Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

Want to come up to speed on the Rainy Day fiction serial? Read part one, part two, part three and part four before tackling the ultimate episode.

It was said the Aggie Lone, MacK's mother, had not been outside the house in twenty years. After her husband died following "questioning" by the authorities in the Barracks, she handed over the running of the family pub to her eldest son and spent her life indoors, leafing through a prayerbook swollen with sepia photos of departed that it was customary to circulate around that time. She made haphazard appearances in the bar, when "her own people", as she put it, were down from the mountain and she emerged to play cards one night a week during the winter months when a goose or a turkey was the main prize.

Neddie didn't mind the musty old woman with the white skin and blue lips even though she always insisted on holding his hand. When he'd manage to withdraw it from her clasp, folded paper money would be his to pocket. It was a small price to pay.

"Stop! You shouldn't. You're too good," Granny would say after seeing the note, protesting that the times were too hard to be giving money away to "young fellas" who didn't know the value of it.

Often, however, when sitting beside the fire at home, Granny would draw down the subject of Mrs Lone and Neddy would detect a change in tone.

"That one's rotten with money," she'd say bitterly, adding mysterious elaborations such as, "Two brothers clerics, a sister a minister and another a counselor. All they have is what they can take from the poor people." And this was just the start of the invective.

As Neddy toyed with his glass of lemonade, tilting it to see how far he could slant it before spilling some on the table top, the two old women continued to whisper. They had knowledge and their topics were necessarily clandestine: deaths, wakes, burials, funerals, families, graves, cemeteries, certainties. Sometimes, to leaven the conversation, they discuss pains, ailments and complaints, after which they'd list the youthful that had died too soon and the elderly that had lived beyond the expected span. Young girls who "got caught" were another favourite and although Neddy wasn't fully sure of what was involved, he could sense that it was scandalous.

Two hours would elapse, usually, before MacK would approach their table, mutter something into his mother's ear and withdraw. The message was then transmitted to Granny. It was time for them to go home.

The house was packed, filled with smoke and talk and overflowing with life. Some of the men were still sweating from their exertions, dabbing their foreheads with handkerchiefs and lifting up their hats and caps to run fingers through their matted hair. Most of them held bottles, which they raised high before tossing the pungent drink down their throats. Mr Ford and Mr Taylor were washing their hands in one corner, passing the yellow bar of carbolic soap back and forth, lathering their arms and Neddy noticed that the water in the large enamel pan had a rosy tint.

In the back room, some of the women were scrubbing the walls and the floor using wire brushes. Their buckets of suds reeked of Jeyes fluid. They chattered gaily, which added a semblance of normalcy to the chore of cleaning up after a truthing. The others were brewing big pots of tea and heaping plates with sandwiches.

The sideboard was lined with knives, which Nolie Doland was shining and drying with two kinds of soft cloth. Opposite her, Janey Kennerflock held the pliers up to the light and was removing something stubborn from between its jaws with a sliver of metal. The ropes were soaking in two black buckets that were filled to the brim. Again, the reddish hue.

Neddy wandered back into the parlour where he was suddenly grabbed by Mr Dinlaye, who shaved only on Sundays.

"I'll sandpaper you, me lad," said the old man laughing and he rubbed his bristles across the boy's right cheek while embracing him. Face red and smarting from the assault, Neddy stumbled back against a chair only to have his wrist caught by Mr Grifford, who kept the big dog that the men brought their smaller dogs to when they wanted pups. He quickly shoved his hand down the front of Neddy's trousers.

"Anythin' stirrin' yet?" he leered and winked. Neddy gaped at the huge red head under the dirty hat, stepped back, saw his father in the corner and wriggled his way through the crowed room towards him.

A time would come in a place far away when he was in the middle of crowds, walking between purposes, thinking of all the things he had to do, visualizing lists and inwardly crossing off items, when the light in the evening city sky would suddenly take on a certain tinge and it would all flow back. Or it might happen when music escaped from an open window. But it has to be something modal. Then, the past that no one admitted to, with all the cries that had gone unheard, echoed around him. What was the meaning? He couldn't recall. At this distance, it was futile and inexplicable. He'd sometimes cry when he was on his own, but the tears weren't for the informers and their suffering. He wept for that moment when everything was perfect and he was at the centre of the world. He could taste the loss.

Neddy snuggled in beside Granny in her fireside armchair. Tommy Potter and Tommy Parsons had taken out their instruments and were settling on the tuning that was preferred for the region's minor music. Soon they'd launch into "The Starry Monster," everyone's favourite. Now it was almost bedtime, but not quite yet. The best part was coming.

He saw his mother approaching. The crowd parted as she made her way towards Neddy. There was much head nodding and smiling in his direction and murmurs of "He's the lad," and "Afraid of nothing" could be heard. She handed him the dish first and then the spoon. He smiled before digging down through the large splash of cream that covered the trifle and gathered up an amount he judged wouldn't spill on the way back up. It tasted of? Everything nice and something else, too. Something faintly metallic, perhaps? No, something else entirely. And then he had it. It tasted of secrets.