‘Thank you, Mrs Kehoe. I’m much obliged to you for saying.’
‘Happy Christmas, Bill.’
‘Many happy returns,’ Furlong said, pressing the change she’d given him back into her hand.
*
When he went out, it was snowing. White flakes were coming down out of the sky and landing on the town and all around. He stood looking down at his trousers, the toes of his boots, then screwed his cap down tight on his head and buttoned up his coat. For a while, he simply walked along the quayside with his hands deep in his pockets, thinking over what he’d been told and watching the river flowing darkly along, drinking the snow. He felt a bit freer now, being out in the open air, with nothing else pressing for the time being and another year’s work done, behind him, at his back. The urgency to run the one errand he had to run and get on home was falling away. Almost light-heartedly he turned under the lights of town, the long, zig-zagging strands of multi-coloured bulbs. Music was coming from a speaker and a boy’s tall, unbroken voice was singing: O holy night, the stars are brightly shining. Passing the tree outside the Town Hall, he caught his toe on a paving stone and almost tripped and found himself blaming Mrs Kehoe, who’d made him take a hot whiskey, for his cold, and had given him a huge bowl of sherry trifle. Here and there, he stopped to look into shop fronts, at the merchandise, the snaking lengths of tinsel, so many shining things: Waterford Crystal, sets of stainless-steel cutlery, china tea sets, bottles of perfume, christening mugs. At Forristal’s, his gaze rested on black velvet trays stabbed through to display engagement rings and wedding bands, gold and silver watches. Bracelets draped from a false arm – and there were lockets on chains, necklaces.
At Stafford’s old shop, he stared as a child might at a hurley stick and sliotar, nets of glass marbles, toy soldiers, plasticine, Lego, draughts and chess sets, at some things which had lasted. Two dolls in frilly dresses sat stiffly with their arms out, their fingers almost touching the pane, as though they were asking to be lifted. When he went in and asked Mrs Stafford if she had a jigsaw of a farm in five hundred pieces, she said the only jigsaws they kept now were for children, that there was little demand for the more difficult ones anymore, then asked if she might help him find something else. Furlong shook his head but bought a bag of the Lemon’s jellies hanging on one of the hooks behind her head, as he did not like to go back out with one arm as long as the other.
At Joyce’s Furniture, he caught his reflection in a full-length mirror that was for sale and decided he should go on to the barber’s, for a haircut. When he looked in, there was a long queue but he pushed the door and at once a little bell tinkled. He took his place at the end of the bench to wait his turn beside a red-haired man he did not know and four red-haired boys who much resembled him. Sinnott, with one too many taken, was in the chair with the barber standing over him finishing a short back and sides. The barber nodded solemnly at Furlong in the mirror and carried on with the shears for a while before putting the shears down and brushing the hairs off the back of Sinnott’s neck, and emptying out the ashtray. When the butts landed in the bucket, some hair singed a little, giving out a bitter smell, and Furlong thought over what Eileen had been told about the barber’s son, the young electrician, of his diagnosis, and how the lad had been given little time. Some talk rose up then, between the men, and a few rough jokes were bandied, in disguise, on account of there being children there.
Furlong found himself not joining in the talk so much as keeping it at bay while thinking over and imagining other things. At one point, after more customers had come in and Furlong had shifted across the bench, before the mirror, he looked directly at his reflection, searching for a resemblance to Ned, which he both could and could not see. Maybe the woman out at Wilson’s had been mistaken and had simply imagined the likeness, assuming they were kin. But this did not seem likely and he could not help thinking over how down-hearted Ned had been in himself after Furlong’s mother had passed away, and how they had always gone to Mass and eaten together, the way they stayed up talking at the fire at night, what sense it made. And if this was truth, hadn’t it been an act of daily grace, on Ned’s part, to make Furlong believe that he had come from finer stock, while watching steadfastly over him, through the years. This was the man who had polished his shoes and tied the laces, who’d bought him his first razor and taught him how to shave. Why were the things that were closest so often the hardest to see?