“If you could just step out of the light,” she asked, turning to look him in the eye.
“Just the one flat,” he said, scratching his chin as he considered this. “So you live with them, do you?”
“With who?”
“That’s a curious arrangement altogether.”
“With who?” she insisted.
“With the queer fellas, of course. But what would they want with you anyway? They’ve no use for a woman, either of them.” He stared at her belly and shook his head. “Did one of them do this? No, sure they wouldn’t have it in them. You probably don’t even know who’s responsible, do ya, ya dirty little slut.”
My mother turned back to the door and this time the key slid in easily and the lock released. Before she could step inside, however, he pushed past her and marched into the hallway, leaving her standing on the street, uncertain what to do. It was only when he began to make his way up the staircase that she regained control of her senses and grew angry at the intrusion.
“Get down here, you,” she called up to him. “This is a private residence, do you hear me? I’ll call the Gardaí!”
“Call whoever the fuck you like!” he roared back, and she looked up and down the street but there wasn’t a sinner in sight. Gathering all her courage, she followed him up the staircase, where he was rattling ineffectively at the door handle.
“Open this now,” he said, pointing a fat finger at her, and she couldn’t help but notice the dirt that lived beneath his long fingernails. A farmer, she decided. And his accent was Cork too, but not West Cork or she would have been able to identify it quickly. “Open it now, little girl, or I’ll put my foot right through it.”
“I will not,” she said. “And you’ll leave these premises or I’ll—”
He turned his back on her, waving her away, and as good as his word lifted his right boot, gave the door an almighty kick and it burst open, slamming against the wall and causing a pot to fall from a shelf into the bathtub with a terrific clatter. The living room was empty but even as he stumbled inside with my mother in hot pursuit the sound of anxious voices could be heard from the bedroom beyond.
“Get out here, Seán MacIntyre!” roared the man, reeling in his drunkenness. “Get out here now till I beat some decency into you. I warned you what I’d do if I ever caught the pair of you together again.”
He lifted his stick—my mother hadn’t even noticed the stick until that moment—and brought it down solidly against the table a few times, hard enough to make her jump at the noise of it. Her own father had a stick just like this one and many was the time she had observed him set upon one of her brothers with it in a fury. He had tried to use it on her on the night that her secret was revealed but, mercifully, my grandmother had held him back.
“You have the wrong place,” cried my mother. “This is madness!”
“Get out here!” roared the man again. “Get out here or I’ll come in there and get you myself. Come on now!”
“Leave,” said my mother, pulling at his sleeve, but he pushed her away violently, causing her to fall against the armchair whereupon a swift pain coursed through her back and ran along the length of her spine, like a mouse scurrying for cover. The man reached for the bedroom door, flinging it wide open, and there, to my mother’s astonishment, were Seán and Smoot, naked as the day they were born, sitting up against the headboard of the bed, expressions of utter terror on their faces.
“Jesus Christ,” said the man, turning away in disgust. “Get out here now, you dirty little bastard.”
“Daddy,” said Seán, jumping from the bed, and my mother couldn’t help but stare at his naked body as he rushed to cover himself with trousers and shirt. “Daddy, please, let’s just go downstairs and—”
He stepped into the living room but before he could say another word the man, his own father, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and smashed his head hard against the one shelf that stood affixed to the wall and carried only three books, a Bible, a copy of Ulysses and a biography of Queen Victoria. There was a terrible sound and Seán let out a groan that seemed to emerge from the very depths of his being, and when he turned around his face was pale and a black mark stood out on his forehead, pulsating for a moment as if uncertain what was expected of it, before turning red as the blood began to pour. His legs gave way beneath him and, as he collapsed to the ground, the man reached down and dragged him with one hand toward the doorway, where he began to kick him repeatedly, beating him with his stick and issuing blasphemies with every fresh assault.
“Get off him!” cried my mother, throwing herself on the man as Smoot emerged from the bedroom with a hurley stick, a red and white sticker affixed to it showing two towers and a ship sailing between them, and charged toward their attacker. He hadn’t put a stitch of clothes on and even in the drama of the moment my mother was shocked by the hair that covered his torso, so unlike the chests of Seán, my father or any of her brothers, and the long, still-glistening manhood that shook between his legs as he advanced on them.
The man roared as the hurley hit him in the back but it was an ineffective blow and he pushed Smoot away with such force that the younger man fell backward over the sofa and into the doorway of the bedroom beyond, where, she realized now, the boys had been lovers since the day the bus had arrived in Dublin from Cork. She had heard of such people. The boys in school made fun of them all the time. Was it any wonder, she asked herself, that Smoot had never wanted her there? It was to be their love-place, that was it. And she was the cuckoo in their nest.
“Jack!” cried my mother, as Peadar MacIntyre—for that was the man’s name—took his son by the head once more and kicked his body with such barbarous force that she could hear the sounds of ribs cracking. “Seán!” she screamed, but when the boy’s head twisted toward her his eyes were wide open and she knew that he had already departed this world for the next. Still and all, she would not allow more injury to come to him and ran back across the room, determined to pull the man away, but with her first attempt he took her by an arm and, in a quick movement, gave her a mighty kick that sent her through the open doorway and tumbling down the staircase, each step, she told me later, making her feel an inch closer to death herself.