“I am, yes,” she said, turning to look out the window at the fields as they passed and the children working in the haystacks, who jumped up and down to wave when they saw the bus coming along the road in their direction.
“Do you go up and down a lot?” asked Seán a moment later.
“Do I what?” she asked, frowning at him.
“To Dublin,” he said, putting a hand to his face, and perhaps he was wondering why everything he said seemed to come out the wrong way. “Do you go up and down the road a fair amount? Maybe you have family up there?”
“I don’t know a soul outside West Cork,” she told him. “The place will be a mystery to me. What about yourself?”
“I’ve never been there but a friend of mine went up over a month ago and got a job quick-smart in the Guinness Brewery and he said there’s one waiting for me there too if I want it.”
“Do them lads not spend all their time drinking the profits?” she asked.
“Ah no, sure there’d be rules, like. Bosses and so on. Fellas going round making sure that no one’s supping the porter. My friend, though, he tells me that the smell of the place would drive you half wild. The hops and the barley and the yeast and what have you. He says you can smell it on the streets all around and the people who live nearby go around with daft expressions on their faces all day long.”
“They’re probably all drunk,” said my mother. “And it didn’t cost them a penny.”
“My friend says it takes a few days for a new worker to get used to the smell of the place and until you do you can feel queer sick.”
“My daddy likes a Guinness,” said my mother, recalling the bitter taste of the yellow-labeled bottles that my grandfather occasionally brought into the house and that she had tried herself once when his back was turned. “He goes down to the pub every Wednesday and Friday night, as regular as clockwork. On Wednesdays he limits himself to three pints with his pals and comes home at a respectable time but on Friday nights he gets polluted. He’ll often come in at two o’clock in the morning and rouse my mother from her bed to cook him a plate of sausages and a ring of black pudding and if she says no, then he raises his fists to her.”
“Every night was a Friday night with my daddy,” said Seán.
“Is that why you want to get away?”
He shrugged. “Partly,” he said after a long pause. “There was a bit of trouble at home, if I’m honest. It was for the best that I leave.”
“What kind of trouble?” she asked, intrigued now.
“Do you know, I think I’d rather just put it all behind me if it’s all the same to you.”
“Of course,” she said. “It’s none of my business anyway.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I know you didn’t. It’s fine.”
He opened his mouth to say something more but their attention was distracted by a little boy running up and down the aisle. He wore the headdress of a Red Indian and was making the sounds to match, a terrible howling that would have given a deaf man a headache. The bus driver let out an almighty roar and said that if someone didn’t take control of that child, then he’d turn the bus around and take them all back to Cork City and there would be no refunds for anyone.
“So what about you, Catherine?” asked Seán when peace was restored. “What takes you up to the capital?”
“If I tell you,” said my mother, who somehow already felt that she could trust this stranger, “will you promise not to say anything cruel to me? I’ve heard a lot of unkind words today and, truth be told, I don’t have the strength for anymore of them.”
“I try never to say unkind words,” replied Seán.
“I’m to have a baby,” said my mother, looking him full square in the eye and without an ounce of shame. “I’m to have a baby and I don’t have a husband to help me rear him. And there’s war over it, needless to say. My mammy and daddy threw me out of the house and the priest said I was to leave Goleen and never darken the place again.”
Seán nodded but this time, despite the indelicacy of the subject, he didn’t blush. “Sure these things happen, I suppose,” he said. “We’re none of us perfect.”
“This one is,” said my mother, pointing toward her belly. “For now anyway.”
Seán smiled and looked ahead, and they said nothing to each other for a long while after that and perhaps they both dozed off or perhaps one of them shut their eyes to give that impression so they could be left alone with their thoughts. Either way, it was more than an hour later when, awake again, my mother turned to her companion and touched him lightly on the forearm.
“Do you know anything about Dublin?” she asked. Perhaps it had finally struck her that she had no idea what she would do or where she would go when they arrived.
“I know that it’s where Dáil Éireann sits and that the River Liffey runs through the heart of it and Clerys department store stands on a big, long street named after Daniel O’Connell.”
“Sure there’s one of those in every county of Ireland.”
“True enough. Just like there’s a Shop Street. And a Main Street.”
“And a Bridge Street.”
“And a Church Street.”
“God preserve us from the Church Streets,” said my mother with a laugh, and Seán laughed too, a pair of kids giggling at their irreverence. “I’ll go to hell for that,” she added when the laughter stopped.
“Sure we’re all going to hell,” said Seán. “Me worst of all.”
“Why you worst of all?”
“Cause I’m a bad lad,” he said with a wink, and she laughed again and felt a need to go to the toilet, wondering how long it would be before they might stop somewhere. She told me afterward that this was the only moment during their acquaintance when she felt anything close to an attraction for Seán. In her mind she entertained a brief fantasy that they would leave the bus as sweethearts, marry within the month and bring me up as their own. A nice dream, I suppose, but it was never going to be.
“You don’t strike me as a bad lad,” she told him.
“Ah, you should see me when I get going.”
“I’ll bear that in mind. So tell me about this friend of yours. How long did you say he’s been up in Dublin?”
“Just over a month now,” said Seán.
“And do you know him well?”
“I do, yes. We got to know each other a couple of years back when his father bought the farm next to ours and we’ve been great pals ever since.”
“You must be if he’s setting you up with a job. Most people just look out for themselves.”
He nodded and looked down at the floor, then at his fingernails, then out the window. “Portlaoise,” he said, noticing a passing sign. “We’re getting closer anyway.”
“Do you have brothers or sisters who’ll miss you?” she asked.
“No,” said Seán. “There was just me. After I was born, my mammy couldn’t have anymore and Daddy never forgave her for it. He plays around, like. He has a few different fancy-women and no one ever says a thing about it because the priest says that a man expects a houseful of children from his wife and a barren field takes no planting.”