by Tim Connolly
“I’ve got cash.”
“I’m on my way.”
Denny found his drink waiting for him. “That,” he said with measure, after his first sip, “is a decent pint of Guinness.”
“Didn’t know you drank the stuff,” Ellis said, offering his dad a smoke.
“You should go to Ireland and try the real thing,” Denny said.
“So should you,” Ellis replied.
“I’ve been. A Guinness in Ireland is a pleasure indeed. Might take you there myself. I’ll add it to my list.”
“When did you go to Ireland?”
“In my youth, a number of times.”
“First I’ve heard of it,” Ellis said.
“You don’t know the half of it,” Denny said, and sipped again.
When their glasses were empty, they took Des Paine home.
Denny O’Rourke gazed at the snowdrops on the front lawn whilst the estate agent showed the cottage to a couple from Chiswick. The couple were in their early thirties, had two young children and hoped to have a third. They said the cottage was beautiful. They understood it must be a wrench to leave. Denny listened politely and smiled his handsome, disarming smile, oblivious of its qualities. He found himself picturing the wife from Chiswick naked. This was not something he usually did. But he was doing it now. They made love and she was sweet and warm. Embarrassed, he went into the dining room, under the pretext of having to record something on the radio.
“It’s difficult for him,” Ellis explained.
Ellis had made a point of never using the fact that he had no mother for his own advantage. But now, consumed by the urge to touch this lovely older woman, he bent the rule by leaning forward and touching her forearm, as he added, “His wife died, you see.”
And by not saying “my mum died” he felt he hadn’t cheated too blatantly. The woman’s eyes shone pale blue in sympathy.
The estate agent called at two o’clock with an offer. Denny rejected it and said that if they offered the asking price the cottage was theirs. At three o’clock, the agent rang and said he’d never sold a house so easily. Denny suggested he reduced his fee to reflect the fact. The agent laughed nervously.
“You said it would take months!” Ellis protested.
“I thought it would.”
They drank a little that evening.
“Strangest thing happened today,” Denny admitted, when the bottle was empty, “with the woman buying the house …”
“Yeah?”
“Came into the dining room and kissed me.” Denny was as shocked now as he had been then. “Kissed me on the cheek, squeezed my hand and said, ‘Do take care.’”
Ellis was appalled. “Lucky sod! I fancied her rotten. I was thinking all manner of unsavoury things about her.”
This alarmed Denny. If he was going to start having fantasies about naked women in his retirement that was one thing, but he didn’t expect to be fantasising about the same women as his son.
Gary Bird opened the door to Ellis, revealing that he had grown to twice Ellis’s width and weight. His neck was as thick as his head. He looked at Ellis blankly.
Ellis gave in. “Hello, Gary.”
Gary seemed not to be breathing.
“It’s me, Ellis.”
Gary raised his eyebrows in an unusual display of animation. “I know it is.”
“Oh. Right. Long time no talk.” Ellis struggled on.
“Seven years,” Gary mumbled.
“Quite a long time considering we live …” Ellis faltered, gesturing weakly to the cottage opposite. “I was a bit of a git to you as a kid.” This was not the conversation Ellis had planned. “You probably think I still am.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Anyway! That’s not the point.”
“What is?” Gary asked.
“I don’t know if you’re in work right now but we need someone to help us pack and shift furniture all week.”
“Right.”
“You interested?”
“Yup.” Gary remained lifeless.
“Oh, good.”
“Two pound fifty an hour,” Gary gushed.
“Fine. See you eight thirty.”
“Nine,” Gary muttered darkly.
“By the way, feel free to apologise for breaking my nose and smashing my brain into my arsehole seven years ago,” Ellis said brightly, curious as to how Gary would react. He reacted by gently shutting the door.
Ellis woke to the sound of blackbirds fighting in the trees. After a week of working too relentlessly to think of time running out, and distracted by the bet he and Denny had made on whether or not Gary Bird would ever smile, the hollowness of his bedroom stripped bare reminded Ellis that today was the day.
“But we only just got here,” he whispered.
The words floated upwards to the attic hatch and dislodged it. Soon after, he saw the first spider poke its head out.
“I thought you’d make an appearance.” Ellis smiled.
The spider smiled back. It looked over its shoulder, nodded encouragingly, and another spider appeared.
“Hello,” said the second spider.
Ellis smiled at this spider too. The spiders launched themselves down on to the blanket that Ellis lay under, the strands of silk catching in the orange glow of first light as they twisted.
“Are you feeling sad?” one of the spiders asked.
Ellis welled up. “A little.” He shut his eyes and felt the bridge of his nose and the back of his eyes burn with a threat of tears. “I’ll miss you,” he whispered.
When he opened his eyes again, there was a sea of spiders at the hatch and a mist of them descending on drag lines to the floor. They gathered around Ellis, tens of thousands of them. Enough, it seemed, to lift Ellis up and carry him away.
“Ellis,” said one of the spiders, “we’ve watched you grow up and we’re very proud of you.”
Ellis smiled. “Thank you. Please look after yourselves when the new people move in. It’s going to be a dangerous time.”
“Goodbye, Ellis,” they called out.
Ellis shut his eyes and allowed them time to disappear so that when he moved he wouldn’t harm any of them.
“Goodbye,” he whispered.
He regretted his shyness with people when it came to taking photographs. He had photographed the village from every angle but he had not found the courage to approach people for their portraits. Tomorrow would be too late. Tomorrow, he would be an outsider. Year by year, with no photographs to sustain them, the people would fade from his mind’s eye without putting up a fight.
The family from Chiswick pulled up in the lane two hours early. Ellis and Denny peered out from Mafi’s bedroom window as if they were under attack. After watching his son march down the driveway and invite the family in, Denny O’Rourke bent down to check himself in the three-way mirror of Mafi’s dressing table and found himself staring at a blank wall.
When the moment of leaving came, Ellis defied his own resolution and went into every room of the cottage and tried to recall and wrap up all the years in his heart. It proved a futile and panic-stricken measure. His dad was waiting for him at the foot of the stairs and saw the distress on his son’s face. He held Ellis’s shoulders rigidly and steadied him.
“Come on,” he murmured, “let’s not mess it up now.”
He forced a smile and Ellis did the same. They marched out of the cottage into the courtyard, where the young couple were trying to keep out of the way.
“Time’s not a problem,” the woman said. “We’ll leave you alone for a few minutes and wait down by the lane.”
“Nonsense!” Denny O’Rourke laughed, more loudly than he’d meant to. “We’re not like that.”
He handed the keys to the husband. “It’s all yours.”
The woman moved forward to embrace Denny but he thrust out a hand to parry her move and they shook hands formally. Ellis stole a glimpse of the shape of the woman’s body as she turned and watched Denny walk a
way to his car. He shook the husband’s hand.
“I hope you’re very happy here,” he said, as sensibly as he could.
He turned his back on the husband and smiled his most endearing, most vulnerable, most motherless smile at the wife and, hijacking the sympathy she felt for his dad, embraced her.
“Look after your father,” she whispered.
Ellis sighed in her ear, feigned the onset of tears, and rested one hand lightly across the top of her buttocks.
“I will,” he whispered, and stroked her bottom once.
He marched away to the car. Denny was reversing down the drive before Ellis had shut the door. They pulled out into the lane and paused for a moment. Denny took a deep breath and turned to his son.
“Ready?” he asked him.
Ellis nodded. “Ready for everything.”
As they pulled away, Gary Bird emerged from his parents’ house and headed up the lane, without acknowledging the O’Rourkes. Ellis leant out of the window and called across to him.
“If you had smiled at me just once in the last week I’d have won the sodding ten pounds and split it with you, you miserable git!”
He pulled his head back inside and grinned at his dad.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said.
“Let’s,” his dad agreed.
And they were gone.
They went to a place where the night sky was orange and there were no stars. But it was available, and cheap to rent, and it was only for a short time, until Denny found the perfect place. The rented house sat in a large, directionless sprawl of modern houses on the edge of the town, which had no edge to it. A line of old walnut trees ran along the bottom of the garden and in the middle of them was a wooden gate leading into the last remaining field, a handkerchief-sized relic of open country. Tunnel vision, selective hearing and an optimistic disposition could give the false impression of being back in the village. Beyond the field, the houses and roads began again. One relentless hour northwards, they became London.
Within a month the walnut trees were green and their large leathery leaves fluttered in the breeze and their percussive sound veiled the drone of the motorway. Denny and Ellis looked at the orange glow that hid the stars from them and, for the first time, Ellis saw doubt impoverish his dad’s features.
“I think I might have made a mistake, dear boy.”
“The moment you find a place you love, you’ll feel differently.”
“I’m sure you’re right …” Denny said unconvincingly.
Chrissie arrived with a parcel for her dad.
“They’re not presents, they’re homework,” she told him.
Beneath the brown wrapping paper, Denny O’Rourke found The Times Atlas of the World and books entitled The Art of Independent Travel, Great Train Journeys of the World, Fodor’s Guide to New Zealand and a Jiffy’s Container Shipping brochure, in which were listed cargo ships that offered berths for civilians.
“How marvellous!” he said.
“Inspired idea,” Ellis muttered to his sister.
She winked at him proudly.
Denny positioned a table and chair at the kitchen window, facing the walnut trees. He set the atlas and travel books out on it, along with a pencil and notebook. He opened the window to a refreshing breeze, played his music a little louder than the sound of the road, and began to read.
Ellis spent the spring preoccupied by the number of months that were amassing since he’d had sex. He could think of no one in his current routine who would want to sleep with him. The suburbs seemed to drain away the potential for romance or lust, and for anything else for that matter. He was bored. What he really wanted and needed was to work for Milek but that would mean asking for Chrissie’s help and, right now, he didn’t want to ask her for anything. Something had changed between the two of them. The tenderness had gone from her, unable to cohabit with her ambition. She was businesslike in all things and injected competitiveness into situations where none need exist. Ellis hoped it was a temporary change in her and that things would return to how they used to be, but in the meantime he was bewildered by her need to belittle him.
Denny had viewed four small houses in four different villages but none of them was right. The villages were too enclosed and the houses lightless. He missed the cottage. He missed the way in which his village had allowed the sky in, right up to the doorstep. He loathed the suburbs that surrounded him. He sat in the living room and the afternoon clouded over without his noticing. He rocked gently back and forth, his arms folded across his stomach. He took the phone up to his bedroom and shut the door before calling the doctor and making an appointment for the next day. He went to bed soon after eight o’clock. Ellis brought him in a glass of water and put it beside his bed.
“I’ve never done this before,” Ellis said.
“What’s that?”
“Looked after you when you’re ill.”
“I’m not ill, just a little off-colour.” Denny smiled to back up his claim.
Ellis retreated to the door. “What sort of off-colour?”
“Just a tummy ache, that’s all.”
17
The week was slow and empty. Ellis noted with wry admiration his dad’s ability to navigate clear of the word ‘tumour’ throughout it. When the time finally came, he drove Denny to the hospital. Chrissie couldn’t. She had what she called “wall-to-wall meetings” all day.
Father and son were synchronised bravado. They wore identical smiles and the unruffled body language of the Invincibles and they ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ at the same houses in Country Life magazine. But, in Denny’s room, where hotel luxuries and medical equipment made a strange marriage, Ellis felt things change when Denny asked at what time the next day his son should collect him. The consultant looked amused, initially, then appalled.
“Are you aware of the scale of this procedure, Mr O’Rourke?”
Ellis watched the warm, confident smile evaporate from his father’s face and realised that Denny had not begun to grasp the enormity of the impending assault on his body.
“This is surgery many people make a full recovery from but you are having a significant portion of your bowel removed this evening. It is major surgery. You are not going to be going home tomorrow. You are not going to be going home the morning after that, not for a couple of weeks.”
“Why ever not?” Denny was stunned.
The consultant spelt it out. “Because you will be in a great deal of discomfort.”
Ellis was shocked less by the seriousness of their outing than by the discovery that his dad didn’t keep the unpalatable truths of life at arm’s length just from his children but from himself also.
“Do you want me to take you through any other details?” the consultant asked.
“No thanks,” Ellis said. “Send in someone funnier.”
Chrissie seemed more indignant than upset that evening.
“All of a sudden we’re talking about a tumour. You told me it was just a lump and they’d whip it out.”
Denny placated her. “Well, it is a lump … and, chances are, whipping it out will do the trick.”
“Chances! I want to know for sure!”
“Yes, dear girl, me too.”
“Think of it like this,” Ellis began, making his sister squirm at the prospect of taking his counsel. “It’s great that the GP noticed this lump and it’s great that Dad kept up his health insurance from work and it’s great that Dad’s in here so quickly and by tomorrow it will have been cut out. I mean, that’s what happens, this is the reality of people finding out they’ve got stomach cancer and having it successfully removed.”
“Don’t say cancer, Ellis,” Chrissie said.
“Thank God it’s in my stomach,” Denny said, “where there’s loads to spare and they can just cut it all out. If this was on my lungs or liver …”
“You’d be fucked!” Ellis said, trying to lighten things up.
Chrissie smiled, despite herself.
; “OK,” she retreated, “but don’t use the word cancer.”
They sat awkwardly and quietly, mulling this over.
“Isn’t that going to be quite difficult?” Denny asked.
“What?” Chrissie said.
“Not using the word cancer.”
“We’ve got to be able to talk about it,” Ellis said.
“OK,” Chrissie said, “but why don’t we choose a different word for the c-a-n-c-e-r? We could say TB.”
Denny was confused. “TB? As in tuberculosis?”
“Yes. It’s quick, medical and easy to remember.”
The room went quiet.
“I thought,” Denny said diplomatically, “the idea would be to replace c-a-n-c-e-r with something a little lighter.”
“Indeed,” Ellis agreed.
“Oh,” Chrissie said, confused. “OK, if you like. For me though, anything other than c-a-n-c-e-r is an improvement. That’s why I went for something catchy but still relevant.”
“How is TB relevant?” Ellis asked.
“’Cos you ‘get it’ and Dad’s also ‘got’ something.”
These days, Ellis and Denny found it difficult to know when Chrissie was being ironic and when she was being earnest.
“How about …” Ellis said, gazing at the ceiling.
All three of them thought hard.
“The disease,” Chrissie suggested.
“Again,” her dad said, “a bit dark.”
“You mind cancer but you don’t mind ‘disease’?” Ellis asked.
“Don’t say cancer, Ellis. The ‘thing’?”
“Too vague,” Denny said. “We’ll come a cropper the first time we are having a conversation about the c-a-n-c-e-r and also happen to mention a thing. All of a sudden, we’ll have two ‘things’ in the conversation and we won’t know what we’re talking about.”
“We just call it your condition,” Ellis suggested.
“No, sounds like I’ve got a rash.”