The Scattering Read Free Page B

a few intoxicating memories squirrelled from our youth. I told him it was high time we lived a little. He agreed and told me then of his plans to flatten the court. I remember that as I walked towards my car, parked beside the silver lake, I had the distinct and certain feeling I was being watched.

1975
    As the light weakened, Mr McCourt pulled open the velour drapes and lit the vanilla-scented candle. He had just said goodbye to his youngest daughter, and watched as she crossed the road to catch the airport bus. His children had been coming and going for a long time, perhaps twenty years, but he’d never gotten used to it, and ‘goodbye’ had become increasingly difficult.
    â€˜We’re thinking of buying the white bungalow,’ he had heard her say throughout the four days; he knew she hadn’t even arranged to view it.
    â€˜You’ll not be able to settle in if you leave it too long.’
    â€˜It’s my town isn’t it?’ she had replied.
    He watched her stand stiffly by her black trolley, her long red hair jetting out of a high ponytail. She did not look across at him standing behind the flame in the otherwise dark room. He must, he thought, be visible behind the nets in the dusky evening. Nor had she so much as glanced at the white bungalow. She reminded him of his wife with that hair and her petite frame, but something tight and of the city clung inelegantly to her. He had not fully believed her work-attributed reasons for rushing back to London.
    He thought that maybe he’d talked too much during the days he’d spent with her; he thought of what his son, Francie, had said: don’t try too hard with her, don’t take time off for her. As far as he knew she hadn’t even been near Crowe Street.
    He had taken time off for her. Almost in anticipation of her visit, he had recently brought in two new girls to help Bridie, his chief baker. Bridie had come home after thirty years with big plans for her own shop, only to have her husband run off with a girl half her age after their first month home. (He had felt sorry for her; she was often sour-faced but good with the women.) It had been his hope, until recently, that Francie or one of his daughters would run the shop with him. It had happened at Daly’s and Duffner’s; siblings working together in their respective shops, both families exuding a soft and enviable pride. Once he had Francie with him for a whole summer; the girls came sporadically during holidays but that had been the extent of their working together as a family.
    The bus was late. Perhaps she would cross to the house and stay another night. They could listen to the Lena Martell records, or to Geraldine O’Grady, and he could tell her the stories about the farm, stories about the Channonrock families and O’Hara and his own scrapes at the border in ’69. He hadn’t told any of them the stories in years, he thought. Nor had they asked for them. Further evidence, if he needed it, that they’d all managed to sever themselves from their past. The realisation had come as quite a shock to him, about five years ago.
    In London, his wife had dragged the girls to Irish dancing on the other side of the city in Finsbury Park. He had taken all four of them to Irish language, flute and recitation classes at the Irish Centre in Quex Road in Kilburn, twice a week. They had done so in anticipation of returning, building a home and business back in the town; and he didn’t want his children to forget and grow up English. (The South London accent was enough for him; had he had any say they would have been trained to adopt his own sharp Monaghan spurt.) It had taken much longer than planned to save in London, and by the time he’d brought them back, the so-called ‘Irishness’ they’d been inculcated with stood out as artificial; an outmoded thing in the prospering town.
    â€˜Irish culture is alive and well and living in