The Spinning Heart Read online

  I ALWAYS KNEW Pokey Burke was a bit afraid of me. Triona says I exuded menace when she met me first. She has a lovely way of putting things. There was no one stopping her doing honours English. She says I stood against the bar inside in the disco in town and stared at her. Her friend said what the fuck is that freak looking at, but Triona knew the friend was only raging I wasn’t staring at her. Oh, don’t look back, for Christ’s sake, the friend said, he’s from an awful family, they live in a hovel, the father is a weirdo and the mother never speaks – but Triona looked back all the same and when I scowled at her she knew I was trying to smile, and when I hardly spoke to her on the way home she knew deep down that I was terrified of the lightness and loveliness of her, and when she said are we going to shift so or what, I thought I’d never again regain the power of movement.

  Pokey Burke had been mad after her; she’d shifted him weeks before, and he’d been rough, biting her lip and clawing at her bra, and I’d never forgive him for having touched her. Even when he told me I was foreman, and was handing me an envelope every week with twenty fifties in it, he was afraid of me, and I was afraid I’d kill him. But still and all he needed me, and I sneered at him, and we all called him a prick, but now he’s beyond, sunning himself in God only knows where, hiding from the bank and the taxman and probably trying to ride foreign wans. And here am I, like an orphaned child, bereft, filling up with fear like a boat filling with water.

  HAVING A WIFE is great. You can say things to your wife that you never knew you thought. It just comes out of you when the person you’re talking to is like a part of yourself. We went to a play inside in town one time; I can’t remember the name of it. You couldn’t do that without a wife. Imagine it being found out, that you went to see a play, on your own! With a woman, you have an excuse for every kind of soft thing. The play was about a man and wife; they just sat on the stage on either side of a table, facing the audience, talking about each other. Your man was like my father, only not as bad. The wife was lovely; she was dog-tired of your man’s auld selfish ways, but she persevered with him all the same. He sat there, drinking a glass of whiskey that was really red lemonade and smoking fag after fag, grinning back to his two ears as she read him to the audience. He had an auld smart reply for every criticism. They aged onstage, as they were talking. I don’t know how it was done. For a finish, they were both old and their lives were near spent, and at the very last, your man turned around and admitted he thought the world of her; he’d always loved her. He put his hand on her cheek and looked at her and cried. Christ, your man was some actor. On the way home in the car, tears spilled down my face. Triona just said oh love, oh love.

  Josie

  I LOVE MY first son more than my second son. I often wonder should I go to confession and purge that from my soul. But is it even a sin, to love one child more than another? It’s wrong, all right; I know that. I gave my second boy everything, to try to make up for it: my business, years of my time showing him what to do, enough working capital to allow for all sorts of balls-ups. Poor Eamonn only barely got the money to pay for his digs above in Dublin when he went to Trinity. There’s neither of them thick enough to not know where they stood, though. I was always stone cracked about Eamonn. I couldn’t understand how I never felt the same about poor Pokey. I even let Eamonn take his name from him. Pokey, he said, and pointed a fat little finger at the new baby, and we all laughed and told him he was great, and Seán Pól was lost forever. He never got a look in, the poor little darling boy.

  I should have come down from the top step when Bobby Mahon came here the other day asking to know where was Pokey and what was going to be done about stamps and redundancy and what have you. I should have taken his hand and shook it and told him how sorry I was it was all gone wallop besides snapping at him; I should have apologized to that man on my son’s behalf. I snapped like that out of crossness with myself. I was too ashamed to look the man in the eye; Bobby Mahon, who never missed a day, who I was always so glad was foreman after Pokey took over – I thanked God there was a man there to keep Pokey from getting too big for his boots. Pokey was more than half-afraid of Bobby Mahon. He wished he was Bobby Mahon, I think. I have a feeling that he asked himself what Bobby would think of every decision he was making before he made it. It’s only a shame he told no one he was mortgaging everything on the building of one last massive estate of houses that no one was going to buy and a share in some monstrosity beyond in Dubai. I should have shook Bobby Mahon’s hand and thanked him, and apologized, besides leaving him walk off with his face red with anger and disappointment.

  I think of Pokey and I feel disgust, with him and with myself. Wasn’t it I reared him? Or maybe that’s what went wrong; I left most of the rearing to Eileen. And isn’t it a sacred duty, to rear your children? I got that all turned around in my head, of course. I confused providing for them with rearing them. I got a fixation on work and having enough money that waxed and waned for my whole adult life, but was always there. I never even really went into a shop and bought anything. Eileen buys my pantses and shirts and shoes and socks and underwear. I give out stink to her if I open the hot press and there’s none at hand. I used to read her from a height at Christmas over the expensive presents. Lord God I’d take that back if I could. I’d give every single penny I ever had and more to go back to certain days and hours and change things just a little bit. I’d catch Pokey in time. I’d catch myself.

  MY CHICKENS are gone woeful fat. Eileen says I leave them in too much corn altogether. She doesn’t know that I also pick big caterpillars off of the cabbages and feed them in to the old fatsos. They see me coming and get into a right flap. They’re the fattest, happiest chickens in Ireland, I’d say. I have a daughter too, you know. I can’t bear talking to her any more. I used to think she was the bee’s knees, but now I’d rather feed caterpillars to chickens than talk to her. What sort of a man am I at all? If you heard the rubbish she talks, though, about poverty and Palestine and carbon dioxide and Tibetan monks and what have you. And if you saw the cut of her – no bra, men’s army pants, big auld boots – you’d rather look at chickens, too. I don’t feel guilty about her at all. Isn’t that awful?

  I served my time in the sixties as a block-layer beyond in Liverpool, in a firm belonging to a great big fat fella from south Tipp. He was a horrible, ignorant man. I had no digs sorted out for myself when I got over there. He gave me my start on my first day off of the boat. I asked him where would I stay and he laughed at me, a big, fat, wet laugh. I don’t know in the fuck, he said, and I don’t care, once you’re here in the morning at seven. I sat on the steps of a locked-up church all that night, frozen with the cold, and scared of every shadow. I wondered was it a Protestant church. I wondered what was the difference. I learnt my trade quickly, and didn’t mess around. I hardly ever drank; it sapped the strength from men and made them forget themselves. I overtook that big fat man from Cashel. I went out on my own and put in for every job going. I brought four or five boys with me who I knew wouldn’t argue with me. I undercut the prick all over Liverpool. He died of a heart attack at the door of a pub in Warrington. People stepped out over his body. I laughed when I heard. Then I thought more about it and felt sick. But at least my laugh had been heard and noted. I was hard.

  I came home and never stopped working. I bought the yard and a site and built a house and bought machinery and married Eileen and worked and worked and worked. I never stopped going. All through the seventies and eighties, I hardly drew breath. I built a beautiful estate of bungalows on a lovely site when no one else was building private estates. It was I started all that. I fell into the drink one time, for about six months. To this day, I don’t know why. I ended up trying to force myself on a woman. She got away from me easily enough. I laughed at her and went back to my drink and saw men looking at me with satisfaction in their eyes. I knew then to stop drinking. I often thought to find that woman I handled roughly and say I was sorry. I often wondered did she know I had a wedding ri
ng inside in my pocket and a pregnant wife at home crying over me. I wonder does she hate me still.

  JOSEPH BURKE was my father’s name too. Second sons were named for their fathers in those days as a rule. Second sons got a name and first sons got everything else. My father made us all afraid of dishonesty. The devil loves lies, he always said. The devil loves liars. It wasn’t from me that Pokey learned deceit. He never paid in those boys’ stamps. Imagine that. I used to have that done every year before January would be out. The Revenue Commissioners are roaring for VAT, the sub-contractors are arriving to the door with invoices every day. Honest men, who know only work, white with the shock of the sudden stop that everything is after coming to. When I think about it, what people must be thinking and saying, I can hear my heart beat in my chest. I can feel a hardness, a tight pressure. I think of a hose with too great a flow through it, stretched and strained. Sweat starts to sting my forehead. Eileen says nothing. What’s there to say? Her silence comforts me. If she blamed me, she’d say it. Who’s to blame when a child turns rotten?

  That’s the thing though. Did he turn bad or did he start out that way? Either way it’s my fault. There’s no getting away from it. I’m the boy’s father. His nature and his nurture were both down to me, when all is said and done. He got no badness from his mother, that’s for certain. Eamonn and Pokey were always mad about each other as small boys. How’s it they ended up so different? I did my damnedest not to make fish of one and flesh of the other; I counted out seconds in my head of time in my lap, the number of times I lifted each one up, the number of times I smiled at each one. Pokey had an unbelievable eye, though, to see a slight so small there was nearly none at all: he noticed every time I looked at Eamonn, patted his head, squeezed his little fat leg. He had a ledger inside in his head on which every single move I made was entered, and it never, ever balanced in his favour. I started resenting him, and nearly hated him. I did hate him. God forgive me, I should confess that. Imagine poor old John Cotter, how he’d stutter out my penance and redden every time I met him after. I’d nearly have to travel in to the Cistercians in the city, where my face would not be known or seen again. Or those Franciscan lads in Moyross: they’d have me right with God in no time. They’d never have me right with myself, though.

  I haven’t said a word yet to Eamonn about Pokey lighting out for the continent. He doesn’t know about the big huge loan from Anglo, the Revenue, the lads’ stamps, their redundancy, anything. I’m afraid of upsetting him. I’m ashamed opposite my own son to tell of his brother’s badness. Eamonn teaches in the city. They’re all pure stone mad about him in there: the other teachers, the young lads, his wife’s people. Jesus, what if I hadn’t him? I’ll have to tell him soon. The next time he calls with Yvonne and the children, he’ll ask as he always does, is Pokey coming, and I won’t be able to lie to the boy. I hope I don’t start to cry like a fool. My tear bags are fierce close to my eyes these days. That Bobby Mahon and my Eamonn are very alike in ways. They’re both men you’d be proud of, who you’d be embarrassed opposite, having to tell of the failings of other men and feeling as though those failings are your own.

  And there’s no one can say the whole fiasco with the business wasn’t my fault, that’s for certain. It was I handed over all to Pokey. I only kept our house and my pension. But there were seven years there where you could build houses out of cardboard and masking tape and they’d be sold off of the plans. People queued all night to buy boxes of houses all crammed together like kennels. Pokey cleaned up. He paid me a dividend and I fattened on it. We should have known it would all end in tears. Around here, it all started with tears: that boy of the Cunliffes getting shot in his own yard by the guards, and his land going to his auntie, who shared it out among us like the Roman soldiers with Our Lord’s purple robe. That was no way for good times to start.

  Lily

  WHEN I WAS inside in the hospital having my fifth child, a nosy bitch of a midwife asked me to know who was the father. I told her by accident. They had me drugged up to my eyeballs. The auld hag must have fattened on my answer. Bernie came down to my house a few weeks later. It must have taken that long for the whispers to reach his hairy ears. He charged in here like a bull. I remember smiling at him like a fool; I actually thought he’d come for a look at his child. He said nothing, only punched me straight into my face. Then he drew back his big fist and punched me again, right into my mouth. You stupid bitch, he said, you stupid, stupid bitch, I should kill you. My lip split open and pumped blood. My front tooth came out. Then he threw a twenty-pound note at me and charged back out. My eye swelled and closed and turned black. He never called to me again.

  I met Jim Gildea the sergeant a few days later, in the Unthanks’ bakery. He looked down at me as I waited for my sliced pan and he flinched; my face was still in ribbons. He didn’t want to ask me and I didn’t want him to. What happened you, Lily? I fell, Jim. I could see the relief on his face, and the knowing in his eyes of my lie. He was grateful for my lie; he’d think of it again.

  THERE ARE rakes of men around here that have called to me. I’ve had years of eyes at my door. Eyes that can’t meet mine, full of hunger when they arrive and full of guilt as they leave. Eyes full of laughter, thinking I’m only a joke; eyes full of tears. I’ve seen eyes full of hate, and I never knew why those men hated me. I’d never blame a man for calling to me. Men have to do what they have to do. Nature overpowers them. Some of the old farmers were lovely, once you got over the smell. They had a smell you could nearly talk yourself into liking. I even bathed one or two of them – they loved it – like big auld babas, splashing around and grinning up at me with their soft gums and their hard dicks. Cow shit is nowhere near as bad as dog shit, or human shit. A fella called to my door one time, hardly able to stand up for drink, with a toughie English accent and shit all over the tail of his shirt. He must have wiped his arse with it, in some dirty toilet. I ran him. I’d never be that stuck.

  I was only about eleven when men started looking at me. There was something about me that they couldn’t stop looking at. I grew up early. But lots of young girls grew up early in them days. There was something more about me that drew men’s eyes. It was years and years before I knew what the word for that thing was. I was wanton. I had a wanton look about me. Do I still? I don’t know in the hell. Hardly, I’d say. A young fella that I met on a lane in the forestry one summer’s day told it to me years ago. I was looking for burdock; he was striding along with his white legs sticking out from his baggy short pants and a little knapsack on his narrow back. I had my eldest fella, John-John, with me; he was only small, whining and snotting along beside me, trying to copy the song I was singing and making me laugh. His father was a real gas card, too. I heard one time that he came a cropper beyond in Liverpool, off of a motorbike. There were too many years gone by for me to care.

  I brought the skinny townie back to the cottage with the promise of a bag of mixed herbs from my little garden. He leapt on me the minute I had John-John put away into the back room to play with his toys. The babies were sound asleep. Christ, you’re wanton, he gasped, as he finished, not even a minute later. I’m what, now? Then he told me what it meant, slowly and kindly, like I was a simple child. He called again from time to time over the years. I think I made him feel bigger and smarter than he was. He always took away a bag of herbs or a jar of preserves with him. That’s what he was leaving the money for, in his own mind.

  I ONLY EVER refused men who really and truly disgusted me. Men who you knew would prefer to force you even if you were willing. I only refused a good man once, because I knew his goodness well and was afraid of blackening his mind against himself. He had himself beaten out of shape. He didn’t know himself. He was trying to be cold and unfeeling and bad, but he wasn’t able to be that way; he was full of kindness that he thought was weakness. That’s the way he was reared. He was pouring drink into himself, hoping he’d wake up different. He tried it on with me outside the Frolics bar below in Carney.
I’d cycled out that far and was waiting for an offer of a spin home in a farmer’s car. A ride for a ride; it’s nearly biblical. I knew if I went with him it’d be the sorriest thing he ever did. I knew he was stone cracked about his wife. She was expecting at the time. I very nearly let him do it to me. I really wanted to. A few years later I’d have done it out of spite. But I pushed him off of me and belted him into the balls. I used to see him coming from Mass for years and years after that, with his wife and his two boys and his little girl. I don’t think he knew me. I don’t think he really saw me that time in Carney.

  THERE’S PLENTY calls me a witch. It doesn’t bother me. I haven’t aged well; I look a lot older than I am. I have rheumatoid arthritis. It pains me everywhere. It has me curled over, balled up, all smallness and sharp edges. I’m like a cut cat half the time. Men never call here any more. My children never call to me, even. They’re pure solid ashamed of me, after all I done for them. My daughters are beyond in England. My second fella, Hughie, is married to a strap of a wan that looks at me like she scraped me off of the sole of her shoe. They had a little girl I only seen once. Lord, my heart aches just to hold that child, blood of my blood. Millicent, they called her. Milly and Lily. Wouldn’t it be lovely? My third boy is a solicitor in the city and my John-John is knocking around, never too far away, nor never too near.