A VISITOR
When Johnny died they all spent
days pouring over photographs of him. Johnny as a round faced lad wearing a cap
the time he was apprenticed to his father in the bricklaying. Johnny wearing a
grey pinstriped suit, leaning on his bicycle, one trouser leg caught in the hoop
of a bike clip. Where was he going, they asked, dressed like that? Johnny in
full swing foxtrot ushering his stiletto heeled partner through a series of intricate
steps. This was the Johnny that his grown up children never knew. The one who
had stolen her heart.
They’d met in the queue of the
Aster cinema in 1944. She worked in the factory with his two sisters and knew
him as “a bit of a ladies man.” She hadn’t until then been on the receiving end
of his honeyed brogue. But that evening as she stared wistfully at a pair of paten
shoes, shiny black with a satin bow at the side, a seductive voice had broken
in on her musings.
“Would you like me to buy them
for you?”
She’d treated that remark with
the distain it deserved. But from that day on she’d caught his eye more than
once across the street as she walked the mile to and from work, and her ear
strained daily to hear stories of his latest dance floor antics and conquests.
Then one day his sister Madge delivered the missive.
Would she meet him at the Gasworks for a stroll? And the rest was history, as
they say. Her two left feet put an end to his dancing expos and the day they
walked up the aisle there was more than one broken heart on the factory floor.
Their three grown up children
preferred the photos of Johnny as a young father bouncing a couple of infants
on his knees or wading in the sea with them at Warrenpoint. They enjoyed too
the snapshots of him playing pitch and putt with the grandsons, fishing in
stocked rivers and lakes with them too. He did, of course, do some real fishing
with his pals, Jimmy Loughran and Pat McCrea, and often on his own for hours
out at the Lough until the day he took a stroke.
Even though it was designated as
a minor one, she had wanted him to give up the fishing. Afraid that something
would happen to him out there miles from anyone. Afraid that she wouldn’t be
there, that nobody would be there. And so he had given it up to keep her happy.
Just like the dancing, he teased her. She was his ball and chain for sure!
She was there when he died
peacefully and unexpectedly in his sleep. Right next to her and she hadn’t
known a thing about it. A “saint’s death” they all called it as they sat around
at the wake, recalling his dapper days. He had died with his hand tucked under
his chin, a calm expression on his face. He had suffered no pain, they told
her.
But she didn’t get to say goodbye. That was
the problem. He had stolen off in the night without telling her. For weeks she
was mad as hell at him. And every time she picked up one of the many photos of
him that had been unearthed from forgotten corner cupboards and framed in an
array of silver plate and oak, she told him so.
It was on one of these occasions that Mary, her eldest daughter, came in
the backdoor, unnoticed by Agnes. A family council meeting was held and it was
deemed essential that they keep a closer eye on her. Teresa, the youngest, who
lived nearest to her, suggested a pet for company.
“A dog? A puppy? You can’t be
serious!” Agnes exclaimed.” Hadn’t I had enough bother rearing the whole of you
without starting again with a puppy?”
“You exaggerate, mum. It’s not
a baby! It’s only a dog. A cute wee Yorkshire
or something like that. And it will be great company for you. We can’t be here
all the time.”
“And I don’t ask you be here.
I’m quite alright by myself. In fact I like my own company.”
“Mum, Mary says you’re talking
to yourself.”
“Sure doesn’t everybody do that?
You probably do it yourself only you don’t even know. Besides, I wasn’t talking
to myself. I was talking to your dad. And God help us can I not even do that?
Would you leave me in peace now.”
Agnes stalwartly refused any
notion that a furry friend would make her life meaningful again. Instead she
sat out in the porch watching the stars, as they had done so many times in the
past together. She read every piece of correspondence she could find written in
his bold round script and wore his green woollen cardigan when the others weren’t
around; the one they had bought together for him in Avoca Handweavers two
Christmases before he died.
She was having a chat with him
about the latest council plans to dig up the lane yet again for water pipes
when she heard the scratching at the door. At first she thought it might be a
straggling branch of the still flowering Fuchsia being battered about by the strong
gusty wind. Agnes chose to ignore the tap tapping for a while. But as she
thought about the distance from the hedge to the window of her half door the
thought occurred to her that it might be that intrepid ginger cat that had
taken to visiting her, uninvited, whenever she left any aperture in the cottage
ajar.
It was then that she heard a
definite whining sound. Opening the top window of the half door she peered over
to see a brown and white pointer, looking wistfully back at her.
“Now where did you come from?”
she declared. This couldn’t have been a ploy. None of her children would have
picked this bony half starved creature as a would-be companion for her. But
here he was, in need of a meal at least. Agnes softened some bread in a bowl of
milk, opened the door wide and offered the bowl to the intruder. The pointer
gulped the lot down in split seconds.
The gale swept a batch of
leaves on to her door mat and Agnes decided there and then that the pointer
would have to go. She whooshed the reluctant dog out the door and closed it
firmly against him. Then she listened. But the only sounds were the clock
ticking and the wind howling.
Agnes put on the kettle and
settled down for her late night cuppa and two digestive biscuits. As she was
about to pick up the last quarter of biscuit she thought of her visitor.
“You’ll never get rid of it if
you start feeding it biscuits!” she imagined Johnny teasing her. But she slowly
walked towards the door anyway, to have a look at the stars, she told herself,
even though the clouds were sure to be obstructing her view of Orion the hunter
and his prey tonight. Agnes opened the window.
After a quick perusal of a
starless sky she looked down. Sure enough the shivering pointer lay in a heap
at her door.
“Well just for tonight, Mister!
In the morning you’re off!” The pointer seemed to get the picture, for he
sidled quickly past her as soon as she nudged open the door and dropped down, with
what sounded to Agnes like a sigh, on the first rug he came to.
Agnes was still holding the biscuit when there was a knock at the door.
“Just checking in on you!” It
was her youngest daughter. “What’s that?” Teresa pointed to the dog.
“What does it look like?”
“It’s a mangy looking thing,
Mum. Where did you get it? You said you didn’t want one. We were looking for a
nice wee pedigree Westie for you.”
“Those Westies are very bad
natured. Sure didn’t we have one years ago. Left the track of its teeth on
everybody.”
“A cocker Spaniel or King
Charles would be nice. Vaccinated and clean.” She looked at the thin pointer
that now licked the biscuit out of Agnes’s fingers. “You wouldn’t know what
you’d pick up off that yoke, Ma. You can’t be serious!”
“I can and I will!” declared
Agnes who hadn’t until that moment had the slightest intention of keeping the
pointer. “If it doesn’t have an owner, that is.”
“We’ll put up notices tomorrow
and please God…” muttered Teresa.
“A couple of good feeds and a
visit to the vet is all it needs,” said Agnes. “Didn’t you all want me to have
company and now I do! Sure maybe Johnny had a hand in it.”
“Or maybe he fell out of the
sky!” remonstrated Teresa.
“A companion of Orion, of course!”
exclaimed Agnes. “His pointer! Every hunter must have a pointer? Right?”
Stringer was there to stay. They
said he was a “string of misery” and so they named him. Secretly Agnes called
him Orion. Nobody ever did reply to Teresa’s bold printed urgent notices posted
in every cornershop, library and surgery within a ten mile radius. Agnes talked
just as much to herself as before the arrival of her visitor, but the subject of
her verbal meanderings was now usually connected to the stars.
“She’s always talking about
heavenly configurations!” declared Teresa. “Asking Stringer this and that about
the heavens!”
“With a bit of luck that
creature will disappear as mysteriously as he arrived,” said Mary.
But Orion was there to stay. And
every clear evening Agnes and the pointer sat under the night sky and journeyed
through the stars.
