Love

by Roddy Doyle

  —But.

  —Wha’?

  —I wasn’t going to say anythin’ salacious, I said.

  —Wha’?

  —This would’ve been your first time. With Jessica.

  —Yeah.

  —But come here, I said. —You said –. Earlier, you said it. Tha’ you think you might be the father of her son.

  —I did, yeah.

  He didn’t look cornered, or caught.

  —An’ you said it didn’t matter.

  —Yeah.

  —Well, I said. —Fuckin’ hell, Joe. How does tha’ work, for fuck sake?

  —Davy, he said. —Give me a fuckin’ chance.

  —Are you his father or aren’t you?

  He stood up off his stool, although he didn’t quite stand. He lifted both shoulders and extended his arms. Like a half hearted Jesus on a cross built for a smaller man. He sat down again.

  —What does tha’ mean, Joe? I asked him.

  —It means –.

  He lifted his shoulders again.

  —It means I know an’ – I suppose – I don’t, he said.

  —It means there might not be an answer. Or a satisfactory answer.

  —Jesus –

  —I know, he said. —An’ it’s the problem with drinkin’ like we are. The stories should be gettin’ dirtier or whatever. But this one isn’t, an’ it isn’t going to.

  —That’s not the point.

  —I know, he said. —But it kind of is.

  —I’m lost, I said.

  —Well, he said. —I’m tempted to say the same thing, Davy, an’ I nearly would. But I won’t.

  —Even though you say – what is it? – you might or you might not be the father of a middle-aged man?

  —Yep.

  He didn’t hesitate, or grimace, or smile. Or shrug.

  —I think I might go now, Joe, I said.

  —Ah, no.

  —I’m too drunk to listen.

  —Ah, go on to fuck, Davy. It’s the only way to listen.

  —Bollocks.

  —Spoken like a true Englishman.

  —Fuck off.

  —Look, he said. —Look it. You can’t go. Be a pal. Give me a chance.

  —What chance? I said. —Wha’ fuckin’ chance? Wha’ d’you even want, for fuck sake?

  He’d spoken as if it had been his turn to unburden himself and I was being selfish. He’d endured my late-midlife, early-elderly confessions and now it was his go.

  And maybe I was selfish. I hadn’t told him about my spell in hospital, the scare that hadn’t scared me until months later when I started crying. I’d never mentioned it, yet I resented his lack of curiosity. I needed him to be a bad man, somehow. I had to be the good man. There couldn’t be two of us.

  —The thing is, he said. —I don’t think it matters.

  —Wha’ doesn’t?

  —Whether I’m his father or not. His biological father.

  —You’ve never fuckin’ met him.

  —Doesn’t matter.

  —You never had sex with her.

  —Well, he said. —There now.

  —Ah, Jesus, I said. —Wha’?

  He gave me the shrug again.

  —Did I say never, Davy – actually?

  —Did you?

  —Does it matter?

  —I’m definitely goin’, I said.

  But I picked up my pint and drank from it. The stout went down without a protest. I felt stupidly pleased; I was holding my drink.

  —I love her, Davy, he said.

  —So wha’?

  —It goes a long way.

  —Wha’ the fuck does tha’ mean?

  —I want her to be happy, he said. —It’s all I want.

  —So fuckin’ wha’?

  —Literally, he said. —Literally. It’s all I want. It’s not an easy one when you’re a bit pissed, is it?

  —Wha’?

  —Literally. Sayin’ literally.

  —You keep sayin’ somethin’ serious, I said. —Or it seems to be serious. An’ then you say somethin’ frivolous like tha’. To distract us.

  —Yeah.

  —Why?

  —Because I hear meself, he said. —An’ I can’t fuckin’ believe it.

  —Because I have to say, Joe, it’s very fuckin’ irritatin’.

  I wanted to go but I was leaning in, almost resting against his shoulder.

  —When I met her, he said.

  —Jessica.

  —Yeah. When I met her. When I met her. I don’t know. I felt happy.

  —Fuckin’ happy?

  —Not delighted. Or giddy. Or aroused, or any o’ tha’. Just happy. I’ll tell you – I’ll tell you what it was like. You’re pushin’ me off the stool, Davy.

  —Sorry.

  —D’you want it – d’you want to sit down?

  —No, I said. —No. I’m grand.

  —Okay.

  —You were sayin’.

  —Was I?

  —What it felt like when you met Jessica.

  —Yes, yeah – brilliant. Yeah. So. We were cleanin’ out the house, me an’ the sisters, when me ma died.

  —How long ago is that?

  —Does it matter?

  —No.

  —Four years. Five. Five years ago. We were puttin’ the house on the market. Strange fuckin’ experience, by the way. Emptyin’ a house like tha’. Because they’d lived in it all their lives together, my ma an’ me da.

  —Same as mine.

  —Yeah, of course.

  —Well, my father did – does.

  —Yeah, yeah, he said. —So anyway, I thought it was horrible, just a horrible fuckin’ experience. Throwin’ all their stuff ou’. It made me feel really shite – guilty, I think. Their lives, you know – into a skip. Or down to the Vincent de Paul. An’ my sisters felt the same way. The cryin’ – Jesus. Everythin’ we picked up. An’ the laughing. We can’t throw this ou’, there’s no way we can throw that ou’. But it had to be done. But the things we found tha’ we didn’t even know were in the house.

  —Wha’?

  —Nothin’ dodgy. Calm down. We didn’t find an Armalite or a vibrator –

  —Ah, Jesus.

  We were laughing.

  —Nothin’ like tha’. At all. But stuff tha’ should’ve been thrown out years before. Things we’d had when we were kids tha’ we’d have forgotten even existed.

  —Toys?

  —No.

  —We’ve kept the kids’ first shoes.

  —No. Same here – but no. Trish put them somewhere. But not tha’. Or teeth. Did you keep your kids’ baby teeth?

  —Some.

  —Same here, he said. —After the tooth fairy came down the chimney. No – that’s fuckin’ Santy. But anyway. Like, we made the decision to save the shoes an’ the teeth. Me an’ Trish. But this was different. Or, half different. Maybe she decided – I’m guessin’ it was my mother. I can’t see me da givin’ much of a shite. But she decided she’d keep the school reports. But she only kept one.

  —Whose?

  —Not mine. But we found one letter from the Gaeltacht. One. An’ we’d all have gone there at some time – all of us. But she only kept one o’ the letters. An’ I’m nearly certain I’d have written letters to her when I was there.

  —So it wasn’t yours.

  —No. But then. It was Orla found it. My Holy Communion prayer book.

  —Jesus.

  —Well, yeah. Exactly. It was in this little – this small suitcase. At the back o’ the wardrobe. Like a suitcase a teenager would’ve had when my ma was a teenager. With a clasp, you know – the lock.

  —Yeah.

  —It wasn’t cardboard like those old suitcases, the ones people emigrated with. It was – I suppose – plastic. Vinyl or somethin’. Lacque
r – I don’t know. Cream coloured. An’ I think Orla was worried openin’ it. She was afraid there’d be clothes in it – that our ma might’ve planned on runnin’ away at some time, or somethin’.

  —An’ what was in it?

  —The prayer book – I told you.

  —Besides tha’.

  —Letters, he said. —Sent to her when she was a kid. Most o’ them were from a cousin or somethin’ in New York. An’ two from a boy called Colm. An’ a few photographs. A couple o’ bits of ribbon. An ol’ record – a 78, believe it or not. Called ‘The Old Refrain’. It was stuff she brought with her into the house – into the marriage. Her life before she got married.

  —But your prayer book too.

  —There you go, he said. —It was slipped into a little side pocket.

  —Only yours?

  —Only mine. It was the only thing in the case tha’ came from after she married my father. An’ tha’ got the girls’ backs up a bit. They were callin’ me the white-headed boy. But then Sheila admitted she couldn’t remember if she’d had a prayer book. She said she’d almost definitely have had one but she couldn’t actually remember it. An’ the others were the same. They couldn’t remember their own prayer books. But there’s the thing.

  —Neither could you.

  —Exactly. I’d no recollection of it. Even when I was holdin’ it in me hands. It’s a lovely little thing, by the way. The print is nearly faded off the cover but you can still make it out. Souvenir of First Holy Communion. An’ a cross, of course. An’ inside it has – on the first page. It has my name an’ address, an’ the date.

  —What was it?

  —The 29th of June. 1965.

  —Christ.

  —Yeah.

  —That’s brilliant.

  —Yeah.

  —An’ the best thing – come here. The thing tha’ really fuckin’ floored me. It’s my father’s handwriting.

  —Brilliant.

  —Ah, man.

  —That must’ve been incredible.

  —Well –.

  He took off his glasses and gave his eyes a quick rub.

  —Look at me, he said. —Fuckin’ eejit.

  He put the glasses back on.

  —But yeah, he said. —You can imagine, Davy. An’ you know me an’ religion. I hate the fuckin’ Church, everythin’ about it. But this thing – the little book. Jesus –. This is true now. It was the first thing I packed when I was leavin’.

  —Leavin’ wha’?

  —Trish an’ tha’.

  —Yeah – sorry. Gotcha.

  —The first thing, he said. —It’s mad, I know. Given wha’ was goin’ on, like.

  —I can kind of understand it.

  —But it made me – I don’t know. Happy. So, like – so full of happiness. Even though I’d never missed it or even knew about it. She probably put it away the same day, the day of the Communion. We’ll never know why she put it into the little suitcase – why in there. But, anyway. There you go. I just felt so happy. So complete. Complete – yeah.

  —Yeah.

  —An’ that’s exactly how I felt when I met Jess. When I was with her again.

  He looked happy now too. He’d got there; he’d explained it all to me. He thought he had.

  —A complete surprise, he said. —Out o’ nowhere. But it still made sense.

  * * *

  —

  I was officially exhausted. And I didn’t know why. Nothing had clicked, no one good cause had made itself known. Work, money, sex, kids, grief, marriage – a line of not-reallys. I was a fraud. I believed that.

  I’d woken up the morning after I’d been admitted. I knew exactly where I was and why I was there. I was exhausted; I’d been told that the day before. Time had been broken into unjoined moments. But not now. I sat up in the bed; I did it carefully. I knew I had to, because my blood pressure was low – interestingly low, the neurologist, whose name I never knew, had said. I wasn’t linked to the drip-stand beside the bed. I would be again, later; the IV valve was taped to my wrist. There was a heart monitor sitting on my chest. It looked like an old-fashioned smartphone, some early prototype, wrapped in thick plastic. It hung around my neck; I had to bring it with me. I sat on the side of the bed. I waited some time. Then I stood.

  Wake, know, sit, stand – it was a line, linked moments and knowledge. I stood slowly, one hand still resting on the bed. I stood straight. My head didn’t spin. I looked at my feet; I looked down. There were slippers beside my feet. They weren’t mine. I didn’t own slippers. But they made sense. Faye had bought them in a shop, downstairs. The yellow pyjamas I was wearing now, the slippers, the bottle of Lucozade, The Girl on the Train – she’d brought them back up to me before she’d gone home. I was interested in my feet. If I could use them. If I could walk. I lifted the right foot and placed it in front of the left; I’d be stepping away from the bed. I’d be stepping out of something – and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I liked exhaustion. I liked not knowing, caring, not living the measured life.

  I took the step. I took the other. I walked to the window. Around the bed. I opened the curtain. I looked out for the first time. At a wall. I smiled – I felt myself do it. A wall – no windows. And a patch of sky the same colour as the wall, just as badly painted. I liked it – I’d tell Faye.

  I’d tell Faye.

  I was able to eat breakfast; I was hungry. I was told to stay on the bed. I was dehydrated. But I was fine. Fine, but I didn’t care. It was what I wanted: I wanted not to care. I looked at the window, at the wall to the side of the window. I waited for, I pressed for the differences – the colours, glass, sky – to stop. I tried to go back to broken time. I wanted it back. I didn’t know what I didn’t want to face. I didn’t know and it didn’t matter. I tried to gaze my way back, hypnotise myself. Escape. Unhappiness. Redundancy. They’d been gone. I tried to get back there.

  Faye was in the room. But I saw her come in – she wasn’t just there. I heard her open the door, I saw her. I saw her look at me – smile.

  —How are we this morning?

  I saw her look at the clear bag suspended from the drip-stand; I was being fed again. I saw her frown – I saw her decide to.

  —Is it doing the trick, is it?

  She held the collar of the pajamas.

  —Yellow’s your colour, David.

  She had a shopping bag with her. I wanted to see what was in it. I wanted to watch her empty it, comment on each item, place each on the table in front of me. I wanted to look at her do things. I saw: I understood. She wanted this too. She wanted me to watch her. She wanted me to follow her. She wanted to feel my eyes. She wanted to lift me out of death.

  —I’m feeling better, I told her.

  Regret immediately drenched me; I’d been fooled, found out. I wanted to go back. This might be the last time. I wanted to go back behind there.

  But I wanted Faye. I wanted to be with Faye. To look at Faye. I wanted to feel her. She placed an Innocent smoothie, mango and passion fruit, on the table in front of me.

  —That’ll put hairs where you want them, she said.

  —And not the grey lads, either.

  She stepped past the table and leaned down, right to my face, my eyes. She kissed my lips.

  —I want you better, she said.

  She examined both of my eyes.

  —They’re not as red. Only pink. Pink’s your colour, Dave.

  —Yellow and pink, I said. —My colours.

  —Oh, God, I’m getting the lady horn.

  I laughed – it burst out of me.

  —That’s music to my ears, she said. —Are you back?

  —I am.

  —Great.

  —I think so.

  —No thinks, she said. —No fuckin’ thinks. You’re back or you’re not back.

  —I’m back.

  I said it, but I hated say
ing it. I hated believing it. Exhaustion was safe and I wanted it back. I shut my eyes but I couldn’t keep them shut.

  * * *

  —

  We made it to a party one night. We hung on, we followed. We got into the back of a car. A Mini, I think. We’d no idea where we were going. The two other lads in the car booed as we passed a set of big gates, then clapped, and laughed.

  —What’s that about? I asked the girl beside me, the Emmylou girl. She was on a lap, to my left.

  —Blackrock College, she said.

  —Did they not like it?

  —They fucking loved it, she said. —They never fucking left it.

  —I can’t remember the name o’ the school I went to, I told her.

  —My kind of guy.

  The car stopped. I got out, followed others, made sure I was with Joe, went through a gap in a wall. A path under trees. A lantern. But no door.

  —How do we get in?

  There was an open window. There were people inside. There was music. There was a door around a corner. And the mother.

  —Oh, fuck.

  A formidable mother. A mother like nothing we’d encountered before. There were steps up to her – this must have been the front of the house. We were never going to get past her. She was gorgeous. Too full of sex to be a mother but definitely the mother, the owner of the huge house right behind her.

  Joe got up on the first step.

  —Two more ’Rock boys for you, he said.

  —Oh, dear God, she said, and raised her colossal eyes to the porch above her stiff hair, and smiled, and moved aside just enough for us to pass and smell her, and rub against her, as we went.

  —Fuckin’ hell.

  —This is a bit fuckin’ different.

  A house from American television. A flow of people up the stairs, and down. The people coming down held bottles of Heineken. We went up, joined the queue, to a bath full of ice and bottles, and a child with a bottle opener sitting on a shower seat beside the bath. Joe pulled up a sleeve and took two bottles from the bath. The Heineken labels were floating on the water. One of them stuck to the hair on his arm. He pulled it off and threw it back in the bath.

  —What’s the occasion? he asked the child.

  A boy.

  The boy stared up at us.

  —Why don’t you know? he asked.