by M. J. Hyland
‘The sea’s down that way,’ she says.
‘We’ll walk back that way later.’
‘But it’s such a beautiful day. You said so yourself.’
‘It’s better if we catch the bus to town first and then come back.’
‘I’m not an old woman yet,’ she says. ‘I’m well able to walk.’
‘You could run a marathon,’ I say.
She laughs and punches my arm, soft, affectionate. And now she’s got the laughter going she’s got trouble stopping. My father hardly ever laughs, only snorts as though he’s criticising something. I’ve never minded her laughing.
I smile at her.
‘You sound like the seagulls,’ I say.
‘It’s nice to be near the sea, isn’t it?’
‘That’s why I came.’
She looks down the road. There’s no sign of a bus.
‘Why did you leave?’ she says.
‘I’d left the tap on upstairs.’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ she says.
I say nothing.
‘Don’t treat me like a fool,’ she says. ‘You know I’m not.’
My mother collects porcelain animals and she always gets them on birthdays and at Christmas. She’s got hundreds of them and she dusts them every other Saturday afternoon.
I came home from the pub one night and she was sweeping up broken bits from the living room floor.
My brother Russell was helping.
‘What’s gone on here?’ I asked.
Russell took me to the kitchen.
‘Dad lost his temper and he went and threw two new horses against the wall.’
I went back into the living room and looked at my mother. She was down on her knees, collecting small shards and she turned and looked at me.
‘He did it right in front of her,’ said Russell.
Dad’s temper must have been bad for Russell to speak against him. They’ve always stuck together.
And now, as we stand by the stone bus-shelter and wait, I see that same look on my mother’s face.
‘I want to know why you left home,’ she says.
‘I told you why. I left because of this new job. I’m not going over it again.’
‘You left in an awful hurry,’ she says. ‘You only gave us a day’s notice and we hardly had time to say a proper goodbye.’
I say nothing. She moves her handbag from one hand to the other.
‘And what about Sarah? We were all very sad to hear about that, you know.’
I shouldn’t have told them about Sarah. I could’ve lied and said it was my idea to finish it.
‘End of story,’ I say.
She looks at a bus travelling the other way as though she plans to go into the middle of the road and wave it down and ask the driver to turn around.
‘We could be waiting here a month,’ she says, ‘let’s walk.’
‘What did you talk about while I was upstairs?’
‘Nothing you’d be ashamed of.’
‘So what was said? What did you talk about?’
‘Those two lovely young men told me how much they enjoy living in the house.’
‘That’s good.’
‘They said you’re fitting in very well.’
‘Fitting in?'
‘Getting along.’
She puts her hand on my arm.
‘The good-looking one,’ she says, ‘the dark-haired one with the cigarette behind his ear—’
‘Shaun Flindall.’
‘He’s very good-looking, but I’m not sure that he knows it. He seems a bit biddable, the way he hangs off every word of the other one. The blond one. I’d bet he’d steal the blond one’s personality if he could.’
She thinks what I think. It’s pretty much always been that way. But I can’t say this now. Not now. She can’t stay here. She’s got to go home.
‘And the blond one? What’s his name? I’ve forgotten.’
‘Ian.’
‘He studied maths at Cambridge. He’s very self-assured, one of those arrogant but friendly types. A strange one, but at least you’ll not be bored.’
‘I know.’
She looks down the esplanade for the bus. There isn’t one.
‘They’re both quite posh.’
I say nothing, don’t even smile. I don’t want to be hard on her, but she’s left me no choice.
‘And Bridget’s building a boat.’
‘I know.’
‘What kind?'
‘A clipper,’ I say, though I wouldn’t know a clipper if I fell over one.
‘Maybe she’ll take you sailing in it when it’s finished.’
I sit up the back of the bus.
‘Why sit up the back where the hooligans sit?’ she says.
‘I get sick up the front.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
I’ve left a space between us and she puts her handbag there and looks at it as though to check if it’s comfortable.
‘I wish you hadn’t left in such a hurry,’ she says.
‘Is that why you followed me here?'
‘You left with hardly any warning. You just walked out. You broke it off with us.’
She thinks she understands it, but she doesn’t. She thinks I was hurt by Sarah and so decided to hurt them. That’s not it. I left so I could start again. I don’t want her thinking I need her.
‘You shouldn’t have followed me here.’
Two old women get on with tartan shopping carts and, even though there’s a whole empty bus, they sit two rows in front of us.
‘I was hoping we could talk in your room at the boarding house,’ she says. ‘I was hoping to see your room.’
‘You can see it later.’
She won’t see it later. As soon as I’ve finished with her, she’ll get straight on the next train.
‘Why don’t we go down to the sea?’ she says. ‘We could get an ice-cream.’
‘Haven’t you just eaten a packet of biscuits?’
‘I had two biscuits. You’re a terrible exaggerator.’
She’s right.
I say nothing.
We get off the bus at the top of the main street and I take us in the direction of the station, but I stop outside the pub I saw yesterday, two doors down from the cinema.
‘It’s too early for the pub,’ she says.
‘Is it?'
‘You’re not drinking at this hour.’
She sits on the bench outside the pub.
I don’t sit.
She opens the clasp of her handbag, takes out a tissue. ‘Let’s go to the sea. It’s only just over there.
Let’s get some fish and chips and watch the waves.’
She’s spoken now like a small girl and I wish I could join her in the fun.
‘I’d rather not,’ I say.
‘Let’s find a café then.’
‘I fancy a pub meal,’ I say. ‘I didn’t get to finish my breakfast.’
She looks round the street but the only witnesses are the two old women with tartan shopping carts from the bus and a man walking a small white dog and, across the road, two teenage boys leaning on either side of a pole, smoking cigarettes.
The end of a hot summer, a seaside town, and it’s nearly deserted.
‘Look,’ she says, ‘I think there’s a café over there. See? Just past the pharmacy.’
I want to speak and not to speak. I want the both, for it to be better than it is, and to make it worse so as she’ll leave. If I could be alone with her, alone in a room, not in the street, not where we can be seen, then I’d want the chat with her. I’ve never minded the chat. But I don’t want to start here with her walking too close beside me.
‘Let’s go there,’ she says.
She takes the lead and we’re crossing the road side by side, close enough for my arm to touch her arm. I don’t move away.
We go into the café, sit at a table near the window.
‘I want you to be a bit nicer to me,’ she say
s. ‘Can you do that?’
I want that too, but it’s not the only thing I want.
‘I’ll do what I can.’
‘Don’t be sarcastic.’
I look at the menu.
‘Why do you have to behave in such a contrary way?’ she says.
‘I’m not being contrary. It’s just that what you want isn’t the same as what I want.’
4
For my tenth birthday my parents gave me a brand-new Sting-Ray Schwinn because I’d topped my class. There’s only me and my brother, Russell, and he’s seven years older. He didn’t ever show any promise at school, left after his O-levels and he’s ended up working in the chocolate factory with my father and he’ll soon be the head parts-importer and he wears a shirt and tie, always a white shirt, always a blue tie, just like my father.
After the red Schwinn, my parents paid me even more compliments for doing well at school, but in the very next breath there’d always be jabs from my father about my mutant genes, about missing adoption papers and the whereabouts of Einstein at the time of my conception. I knew he loved me, ‘course I did—every night he used sit on the settee in his thick socks and watch the TV and have me sit up close and he’d put his feet on my legs and I’d massage his feet and then he’d do the same for me—but he got my back up with the hot and cold, with encouraging me one minute and teasing me the next.
Even without effort I was always close to the top of the class, and when it came time to sit the grammar school exam I gave it my best and passed easily and I think I did it because I could stomach the idea of failing even less than the idea of passing.
In my third year at the grammar, when I was fourteen—the year I noticed Sarah—I started getting the pains in my neck and shoulders and the dread of tests put knots in my gut.
And then, one weekend, the Schwinn’s gears got jammed and I took the bike apart and spent the whole day and half the night building it again. When I’d put it back together, it was perfect. I danced around in my bedroom all light-footed and shadow-boxing like Muhammad Ali.
I started reading mechanics magazines. At first I borrowed them from the library, but then I saved some of the money I earned working on Saturday mornings at the corner shop, and I bought my first tools too, started my toolkit with adjustable spanners (a ten inch and a six inch), needlenose pliers and side cutters, then I got a set of box spanners, a ball peen hammer with a flat cold chisel, and a centre punch and some multi-grips. I knew what I needed and liked looking for the best pieces.
A few months before I fixed the Schwinn, I’d told my mates Geoff and Daniel that I wanted to run off to join the French Foreign Legion after school, or maybe as soon as I turned sixteen. I don’t know why I told them. I wasn’t even sure it was something I wanted to do, but I wanted to want to do something and maybe I wanted them to see me as a bit tougher.
Geoff liked the idea too and went off to ask his uncle about what kind of man could get into the Legion and his uncle told him all about it and also told Geoff that I wouldn’t make the height requirements and it turned out he was right.
The night I’d spent fixing the Schwinn had given me a good confidence boost and I didn’t care so much about the Legion any more.
The next Sunday I went round to my gran’s house to share the good news. She always took my side in things and she said I had a good spirit and my father and my brother were like ‘two tall drinks of water’, but that there was nothing watery about me.
She took me to Dublin with her for a weekend when I was twelve, just me and her. We stayed in a hotel near Phoenix Park and we went down to the sea.
As soon as I was standing inside her hallway, I said, ‘Gran, I think I want to be a mechanic.’
‘And why do you think that?’ she said.
‘Because I fixed my bike last weekend and it was fun.’
‘Fun is good,’ she said, ‘but what makes you think it’s what you want to do with your life? There must be more to it.’
‘I don’t know how to say it.’
‘See if you can.’
She waited.
‘When I was doing it,’ I said, ‘the time flew like magic, like the world didn’t exist. I thought I’d only spent an hour doing the fixing, when it turned out it was the whole afternoon. And when I was doing it, I didn’t have any worries about school or anything. And the pains were gone.’
She didn’t say anything, just opened her arms and gave me a good strong look and waited for me to embrace her, and when she was holding me she said, ‘Dear Patrick, you’ve found the thing you love to do.’
She took hold of my hand then and we went in and sat on the soft blue settee and had cake and tea by the fire. It was lashing rain outside and her cat Samantha sat on my lap and we spent a very good day.
When it got dark, she had a brandy and let me take a few sips and she taught me how to play gin rummy and how to bluff at poker.
When it was time to go, I asked her to keep what I’d told her a secret.
‘Of course,’ she said.
‘I’m not even going to tell Geoff and Daniel,’ I said.
She took hold of my hand. ‘It’s good to sometimes keep something completely for yourself.’
Then she laughed. ‘Except for me. You must tell me everything.’
She died two weeks later of a heart attack. She was sixty-five and she died on her feet. She was getting ready to go to Mass and she had her best dress and shoes on and she died, probably about to go to the dressing-table to finish putting powder on her face.
When I got the news I rode my bike to the new estate being built around behind the chocolate factory and dug a hole in the ground and screamed into it. I screamed about how fucking stupid the world is.
When I left for university, my parents and Russell came to the train station to say goodbye, and my father called me ‘Professor’ and ‘Doctor’ and ‘Judge’ but he laughed and shot my brother looks when he said it.
I didn’t want to go to university but I didn’t want to stay at home either. Leaving seemed easier than staying on, easier than talking about why I didn’t want to go. They’d not like that I wanted to become a mechanic and they’d not understand it.
During the first term, I took up smoking, drank beer and improved my snooker game. I bought a set of arrows for the dartboard and played alone at night in the common room after most of the others were asleep or out on the town. By the end of the second term, I knew I was going to fail and my mood turned sour. I had stomach cramps and bouts of nausea and most days I slept till the afternoon.
My room-mate tried to cheer me up, saved jokes he’d heard down the pub or student union, but he gave up when I stopped him halfway through a joke to tell him I’d heard it before.
‘What’s the punch line then?'
‘I can’t remember,’ I said. ‘But I know I’ve heard it before.’
‘When’s the last time you laughed?’
‘Yesterday,’ I said.
I hadn’t laughed for a long time and his question unnerved me.
After that, when my room-mate came back to our digs at night, I usually went straight out, and it didn’t much matter where. I didn’t have anything to say to him and he’d stopped talking to me anyway.
I took long walks, drank alone, or played darts.
Near the end of final term, I saw posters advertising The Merchant of Venice, one of the plays I studied at the grammar, and a girl I’d met when I won a snooker game was acting in it. The night I won the snooker, she came over to congratulate me and told me her name was Amanda. She was with her boyfriend then, but I got to wondering if she might be single by now.
Next time I saw her, I told her I was going to see her play.
‘That’s great,’ she said. ‘Maybe you could come to the party afterwards.’
I went alone to the theatre, but soon as I went in, I saw some students I recognised from my dorm standing in the foyer. There were five of them, three girls and two boys, all dressed very smart. I felt
all right and thought I could make up the sixth member of the group.
I went over to them.
They reminded me of their names and I reminded them of mine and they did their best to include me. I wanted them to like me and it pleased me the way they counted me in.
‘How long does a show like this drag on for?’ I said.
One of the boys laughed and so did one of the girls.
‘Do you have to be somewhere afterwards?’ said the boy who’d laughed.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I just want to be prepared.’
‘You’ve just said the thing everybody wants to say but nobody has the courage to say,’ said the girl who’d laughed.
‘That’s because I’m nervous,’ I said.
She laughed again, but not viciously. It was as though I’d done something charming, as though they all liked me for being honest, as though it was part of a clever act I was putting on.
When we went into the theatre, the girl who’d laughed sat next to me, good and close, and she made movements like somebody snuggling up in bed. She draped her coat over her knee like a blanket and a bit of it went over my knee too.
I was bored by the play and a bit nervous about the girl and I stopped paying any attention for a good while, but that only made my restlessness worse. I wanted a drink to calm my nerves and thought I’d probably leave before the intermission and down a pint.
But when an actor on stage said:
I am a tainted wether of the flock,
Meetest for death; the weakest kind of fruit
Drops earliest to the ground, and so let me
tears came and clogged my throat.
I tried to swallow, but the tears forced their way and pushed through and even more tears came. I didn’t know why I was crying, but I cried as though I had good reason. I didn’t know then that a wether is a castrated male sheep, but I put my hands over my face to stop the noise my throat and mouth were making. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop the noise and tears.
The girl put her hand on my arm and whispered, ‘Are you all right?'
I got up without answering and left the theatre. When I got outside, I stood a while and I realised that I was waiting for the girl. I hoped she’d follow. I waited for a good while and it was cold. I let myself get cold, didn’t even move to keep the blood flowing, just stood and waited and waited for her to come.