Sometimes I even thought – though it may have been my imagination – that these men recognised me also, that they could mark me out by some kind of moral radar, that there would be a certain sidelong glance of understanding as we would brush past each other, middle-aged men in a punk-rock record shop or busy boutique, arms full of clothes that looked like banners of war. This would seem to me a look that implied something was known and noted fundamentally about what you were enduring yourself; for that little, or that much, I was grateful.
After a time I fancied that I could spot the children too, the children of separated parents. These were the children with many presents and big bags of shopping; they would be weighed down with computer games and expensive toys, every week like Christmas week. I have since found out that this is a thing separated fathers do, they buy their children presents. Men in these situations get good at buying presents. It is a silent way of apologising, I suppose, and of saying other things which may not be easily said in language, or even things for which there can never be any real language. It is a thing I did myself for a time, until Grace wrote to me one week, a cursory note, saying that she did not want the girls to be spoilt. She understood that I wanted to be generous, she wrote, but the girls would have to work for the things they wanted. The note was on headed paper. I noticed that she’d had it printed with her maiden name. She was Grace Lawrence again.
It was very late one night around the time of your fourteenth birthday when I was awoken by a knock on the front door. On my way down the stairs the knock came again, much louder this time; it sounded like someone was kicking at the door. The hall was dark, I remember, the bulbs had gone recently and I had not got around to replacing them. The banging rang through the house once more. I looked at my watch. It was just after four in the morning. I ran back upstairs and got out an old torch. Then I came slowly down and shone the beam through the glass panels at the side of the front door. There was nobody there.
I heard footsteps walking quickly around the house and the clank of the side gate being repeatedly tried. I was scared now. The gate must have been locked because I heard the sound of someone climbing over and then the crunch of feet hitting the gravel on the other side.
I went into the kitchen and stood in the darkness looking through the window. For a moment or two I could see nothing, and then suddenly, there it was, a black-clothed body moving around in the darkness. The body came up the path and as far as the back door. The handle was tried. There was more loud knocking, then I heard a few deep sighs. I glanced around the kitchen for something sharp.
‘Dad,’ a voice hollered out.
I could feel the adrenalin pumping through me as I opened the back door to let you in. Your eyes were streaked with mascara and you were crying. My first terrible thought was that you had been attacked or assaulted in some way. You stumbled into the kitchen, mumbling, hugging me. I sat you down and held you in my arms.
After a few minutes I got it out of you. You’d had an argument with your mother, you told me, and so now you had made up your mind that you wanted to come and live with me.
I think I might have started to laugh and tell you this was silly. But then you began wailing and pulling at my sleeve.
‘Please Dad,’ you said, ‘please. Don’t send me away.’
I just did not have the heart to give out to you then.
‘Don’t be dense, love,’ I told you. ‘You’re welcome here any time, you know that. Why the blazes would I send you away? Sure I’m always delighted to see you. Though I’d prefer it wasn’t nearly dawn, Maeve.’
I made you tea and a sandwich and we sat in the kitchen for a while just talking. I remember being shocked when you wondered aloud if there was any drink in the house; you wanted to have a drink. I said no, there was no drink and at first you did not believe me. You asked me what about all the drink that I used to hide around the place and I felt embarrassed then, because of course I had never realised that you knew about this. But you laughed and told me that you did know, and indeed, that you and Lizzie had often drunk a quarter of one of my bottles of vodka before filling it up again with water. ‘And you can’t read me the riot act about it,’ you said ‘After all, Billser, that probably saved your bacon a few times.’
Your mother had met a man, you told me. She had been going to Al-Anon, the support organisation for the families of alcoholics. I was surprised to hear this, it was news to me. But Grace had been going to these meetings for some time, more or less from the week she had moved out of Dalkey, and apparently had met a man at one of the meetings whose wife was an alcoholic. ‘Like you, Dad.’ She had begun to see him socially, they had been to the cinema a few times. You thought they might even have been out to dinner.
I was surprised by the surge of jealousy I felt. But then, I told myself, I had no right to such feelings any more.
‘Well, going out for a meal isn’t a criminal offence,’ I said to you. ‘Your mother needs company, that’s all. She’s a very sociable person. Like you.’
‘I came home tonight and he was there in the apartment.’
‘Look, Maeve …’
‘And he was kissin’ her on the sofa. He had his hand practically right on her tit. And he’s been staying the night, Dad.’
I told you then that I thought it would be better if we talked about all this in the morning. You said that there was nothing to talk about, you had it all figured out, you were coming to live with me, and Lizzie could stay with Grace. It was only fair, you said, that each of us should have one of you. You had been thinking it over for ages. It just was not right, me living here in the house by myself.
By now it was almost five o’clock, so I did up the bed in your old room and made you go up and get into it. I waited until I was sure you were asleep, then I wrote you a note telling you not to worry about anything which I pinned to your door. I threw on some clothes, got into the car and drove down to your mother’s place.
When I rang the doorbell, a moment or two went by before her voice, sounding very angry, came over the intercom. She said your name. I told her no, it was me. She sounded surprised then, and let me in. I came up in the lift. A long-faced streak of ugly misery in striped pyjamas opened the door of the apartment. He was taller than me and ten years younger. His face had an odd, slightly concave shape, as though he had recently tried to head a football that had turned out to be made of cement. I told him my name and that I was Maeve’s father. He nodded and said he knew who I was. The way he said it made it clear that I was not welcome. He brought me in without speaking another word.
In the small neat living-room your mother was sitting on the sofa with her head in her hands. She was wearing a nightdress. There was a bottle of red wine on the floor with two glasses. When she looked up at me her face had a frightened expression.
‘Don’t tell me it’s Maeve,’ she said. ‘Jesus, Billy, don’t tell me anything’s happened.’
No, I told her, you were fine.
‘So where is she?’
‘She’s with me,’ I said. ‘She’s above in the house.’
‘What? In Dalkey?’
‘No, Grace,’ I said. ‘On Mars. Where the fuck else except in Dalkey? I nearly bottled her an hour ago. I heard her prowlin’ around the place. I thought she was a burglar.’
She jumped up and left the room. Head-the-Ball sat silently gaping into the fireplace and picking his teeth with a match. A minute later Grace stormed back in wearing training shoes, and a raincoat over her nightdress. I asked her what she thought she was doing.
‘She’ll have to come home,’ she said, and turned to him. ‘Phil, you can drive me up to get her.’
‘I’m drunk, honey,’ he said.
‘Well, I’ll go myself then.’
‘Grace,’ I said. ‘You’re not going near her tonight. And that’s that.’
‘She’ll come home tonight,’ she said. ‘This is her home.’
I grabbed her arm to stop her leaving. ‘She’s asleep,’ I said. �
��And you’ve been drinking. You’re not all right to drive.’
‘Take your hands off me, Billy.’
‘You won’t take her away tonight, Grace. I won’t allow you to do that, I’m telling you.’
‘The day you’ll order me’s long gone, Billy.’
I opened my mouth and bawled. ‘You won’t take her, Grace. End of story. Do you seriously think for one single minute I’d let you do that? Don’t you know there’s no way in the world I’d allow you do that, Grace?’
She went to slap me in the face but I grabbed her wrists and pushed her away from me. Your man came over then and put his hands on my arm. I turned to him. He looked pale and very nervous. The skin on his lips was cracked, his small eyes bleary and moist. I stared down at his hands.
‘I’m going to count to five,’ I told him, quietly, ‘If you’re still touchin’ me when I get there, I’ll rip your fuckin’ head off, Phil.’
‘I don’t want trouble,’ he said.
‘I’ll beat you to fuckin’ death, Phil, I swear it, if you’re still touchin’ me in five seconds.’
He took his hands away.
‘Thank you, Phil,’ I said.
Your mother was back on the sofa and crying. ‘We can talk about this again,’ I told her. ‘I didn’t come here looking for a scene, I’m sorry. I just thought you should know she was safe. I’m going home now. Good-night.’
‘You lousy bastard,’ she said.
‘Yeah, good-night, Grace. And listen, thanks again for all your help.’
It was good and kind of your mother to let you stay here with me. I always admired her for that. I know all too well what it is to live without your children, it cannot have been easy for her. But she knew you were unhappy and knew too that you loved the old house almost as much as Lizzie hated it. She would not give up legal custody, she said, but as an experiment you could stay with me in Glen Bolcain for a while. But she asked me then not to bring Lizzie to the house any more. She told me that Lizzie was having nightmares about the house and did not want to see it again.
After we agreed to you coming back I thought things might calm down for you. But I was wrong. You were at a difficult age anyway. Not that there is ever an easy age. Maybe I was too strict with you, I don’t know. I suppose I must have been aware that your mother would drag me back into court at the first sign of you getting into trouble. But you did not care. You seemed to like trouble. Before too long, you seemed to be seeking it out.
You would stroll blithely in on a Saturday afternoon from town with your face daubed in white or yellow make-up, hard black triangles of eyeliner around your eyes, black lipstick smeared across your mouth like a scar, your hair thick with gel or glue. I could never make myself understand why you would want to do that to yourself. We argued about it but you would never listen. I told you that you were immature, that you were still dressing up to play, like a child would. ‘I’m fourteen now,’ you’d say. ‘I’m fourteen. I can do what I like, you fascist.’
I think I started by trying to bribe you out of it. I would drag you into town and buy you expensive, respectable clothes, but you would refuse to put them on. I would raid your room and fling out every scrap of make-up I could find. You would throw tantrums and accuse me of invading your privacy, but I did not care, I did not want my teenage daughter looking like a low-grade Commanche hooker. You told me I could trash your clothes and make-up if I wanted, it did not matter, you would get more. I warned you not to threaten me, pointed out that it was my house, you would have to do what I said while you lived there.
‘Oh, very mature,’ you sneered. ‘Daddy’s little dictatorship.’
As you grew taller you became more evasive. I would ask where you were going, you would say ‘Out’, if you answered me at all. Then I would say ‘Out where?’ and you would do that infuriating shrug and sigh deeply ‘Just out’, or ‘Nowhere’. If I was foolish enough to continue and wonder aloud who you would be with, you would reply ‘Nobody’, and if pressed, ‘Nobody you’d know’. It got to be almost a game we played, a catechism of frustration.
You began to wear your outlandish clothes into school until the head nun called me down and said that something would have to be done about this. There was a uniform, she said, this was not some working-class area after all, this was Dalkey. I told her I was from a working-class area myself, if she didn’t mind. No, she said, she didn’t mind in the least. But this was still Dalkey. And there was still a uniform.
You had come into the school wearing pyjamas recently, the nun told me. When you were ordered to go home immediately and change, you did. You arrived back in class an hour and a half later wearing a different pair of pyjamas. This simply could not go on.
I told you to wear the uniform, which you did for a while, albeit reluctantly. But then I noticed that you were altering it. You would cover the lapels of the fifty-quid crested blazer with row upon row of metal badges, safety pins, bits of chain; you’d clank around the house like a sleepwalking medieval knight. One morning you went into school wearing a swastika armband which you absolutely refused to remove. There were ructions, one poor nun practically had to be hospitalised. I had to get off work and come home early and give you a good lecture on some of the finer points of your family history. This you sat through, chewing gum, blowing bubbles and staring at the wall. The very next night I caught you in the kitchen cutting several inches off the hem of your school skirt with a garden shears.
One Saturday morning not long after this I was out in the garden looking at the birds when I noticed that the door of the old stable had been forced open. When I went in, I found piles of clothes, records, expensive art books, whole boxes of make-up, all of them brand new. Slung in a ball on the floor was a red leather evening dress with the price tag still attached: it was more than I was earning in a week. I brought all the stuff up to the house – it took almost an hour – and simply left it lying on the living-room floor. When you got home from town you had a pal with you, Josephine Ryan, that blousy little brasser from Monkstown Farm who smoked in front of me. I told her to go home and asked you about the things I had found in the stable. At first you pretended not to know what I was talking about. I brought you into the living-room and showed you the pile. You absolutely denied knowing anything about the stolen stuff, you were adamant, you swore and promised, it just drove me demented. I lost my temper with you in a way I don’t think I had ever lost it before. I felt rage with you, love, I really did. I could not believe that you would lie to me like that. I warned you that I would have to telephone Grace and make her come over immediately to sort this out. You pleaded with me not to do this. You confessed that you and your mates had been spending your spare time down in Dun Laoghaire shopping mall, stealing as a dare. It was some sort of game between you, to see who could pull off the most audacious theft; Josephine Ryan had once managed to steal a new bicycle straight out of the shop. I swear I still do not know how I managed not to hit you. I bawled and roared until I was hoarse, I’m sure the language must have been choice. I told you about Seánie’s brother Frank who stole a pound of butter when he was fifteen, got sent to Letterfrack Borstal and progressed to burgling houses.
You rolled your eyes. ‘Oh, here we go again,’ you sighed. ‘Life in proletarian Dublin.’
I warned you to listen or I would stop your pocket money for a month.
‘I don’t give a flyin’ fuck about Seánie’s brother Frank,’ you yelled, ‘and neither do you, so don’t pretend.’
‘The reason I’m working my arse off every day is so you don’t have to steal. Can you not get that into your head, Maeve? I was brought up without a thing and none of us stole.’
Your expression reminded me of Grace then. You promised that you would never do it again.
Shortly after this I allowed you to have a party. You persuaded me to go and stay with Jimmy for the night. Lizzie would be coming, you said. Lizzie would make sure there were no problems. I told you I was surprised to hear that Lizzie would
be coming, since she had told her mother she did not want to visit the house any more. But you swore it was true. Next morning when I got home, I was kicking around in the long grass down by the back wall when I found a packet of condoms. When I opened it I saw that three or four were missing. I stormed up to your room and pulled open the curtains.
It was the first time I had been inside your room in some months. It looked as though it was inhabited by some kind of rabid animal. I could not actually see one square inch of the carpet for clothes. The inside of the door had been daubed with thick streaks of black and red gloss paint. The words ‘Yeats is dead’ had been scrawled in thick green marker across the ceiling. The place reeked of incense and dirty socks. There was a pint glass of brown water on your bedside locker with the stinking remains of dozens of cigarette butts in it. There were beer cans on the window-sill. The walls were covered with twelve-inch records, the edges of which had been melted and twisted out of shape. When I saw these it annoyed me even more. I could not believe that anyone would do that to records.
I threw the pack of condoms on the bed.
‘What do you think they are?’ I shouted.
You yawned up at me. ‘Balloons?’
‘Smart aren’t you, Maeve? If you were half as clever in school you’d be away in a hack. Are they yours?’
The Salesman Page 18