It was one of those Galway nights that you would see frozen forever on an arts festival poster, the moon with a crook sharp enough for someone to sit in and drop a fishing line down to the bay below. Flares erupted over near the harbour. Fireworks launched from the roof of the fancy hotel.
Out on the waves, silhouetted against the coast of Clare, the flickering lights of trawlers and research vessels as they sounded their horns in response to the bells of St Nicholas. Seven centuries of ringing out the city proximity to visiting seamen, an annual reminder of the need for mankind to look out to sea. Columbus would have heard these bells, or so the legend goes.
Kathleen stood at the door, looked up and down the street; at all the doors that used to be open at this time on every New Year’s Eve. This street had known so much, had played such an unwitting role in the world, because it was the place where Nora Barnacle had grown up. The place from where Joyce had taken her as his muse, to the capitals of Europe.
The houses had changed from that time, had been tidied up, but were still the basic shape, so the same moonlight shadows drew black chimney tops across the narrow road as they did when Joyce waltzed in here. The light crackled again with the sound of a distant firework, a whoosh and then a cascade of colour. The bells stopped and the sound just hung there, like the smoke from the Catherine wheel.
She looked at it all and said ‘bad cess to the old year and in with the new.’ Herself and Frank had carried out this tradition for the previous 48 years, opening the front door to let one year pass out and another sneak in. Although they both knew that bad news never respected a calendar — a bad year could just as easily be followed by an even worse one.
The year just gone qualified as a bad one — this was the first time that she would open and close the New Year’s Eve door on her own. Frank had been taken in May, having been only diagnosed in February. But there was still a sense of him in the house, as if he had just gone out somewhere and would be back soon. She could still smell him and from time to time, she imagined she heard the scraping sound of the kitchen chair being pushed back as he rose from his Galway Advertiser to put the kettle on for more tea.
She wished there had been someone in the street to see her and wish her good tidings tonight, but there was nobody, just the sound of yelps and yahoos from the folks in the houses around the back. People who had a lifetime of Galway New Year’s Eves ahead of them, not knowing how precious they all were.
Most of the neighbours who normally came out on the street to shake hands and hug and wish each other good tidings for the year ahead were gone. Hers was the last family-owned house, as the others had been bought and refurbished and turned into trendy AirBnbs. She remembered the day when herself and Frank had bought the house at Bowling Green for fifteen hundred pounds and how the neighbours had come around and welcomed them with apple tarts and potato cakes. And how one of the women who called in was actually a relative of Nora Barnacle herself.
This street had helped raise their entire family. There was always one mammy half-watching as they played out on the road in the days when cars were a novelty and not the norm. On hot days, the boys would be stripped to their shorts, lying out in the middle of that road, a chatter of small excited children hosing themselves down.
Tonight, it was very different, both sides of the road lined by cars the owners of which she didn’t know. She stepped out onto the path, setting the little tab on the latch, conscious of not pulling the door after her and finding herself locked out. In the olden days, there would always have been a spare key left with the Feeneys or the Boyces, but they were all gone now too. She was the last woman standing, the longest-living resident of the place, the uncrowned Queen of Bowling Green. A proud O’Malley, the Granuaile of the Green.
“Bad cess to it. Bad cess to the year just gone,” she whispered as she whooshed an arm, a sort of imaginary ‘come on will ya’ to the year. Kathleen closed the door and when the latch locked set, it felt like a dagger to her. She followed it with the two bolts that Frank had screwed on to give the door strength against anyone trying to get in. It had been a decade since a drunk had shouldered it in one night on his way home to the Claddagh. He had taken the lock and all with his strength, and that prompted Frank to give it extra protection at the top and the very bottom to take the pressure off the keyhole lock.
Tonight, every drawing across of the bolt was a reminder of just how vulnerable she was, here in this street on her own, an outlier from the new demographic, little Mrs O’Malley in the house with the red door.
The television was still on when she went back into the kitchen. Imelda May singing a blues song on a stage in Dublin. She flicked the channels and watched a minute of Jools Holland before seeing the remnants of the London celebrations conclude. Too early to go to bed yet, she switched on the computer and waited for it to come to life. Going to RIP.IE, she scrolled down to Frank’s death notice again. He looked so handsome in that photo taken at Jess’s wedding. He never knew then that this would be the image through which the world would see him forever.
She opened the condolences page. It had been sealed now as six months had passed, so there weren’t any new messages, but this didn’t stop her from checking and re-reading the goodwill. She knew too that some of those who had left messages had also since died. In one part of this website they were alive; In another, they were gone from life. From contributors to content in one fell swoop.
All through life, she tried to put it out of her mind that one day she would be here alone. That Frank with his chainsmoking would precede her, and although they had spoken in recent years about the realisation that their life was nearing its end, they used to shush each other when it came to talking about funeral arrangements and plots and wills. They had written their will years ago, the two of them sat in the solicitor’s office with ten-year-old Jessica on their lap, and the solicitor using the word ‘Imithe” rather than ‘dead’ within earshot of the child. Because of that, the folder box where the will copy was left alongside the deeds and their bank documents was left in the drawer upstairs, the box marked “The Imithe stuff.”
She looked back at the latest death notices for Galway. Eight new ones. A backlog at this time of the year held up by the holidays, the Christmas festivities and the practicalities of getting family members home at a time when flights were at their most expensive and most scarce. It frustrated her when the same deaths dominated for days.
Mary Wilkins in Renmore had died. Kathleen opened the photo, and then peered in to see if she knew her, maybe from around town. No recognition. She opened the condolences. The usual ones. “May she rest in the arms of the angels; thinking of you all at this difficult time. I have lit a candle for ye.”
She could see that Mary had worked in Lydon House restaurant. Kathleen had often eaten in there. So she clicked the box Add Condolence and started to type.
“Mary was always lovely in Lydons. A wonderful smile and a kind word for everyone, she will be sorely missed. A great woman for the chat.” She previewed it for errors and then signed her name. Her maiden name. Kathleen Ford, Bowling Green.
Every time she read the messages of condolence on Frank’s death notice, she took solace from the fact that nice things said about him would live on in this cyberspace. Out there in the ether, with his spirit would be the words of goodness that were sent her way. Everyone deserved that, she felt. It felt good to matter as well, to be able to sign your name to something communal. The wisdom of life had taught her that bitterness counts for nothing in the end and that the kind word was the sweetest honey to bestow on anyone. Even if you had never met them or knew anything about them.
A Johnny Talbot had died in Gort. His face looked so gentle and welcoming. Some messages revealed that he liked his weekly walks in Coole Park, stepping in the footsteps of Yeats and Lady Gregory. She started typing.
“To all of John’s family, a shoulder of support at this sad time. His knowledge and warmth was always welcome to those of us who knew him from his walks in the woods at Coole. Never too busy to stop and talk. - Cait Ni Mhaille, Galway City.”
Kathleen felt that to lose someone on and around New Year’s Eve would be life-altering for those families. That from every year thereafter, the event would be dominated by the loss; the juxtaposition of celebration and mourning, of the gala and the grief.
Tonight, she thought, perhaps as they set out on the days of preparing for a farewell, they would find some solace from her messages. They would give a spark to their hearts; their appreciation of the complex and unknown lives of the departed would be enhanced.
She dragged the mouse to the Shutdown option and watched as the screen turned to black, and she saw her reflection in the darkness. She looked tired, different to how she imagined herself. Outside, the New Year settled into itself and across two streets, from where the late revellers were making their way home, she could hear someone blasting out Galway Bay.
“And if there’s going to be a life hereafter
As somehow I feel sure there’s going to be
I will ask my God to let me make my heaven
In that dear land across the Irish Sea…”
On the stairs-top at the landing, she looked down at the children’s rooms, now empty, sighed a sigh of resignation, and flicked the switch that made the trail of darkness follow her into the last lit part of the house.
Tomorrow would be another day of getting on with getting on.
****
The Queen of Bowling Green is a short story from a new collection of fictional short stories by Declan Varley, entitled When I Caught Up To You, You Were Gone to be published in 2025.
