by Doreen Finn
‘Where?’
‘In town.’
For a split second Sarah’s forehead furrowed, then as quickly as it had happened, it smoothed again. ‘Be careful.’
Gemma’s tongue clicked with impatience. ‘There’s nothing to be careful of.’
‘I just worry.’
‘Well, don’t. It’s fine. Just some speakers and a glass of wine.’
‘Lovely,’ Sarah said again, but she didn’t really mean it. Occasionally, Gemma went to political meetings in unspecified locations. Awareness groups, she called them, where guests were invited to speak to those gathered, in the hopes of making the world a better place. Once it was about apartheid, another time someone came to lecture about the working conditions of children in factories in the Third World. The Third World was actually part of this world, but it was so poor that it was like a whole other world entirely. Another time there had been a meeting about Bolivia, and Gemma had been furious about that for days afterwards, which was why Sarah preferred her to stay at home or go to the cinema with her friend Ruth, whose father sold Gemma her art supplies at discounted prices. Ruth was nice, and worked as an art teacher in the city centre. Gemma said that maybe she’d like to be an art teacher herself some day, and Sarah said that if she wanted to then she should do it.
We closed the door behind us. The music started again before we reached the bottom of the stairs. Simon and Garfunkel. Ruth had given her The Sounds of Silence when I was born. Gemma said it occupied a very important place in her collection. The few other people who had given Gemma presents gave her baby clothes, but Ruth had said that Gemma needed something for herself.
I’d once heard Gemma say that she was lucky she’d been able to keep me. Sarah didn’t like my mother saying such things. Gemma sometimes got upset with Sarah, said that it was easy for her. She wasn’t the one who had doors closed in her face. Sarah hadn’t lost most of her friends from school. Sarah wasn’t the one who had left art college in her second year because it was too much, too exhausting to walk in each day and sit in classes after being up all night breastfeeding. I was her baby. She would take care of me. The art would work itself out. And it had.
People were funny about babies. They welcomed them, fussed over them, brought presents. They kissed them and told them how lucky they were. But there were words for them too, words for children like me, children with no father. Bastards, they called us. We who were born out of wedlock. Our mothers were whispered about. Our mothers who had brought shame on their families. Brazen hussies, letting themselves and everyone around them down. Then the cheek of them to complain. They made their beds, let them lie on them now. I never understood it, though. I was loved. Yes, my mother was tired, and sad sometimes, but she wasn’t ashamed of me. Why would she be? My mother loved me.
3
Gemma was sixteen when my grandfather died, so he never knew me. He suffered a heart attack getting off the bus one day after work, the week before his fiftieth birthday. Gemma didn’t talk about him too much because it made her sad, even twelve years after the fact. Sarah had carried on without him, because, she had often said, what else could she do? There were markers of him still throughout the house. His picture was in a silver frame on the sideboard in the dining room, another on the mantelpiece over the fireplace, and some of his books were on shelves, his name carefully scripted in fountain-pen ink. And, of course, there were the stairs.
My grandfather, helped by his friend Jim, built a set of wooden stairs leading from the garden to the kitchen when Gemma was little. The stairs were old now, and the bottom steps were broken, rotted through after too many winters of rain. The wood was black in places and splinters bared their teeth where the steps had fractured. The stairs ran up alongside the wall that divided our garden from Daniel’s and ended in a deck, also built by my grandfather and Jim. A set of double doors led from the kitchen onto the deck, where Sarah kept pots of flowers, and where we often sat on warm days, birds in our eyrie. Neighbours had objected when the stairs were built and the doors put in the kitchen wall, but nothing was done about it and it was soon forgotten, petty neighbourhood squabbles laid to rest amid the natural rhythms of urban life.
After the bottom steps were deemed too dangerous to use, getting into the back garden wasn’t as easy as it had been. Instead of descending the wooden stairs, we went through the garden flat. A door beside the kitchen opened onto the dark and narrow staircase to the flat. It was spooky, the light switch was stiff, and I always counted to ten before taking the steps two at a time.
Once the Jacksons had decided to take the flat, Sarah realised we would have to revert to using the wooden stairs to go into the back garden. We’ll have to get Jim to mend them, she said to Gemma. We can’t arrive downstairs on top of our new lodgers just because we need to go out into the garden. Sarah and Gemma were outside the kitchen as they discussed this, the doors thrown open to let the morning in. My grandmother touched the handrail with the feathery blooms of bougainvillea that twisted themselves around the wood. Your father would have been very impressed with his steps. I can’t believe they’ve lasted this long.
The Americans arrived in a borrowed station wagon with all their stuff the day after the viewing. They made three trips from the house they’d been staying in since their arrival two weeks earlier, the car each time ejecting its contents onto the parched lawn. Initials and contents decorated the sides of boxes. B clothes. C books. C books and papers. B shoes and books. C clothes. J clothes and shoes. C books. How many possessions could one small family need? They seemed to own twice as many things as Sarah, Gemma and I, yet Judith had said they left most of their things in New York. Already they had borrowed an extra chest of drawers, and Judith asked Sarah would she mind if Chris put up some shelves for his books, the ones he wouldn’t need for his office in the university.
That afternoon, Sarah and Judith sat in the shade, sipping iced tea from tall glasses. Already, change was taking place. Tea in a glass. Cold. With lemons. Later, it would be wine, chilled in the fridge, condensation wetting the label on the bottle. On other days there would be martinis, complete with olives lined up on a cocktail stick, or something else entirely: a margarita, with crystals of salt rimming the glass.
Now, I hovered at the edges of their conversation, reading a book. The sun had me in its full glare and my South American hat was nowhere to be found. Squinting made my eyes hurt and I put the book aside. A half-finished drawing of a bumblebee in a flower was wedged under me, and I pulled it out, smoothing its creases. It wasn’t very good, and I disliked finishing anything that wasn’t good. Normally, I loved drawing, and up in my room I had shoeboxes full of my pictures, all dated and signed, but lately I hadn’t been doing much art. It was the heat, I suspected, and the difficulty that accompanied sitting still in the sunshine. It was too hot to be indoors, and the patience I usually had for sketching had abandoned me. I crumpled the bee picture and threw it to one side.
Sarah’s gardening hat lay on the grass by the loganberry bush. Her transistor radio was wedged in its habitual daylong position in a fork in the apple tree. The dial was broken, stuck on Radio One, which was all Sarah listened to anyway. Something, a serial or drama, played to the quiet air. Someone called Johnny was having an argument with his mother over the girl he wanted to marry. Johnny’s mother disapproved of her because the girl was English, and Johnny asked his mother not to make him choose. No one was listening. I would have switched it off if I’d had the energy to get up and walk over. The heat lingered, paralysing us with its intensity. My mouth hurt from thirst. Judith offered me iced tea, but I refused. I never drank tea, not even the hot kind, and I certainly didn’t like the look of the brown liquid in the women’s glasses. It was like something Sarah would use to pour over the houseplants, a fertiliser or feed. The offer was not made a second time. Ice clinked in the jug as glasses were refilled. Presently, I began to regret turning it down. Out on the main road a car honked, the sound muffled by the houses.
I rolled over on my back, my hands covering my eyes. A dragonfly darted above me, its shadow flitting across the latticework of my fingers. I felt sorry for the insects, scrambling desperately for water. In the mornings and evenings, when I soaked the tubs of flowers, I splashed extra water around, trying to find shady spots where it wouldn’t dry out as quickly. It was old water anyway, so I didn’t feel guilty for wasting it. Daniel was always helping insects, and he didn’t think it was a waste of water. He left saucers of water around the garden and watched tiny creatures hover.
The doorbell jangled, distant inside the house. Sarah heaved herself out of her chair.
‘I’ll get it,’ I offered. Anything to escape the heat of the unmoving afternoon, the dust so thick on the dry air it was catching in my nostrils and making me want to sneeze. I wondered how my mother could stand the heat in her attic.
‘No, I’ll go,’ Sarah insisted. ‘It’s probably Jim.’
Jim was enlisted for all the jobs our small household of females couldn’t do. That afternoon he was coming to fix the steps.
The hammering of wood broke up the stillness. Judith gathered her things and disappeared into the hush of indoors. Cooking smells soon filled the air, new smells that were hot, spicy, different. Sarah picked up her hat and pulled on her gardening gloves. The radio drama ended, its signature tune fading into the news bulletin. A man read out something about Belfast, a car bomb, a British soldier. Dozens of bombs had exploded in Northern Ireland so far that year. Bombs in bins, under cars, outside shops. Bombs thrown at soldiers and soldiers shooting the bombers. Agents and double agents, spies and snitches. Sarah hated when I listened. A shadow crossed me, blocking the sun. I opened my eyes. Beth stood over me.
‘Hey,’ she said.
I pulled myself up onto my elbows. Beth didn’t wait for me to say anything. She flopped down on the ground beside me.
‘It’s really hot here. Not as hot as New York, but much hotter than they told us.’
‘What have you been doing?’
I wasn’t bothered, but felt I should ask her. Sarah always reminded me to be interested in what people said to me.
‘Oh, nothing, just putting my stuff away, but I got bored. My mom’s cooking chilli. She had such a job finding kidney beans. In the end, she just bought a tin of baked beans and washed them in the sink.’ Beth shuddered. ‘Ugh. All that tomato sauce mixed with water was gross.’ She shaded her eyes with her hand. ‘What a racket.’ She pointed at Jim. ‘Who’s he? Does he live here too?’
I followed her finger. Jim had paused in his hammering. His blue shirtsleeves were rolled to his elbows and he wore a hat to keep the sun off his face. Jim was as old as Sarah, but he didn’t look it. His hair wasn’t even grey and he was stronger than anyone I knew. He’d been my grandfather’s friend their whole lives. They’d lived next door to each other, gone to school together, and had remained firm friends as adults. After my grandfather died, Jim helped us with jobs around the house. Now he wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist, drank from a glass of water Sarah had left for him and resumed his work. ‘That’s Jim. He’s our handyman.’
Beth smirked. ‘So he’s not your dad?’
An ant tumbled over my thigh, followed by another. In their hardworking jaws, they carried crumbs we had carelessly strewn around. Crackers, bread, the odd biscuit. They scrambled on my hot skin, unaware of being watched. I let them. They distracted me. I pretended not to hear Beth when she repeated the question, but I knew she wouldn’t let it go. Already, I could see the kind of girl she was. Insistent. Confident.
She prodded me. I moved away, reclaiming my arm.
‘Jeez, Megan, it’s only a question. He either is or he isn’t. God.’
‘Jim is not my father.’
‘Okay, so he’s not your father. Big deal. I mean, there’s no need to just, I don’t know, disappear like that.’
Two more ants climbed across me, followed by three more. ‘I didn’t disappear.’
‘Yes, you did. You just got this funny look on your face and said nothing.’ Beth frowned in imitation, pursed her mouth in the way I knew I did, because Sarah mimicked me sometimes, if I was annoyed. Beth was teasing me, I could see that, but I wasn’t used to it, not by someone close to me in age. I had no sister and I hardly knew this American girl, this tall stranger with hair that glowed white in the crazy light of the early afternoon.
I didn’t say anything. The father question drove me mad. It was like the first time at school that the teacher asked us our fathers’ occupations. When it was my turn, I said I didn’t have a father. It was the truth, and it hadn’t meant anything to me until that moment. The teacher went pale and said not to be silly, of course I had a father, everyone did. She moved on to the next girl before I could protest. Other girls’ fathers were bankers, shopkeepers, dentists, plumbers, teachers, doctors, policemen. One girl’s father was even dead. But nobody except me said they did not have one.
‘Want to get an ice cream?’
I shrugged one shoulder.
‘Come on, I have money. I don’t want to sit here all day.’ Beth tugged my arm. ‘Come on, Megan. Show me your neighbourhood.’
Jim was finishing a step. He slapped it with the heel of his hand.
‘That one shouldn’t give you any more problems,’ he said, winking at me. ‘Just a couple more to do and you’ll be running up and down like no one’s business.’ He pushed back the bougainvillea that clustered beside the base of the staircase and wound its way around the handrail all the way to the top. My grandfather had planted it for Sarah after they’d been on holiday in Italy. Sarah said she had laughed, told him bougainvillea would never survive an Irish winter. It’s a Mediterranean plant, she told me. It thrives on sunshine and dry heat, not rain and cold dampness. But somehow, miraculously, it had survived, and it still grew, thicker each year. Now its blossoms covered the branches that wove themselves around the handrail, making themselves firmly at home among the pale wood and new, shiny nails.
‘Come on.’ Beth tugged again, this time at the sleeve of my T-shirt. I allowed myself to be propelled towards the house.
4
Heat rose off the pavement as we walked. Grass was yellow in the gardens. Flowers wilted in weary rows. Up ahead, the surface of the road lifted in a silver shimmer, like water. A mirage. We often saw mirages in the intense heat of day. Gemma said they were an optical phenomenon, which is something that your eyes think they’re seeing, only they have been tricked by the sun. Each time I watched out for mirages I was disappointed, yet they had a habit of appearing when I least expected and they were always a surprise, like this one. By the time I turned to Beth to alert her, it was gone.
The shop was twelve doors away from our house, at the end of the terrace. It had a name, News and Food, but no one used it because it wasn’t a very good name. Everyone just called it The Shop, and there was never any doubt as to which shop was being referred to. We went there every day to get the newspaper. Beth rattled the coins in her hand. I pushed against the hot metal handle of the shop door. The bell over the door jingled as we entered. The interior was dark after the mica-bright dazzle of outside. Mrs Brennan, the shopkeeper, wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, the fingers of her other hand pressed to the small of her back. Despite the dim light, it was oppressively warm inside, the smell of sugar overlaying everything. Sugar, with an undernote of newspaper ink and dust.
On every wall of the small shop were shelves, all of them old, painted over several times so that if you looked closely enough you could see the brush marks in the paint, and sometimes a bristle or two shed by the brush. Behind Mrs Brennan, the shelves held sweet jars, rows of them. Pear drops, bullseyes, cola cubes. Sherbet pips and lemon sherbets. White mice, pink, white and yellow bonbons. Humbugs and imperial mints. Boxes of chocolate bars, rows of sweets in tubes. Lollipops, chewing gum, penny sweets. Everything you needed to rot your teeth, Sarah said. Other shelves held dry goods, tins of
beans and peas, packets of soup and custard, jars of jam. Bottles of lemonade in crinkly orange cellophane. Balls of string, clothes pegs, boxes of nails and screws. Stacked on the floor were newspapers, some still tied in bundles.
‘Hi there!’ Beth stepped forward. ‘We’d like two ice creams, please.’
Mrs Brennan squinted at us. She smoothed her blue shop coat with the palms of her hands before slipping them into large square pockets. Mrs Brennan’s hair was combed neatly, her roots a grey inch along her parting. On her lapel was a Pioneer pin.
‘Is that yourself, Megan?’ she asked.
‘Hello, Mrs Brennan.’
‘Fierce heat, isn’t it? I think I’m going mad. Don’t know what to be doing with myself.’
A large fly buzzed on the counter. Mrs Brennan smacked at it with a rolled-up newspaper and missed.
Beth dug into the chest freezer and produced two wrapped ice pops. ‘How much are these?’
‘Three pence each.’
‘I’ll take two.’ Beth laid the coins out on the counter. Six pennies in a neat row. Beside the cash register were the cigarettes and matches, the pouches of tobacco. Mrs Brennan also sold individual cigarettes, for which she charged a whopping five pence each, plus a penny for a match. Sarah said that was just Mrs Brennan’s way of ripping people off.
Beth plucked a single cigarette from an open box. Players No. 6. The blue and green stripe on the white box, the gold lettering. No one in my family smoked. Sarah said it could kill you. ‘This too, please.’ My mouth must have fallen open slightly, for I saw Mrs Brennan look from me to Beth and back again.
‘Is that for your mammy?’ she enquired. ‘Or your daddy?’
Beth swatted the question away with an impatient hand. ‘Oh, it’s for my mom. She’s trying to quit.’
‘Well now, isn’t it well for her to try? Will she take a match with that?’