Free Mothers and Sons by Colm Tóibín Page A

and a wife of one of the brothers, and a cousin or an aunt who was upstairs in bed, they got all their bread from her on a Friday, paid her once a month, and never ordered anything else except jars of Bovril and large pots of strawberry jam – they each had their own, they did not share. And poor smiling Mags O’Connor, alone by the fire with two dogs, in a two-storey house down a long rutted lane, she must have had money or a pension from England because hers was the biggest order of all, including duck loaves and grapefruit juice and Mikado biscuits and tins of salmon and jars of chicken and ham paste and sandwich spread.
    By ten o’clock she had only Mags O’Connor and the Sutherlands to visit. She was cold and tired and wished she knew how to tell these customers that they should find another way to have their groceries delivered. As she approached Mags O’Connor’s house, she noticed that there were two cars parked; one of them had an English registration. When she got out of the station wagon, a sheepdog came and wagged its tail, followed by another who nosed up against her. She took the boxes from the back seat of the car and went towards the door which was, as usual, half open.
    ‘Well, will you look who’s here?’ Mags always used the same greeting.
    ‘This woman,’ she said to the three visitors who sat at her kitchen table, ‘this woman is the saving of my life. I don’t know where I’d be without her. How are you at all, Nancy?’ she asked.
    Nancy greeted her and waited.
    ‘It’s fresh and well you are looking,’ Mags as usual said as the boxes were put into the corner.
    ‘You’ll have tea, Nancy,’ she went on, ‘because I have people here who’ll make it for you.’
    She was a big-framed woman who normally seemed gentle and ready to smile, but now she looked imperiously at her visitors.
    ‘We’ll all have tea,’ she said, ‘and wait until I introduce you now to my two nieces, Susan from Dublin and Nicole from Sheffield and then Frank there who’s married to Nicole and not an Irish bone in his body and no worse for that, although you’d better not tell anyone else I said that.’
    Nancy wondered if she had been drinking but realized that the company had made her talkative.
    ‘Use the good cups and saucers now,’ she said as the two nieces set about making tea, ‘and sit down here, Nancy, I was telling them all about you and poor George and I was just saying that old Mrs Sheridan was the nicest woman in the whole town, there was no one as nice, and of course you’re very nice too. I was saying that too, wasn’t I, girls? So I suppose the gist of what I was telling them was that all the Sheridans were very nice and are still very nice. So it’s a pity you weren’t listening at the door, you would have heard nothing bad about yourself.’
    Nancy wondered if she was imagining this. In the silence which followed she thought she saw one of the nieces with her back to them shaking with laughter.
    ‘Oh, show me the red book before I forget,’ the old woman said, ‘till I see how much I owe you. I keep my money by my side, so I’d be very easy to rob. Philly Duncan up the lane does go to the post office for me everyso often. If it wasn’t for you and for him and for that wireless there and Shep and Molly, I’d be in the County Home.’
    She took a breath and then sipped her tea.
    ‘So how are you at all, Nancy?’ she asked.
    ‘I’m very well, Miss O’Connor, very well.’
    ‘It’s always nice to see you. I wrote to the girls here and I said it as well to Philly Duncan that Nancy won’t give up. I know the Sheridans and she won’t give up, she’ll be out here, or she’ll get someone to deliver. They were always great business people, the Sheridans.’
    She looked serious, her jaw set, as she poked the fire.
    ‘And they always have the best things, sure you couldn’t beat their bread, it’s the freshest, and there’s nothing they don’t have, but I believe there are