The old man shut his eyes and drank his drink.
‘Is anything wrong, Grandfather?’
‘It will hit me in the middle of the night,’ said the old man. ‘I will probably stand up in bed with a hell of a yell. But right now it is just a thing in the pit of my stomach and the back of my head. Let’s talk, boy, let’s talk.’
And they talked and drank until midnight and then the old man got put to bed and Tom went to bed himself and after a long while both slept.
About two in the morning, the old man woke suddenly.
He peered around in the dark, wondering where he was, then saw the paintings, the upholstered chairs, and the lamp and rugs Frank had made, and sat up. He clenched his fists. Then, rising, he threw on his clothes, and staggered toward the door as if fearful that he might not make it before something terrible happened.
When the door slammed, Tom jerked his eyes wide.
Somewhere off in the dark there was a sound of someone calling, shouting, defying the elements, someone at the top of his lungs crying blasphemies, saying God and Jesus and Jesus and God, and finally blows struck, wild blows, as if someone were hitting a wall or a person.
After a long while, his grandfather shuffled back into the room, soaked to the skin.
Weaving, muttering, whispering, the old man peeled off his wet clothes before the fireless fire, then threw a newspaper on the coals, which blazed up briefly to show a face relaxing out of fury into numbness. The old man found and put on Tom’s discarded robe. Tom kept his eyes tight as the old man held his hands out toward the dwindling blaze, streaked with blood.
‘Damn, damn, damn. There!’ He poured whiskey and gulped it down. He blinked at Tom and the paintings on the wall and looked at Tom and the flowers in the vases and then drank again. After a long while, Tom pretended to wake up.
‘It’s after two. You need your rest, Grand-da.’
‘I’ll rest when I’m done drinking. And thinking!’
‘Thinking what, Grandpa?’
‘Right now,’ said the old man, seated in the dim room with the tumbler in his two hands, and the fire gone to ghost on the hearth, ‘remembering your dear grandmother in June of the year 1902.
And there is the thought of your father born, which is fine, and you born after him, which is fine. And there is the thought of your father dying when you were young and the hard life of your mother and her holding you too close, maybe, in the cold beggar life of flinty Dublin.
And me out in the meadows with my working life, and us together only once a month. The being born of people and the going away of people. These turn round in an old man’s night. I think of you born. Tom, a happy day. Then I see you here now. That’s it.’
The old man grew silent and drank his drink.
‘Grand-da,’ said Tom, at last, almost like a child crept in for penalties and forgiveness of a sin as yet unnamed, ‘do I worry you?’
‘No.’ Then the old man added, ‘But what life will do with you, how you may be treated, good or ill—I sit up late with that.’
The old man sat. The young man lay wide-eyed watching him and later said, as if reading thoughts:
‘Grandfather, I am happy.’
The old man leaned forward.
‘Are you, boy?’
‘I have never been so happy in my life, sir.’
‘Yes?’ The old man looked through the dim air of the room, at the young face. ‘I see that. But will you stay happy, Tom?’
‘Does anyone ever stay happy, Grandfather? Nothing lasts, does it?’
‘Shut up! Your grandma and me, that lasted!’
‘No. It wasn’t all the same, was it? The first years were one thing, the last years another.’
The old man put his hand over his own mouth and then massaged his face, closing his eyes.
‘God, yes, you’re right. There are two, no, three, no, four lives, for each of us. Not one of them lasts, it’s sure. But the thought of them does. And out of the four or five or a dozen lives you live, one is special. I remember, once…’
The old man’s voice faltered.
The young man said, ‘Once, Grandpa?’
The old man’s eyes fixed somewhere to a horizon of the Past. He did not speak to the room or to Tom or to anyone. He didn’t even seem to be speaking to himself.
‘Oh, it was a long time ago. When I first came in this room tonight, for no reason, strange, the memory was there. I ran back down along the shoreline of Galway to that week…’
‘What week, when?’
‘My twelfth birthday fell that week in summer, think of it! Victoria still queen and me in a turf-hut out by Galway strolling the shore for food to be picked up from the tides, and the weather so sweet you almost turned sad with the taste of it, for you knew it would soon go away.
‘And in the middle of the great fair weather along the road by the shore one noon came this tinker’s caravan carrying their dark gypsy people to set up camp by the sea.
‘There was a mother, a father, and a girl in that caravan, and this boy who came running down by the sea alone, perhaps in need of company, for there I was with nothing to do, and in need of strangers myself.
‘Here he came running. And I shall not forget my first sight of him from that day till they drop me in the earth. He—
‘Ah God, I’m a failure with words! Stop everything. I must go further back.
‘A circus came to Dublin. I visited the sideshows of pinheads and dwarfs and terrible small midgets and fat women and skeleton men. Seeing a crowd about one last exhibit, I thought this must be the most horrible of all.
I edged over to look at this final terror! And what did I see? The crowd was drawn to nothing more nor less than: a little girl of some six years, so fair, so beautiful, so cream-white of cheek, so blue of eye, so golden of hair, so quiet in her manner that in the midst of this fleshy holocaust she called attention. By saying nothing her shout of beauty stopped the show.
All had to come to her to get well again. For it was a sick menagerie and she the only sweet lovely Doc about to give us back life.
‘Well, that girl in the sideshow was as wonderful a surprise as this boy come running down the beach like a young horse.
‘He was not dark like his parents.
‘His hair was all gold curls and bits of sun. He was cut out of bronze by the light, and what wasn’t bronze was copper. Impossible, but it seemed that this boy of twelve, like myself, had been born on that very day, he looked that new and fresh. And in his face were these bright brown eyes, the eyes of an animal that has run a long way, pursued, along the shorelines of the world.
‘He pulled up and the first thing he said to me was laughter. He was glad to be alive, and announced that by the sound he made. I must have laughed in turn, for his spirit was catching. He shoved out his brown hand. I hesitated. He gestured impatiently and grabbed my hand.
‘My God, after all these years I remember what we said: ‘Isn’t it funny?’ he said.
‘I didn’t ask what was funny. I knew. He said his name was Jo. I said my name was Tim. And there we were, two boys on the beach and the universe a good rare joke between us.
‘He looked at me with his great round full copper eyes, and laughed out his breath and I thought: He has chewed hay! his breath smells of grass: and suddenly I was giddy. The smell stunned me. Jesus God. I thought, reeling, I’m drunk, and why? I’ve nipped Dad’s booze, but God, what’s this? Drunk by noon, hit by the sun, giddy from what? the sweet mash caught in a strange boy’s teeth? No, no!
‘Then Jo looked straight at me and said. “There isn’t much time.”
‘“Much time?” I asked.
‘“Why,” said Jo, “for us to be friends. We are, aren’t we?”
‘He breathed the smell of mown fields upon me.
‘Jesus God, I wanted to cry, Yes! And almost fell down, but staggered back as if he had hit me a friend’s hit. And my mouth opened and shut and I said, “Why is there so little time?”
‘“Because,” said Jo, “we’ll only be here six days, seven at the most, then on down and around Eire. I’ll never see you again in my life. So we’ll just have to pack a lot of things in a few days, won’t we, Tim?”
‘“Six days? That’s no time at all!” I protested, and wondered why I found myself suddenly destroyed, left destitute on the shore. A thing had not begun, but already I sorrowed after its death.
‘“A day here, a week there, a month somewhere else,” said Jo. “I must live very quickly, Tim. I have no friends that last. Only what I remember. So, wherever I go, I say to my new friends, quick, do this, do that, let us make many happenings, a long list, so you will remember me when I am gone, and I you, and say: That was a friend. So, let’s begin. There!”
‘And Jo tagged me and ran.
‘I ran after him, laughing, for wasn’t it
