LITMIR.BIZ

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      Frank swung a chair out from under the table and sat down. I was pretending to fuss with JJ but what I was really doing was trying to put myself in Frank’s place and figure out what he might be thinking. We go back a long way, Frank and myself; neighbours and school together since we were kids and a long spell in London in the seventies and eighties. There’s not a lot we don’t know about each other but I could tell that evening I had him fairly flummoxed.

      “You were gone a few days,” he said, not taking his eyes off JJ.

      “A few days,” I said. “Out foreign.”

      “Out foreign?”

      “Out foreign.”

      He wasn’t happy. He tried another tack.

      “I thought there might be something wrong.”

      He was still staring at JJ. He told me afterwards it was as much as he could do to stop himself from reaching out with his hand to touch him and make sure he was real. Leaning out on his elbows he was, staring at him. I turned JJ round to face him.

      “Say hello to your new neighbour, JJ. Frank, this is my son, this is JJ O’Malley.”

      I held out JJ and Frank drew back in his chair.

      “Anthony . . . ?” He had his hand out, pointing. “Anthony . . . how, where . . . ?”

      I could barely keep from laughing.

      “I bought him,” I said casually.

      “Christ!”

      “Two thousand dollars, give or take a few pounds, import duties and all the rest.”

      “For God’s sake, Anthony!”

      “What?” I said, playing the innocent. “You don’t think it was a fair price. I thought it was a fair price.”

      You could see the colour rising in Frank’s face. Go to the dresser, I said, and get the bottle. He poured two stiff ones and drew in his chair. It was my turn to start talking and now that it was I didn’t know where to start. The more I thought about it the more I realised that some stories are so daft it makes no difference where you start telling them. You might as well start at the end as at the beginning because one part is as far from making sense as the next. But I had to start somewhere so I just took it out of face. I told him how, after the cattle had been taken away, I’d had a lot of thinking to do. Six months before I could stock up again, what was I to do in the meantime? Night after night in front of the fire thinking and mulling things over, looking at the telly and trying to make sense of things. I told him how I’d seen the coverage of all those revolutions and those orphanages and how I’d got the idea of going abroad and getting a child of my own. Money wasn’t a problem, I had my own house—what else would I do with it all? So I told him about the trip to that bitter city and all the days spent traipsing from one orphanage to the next with no clue what I was looking for. And then I told him how I found JJ and the wicked witch and about the haggling as well. No more than JJ years later, Frank could hardly believe it either, you could see it in his face. But I wasn’t ashamed of it. I wasn’t ashamed of it then nor am I now and that is something I cannot explain. He was quiet for a while after that and then he shook his head.

      “I’ve heard some good ones in my time but I can say in all honesty I’ve never heard the beating of what you’ve just told me.” He laughed. “And I never figured you for the fathering type, Anthony.”

      I shrugged. “There it is, you see, you never know. Spend enough nights on your own thinking and you start seeing things about yourself. You see the things you’ve done and the things you’re likely to do and when you see that the balance of your life is already in the past you find you’ve got some hard decisions to make. You either face up to it or you settle down to pissing away what’s left of yourself. There were nights here when that fire never went out.”

      It all sounded a lot wiser than I felt but it seemed to make sense at the time.

      “He’s a fine child though,” Frank said. “How old did you say he was?”

      “Two years old, he’ll be two years old in the middle of April. At least that’s what I’ve been led to believe.”

      “And he’s healthy and everything?”

      “He seems to be, there’s nothing wrong with his appetite.”

      We talked on for another hour and it must have been near eight when Frank got up and put his glass on the table. Maureen would call over in the morning, he said. By that time JJ was flat out in my arms, his eyes closed and his mouth open. I put him in my bed next to the wall with two pillows outside him so he wouldn’t roll over in his sleep and end up on the floor. He looked comfortable in that big bed, all warm and peaceful with the blankets pulled up under his chin. I put the light out but left the door open and when I got back into the kitchen I saw the two empty glasses on the table. I was happy that on his first night in his new home someone had already drunk to his health and happiness.

      Maureen came over the following morning. We’d been up about an hour, JJ was fed and the fire was down when she opened the door. She passed straight by me to JJ, picked him up and held him out at arm’s length to get a look at him. That’s Maureen’s way—cut straight to the heart of things, no beating around the bush. A lot different to Frank in that way; he has to know the ins and outs of everything before he can make a move. I suppose that’s what makes them a good team. Anyway, whatever it was she saw in JJ she took to him straight away.

      “JJ,” she cooed. “Aren’t you the gorgeous little thing? Such dark eyes.” She turned him round so that the light fell on his face. “You’re going to break a lot of hearts with those eyes, JJ, isn’t that right, Anthony?”

      Breaking hearts was something I knew nothing about so I kept quiet.

      “How has he settled in, Anthony? Is he making strange with the place?”

      As far as I knew he seemed to have settled in fine. I’d woken up that morning and found him sitting up in the bed beside me, looking around him. The poor fella hadn’t a clue where he was. I pulled him on to my knee and talked to him and don’t ask me what I said to him but whatever it was it seemed to put him at his ease. After he was dressed and fed he sat on the ground while I put on a fire. I’d just finished when Maureen came in. Of course she saw problems straight away.

      “Does he have any clothes but these, Anthony? These could do with a wash.”

      “Not a stitch but those.”

      “Well, don’t go buying anything just yet. I have a load of things young Owen has grown out of. I know someone who’ll make good use of them, don’t I, JJ?”

      It wasn’t the first time I was glad to have Maureen Lally for a neighbour and it wouldn’t be the last either. It was only a small thing, a child’s clothes, but it made me think for the first time that I might have bitten off more than I could chew. What did I know about a child’s clothes, or anything else for that matter? For the first time I had a feeling I had done something foolish. This wave of fright came over me. If Maureen had taken JJ away with her at that moment and told me I was never going to see him again I wouldn’t have raised a hand against her, that’s how spooked I was. She must have seen the look on my face. She handed JJ to me and laughed.

      “Children are simple things,” she said. “Keep them clean and warm. The only thing they need after that is love.”

      She came back an hour later and tipped a black rubbish bag of clothes on the table. After separating them out in little piles she went through them piece by piece, telling me what would go with what and holding up little sweaters under JJ’s chin and saying didn’t that go lovely with his eyes and doesn’t that suit his colouring and of course it was all lost on me. As long as he’s warm and clean I kept telling myself.

      She stripped JJ then and put on a little sweater and blue pants and he looked a lot brighter in himself; I hadn’t realised how dirty those clothes were.

      “We’ll

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