JJ never had. Everyone knows he spent as much time eating and sleeping in Owen’s house as he did in his own. But I didn’t mind that, I needed all the help I could get. Good neighbours are a blessing and I knew from that first day I could rely on her. Looking back now I don’t know how I would have managed without her.
Frank came in and saw them playing together on the floor. “The two men,” he said happily. “The men they couldn’t hang.”
* * *
JJ’s health checked out fine. His medical records listed shots and inoculations but Dr Ryan said he’d give him booster shots just in case. He took a blood sample from him and said he’d have the results back in a few weeks—he wanted to do some tests on him to see if there was anything like MS or whatever waiting for him down the line.
“But he looks healthy I have to say. A healthy lucky baby. He could do with a bit of feeding up but other than that there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with him. As I say we’ll know more in a few weeks. How is he feeding?”
“He eats whatever I eat, he seems to have no problem. Spuds and meat and vegetables, plain food.”
“Good. Just mash it up for him or cut it into small pieces. I’m going to prescribe a small tonic. Once a day after his dinner. Other than that he seems to be fine. Bring him in to me if he starts running a temperature or anything. If anything comes up in the blood tests or if I need more information I’ll give you a call. If you don’t hear from me you’ll know everything is all right.”4
I didn’t get any call from him.
He was baptised about a month after that—that would have been about the middle of May. I didn’t know whether he was baptised or not or what religious background he came from so I decided to do it just to be on the safe side.
It was a Saturday afternoon, a lovely sunny day and there was good crowd in the church. Of course word had got out by then so everyone had turned up to have a look at him—his first public appearance so to speak. And he looked the part too. Maureen had come in that morning and smartened him up, put on his clothes and brushed his hair—a thing I could never do—and he was the smartest-looking little lad you’ve ever seen. He was six weeks with me by then and he’d come on in leaps and bounds. He’d got stronger and hardier and his face had filled out and as Maureen said it was the type of face that was quick to smile. Anyway, he walked hand in hand with me up the aisle to the christening font and there wasn’t a gig out of him throughout the whole thing. As good as gold he was. The same couldn’t be said for Frank, his godfather . . .
Maureen told me he was all nerves that morning. You’d swear it was himself that was being baptised, she said. Nothing would do him but to have a few stiff ones before he sat into the car for the church and I suppose the heat of the place got to him when he was inside because when he stood across the christening font from me he had this high colour in his face and a smell of whiskey off him that would knock a horse. Swaying back on his heels he was with a smile on his face like a man who was going to burst into song at any moment. Maureen gave him a shot of the elbow and that woke him up and he looked around him like he didn’t know where he was. Then he started rooting in his inside pocket and pulled out his tobacco and a box of matches. For a split second I thought he was going to roll up a fag and throw the match into the christening font. Maureen looked like she was going to split him. Father Scallen was looking at Frank and Frank was looking off into the distance like he had other things on his mind. Then he turns the pack of tobacco over in his hand and takes out this folded handkerchief from under it and blows his nose. The whole lot back in his pocket then and that was it. It was as much as I could do to stop laughing. But everything passed off smoothly after that. Frank and Maureen forswore Satan with all his works and empty promises and JJ was held out so that the holy water could be poured over his head. He lashed out with his hand and nearly drowned us and everyone got a great laugh out of it.
When all the fuss was over the five of us went for a meal in the hotel—Owen was with us as well. A lovely evening it was too, sitting round and having a quiet drink and the craic and people coming up shaking my hand and wishing us well. And when Maureen took the two boys home myself and Frank moved into the front bar and I bought a round of drinks for the house. It must have been near eleven when Frank gave us the first song. He could hardly stand by that time but no matter how drunk he is he’s still a fine singer. “The Streets of Laredo,” that’s his song. He got the hush and he just stood there with his eyes closed and one elbow on the counter and it was no hardship to listen to him. The odd shout of Good man, Frank, and Shhh and Give him a chance and then at the end a big round of applause and someone said Folla that and I was called to sing. And that was it for the rest of the night. We sang it out, one after another along the bar, some of us singing twice and the night ended where it began with Frank singing “The Parting Glass.” We were the last to leave—Johnny was wiping down the tables. When we stood out on the street the town was quiet, no one around except Sergeant Nevin standing on Morrison’s Corner with a flashlight in his hand. Goodnight, men, he said as we passed and we went on our way down to the bridge where the car was parked.
It was around that time I applied for this council house. John Ryan was the welfare officer at the time; he was calling round fixing up JJ’s medical card and children’s allowance and so on. It was him that mentioned it.
There was only two bedrooms in the old house: JJ’s behind the fireplace and mine at the other end of the house. It was big enough for both of us but you didn’t need to do much looking at it to know it was no place to raise a child in. There was a small bathroom off the back and a flat-roofed kitchen extension put on in the seventies that was never right. It needed rewiring and the roof needed to be redone. I talked about renovating the whole thing.
“That’s only throwing good money after bad,” John said. “The sooner you get in an application for a council house the sooner you’ll be out of this place. Take it from me this house will be down around your ears in a few years. It’s no use reroofing or rewiring, a house this old will always be an old house, dampness and everything. Do the job right or forget about it. A child in your care and site on your own land—the whole thing’ll be ready in a few months.”
So I took his advice, wired off a half-acre of land—this half-acre we’re on here—and filed for planning permission. Pete Mangan was peace commissioner at the time and he signed for it and the whole thing was in progress about two months later. It went out to tender that August and the foundation was dug and poured in the middle of September. John Finn put up the blocks and Ted Naughton—this was one of his first jobs—did all the plumbing and wiring. The promise was that we’d be in it by Christmas but between one thing and another it wasn’t till the first week in February we turned the key in it.
JJ was nearly three years old by then. He’d grown strong and hardy and he was running around and up to all sorts of devilment; it was a full-time job keeping an eye on him. Up on tables and ladders and you couldn’t keep him down off the old Ferguson for love or money. And one day, when my back was turned, he went missing. Owen came over looking for him and my heart came up in my mouth; I thought he was with him. Out we went looking for him, the whole lot of us; Maureen and myself going through the sheds and barns and Frank, grey in the face, standing on the wall of the slurry pit with a length of four-by-two in his hand. Then Maureen comes round the house with JJ asleep in her arms. Up on top of the bales she’d found him. How a three-year-old gasúr managed to climb up there with no ladder was beyond me but climb up he did. Up after the cat he’d gone and whether it was the heat of the hay or that he couldn’t get down Maureen had found him asleep with the cat curled up on his belly.
That’s when I put him into the crèche. I couldn’t keep an eye on him twenty-four hours a day, not with the few cattle I had and doing jobs and everything. Maureen mentioned the crèche but I was in two minds about it. The way I saw it I hadn’t taken him out of one
