Free Bend for Home, The by Dermot Healy Page A

to tell her the guilt that was nagging at me. My sin I felt was awesome.
    I touched a girl, I said.
    Think, said she, if that had been your sister.
    So, we parted. I was forgiven somewhat. But this led to frightening invasions of my private life. She went through my diary where all sexual acts were written in code. She demanded to know the meaning of them all. And of course I didn’t tell her, but I knew by the look she gave me that she knew.
    That talk in the garden had its apotheosis the first time I saw my sister Una kiss a boyfriend. I wanted to run a mile. All my guilt surfaced. I could tell what that man wanted. All my insane longings were being perpetuated through him. The embarrassment I felt was like a sickness. I’m not the better of it yet, as they say.

Chapter 12
    Aunty Maisie slept at the front of the house on Main Street, below a grey print of Our Lady of the Flowers. She got up at twelve each day, turned on the radio and sauntered po in hand to the bathroom with a distracted air. She’d touch the curtains in the corridor and check each room to make sure lights were switched off. Then she broke open blood-red wax seals on bills from confectionery companies and cursed in dismay. Then she took a leisurely breakfast of tea and warm buttered brown bread. She sat watching the reflection of the girls speeding past in the mirror and smoked an Afton in the dark. No daylight reached into the private room.
    Is everything all right, Miss Slacke? asked Katie German.
    Yes, Katie.
    Would you like something else?
    No, thank you.
    She’d bring in her dishes to the scullery and run a scalding tap over them. She might even dry a few from the tearoom that sat on the draining board. Then, as the time got closer to the beginning of her shift in the shop, her demeanour would change. Her cheeks blazed with disdain. Her eyes hardened at the thought of all the responsibilities ahead. She’d whack the table.
    Have they nothing to do, she’d say as she disparaged her customers, but feed their faces? The cursed whores!
    Slinging hash, by God!
    Then she’d cast aspersions on some item in the kitchen, wring out a dishcloth angrily and pass up the entry with her head down. She’d refresh her hair and face in the hall stand mirror, go up to her room to get the cash box and at one o’clock relieve my mother.
    The two ladies never spoke at the changing of the guard except to point out orders that had come in.
    Mrs Smith wants a cherry cake at five, my mother would say.
    Does she, the faggot.
    And the man from the sugar company called.
    What was he calling for? He wants a kick up the hole.
    They’ll hear you in the tearoom.
    Let them, she’d shriek.
    Have it your own way, my mother would say.
    Maisie would slap her fist into her hand.
    I could do that to them! she’d say savagely.
    I’m going in now.
    Go on, she’d say, who’s keeping you?
    She’d turn and find a customer at her back. A vague smile would ghost across her lips.
    Yes? she’d enquire. Yes, what can I get you?
    My mother, who’d been up at eight to let in the girls, would flee to the kitchen to help. It was dinner hour, the busiest part of the day. Bachelor bank clerks, clerks from the County Council, the girls from the tax office, vets, apprentices from the shoe shops, young grocers, old drapers, men from the hardware department in Provider’s, coal men from Fegan’s, country women who left their shopping behind the counter, road men, men from the Guinness lorries, all would file past.
    Good afternoon, Miss Slacke.
    Good day, Mr Igo.
    As each customer entered Aunt Maisie rang a bell at the end of the counter to alert the girls within. This gave a piercing sound in the small dining room, and pressing hard down with her thumb, she always rang longer than anyone.
    Does she think we’re fucking deaf? Mary Kate would ask.
    It would ring again for good luck.
    The bitch, said Mary Kate, you’d swear she heard me.
    Maisie, between customers, made cakeboxes or filled