I thought at times that Jonas was a lost boy. He never spoke of friends. He had no girlfriend, had taken no one, not even himself, to his school’s Christmas dance. He didn’t join clubs or play sports. He went to school, he came home from school. He went to films alone on Sunday afternoons, foreign films usually. He helped out around the house. Was he a lonely boy? I wondered. I knew something of what it was to be a lonely boy.
So there was only Hannah and Jonas in the house, a husband and father dead, a son and brother away on the sites, and from what little I knew of family life, I knew this much: a woman in her mid forties and an anxious teenage boy would have precious little to talk to each other about, and so perhaps this was a house of silence, which had led her to pick up the phone and call her older brother and say will you not come over for dinner some night, Odran? Sure we never see you at all.
I had the new car with me that night. Or the new used car, I should say, a 1992 Ford Fiesta. I’d picked it up only a week or so earlier, and I was pleased as Punch, for it was a smart little thing and fairly whizzed around the city. I parked on the road outside Hannah’s house, stepped out, and opened the gate, which was hanging slightly off its hinges, and ran my finger along the chipped black paint that scarred the surface. Would Jonas not do something about that? I wondered. With Kristian gone and Aidan away, wasn’t he the man of the house now, even if he was little more than a boy? The garden looked well, though. The cold months hadn’t destroyed the plants, and a well-tended bed looked as if it had a hundred secrets buried beneath the soil that would spring to life and spill their consequences once the winter had given way to spring, which couldn’t come soon enough for my liking, for I have always been a lover of the sun even if, spending a lifetime in Ireland, I have had little personal connection with it.
When did Hannah become a gardener? I wondered as I stood there. This is a new thing, is it?
I rang the doorbell and stepped back, glancing up toward the second-floor window where a light was on, and as I did so, a shadow made its way quickly across. Jonas must have heard the car pulling up and looked outside as I made my way up the short path to their door. I hoped he’d noticed the Fiesta. What harm if I wanted him to think his uncle had a bit of something to him? I thought for a moment that I should make more of an effort with the boy, for after all, I was his only uncle, and he might need a man in his life.
The door opened, and as Hannah peered out, she reminded me of our late grandmother, the way she stood and stared, bent over slightly, trying to understand why a person might be standing on her porch at this time of night. In her face I could see the woman she might be in another fifteen years.
“Well,” she said, nodding her head, satisfied now that she recognized me. “The dead arose.”
“Ah now,” I replied, smiling at her and leaning forward to give her a peck on the cheek. She smelled of those lotions and creams that women of her age wear. I recognize them whenever they come close to shake my hand and ask me how my week has been and would I like to come for dinner some evening and how are their sons doing, they’re no trouble to me now, are they? I don’t know what those lotions are called. Lotions probably isn’t even the right word. The television advertisements would say something else. There’ll be a modern word for them. But look, what I don’t know about women and their ways would fill enough books to stock the Ancient Library of Alexandria.
“It’s good to see you, Hannah,” I said as I stepped inside and removed my overcoat, hanging it up on one of the empty hooks in the hallway, next to her well-worn navy Penney’s coat and a brown suede jacket that could only belong to Jonas. I glanced up the stairs, suddenly eager to see him.
“Come in, come in,” said Hannah, leading the way into the living room, which was welcoming and warm. She had a fire lit in the grate, and the place itself had an air about it that made me think it would be very comfortable to sit here of an evening, watching the television programs, listening to Anne Doyle describe what Bertie was doing and whether John Bruton would make a comeback and what poor Al Gore would do now that he was on the scrap heap.
There was a framed photograph on top of the telly of little Cathal, laughing his head off as if he had his whole life in front of him, poor lad. One I’d never seen before. I stared at it; he was standing on a beach in a pair of short trousers, his hair unkempt, a smile on his face that would break your heart. I felt a moment’s dizziness overwhelm me. There was only one beach Cathal had ever stood on in his life, and why would Hannah display a memory from that terrible week? Where had she even found it?
“How was the traffic, anyway?” she asked me from across the room, and I turned and stared at her for a moment before replying.
“Not a bother,” I said. “I’ve a new car outside. It goes like the wind.”
“A new car? That’s very posh of you. Is that allowed?”
“I don’t mean brand-new,” I said, telling myself I should stop thinking of it in those terms. “I mean new to me. It’s secondhand.”
“And that’s allowed, is it?” she asked.
“It is,” I said, laughing a little, uncertain exactly what she meant. “Sure I have to get around, don’t I?”
“I suppose so. What time is it, anyway?” She glanced at her watch, then back at me. “Will you sit down? You’re making me nervous standing there.”
“I will,” I said, taking a seat, and as I did so, she clapped a hand to her mouth and stared at me as if she’d just had a great shock.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” she said. “I invited you to dinner, didn’t I?”
“You did,” I admitted, aware now of how the smell of food in the air seemed to be more the memory of dinner than the promise of a new meal being prepared. “Had you forgotten?”
She turned away and looked confused for a moment, scrunching up her eyes, so that her face took on a most unusual aspect, before shaking her head. “Of course I didn’t forget,” she said. “Only, well yes, I suppose I did. I thought it was—did we not say Thursday?”
“No,” I replied, certain that we had said Saturday. “Ah look, maybe I got it wrong,” I added, not wanting to blame her for the mistake.
“You didn’t get it wrong,” she said, shaking her head and looking more upset than I thought necessary. “I don’t know where I am these days, Odran. I’m all over the place. I can’t begin to tell you all the mistakes I’ve made recently. Mrs. Byrne already gave me a warning and told me I had to buck up my ideas. But sure she’s always giving out, that one. I can’t do right for doing wrong as far as she’s concerned. Look, I don’t know what to tell you. The dinner’s over. Jonas and I ate a half hour ago and I was settled down to the telly. Can I make you a sausage sandwich? Would that be all right?”
“That would be smashing,” I said, and then, remembering how my stomach had been rumbling in the car, I said I’d take two if it wasn’t any trouble, and she said sure how would it be any trouble, didn’t she spend half her life making sausage sandwiches for those two lads upstairs anyway?
“Two lads?” I asked, wondering whether I had mistaken the shadow in the window for Jonas when it might have been his older brother. “Aidan’s not home, is he?”