The Empty Family (19 page)

Once he’d put his aunt’s missal back where it belonged, he decided that it was best not to keep looking through her private things. He took the post office book, found his coat, turned off the lights in the house and locked the door before making his way to the hotel.

As he sat alone in the dining room having his supper, he smiled to himself at the thought of someone mixing him up with Tom Furlong, a local elderly member of the Knights of Columbanus. He knew how much Tom Furlong would disapprove of him. In all the years, Josie had never once referred to Paul’s sexuality; it was not something that could be mentioned. And he had never found out when she’d known for certain that he was gay. He had made a point of bringing friends to the house to visit; they were always male, and some of them were boyfriends or lovers, and thus they appeared in Aunt Josie’s front room a number of times over a year or two and then never again. Somehow, it seemed, she had understood, or maybe, he thought, someone had told her.

She had not mentioned, either, that at Mass on Christmas mornings he did not go with her to Communion but sat in his seat. He remembered her face as she walked back down the aisle towards him, her expression a mixture of reverence and strain. He knew that others would have noticed his not going to the rail, and he supposed she might have minded that, too.

Only once, as the AIDS crisis was daily in the news, had she made any oblique reference to his being gay. One day when he was leaving her house, having stayed over on a Saturday night, she turned to him gently as he stood up to go.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked, narrowing her eyes.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I was just worried about you, that’s all. I read the paper and I watch the television and I worry.’

‘There’s no need to worry.’

‘Are you sure, Paul?’

‘I am,’ he said. ‘But thanks for asking.’

He almost moved towards her then to touch her arm or hold her hand for a moment, but instead he tried to smile to show that he loved and appreciated her tact. And then he left and drove back to Dublin.

The evening when she mistook him for Tom Furlong he had entered the house with his own key, as Tom must also have done regularly. With the light going, Josie was in the front room listening to the radio. It was the time when both her eyes and ears were failing her, and she had not even heard him enter. He did not want to turn on the light without asking her, in case he frightened her.

Slowly, however, his aunt became alert to his presence. But he had to shout his name several times, even though he was standing in front of her.

‘Oh, sit down, Tom,’ she said. ‘And it’s always lovely to see you.’

‘No, it’s Paul. Paul.’

She said nothing for a while, and he wondered if he should turn on the light. But he waited and then sat down on the small sofa at the window.

‘Tom,’ she said warmly.

‘No, Paul, Paul.’

‘Oh, Paul,’ she said sadly. ‘Paul got involved with a rotten crowd up in Dublin, Tom. A rotten crowd! I don’t know whether I was right or wrong when I decided I wouldn’t even pretend I knew about it. I made the decision all on my own not to get on to him about it. Oh, I don’t know.’

‘Aunt Josie, it’s Paul. This is Paul.’

In the shadowy light, she stopped talking and peered towards him.

‘What?’ she asked.

He wondered if it would be possible to run out of the room and behave as if this scene had never taken place, make her feel that she might have dreamed a visitor, so that she could put it out of her mind, as he would, too.

‘Aunt Josie, it’s Paul.’

‘Oh, Paul,’ she said, and then mumbled something. ‘Is it you, Paul?’

‘Yes, it’s me. How are you?’

‘Paul,’ she said, and then stopped. ‘Paul, you won’t … I thought … Will you turn on the light?’

Once he had switched on the light, they talked for some time about the roads and all the traffic and the work being done and the length of time it took now to get through the town of Gorey. When he stood up to leave, she looked at him imploringly.

‘You will come again, won’t you, Paul?’

‘Of course I will, Josie, of course.’

He almost laughed to himself now at the memory of this scene, the one moment in all the years when her tact and sense of decorum had failed her.

When he came down to the nursing home the following Saturday, she was ready to leave once more, insisting that she knew where her coat was and that she had nothing of any value in her room, so they both could slip out – he could help her, and no one would be any the wiser. He sat patiently with her, noticing that her hearing had improved, explaining how fiercely cold it was outside, and asking her about the food and how she had slept, and smiling each time she pressed him to take her home and slowly explaining again that her house was freezing and that she was warm here.

‘Did you not bring the car?’

‘Aunt Josie, it’s the coldest day of the winter.’

‘What day is it?’

‘Saturday.’

‘Will you go and get the car?’

He tried to change the subject and spoke about all the new houses being built on the edge of the town and all the new people who had been taken on at his office, including two accountants from England. As he spoke, he became more determined to ask her to sign the form he had received from the solicitor that would give him power of attorney. Observing her, he realized that she must know where she was, and he believed that she must have some inkling that she was not going back to her own house. She seemed to alternate between an almost childish helplessness and a weary resignation.

He took the form out of his jacket pocket.

‘I need this form signed for the bank,’ he said. ‘I have a pen here.’

‘What are they for?’

‘They mean that I can lodge your pension for you, and get you money when you need it without you having to bother.’

She pretended that she did not hear. He knew that every word was being taken in by the others around them. He decided not to repeat what he had said. He merely handed her the sheet of paper and held out a pen and pointed to the spot where she should sign.

‘Just your name. I’ll put the date in.’

She looked at him, her expression cold and hard and wounded. He knew that if he flinched now, or changed the subject, or offered any further explanation or even apology, he would lose this chance.

‘Here,’ he said, and pointed again to the line where she should sign.

‘I never thought …’ she began.

Paul did not move. He held the paper steady and offered her the pen again. Slowly, Josie signed her name and then she pushed the sheet of paper away from her.

As the year went on, and spring gave way to summer, she began to complain less, agreeing that she liked the food at the nursing home, and that she found being put to bed at six each evening very restful; it was something she looked forward to, she said. Paul grew to recognize some of the other old people and learned to smile at them and greet them when he came to visit. Some of them, he saw, were always keen and on the look-out for news; others seemed dazed. As the year went on he became used to coming to the nursing home and Josie became almost used to the idea that she would not be leaving with him in his car.

When Christmas approached, he spoke to Noeleen, who said that many of the patients went to their families on Christmas Day, but she would be happy to look after Josie if Paul wished. He had friends in Dublin who usually had their Christmas dinner at four in the afternoon, so he could drive to the nursing home on Christmas morning and spend an hour or two with Josie and then return to Dublin.

When he came in at about eleven that morning, Josie was asleep and Noeleen was in the office. She was the one on duty all day, she said as she sat with him in the hallway, but she didn’t mind. She would have her Christmas dinner in the evening and be able to relax then.

‘She talks about you a lot,’ Noeleen said. ‘When you’re coming next, and what you’re doing. That’s her big subject.’

Paul smiled.

‘She’s great most of the time,’ he said. ‘And she’s put on weight.’

‘I was thinking about you and her just this morning,’ Noeleen said. ‘It was awful what happened, of course, and I knew your mother well. Josie was marvellous the way she took you in and reared you. I used to see the two of you walking back to her house together after her day’s work was over. And she was very proud of you.’

She looked at him and nodded cheerfully. He could think of nothing to say in reply.

‘And, of course, your mother always got news of you and she must have been glad that you were being looked after. There were people in the town who kept in touch with her. She always asked about you, Paul. I heard that, now.’

Paul glanced over at his aunt. He hoped that she would wake up soon, so that this conversation could end.

‘And she was wise to come home to Enniscorthy after all the years, to be among her own in the town,’ Noeleen continued. ‘There’s a friend of mine is a neighbour of hers on the Ross Road, and she says that she’s in right form.’

Paul saw that Noeleen was watching him carefully. He did not know that his mother had come home to Enniscorthy and was living on the Ross Road. He wondered how long ago this had happened.

‘There’s no love lost, of course, between her and Josie,’ Noeleen said. ‘But that’s the way. That’s the way the good Lord made them, and they’re too old to change now. It would take a miracle.’

He had, he thought, no real memory of his mother, just a sense of being somewhere in a car with her and the memory of a smell of something that had made him sick. But he was not even sure about the memory. It was too vague. He had been aware, because he had heard someone say it, that she drank, but it wasn’t until he was a teenager that he understood what this meant. He knew that his mother had come to Josie’s house once when he was seven or eight and created a fuss in the street when Josie would not let her see him, because his friend Liam Colfer had told him the next day. He had been in the front room that night watching television and had no idea what all the shouting was about. Josie had merely said that it was a woman who delivered kindling and she would be coming back on Saturday, thank God, with that delivery, which was long overdue. She had refused to pay the woman, she said, until she delivered the kindling.

His mother, he supposed, had gone back to England then. He had never asked about her. Her name had never been mentioned. Every day after school until he was twelve he would go and sit in Whyte’s Insurance, at his own special desk close to Josie’s, and do his homework, or make drawings, or read comic books. And then, at half past five, he would go home with her.

Josie made sure that he was happy and that he studied hard. As soon as it became obvious that he was good at maths and science, she learned everything she could about careers for him and what points he would need. She paid for grinds so that he would have honours in maths and thus gain entrance to University College, Dublin to study engineering.

He was always sure that his mother was alive, because he believed that someone, even Josie herself, would have to tell him if she died. She had sisters in the town whom he knew by sight, and a few times he had met cousins of his in one of the bars there, but he had not spoken much to them. Someone, he was certain, would tell him if anything happened to his mother. But no one had told him that she had come home.

Over the next year he saw Josie whenever he could. He always stopped and talked to Noeleen if he had time, and there was another woman, who seemed the most sprightly and alert among the patients and, he thought, the most lonely, to whom he spoke as well if he found her in the porch. The talk was always easy, of the weather, or the traffic, or the news of the day. He began to think of the nursing home as a place of comfort, the best refuge for Josie to be in now, and felt that the food and the routines of the place were keeping her alive, just as the other patients were keeping her stimulated.

Halfway through the year, Josie changed and became even brighter. Not only did she put on more weight but she was happier and smiled if one of the nurses came towards her. She was also more forgetful, however, and could ramble when she spoke. Nonetheless, she recognized him and thanked him for visiting. Noeleen told him that the woman who had recently begun to sit beside Josie, Brigid, looked out for her, and they often talked to each other in whispers.

Paul noticed that the two women used the same rug to keep warm, and when tea came Brigid made sure that Josie did not spill hers and took the cup from her when she had finished drinking. On some visits, having driven for two hours, Paul felt guilty for staying only a short time, but it was hard to think of anything to say, and it was, he reassured himself, more important that he simply made the visit each time he promised he would. Despite the fact that her mind was gradually fading, Josie had a way of making him feel loved while he sat with her, and something close to proud that he had driven all that way.

She never mentioned the past, never spoke about her own childhood, or the years working in the insurance office, when she took care of him. Most of this appeared to have been forgotten or erased now that her world had narrowed.

He noticed new arrivals at the home more than he noticed who was missing, but slowly it became clear to him that the line of old ladies who had watched him when he first appeared in the large room had gone and that some of them must have died or were now confined to their rooms. Josie seemed not to register new arrivals or to miss those who were no longer there. She merely viewed the people in the room and the staff, Paul thought, as she viewed the television, with vague puzzlement.

Once, when he had supper with an old boyfriend who asked about Josie and seemed to want to hear about the nursing home and the empty house in the town, Paul came close to confiding that his mother, as far as he knew, after an absence of many years, was now living in Enniscorthy as well. Instead, he decided to say nothing. He knew that his friend would argue that he should try to make contact with her. He did not want to hear that argument.