The good son

The Ward men were outside the hospital just as Joe’s mother had said they would be. Standing guard, dressed in leather jackets, jeans and trainers; giving each man approaching the main entrance the once over, checking that they were not a McDonagh on a mission to finish the job they had started outside the cathedral. They cast a critical eye over Joe but he got no sense of hostility. He in return subtly appraised their heavy, drink-reddened faces, wondering if Paddy Ward, the traveller boy with whom he had shared the pain of a caning at the village school two decades ago, was among them.

His mother had filled Joe in with the background to the drama soon after his arrival on the coach from Dublin. It was all about control of the drugs trade, she had said. The McDonaghs were trying to establish a monopoly of the trade and had used money to secure the subservience of most of the traveller families in Connaught and Munster. But the Wards had refused to be bought off and the McDonaghs had turned to violence. They had laid down a marker at the funeral of a Ward patriach in Tuam when they had attacked the mourners at the grave side and the fight had spread throughout the small market town until the Gardai had bought it under control. Fifteen Wards and seven McDonaghs were hospitalised.

The McDonaghs had pressed their advantage. Peadar “Mad Dog” McDonagh had challenged Malky Ward, the top man in the clan, to a one-on-one set to. The men from the two families had gathered in the car park of the cathedral and had formed a circle. The McDonaghs outnumbered the Wards by two to one but Malky, still holding to the travellers code, had hoped that his strength and courage and the speed of his fists would end the conflict in a time-honoured way. But Mad Dog had no intention of fighting a fair fight and, as Malky had advanced into the circle to go head to head, the other McDonaghs had whipped out slash hooks from under their jackets and ripped into the Wards.

Now Malky and eight of his kinfolk were in the Galway Regional Hospital and the remaining men were standing guard waiting for the next attack. Behind them, inside the doors of the hospital, were the Ward women, the last line of defence. In contrast to the menacing silence of their husbands and brothers, the women were talking loudly but under the chatter Joe could sense their terrible fear.

The last thing his father needed was for a riot to break out in the hospital, he thought. It would finish him off.

He asked a nurse for directions to the High Dependency Unit and she pointed him down a corridor. As he walked the polished floor he looked around, trying to remember how the hospital had been the last time he was here, twenty-one years ago. This part was unfamiliar. He had been on wing, several floors up and had been able to see the cathedral from the windows of the ward. There was something different about the nurses as well. None of them were wearing the habit of a Sister. The nuns had flown the hospital.

The glass panels of a door to a darkened room gave him the opportunity to check his reflection. The black four-button suit had held its shape well during his journey. His girlfriend, Elisha had questioned his outfit when he had set off, saying that he looked like he was going to a funeral, but he had argued that it was more important that he wore what he felt comfortable in. But now he questioned the wisdom of the black polo-neck jumper. He could feel sweat trickling down his back and beads of water were forming on his forehead. He felt very alone and wished Elisha was with him. He took a deep breath, dabbed his forehead with a tissue and walked on.

He gave the name of his father to a plump, rosy-cheeked young nurse sitting behind a desk guarding the doors of the HDU and she made a call on her telephone. Another fresh-faced nurse came out smiling and took Joe into the Unit. He was expecting bright clinical whiteness and lots of shiny steel and the smell of disinfectant. But instead the lights were dull, the walls were yellow and there was a lot of old, worn, wooden furniture and a smell of piss. He wondered if Malky or any of his brethen were in here and the scene from Godfather where Al Pacino wheels the bed and the drip of the critically bullet-wounded Marlon Brando to a safe room flashed through his mind.

They reached the bed of his father.
“Mr Hill, your son is here to see you, so he is. Isn’t that a nice surprise now,” the nurse said.
“He’s doing grand but he gets tired very quickly,” she said to Joe before leaving.

His father lay in a tangle of white sheets. He had tubes going into his nose and a drip in his arm. He looked pale and fragile. His mane of silver hair was unkempt and his chin was bristly with three day’s growth. He turned his tired eyes to Joe and smiled weakly.
“Hiya Dad,” Joe said softly. “How are you doing?”

He sat down on the bedside chair.
“I’m okay,” his father wheezed. But he didn’t look okay. Joe looked up to the heart monitor above the bed and tried to make out the significance of the green zig zags.
“I came as soon as I could.”
Joe thought about reaching out to touch his father’s hand. To show him he cared. But it did not seem right.
“The nurses seem nice, are they looking you after you?”
He had wanted to say so much. He had rehearsed it in his mind on the flight from London and on the coach. To tell his father that he loved him and did not want him to die. But none of it now seemed appropriate. He reached out and gently squeezed his father’s hand.
“I’m here now and Mum’s asked me to stay until you’re better.”
“I’m very tired,” his father said.
“Of course you are. I’ll go now and now let you sleep. I’ll visit you with Mum tomorrow.”

He thought about leaning over and giving his father a good night kiss, but he did not. His father closed his eyes and Joe watched him sleep for a while before he got up and slipped away.

He thanked the nurse at the desk, but he felt quite angry. The sheets in particular bothered him. The contrast between his father’s bed and the bed he remembered from the two weeks he spent here was stark. His sheets had been bleached white and crisply starched with razor-sharp folds. He had loved watching the nurses make the bed each morning and then squeezing into the cool envelope, feeling the comforting tightness of the blankets. Everything in the ward was clean, scrubbed and disinfected. No woodlice crawling on his bed, no mice scratching against the skirting board, no rats scrabbling and squealing under the kitchen sink. He had loved the certainty of fixed mealtimes. Seven o’clock for a cup of tea and two slices of white bread. Breakfast at nine, cereal and a boiled egg with more white bread. Dinner at noon, perhaps a stew or meat and two veg, then tea at four. All the comics he could read. Crossword puzzles. Plenty of telly. And George Best.

Joe smiled at the memory. The doctor who had wheeled him down to the operating theatre had looked just like George Best with long black hair and beard. As Joe had felt himself slipping into a deep sleep, he had heard George telling him everything would be fine.

And when he had woken in the night, this throat and mouth parched with thirst, he had known that everything was fine. They had taken out his appendix. For a couple of days after the operation the wound had been very sore and he wasn’t able to eat anything. And of course he had felt terrified that the doctors would find out the truth and expose him. He imagined George coming into the ward holding up a jar with the appendix suspended in liquid, his face darkening as he told Joe that what he had here was a healthy, perfectly normal fit-as-a-fiddle organ and that Joe was a little blackguard who had lied and wasted the doctors’ and nurses’ precious time. But as the days went by no such exposure took place and Joe began to relax, even to feel proud of his audacity.

The plan had germinated several years before when they were living in London and he had developed a pain in his side. His mother had taken him to the Whittington Hospital and the doctor had examined him, prodding his fingers gently into his abdomen and then slipping a gloved finger up Joe’s anus to probe inside his rectum.
“Has he had a fever?” the doctor asked.
“No,” Joe’s mother had said.
“Any vomiting?”
“No”.
The doctor had smiled: “There’s nothing to worry about Mrs Hill. It’s not an appendicitis, it’s probably just indigestion.”
“Thank you so much doctor,” she had said. “Oh, and actually the name is Hill-Larkin, with a hyphen.”

As they had left the hospital Joe had felt relief, but also some disappointment that he was not something for his mother to be worried about.
But Joe had filed the incident in his head. And this time he rehearsed his act fully. Step one was to complain of a pain in his side before going to his bed in the little room he shared with his brother. His mother had given him a teaspoon of Milk and Magnesia. Step two was to creep out early in the morning into the cold and damp kitchen and mix up a mug of cereal with some leftovers from the corned-beef hash they had eaten for their dinner with water and hurl this slop into the pan of the toilet. Step three was to splash cold water on his hair and face to give the appearance of sweat and tip toe back to bed where he lay with covers off, imagining a terrible pain radiating through his stomach.
Step four was to begin to groan and to turn and twist on the bed. He heard Daniel stir.
“What’s the matter?”, his little brother said sleepily from across the room.
“I’m not feeling good,” Joe whimpered, and then let out a loud groan.
“Are you having a nightmare?” Daniel asked.
“No. I’ve got a pain. Owwwh,” Joe went for broke with the groan.
“You’re scaring me. Stop it.”
“I’m going to be sick.”
That did it.
“Mum!” Daniel shouted, tumbling out of bed and leaving the room. “Mum! Joseph’s going to puke!”

Fooling his mother was easier than he had thought it would be. By the time she came into the room in her dressing gown, the pain in his side felt real and he did indeed feel feverish. As she examined him he began to shake. When his pyjama-clad father stumbled in, with the news that someone had vomited in the toilet, the deceit was complete and his mother took control. Ten minutes later they were in the Morris Oxford speeding down the dark, wet country lanes towards the town and the hospital.

The questions the doctor asked were the same as in London and the answers Joe gave and the cries of pain he emitted under the probing latex fingers made the diagnosis simple. “We will need to admit him, Mrs Hill-Larkin, for an operation. It’s his appendix, so it is. It needs to be removed,” the doctor said.

The Wards were still gathered around the entrance when Joe left. He put some distance between them then stopped to light a cigarette and look back at the buildings of the hospital. What a thing for an eleven year old to do, he thought sadly. What a terrible thing. There were so many questions stemming from his childhood which he wanted answered. His father was not in position to answer them. But maybe his mother was.

She was waiting for him when he reached the small pebble-dashed terraced house on the little side street behind the new shopping centre, and had opened the door before he had rang the bell. She reached up to embrace him. Joe stiffened but allowed her to put her arms round him. He patted her softly on the back. She felt very frail, like a bird, and he could feel her rib bones under her sweater. “How is your father?” she said.
“He’s very tired and didn’t have the energy to say very much so I let him sleep. But the nurses seem to be taking care of him,” Joe replied.
“He’s through the worst of it now. They say most people die in the first forty-eight hours. Do you want a cup of coffee?”

She led Joe into the large combined living room and kitchen which had been created by knocking through two smaller rooms. As she busied herself at the sink and cooker preparing the coffee, Joe looked around. The walls were covered with bookshelves which stretched to the ceiling. Books were crammed into shelves and piled on the floor alongside heaps of yellowing newspapers and cardboard boxes stacked with audio tapes. An old, battered and dusty orange sofa with a patchwork throw was positioned in the kitchen area next to an even more decrepit matching armchair which had moulded itself into the shape of his father.

A memory of the sofa and armchair, wrapped in shiny plastic, being delivered to their cottage in the country and the excitement he had felt crept into his head and then crept away again as he took in the rest of the furniture which consisted of a table with a grubby formica-top on which was set a jumble of overflowing ashtrays, unwashed cups and a half cut loaf of soda bread, two wooden stools and a stack of discoloured white plastic garden chairs.

He walked over to the table. The floor was covered with a floral-print lino. It was swept but had not been washed for a long time and was sticky underfoot. He gathered up the cups and brought them to the draining board of the sink which was piled with dirty crockery. He emptied the ashtrays into an overflowing carrier bag of rubbish which sat on the floor and wiped crumbs and ash off the table with a slimy damp cloth. His mother waited until he created some order on the table and then handed him a mug of coffee. They both sat down at the table on the stools. His mother took a sip from her cup and lit a cigarette. Joe did the same.

“You’re a good son Joseph. I’m so glad you came and so is your father,” she said.
“Needs must,” Joe said. “It was all a bit of shock to me. It must have been even worse for you.”
“It was terrible”, she said. Her head was nodding involuntarily and her eyes were watering. “I don’t know what I would do if he died.”
“He’s not going to die Mum. He’ll be right as rain in no time.”
His mother smiled and blinked back her tears. “It was his hypochondria which saved him you know.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well you know what your father’s like. Always imagining the worst when he gets the slightest ache or pain and I don’t have any sympathy for him. I need an aspirin he says and takes one while I tell him to stop being a big baby. The doctor says it was the aspirin he took before he collapsed which probably saved his life. It helped dissolve the clot in his heart. And there was me thinking all he had was indigestion.”
“Good for Dad.”
“Were the Wards at the hospital?”
“Yes. Just as you said they would be.”
“It’s a bad business. I wish I could do more to help.”
“But how can you help?”
“The McDonagh’s racket needs exposing. They’re cowardly bullies. Once the other traveller families know what they’re about and the corrupt politicians who support them are exposed, this gangsterism can be stopped. I’ve written a letter to the Connaught Tribune about it, but they haven’t published it.”
“I’d stay out of it if I was you Mum. It all sounds very dangerous.”
“I can’t remain stay silent on this issue. They want to shut me up, but they won’t.”
“Always the politico, eh? The tribune of the oppressed.”
“If the world is going to be changed, the individual has to take action.”
“I don’t disagree. I just think you should let someone else take action. You’ve got enough on your plate.”
“Oh Joseph, you’re always so conservative. Don’t you understand that by me doing something to help the Wards it helps me deal with what has happened to your father.”
“But I still don’t fully understand the connection.”
“I’ve told you about the book I’m writing with Mary Ward.”
“No. I thought you were working on a history of Jewish women in Ireland.”
“I am, but I’m compiling an oral history of the travellers in the West as well. It’s a collaboration with Mary. We’ve been collecting tape-recorded interviews for the last two years. We’re going to call it “To Hell or To Connaught”. That was Mary’s idea, it’s good don’t you think.”
“So you’ve got some recollections of Oliver Cromwell in there have you? Joe said, affecting a rough Irish brogue. “I was there when he rode his horse into St Nicholas’s church and defiled the sacred altar. I was only a little broth of a boy but my memory of the butchering blackguard remains as clear as the waters of the Corrib.”
“Don’t be faecetious, Joseph,” she said smiling. “It’s a serious work of history examining a rich cultural heritage which has been suppressed. The role of the family in traveller culture is fascinating.”
“I’m sure it is,” Joe said. He lit another cigarette. “Have you heard from Nathan?”
“I spoke to him while you were at the hospital. He’s flying over tomorrow. I said if he wanted to stay for a while the two of you could make it into a little holiday. It’s been so long since you’ve both been back.”
“I’m not sure if I’m in a holiday mood,” Joe said.
“It will do me and your father good, to know you’re enjoying yourself. We don’t want you behaving as if you’re waiting for a wake. Now what would you like to do tonight?”
“What are you doing?”
“I need to visit Mary. Why don’t you come. She’d be delighted to meet you.”
“I’ll pass on that if that’s okay. I think maybe I need a little time on my own. I might go for a little walk.”
“You do that. It’ll be good for you. You’ll be amazed at how our little town has changed in the last few years. The celtic Barcelona they’re calling us. Who would have thought it.”
“Are you sure you’ll be safe visiting Mary?”
“Oh Joseph, she only lives round the corner and the McDonagh bully boys aren’t interested in attacking women. It’s the men they’re after. But us women are going to put a stop to their little game.”

Joe walked down Quay Street through a soft fine rain. The old stone warehouses he remembered lining the road had been turned into pizza restuarants and bars with fancy neon signs, poster promising the best craic in Ireland and bouncers on the doors. Crowds of boisterous young people spilled off the narrow pavement into the road.

Down at the quayside, by the spot-lit Spanish Arch, it was quieter and darker, and across the dock the lights of the Claddagh village glistened through the mizzle. The smell of the place had changed. The sea smelled fresh, not the stench of rotten seaweed which Joe remembered.

He walked onto the Wolf Tone Bridge over the Corrib and stopped to look over the parapet. The black roaring water was shot through with diamonds of silver from the reflections of the street lamps. In the spring time many years before he had stood here watching older boys snatch the salmon heading upstream with fishing lines and big treble-barbed hooks. The trick was to rip the hook deep into the belly of the fish so that it could be hauled up onto the bridge and finished off with a sharp blow.

The voice of his mother echoed in his head. Words she said two years before at the wake held for his grandmother, her mother. Elisha had been there.

“When I die Joseph, forget any notions of burial or cremation. I want to be sent floating down the Corrib dragging six bishops behind me. Can you arrange that for me?”
“Why would it be down to me to arrange?” Joe had replied. “It would be up to Dad.”
“Your father will die before me, that’s why,” she had said.
“It might be a bit difficult rounding up the bishops,” Elisha had said with a smile, trying to lighten the conversation.
“Not at all. When they hear Rebecca Hill-Larkin, the scourge of Catholic hypocrisy, has kicked the bucket, they’ll all come to the wake to gloat and you can just slip up behind them with a length of rope and tie them up. Get Nathan and Daniel to help. Then a little procession down to the river bank and in we all go. Now wouldn’t that be grand?” And Joe and Elisha had laughed; but afterwards they had wondered why.

The bright lights of the Roisin Dubh welcomed him. He entered the pub and slipped through a crowd of drinkers to the bar. Joe was approached immediately by a young barman in a white shirt and tie.
“Howya. What can I can do you for?” the barman asked.
Joe tried to scan the beer pumps.
“Have you got any draught premium lager?” he said.
“Heinekin.”
“No I mean something over five per cent alcohol, like Becks or Stella.”
“How about a bottle of Bud?”
“No. Just give us a pint of a Heinekin.”

Joe took his pint and found a table in quiet corner. He took a sip of the lager and grimaced. It tasted like fizzy water. Across from him on the small stage a ceilidh band was preparing for a set. An accordion wheezed, a bodhran was thrumped and the strings of a fiddle scraped. Joe lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. A torrent of thoughts surged through his head.

Accept them, Joe, he thought. Accept them as they are. I can’t change the past. I can’t change the way they are. But they’re part of me. What does that say about me. I love them, but I hate them. I love myself, but I hate myself. Hardman Hill. Mr Control. JH for aggro. You mess with me and you get a boot in the bollocks.

“But you’re a good son Joseph. You father is proud of you. We’re both proud of you. We’re especially proud of the lies. You’re the best deceitful, dishonest, manipulating, conniving little blackguard we’ve had the fortune to bring into the world. Have a holiday. You and Nathan, the best of brothers, Cain and Abel.” Me and Nathan. Dear old happy chappy Nathan. That kindly scowling face. Those gentle black knitted eyebrows. That charming, sneering, slurred skill at conversation. A magical, monosyllabic bundle of balding joy. Have a holiday. Let’s go tripping over the hills of Connemara together. Me and Nathan. Two peas in pod. Blood is thicker than water. Am I my brother’s keeper? I am my brother’s keeper. The code, defend the code of honour, the code of the Hills, the debt of blood, honour thy father and thy mother. The Hills and the Wards united will never be defeated. Mad Dogs versus Englishmen. Mad Dog Nathan versus Joe Hard. “Fight! Fight! Fight!” You can take him Joe, you can take him.”

Blood is thicker than water, but oil and water don’t mix.

He saw the water of the Corrib, gently carrying the ribbon-festooned corpse of his mother, who was dragging behind her, by treble-barbed slash hooks knotted on ropes of tangled dirty sheets and plastic drip-tubes, his father, with his white hair spreading out across the river. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, gently down the stream.

So the bullying of the McDonaghs had to be exposed? What about the history of the family you created mother dearest? Maybe someone needs to shine the searchlight of truth on that.

And then he heard a voice, a gentle, soft voice cutting through the clamour in his head. The voice of Elisha. “I love you Joe Hill. I love you for simply for being you and I love you for letting me be me.”

Elisha . He had promised to ring her. She must be getting worried. Maybe he should have let her come with him. She had wanted to, but he couldn’t do that to the one person in the world he loved, the one person who truly knew and loved him. This was his journey. Only he could tread this road. But he had to ring her.

He went to the bar, ordered a double Jamesons and downed it one, then went to a telephone in an alcove. He dialled the number and poured change into the slot. The phone rang and rang. Just as he was about to replace the receiver, she answered.

“Hi, its me,” he said.
”How are you?” she said.
“I’m okay, Dad’s okay,” he said and felt a deep well of pain rising in his stomach.
“You don’t sound okay,” her voice was concerned, full of love.
“No,” he said, his voice cracking. “I’m not okay. I’m not…”
A great bubble of hurt billowed up and exploded in a wracking sob. “It’s so…It’s so fucking terrible here. It’s …fucking…terrible. I just want…I want to … I want to come home.” And he let the great dam of tears inside him burst and engulf him.