“I did too,” she said. “My father spent half his life staring at the sky or sniffing the late-afternoon air for rumors of what was to come the following day. They say it always rains in Dublin. Do you believe that?”
“We’ll find out soon enough, I suppose. Do you go all the way, you do?”
“I beg your pardon?”
His face went scarlet, from the base of his neck to the tips of his ears, and the speed of the transformation fascinated her. “To Dublin,” he said quickly. “Do you go all the way to Dublin or will you be getting off at one of the stops?”
“Do you want my window seat?” she asked. “Is that it? Because you can have it if you want. I’m not particular.”
“No, not at all,” he said. “I was only asking. I’m happy where I am. Unless you’re going to start in on the egg sandwiches too, that is.”
“I’ve no food at all,” she told him. “I only wish I did.”
“I have half a baked ham in my case,” he told her. “I could slice you off a rasher if that would help.”
“I couldn’t eat on a bus. I’d be sick.”
“Can I ask you your name?” asked the boy, and my mother hesitated.
“Is there a reason you want to know it?”
“So I can call you by it,” he said.
She looked into his face and for the first time noticed how handsome he was. A face like a girl’s, she told me afterward. Clear skin that had never known the pull of a razor. Long eyelashes. Blond hair that tumbled over his forehead and into his eyes no matter how hard he tried to tame it. There was something in his manner that made her believe that he wasn’t a threat to her in any way and so she relented, letting down her guard at last.
“It’s Catherine,” she said. “Catherine Goggin.”
“Pleased to meet you,” he replied. “I’m Seán MacIntyre.”
“Are you from the city, Seán?”
“No, I’m from out near Ballincollig. Do you know it there?”
“I’ve heard of it but I’ve never been there. I’ve never been anywhere, really.”
“Well, you’re going somewhere now,” he said. “Up to the big smoke.”
“I am, yes,” she said, turning to look out the window at the fields as they passed and the children working in the haystacks, who jumped up and down to wave when they saw the bus coming along the road in their direction.
“Do you go up and down a lot?” asked Seán a moment later.
“Do I what?” she asked, frowning at him.
“To Dublin,” he said, putting a hand to his face, and perhaps he was wondering why everything he said seemed to come out the wrong way. “Do you go up and down the road a fair amount? Maybe you have family up there?”
“I don’t know a soul outside West Cork,” she told him. “The place will be a mystery to me. What about yourself?”
“I’ve never been there but a friend of mine went up over a month ago and got a job quick-smart in the Guinness Brewery and he said there’s one waiting for me there too if I want it.”
“Do them lads not spend all their time drinking the profits?” she asked.
“Ah no, sure there’d be rules, like. Bosses and so on. Fellas going round making sure that no one’s supping the porter. My friend, though, he tells me that the smell of the place would drive you half wild. The hops and the barley and the yeast and what have you. He says you can smell it on the streets all around and the people who live nearby go around with daft expressions on their faces all day long.”
“They’re probably all drunk,” said my mother. “And it didn’t cost them a penny.”
“My friend says it takes a few days for a new worker to get used to the smell of the place and until you do you can feel queer sick.”
“My daddy likes a Guinness,” said my mother, recalling the bitter taste of the yellow-labeled bottles that my grandfather occasionally brought into the house and that she had tried herself once when his back was turned. “He goes down to the pub every Wednesday and Friday night, as regular as clockwork. On Wednesdays he limits himself to three pints with his pals and comes home at a respectable time but on Friday nights he gets polluted. He’ll often come in at two o’clock in the morning and rouse my mother from her bed to cook him a plate of sausages and a ring of black pudding and if she says no, then he raises his fists to her.”
“Every night was a Friday night with my daddy,” said Seán.
“Is that why you want to get away?”
He shrugged. “Partly,” he said after a long pause. “There was a bit of trouble at home, if I’m honest. It was for the best that I leave.”
“What kind of trouble?” she asked, intrigued now.
“Do you know, I think I’d rather just put it all behind me if it’s all the same to you.”
“Of course,” she said. “It’s none of my business anyway.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I know you didn’t. It’s fine.”
He opened his mouth to say something more but their attention was distracted by a little boy running up and down the aisle. He wore the headdress of a Red Indian and was making the sounds to match, a terrible howling that would have given a deaf man a headache. The bus driver let out an almighty roar and said that if someone didn’t take control of that child, then he’d turn the bus around and take them all back to Cork City and there would be no refunds for anyone.
“So what about you, Catherine?” asked Seán when peace was restored. “What takes you up to the capital?”
“If I tell you,” said my mother, who somehow already felt that she could trust this stranger, “will you promise not to say anything cruel to me? I’ve heard a lot of unkind words today and, truth be told, I don’t have the strength for anymore of them.”
“I try never to say unkind words,” replied Seán.
“I’m to have a baby,” said my mother, looking him full square in the eye and without an ounce of shame. “I’m to have a baby and I don’t have a husband to help me rear him. And there’s war over it, needless to say. My mammy and daddy threw me out of the house and the priest said I was to leave Goleen and never darken the place again.”
Seán nodded but this time, despite the indelicacy of the subject, he didn’t blush. “Sure these things happen, I suppose,” he said. “We’re none of us perfect.”
“This one is,” said my mother, pointing toward her belly. “For now anyway.”
Seán smiled and looked ahead, and they said nothing to each other for a long while after that and perhaps they both dozed off or perhaps one of them shut their eyes to give that impression so they could be left alone with their thoughts. Either way, it was more than an hour later when, awake again, my mother turned to her companion and touched him lightly on the forearm.
“Do you know anything about Dublin?” she asked. Perhaps it had finally struck her that she had no idea what she would do or where she would go when they arrived.
“I know that it’s where Dáil éireann sits and that the River Liffey runs through the heart of it and Clerys department store stands on a big, long street named after Daniel O’Connell.”
“Sure there’s one of those in every county of Ireland.”
“True enough. Just like there’s a Shop Street. And a Main Street.”
“And a Bridge Street.”