‘I wish I’d known that recipe when I was working,’ Nancy chuckled, remembering how she would race home at lunchtime and cook a meat, potatoes and veg dinner before hurrying back to work. ‘I’m very fond of Hilary, she’s a lovely girl.’
‘I know,’ Jonathan agreed affectionately. ‘She’s the best in the world and I’m lucky to have her as a friend.’
‘And she’s lucky to have you too,’ Nancy declared, placing a large helping of apple crumble, drenched in steaming creamy custard, in front of him.
‘Ooooh yum! You spoil me rotten.’ Jonathan tucked in with gusto, delighted that she had made his favourite childhood dessert. ‘So tell me all the news, scandal and gossip,’ he grinned when she sat back down opposite him.
‘Ah it’s quite enough around here these days. Poor Nellie Murphy passed away last week and she was lying on a trolley in A&E for two days before they got a bed for her. It’s a disgrace,’ Nancy grumbled. ‘All them chancers up in the Dáil never have to wait in A&E departments. Into the Mater Private and the Blackrock Clinic with them. There might be a boom but it’s not making any difference to the likes of us.’
‘Ah yes, the golden circle. The privileged few will always be looked after. Will it ever change?’ Jonathan spooned honey-sweetened apple into his mouth.
‘And we’ve plenty of chancers here too, I can tell you. You know that fella Donnie Quill over on Hawthorn Street? He works for the Health Board. Well Maura Flynn who lives beside him – she’s in the knitting group and she’s a nurse – she saw himself and another fella, brazen as you like, unloading a hospital bed from his trailer and storing it in his garage. And they cost thousands! And he’s getting petrol from somewhere too because Maura sees him filling the two cars with it. You know the wife, Antonia, a real snooty one that wouldn’t pass the time of day with you if you met her on the street, a right little consequence. Well Maura has the measure of her. “Did your car run out of petrol again?” Maura says, ever so airy-fairy when Donnie was filling it with petrol, and Antonia was raging!’ Nancy chuckled, and Jonathan laughed, enjoying his catch-up with the various goings on in Rosslara. ‘Terrible, isn’t it, to be robbing the Health Board like that?’
‘Robbing us like that! It’s our hard-earned taxes that pay for it.’ Jonathan began clearing away the dishes. ‘But don’t forget, what goes around comes around.’
‘And seemingly he was fiddling the gas company for years. Could have blown up the street interfering with the meter. Ah the world is gone to the divil.’ Nancy wiped the table. ‘The news is full of terrible things. How can people do the things they do to each other?’
‘Man’s inhumanity to man is endless indeed,’ Jonathan sighed, filling the dishwasher.
‘If I asked you something would you tell me the truth, son?’ Nancy said hesitantly, filling the kettle to make another pot of tea. Her heart started to pound.
‘Eh . . . yes . . . of course I would.’ Jonathan looked at her in surprise.
‘Good,’ Nancy said weakly. ‘That’s good to know because I want to ask you something.’
‘Right, fire ahead.’ Jonathan frowned, seeing how troubled his mother had become, and wondered what was up.
Nancy took a deep breath. ‘When you were young did anyone ever do anything bad to you? Anyone at school, the teachers, or the priests or the brothers? Were you ever abused?’ She studied his face intently, her blue eyes filled with concern and dread.
It was as though time had stood still in his mother’s kitchen. Jonathan was acutely aware of the silence between them. The aroma of the meal they’d just eaten lingering in the air, the kettle beginning to hiss as it boiled. The steady tick-tock of the clock on the wall and the light of the moon glimmering through the frosted-glass panes in the back door lent an almost surreal air to the moment. Nancy stared at him expectantly, her hands clasped so tightly together her knuckles were white.
Jonathan swallowed hard, his heart pounding. ‘No, Mam, no priest or teacher or brother ever did anything to me when I was young,’ he answered truthfully.
‘Oh thank God for that, Jonathan. I’ve been so worried about it. Every time I hear something on the news now, about child abuse, I wonder did anything like that happen to my lovely boy. I was afraid something had, and that you had to carry it alone. And I thought that was the cause of your sad moods.’ Nancy’s blue eyes glistened with tears and she fished up her sleeve for her handkerchief.
Jonathan put his arms around her. ‘Don’t ever worry about me, Mam, I’m fine. Honest.’ He struggled to keep the emotion from his voice. He wanted to cry.
‘Did anything ever happen to you? I know you got into fights and scraps. I used to cry myself to sleep worrying about you when you’d come home with a black eye or bloodied nose. Did anyone ever abuse you, Jonathan?’ She drew away from his embrace and looked up at him.
It was the moment he could have told her. His mother was no fool. She’d finally put two and two together. But how could he tell her that the neighbour she had lived
