Ma’s mouth pursed up. “If you want to do that silver, do it properly. Get into the cracks. There’s no point if I’ll have to do the lot again after you.”
I said, “Sorry,” and upped the display of elbow grease. After a moment she said, “I’m not saying your da was a holy innocent. Tessie O’Byrne never had a bit of shame, but there was the pair of them in it.”
I waited, rubbing away. Ma caught my wrist and pulled it towards her to check the shine on the frame; then she gave a grudging little nod and let go. “That’s better. Things weren’t the same, back then. We had a bit of decency about us; we weren’t riding all round us just because that’s what they did on the telly.”
I inquired, “Da rode Tessie O’Byrne on the telly?”
That got me a clout on the arm. “No! Amn’t I telling you, if you’ll only listen to me? They were always wild, the pair of them. Made each other worse. One day in summer your da borrowed a car off a friend of his and drove Tessie down to Powerscourt on a Sunday afternoon, to see the waterfall. Only the car broke down, on the way back.”
Or that had been Da’s story. Ma was giving me a meaningful look. “And?” I asked.
“And they stayed there! Overnight! We’d no mobile phones back then; they couldn’t ring for a mechanic, or even to let anyone know what was after happening. They tried walking for a bit, but they were out in a lane in the middle of Wicklow, sure, and it was getting dark. They stayed in the car, and the next morning they got a jump start off a farmer going past. By the time they got home, everyone thought they were after eloping.”
She tilted the silver widget to the light, to check that the finish was perfect and to stretch the pause-Ma always did have a taste for drama. “Well. Your da always said to me he slept in the front seat and Tessie slept in the back. I wouldn’t know, sure. But that’s not what the Place thought.”
I said, “I bet it wasn’t.”
“Girls didn’t stay out with fellas, back then. Only slappers did that. I’d never known a girl who did the bold thing before she was married.”
“I’d have thought the two of them would’ve had to get married, after that. To preserve her reputation.”
Ma’s face closed over. She said, with a sniff in her voice, “I’d say your da would’ve done it, he was that mental about her, the fecking eejit. But he wasn’t good enough for the O’Byrnes-they always did have notions of themselves. Tessie’s da and her uncles bet the living shite out of him; I saw him the day after, I hardly recognized him. They told him not to be going near her again. Said he’d done enough damage.”
I said, “And he did what he was told.” I liked that, a lot. It felt reassuring. Matt Daly and his buddies could have beaten me to within an inch of my life, and the second I got out of the hospital I would have headed for Rosie as fast as I could limp.
Ma said, prim and satisfied, “He hadn’t got much choice. Tessie’s da had always let her away with murder, so he had-and look where that got him-but after that he’d hardly let her go out the door, only to go to work and he walked her there himself. I wouldn’t blame him; everyone was talking about it. The little gurriers were calling things after her on the street, all the aul’ ones were waiting for her to turn up in trouble, half her friends weren’t allowed speak to her in case she turned them into hoors as well; Father Hanratty gave a homily about loose women weakening the country, and that wasn’t what the men died for in 1916. No names, mind you, but everyone knew who he meant. That put a stop to Tessie’s gallop.”
Straight across almost half a century, I could feel the feeding frenzy: the whirling hysteria of it, the double-speed pump of adrenaline as the Place smelled blood and went into attack mode. Those weeks had quite probably sown the crazy seeds in Tessie Daly’s mind. “It’d do that, all right,” I said.
“And serve her right! Taught her what was what. She liked messing about with the fellas, but she didn’t want the name for it, did she?” Ma was sitting up straight, with her virtuous face on her. “She started going with Matt Daly straight after-he’d been making goo-goo eyes at her for years, but she’d never paid him any notice. Not till he came in useful. He was a decent fella, Matt was; Tessie’s da didn’t mind her going with him. It was the only way she was allowed out the door.”
I said, “And that’s what Da has against Matt Daly? He nicked his girl?”
“That was most of it. Sure, they never liked each other to start with.” She lined up the silver gizmo with three more like it, flicked a minute speck of something off the side, picked out a twee little Christmas-tree ornament from the to-do pile. “Matt was always jealous of your da. Your da was a million miles better-looking than Matt, so he was, and he was popular-not just with the girls, the fellas thought he was great as well, a great laugh… Matt was a boring little bollix. No go in him.”
