Home Stretch

by Graham Norton

  ‘To everyone back home, love Connor.’

  Chrissie could hardly get the words out before clutching the card to her breast and emitting a low moan. Dan got up and went around the kitchen table to hug her shoulders. He kissed the top of his wife’s head. Ellen looked away, embarrassed by this highly unusual display of physical affection.

  ‘Don’t be upsetting yourself. He’s a big lad. He’ll be doing grand.’

  ‘Could he not …’ Chrissie wiped her tears away with the sleeve of her dressing gown. ‘Could he not have told us something? A little note?’

  ‘Ah Chrissie love, that’s boys for you.’

  ‘I suppose,’ she replied, trying to calm herself.

  ‘Did you put a letter in with our card?’

  She looked up, as if reprimanded. ‘I did of course.’ Her voice was indignant.

  ‘Well then, I’m sure he’ll reply to that and we’ll get all his news. If anything bad had happened we’d know. No news, as they say. Isn’t that right, love?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘Now are you ready for your second cup?’

  ‘It’s in the pot.’ She stroked the Christmas card on the table as if it was the hand of a loved one.

  Ellen did her best to pretend that everything was back to normal but clearly things weren’t. The regulars had returned to the bar slowly over the past few weeks, like wandering cats returning home to be fed, but Hayes Bar was rarely what anyone would call ‘busy’ any more. Ellen would never have dared ask her parents about money, but she wondered if the sparse population of rogues and pensioners was enough to make ends meet.

  ‘Fierce quiet for the lead-up to Christmas’ was the most she had heard her father say about the state of the business.

  Up at the farm centre things continued as they had before the accident, though somehow Ellen found she enjoyed the whole idea of working less and less. She wasn’t sure if that was to do with Connor or if it was simply that the thrill she had felt at earning her own money had begun to fade. Folding plastic sacks, using the wide yard brush to sweep up the stores, or stamping ‘Overdue’ on invoices before sending them out for the second or third time, all just made her dream of college. Seeing Connor’s undistinguished departure from school two years earlier, leaving him without options, had spurred her on. She had forced herself to study and her exam results had been a pleasant surprise to everyone, including herself. The glossy prospectus for the Cork College of Commerce was permanently propped up by her bedside lamp. With the encouragement of her mother and the slightly less enthusiastic careers advice counsellor at the convent, Ellen had applied and been accepted for a legal secretary course, but what she really wanted to do was walk around the city with a gang of girls who knew nothing about her, laughing and smoking cigarettes. Increasingly, she firmly believed that if she could just stop being Connor Hayes’ sister, then everything would be all right. Her life could start again.

  It was the week before Christmas and the three other girls were moaning to each other about how busy it was going to be. As a rule, Ellen never initiated conversation but she found herself compelled to ask, ‘People buy presents in here?’ She looked around incredulously at the sacks of chemical fertiliser and displays of power tools.

  The eldest girl, Deirdre, gave Ellen a look that suggested she almost pitied her for being so stupid. ‘No. But every job they’ve been meaning to do all year suddenly has to get done for Christmas. I mean, what’s so special about Christmas?’ The others rolled their eyes in agreement as they buttoned up the green nylon housecoats that served as their uniform. It struck Ellen as sad that they found no joy or festive cheer. She had always loved this time of year, the pub busy every night, her parents tipsy and cheerful, the excitement of the parcels under the tree. It was a multi-coloured oasis in the grey wastes of a Mullinmore winter. Of course, it would be different now. It wasn’t that she missed Connor exactly, but she hated things not being normal at home. She had never looked forward to a Christmas Day less.

  She was in the back office on her hands and knees trying to untangle spools of electrical cable when Deirdre stuck her head around the door.

  ‘There’s someone out front to see you.’ Her face floated out of view.

  Ellen immediately felt nervous. This was a time for bad news, so surely this would just be more of it. Had Connor done something stupid over in England? Perhaps it was her parents.

  The last person she expected to see waiting at the counter was the doctor’s son, Martin Coulter, but there he was, taller than she remembered, with a long navy Crombie overcoat hanging loosely over his jeans and white sneakers. It gave him a slightly artistic air, bohemian even. His dark hair fell over his eyes as he pretended to be interested in a pile of leaflets about a sponsored Christmas Day swim. She hesitated. This was bound to have something to do with Connor. Unsure of how to address him – she couldn’t remember ever speaking to Martin Coulter before – she simply said, ‘You wanted to see me.’

  His head sprang up. ‘Ellen. Hi. Yes, I did.’ He was smiling at her in a way that relaxed her. This couldn’t be terrible news.

  ‘You’re well?’

  ‘Yes thanks.’ Ellen was surprised her voice emerged quite even and calm. ‘Yourself?’ This was what conversations between adults sounded like.

  ‘Great, yeah. I’m just back from uni for the holidays.’

  ‘Right.’ They smiled at each other. Ellen hoped he would speak again because she was struggling to think of another question.

  ‘Any word from Connor?’

  ‘We had a Christmas card there, so he must be doing grand.’

  ‘Great.’

  Another smile-filled pause. Ellen considered offering him assistance finding what he was looking for in the shop, because, well, that was the only reason she could think of for his visit. Martin cleared his throat.

  ‘Well, Ellen, the thing is, I have a couple of tickets for the Rugby Club dinner dance on Thursday.’

  Ellen wondered what this could have to do with her. He wouldn’t need a babysitter. What might it be? Her head tilted to the side like a dog trying to interpret what its master was saying.

  He pushed his hair off his face and continued, ‘So I just wondered if you’d like to come with me?’

  His invitation was so unexpected that Ellen thought she might have misunderstood the question.

  ‘Oh. I see.’

  Martin quickly filled the silence: ‘It might be awful but it might be fun too. But look, if you’re busy or whatever, no big deal. Don’t worry about it.’

  Did Martin Coulter actually believe for one second that she wouldn’t want to go on a date with him?

  ‘No. Sorry. No.’ Why was she flailing her arms? She put her hands on the counter to keep them still. ‘That sounds great. Thanks.’

  Martin looked relieved. ‘Great. I’ll pick you up around seven thirty? From the bar?’

  ‘Yes. That would be grand.’

  ‘Brilliant. See you Thursday night then.’ And before she had a chance to say anything else his coat was flapping its way down the wide aisle away from her. He was slim but his shoulders were nice and square. She liked the way he walked, full of purpose and confidence.

  All at once she was very aware of her shapeless uniform and her unkempt hair that wasn’t exactly blond nor light brown. What had just happened? She felt a little thrill of excitement and maybe, no definitely, desire. Deirdre appeared at her side.

  ‘What did the doctor’s son want?’ Her breath smelled of soup.

  ‘Well, he asked me to the rugby dance.’ Ellen felt her face flush. This information seemed very personal, intimate in some way. Not the sort of thing she would normally have shared with the girls at work.

  ‘Awwww, isn’t that sweet of him. That’s a nice thing for him to do.’ She patted Ellen’s arm and walked off, doubtless in search of the others to share the news that Martin Coulter had taken pity on Connor Hayes’ sister.

  Ellen felt like such a fool. Of course, that’s wha
t this was. A well-brought-up young man doing something nice for the girl who had lost her brother. He didn’t fancy her, he just felt sorry for her. This version of events made total sense, and yet she couldn’t help remembering the way he had looked at her. His smile. Ellen knew she wasn’t a great beauty like Sarah Mooney or Katherine Begley. She wished her hair was finer or blonder, and when she stood on the edge of the bath to see herself in the mirror, she did wonder if her legs were a bit short for her body and her hips a little wide but there was nothing weird about her either. She didn’t have a nose like Beaky or terrible heavy eyebrows like Liz Phelan. She liked her lips and while her eyes weren’t vivid blue, they were still pretty. Would Martin Coulter really date someone out of politeness? Maybe his parents had forced him to invite her, but he had seemed so sincere, keen even, or at least not someone being coerced into doing something. Deirdre was just a jealous bitch.

  A rapid clicking of heels on concrete announced the arrival of Trinny. Her uniform was so big for her she looked like a child playing dress-up.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, touching her friend’s arm.

  ‘Martin Coulter is after asking me to the rugby dance.’

  Trinny’s face beamed with delight.

  ‘That’s wonderful news. Why are you upset?’

  Ellen bent forward and whispered so as not to be overheard by the other girls. ‘He’s just doing it to be nice. He doesn’t fancy me.’

  ‘Of course he does. You’re gorgeous, you just don’t know it.’

  Ellen pushed her hair off her face self-consciously.

  ‘Well if that’s the case, why did he never pay me a blind bit of notice up to this?’

  Trinny put her index finger up to the corner of her mouth, like a drawing of somebody thinking. Then a smile. She’d got it.

  ‘Your brother! Maybe when Connor killed those people driving his car, Martin spotted the sister and saw how beautiful you are. I told you something good would come from all of this mess, didn’t I?’ She reached up to give her friend a hug that Ellen wasn’t sure she wanted. Could that possibly be true?

  If only her mother hadn’t hesitated. If only she had managed to arrange her features without the momentary flicker that betrayed her true feelings. The ‘Oh, isn’t that lovely!’ and wide, warm smile meant nothing, because Ellen had already seen the doubt. Her own mother didn’t think she was good enough for the doctor’s son. Head lowered to avoid revealing her tears, she turned and retreated as fast as she could down the corridor to her room. ‘Ellen, what is it?’ her mother had called after her. A door slam was the only reply. Ellen felt sick. She lay face down on her bed hugging her pillow for comfort. Her own mother! Clearly no one could believe that Martin Coulter would ever want to date her unless it was an act of charity.

  She would cancel. An illness would be invented or perhaps some family emergency. What did it matter? It wasn’t as if Martin would care; he’d probably be relieved. He could assure his parents that he had done the gallant thing, but the pitiable little girl from the pub didn’t want to go to the dance. He’d be off the hook and she’d be spared the public humiliation of dancing with Martin Coulter while he made faces at his friends over her shoulder. A pang of guilt pierced her worst-case scenario. Maybe he wasn’t that sort of boy, but the alternative was just as bad; people looking at the doctor’s handsome son as if he was some sort of saint while she was nothing more than an object of pity.

  Later when she heard her mother head downstairs to the pub, Ellen crept out and retrieved the phone book from the hall table. She quickly found the number for the surgery, along with the out of hours line which she assumed would be their house phone. Her mouth was dry. She should ring now, this very evening, because the longer she waited, the more difficult the call would be, but like a mist of delusion rolling in, she had begun to accept that she wasn’t going to pick up the receiver and dial the number. An internal counter-argument had begun. A side of herself that she knew was not her friend, a strange, as yet unexplored part of her personality refused to give up all hope. A tentative confidence whispered to her that everyone might be wrong. They couldn’t know for certain and maybe Martin Coulter was special. A man with the imagination to see beyond her nylon tabard and mousey hair. Surely men like that existed? Ones who were attracted by deeper, intangible qualities. The odds might be hopelessly against her, but that night, lying in her childhood bedroom, Ellen Hayes decided to take a gamble on herself.

  IX.

  The weekends were the worst. Monday to Friday, when he was working or spending the evenings sitting in Huskisson Street while the lads bantered and bitched, it wasn’t much worse than school. Connor had long ago learned how to blend into the background. Not so much that people thought you were weird or a loner but just enough so that people weren’t that aware of you. Laugh at jokes but never try to crack one. Offer to make tea but don’t ask questions. Only his freckles failed him and drew attention but being referred to as Dot instead of Connor didn’t seem so bad when he thought of some of the names they might have called him.

  On Saturdays and Sundays he felt he couldn’t just hang around the house. The others drifted off in noisy packs to find pubs that showed the GAA matches from back home, or places where they could observe groups of uninterested women. Connor didn’t want them to come home and find him sitting alone watching the small portable television or, even worse, reading a book. On a couple of occasions Connor had gone out with a few of the other lads. The first time hadn’t been too bad, apart from the hangover, but the second time they had all ended up in a pub with strippers. Well, Connor assumed they were strippers, though they appeared to have dispensed with the performance element and just wandered around the pub wearing nothing but panties, getting punters to put money in a pint glass in return for being allowed to paw at them. Connor hadn’t just found the whole experience horribly uncomfortable; it had cost him a fortune.

  Now, at the weekend, he tended to sneak out of the house before lunch while most of the others were still asleep. Hands deep in his duffle coat pockets, he would walk down the hill into town and look around the shops for an hour or so. He’d sip a coffee and read his book in one of the little cafés that lined the lanes leading off Victoria Street. In the late afternoon he slipped into the cinema muttering, ‘One, please,’ as if someone might challenge him for this suspicious behaviour. He would slump in his seat before the lights went down in case anyone saw him, and then surrender himself to the blessed distraction of the darkness that brought him the advertisements, trailers and whatever movie it might be. Dirty Dancing or Cry Freedom, Connor didn’t care. It was time spent.

  ‘Dotty! What are you doing for Christmas?’ It was Ciaran calling across the kitchen. Connor hesitated. Was there a right answer?

  ‘Heading home like, or will you be here?’ Ciaran’s impatience suggested he didn’t care one way or the other.

  ‘I’ll be here I suppose.’ He didn’t imagine that anyone in Mullinmore would want to see him again this soon. The whole point of him going away was so that people might forget him and what he had done. Besides, he could hardly ask his parents to pay for his return journey and he certainly couldn’t afford it himself. ‘Is that OK?’

  ‘Grand. I just wanted to know who was around. Frank is staying and Robbo will be here too.’

  Inwardly Connor groaned. The only one of the men who still seemed to be suspicious of him was Robbo. Often he would catch him giving a sideways glance or looking away quickly as if he had been watching Connor. One night Robbo had started asking him exactly whereabouts in Cork he was from, but it hadn’t seemed friendly, more like an interrogation. Connor wondered if some half-formed gossip had filtered through from home about the killer who had gone to work on the buildings. Whatever the reason, Robbo made him feel nervous, so the news that he would be practically alone with him for a few days wasn’t welcome.

  Friday was the last day of work and that night most of the housemates sat around the kitchen table drinking and telling
stories of home. While the cans of lager were nothing new, these more personal tales of friends and families were less frequent. It was as if the men couldn’t allow themselves to miss home, but tonight they gave themselves permission because the next day they would be getting buses and ferries back to the roads and streets where they were truly known. They would stand in pubs and look across the room at faces that all told a story of a life they knew as well as their own. Leaving home might have been a choice for most of these men but going back was as inevitable as the tides. They would always return, and if they didn’t, it remained their unanswered prayer. Connor laughed at their stories and got up to pull cans out of the fridge but while he recognised everything that was being spoken of, he felt even more distant from these men than usual. How could he yearn to return to something that was no longer there? All the love and familiarity that existed for him in the streets of his home town and those few rooms above the pub were gone because he had destroyed them. Mullinmore was better off without him.

  Maybe it was to do with Christmas, or perhaps it was just that he had seen every film showing in Liverpool, but on the Saturday afternoon he found himself walking down Hope Street towards the Catholic cathedral. It was an extraordinary sight, like a giant concrete shuttlecock or an umbrella blown inside out, just perched on the skyline. The closer Connor got the larger he realised the building was. It was just getting dark, so the light had begun to seep from the stained glass that pierced the tall concrete ribs that Connor assumed were the modern equivalent of a spire. The wind was blowing hard and cold, so he pulled his duffle coat tighter and made his way inside.

  He wasn’t religious but he had somehow hoped to find some comfort in this place. It was only now that he was standing at the edge of the immense circular room that he realised he could find no connection here to anything familiar. Yes, there was the faint smell of incense and the whisk of cassocks and whispered conversation, but he didn’t feel present. It was as if he was watching a programme about architecture, when what he really wanted to do was kneel in the dark and breathe in the scent of polished wood and dusty hassocks, to be transported back to St Joseph’s. His eyes took in the vast expanse of space and the giant spider structure suspended above the altar. He noticed a priest walking with purpose around the outside of the pews and realised that he was heading towards him. He hastily returned to the December chill that awaited him outside.