I nearly can’t breathe but am afraid to say. She rocks me, saying, ‘My boy, my boy,’ over and over again, and I think I might have said the right thing after all.
When she pulls away I say, ‘Can I ask you another question?’
She nods.
‘Why did you call her Victoria?’
Her face creases again, in pain, but she composes herself and even smiles. ‘I haven’t told anyone why.’
‘Oh. Sorry.’
‘No, pet, it’s just that nobody asked. Come here and I’ll tell you,’ she says, and even though I’m too old, I squeeze onto her lap, half on the armchair, half on her. ‘I felt different with her. A different kind of bump. I said to Mattie, “I feel like a plum.” Says he, “We’ll call her Plum, so.”’
‘Plum!’ I laugh.
She nods and wipes her tears again. ‘It got me thinking about my grandma’s house. We used to visit her: me, Sheila and Paddy. She had apple trees, pears, blackberries, and she had two plum trees. I loved those plum trees because they were all she talked about, I think they were all she thought about – she wouldn’t let those trees beat her.’ She gives a little laugh and even though I don’t get the joke, I laugh too. ‘I think she thought it was exotic, that growing plums made her exotic, when really she was plain, plain as can be, like any of us. She’d make plum pies and I loved baking them with her. We stayed with her on my birthday every year, so every year my birthday cake was a plum pie.’
‘Mmm,’ I say, licking my lips. ‘I’ve never had plum pie.’
‘No,’ she says, surprised. ‘I’ve never baked it for you. She grew Opal plums, but they weren’t reliable because the bullfinches ate the fruit buds in winter. They used to strip those branches clean and Nana would be crazy, running around the garden swatting them with her tea cloth. Sometimes she’d get us to stand by the tree all day just scaring them away; me, Sheila and Paddy, standing around like scarecrows.’
I laugh at that image of them.
‘She gave the Opal more attention because it tasted better and it grew larger, almost twice the size of the other tree’s plums, but the Opal made her angrier and didn’t deliver every year. My favourite plum tree was the other tree, the Victoria plum. It was smaller but it always delivered and the bullfinches stayed away from that one more. To me, it was the sweetest …’ Her smile fades again and she looks away. ‘Well, now.’
‘I know a marble game called Picking Plums,’ I say.
‘Do you now?’ she asks. ‘Don’t you have a marble game for every occasion?’ She prods at me with her finger in my tickly bits and I laugh.
‘Do you want to play?’
‘Why not!’ she says, surprised at herself.
I’m in such shock I run up the stairs faster than I ever have to get the marbles. Once downstairs she’s still in the chair, daydreaming. I set up the game, explaining as I go.
I can’t draw on the floor so I use a shoelace to mark a line and I place a row of marbles with a gap the width of two marbles in between. I use a skipping rope to mark a line on the other side of the room. The idea is to stand behind the line and take it in turns to shoot at the line of marbles.
‘So these are the plums,’ I say to her, pointing at the line of marbles, feeling such excitement that I have her attention, that she’s all mine, that she’s listening to me talking about marbles, that she’s possibly going to play marbles, that nobody else can steal her attention away. All aches and pains from my fever are gone in the distraction and hopefully hers are too. ‘You have to shoot your marble at the plums and if you hit it out of line you get the plum.’
She laughs. ‘This is so silly, Fergus.’ But she does it and she has fun, scowling when she misses and celebrating when she wins. I’ve never seen Mammy play like this, or punch the air in victory when she wins. It’s the best moment I’ve ever spent with her in my whole life. We play the game until all the plums are picked and for once I’m hoping I miss, because I don’t want it to end. When we hear voices at the door, the shouting and name-calling as my brothers return from school, I scurry for the marbles on the floor.
‘Back to bed, you!’ She ruffles my hair and returns to the kitchen.
I don’t tell the others what me and Mammy talked about and I don’t tell them we played marbles together. I want it to be between me and her.
And in the week that Mammy stops wearing black and bakes us plum pie for dessert, I don’t tell anybody why. One thing I learned about carrying marbles in my pockets in case Father Murphy locked me in the dark room, and going out with Hamish and pretending to other kids that I’ve never played marbles before, is that keeping secrets makes me feel powerful.
Mid-morning and back home, I lug Dad’s boxes into the middle of the living room floor and separate two I already know, boxes of sentimental and important items that we had to keep. I move them aside to make way for the three that are new to me. I’m mystified. Mum and I packed up his entire apartment, but I did not pack these boxes. I make myself a fresh cup of tea and begin emptying the same box I opened earlier, wanting to pick up where I left off. It is peculiar to have time to myself. Taking care and time, I start to go through Dad’s inventory.
Latticino core swirls, divided core swirls, ribbon core swirls, Joseph’s coat swirls. I take them out and line them up beside their boxes, crouched on the floor like one of my sons with their cars. I push my face up to them, examining the interiors, trying to compare and contrast. I marvel at the colours and detail; some are cloudy, some are clear, some appear to have trapped rainbows inside, while others have mini tornadoes frozen in a moment. Some have a base glass colour and nothing else. Despite being grouped together under these various alien titles I can’t tell the difference no matter how hard I try. Absolutely every single one of them is unique and I have to be careful not to mix them up.
The description of each marble boggles my mind too as I try to identify which of the core swirls is the gooseberry, caramel or custard. Which is the ‘beach ball’ peppermint swirl, which is the one with mica. But I’ve no doubt Dad knew, he knew them all. Micas, slags, opaques and clearies, some so complex it’s as though they house entire galaxies inside, others one single solid colour. Dark, bright, eerie and hypnotic, he has them all.
And then I come across a box that makes me laugh. Dad, who hated animals, who refused every plea for me to get a pet, has an entire collection of what are called ‘Sulphides’. Transparent marbles with animal figures inside, like he has his own farmyard within his tiny marbles. Dogs, cats, squirrels and birds. He even has an elephant. The one which stands out the most to me is a clear marble with an angel inside. It’s this that I hold and study for some time, straightening my aching back, trying to grasp what I’ve found, wondering when, what part of his life did this all occur. When we left the house did he watch us drive off and disappear to his ‘farmyard animals’? Tend to them privately in his own world. Was it before I was born? Or was it after he and Mum
