Slowly, he drove round the back and parked up in the yard, and turned the engine off. A part of him felt disinclined to go near the house or to make any conversation but he made himself get out and cross the cobblestones, and knocked on the back door. He stood for a minute or two listening before he knocked again – then a dog barked, and the yard light came on. When a woman opened the door and greeted him in a strong, Enniscorthy accent and Furlong explained that he’d come to visit Ned, she told him that Ned was no longer there, that he’d gone into hospital more than a fortnight back, after catching pneumonia, and was now convalescing, in a home.
‘Whereabouts?’
‘I don’t rightly know,’ she said. ‘Would you like to speak to the Wilsons? They’ve not sat down to their supper yet.’
‘Ah, no. I’ll not disturb them,’ Furlong said. ‘I’ll leave it so.’
‘Easy knowing you’re related.’
‘What?’
‘I can handy see the likeness,’ she said. ‘Is Ned an uncle of yours?’
Furlong, unable to find a reply, shook his head and looked past her into the kitchen whose floor was now covered over with lino. He looked at the dresser, too, which was much the same as it had always been with its blue jugs and serving plates.
‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to let them know that you’re here?’ she said. ‘I’m sure they wouldn’t mind.’
He could feel her bristling over the door being left open, his letting in the cold.
‘Ah, I’ll not,’ he said. ‘I’ll head on, but thanks anyhow. Won’t you tell them that Bill Furlong called, and wish them a happy Christmas?’
‘I will, of course,’ she said. ‘Many happy returns.’
‘Many happy returns.’
When she closed the door, Furlong looked at the worn, granite step and drew the sole of his shoe gratingly across it before turning to see what he could of the yard: the stables and the haybarn, the cow-house, the horse-trough, the wrought-iron gate leading to the orchard where he used to play, the steps to the granary loft, the cobblestones where his mother had fallen, and met her end.
Before he got back into the lorry and pulled the door closed, the yard light went off and a type of emptiness came over him. For a while he sat watching the wind blowing through the tops of the bare trees, the flinching branches, taller than the chimney pots, then he reached out and ate a mince pie from the brown paper. For a good half hour or more he must have sat there, going over what the woman inside had said, about the likeness, letting it stoke his mind. It took a stranger to come out with things.
At some point later, an upstairs curtain moved, and a child looked out. He made himself reach for the key, and started the engine. Driving back out the road, he pushed his fresh concerns aside and thought back over the girl at the convent. What most tormented him was not so much how she’d been left in the coal shed or the stance of the Mother Superior; the worst was how the girl had been handled while he was present and how he’d allowed that and had not asked about her baby – the one thing she had asked him to do – and how he had taken the money and left her there at the table with nothing before her and the breast milk leaking under the little cardigan and staining her blouse, and how he’d gone on, like a hypocrite, to Mass.
7
On Christmas Eve, Furlong never felt more like not going in. For days, something hard had been gathering on his chest but he dressed, as usual, and drank a hot Beechams Powder before walking on down, to the yard. The men were already there, standing outside the gates, blowing on their hands and stamping their feet in the cold, chatting amongst themselves. Every man he’d ever kept on had turned out to be decent and wasn’t inclined to lean on the shovels or to complain. To get the best out of people, you must always treat them well, Mrs Wilson used to say. He was glad, now, that he always took his girls to both graveyards over Christmas, to lay a wreath against her headstone as well as his mother’s, that he’d taught them that much.
After Furlong bade the men good morning and opened the gates, he mechanically checked the yard, the loads and dockets, before getting in behind the wheel. When he started the lorry, a black smoke came from the exhaust. Driving out the road, she laboured on the hills and Furlong knew the engine was giving out, that the new windows Eileen had her heart set upon for the front of the house would not be installed next year, or the year after.
In some of the houses, out the country, it was clear that people were struggling; at least six or seven times he was drawn to one side, quietly, to be asked if what was owing could be put on the slate. At other houses, he did his best to join into the small, festive splashes of conversation and thanked people for their cards, their gifts: tins of Emerald sweets and Quality Street, a sack of parsnips, cooking apples, a bottle of Bristol Cream, Black Tower, a girl’s corduroy jacket which hadn’t been worn. One Protestant man pressed a five-pound note into his hand and wished him a happy Christmas, saying his son’s wife had just given birth to another boy. In more than one house, children, off from school, ran out to greet him, as though he was Santa Claus, just bringing the bag of coal. More than a few times, Furlong stopped to leave a bag of logs at the doors of those who had given him the business, when they could afford it. In one of these, a little boy ran out to the lorry and picked up a lump of coal but his big sister came out and slapped him, telling him to put it down, that it was dirty.