Colleen snapped up her book and disappeared into our room while the rest of us worked on dinner. Mum patted my back because I was nearest, and it always soothed her to touch one of her children. Perhaps she was thinking what she must have already known. Sometimes living in the same world with them was all it took.
The next summer, Finbarr came to the farm for tennis almost every night. He trained Alby to lie absolutely still, no matter what happened. I think Alby would have expended less energy running ten miles than it took to fight his every instinct and stay frozen in the face of that bouncing tennis ball. But stay frozen he did, never jumping to his feet until Finbarr gave him the command.
‘Ready. Ball,’ Finbarr would say, and finally the dog could catapult into the air.
In the autumn, back home at my family’s dinner table in London, I listed the tricks Alby could do.
‘Finbarr tells him to sidestep one way and then another. He tells him to stand still until he gets the command to move.’
‘Not so impressive for that breed,’ my father said, from the looks of him remembering the dogs of his youth.
‘I’m not done. Alby can do all the usual tricks – sit, sit pretty, cover. Uncle Jack says he’s the best herding dog he’s ever seen.’ This would mean he’d be the best my father ever saw. ‘And Finbarr taught him to catch a football and balance it on his nose. He taught him to jump on a horse’s back and sit pretty.’
‘You make it sound as if Finbarr’s the clever one,’ said Megs. ‘I’d say it’s the dog.’
‘They’re both clever.’ But I knew Finbarr could do the same with any dog. He had a gift.
‘Perhaps I’ll go next summer, too,’ Megs said.
‘Give your sister some competition for this clever Mahoney boy,’ my father said.
My sisters and I had a particular look we exchanged when my father said something ridiculous. We would never fight among ourselves over a boy.
Mum ended the conversation by saying what she always did, speaking to me but looking at Colleen. ‘Don’t you go marrying that Ballycotton boy. I don’t want to have grandchildren I only see but once a year.’
‘Why do you always look at me first?’ Colleen objected. ‘I’d be the last one ever to leave you, Mum.’ She stood up and collected our plates, stopping to give Mum a kiss on the cheek.
That night in our room Colleen said, ‘What if I go with you next summer, to get out of the city? Do you think I’d like it?’
Colleen and I slept in one bed, by the window, Louisa and Megs in another, pressed against the wall. I sat up and said, ‘Oh, you’d love it.’ I started to spill into my usual paeans for Ireland and she clapped a hand over my mouth.
‘Yes, I know,’ she said. ‘It’s sheer heaven. But even heaven’s not for everyone.’
‘Heaven may not be. But Ireland is.’
The following summer I was fifteen. Uncle Jack’s farm was going strong, but not strong enough to pay passage for two of us.
‘I wonder if Colleen should have a turn,’ Mum said, when Da got Jack’s letter. She was tying a bow at her collar, trying to look smart on her way to work at Buttons and Bits.
‘Oh, I’d never take Ireland away from Nan,’ Colleen said quickly, before I even had a chance to turn pale with loss.
‘Just as well,’ Da said. ‘I want this one here where I can see her.’ He tapped her chin fondly but the way Colleen bit her lip I could tell she knew he was only half joking.
The exchange occurred so fast I only realize in the telling of it the debt I owed my sister. Travelling back to Ireland on my own. I must have had my share of doubts and forebodings, during this time in my life, as we do in all times of our lives, even childhood. But what I remember is a beautiful ignorance of everything the future held. Ignorance of the looming war, and how it would permeate all our days to come. Reality wasn’t the newspaper making my uncle’s face crease with worry. Reality was the way the ocean carried through the air I breathed. Reality was the clean white sheets we hung on the clothes line to dry in the sun, so that by the time they got to our beds a hint of brine stayed with them, filling our dreams with waves, rocks and seals. Reality was the black-haired, blue-eyed boy and his dog, travelling over green hills to see me.