I can’t remember when the image began to fade. How
could I? I was only two and a half for God’s sake,
and time has danced on memory’s fragments.
My mammy is carrying God’s gift, a tight white pupa
of swaddling clothes across her breast. I can see that right
now. That bit is always there. She’s walking towards
us, never getting closer, too far away to smile. Sometimes
she is away up beside the green gaslamp, and sometimes she
has almost reached the first house on our side, the McGoogans.
She’d hardly have been wearing one of her scarves
that day; more likely was her proud thicket of auburn catching
the August morning’s sun (and kept catching it for
years later through my frequent races round to the chemist’s
shop for an Auburn Tonerinse). That piece is missing. But
I can remember her slenderness and height and poise; her
back would still have been straight then.
That’s my daddy behind me on the steps. And that’s
me under his belly, one hand on the doorframe to lean my
head into the street. Sometimes it’s three and sometimes
it’s four of us, but at least one of my two older
sisters was there. They are all behind me you see, so I
can’t see them. But I can see they are there. We are
all leaning into the street, looking up. Sean was coming.
That’s him in my mammy’s arms. Getting closer.
Never getting closer. McGoogan’s. The lamppost. Halfway
in between. Fragments rearranging.
It’s hard now to see how big and open it all was
when the wasteground was there. Wasteground – that
was its name. You have to say it fast, joined up. It’s
just one word, wasteground, not waste ground. She is coming
down our side of Eglinton Street between the big blocks
of red brick flats. I have to work hard to remove the flats
they built there. They weren’t there yet. They shouldn’t
be there. The flats weren’t there. I try not to see
them; I try to see the wasteground where we played for years.
But it’s hard.
And the green gas lampposts with their arms pointing up
and down the streets – there was hardly a moment when
some urchin wasn’t swinging from a frayed piece of
salvaged rope in quickening spirals around them, the whole
thing leaning to follow the game like an old man too stiff
and tired to play anymore. The lampposts dug their own graves
in increasing circles, often in the sickening stench of
escaping gas. Why is this not there?
It’s like a picture you see. Like a picture where
things change. Never lying, just changing. But it’s
definitely Sean there in my mammy’s arms. Getting
closer. Never getting closer. Never making a sound. Mammy’s
hard heels silent on the concrete paving. Here comes mammy!
- one of us must have blurted it. But no one is saying it.
No thump from a swinging child against the solid post, nor
clunk of straining metal against kerbstone. There’s
no time for sound; it’s all just a blink. A broken
blink. Silent and still.
It can’t have been the Christening, that’s
a family thing; we would all have been there. Mammy must
have been on her way home from the Mater Hospital some days
after birth’s pains had eased. That was a woman’s
thing; so now it was time to go home and there she was walking
down our street on her own with the new baby.
She is walking close to the new wall with its parallel
layers of red brick, the wall around the flats. But the
wall wasn’t there yet. The flats weren’t there
yet. Where is the flatness of the wasteground where we stole
mammy’s yard brush to push twisting train tracks through
the granite beads and raise the summer’s dust in choking
clouds?
When I try hard, I can still see how the dust would build
invisible layers over the pavements and lie in wait to catch
the first overgrown droplet which threatened a summer storm,
signalling capture by a creeping inkblot of damp as dark
as the sky that sent it. Those first raindrops would throw
the warm dust up into a thick miasma that bit at awakening
nostrils. In my mind’s eye, why is the first echo
benign, odourless, clean?
You can see photographs of our street in Bombs on Belfast.
You can see the homes blown to bits, crumpled by errant
German bombers, and the hard hatted help scratching through
the detritus with no more for tools than the strength of
bare hands. But another photograph shows that ample hands
cleared it to perfect flatness except for one curiously
lumpy knee-high rock that protruded to add a surreal adornment
to one corner of the wasteground. The focus of many a head-scratching,
ice-cream-licking moment turned out eventually to be nothing
more than an excess of concrete dumped for want of further
use; it seemed that it didn’t go the whole way through
to Australia after all.
There’s my mammy and Sean just across the street
from our rock. But I can’t look over to see it. It’s
not part of the picture. And there’s us leaning out
from the steps to see them coming. That's me under my daddy's
belly with one hand on the doorframe and the other supported
on the gloss painted render covering the front wall. But
it wasn’t rendered yet. Why can’t I see the
hoary wash of age bleached into the flaking brickwork and
crumbling mortar?
I can see mammy getting closer. Never getting closer. She’s
at the gas lamppost. McGoogan’s. Halfway between.
Fragments.
