by William Wall
He told me that when he was young he went in the boats. He fished a while with a man who had a boat at the pier below and there were three other men in the boat besides himself and the skipper. One day the son of one of the men called out to him as they were just leaving the pier and the boat had to tie up to the wall again and let the man off and he went home and sent another man in his place because once a man crossed the threshold onto the sea he could not be called from the shore. It was bad luck. It would bring misfortune on the boat to call a man back the same as when a man died you should not call his soul back. The sea was a threshold and death was a threshold and there were others that he could not remember. So that man missed out on that day’s fishing because his son wanted him, and he missed out on his share of the catch, because they were paid in shares. Another time a huge beam of wood as big as a herring trawler came ashore just east of his house in the little bay called Cuaisín and there were five strong men on it and they said they were wanting a sixth to manage the beam properly and undertake adventures with them and they called for volunteers, and there was a young man in the village who would risk anything for the pleasure of it and he jumped onto the beam and the six of them set off again out to sea. The young man could see no means of propulsion. There was no engine and no sail and no oar. He thought that it was very strange but he said nothing. And the five men walked about the beam and seemed to be working the ship, but they had nothing to work with and the young man thought it was very strange but he said nothing. But when they were far enough off the shore that the people looked like specks the other five men vanished and their places were taken by five seagulls. It was at that moment the young man realised that the men were sailors lost at sea in some old war and the beam was an enchanted beam. Now, thought the young man, I’m for it as sure as eggs. He looked around him to see was there any way he could take the beam of wood in charge, but there was nothing on it only an old shirt. He thought long and hard and after a time he picked up the shirt and he tied the sleeves to his belt and held the tail of it up. A wind was just after rising and luckily enough it was a wind towards the land for it was a summer’s day. He made a sail of the shirt and by walking back and forth along the beam he was able to direct it again towards the shore. The seagulls were not pleased at all and they first of all made a terrible racket, and then when they saw what he was at they started to attack him. But this young lad was a mighty dancer and they could no more catch him than Sonny Liston could catch Cassius Clay. By and by he brought the beam ashore and the seagulls flew away and the people took the beam and found that it was the very best of wood from South America, a kind of mahogany that they call ironwood. They turned it into keels and keelsons and king planks and ribs for their boats and it was always said that a boat out of Cuaisín would never drown. That man’s name was Patrick Leahy and he was an old man when I was a boy.
They were the kind of stories that Peter told me. Tbh I think he never learned about the realistic convention in Leaving Cert. Like we almost didn’t do it ourselves except someone found out about it on Wikipedia. It was like he lived in a fairy story himself idk here he was on his own miles from anywhere and his head was full of these things. It was sad. Somebody should write them all down before he dies.
Why didn’t you marry someone, Peter?
I was never taken enough with anyone, he said. The girls around here are flighty and I never liked flightiness.
I didn’t know what flightiness meant, but I thought maybe it could mean someone like Serena and I could see why he wouldn’t want to marry someone like that. And then again maybe I was flighty myself idk. I was going to say I didn’t like flighty girls either but I thought I might give the wrong impression. So instead I told him about Holly and he said I was lucky to have such a good friend. I told him that my family was totally dysfunctional, if you google it we have nearly all the signs, and I didn’t know which of them I’d kill first, my dad or my mam. He thought that was funny. Oh kill your father, he said. Fathers is always trouble, although it’s nearly always the son kills the father, still they could make an exception once in a while. The two of us chuckled about that. I said only for Holly I would go crackers. He went and made another pot of tea. We had scoffed all the biscuits by then. I could hear him whistling through his teeth in the kitchen. It is the lonesomest sound. Or so I believe anyway.
55
But my dad got no sleeping pills all the time she was here. She got him up every day and they went on walks. Sometimes I had to go with them but sometimes not. The first day he could only walk a few hundred metres. I googled sleeping pills but they never said anything about weakness. I started to see things about motor neurone disease and multiple sclerosis. Like maybe he had what Stephen Hawking had? But Stephen Hawking is a genius. If you google anything medical you get a million hits for whatever is the worst nightmare of your life. But the second day he could walk further, and on the third day we all walked out to the point together. I decided he didn’t have motor neurone disease. And Peter came up to see how we were getting on and my mam sent him into the village with a list and he came back with fruit and chocolate biscuits and frozen pizzas and stuff. I realised I should have bought frozen pizzas when I was shopping. It would have been a lot easier and I wouldn’t have eaten three quarters of a sheep while my dad was asleep.
There was no fighting. Dinner was more like at Serena’s. The only bit of hassle took place when Mam told him that Dan Kelleher got the nomination while he was away. My dad said, Are you trying to twist the knife in the wound?
I’m just saying.
Well you didn’t have to fucking say it.
Well, if you were at home you might have stopped him.
My dad shrugged. That fucker is like a rat. He can weasel his way into anything. There’s no stopping a cunt like that.
My mother said, Mind your language in front of Suzy.
Dad looked at me. Suzy has her own language.
Then on the third afternoon, the day we all walked up to the point, my mam said, Ok, Matt, you’re back on your feet now, time for me to go home. And my dad said, Thanks. And my mam said, You had your little drama, come back when you find the guts to face it, but I’m taking Suzy with me.
I couldn’t believe it. She was leaving. I thought they were sorted. And I knew if I left Dad here he would stop eating again. He would die. Or he would jump into the sea.
Get your things and get into the car, Suzy.
I shook my head. No, Mam.
Get into the car now.
No, Mam. I can’t.
She looked at me and then she looked at my dad. I looked at him too and I saw he was smiling. Like a little smile. Like he was doing his best to hide it but he couldn’t. My mam got into the car and drove away. We watched her as long as we could. We could see the roof of the car winking in the sunlight away down towards Peter’s house. Then it was gone.
OK, my dad said, that didn’t work. Plan B.
I stared at him. Like what didn’t work? He’s lying in the bed dying and it’s Plan B? He went into the house and after approximately thirty seconds I could hear him on his phone. The phone he told me was in a bin at the office. Now I really wanted to run down through the field and take a flier over the edge. I even turned round and tried to figure out a way to get over the barbed wire without ripping my jeans until I realised that ripped jeans wouldn’t matter so much if I threw myself in the sea. Then my dad came out. He pressed the button that opened the car and the lights flashed. It makes a little squeaking sound. A sheep that was eating something on a ditch looked around. She didn’t give a flying fuck. We could drive into the sea and she would still be eating grass.
Get your kit, Suzy, we’re moving out.
I didn’t know if he was happy or just decisive. He was businesslike. This was how he bought houses. He already had a plan. In his mind there are plans and mostly they work. In my life plans are all fucked up. There is no plan because everything just happens. I am always at the fall-back position and s
till falling.
56
The white road home. Even the bogs were bleached white by winter. Some kind of bleached reeds or long grass maybe and these crazy walls whitened by lichen. To make the fields they had to take the stones out first otherwise they would have been stone fields. Nobody grows stones. Sometimes the field was so small you could hardly stand in it. And in places there were the scabs of cut turf and the scar of the cutaway. We drove home through the mountains and came out in a place where there were buses and houses and small towns with WiFi cafes and I knew then we were going to finish up at home and everything would start all over again. This must be some kind of hell, where all your mistakes keep happening no matter what you do.
And after about an hour my dad rang someone and found out that Kelleher was spreading rumours that my dad was in trouble with the Revenue, and Great-To-Meet Micky Molloy told Somebody Somebody that his relationship with my dad was purely on a business footing. My dad said he would sue Dan Kelleher. Like, what was the story there? My dad was going to be bankrupted by the Revenue and he was going to sue Dan Kelleher, future member of parliament for the Blue Party once Great-To-Meet Micky retired? Like me and Holly did a project once for Civics. The most common jobs our public representatives had before they were elected was teachers, auctioneers, salesmen and farmers. Some of them did two of the jobs. Farmer and auctioneer. So Dan Kelleher was as good as in the door. All he needed was someone to die, preferably Micky, and there would be a by-election. Or maybe we were due a general election. They’re meant to change every five years but as far as I can see it’s always the same people anyway. Teachers, auctioneers, salesmen, farmers. It’s meant to be democracy. Idk.
The other thing he found out was that Bowles was replacing the gates at Ballyshane. They were iron gates. My dad said they were there since famine times. He couldn’t believe it. This English cunt coming over here and throwing our gates out. But, Dad, I said, Miss Corry let them rust away.
Never mind what Miss Corry did. She was one of our own.
Seriously, Dad, I said, like the Corrys?
No way, my dad said, should he be allowed to touch those gates. Those gates are part of our history.
Like the gates were part of our history all right. They were closed on the famine. They got the starving humble peasants to build a nice limestone wall around them and they Paid Them In Soup. That was the Furneys of course, and the Corrys bought the estate from them, but still the Corrys were huntingshootingfishing and they didn’t exactly tear the wall down after the revolution. Even Miss Corry wore a tweed suit. Idk. They were just different. They might as well have been Protestant. Leary our History teacher says Catholic landlords were as bad or worse than Protestant landlords. A landlord is a landlord, Leary says. Holly’s dad says my dad is suffering from false consciousness. I said I thought he was suffering from depression or psychosis or something. She says he’s a bourgeois. Can’t deny that. At least he’s a wannabe bourgeois. If he could be a Corry he would be. Matt Corry-Regan would suit him fine. Or Regan-Corry. But my dad doesn’t have the class to be a proper bourgeois. He just makes money and joins clubs. Clubs never turn money away. And if they did my dad would build a terrace of houses on the fifth green or whatever. He’d get planning for it too. My dad always gets what he wants.
And I found out that Serena had a date. Like, Hi suzy i got a date with my master satrdy at 3.
Fuck my life, Jesus, I swear I don’t know how I live through it.
And when we turned in the gate the trees were in flower. Like the only trees in my garden are mountain ash, because they remind my mam of her place, where her people came from, which is mountainy. But I had my window open and the car filled with the smell of sex idk whatever the mountain ash flowers smell like it just reminds me of sex, I’m not going to explain, just think about it. It was sad.
57
Naturally there was no Plan B. There never is. B stands for bullshit. All we did was arrive during the day when the house was empty and put our things in the washing machine.
That was my idea. I couldn’t wait to get a wash going. By that time I was wearing Vintage Pre-Worn Panties.
When my mam came home we were already there. She took one look at us and put a frozen pizza in the oven.
I assume you looked after yourselves, she said.
Dad said we had chicken and chips on the way home.
There was no fight. There was no talk of a summons idk maybe my dad was just making stuff up. Maybe it was all about my mam. The way things are in my house I’m never going to find out. But it’s like when you have a fight in school and you walk away and you’re hoping the other person idk maybe a Serena-like individual will call after you, Come back, Suzy, all is forgiven. But there’s already too much to forgive and nobody is ever going to call. But like I need someone to call. Maybe more than my dad, I need it.
I never slept a wink even though I was in my own bed again. I couldn’t stop waiting. The Macbeths slept like kings until they murdered someone, like uneasy lies the head idk but I got sleeplessness for even just thinking about it, or even like just worrying that something might happen. But nothing did. It’s just they went to bed. Tony came home about two. Maybe I dozed off idk about five o’clock I heard a fox barking somewhere. It was a she-fox maybe, a sound like a woman screaming, a short hard scream. I hear it often around my house at night. We are miles from anywhere.
58
So next day I went to school and Holly and Serena wanted to know all about it. I told them about Peter. Serena said, Like, you found this old depressed guy in a bog somewhere, that is so you, Suzy, just totally gross, he was probably a gay.
But Holly understood. When I think of it now Peter was Holly. He was that thing which is just gentleness. Which I need. Someone to be with where I don’t have to run or hide. I was lucky I found him. He maybe saved me. And Holly was still saying no to Jason Clancy. She showed me one of his texts. Babe u gotta let me xplain im not an asshole I just say de rong tings ☹.
Like, rong? How could anyone spell it like that?
I said, Tell him to try autocorrect.
She didn’t get it.
He was even tweeting her. Holly said he was practically stalking her. She was trying to block his number but you can only block calls on her phone.
And all Serena wanted to talk about was the Graham Dwyer trial. She knew all about it and she had googled all the things they did.
Holly was like, Too much information Serena, I don’t need to know this. And we’re in school. So Serena decided to tell Holly the whole story. It’s a kind of BDSM thing is how I figure it, forcing other people to hear things they don’t want, especially about sex. Or like toilet or something. She was like: This guy who arranged with a girl to stab her to death during sex (breathlessly). She suffered from death wish, you know? And he did it, like totally stabbed her to death (eyes widen in pretend shock). I don’t know if he had sex with her because they only found her bones so like duh no forensics (grin). The guy was married with kids but he had this secret life (eyes open again and she looked at me). And they did bondage and they had all these brilliant bondage objects, like a ball gag and handcuffs and (whisper) an anal plug.
Like Serena actually said anal plug in my school!!?? Even if it was a whisper. Serena does not really do whisper.
So what about the dead girl Suzy found?
Way! I only found the purse!
Serena was big eyed. You’re right, she said, what if it’s the same thing?
This was rape and murder, I said. The woman didn’t like make contact with a possible euthaniser or whatever. Is that even a word?
Serena ignored me. It was like this deliberate ignore, like you see.
Dwyer buried the woman someplace and threw all her things into a lake and during a dry summer people found stuff. Phones idk stuff (gesture of raising empty hands). It was like some film. And at the same time a completely freaky accident (eyes open wide again), a dog walker found her bones, well the dog foun
d her bones, you know dogs and bones? Like a human skeleton is bone heaven for a dog (she doesn’t bat an eyelid). Like it was the perfect crime because the girl was suicidal and it shouldn’t be a crime at all because the girl wanted to die.
And I kept saying, It’s too sad, it’s too sad. I wanted her to stop telling us about it now.
He’ll get life, Serena said, and all he did was help her.
Holly took two steps back and looked at her. For fuck’s sake, Serena, are you even for real?
Then she walked away. Which left Serena and me alone. Well, not alone because we were in the hall and the place was full af with girls and random teachers. But I was afraid she’d ask me what I thought. So I said, I don’t know what I’m going to say to Leary, I never got my essay done.
Then the bell went.
59
My teachers gave me hell of course. This is your Leaving Cert Year, Suzy Regan, you’re never going to get an A if you don’t shape up.
That kind of shit. It’s their job.
But Leary just shook his head and started on revising the Battle of Stalingrad. It’s like he understands.
The big news was that Serena had an actual not Jason, not Larrydemaster, boyfriend. Holly told me. I don’t know if you can believe that. Terms and conditions apply with Serena. I said that to Holly but she said no she was legit dating this guy from the Brothers’. What Holly was amazed about was that he was meant to be a nice guy. Or so people said. What’s a nice guy doing with Serena The Hate Message Queen? His name was Jack. It wasn’t James or John, it was Jack from the start. Like we both knew Serena was doomed to end up with some sleazeball, but Holly was saying this Jack was OK. It was a miracle. He was a year younger than Serena. He was in fifth year in the Brothers’. He was in the Brothers’ and we were in the Nuns’ and there were no Brothers in his place and no Nuns in ours. All the brothers and nuns evacuated the premises before we arrived. But we were still coming down with religion. I asked Holly if Serena had done anything with him yet and she said she didn’t think so, they went to the pictures and they went to a food place and that was all. She heard they went to see Minions, which is just totally Serena. A film about depressed unmotivated single-cell organism descendants who live in a cave is as good as Michelangelo to her. Or Da Vinci or whatever. Somebody big. I saw the trailer and it looks like crap.