Listen to the author reading this story:
“Your shirts are in the wardrobe Henry. And the dinner’s on the table. Sit in there and have it while it’s still hot. Good man.”
He pushed himself from the armchair, focussing rheumy eyes. The tall girl. Vaguely familiar. Mother had always called him Henry. And now, some of the girls that came and fussed around him followed suit. Henry this and Henry that. He steadied himself at the table. Mother’s check oilcloth whitened and frayed. But still there. The girl was sitting opposite, counting tablets into a container. He forgot her name. All their names. She was the one with the purple scarf. Pulled tight around her throat, the same colour as her feathered hair. He noted the claw that snaked its way from beneath the silk onto her lily-white neck. Was it alabaster they called it, in books? Maybe she was regretting the tattoo. Hiding it. Sure, most of them nowadays were destroyed with that nonsense. Painting over perfectly good skin. She was no different.
“What day is it, Miss?”
“Sunday Henry. And its Millie, I’m your weekend carer. Boris and the other girls come during the week. Remember?”
Boris, the giant that wrestled him into the bath, laughing at the protests and then basting him with talcum. He liked Boris, the battles and attention. Told him every Friday that he would have met a different proposition thirty years ago, that big as Boris was, he wouldn’t get the better of him then. And forgot completely the withered remark by the time the ritual was complete. Then the cajoling and good-natured banter would continue until agreement was reached on combing the thinning hair. Faux masochism on both sides, but a general understanding. All the girls agreeing that Boris had the measure of him.
Sunday had always been his day. Mass, pints, dinner with Mother and a match. And maybe a fight. Until Mother died and the dinner was lost. Cook on Saturday, more pints on Sunday. Lunch evolved to two rounds of batch bread and chunks of Saturday’s ham. And out at the gate to wait for a lift to wherever the match was on. Hurl abuse at referees and players. Then the pub for analysis and the odd skirmish. A bag of chips and the slow stuttering walk home. All those memories rambling aimlessly in his head. Searching his thoughts to find purchase on a particular occasion. Could have been any Sunday, any match. Those heady days. Landing randomly. A lovely memory, causing a smile.
He was squinting in the sunlight as he emerged from the dank toilets at the pitch side. His face contorted, purplish with wheezing and laughing. The reek of the jacks, the belched-out beer and bacon, the vulgar odour of piss. Fused with his acrid deposit. He loosened the tie and undid the top buttons on the good Sunday shirt. Pushed the pork pie hat off his greasy forehead. The gossoon beside him at the urinal forced his way through the half time melee and coughed, eyes watering from the malevolent stench.
“Sweet Jesus, Powder. Ya must have ate the pig’s mangles? You’re pure rotten.”
More laughing and wheezing and name calling. And back onto the embankment to cajole young lads from the town. Watch as they recognised his menace and shied away from battle, all mouth and no substance. Powder, in all his glory. The hard man, reputation hewn from fear rather than respect. A reputation intact until after the ambush and receiving the mother and father of all hidings. Guard Foley visited him then, when the bruises were yellowing and the scabbed scars fading. Enough of a hiatus for a defeated warrior to regain some dignity. Thankful that Margaret Powder wasn’t there to witness this shame, guards at the door to counsel an ageing whelp, long enough in the tooth to know better. A salutary warning and an enforced reduction of his errant behaviour. Everyone grows old and loses confidence and edge. Powder was no different.
He toyed with the dinner, pushing potatoes from one side to other. No interest in food, only feigned interest in anything if truth was told. The tall girl encouraging him. She was pretty, in an uncommon way. Willowy, with a precious fragility. Like the remaining China plate from Mother’s set. Too beautiful to disregard and too delicate to handle. Even in his heyday, she would have been out of his reach. He never had a relationship that mattered anyway. The very rare fumble after the Indians or Tweed in the Macra Hall. Hard to shift anyone after throwing digs at all and sundry, him employed as a bouncer. Young lads, fuelled with porter, mouthy and ambitious, and young ones bawling as their soldiers fell. And his supporters validating his every move, revelling in his notoriety. Good man with his fists.
“Good man Powder, you put manners on them.”
None of them here now though. No visits from any of his friends. If they were ever such. More acquaintances, more drinking buddies than lads you could seek advice from on the fairer sex. He didn’t know how to talk to girls. Mother warned him of young ones who would trap him, bed him and have him pay for the rest of his life. He never met them, try as he might. Eventually he abandoned notions of romance, drank to ease the disappointment and in time resigned himself to a life of solitude. His only conversation now was with the carers, or if Nurse Macken called to see how he was managing. Harry, the blackguard nephew an even rarer visitor. Harry lay in wait, the cottage his prize whenever Powder shuffled off. A maelstrom of bile and anger, so not great company in any case. In lonesome moments Powder felt he would be found at the table someday, head resting in the fissures of the oilcloth. No one to mourn him. No tears for his sorry soul. Harry in an oily black suit and bogey rope knot in his tie, full of mourning and sadness. Maybe giving a respectable few months before selling the cottage and pissing the proceeds all over the village. Sooner the better in some ways. Life is a bitch when you know no one.
Millie was glad he didn’t recognize her. This version of her. She remembered him, the night he creased Billy Foy outside the chipper. For no good reason. Billy was one of her tribe, a gormless young lad without a bit of spite or aggression in him. And the thug sitting across from her had hurt him. In turn Maurice Foy and his brothers bundled Powder into the back of a Hiace van and exacted their form of justice. He experienced fear that night, wetting himself and crying for mercy. His father would have laughed at him, covered in piss and bawling like a stricken toddler. The Foys broadcasted his shame, though few others dared ever mention it. Wounded and humiliated was dangerous. Better to leave well enough alone. Guard Foley had questioned the crew about the assailant, but no one spoke. No question about the injuries Mr Powder sustained. Silence would have ensued.
Instead of snitching, Billy and the gang sought their own retribution. For weeks handfuls of rocks rained onto the galvanised roof of Powder’s cottage, as soon as his bedroom light was quenched. Thunderous noise that would wake the dead. Their target trundling to the door in yellowed y-fronts and open shirt, issuing all manner of threats. Until one night a voice from the shadows enquired if he had pissed himself with fear. Again. The fury was palpable, and the crew decided to abandon the guerilla tactics before Powder cottoned it was them. And sorted them. Millie still enjoyed the memory though.
Billy Foy was first to leave, building sites in London offering him a way out. The crew scattered, the village becoming claustrophobic. Millie transitioned to a life in New York. Where she found herself, became herself. Where she wished she was now.
She pulled the scarf over her throat, subconsciously. She had noted Powder examining the phoenix talon earlier. Her phoenix representing her less than majestic rise from the ashes of a life she should have never lived. Baring her throat gave rise to questions and she could do without the additional scrutiny. Life was already hard enough, as it was.
“Anything wild on the paper Miss?”
“The usual stuff Henry. Bad news like. Gaza, Homelessness. Immigration. Oh, the Russians launching more attacks on Ukraine.”
He seemed to be working out an answer, a comment on the state of the world. Millie ceased counting pills, wiping the table, anticipating.
“Right go boys, them Ould Russians.”
The thoughts of coming home presented problems. She hadn’t renewed her passport, laziness and a sense of home in New York rendering it unimportant, though the current one raised questions. Easier to stay put than have some jobsworth official eyeing her up and joining the dots. She preferred life without the scrutiny, or the discomfort. She only came home for Daddy. The fraught phone conversation with her mother, Millie being the only one with any bit of healthcare experience, the only one with no commitments. The brothers too busy to assist with their dying father. Mammy fretting and preparing for a funeral before the poor man was even officially diagnosed. Down to whether vegetarian sandwiches would be eaten, if she ordered them. Millie anticipated the difficulties, the questions, the potential hostility. The brothers grudging acceptance, but only because she was here to look after things and still sniggering behind her back. Daddy shaking his ailing head, not understanding. Enough on his plate with dying, without fretting about her as well. None of this phased her. Though she mourned the loss of her identity in a city of anonymity. Mammy was the only one to venture any level of questioning.
“When did you make the decision love? Are you happy now?” A momentary pause before the barb. “And by the way, you know my feelings on those bloody tattoos. You destroyed yourself.”
Mammy trying to square the circles. Needing information to bat away the curiosity at Mass or bridge or the book club. Shaking her head like Daddy did when she didn’t get an acceptable answer. Torn between fielding awkward enquiry or minding the man she loved on her own. Needing Millie home. Yet wanting her back in New York. Poor Mammy, unable to express the dilemma. Unable to accept her own confusion whilst envying others who knew her child better. Millie’s response doing little to ease her torment.
“It’s not a single decision Mam. It’s a journey, a process. It’s who I am, you have to accept that. And by the way, you may get used to the tattoos as well.” Her turn to barb. “I’ll stay out of the way Mam, no Mass or bingo. Wouldn’t want the village gossiping, now, would we?”
Many awkward silences and untapped opportunities for understanding. Millie sought escape in the weekend work. It meant getting out of the house, even if was only to cajole this waning malcontent to eat his dinner and take his tablets. The Powder she remembered was long gone, a husk. He still had the modicum of snarling presence, but the tiger was tired, beaten. She looked at him differently though. Once upon a time she laughed at the indignity of the hard man pissing his trousers with fear. Now she pitied him. His inability to look after himself.
Foolish as it sounded, Millie found the stilted conversation with Henry Powder easier to manage than talking to her mother. No judgement, no agenda. Just inconsequential chat. He rarely smiled, rarely spoke about his past. Millie didn’t ask too much, conscious that such exchange might trigger memories. Might allow recognition and a memory lane trip beset by thorns and trouble and rocks bouncing off a cottage roof. Instead, she confined the chat to the newspaper headlines and the death notices on the radio. He was really only concerned with where she put his freshly ironed shirts and what day it was. The Russians seemed to pique his interest though.
“There’s a big lad comes here, think he’s a Russian? Maybe not. Maybe he said Polish.” He frowned as he searched for memories, then suddenly grinned, revealing yellowed teeth. “Me father loved Nikita Kruschev.”
“What? Your father loved who?”
“Ah it was an old song, Miss; the mother loved it. Doubt me father ever loved anyone to be honest. Not even me poor mother. And sure, he only ever gave me the back of his hand.” He paused, almost tearful. “Sure, you know what they say. Black cat, black kitten. Never had much luck with love meself either Miss. I was probably like the Ould lad. Too contrary.”
They sat musing over the squares on the oilcloth. Like chess players without pieces for battle. Millie knew his revelations would fade into the mists of his mind, that his upset would be short lived. Giving serious significance to the moment. Clarity bringing regrets, making the ensuing confusion welcome. She momentarily forgot herself, addressing him with familiarity.
“You know what? Maybe you didn’t have it easy Powder. Life was tough, nothing but hardship. I’m sure you did your best. I’d swear you loved your mother. Not everyone does. That’s the God’s honest truth.”
“That’s me Miss, that’s me. Sure, I was always just Powder”
Johnny Thompson is a retired Mental Health Nurse. He is married to Helen and has three adult children. Johnny completed the Masters in Creative Writing in UL recently. He has some short stories published and his dream is to have a novel in print. Johnny cites Donal Ryan, Jospeh O’Connor, John Boyne and Michael Harding as inspiration and major influences, though his favourite read is Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Since retirement in 2018, Johnny has trained as a Celebrant. He describes meeting couples in the run up to their weddings as a joyous experience, seeing people at a happy time in their lives. Johnny says he wants to launch a novel before he turns seventy, and is working towards that dream!