Seedling 22: Donegal Two
‘You went over High Glen??’
My Uncle Joshua was incredulous, scratching the top of his increasingly bald head and mumbling, ‘for fuck’s sake’. He stood in the doorway of my mother’s kitchen, covered in sawdust, his fingers permanently splotched with white paint and a few of them misshapen from what were decades of abuse and mishaps. ‘In that old thing?!’ He was on the verge of a sideways smile before self-consciously pulling his lips into an odd purse to cover the missing top teeth.
That ‘old thing’ was Mum’s car, naturally, but as rattletrap as it was, she wasn’t keen on a change. Wasn’t even an option, really. She couldn’t drive manual and finding another automatic in someplace as unpopulated as Donegal was a challenge. This 1995 Clio had come from The North, in fact; Mum paying the tax to take it across the border. Minus the ever-leaking sunroof and a few spiders living in the dashboard, it did the job, well enough. Up and over the Fanad had never been an issue. Besides, if I’d thought the roads were ‘slippy’, as they say, I wouldn’t venture over to High Glen without a manual, anyways.
The trip up the mountain was more my Mum indulging me than the other way around. She’d have been happier along the coast, gazing across The Swilly. It was I who liked traversing the highlands; and, there is just something about the journey to High Glen I find a touch magical. The steep, winding lane up from Milford, nearly impossible to navigate - getting turned around three or four times at intervals - then suddenly breaking out of the scrub brush vegetation, high above the village, the ocean in the distance, buffeted by strong winds, the rusted heather dancing beside us in rolling waves. You can race across the tabletop heights at eighty kilometers per hour, the primitive Clio swaying and bouncing with every twist of the road.
It is savage and exhilarating by equal turns.
By the time we came down the other side and land in Carrigart for lunch at one of Mum’s favorite cafes, I found myself stopping in front of every estate agent’s window, reading through the listings and wondering how and when I could make my escape from London to this part of the world. It wasn’t realistic - where would I work, what would I do with myself(who would I date?? Yeah, that would be a dead end). But testament to my exhaustion with Seedling, to the London struggle in general, I found myself in this pointless pre-planning exercise.
‘And did you come back over in this??’ Joshua was referring to the screaming winds now bending the trees over the back side of my mother’s bungalow. But, we hadn’t. We went to Fanad light via the new Harry Blaney bridge; the ‘Bridge to Nowhere’ as locals called it, a boondoggle over Mulroy Bay touted as a surefire draw for tourists, but after construction, merely a deadly venue for local boy racers. Past the Blaney, the countryside becomes increasingly desolate and with the road signs flipping from bilingual to Irish-only the further north you drive, I couldn’t have found my way back without my mother on board to translate.
Mum and Joshua were arguing over Christmas arrangments. Joshua spends it with his partner, Maureen’s, family. So Mum always sends a plate. Last night she gave him some cod croquettes but he claims he never got them.
‘I am telling you, Joshua, you stood here in this kitchen as ever before my eyes, and I handed you the plate and you took it back over’.
Another half-smile concealed in pursed lips. ’And I am telling you, I put it there in the kitchen and then it was just gone’. He scratched his head again and added another for fuck’s sake.
I already knew where this was going. My uncle was casting a few glances my way, at the same time telegraphing my Mum the secret message that, in truth, was no longer a secret to me.
‘Your uncle is convinced he has a ghost’. This is what she told me earlier as we rounded a corner and the wide strand of Portsalon spread out before us, still beautiful through the spray of rain that was spreading across the windshield. I tapped the breaks a couple of times, trying to find a wiper setting that could keep up with the sudden sideways shower.
‘Why would he think he has a ghost?!’
‘Well, as you know, he can’t find anything in that pigpen of his....’.
This was true, firstly because his house was an utter chaotic disaster, and secondly because he’s needed glasses for about twenty-five years. One time we were meeting him at a shopping centre in Letterkenny and my mother said ‘watch this…’ and then ran up and crashed into him as a prank. Joshua turned to me and said, ‘is this your kid?’. It was no joke; he’d mistaken my very short mother(his sister) for a child and the nearest adult as the caretaker, never the wiser to our true identities until he heard our speaking voices. ‘For Fuck’s sake!’ he’d protested.
My mother continued, ‘so he’s had a few things “disappear”, or so he says. Couldn’t find the van keys for five days. Took that week off work. Then the meals I cook for him. Gone from the kitchen. I’ll explain that, later’.
It wasn’t much like my mother to leave me on a cliffhanger, but I was focused enough on the dodgy driving that I didn’t much notice nor even remember the conversation until we were sitting in her kitchen just now. When I looked up, I saw Colm and his son Daniel doing a quick peek in the window; the gales had them unsteady on their feet. They cast their faces down and start walking away, again.
‘Was that our Colm and Daniel?’. My Mum wasn’t asking, really, just alerting the half-blind Joshua to their presence - seeing as the two brothers aren’t talking, and all. Joshua made clear he was on his way out, ‘anyways, really’. He needed to pop into his workshop for one more thing or so he said.
‘Well,’ said Mum, ‘looks like this might be a late night’.
Colm and Daniel would be back. Colm doesn’t sleep and sometimes forgets others do. Well, Joshua doesn’t sleep much, nor my Mum for that matter. Runs in the family. Daniel seems to be following Colm’s lead; we sometimes see him wandering around ‘the compound’ early mornings, no destination, expressionless, sometimes tossing stones into the creek. It unnerved my mother, for a while. But she got used to it.
My mother poured some milk into her decorative cow-themed creamer in anticipation of Colm and Daniel’s return. The wax paper-wrapped scone, still sporting the disc shape of its cast-iron pan was moved to an iron rack and the margarine set out to soften. I went back to my laptop, touching up some of the pics I’d taken on our earlier roadtrip.
We heard a rustle steadily growing outside the kitchen window, but the crunching of the dirt and gravel was clearly a car coming in, not footsteps. Maureen’s Citroen raced past the kitchen window and a quick wave of a hand was visible from the passenger side as she passed by our lit window and pulled up outside Joshua’s rear kitchen door. Maureen had this penchant for always moving at breakneck speed. Quite the opposite of Joshua, obviously. She jumped out of the driver’s side, her leather jacket and its myriad of zippers jangling in the heavy wind. Maureen pushed on the kitchen door, but it was locked. Backing up fifteen feet she cupped her mouth and began shouting up at what would be the nearest window of Joshua’s bedroom.
‘Joshua! Jossshhuuaa!!’ She waited a moment and then mumbled ‘for fuck’s sake’.
There was a sudden boisterous yelling from the car’s passenger seat. ‘Joshua! Joshua! For fuck’s sake!’
‘Gary, be quiet!’
Gary is Maureen’s developmentally disabled son. He’s twenty, now, but this regular pantomime had been repeating as long as I’d been coming to The Fanad.
‘Josssshuaaa!’
‘Jossshuaaa!’ Fer Fuck’s sake, JOSH-hua!!’
‘Hush down, now, Gary!’ Maureen was about to climb back into the car when my mother pushed open her kitchen window and flagged her down.
‘Hallo there, Maureen’.
‘Hallo there, Katie, what’s the craic?’
‘Our Joshua’s in the workshop. You didn’t see him?’
‘Aw, no, Katie. Wouldn’t thought he’d be in there this late, but seeing the light on, now you’re mentioning it; God where is my head? Is that our Paul? Hallo there Paul, How’s London? Wile expensive, no?’
I put on my Mum’s charity shop Crocs and went out to give Maureen a hug, chatted for a bit. Leaned in the passenger window and said ‘hello’ to Gary as well. He was quite distracted by a computer game on an old mobile, but took the time to practice some of his social skills - and a bit of profanity, as well. The gales had petered out a bit, but I was starting to shiver, nonetheless, by the time we said our goodbyes and Maureen sped away. Inside, my mother was turning on our respective electric blankets and putting away the scone and tea, once more.
‘You’re clearing up?’
‘Colm won’t be back over. I’m just looking at the time - football is on’.
If that was the case, he certainly wouldn’t be back over. Glory days, and all...
‘Quick, come here’.
Mum was washing up the last of the dishes and motioned me over to the window above the sink. I peered past her shoulder and said ‘what’, but she shushed me. I could just make out a large tabby stalking up to Joshua’s kitchen window, still open about five inches at the base. Suddenly the tabby leaps into the dark space, hardly touching the sill. And as soon as it had leapt in, back out it came, a large piece of breaded chicken in its mouth.
My mother squeezed out the sponge and turned off the tap.
‘There’s Joshua’s “ghost” for ya’.