Patrick
Gerard says: Wait’ll I tell ye. He leans forward in his blue foldaway chair. This used to be a priory. It smells like sweet milk.
Gerard says: God love him. Patrick. He leans forward, his chair sinking into the floor. He says: God love him. Wait’ll ye hear. He turns his hands over, his palms facing up.
I sit between them, my da and his cousin. They have the same names. We all do. My da and his da, cousins and blood, names threaded through families as though hydrogen-bonded, the bases of a helix braided into each finger’s crease.
The air is heavy and it smells like sweet milk. I can feel my shoes sinking into solid ground.
I meet my da in Piccadilly Station. I know him from behind, from his backpack (with its dangling clips and straps, like spider plants), from the sunglasses indenting the soft skin of his head.
His phone sticks out of his jeans’ back pocket. I lift it as I go round him. I say, “You can’t do that here. Hide it away.”
He blinks, holding the arms of his backpack, one thumb tucked under each strap. He says, “Should I hide my wallet, too?” One pocket has his phone, the other his wallet, passport, and keys. These things in London in two denim back pockets. We take the tube to Richmond.
Gerard says: When the Troubles—I thought my mother might move in with one of us. But any time we suggested it—she had this way of looking, speaking as though it was her glasses talking—she used to turn her head, lead a panning shot round the room—three Sacred Hearts of Jesus, red gas lamps burning, the Blessed Virgin, the Holy Mother, four St. Brigid’s crosses, St. Christopher himself, a handwritten recitation of the prayer of St. Francis, red and white wax dripping down the windowsills, one crucifix on each wall—and she’d say, No harm’s coming to me.
There was a fairy tree on the farm where my da grew up. It was hawthorne. It sat in the middle of the boggy field. What my da does and doesn’t believe can be difficult to ascertain; I feel like a water diviner.
I ask, “Do ye believe in the fairy people?” and he says, “I don’t not.”
I say, “Would you tie an offering to a branch if you needed something?” and he says, “No. But I’d light a candle in the Mass.”
I say, “Fairy trees are doors,” and he says, “Aye.”
I say, “You can’t sleep under a Willow,” and he says, “No.”
I say, “You can’t mark a fairy tree,” and he says, “Never. There are motorways built round them. God Himself can’t help you if ye cut one down.”
Gerard says: The postman at that time was a real good man. He used to do messages for my mother—pick her things up from the village, pass news on to neighbours when he left their letters. A real good man. Very good to my mother.
Gerard says: He was shot dead on his rounds. One house before my mother’s.
I have the name of their mother’s sister. Names tied like shoelaces, said in sweet, milky air. My da was Patrick as a baby, called Gerard when he’d grown. He was thirteen years old when the civil rights movement started. He says: “One man, one vote. That was all that they wanted. Catholics wanted the vote. Housing. Jobs.”
He says, “Do you know how it started?” He sits with his fingers locked together, sat still as though braided. He says, without breathing, “Do you know who you are?”
Gerard says that one day he went up to see her and he’d to stop in the lane at the sound that he heard. He had in his hands a flask of tea and a sandwich. It stopped him, it clawed at his eyes and his throat, this terrible noise, rising up to bare branches. He crept forward so slowly his shoes made no sound.
She was knelt at the window, his mother, above candles and under icons who looked down with their arms outstretched. She was screaming, heaving, brittle knees swaying—praying or retching, brittle body breaking—praying for the postman and his soul and his family, his children and his friends and their neighbours and his parents—for the people who found him, heard him screaming, heard the shots—for the people who carried him, cared for him, helped—for the people who lived in the house he was lured to—for the people who wrote the letter that led him there—for the people who made the paper the letter was written on—for the person who licked the seal and bought the blue stamp—praying that they all could be stopped, eased and mended—praying for healing, for hands washed clean, for blood stuck in the grooves and the creases of each finger—
When Gerard went to the front door, he saw her letters where they’d fallen. They were dyed with the dead postman’s blood.
The air in the priory smells like sweet milk.
Gerard says: God love him. Patrick.
I say: “We all do.”
My da sold the field up at the farm, the boggy field with the fairy tree, and its cream hawthorne flowers.
Gerard tells him the Bad News: the new owner’s been struck, hit like a truck by illness that no doctors yet know.
We drive to the farm, breathing the car’s air in heavy. We walk to the field where the land starts to grow rushes. The fairy tree is gone. My da says, “For fuck’s sake.”
My da visits London.
I say, “You have to be careful. There’re pick-pockets here.”