I was sixteen when my mother first sent me across the landing to Mrs Kavanagh’s flat in Stoneybatter with a plate of brown bread and a warning not to come back in two minutes pretending she was asleep. I had been caught skipping school and hanging around Smithfield with lads who thought kindness was something to be embarrassed about. My punishment, Mam said, was to visit our elderly neighbour every Sunday after lunch. I thought it was the most unfair sentence ever handed down in Dublin.
Mrs Kavanagh lived alone in a one-bedroom flat that smelled of lavender polish, boiled potatoes, and old newspapers. Her sitting room window faced a wall, but she kept a pair of binoculars on the sill anyway, “for the birds,” she told me, though I never saw one land there. The first few Sundays were torture. I sat on the edge of her armchair while she asked about school, my mother, the weather, and whether young people still danced. I gave answers like stones. Yes. Fine. Rainy. I don’t know.
Then one Sunday, the television wouldn’t work. I fiddled with the remote, changed the batteries, slapped the side of the box like I knew what I was doing, and somehow got the picture back. She looked at me as if I had restored electricity to the whole northside. “You’re handy,” she said. No one had ever called me handy before. After that, she started keeping small jobs for me: a bulb in the hallway, a jar of marmalade too tight, the shopping list written too small for her eyes. I still went because I had to, but I stopped watching the clock.
By winter, our Sundays had a rhythm. I’d call into the shop near Phibsborough for milk, she’d make tea too weak for my liking, and we’d sit with the radio on low. She told me about her husband, who had driven buses along the quays, and her son, Michael, who had gone to London in the 1980s and only came back twice before he died. She said this plainly, not looking for pity, but her hands always went still when she said his name. I began bringing her things from my week: a photo of the canal frozen over, a programme from a school match, once even a leaf I picked up in the Phoenix Park because it was the size of my hand. She kept it pressed in a book.
The Sunday that changed everything was in February. Dublin was wet in that sideways way that makes umbrellas useless. I had a match that morning and was in a foul mood because we lost. I remember standing at our own door, still in muddy boots, deciding I wouldn’t go over. I told myself Mrs Kavanagh would understand. She had told me often enough not to be making a saint of myself. Then Mam called from the kitchen, “Did you knock into Nora yet?” I said I was going, but I waited another ten minutes, full of teenage resentment, as if kindness were robbing me of something.
When I finally knocked, there was no answer. Usually she shouted, “Come in, pet,” before my knuckles left the door. I knocked again, harder. Nothing. I tried the handle. Locked. I nearly walked away then, embarrassed by my own worry, but I heard something from inside, a small sound like a shoe scraping lino. I ran back for Mam, and she rang the caretaker while I stood in the hallway saying Mrs Kavanagh’s name through the letterbox. When the door opened, we found her on the kitchen floor, her cardigan soaked from a spilled
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