by Alex Barclay
Murph nodded. ‘Yes. I’ll get a grip.’
Edie smiled. ‘Good. You should be enjoying yourself.’
‘I am!’ said Murph. ‘I was! You can’t leave me alone for a minute …’
Edie pulled open the door a fraction, and as she slipped through it, she paused and turned back. ‘Oh – and please keep that to yourself, OK?’
Murph watched her hand slide down the door and disappear as it closed behind her.
Helen lay in bed, with an upturned book on her chest, staring at the ceiling.
There was a knock on the door. ‘Helen! Helen! Are you awake? It’s Murph!’
She turned towards the door. ‘Yes. I’m in bed. But come in!’
He pushed the door open. ‘It didn’t feel right. The birthday girl. Are you lonesome?’ He paused. ‘Or were you dying to get away from us?’
Helen laughed. ‘I was … I actually was lonesome.’
‘Well, that’s shite.’ He looked around the room. ‘This is fabulous.’ He looked down at her. ‘Can I come in for a cuddle?’
Helen laughed. ‘You’re mental. Of course you can.’
He hopped on to the bed beside her, and shifted over. He put his arm around her, and she put her head against his shoulder. He gave her a squeeze.
‘What are you doing down here?’ said Helen. ‘I hope I didn’t break up the party.’
‘Well, I hope you’re not here thinking shite stuff about yourself. Seriously. It’s Happy Birthday. Why wouldn’t I be down here? Because you’re in a wheelchair?’ He looked over at it. ‘Do you want to go for a spin for the craic? In your nightie.’
She laughed. ‘Murph, I love you.’
‘Good! Because I love you too!’ He kissed the top of her head and put his hand against her cheek. ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘what’s this? Not tears.’
Helen let out a shaky sigh. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t apologize to me,’ said Murph.
‘Look at this place,’ she said.
‘I know!’ said Murph. ‘All down to you.’
She laughed. ‘Not all down.’
‘All the important bits,’ said Murph. ‘All the award-winning bits.’
‘I … I …’ She started to cry. ‘I don’t want to be an expert in this.’
Murph, his head against hers, closed his eyes at the words and held her a little tighter. ‘I know, pet. I know.’
‘I was an expert in adolescent psychiatry,’ said Helen. ‘I was a director of nursing, I gave talks to hundreds of people on psychiatric nursing, my staff came to me for advice.’ Murph handed her a tissue, and she blew her nose. Then she sat up a little straighter. ‘I’m still an expert in adolescent psychiatry!’
‘Exactly!’ said Murph. ‘You can spot young mentallers from a hundred feet.’
Helen sniffled and laughed. ‘The others were all talking about kids and anxiety earlier and no one asked me a thing.’
‘Ah, but that wouldn’t have been on purpose.’
‘No – I know,’ said Helen, ‘I do. And I’m not offended. Seriously. But sometimes it feels like … my slate is wiped clean. The wheelchair comes in, and steamrollers over everything. I am now the Woman in the Wheelchair. If someone wanted to narrow me down, that’s who I am. Do you know Helen? You see her around town. She’s the Woman in the Wheelchair. It doesn’t matter who I am or what I did. I was strong, I was fit. Now I’m Poor Helen and God love her and the Woman in the Wheelchair.’
‘You could go over there and be the woman in the wheelchair in the window and we could write a book about you.’
Helen laughed. They fell into silence. Murph kissed her head a few times. ‘I’m doing this for the view.’
Helen slapped him, and adjusted her nightdress.
‘Stop wrecking my night!’ said Murph, pulling her hand away.
‘Oh, Murph, I wish you were around more,’ said Helen. ‘I miss the craic. I’m so … I’m just at home all day, all night … doing what exactly? What’s the point of me? If I was gone, what difference would it make? You know when you read obituaries and they say “died surrounded by family”? What am I going to have? “Died surrounded by … eggshells”.’
‘That’s a good line,’ said Murph. ‘I’ll put that in the woman-in-the-wheelchair book.’
Helen laughed.
‘Listen – you’re not dying, and unless you fall out of that while you’re making your breakfast, there’ll be no eggshells involved. And if that does happen, you’ll die knowing you’ll have given me a brilliant story for the funeral.’ He paused. ‘Do you want me to do the eulogy?’
‘Oh God – do,’ said Helen. ‘Please do.’
‘Helen – or the Woman in the Wheelchair as she was known to most – made her last omelette this week. The Woman in the Wheelchair in the Kitchen with the Eggshells …’ He paused. ‘Speaking of which … I realized earlier: you know what Edie and Johnny could do? They’ve got a study, a kitchen, a conservatory, a Billiard Room, a library, a dining room … they could do those swanky sex parties … with a Cluedo theme. Lewd-o.’
‘You could be the spanner,’ said Helen.
‘That’s my girl!’ said Murph. He laughed. ‘Right – I better get back to the others.’ He slid his arm out from under her, and knelt up on the bed. ‘But I do want to say one thing before I go: most beautiful girl in the room tonight.’
Helen smiled. ‘Aw, thank you.’
‘My pleasure.’ He looked around. ‘Jesus, I could stay here now, happy out for the night.’
‘Why don’t you?’ said Helen.
Murph stood up. ‘Because you’re in a wheelchair.’
Helen burst out laughing. Murph danced across the room, then blew her a kiss from the door.
23
MURPH
Castletownbere, Beara
10 February 1984
Murph took the replica Aer Lingus plane from his bedside locker and flung it across the room. The only reason he had it was because his mam was dying, and his uncle had come back from America to say goodbye. Murph was delighted with the plane even though he was too old to play with it. But he didn’t know then that you could look at a thing – a toy, or a game, or a pair of pyjamas, or a pillowcase, or a coat in a wardrobe – and it could upset you. He only found that out when his mam died. And then he lay there thinking about how sounds can even make you sad – like bracelets banging off each other when someone was giving you a hug. And then he thought about smells, and decided they were the worst and the best of all of them.
Today, he’d been sitting on a bench in the square, because his dad was in the pub, and the Sergeant’s wife came up to him, Laura’s mam, and she was a lovely, gentle lady. And she asked him how he was, and he said he was OK, but he knew he looked sad, because he was sitting there, sticking his legs out in front of him, staring at his shoes. And she had crouched down in front of him, then, and said to him, ‘I’ll never forget what your father said once, years ago, before you were born. Did you know your parents waited ten years for you to come along? And your dad said to me: “Wouldn’t it be an awful shame if people thought myself and Nora weren’t a family because we didn’t have a child?” And well, that’s what I think now, Liam – wouldn’t it be an awful shame if people thought yourself and your dad, no matter what, weren’t a family?’
And Murph realized later that ‘no matter what’ wasn’t just because his mam had died, it meant ‘no matter how drunk your father is’ and ‘no matter how many times you’re spotted wandering around on your own’ and ‘no matter how many times people drive by the house and see one little shape on the sofa in front of the television’.
And he remembered that he was suddenly in Laura’s mam’s arms and it felt like it was an accident, as if you could slip off a bench and jump into someone’s arms and after she hugged the life out of him, she put her cold hands to his cheeks, and he could smell flour and apple skins and margarine, and he wanted to cry more, but he wanted to be polite. He started to think about his mother with her hands
covered in pastry, slicing apples so fast it was like a magic trick.
Three hours later, Murph woke to the sound of hammering on the front door. He sat up, his heart pounding. He waited for it to stop, but it didn’t. He went to his door, and opened it quietly, and ran across to his father’s room. He knocked on the door. There was no answer. He knocked harder. Then he opened it. His father’s bed was empty. The hammering on the door wouldn’t stop. Murph went to the landing, and hid behind the wall, and looked down at the front door. He could see a hand pushing through the letter box, and his legs started to shake.
‘Liam! Liam! Is there a Liam here?’
Murph frowned. He didn’t recognize the voice. But whoever it was, he knew his name.
‘Liam! It’s about your granddad! Open up!’
Murph thought his heart would explode from his chest. He ran down the stairs, slipping on some of them, then got to the front door, struggling with his shaking hands to open the latch. There was a man standing there – a stranger – and Murph was panicking now about opening the door to him.
‘Don’t worry, son – everything’s going to be OK,’ he said. ‘Your granddad’s taken a bit of a fall—’
‘He’s my dad!’ said Murph. ‘He’s my dad! He’s just old.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said the man. ‘He’s not making a lot of sense. He told me he lived the next house down, and he told me your name was Liam, that you were twelve and I—’
‘Where is he?’ said Murph, already running, in his bare feet and his pyjama bottoms, in the direction the man had pointed.
‘I was driving by, and the headlights caught him,’ said the man, following Murph. ‘He’s back there a small bit – I can show you—’
‘Dad!’ Murph screamed. ‘Dad!’ He almost ran out on the road, then turned, and started running in the pitch dark. ‘Dad!’
He stopped when he saw the top of his father’s head, and the strips of his grey hair half across it, half falling down. He was lying curled on his side in the ditch, his black wool coat around him.
Murph rushed to him, and collapsed on the grass beside him. He took his head gently in his hands, and turned it up towards him.
‘Daddy!’ he cried when he saw the blood, and the grazes down his face. He could hear the fright in his voice and it frightened him more and he burst into tears. ‘Are you alive? Dad! Are you alive?’
He put his ear to his father’s mouth, and he could feel his breath against it, and he went dizzy with relief. He hugged his head, then his chest, and then he lay his head against it. He could feel his father’s shoulder shift, and his arm fell down heavy across his back. Murph closed his eyes and hugged him tighter.
His father patted his back. ‘Liam,’ he said. ‘Liam. Liam. Liam.’
‘Yes,’ said Murph.
His father let out a long sigh.
‘You’re OK,’ said Murph. ‘You’re OK. We’ll get you home to bed. You’ll be right as rain in the morning.’
The man had come up behind Murph. ‘Is he all right, son? Is it bleeding much? The cut? He wouldn’t let me call an ambulance. Will I call an ambulance?’
‘No, thank you,’ said Murph, looking at the man over his shoulder. ‘Thanks all the same. He just wants to come home.’ He turned back to his father.
The man looked away, pressed his fingers into the corners of his eyes. ‘Let me help you with him, so.’
Murph sat by his father’s bed. There was a roll of cotton wool and a small basin with water and Dettol on the bedside locker. He started to pick the black bits of gravel out of the cut. Jerry was drifting in and out. Murph tore off some cotton wool, dipped it in the basin, and squeezed it out.
‘It might sting a small bit,’ he said, pausing before he put it gently to his father’s face.
Jerry winced, but then seemed to drift off. By the time Murph had cleaned the wound, his father was watching him with one eye and it made Murph smile.
‘It looked worse than it was,’ said Murph, patting his father’s arm.
‘You’re a great man,’ Jerry said. ‘You’re a great man.’
‘Aren’t you the same yourself?’ said Murph.
It reminded Murph of what people used to say about his father: ‘That’s a man you can rely on’, ‘That’s a man that’d never let you down.’ But since his mam got sick, and then when she died, Murph heard different things about his father: Jerry Murphy was ‘gone altogether’, ‘devastated altogether’, ‘in a heap altogether’.
‘She took his heart with her to the grave,’ he heard an old woman say outside Mass one Sunday. She didn’t realize Murph was right beside her. He wanted to turn around and roar at her: ‘My dad tells me the whole time he loves me! No one’s dad does that! And you have to have a heart to love someone, so it’s not in any grave! It’s inside his chest! And Mam had the biggest heart in the world, and people with big hearts don’t usually steal things in the first place, plus she’s probably up there now handing out bits of it to the angels if they’re stuck.’
Instead, he made his eyes look scared, turned to the old woman and said: ‘I heard every Valentine’s Day, it comes back to haunt him.’
Murph sat in silence for a moment, watching his father’s chest move up and down. ‘Is it I’m too much trouble for you?’ he said. ‘Without Mam here?’ He waited for an answer, shoulders rigid, heart pounding. ‘Because I’ve no problem … it’s as easy to make two sets of sandwiches in the morning as it is to make one.’ He remembered Laura’s mam. Wouldn’t it be an awful shame if people thought we weren’t a family? Wouldn’t it be an awful shame? Murph wiped his arm across his eyes, and under his nose.
‘I miss Mam,’ Murph said, then. He didn’t mean to.
His father nodded, and he kept nodding, and his head was loose on his neck. ‘The auld … bitch,’ he said.
Murph’s heart closed like a fist, then burst to fill his chest and pound against it.
‘Cuh … cuh, cuh …’ sobbed his dad. ‘Consolata …’
Murph let out a breath.
‘Telling everyone,’ said his father. ‘Telling everyone …’
Murph felt his gut twist, because he didn’t want to know what Consolata was telling everyone, because it can’t have been good, and it could travel so far.
‘Saying … I’d done a bad job up above …’ said his father, ‘that I couldn’t be relied on, that I was too … too … fond of the drink … that … that … I was a wreck altogether …’
‘What?’ said Murph, because he knew that when his dad was working, he worked hard, and he didn’t drink. He only drank with the loneliness of the house around him.
His father nodded. ‘Told people … I was …’ He shook his head. Then his forehead crumpled, and he raised a limp hand to cover it. Murph’s heart started to pound again. His father let his arm fall to his chest, and when he looked at Murph, it was like he wasn’t seeing him any more, that he’d forgotten he was there, because then he mentioned Rosco, and that was too much at this stage.
‘And …’ said his father, his head rolling away from him. ‘… Rosco.’
Murph wanted to run now, at the thought he might hear something upsetting. Now his father was gripping his hand, and looking at him again. He put his other hand to Murph’s cheek. ‘… gone,’ he said. ‘Gone.’
And then his chest seemed to collapse in on itself, and his shoulders shook, and he let out a terrible sob. ‘… And the child,’ he said, sobbing again ‘… and the child without …’ His breath heaved. ‘And the child … without a …’
Mam, Murph was thinking. Mam.
Rosco had been missing for five weeks. And every morning since, Murph woke up, thinking this was the day Rosco would come running up the drive and jump into his arms with the absolute confidence that he would always, always be caught.
But there was something about the way his father said ‘gone’ that told Murph tomorrow morning, things might be different.
24
Edie was standing in the window of the Billi
ard Room, her cheeks flushed, fanning her face with her hand. The rain was loud as it pounded on the windows, intermittently quietening when it was whipped in a different direction by powerful gusts. Edie looked at her reflection in the window and adjusted her hair. She went to the door and opened it gently, pausing on the threshold before going into the hallway and turning right. She walked down to the entrance hall, opened the door of the honesty bar and stuck her head in.
Laura was standing in front of Johnny’s photo wall, holding a black-and-white photo of him in her hands. She looked up at Edie and laughed. ‘It fell,’ she said. She held up the torn string at the back of it.
Edie laughed. ‘Well, I didn’t think you were standing there admiring it.’
‘Lucky it didn’t break,’ said Laura.
‘I know,’ said Edie. ‘The symmetry would be all off.’
Laura handed it to her. Edie put it on the floor against the wall.
‘Where’s Murph?’ said Laura.
‘He was here last time I saw him,’ said Edie. ‘God knows.’
‘Is Clare not with you?’ said Laura.
‘I left her in the library,’ said Edie. ‘I presume she’s still up there.’
Laura looked around the room. ‘You did a fabulous job on the place.’
‘Thank you,’ said Edie. ‘Are you OK for a drink?’
Laura tapped her glass. ‘I helped myself.’
‘I hope so,’ said Edie. ‘I don’t feel like I’m being a very attentive hostess tonight.’
‘Jesus – relax,’ said Laura. ‘We’re happy out.’
‘I have to find Johnny,’ said Edie. ‘What do you want to do? I feel bad leaving you here on your own.’
‘Do you have any idea how rare it is for me to have a room to myself?’ said Laura. ‘I have the three of them following me around the place the whole time. None of them can make a decision by themselves. “Mammy, can I?” whatever. “Laura, can he?” whatever. “Am I allowed?” this, that, and the other. It would do your head in.’
‘I know,’ said Edie. ‘They’re helpless.’
‘I was watching this programme about people who go into cults and they have to be deprogrammed when they come out and I thought: Someone needs to set something like that up over here for men whose mammies did everything for them. Frank’s mother made a balls of him.’