The Visitors by Patrick O'Keeffe Read Free Book Online

pushed two fifty-pence pieces into the meter and turned the metal key. The fridge hummed to life. It took me five minutes to open up the stuck window. Cold air filled the room. I pulled out the chair and sat down at the table and opened the box of cigarettes Eddie gave me, lit one, and stared across the fat moss at the evergreens. I felt hungry, but I’d fry some eggs later. I’d need to write that letter to my mother, but that, too, could wait. Strange voices were trapped before the window for seconds. Those voices sounded thrilling. My first night without them, and I didn’t feel lonely.
    And I never again saw or heard from Eddie. But his part was played. He did what a cousin from home had asked of him.
    •   •   •
    —I have a close relation for years in the civil service, Una said.
    —I like the pub, I said. —People tell you strange things, and they sing. They sing the Dublin songs.
    —You’ll get tired of all that, Jim. Mark my words, she said. —You like it now because it’s new, and you are new to the city. I know Daddy used to visit your house. He was so fond of your father, more than hewas of most people, but Daddy visited more than your house. I think he visited houses to let people know he was available if they needed a handyman. It was the country way of doing business.
    —I remember him very well, I said.
    —I don’t think about him like I used to. I’m being honest, she said, and released her arms.
    —He was very funny. When he came to the house he told jokes that my mother and father didn’t like to hear.
    She made a quick knot on the strings, without looking down. She placed her right hand on her hip. —I might go and live in France or Germany. Do you know anyone who’s even gone there?
    —Not a one, I said.
    —I was very good at the French in school, if you don’t mind my saying so—
    —I don’t—
    —I was good at the Irish, too, but the nuns lashed the French verbs into me. My mother, mind you, wouldn’t like to hear me say that I was going anyplace. So you can’t repeat any of this to your mother or it’ll go straight back to mine.
    —I won’t open my mouth to any of them.
    She stood and crossed the room. An empty pram was bouncing along the footpath, and before Una reached the window the pram crashed into a lamppost and the children were laughing and screaming. She lowered the window and sat on the sill, her head bent. The light made her hair look more red than black. Her shadow fell along her bed. Then a cloud moved and her shadow vanished.
    She came back from the window and picked up the ginger biscuit. She stared at it before putting it back on the edge of the plate. She touched her fingertips together then quickly folded her arms again, holding herself like she were cold, and she gazed down at me, her eyes blinking in a way that made me wonder if she had forgotten I was there. I coughed and covered my mouth. She slowly sat on the edge of the chair, again watching toward that window.
    —I used to fill Daddy’s flask of tea and make his sandwiches before I got on the bus. I had the flask filled that morning. I had to throw the tea out four days after. It was still sitting there on the table. No one in the house would touch the flask. And Daddy knew people enjoyed his company. He could get a rise out of the stiffest of them.
    —He did out of my father and mother, I said.
    —That was Daddy’s way, she went on. —Get a rise out of them. You know he spent a half-hour before the mirror every morning, combing his hair, before going out to shovel concrete and fix things for people, many of them who never paid him, like the big farmers, the ones who could. But his work shirts and his pants had to be ironed. He demanded that. Every morning he’d ask me if he looked grand. He’d ask me when I handed him that flask of tea and the two sandwiches. I told him that he did look grand. Vain, that’s what Daddy was, but I liked that in him.
    —He was on my mind, when I