His Father's Son: To save the son he loves, a desparate father must confront the ghosts of his past (27 page)

“Jaysus, they’ve let the place go a bit,” he said to himself.

Joey scraped the gate along the ground and it caught on an uneven flagstone, forcing him to squeeze into the gap. At the door he knocked three times, his heart speeding up with every rap of his knuckles. He wondered what he would say to his father and mother. Would they even recognise him after all these years? If they did, would they let him in?

He remembered his father’s words the night he told them Shauna had had an abortion. He raged at him and called him a murdering bastard, who would be damned straight to Hell. He had said he never wanted Joey to darken his door again and it made him smirk because he thought that it was something only people said in the films. When his father saw the smirk he raised his hand, but Joey grabbed it. He stepped up to him and looked in his eyes – he felt his father reading his thoughts – then Joey spoke in a whisper, told his father the days of laying into him were long by.

Joey grabbed for the door knock and the noise was like thunder in the heavens, then the door started to creak, and was slowly opened.

“Hello, Mam,” said Joey. His voice was soft.

Peggy Driscol stared out wide-eyed, with a look that said she had seen death wakened, and then she made the sign of the cross and motioned her son in. The house smelt stale and damp like something was rotting away beneath the floor, thought Joey, and when he looked down he saw the carpet was worn away and the boards were exposed beneath. It was the same carpet he remembered from when he was a boy, and his eyes jumped to see it still in place. When they went through to the front room Peggy sat down and sighed out, then said she didn’t know what to say. She looked older than Joey remembered her. Her hair was iron grey now and there were hollows in her cheeks, but her eyes still danced with a look of intelligence.

“Well, it has been a long time, has it not,” said Joey.

“It has,” said his mother, touching her quivering lips, “that it has.”

He thought she seemed more gentle than he remembered, but then wasn’t she very frail. “Are ye well, Mam?”

“I have no complaints … yeer father is not a well man,” she said.

“I heard.”

“Oh, ye would have. He is not a well man but still a
known
man in Kilmora.” The words seemed to give her strength and the old composure was back with her once more. She straightened her back where she sat, and Joey saw there was still a power of pride left in her.

“Where is he?” said Joey.

“He’s through in bed,” said Peggy, “tis a terrible strain for him to move about now … It’s his heart, ye know. He is very weak.”

“Mam …” said Joey, then broke off.

“Ye will want to see him, I suppose.”

“Is he fit for visitors?”

“Go on through – haven’t I just brung him his soup. Ye know where the room is.”

Joey stood up. His knees were weak when he tried to walk. Why would he ever want to be there? There was nothing his father could say that would change how he felt, surely. Didn’t Shauna, who knew him better than anyone, better than even he knew himself, see the damage this man had done? He didn’t want to feel like this. He knew his bitterness had hurt more than himself. It was that thought alone which made him turn the handle and face his father.

“
Joey
… Is it yeerself?” said Emmet. He was pale and old, his skin grey from the weeks spent indoors. There was none of the terror left in his eyes at all. Joey stared at him and found the image hard to take in. Had this pathetic man blighted his childhood, and still blighted his life yet? How could he feel so much hatred for him? Any hatred he had felt was for another man, surely.

“Joey, come away in.” Emmet held out a hand to his son and motioned to his bedside. The hand looked feeble, bony and arthritic, the fingertips purple where his weak heart had failed to pump enough blood to keep the circulation going. Joey stared at his father’s hand and wondered could it really be the same hand that had gripped a hurley in the All-Ireland and made grown men tremble? He stared and stared at his father. He wanted to find the words to say how he felt. How he felt when he was whipped as a boy and how he felt as a man when his own father turned his back on him in his hour of greatest need. But he couldn’t find any words. All he could find was a mix of hurts and anger rolled into an almighty bolus of hatred.

“I’m glad ye came,” said Emmet. His voice trembled over his dry lips. “I had hoped ye would.”

Joey nodded but there were still no words found in him. His voice was somewhere else, hidden in the depths of him. To sound a breath even was beyond him. It felt as though he had not yet learned to make a noise, never mind learned the power of speech.

Emmet gripped his hand and seemed to speak for him. “I know why ye came, son. It wasn’t for me, sure – I don’t deserve any visitors. Yeer sisters and brothers have all stayed away. I don’t fault them for that … they have their own lives now. But you were different, sure. I hoped ye would come.”

Why was he different? Why was it him sat there and not Megan or Clancy or any of the others? Emmet had fathered six children. The idea that Joey had been singled out for his father’s scorn hit him like a bolt in the belly.

“Why?” said Joey. The word scalded his heart, nearly choked him on the way out. It was only one word, one small word, sure, but didn’t it mean the entire universe to Joey Driscol.

“Ye were the firstborn, son, and I was hard on ye.” Emmet spluttered when he spoke. His dark eyes were blood red and circled in black. “I learnt to be a mite gentler on the others, but the habit with ye was hard to break.”

“Why?” said Joey. Didn’t it always come back to the same question for him.

“I had such high hopes for ye, my first boy. I wanted you to be
my
boy but weren’t ye always yeer own man. I thought I could win ye round by being hard on ye … It was what I knew. I got what I wanted by being hard – a hard player I was. I thought ye needed the same.”

“You were wrong.”

“I know it. I know it now … son. I see it now, I do. I see what I did was wrong.”

“Why didn’t ye see it then?” Joey spoke through his teeth, his jaw clamped tight. “That was when I needed you to see it.”

“I saw what was in ye and it wasn’t the same as what was in me, Joey. I wanted to change it, I wanted to make ye more like me.”

“I could never be like you.” Joey spat out the words. He wanted to look at his father when he said them but he couldn’t face him.

“You are better off being nothing like me,” said Emmet. “Didn’t my flower bloom only briefly.”

“None of us missed it, and sure all of us would have been glad to.”

“I know it. Now the Good Lord is close to his harvesting it feels like I finally understand. I know why you’re here and the others are not.” Emmet brought his hands up to his face, tried to cover the tears in his eyes. “You are a very different man to me, different entirely. I tried to shape ye the only way I knew how, but I was wrong. Ye cannot mould a child, tis wrong to try. The best ye can do is live yeer own life well and hope the child follows your example.”

Joey looked at his father and thought he understood something of him. He saw he was sorry; he didn’t need to hear the word even. In his own way Joey knew he had tried to do the same with Marti, that’s what Shauna meant with the suffocating. He had suffocated the boy with love in just the way Emmet had starved him of it. It couldn’t work. It was as wrong to try and mould Marti into the man he never became as much as it was for Emmet to have tried to mould him.

“Joey, son, ye have a good head on them shoulders. I always knew that – didn’t it only confuse me though. I never knew what to do with ye … me a muck savage, how could I?” Emmet began to sob, streaks of tears rolled down his cheeks and held like icicles to his face.

“Don’t, Da,” said Joey. “Just don’t. Isn’t it too late for that now.”

“No, son, ye don’t understand. I knew when ye left for Australia I had ruined ye … ruined ye I had. Sending you out to Gleesons when you could have been in pinstripes. When you left, it was too much, too much entirely for me to think of what could have been.”

“Da, stop now …”

“I was a coward, Joey. Was my hurt pride only sent ye away, pushed ye away like I always did … and why? Because the tongues were at the wagging in Kilmora. I thought they were laughing at the mighty Emmet Driscol. Jaysus, son, I’m sorry. I was a fool then but aren’t we always learning, right to the end, so we are. That’s why it’s never too late, son, it can’t ever be too late to change, to say yeer sorry. Can it?”

Joey looked at his father in the bed before him. He was exhausted now, the effort shown in his face shocked Joey. His father was wasting away. And wasn’t that what he had done with most of his life – just wasted it away. He could see that playing in the All-Ireland meant nothing to his father now that he was dying, alone, without his family.

“Dad, it’s all right,” said Joey.

“Don’t make my mistakes son,
please
,” said Emmet.

“No, Da … I won’t do that.”

Joey removed his father’s hand from his and left the bedside. When he closed the door his mother stood up. “What is it?” she said.

“I’ve made some terrible mistakes, Ma,” he said. “Some terrible mistakes.”

The rain lashed down on Marti, soaking his hair so much that it stuck to his head. There were great drops of it hanging off his nose and his eyelashes even and sometimes the drops would run down his back and the shivers would start. It was freezing cold and dark out and Marti wondered where his dad could be. He would never go back to Australia, surely. Aunt Catrin said if Dad would only up and take himself away back to Australia, wouldn’t that be a blessed release for everyone and wasn’t that what was needed, especially for Mam, who was buckling under the strain of it all, so she was.

Marti started to cry when he thought about Dad going away back to Australia. He didn’t want him to leave. He wanted him to stay and tell the funny stories that made Mam laugh and chased away the Black Dog like before. It wasn’t fair that Mam was sick and in need of the love and comfort of her only son like Aunt Catrin said. He didn’t want her to be sick and he didn’t want Dad to go away again. He wanted to be just like all the other boys who had a mam and a dad and didn’t need to worry about the Black Dog or one of them being taken away or told to leave.

Marti didn’t think his dad was ever going to come back and he didn’t know what to do or where to go. He knew Aunt Catrin would be mad angry at him for being so wet and staying out so late and he knew Mam would be making a holy show if he went home. He stared up at the night sky and watched the rain falling in the moonlight and he wished it would rain and rain until the whole place was one big river and he was swept away somewhere else. When Marti looked up at the rain falling he heard someone shouting at him and when he looked to see who it was, he saw the very old lady with hair the colour of snowflakes.

She called him over to the guesthouse and said was it grim death he was after, for standing in the downpour was a sure way to find it, was it not. The old lady took Marti inside and made him sit by the fire, where the peat was burning away and making little crackle noises. She said her name was Mrs O’Shea, and Marti thought she was a very nice old lady.

“There now, will ye dry yourself on that,” she said, and handed him a fluffy white towel that was so big it could be wrapped around him more than twice. She gave Marti a warm drink that made him cough when he sipped at it and then she laughed and said, “Tis only a tot added, boy … drink up the toddy.”

Marti liked sitting by the fire and drinking the toddy with Mrs O’Shea, and when Dad came back Marti asked could he stay there now, but Dad looked shocked and said he couldn’t.

“Marti, yeer mam will be worried where you are.”

“I don’t want to go back there, Dad.”

“Why not?”

“Because Aunt Catrin is always telling me I’m bold and Mam is always with the Black Dog … I want to stay with you, before Mam’s taken to the Cabbage Farm and I’m left with Aunt Catrin forever.” Marti started to cry, and Dad picked him up and sat him on his knee. He knew he was too big to be sitting on Dad’s knee but wasn’t it grand to be sat up on his knee getting the hugs again.

“Dad, did Mam take me here because I was a bold boy and took the blue ten dollar bill?”

Dad’s eyes went really wide and then he spun Marti round and looked straight at him. “No, son … No way. It was nothing you did at all. Do you hear me? I don’t want you thinking that now.”

Marti nodded.

“I mean it,” said Dad. “It was my fault entirely … not yours or Mam’s either.” Dad looked very sad when he said it was his fault Mam had taken him to Ireland and Marti didn’t want Dad to be sad. It had been so long since he had seen Dad that all he wanted was for him to be happy and have a laugh and a joke like they always did before. Dad rubbed at Marti’s hair with the fluffy white towel and then Mrs O’Shea said about the toddy and Dad said, “I think he’ll live, sure.” A soaking to the skin was no laughing matter though, said Dad, and hadn’t Marti better be getting home for some dry clothes and the sooner the better.

“Okay, fella, up ye are,” said Dad. “Tis time we got you home to Mam. There could be guards out looking for you.”