Too Close to Home

by Aoife Walsh

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Franklin Conderer?’ Jorge asked from the gloom beyond Penny.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’s an idiot.’

  ‘No, he isn’t,’ Minny said loudly.

  Jorge stuck his hand into the popcorn. He didn’t look away from the screen. ‘He’s a chav.’

  Minny had unacceptable words boiling up sticky in her throat, but she could also feel Penny shrink a little beside her. The music started just then. She stared at the screen without seeing any of the credits.

  It was a good film, but she couldn’t laugh at any of it. She didn’t take any more popcorn either. There was no one between her and the end of the row, and as soon as the film finished she stood up abruptly without waiting for the lights to come on. ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘OK,’ Penny said, blinking up at her. ‘I’ll call you later.’

  ‘Great.’

  She thought about staying on the bus and going round to Granny’s house, but decided she was too cross and would just get frustrated, since she could hardly tell Franklin the story. She might go home and tell her mother instead.

  As it happened, when she got in Aisling had just got home anyway. She got nervous in other people’s houses; not so much in Granny’s usually, but none of them had been with her today. ‘Did you have a good time though?’ Minny asked her.

  ‘Yes. We sang “We’ll Sweep Out the Ashes in the Morning”.’

  Minny wanted to ask if she’d been mentioned at all. She also half wanted to apologise for having been mean, but they didn’t do that kind of apology much in their house, and Ash probably hadn’t even noticed it in the first place.

  ‘And Granny liked it. She said we should make a record.’

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘Franklin taught me a new song. It’s called “Clay Pigeons”. He wrote the words down for me.’

  She extended a grimy halved piece of paper, covered in red biro. Minny looked at it; the handwriting was jerky. The one good thing about Aisling was that you could ask her certain questions without having to worry about looking like a chump like you would with anyone else, because she didn’t read into stuff. You weren’t guaranteed to get an answer of course. ‘Did you talk about me at all?’

  ‘Yes. Franklin said he’d teach you to play the song if you wanted and why didn’t you come round. I said you didn’t want to.’

  ‘You said I didn’t want to?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you say I was at the cinema?’

  ‘Yes. Was the film good?’

  ‘It was OK. What did he say?’

  ‘He said, “Oh”.’

  Penny did ring her, just before dinner that evening. ‘You rushed off.’

  ‘Yeah, I had to get back. We had a lot of stuff to do.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Cleaning.’

  ‘Cleaning? You didn’t mind me bringing Jorge, did you?’

  ‘No.’ Which wasn’t exactly true, but it hadn’t been the problem.

  ‘I thought you might have done. You weren’t very friendly, Minny.’

  Minny thought for a moment about reassuring her. Ignoring her outrageous front in saying such a thing, and appeasing her, because it was just Penny and the way she was, and Penny was her friend. But her mother was calling her from downstairs anyway to wash her hands for dinner. ‘No. He wasn’t very friendly to me either. And I didn’t like what he said about Franklin at all.’

  ‘Oh, Minny. So he doesn’t like Franklin, so what? Franklin’s suddenly your best friend and we can’t say a word against him?’

  ‘Not a word like chav, no,’ Minny said. ‘It’s a really terrible word. Look, I’ve got to go, it’s dinner time.’

  FIVE

  All the cleaning must have disturbed the wildlife. At three o’clock next day, just when the guests were due to arrive, they were all in the kitchen bunched up around the kettle and the mug tree and Minny saw a fist-sized spider on the edge of the sink. It was one of the butch ones with thick black legs. She screamed and Babi spilled boiling water over half the ginger buns. Then there was a panic battle when they all got in each other’s way, except Raymond who was trying to put the football into the washing machine, and suddenly they were all outside the front door.

  ‘That was the biggest spider in the world.’ Selena had gone as far as the street; she was white.

  ‘What are we going to do now?’

  ‘I hope someone has got keys,’ Babi said. She was already smoothing her hair. She hated being undignified, but she was terrified of spiders.

  ‘We left the baby behind,’ Minny said.

  ‘Oh God. I can’t go back in there.’ Nita breathed hard. ‘What sort of mother abandons her own child in a moment of fear?’

  ‘It’s only a spider,’ Ash said in a sensible voice. ‘It can’t hurt him.’ Then they all started laughing, and next thing a car drew up behind them.

  Their father was wearing his strategy like a suit of clothes. He was all friendly with Nita, polite and unhostile with Babi. He put his arm round Selena, but only kissed Aisling on the cheek as she stood looking awkward and didn’t try even that with Minny – he just touched her arm for a second. Which was fine. Then they had to explain why they couldn’t go in.

  ‘I’ve got to though,’ Nita said, suddenly alarmed, ‘because Raymond can get the cupboards open and there are things in there – there’s bleach under the sink.’

  ‘Can’t you go and put it outside, Dad?’ Selena asked. ‘Far outside?’

  ‘Like over the road?’ Minny suggested.

  ‘Er –’

  Nita grinned. Lines came on her face when she smiled, but they didn’t make her look any older. ‘Your dad’s as bad as the rest of us, don’t you remember? He’d run a thousand miles from a spider like that.’

  Des rubbed his hands on his legs, looking uneasy. Harriet was laughing. She took the key Aisling was holding out – ‘I’ll do it.’ When she’d gone inside no one looked at anyone. Des leaned forward and pulled the door shut again as if the spider might come stampeding out towards them.

  ‘Hellooo.’ There was a bit of a thin quaver and they turned to see Granny stumping across the road from her little car. Selena ran to meet her, and Aisling shuffled that way too. Minny looked in surprise at her mother.

  ‘Oh yes, I didn’t say. Judy rang me this morning and I invited her. I hope that’s OK, Des, and not uncomfortable?’ Nita said rapidly.

  He rolled his eyes.

  Harriet had only been gone half a minute; Selena was still looking sick, though she’d started gabbling about the school play she was in, her head turning between her father and his mother, when Harriet opened the door again, holding Raymond.

  The ice had to be re-broken then. Harriet looked dismayed when she saw the most recent arrival. Babi seemed amused; Minny supposed the more people there were there, the less risk Babi ran of actually having to talk to anyone. Granny kept patting all the girls whenever she got near them.

  ‘Why did you invite Granny?’ Minny hissed while she and her mother were waiting for the kettle to re-boil. ‘I thought you wanted this to be as civilised as possible.’

  Nita looked unhappy. ‘She rang up, and she was saying she felt wretched because they just had a row, I think, when your father and Harriet were round there on Monday – not a good day for them; no one was very pleased to see them. I said I felt terrible about Harriet because we were so unfriendly – we didn’t even ask her when the baby was due or anything like that—’

  ‘You’re unbelievable.’

  ‘– and somehow I ended up saying, “Why don’t you come along too?” Oh well, we all have to be able to be polite to each other.’

  ‘Well,’ Minny said, pouring boiling water into seven mugs – no one quite got a full one – ‘we’ll see, I suppose.’

  Everyone was still milling around, except Aisling, as if no one wanted to be the first to sit down. Ash, who already had her fingers to her ears to block out all the stran
ds of chat, had picked the corner of the sofa nearest the door, so that Minny had to keep squeezing past her with the tea. ‘It’s ginger and lemon,’ she told Harriet, shoving it at her. Her mother had bought it especially. Her mother was too soft for her own good.

  ‘Oh, gorgeous.’

  When everyone had their tea, Minny had to find somewhere to sit – Nita had tried to dot the dining chairs around the room, but it didn’t make it feel much less formal because the table was still there. Harriet was sitting on the sofa, next to Aisling, who had curled up as tight as she could in the corner. They were much lower down than everyone else. Minny heard hissing in the corridor, which was obviously her mother telling Sel to go and sit between them. The buns were nice.

  Anyway it got a bit less awkward for a minute when the cat wandered in, then caught sight of the baby and immediately left again. Des looked incredulous. ‘Was that really Guts?’

  ‘“Guts”?’ Harriet said, as if it was the most outrageous name in the world.

  ‘I thought for sure he’d be dead years ago.’

  ‘It’s really Vonnegut,’ Aisling explained to Harriet.

  ‘Pretentious, much?’ Dad said.

  ‘But it got shortened to Guts.’

  ‘Guts,’ Harriet said, and began to giggle.

  ‘I can’t believe he’s still alive.’

  ‘He’s not that old, Des,’ Aisling said. ‘He’s only eight.’

  ‘No, he must be older than that.’

  He wasn’t, Aisling was right – of course. Minny remembered perfectly well when they got him, three days after their grandfather died, to cheer them up. Of course it had the effect of making them want to skip the funeral to look after him: Ash screamed all the way there. When Penny’s mother split up with her other mother not long afterwards, Penny’s consolation prize was going to Disneyland in Florida. Parents did that sort of thing. In fact when her own mother had turned up pregnant with Raymond, Minny had half wondered if she’d done it to distract them from Dad being gone.

  ‘Poor old Guts, he’s no spring chicken anyway,’ Nita said with a sigh. ‘Raymond’s doing his best to chase him into his grave, aren’t you? He spends most of his time hiding under Aisling’s bed.’

  ‘Reds under the bed,’ Ash intoned. Harriet looked at her. ‘Reds under the bed, under the bed,’ she whispered to herself.

  ‘Aisling,’ Babi said, ‘not the reds again, please.’ Babi had a thing about that particular phrase because she said none of them had enough awareness of their Czech heritage, and what the Communists did there and all that. But it was just sounds to Ash.

  ‘So, Maude,’ their father said, sipping his tea at Granny, ‘where’s Harold today?’

  Nita and Harriet both looked at him.

  ‘If that’s a reference to Franklin, Desmond, then it’s over my head, but he’s visiting his mother this afternoon.’

  ‘Oh yes? Dropping off your TV, is he?’

  ‘Franklin’s become a good friend of the girls, all over again,’ Nita said loudly.

  ‘What?’ He looked at her, and them. ‘What do you mean? He’s only been with Ma a week, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, but he’s been round, and they’ve been round there.’

  ‘You are kidding me. After all the effort we went to, finding somewhere with a good school full of reputable families, and you start setting our daughters up with the Boy from Borstal?’

  Nita only half laughed. ‘Des, you are the most insufferable snob. And you shouldn’t talk like that in front of the kids.’ Ash was staring into space, but Selena was listening and frowning thoughtfully.

  ‘Sorry, sorry. You’re right. I need to get back into practice, don’t I, Sel?’

  ‘You should never have got out of practice,’ Granny said over Sel’s reply. ‘It’s disgraceful, talking about children like that. And Franklin’s a lovely boy.’

  Sel humphed a bit, but no one except Minny seemed to notice.

  ‘You should hear him, playing the guitar, and Aisling singing like an angel.’

  ‘All right, Ma,’ he said, giving Minny and Ash both a quizzical look under his eyebrows, ‘I’m sure he’s a saint. It’s just the idea of him living with you takes a bit of getting used to, that’s all.’

  ‘I don’t see why. We’re two lonely individuals: I had an empty room, he needed a home.’

  ‘Yeah. Though if you’re that lonely, I don’t understand why you didn’t just pack up and go back to Donegal a long time ago. Plenty of people there, and Tommy Feeney might rook you over the house repairs, but at least you wouldn’t have to worry that he was actually going to run off with the silver every time you left him alone.’

  ‘Oh, go home, is it, and abandon these children, the way you did?’

  ‘Stop it,’ Nita said. ‘Des, that’s enough about Franklin now. While he’s living with Judy, not to mention friends with Aisling and Minny, he’s part of the family, OK? You know, like you want to be.’

  The doorbell went. ‘Oh good,’ Babi said. ‘That will be Gil.’

  Minny gathered from her mother’s face that not even she had known Gil was coming round. Excellent. Still, why not. He came in and had to be introduced – by Nita; Babi wouldn’t lower herself to explain anything to Des. Or Harriet, or Granny. He bumbled around trying to find somewhere to sit; he did glance at the sofa as if he was thinking of squeezing on, but Ash looked horrified and Selena somehow managed to thicken herself instantaneously so that she was touching both Aisling and Harriet. Minny stood up in the end and gave him her chair so she could go and put the kettle on again. She didn’t linger in the kitchen; she didn’t want to miss anything. Her father was being quite good actually; he was polite to Gil and didn’t try to wind anyone up. Granny looked hilarious, studying him through narrow eyes. Then she caught Minny’s eye across the room and grinned.

  ‘We brought presents,’ Des said suddenly. ‘Nothing big, only chocolates. Real presents a bit later on when I’ve caught up with what you like now. Here you go – Thorntons all round. Milks for Selena and Minny, darks for Ash and Milena – I looked all round for a box of Black Magic for you, Milena, but I couldn’t find one anywhere—’

  ‘Dessie,’ Harriet said. Minny saw her mother glance at her and thought how strange it must be for her to hear someone else scolding Des.

  ‘And for you, Nita, something special …’ He handed her a gift box of Walnut Whips.

  ‘Oh,’ Nita said, taking them. Her cheeks, which were nearly always the colour of milk, flushed bright red.

  ‘They’re still your favourites?’

  ‘You haven’t been gone that long, Des,’ she said, trying to laugh, and then looked even more embarrassed.

  ‘Do you remember,’ Aisling said, and Minny knew it was going to be one of those devastating moments, ‘when you said Mum would do absolutely anything for a Walnut Whip, Dad?’

  It was horrifically embarrassing, one of those times when it could have been nothing, but actually it was like her words were a huge church bell echoing around between everyone’s heads. Just for a second of course. And the worst thing was that instead of being frozen by it like she normally would have been, Minny couldn’t stop herself laughing. She tried so hard not to, she got hiccups.

  ‘What about me?’ Granny said after a moment.

  ‘Well, now, Ma, I didn’t know you’d be here, or I’d have sourced some Raspberry Ruffles,’ Des said. ‘And I brought you that bottle of Jameson’s the other day.’

  Granny sniffed.

  ‘Anyway,’ he went on, as they all got tied up in cellophane, ‘there’s so many of us here now, I hope no one minds but I want to hear all about my girls. What you love these days, friends and all that. Selena!’

  Selena had no problem talking about herself in front of a roomful of people. Minny had sat down on the floor with her back against her mother’s chair; Nita pinched her between the shoulder blades because she was still laughing and hiccupping through a mouthful of chocolate. By the time she got herself under control, Sel
was telling her father all about how she got into feeling so religious – ‘because once I could read A Bear Called Paddington, I just read them all, and then the next book on the shelf was the Children’s Bible so I picked that up. And I really liked it, you know, the stories were really exciting, but it was, you know, a bit childishly written …’ On the sofa next to her Harriet was riveted, but Des suddenly looked up at Minny and smiled. And she smiled back before she could stop herself.

  ‘Of course some of it’s a bit scary – there are whole books where it’s all about people being terrible and horrible and God being angry and smiting them, so Mum makes me read a nice soft bit before I go to sleep every night. And then of course I say my prayers so that puts me back in touch with Jesus anyway.’ She took a swallow of her juice and looked over the rim of the beaker.

  ‘Well. Wow,’ Harriet said.

  ‘What a lucky thing the Bible was next to Paddington Bear,’ Des said. ‘Things could have been so different.’

  ‘I know.’ Sel nodded.

  ‘I’ve never known such a bright little girl,’ Gil piped up, managing to annoy both Minny and Selena at once, ‘or such a serious one.’

  Des looked at him. ‘Oh, there’s a joyful side to the Bible, isn’t there, Selena?’

  ‘There certainly is,’ Granny said, glaring at the heathen.

  Not many laughs though, Minny thought; she had to give that to Gil. Raymond had finished his milk on Nita’s knee and got down to crawl over to the fireplace where his jigsaws and things were kept. Granny pushed her chair back out of his way. They all watched him.

  ‘He’s gorgeous,’ Harriet said. ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Fourteen months,’ Ash said. She had just been humming in the corner of the sofa while Selena banged on.

  ‘Does he walk, and all that?’ Des asked. He had leaned back on his chair and crossed his legs.

  ‘No,’ Nita said. ‘Only crawling so far.’

  ‘He crawls really fast,’ Minny said. Her father looked at her and smiled suddenly again.

  ‘You like him, Minny?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, looking away.

  ‘What about you, Aisling?’ he asked her. ‘Do you like having a baby around?’