by Oliver Sands
‘Thanks …’ She tilted it to the light, ‘Breeda? You just holler out when you want another of those, alright?’
Breeda shook a pill from the bottle in her bag and lifted it to her mouth. The glass of wine in front of her was huge – it had been poured up to the 250ml mark. But wasn’t that what she’d wanted? She slid it towards herself and swilled.
A quarter of an hour later the wine glass sat empty in front of Breeda. She realised she needed to eat. She caught the bargirl’s eye and ordered a lasagna and a second glass of red, then looked down at her phone. The screen was a black mirror, smeared and newly cracked, and it reflected a pair of tired Looney eyes back up at her. How close she had come, missing him by a matter of days. If she’d only stood up to Nora sooner, if she’d maybe tried calling him again, or just left a proper message so he’d known it was his daughter looking for him. Mrs Bennett’s words came back to haunt her now – he got spooked – by Breeda’s stupid phone call from the strand. And now with thoughts of the strand bubbling up from her past Breeda shifted on the barstool and felt her eyes moisten. What she wouldn’t give to be able to wind back the years and find herself at the little yellow caravan with the brown stripe around the middle, her dad hoisting young Breeda up on his strong shoulders, as they went off for fish and chips and a ride on the waltzer. But she’d stuffed it up – she’d let him slip through her fingers. Breeda flipped the phone over – sick of the sight of herself – and lifted her wineglass to her lips.
By the time she pushed her empty plate away twenty minutes later the bar was deafening. Bodies bumped her as she sat slouched on her stool. People shouted and laughed, a cheery Friday buzz to which Breeda was impermeable. And it occurred to her as she sat there that wherever she went in life she would always be the awkward loner, out of step with the rest of the world, a bad smell for people to smile through and ignore. A different bar tender, an older lady with a web of smoker’s lines around her mouth, lifted the plate and empty glass away.
‘Did you want a look at the dessert menu?’
The woman wiped the bar, the smell of her stale cigarette smoke drifting towards Breeda with every movement. Breeda thought she saw the woman’s eyes rove over her bumps and tummy. She sat up straight.
‘Cheesecake.’
‘Good choice. Another wine?’
‘Please.’
The yeses and pleases were tripping easily off Breeda’s tongue that evening. She checked her phone again. It had just gone seven and she still hadn’t sorted out a hotel. The combination of the food, the fire, and the wine was numbing her brain. She leaned forward on the bar as the third glass of wine was set in front of her. She should have ordered a coffee, but instead she took a gulp of the wine. It felt heavy and sickly on her tongue. She took another swig.
People eager for drinks had now nudged in either side of her. A guy on her right was waving a fifty-pound note. He seemed to know the chap on her left and was bellowing something across Breeda’s head. The bar had become stifling and suffocating and Breeda had had enough. The older bar woman, Smoker, was coming out of the kitchen at the far end of the bar. She was carrying an over-sized white ceramic plate and Breeda could see faces along the bar turn to admire it, curious as to the identity of the lucky recipient. Breeda felt a sudden sense of dread, allergic to any attention. She willed the woman to stop, for the plate to be for someone else. But Smoker advanced and Breeda lowered her gaze, a low panic taking hold. The plate landed in front of her and she found herself looking at a slice of cheesecake drowning under a syrupy slash of raspberry coulis. Around her the chatting had subsided. She could sense them looking at the desert, then looking at her, their thoughts as loud as if they’d shouted in her face.
No wonder you’re a porker, putting it away like that.
If only someone – anyone – would give her a friendly nudge, encourage her to enjoy it, tell her that you only live once. She needed some kindness, some niceness, someone to tell her she was OK. But the silence stretched around her, heavy with a million micro-judgements. She forced herself to sit up straight, doing her utmost to ignore the heat in her face. Two small forkfuls and she could pay the bill and get out of there. She picked up the fork while the bodies continued to press against her, the waved banknotes hovering inches from her face.
Her eye was drawn to something on the plate - a flourish on the wide rim. She craned her neck but had to slowly turn the plate to read it. Someone in the kitchen had piped something in a chocolate swirl.
Smile!
One word – Smile! She should have known that it wouldn’t take much. She continued to sit without blinking and stared at the dark letters on the edge of the plate. It was welling up now, and she was too spent to fight it. The first tears arrived silently, without any fanfare, no warning to the people around her. Maybe on a better day she’d be able to read Smile! on a plate and interpret it as intended - a nice flourish that the pastry-chef did for everybody. But not today. They were all back there in the kitchen, she knew it, snatching glimpses of the fat, miserable old cow and pissing themselves laughing at her. And why shouldn’t they? She was beyond pathetic. She was a screw-up, a reject, a wrecker of lives. Her shoulders started to heave in awkward spasms. Around her elbows were nudging, conversations were pausing, heads were nodding in the direction of the crazy woman at the end of the bar. The hush spread, people further away unsure of the source, but looking on nevertheless.
She needed out. Breeda tugged at the bag, struggling to release it from the hook, and stood abruptly. Already people had taken a step back, a need to distance themselves from the instability in their midst. The stool toppled and clattered on the tiled floor behind her. Now people at the far end of the bar had smelled blood and turned to gawp at the unfolding drama. She pushed through the sea of curious faces, her bag blundering after her. She managed to blurt out a couple of mangled apologies – her flushed face slick with tears and snot – and pushed through the door onto the wet street. The sense of embarrassment propelled her further, past a red mailbox and across a road, until at last she could stand on the corner of the pavement and gulp in the evening air. A black cab had just come down the hill and as it turned tight onto Regent’s Park Road its tyres found a pothole and sent a spray of murky water over Breeda. She watched the retreating taxi and then looked down at her soaked legs. The denim clung in patches to her thighs and calves.
She remembered her credit card – her only means of a hotel room – was still back there on the shelf behind the bar. She looked off in the direction of the pub and imagined the punters theorizing about the lunatic who’d just had a meltdown in their midst. There was no way she could show her face in there again tonight.
On the corner was the entrance to a park. She walked in and slowly climbed the lamplit pathway and near the top of the hill she found a bench a short distance from the path. She surrendered her body to it and looked out over the view rolling away below her.
A view over London from Primrose Hill.
Overhead the rain clouds had moved off, leaving only wispy patches in the night sky. The air was still and mild, and apart from the blinking taillight of a bike down below the park was pretty much deserted. Breeda stretched out her tired legs in front of her and let the lights of the cityscape in the distance distract her tired eyes. She squinted and the lights from the cranes, buildings and monuments stretched and danced over her retinas. She held her gaze like that, then closed her eyes, just for a minute, a need to suspend the reality of where she was and the trouble she’d caused. If only she could open her eyes and see the lights on the pier from her own kitchen window, with the trawlers bobbing out for their nightly haul. If only she could climb into her own bed, with Ginger balled happily at her feet, and pull the sheets over her face. She imagined Finbarr, banging and clattering on his roof next door, and a sad smile came to her face. Maybe if she kept her eyes closed now this could all just be a bad dream, and there’d be no harm done when she awoke in the morning.
She sighed s
lowly and her weary body sank further into the bench. She’d come to London looking for the missing piece of the puzzle, hoping to feel whole for the first time in her life. But now she felt further from herself than she’d ever felt before, totally alone and beyond exhausted. She toed off one shoe, then the other, and blindly scootched them over beside her bag on the ground. The background hum of the city played in her ears and she folded her feet up beside herself on the bench. Her limbs were like lead and her head had started to loll.
One minute. She would just close her eyes for one minute.
Chapter 34
Trixie’s little yelps chased Breeda through the narrow corridors of her dreams. The dog nipped at her heels and skittered in ever-decreasing circles, until at last it latched its fangs onto the hem of her jeans and tugged her back to a state of consciousness. Breeda woke up with a pounding skull, the barking now close to her head, and swept her hand to scare whatever it was away. She pushed herself up awkwardly on the bench, the daylight blinding, and squinted at the source of the noise.
‘Benji! Come here!’
A tall skinny man wearing tracksuit pants and a stripy jumper was calling to his miniature Schnauzer from over on the main path. He glared at Benji while he raked a hand through his hair, studiously avoiding eye contact with the homeless woman on the bench.
Benji lost interest and snuffled off back to his owner as Breeda swung her legs stiffly onto the ground. She could already feel a tightness in her lower back from her night of sleeping rough. There was a crunchiness to her left shoulder too and her mouth was parched. She checked her watch – it was nearly eight already. How the hell had she slept so long? She thought back to the Diazepam pill she’d popped along with the three large wines the previous evening - the equivalent of a bottle – and shook her head at her stupidity. Down the hill the last of a thin layer of mist was lifting from the lower part of the park. Breeda blinked in the view of London, familiar now in the light of day.
‘Oh, no, no, no!’
Her bag was gone. And her shoes – correction – one of her shoes was gone. She stood quickly and scoured the area around the bench. Nothing. Benji was disappearing down the path after his grumpy master and Breeda wondered if the little shit had swiped her shoe and buried it in a shallow grave somewhere. She sat again and rubbed her hands roughly through her tangle of hair, the memory of the mess she was in lying heavily across her shoulders.
Through the slats of the bench she could see her one remaining shoe looking up at her accusingly. One minute awake and already it was going to be one of those days. She patted her jacket pocket – at least she still had her phone. And then she remembered her credit card too, still back at the bar.
Looking down at the city again she imagined all the millions of people out there, wolfing down cornflakes and dashing for trains. She didn’t belong here. She’d been stupid to come. It was time to go back to Carrickross and face the music. She would lie down naked on a slab in the middle of Main Street and let them all have a go at flaying the flesh from her bones. Whatever they wanted her to do to atone she would do it. She rubbed a hand to her puffy face, doubting there’d be anything left to salvage with Nora. At the thought of her aunt an image of the old woman came back to haunt her now, Nora lying broken at the bottom of the stairs. Breeda let out an audible grown. What an utter shambles she’d made of it all. She stabbed her right foot into the shoe, then stood and clomped back down the path.
There were no obvious signs of life in the pub. Breeda banged on the door anyway and pushed her face up against the glass pane. She could make out the shelf behind the bar where her credit card would be. That card was her ticket home. And right now it would also buy her a pair of shoes and something to eat. A couple of workmen were drilling up the road a few yards away, their noise assaulting her brain. Breeda hammered louder on the door. From behind her, through the din, came another familiar noise. She turned around to find her old mate Benji barking up at her. On the other end of his leash the grumpy owner held a sourdough loaf and a carton of almond milk in his arm. This time the man did meet Breeda’s eye. He scowled at her with a withering look of disdain.
‘For goodness sake, woman! Get some professional help.’
He marched on and tugged yappy little Benji in his wake. Breeda stood open-mouthed, the sting of injustice burning her face. She felt a desperate need to shout after him, to tell him he’d got the wrong idea, but instead she turned away from the prick and tried to convince herself she didn’t care what he thought. She squinted in through the glass at the shelf once more, then decided she had no choice but to return later for her credit card.
She set off as evenly as she could, her eyes on the furthest point of the street. She was tired and sore and desperate to see a friendly face. As she walked, she remembered she was officially now homeless too. Breeda hobbled weakly onwards, any attempted bravado long gone. A few meters ahead a mother with a severe black bob yanked her daughter out of Breeda’s path. The mother glowered, and the daughter gawped, and Breeda looked down at her bare foot, grimy from the park and pavement. Her jeans still had flecks of mud from the encounter with the taxi. And no matter how hard she tried to pat down her hair it still stuck up at every possible angle. She caught her full reflection in the glass door of a boutique and had to turn her face away, ashamed at how she must appear to the Monday morning commuters of this respectable neighborhood. A small inner voice toyed with the idea of how deliciously freeing it would be to begin a long, slow descent into the depths of lunacy.
Familiarity guided Breeda’s feet once more and she soon found herself on his street again. His former street. She trailed her fingertips over the railings of the front gardens and tilted her head back slightly, exhaling a slow, deep breath. She was saying goodbye, acknowledging that she had come to the end of her quest. Overhead a crisscross of contrails etched the sky and Breeda stopped and stared up at the white lines for a few moments. Her dad was gone, just like all those passengers, off to new horizons and a fresh start. In the background an approaching train rumbled. She looked back at the pavement and walked slowly on, a little tightening in her chest the only telltale sign that she’d just passed a yellow front door.
She walked slowly under the railway bridge, closed her eyes and let her fingertips play over the bumps and grooves of the brickwork. Breeda imagined the stories these bricks could tell, wondered how often Mal Looney had walked under this very arch. The rumbling train was louder, but the bricks at her fingers divulged nothing of its approach. Beyond the arch sat a boarded-up old boozer. She spotted some glass smashed near the edge of the pavement – a pint glass, or a car window – and she skirted it. But a small shard managed to find her bare foot and outside a school she rested her hand on a railing and inspected her heel. A small piece of glass glinted at her through the dried mud on her foot. Behind her the noise of the train was louder still. But then, with a halting chill, she realised what it really was. Her knuckle whitened against the railing.
Not here. Not now.
Without turning around Breeda already knew that there was no train. She tightened her hand harder still on the railing and with her other hand groped wildly in her jacket pockets. The pills weren’t there – they were in her stolen bag. Her chest tightened, and she pleaded silently – maybe she could ward it off if she could just cling on to the physical realm. But deep down she knew it was useless. She’d been a fool, ignoring the background hum as it had stalked her up the street. It would no longer be ignored. The rumble was its calling card, the briefest of courtesies to let her know that old blackness was on his way.
Breeda put her foot down and winced as the glass jabbed further in through the broken skin. School windows stared down at her, a hundred pupils waiting in the wings, ready to gawk and point at the weirdo in the street.
She forced herself on, each step a struggle. But buried in the deafening static something else was fighting to be heard. She stopped and grabbed the railing again. Nearly drowned by the white noise ba
ttering her skull came something vague, something remembered. She closed her eyes and leaned into the railings, felt it wash away, then drift quickly past again.
‘Mentioned jetting off to Florida for a change of scene …’
Mrs Bennett’s words played through Breeda’s mind just once and Breeda clung to them and the deception they revealed. The faintest flicker of hope whispered in the distance: He might still be here. He might still be here. She turned and looked back down the street and now felt a shot of urgency in her veins. She wouldn’t make it back in time. But she had to. Through the railway arch she could still see the front of the houses. She put one foot in front of the other, the landlady’s lie fueling her back in that direction. Breeda’s eyes watered and her temple throbbed as she grabbed at the railings and pulled herself forward, her body moving in surges. Blindly, she stumbled, clinging to the weakest of hopes that she wasn’t too late. She forced her bare foot into the splinters outside the abandoned pub, anything to help her focus, anything to keep her from going under, just yet.
Snapshots scattered, and a million memories danced before her eyes. Her mind zoomed in, and there they were, at the strand once more. Their rainy family holidays at their little yellow caravan, and her father’s annual insistence that it was better than going abroad. And Breeda remembered clearly the whispered truth behind it all. Mal Looney had been absolutely terrified of flying.
Breeda bumped her shoulder along the bricks of the arch. The glass dug its way into new parts of her foot, but she stumbled on. The rumble was a roar now, closing in quickly. Meters away, the yellow door was still out of reach. But she lunged for it, fell against it, banged it three times with the side of her fist. But she was too late, had no fight left in her for the landlady. Her cheek was wet against the paintwork, and as the door opened she felt herself falling, saw the wooden floor coming up to meet her. A pair of hands cupped her head. But her vision was gone. The blackness was here now, and it washed over her and pulled her down. Only one word went with her; a man’s voice: