W2F-012 A Second Life-0.txt
Chapter Six
Aunt Cissie must have had trouble walking by now, but her garden was still kept immaculate. The windows were painted the same cream colour as when I was young, the front door the same dark varnish. On summer days I knew she would still hang a tattered green awning over it to protect the paintwork.

It was the final week in March. The new car which Geraldine had bought had been sitting outside for ten days. Without telling her, I got in and drove off. I didn't want a fuss and didn't know myself if I would have the courage to drive the two miles to Aunt Cissie's. It was fourteen months since I had last made that journey, yet I knew that she would greet me as if it were only days. She put her head to one side when she answered the door, trying to disguise her pleasure. There was a scent of baking filling up the whole house and her hands were coated in flour.

'Speeding again I heard you were, you wee scut.'

I grinned, the trauma of the past few months being reduced to another childish prank. This doorstep was where I had always ended up when there was trouble.

'If you think I look bad,' I joked, 'you should see the bus.'

'Well, you weren't speeding to see your old aunt, anyway.'

'Is there any tea in the pot, Aunt Cissie?'
'That wife of yours not feeding you, Seanie? You 'd better come in so and don't be bringing any of your oul cameras with you.'
The hallway seemed smaller and more dank than when I was last here. I remember how big I once felt when I was able to jump up and flick on the light switch. I noticed that the same heavy switch had survived various rewirings.
'You have the house looking great, Aunt Cissie. It hasn't changed a bit.' 'You 've been singing that song since I was twelve.'
She slapped me playfully on the arm and pushed me into the living room. From inside the kitchen I heard the heavy kettle being filled and the whoosh of the gas being lit. When she came out she had tried to put lipstick on without a mirror and it was smudged, highlighting the fine down of hair above her upper lip. There were traces of flour in her hair where she had run her hands through it.

The room seemed at once both familiar and exotic. A blessing from Pope Pius XII still hung on the wall. I remembered staring at the Latin inscription as a child. She selected and carefully wiped the best china, and as soon as I had taken a sup of tea she held the teapot out to refill the cup, almost pouring through my fingers when I held my hand out to motion that I had enough. I knew how disappointed she was that I had not called an hour later, when today's bread would have been ready. Her eyes followed mine to the faded photo of John F. Kennedy over the television.

'God, that man fairly made the bed shake,' she said, wry humour replacing the almost religious tones in which the household had once spoken of him. 'He was a new Daniel O'Connell, all right.'

I remembered the joke from her native Kerry that you could not throw a stone over an orphanage wall without hitting one of O'Connell's bastards.

'You have the piped television?' I asked.

'The best company in the world,' she said, 'after the women down in bingo. Especially the American wrestling on the satellites. Them would have been the boys to beat the Black and Tans. Did I tell you what I 've won at the bingo since?'
'No.' 'Not even the price of the bus fare. It's a good thing I 've the free travel pass.'
We both laughed. For as long as Aunt Cissie had not been going to see out another Christmas she had not even won the price of the bus fare at bingo. She stopped talking, that old smile on her lips as she tilted her head sideways in anticipation, knowing that I would not have called without a reason. I smiled back, suddenly embarrassed.
'Maybe I just called to see how you were keeping.' 'Pigs could fly, wee scut. You never just called to see me in your life. Say what's on your mind.'
I put the slender cup down. Underneath the tea leaves I knew there was the carving of a girl's face which used to fascinate me as a child when I was allowed to touch her china. I tried to think of a way to begin.
'I don't know what's been on my mind really since the accident, Aunt Cissie. All kinds of memories, and...' I paused. 'You know that I was dead for a few moments?'
The few people I had been unable to avoid meeting were either overexcited or dismissive about this. Aunt Cissie just nodded gravely.
'I find it's hard to adjust to ordinary life. Things have a way of playing on your mind afterwards. You know, with no parents or brothers or sisters it's hard to know what you 're remembering or only imagining. It's only a little thing, but lately I 've been wondering... we only lived a mile from the Botanic Gardens and yet I can't remember my mother ever setting foot beyond the gates. It was like she was frightened of the place. There had to be a reason.'
Cissie poured herself more tea. A butterfly had got in and flapped about in the lace folds of the faded curtains.
'Your mother was very... well, ashamed isn't the right word...' Aunt Cissie began, 'but uneasy about not being what she called your real mother. The way it was, after a while all of us forgot that you were adopted. Well, maybe not forgot, but you were just another little terror and she was another mother coping like the rest of us. We were all too busy with everyday problems, but your mother... she 'd spend hours peering at you as a baby, comparing the way you reacted to everything with how our children reacted. She couldn't shake it from her head that you were not responding to her the same as a child would to his natural mother.
'She could blow the smallest thing out of proportion, your mother. She suffered traumas that I wouldn't even be aware of until they were over. It's hard for any mother with a first child, but when you 're that insecure...'

Cissie looked at me.

'How old is your boy now?' she asked.

'Just three.'

'It's a magical age that.'

'I know.' I realized how disappointed Aunt Cissie must have been that I had not brought Benedict with me.
'You can't tell a three-year-old what's real and what isn't,' she said. 'God knows, it doesn't seem long since you were three. Do you remember the times I used to mind you?' 'You used to mind the whole street.' 'Sure you were more fun than the rest of them together. Such a serious little face and the blatherings away out of you, your hands darting in all directions and everything said as solemnly as though it were the end of the world. Mind me. If there was a fly in the room you 'd run into the kitchen, lip trembling, mind me. Same as if crowds came in. You were never really able for people. The kitchen to yourself, that was your idea of paradise. Every pot and pan out on the floor and you 'd be running in and out, so serious about what you were pretending to cook that I almost expected to see cakes and tarts appearing in the pans you had arranged under the kitchen table. I never met a child with an imagination like yours.'
She stopped talking. It was hard to reconcile myself with the child she spoke of or to equate this old woman with the figure of the strong aunt I remembered.

'Why do you ask about the Botanic Gardens?' Her voice was quizzical.

'I don't know.' It was only half a lie. 'Like I said, maybe I 've just had too much time on my hands to dwell on little things.' Her husband had been among the dead faces in the kaleidoscope which had greeted me at that instant of clinical death. I thought of telling her how well and happy he had looked but knew that I never could mention the experience and she would never wish me to. It made me feel lonely again.

'I used to ask you who all the pretend cakes you were making were for,' Cissie said.'"Mamma, Dada, Auntie Cissie, Baba Seanie and the old man in the shed." One time when your mother was collecting you I told you for a laugh to go down and ask the old man in the shed if he wanted a jam or an apple tart. Off you went, racing down the garden as though somebody really lived down there. Your mother and I were sitting here in the kitchen laughing at your imagination when you came in, panting, your face so serious. "Jam tart," you said. "The bits of apple stick in his false teeth." I looked at your mother, wee scut. Three-year-old boys don't make up that type of remark. Maybe you had heard it somewhere else, but you frightened the wits out of us both that day. We never let you down near the shed again.'

I strained to remember the incident, but all I could recall was the bolted shed in the distance and the time that my uncle had kept a greyhound locked in it and he used to bring me down to see the wet tip of his nose sticking out under the crack in the broken boards. I had been much older then, six or seven. There was little I could really remember about the age she was speaking of, except that single image of sitting on a ridge of grass and poking at the loose earth where a worm was slithering back under the soil.
'I know it was just your imagination,' Cissie said, 'but at times it was frightening. The same summer you turned three your mother came over here in tears. She had brought you in to see her brother's grave, your Uncle Peter. He fought in the British Army in the war, you know. The Desert Rats. Had almost half his head blown off. I don't know how they patched him up or how he lived so long. One moment the man was sane, the next you 'd realize that he thought there were other people in the room as well as you, soldiers he fought with, Arabs on camels and God knows who else. It was the first time your mother had been to the grave in the seven years since he died. She hadn't even told you what a grave was. I think she was going to explain to you about people getting old and going to heaven. She thought that you were gazing down at the flowers she had placed in the urn when you looked up at her. That man has no ear. Your voice was like you were saying that there was a big truck passing on the road. She grabbed you up in her arms and ran all the way home from the cemetery.' 'Maybe I 'd heard them talking about him?' I said. 'Maybe I expected to see a man there?'
The sun had gone behind a cloud and it was dark in Cissie's parlour. The story unnerved me. Suddenly I wished I hadn't come to her house. Partly it had only been an excuse to see if I could get back behind the wheel of a car again. I had been given my life back, so why couldn't I just accept it joyously without having to mull over every scrap in my past?
