Mikey sat on the windowsill of his cottage enjoying the warmth of the afternoon summer sun and keeping an eye for the odd passer by with whom to pass the time of day. He had lived in the village all his life and recently found for the first time that he didn’t know some of the younger people; children and grandchildren of people he had grown up with. A large silver coloured car pulled up on the far side of the street. A tall well-dressed man wearing a brightly coloured shirt and cravat got out. Mikey glanced at him but took no notice until the man crossed to his gate. Nobody from a car like that ever came to Mikey’s door before. He looked again.
‘Well Holy God and His Blessed Mother is it yourself.’
‘It is.’
Bob shook Mikey’s arthritic hand, a little too strongly. Mikey lifted his behind off the windowsill.
‘Well it’s a quare few years since I saw you.’
‘It is, it’s thirty-five at least. How did you know me.’
‘Sure I’d know you anywhere from your mother. You’re the spittin’ image of her and don’t I remember you in short pants goin’ around the place bouncin’ a ball, a little black ball, and you’d be throwing it out with a spin on it and have it comin’ back to you. I do often think o’ that.
‘And, Mikey, how are you keeping?’
‘I can walk and I can talk, and when you’re well over eighty and can do that you’re not so bad, and your poor mother and father long since dead and gone, Lord have mercy on them. They were lovely people. They were back here about eight or ten years ago. That was the last I saw of them and I heard that they both died up in a slap one after the other a year or two after that. And where’s your sister, and I have to tell you I’ve forgotten her name?’
‘June is in Canada.’
‘Come in and sit down.’
Mikey took his stick and limped through the open door of his cottage into the dark kitchen.
‘Me Missus died six years ago and I’m on me own ever since.’
‘That’s lonely for you.’
‘It is, but you have to get used to it. The night-time is the worst. The ‘Meals on Wheels’ do bring me dinner and after that the cup o’ tea and the odd boilt egg that I can manage meself keeps me goin’. Put down that cat and sit there, you’ll have to excuse the place, it’s gone to the divil since she died. Angela, me daughter, comes in now and again and does a clean up. I’m not able. I’m on this stick fifteen years or more. I went to Dublin and got one hip done about ten years ago, but never again. The nurses and doctors were great, but the pain, Holy God the pain was terrible. I’ll put up with the other one, bad and all as it is. I don’t be goin’ anywhere anyway. Can’t I see the whole world on television, and it’s nothin’ but bad news so I don’t watch it. I look at the hurlin’ and the football and that’s the height of it. And where are you livin’ now.
‘I live in Botswana.’
‘Botswana, and where in the name of God is that?’
‘It’s in Africa.’
‘I remember now your mother and father told me you were in Africa. And how do you get on with all those black fella’s? But they tell me you can’t say that these days. I don’t know what you’re supposed to call them, but sure aren’t they black, and what’s the harm in that. I’m sure they’d call us white fella’s. And what are you doin’ there?’
‘I’m an engineer.’
‘And what possessed you to go to Africa?’
‘I was in a boring job in Dublin after I qualified and I saw an ad. in the paper. They were looking for engineers there so I applied, got the job and I’ve been there ever since.’
‘I suppose you had a look at your father’s old shop in the town. It’s a supermarket these fifteen or twenty years. You serve yourself and you sink or swim. A neighbour brings me in once a week and I know where to find the few things I need. You don’t get the service these days the way you did in your shop, and when you go to pay the young ones is talking to each other and you’re only a nuisance to them. I bagged sugar and delivered groceries and did everything around the shop for your father. There wasn’t much money in those days and he used give the poor people a bit off and let them pay at the end of the week and if there was a death in a family he’d send up a few things to give them a bit of a help. He was a real gentleman.’
Mikey opened a cupboard and took out a bottle of whiskey and poured two glasses.
‘And what kind of work do you do in Africa?’
‘I’m retired now, but I used to build roads and bridges and things like that.
‘And I suppose you don’t live in a mud hut,’ said Mikey curious to know how Bob lived but not wanting to be too inquisitive.
‘I live just outside the city in a house with a few acres of land; my wife used to keep horses.’
‘I back the odd horse meself. Paddy me neighbour works in the town and lays the bets. It gives me a great interest in the evening paper that he drops in to me at night. I have the cottage acre out the back. It’s enough to grow a few spuds, but I’m not even able to do that now, and if you look out you’ll see it’s gone wild. A fella’ up the road used to cut the hay off it for his donkey, but everyone is so well off these days nobody wants it.
‘That’s one thing about where I live, labour is cheap and the Africans are glad of the work inside and outside the house.’
‘People can’t get anyone to do anything round here they’re all getting’ big money in the factories and the towns.’
Does your Missus hunt or race the horses?’
‘She used to race them. It was a great interest for her.’ Bob looked around the kitchen. It was even smaller than the accommodation for his servants at the end of his garden, if somewhat more comfortable.
‘You’ll see great changes around here. I suppose you had a good look around the town?’
‘I did and I nearly didn’t know it. There’s not one shop front the same as when I was a child’
‘When you were a child and I was working for your father people were contented. Everyone has too much money these days and the young people’s gone to hell with drink and drugs and the divil knows what. You said your wife used to keep horses. Did she give them up?’
‘She still has horses, but we separated some years ago and she lives a couple of hundred miles away now with another man.’
‘ We have that class o’ thing here now too.’
‘Do you mind if I ask you, have you got family?’
‘I have two sons.’
‘And do they live with you?’
‘No, one’s in Australia and the other’s in South Africa.’
‘So you’re on your own?’
‘I am, and answerable to no one.’
Mikey passed the bottle to Bob who poured himself more whiskey.
‘That must be lonely. The furthest any of mine is is the city and they all drop in to keep an eye on the auld fella. Are your two married?
Bob, mellowing from the whiskey, comfortable in the kitchen and at ease with the congenial Mikey was ready to tell the truth.
‘Well Mikey the truth of the matter is I don’t know. You see they left home one after the other in their early twenties when things were bad between my wife and myself and they haven’t been in touch with me for years. All I know is that the older one is in Australia and what he’s doing I have no idea and I’m sad to say the younger one is in prison in South Africa. As far as I know he was on drugs and then started to supply them. I think their mother is in touch with them from time to time but she’s never in touch with me so I’ve no information.
‘Well isn’t that a shocker, and how do you account for that?’
‘Their mother turned them against me early on and when they left home they never made contact again.’
Mikey began to wonder how in the name of God things could get so bad that two young men would want to have no contact with their father.
‘And what do you do with your time now that you’re retired?’ Mikey asked.
‘I play a lot of golf and I travel.’
‘Everyone’s playin’ golf in this country. Every second week there’s a new golf course opening somewhere and as far as travel is concerned I believe that in the summer Dublin airport is like Croke Park on the day of an All Ireland. Everyone has the money and they can do what they like.
And what do your young people do?
Bridget lives in the town, Mary is married to a farmer in Wicklow and the three boys are in Dublin, one’s an accountant, one’s a teacher and the other is in the motor business. All married and I have six lovely grandchildren, and some of them call too from time to time.
Mikey topped up Bob’s drink.
‘Your children all did well.’
‘I suppose they did right enough. They all worked hard at school and the ones that studied afterwards used to work at jobs to keep themselves. They had to go to the city to get the jobs. They had to travel to get work, a bit like yourself but not as far.
The conversation flowed as long as they were talking about the past and about family, but when they had exhausted those interests conversation ran thin. The silences between topics became longer and to fill some of them Mikey would top up Bob’s glass and put no more than a dash into his own or miss it altogether until the bottle was finished.
This was the first time since he arrived in Ireland that Bob had been in a home. Hotels and restaurants, no matter how good don’t supply what Mikey did by his welcome, his hospitality and his homely kitchen. Bob was conscious that he had started to slur his words and inevitably he fell asleep.
Mikey was relieved as he had run out of things to say. He put on the kettle to make tea and looked in the cupboard to see if he had enough to offer Bob something to eat. He tidied a few things around the kitchen and in a while Paddy dropped in the evening paper. Mikey accounted for his sleeping visitor and Paddy remembered him. Mikey checked the nags, no luck, and when he had read the rest of the paper Bob was still asleep. Mikey put two eggcups, two plates and cutlery on the table.
When Bob had been asleep for more than an hour Mikey thought he ought to waken him; tea and some food wouldn’t be out of place.
‘I think it’s time we had something to eat,’ he said across to Bob. His slumbering guest didn’t move. Mikey said it again, this time louder. No stir. He went over, put his hand on Bob’s shoulder and spoke again. The heavy breathing just short of a snore continued. Mikey shook him and patted him on the cheek but could not waken him. He shook him vigorously without success. He took his stick, went to the gate and asked a passer by to call to Paddy and ask him to come.
Paddy arrived and couldn’t rouse Bob either.
‘If he wasn’t breathing so evenly and he didn’t look so peaceful you’d be worried, said Mikey, ‘he musn’t be used to the drop of whiskey.’
Paddy went back and brought Bridie. They half lifted and half dragged Bob down to the room and put him on Mikey’s bed. He stirred, but didn’t’ waken.
It’s nothing new for me to sleep beside the cooker,’ said Mikey, ‘and sure he’ll be grand in the morning.’