‘a night of sleep passes, and they forget you.’
‘He’s only a little fellow,’ I say, by way of explanation and perhaps a hint of apology. Because the boy can be oddly silent even with me. You need to tickle him out, like a spider having his web tickled with a stick. The girl is like a secret all to herself, like seven magpies. Five for silver, six for gold. Seven is a secret never to be told.
He’s only a little fellow. A little fellow has a memory worthy of remark. He seems to forget and yet another time he can call forth a matter in all its bright details. He chooses to remember in his own good time, cannot remember unless something in him wants to. Not wanting to remember for the boy is the same as forgetting. Perhaps that is what forgetting is, and I would do well to practise that art. The ease and dance of a boy’s mind, the rightness of it. But I must think also how easy it would be to destroy his dance, his ease. So I must think well of his father, with that red beard, who as a boy himself had the temper of a wolf - silence, silence, and then the growl and the snap, a ravening temper he could bring to bear on his younger brother. His older brother was different, employing much more elaborate methods of torture. They were a threesome of endless and unnecessary war. And I stood among them not as a mother, which should have been Maud’s job, though Maud either doted on or ignored them, and finally, abandoned them and all daily matters, and put herself to bed one autumn morning and never arose again in any purposeful way. There was a horror and a terror in that for the boys, and in chief for the father of this little scrap, who worshipped the ground his mother trod on. The trouble was, she did not issue forth, to trod!
I do believe the little boy never met his grandmother Maud, or perhaps he crossed her time of dying with earliest babyhood. Certainly Matt worships in turn his little grandson, says he will put him to being a painter like himself, and glories in the prospect. Matt may profess a great disappointment in his eldest son, who he calls a Bohemian, meaning a mere layabout, even though he went himself to be a sculptor in the art college in Dublin. But of this boy’s father he never says but good, and of this boy likewise.
The boy again in turn worships Matt, because Matt, when they lived near him in Donnybrook, was always careful to bring boiled sweets on his bicycle every Sunday, and that is the kind of thing that registers with a child.
Soon now Matt will be down with his paints and easel as the summer matures, and I am hoping he will make the journey from Lathaleer, my cousin’s farm where he stays, often, for the boy’s sake. For my own part it would give me no grief if I never set eyes on him again, for his cruel actions. One of which is, he will not stay here in Kelsha with us, and indeed we have no space for him, but if he wished we would make up the hag’s bed for him, where he could sleep the sleep of the just, with the comfort of the sleeping fire. And it would be nothing for us to include his shirts and drawers in the wash, items I knew well in the old fled days when I washed for all those men, him and his three sons. When they were my care.
But the boy is a complete boy, no roaring or beating has pulled the crystal jewel from his crown of contentment. So I must also say a word in favour of his mother, who I know, because it is writ plain in her face, has a dislike for me. Although it suited her to leave the children with us, while they fix their tent in London, I feel she has no great opinion of our abilities. She wrote me a letter of preparation and thanks that reeked of doubt. Luckily she is a rather indifferent mother - the children’s clothes were all entirely sent down to me without ironing, and holes in the heels of socks, and tears in trousers left to the mercies of the wind like neglected houses—or I might never have got my mitts on the boy and girl. As Billy Kerr
‘He’s only a little fellow,’ I say, by way of explanation and perhaps a hint of apology. Because the boy can be oddly silent even with me. You need to tickle him out, like a spider having his web tickled with a stick. The girl is like a secret all to herself, like seven magpies. Five for silver, six for gold. Seven is a secret never to be told.
He’s only a little fellow. A little fellow has a memory worthy of remark. He seems to forget and yet another time he can call forth a matter in all its bright details. He chooses to remember in his own good time, cannot remember unless something in him wants to. Not wanting to remember for the boy is the same as forgetting. Perhaps that is what forgetting is, and I would do well to practise that art. The ease and dance of a boy’s mind, the rightness of it. But I must think also how easy it would be to destroy his dance, his ease. So I must think well of his father, with that red beard, who as a boy himself had the temper of a wolf - silence, silence, and then the growl and the snap, a ravening temper he could bring to bear on his younger brother. His older brother was different, employing much more elaborate methods of torture. They were a threesome of endless and unnecessary war. And I stood among them not as a mother, which should have been Maud’s job, though Maud either doted on or ignored them, and finally, abandoned them and all daily matters, and put herself to bed one autumn morning and never arose again in any purposeful way. There was a horror and a terror in that for the boys, and in chief for the father of this little scrap, who worshipped the ground his mother trod on. The trouble was, she did not issue forth, to trod!
I do believe the little boy never met his grandmother Maud, or perhaps he crossed her time of dying with earliest babyhood. Certainly Matt worships in turn his little grandson, says he will put him to being a painter like himself, and glories in the prospect. Matt may profess a great disappointment in his eldest son, who he calls a Bohemian, meaning a mere layabout, even though he went himself to be a sculptor in the art college in Dublin. But of this boy’s father he never says but good, and of this boy likewise.
The boy again in turn worships Matt, because Matt, when they lived near him in Donnybrook, was always careful to bring boiled sweets on his bicycle every Sunday, and that is the kind of thing that registers with a child.
Soon now Matt will be down with his paints and easel as the summer matures, and I am hoping he will make the journey from Lathaleer, my cousin’s farm where he stays, often, for the boy’s sake. For my own part it would give me no grief if I never set eyes on him again, for his cruel actions. One of which is, he will not stay here in Kelsha with us, and indeed we have no space for him, but if he wished we would make up the hag’s bed for him, where he could sleep the sleep of the just, with the comfort of the sleeping fire. And it would be nothing for us to include his shirts and drawers in the wash, items I knew well in the old fled days when I washed for all those men, him and his three sons. When they were my care.
But the boy is a complete boy, no roaring or beating has pulled the crystal jewel from his crown of contentment. So I must also say a word in favour of his mother, who I know, because it is writ plain in her face, has a dislike for me. Although it suited her to leave the children with us, while they fix their tent in London, I feel she has no great opinion of our abilities. She wrote me a letter of preparation and thanks that reeked of doubt. Luckily she is a rather indifferent mother - the children’s clothes were all entirely sent down to me without ironing, and holes in the heels of socks, and tears in trousers left to the mercies of the wind like neglected houses—or I might never have got my mitts on the boy and girl. As Billy Kerr
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