Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

Arriving late for the Rainy Day fiction serial? You can read part one here.

"Neddy! Come in," invited Mr Rathbone, "And close the door after you."

"Anything strange in Newhouses?" the old man asked over his shoulder, turning and limping towards the parlour, his walking stick tapping the way.

This was Mr Rathbone's ritual question and Neddy, never sure how to respond, answered, as always, "No. Nothing strange at all, Mr Rathbone."

What made something strange, anyway, he had often asked himself? Was it strange that he had seen Nindeen shoving his tongue into Nans Oran's mouth one evening when he had gone around the back of the school and she hadn't stopped him? Or was it strange that Mr Tobined would arrive at his house later in the day with his big knife for the sticking?

As soon as he was grown up he'd leave Newhouses and go somewhere strange so that he'd be able to come back and answer Mr Rathbone's question properly. He'd been looking at Master Linch's maps and had decided that any place called Luxembourg must be very strange, although not so big that he'd get lost, so he'd go there.

He'd return after a year with lots of presents for everyone, of course. Optical switches and printed circuit boards that the lads could use for cleverer blowing up, and he'd make a special effort to find some of the things the dentist used for prodding inside people's mouths and making them cry. Silver ones. Thin, with cross-looking sharp ends angled like the beaks on those African birds that can stand on one leg all day and were pictured on the middle pages of his nature book. They'd be far better than the pointed sticks Mr Taylor used for getting the truth out of the informers. Wouldn't break as often, either. For his mother, he'd get a…

"Neddy!" greeted Mrs Rathbone as she came in carrying a bucket of coal in each hand. "What in God's name happened your knee? Sit down there and I'll put something on it."

A minute later she was handing him a large slice of barmbrack and a glass of lemonade. As he ate and drank steadily, she returned with an enamel pan filled with warm water made milky with Dettol antiseptic and began to dab the blood-crusted skin with a soft cloth that had once been part of a nightshirt that was now too small for Mr Rathbone.

"How's your mother and father?" she asked.
Oh, fine, Mrs Rathbone."

"They're great people," she declared, dabbing all the while, and going on to tell him and Mr Rathbone, who was looking into the fire, chin resting on his stick, what fine parents he had. Hard workers. Careful. Decent. Bright. The praise made him happy. Years later, when he was making a living by making things up, he realized she was telling him that his people were far more intelligent than the country gave them credit for. He also learned in Luxembourg that such a moment of unexpected manifestation when we become aware of our history or ourselves was called an epiphany and it became one of his favourite words.

Mrs Rathbone spoke rhythmically and ceaselessly, which was why they didn't interrupt her, as she recalled great-grandfathers long dead, cousins in the Big City, aunts emigrated to Beyond and relations of relations of relations who had married men and women from Below and Behind. She described the bad times before liberation and the worse times after liberation and emphasized how tough the people had to be. Neddy looked down at her grey hair tied up with a blue string as she knelt on the cold floor applying a white powder now to the wound. She told the small room with its ticking wall clock and her audience of two about his uncle Joe John who had been shot by the liberation army as he crossed the big hill near Oldhouses late on a winter's evening, and how he had lain up there for two days in the mud, bleeding his life away, conscious of his coming death, before they could bring the body down to wake him. Which he once though meant the person was sleeping, but since then he'd been to lots of houses with Granny where people were crying and giving each other tobacco and glasses of the strong stuff and he'd learned that those lying in their timber boxes being waked weren't sleeping. It just looked like it. Unless their faces were broken. In which case the boxes were shut.

"He was very good looking," she said. "Had a great head of hair. A bit like yourself." She ruffled Neddy's head and he reddened.

"Make sure you mind that knee now," and she went off with the pan.

When she came back, she held the large white ceramic bowl containing the trifle in front of her. "Now look at that," she urged with a proud smile, placing it on the table.

Neddy peered over the edge and into the pond of red jelly that formed the flawless surface of the dessert. Under the top, he could just make out the quarter-moon shapes of whitish pear slices resting on the brown fingers of Mrs Rathbone's sponge cake, sliced and soaked in sherry, which gave body to it all and held the parts together so solidly that the trifle could almost stand on its own if taken out of the bowl. And in the middle, hidden from view, was the pliers, Suspended in sweetness it lurked, jaws clenched, waiting to emerge and bite finger nails later that day.

Next week: Part 3