Home Stretch

by Graham Norton

  ‘That’s awful. Awful,’ was all that Dan said.

  ‘It’s nobody’s fault,’ Connor almost whispered. ‘It’s not your fault. It’s not mine.’

  Chrissie’s jaw tensed and she spat out, ‘It’s Martin Coulter’s fault!’

  Ellen winced. Every time she heard his name, she grew tense and wondered when this would all become her fault.

  On Connor’s third day back in Mullinmore, spring sunshine decided to make a promise of the summer ahead. It beamed from a laundry-fresh blue sky. Connor could feel the heat on his back as he walked along the quay. He had never imagined he would be able to stroll around the town like this. He had always thought of himself hiding in shadows, a cap pulled low, but here he was, head held high to greet the day. Daffodils that he hadn’t noticed before stood along the opposite bank of the river. He found that he was smiling for no reason. He walked on up past the high walls of the convent and then out onto the old Cork road, looking up into the bare branches of the trees overhead, trying to spot buds silhouetted against the bright sky. He rubbed his hand against the damp hedges. He wondered if this was what it was like for a man just released from prison.

  He thought he might walk as far as the entrance to the golf club and then turn and head down the hill back into town, but he was stopped in his tracks by the sight of one house. The O’Connells’. Where Carmel and Linda had lived. He was transfixed by the small ramp leading along the front of the house to the door. It looked so old. The railing was mottled with patches of rust and the stained concrete was trimmed with the green of weeds. How was it possible that something that hadn’t been here when he lived in Mullinmore could already look so ancient and neglected? Perhaps it was because he had been with Tim for so long that he continued to feel young, but seeing this house made it very clear that his youth was firmly in the past.

  He was about to move on when a small hatchback pulled off the road and had to wait for him to clear the driveway before it could enter the gates. He waved apologetically and walked on, hoping that whoever was driving the car hadn’t—

  ‘Connor? Connor Hayes, is that you?’ A woman’s voice, clear and sharp.

  He froze. For a moment he considered just walking on but had to accept that escape was not an option. Turning, he put his hand up to shield his eyes from the sun. He recognised the driver of the car.

  ‘Mrs O’Connell!’

  ‘I heard you were back. Were you coming to visit Linda?’

  How could he admit that he wasn’t? Tell this woman that he had forgotten their house was even on this road?

  ‘Yes. I mean, if that’s all right?’

  ‘Of course, of course. I’ll just go in and make sure …’ Caroline’s voice trailed away, unsure of how to finish the sentence. She edged the car forward and parked by the ramp. By the time she’d retrieved her small bag of groceries and the Examiner off the passenger seat and got out, Connor was waiting for her by the door.

  They smiled at each other. It felt like a reunion of sorts, even though they had never really known each other.

  ‘If I hadn’t known you were back, I don’t think I’d have spotted you at all. You’re a grown man.’

  ‘Overgrown!’ Connor said, patting his non-existent belly. ‘You haven’t changed a bit.’

  ‘Get away out of it!’ Caroline laughed as she fiddled with her key in the door.

  It struck Connor that this was not the welcome he had expected from a woman who blamed him for the death of one daughter and the crippling of another. Ellen had tried to tell him that Linda’s parents knew who had been driving but he had assumed that she had misunderstood. If adults had been in possession of the full facts, surely they would have done something?

  ‘Just take a seat in there.’ Caroline indicated the suite of furniture that filled the small front room and she breezed down the hall with her bag of shopping. Connor sat. This was not a meeting he had planned on having. He had just wanted to see his parents, have a look at his old haunts and then return to his life in the States. One of the deciding factors for him making the trip was that Linda was in a wheelchair, so the chances of bumping into her anywhere were very slim. Now he was sitting in her house waiting, as if he was here to pick her up for a school dance. Odd how this one house could make him feel so old and yet, almost at the same time, like a teenager again.

  One half of the sliding doors was inched open and Caroline stuck her head forward.

  ‘She’s ready for you, if you’d like to …’ She pushed the door further back.

  Connor got out of his chair feeling very self-conscious and stepped forward. Linda was in her wheelchair, the sunlight streaming through the window like a spotlight on her face. All Connor noticed was how old she had become. Why was it such a surprise? He realised that foolishly he had imagined that because her life as she’d known it ended the day of the crash, she would be sitting in her wheelchair perfectly preserved, as if dipped in aspic.

  ‘Connor.’ Linda smiled and held out her hand.

  He shook it. ‘Linda.’

  They took stock of each other for a moment. Connor could still recognise the girl from the back of the car.

  ‘It’s been a long time.’

  ‘It has,’ he agreed.

  ‘I’m so glad you came to see me.’ The sincerity in her voice gave Connor a pang of guilt, given that he’d had no intention of doing so.

  ‘Sit down. Sit down,’ Caroline said, patting the seat of the wing-backed chair by the window.

  ‘Tea, or would you like something stronger?’ Caroline asked this with the air of a woman who had entertained men before and knew what they might like.

  ‘Tea will be fine.’ He smiled at her.

  ‘Linda, love?’

  ‘Yes please.’

  Caroline left them alone.

  Connor was staring at the same photograph that Ellen had noticed in its dark wooden frame.

  ‘Is that the day? The day of …’ He couldn’t bring himself to say the words.

  ‘Yes. Yes, it was.’ She sounded impatient. ‘Look, I’m so glad you came up. I just wanted to say sorry.’

  ‘You?’ This was not what Connor had expected her to say.

  ‘About Ellen. I’ve felt awful about it ever since.’

  ‘You weren’t to know; don’t feel bad about anything.’

  ‘So I was right?’

  ‘Right?’ Connor was unclear.

  Linda bit her lip. ‘That it wasn’t you driving?’

  ‘No.’ Connor was confused. ‘But you knew that. You told Ellen.’

  ‘I thought I knew it. That whole day was like a bad dream. All I meant to say to her was that I had never blamed you. I didn’t mind if you came back.’

  Connor sat back in his chair. ‘So,’ he was trying to piece things together, ‘you told her what you thought had happened and she just immediately believed you?’ He was incredulous.

  ‘She was in such a state when she left here that time and then we heard about her and Martin. I just felt awful. I wasn’t thinking. I just, well after all these years, I thought that if I was right about who had been driving, surely she’d know.’

  ‘Of course she should have. Everyone should. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. We were kids, Linda. Clueless kids.’

  Linda nodded in agreement. ‘How is she? Is she doing OK?’

  Connor shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I mean she’s my sister, but I can’t pretend I know her after all this time. According to Mam and Dad she’s happier than she has been in years, so don’t feel bad. I think the mystery is that the marriage lasted as long as it did.’

  ‘Martin. What a total prick.’

  ‘You’ll get no argument here.’

  Caroline elbowed the door wide and brought in a tray of cups.

  ‘Now, here we go.’

  ‘Thanks very much, Mrs O’Connell. That’s great.’

  ‘Caroline, please.’ She poured the tea and handed a cup to Linda and then put Connor’s on the table beside him.

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nbsp; Caroline stepped back and looked down at Connor.

  ‘Declan will be sorry he missed you. He’s out at golf.’

  ‘Perfect day for it,’ Connor said, unsure if he had ever known what Declan O’Connell looked like or if he had simply forgotten.

  ‘Every day’s a perfect day for golf as far as that man is concerned.’ She raised her eyebrows and headed back to the kitchen.

  Connor bent forward and whispered to Linda, ‘Ellen says that your parents knew who was driving.’

  ‘Not at first. But eventually I did try to tell them.’

  Connor sat back. How was that possible? He hesitated before he spoke, unsure of what he wanted to ask. ‘When? And they didn’t think they should – I don’t know – tell somebody?’

  Linda looked out of the window and when her gaze returned, her eyes didn’t meet his.

  ‘I know it seems mad, but it was after the court case. You’d gone, Carmel was gone. I could hardly put two words together. Don’t blame them for not listening. It was so much easier not to believe me. I mean they were dealing with all of this.’ She indicated her legs. ‘My parents were all over the place. They humoured me, they never went back to Dr Coulter’s practice, but there was no way they were going to go to the guards, not with me as the only witness. If I’m being honest even I wasn’t entirely certain, not swear-on-a bible sure. They were trying to protect me, I think. The truth is they never really trusted my memory and they worried that if they spoke out it would all just backfire on them, but mostly on me.’ Linda checked Connor’s face to see how he was receiving her explanation of events. His jaw was clenched, and he seemed to be gripping the arms of the chair. Connor thought of his father’s contorted face as he shut the car door at the bus station in Cork. His mother slumped on the floor. Could it all have been avoided?

  ‘I understand,’ he said, trying to.

  As if sensing Connor’s reproach, Linda moved the conversation on, asking him about his life. Where had he been? What did he do? For a prodigal son returned, his life, to him, sounded very dull indeed. He told her about the irrigation company, he explained about Tim and the years he had spent with him. Linda nodded along and seemed genuinely interested – he might have been Sinbad recounting tales of his travels. But then Connor considered the life that Linda had lived. Again, he felt guilty. How often had he cursed the injustice that had forced him to leave? Now he was sitting in a room with a woman who hadn’t really had a life at all. Of course, he told himself, that wasn’t his fault, but it still made him appreciate all the living he had managed to do.

  It seemed wrong that he was doing all the talking, so for balance he asked Linda some questions. Vague enquiries about her health, what she did with her day. He was taken aback by her answers. It appeared that she did practically nothing. Reading and watching television with her father in the evening seemed about the extent of her activities. Surely there was more to her life than that? Yes, she was in a wheelchair but so were others, and he saw them doing things – working, travelling, engaging with the world. Surely, she wanted to venture out? Instead of answering him, she began to talk about her worries for the future. Her parents weren’t young. Her father had suffered a mini-stroke at the end of the previous year. Her mother was great but wouldn’t go on forever. What would happen to Linda then? She supposed she’d have to go into some sort of home or maybe what they called sheltered accommodation.

  ‘I try to talk about it, but they refuse to listen, or else Mammy starts to cry, so now we just ignore it.’ Linda chewed the inside of her lip. Connor had no idea what to say. It was difficult to conjure up words of comfort when Linda was clearly right. There was no easy fix for her future.

  The woman in the wheelchair turned her dark eyes on Connor and it felt like she was reading his mind.

  ‘So, your life hasn’t been all that bad, has it?’ Her voice had an edge to it, not quite aggressive but almost as if she was challenging him to disagree.

  ‘I never said—’ he began defensively.

  Linda broke the tension with a laugh. ‘Don’t be stupid. I didn’t mean anything. Nobody has a chance against me in the “I have a shit life” competition.’

  Connor laughed uneasily and drained his teacup. He hoped it might be a signal that he was ready to leave. There didn’t seem to be an easy way to extricate himself from this meeting. Walking out seemed like quitting, or as if he didn’t care.

  ‘I’m sure you’ve places to be,’ Linda said, to Connor’s relief. She had got the hint.

  ‘My parents might be worried. They seem to think that I’ll just disappear again.’ He stood.

  ‘Oh, before you go, I was wondering – and tell me if it’s none of my business – Ellen wasn’t the reason you took the blame, was she?’

  ‘No. No she wasn’t.’ Connor felt he should explain further but that seemed a step too far.

  ‘I didn’t think so. You know it wasn’t that long ago when I think I figured it out.’

  Connor sat back down.

  ‘Tell me more.’

  And she did, and she was right.

  2015

  I.

  Christ, Irish men were hideous. Why would anyone wear a vest if they’d arms like that? Finbarr picked up the next photograph in the pile and winced. Could a person ever be drunk enough to sleep with him? Keep the shirt on. Just then his viewing pleasure was interrupted by a shock of blue hair coming around the door.

  ‘Everything OK?’

  Finbarr tried not to stare. The young man had so many piercings in his lips he looked like he was waiting for someone to hang curtains.

  ‘Yes, fine, thanks. I’m nearly done for the day.’

  ‘We’re packing up downstairs, so when you leave just switch off the lights and make sure the door locks behind you. It needs a good slam.’

  ‘Will do, Fergal. Goodnight.’

  Finbarr hoped that he had understood correctly. It appeared that copious lip jewellery meant that some, if not all, diction was lost.

  Finbarr thought to himself that if a fish could talk it would probably look and sound like Fergal.

  The blue head disappeared, and the door shut, leaving Finbarr alone in the small attic that contained what the staff at Wilde Times referred to as their archive. In reality it was just an old desk with four plastic stacking chairs and boxes piled from floor to ceiling.

  Finbarr felt a bit of a fraud when he had to talk to any of the staff from Wilde Times. They all just assumed that he was as politically engaged as they were, which was very far from the truth. When they expressed their outrage about the Pride parade in Istanbul, he just nodded grimly. He made a mental note to google it later to find out what had happened. Even the referendum on gay marriage earlier in the year had failed to inspire him. Many of his friends had campaigned tirelessly, going from door to door and posting endless calls to action on social media. Finbarr claimed that he didn’t understand why anyone wanted to get married, but the reality was that he was simply too lazy to get involved. He had been surprised then to find how moved he had been when the country had voted in favour of it in May. He had thrown himself into celebrating the victory with an enthusiasm that he had never felt during the campaign. His mother had laughed as she told him that even his grandparents had put a ‘Yes’ poster up in the pub. He had experienced a brief pang of guilt that Dan and Chrissie had done more to fight for his rights than he had. Some of the old gang from Sobar in New York had left messages of congratulations on his Facebook page. Finbarr had hit the ‘like’ button.

  Gay marriage was going to come into law in November and his firm had been commissioned by the National Library to design a small foyer exhibition on gay life in modern Ireland. Most of the work he did was commercial, coming up with point-of-sale displays or exhibition stands for trade shows, so Finbarr jumped at the chance of this more creative brief. Knowing that there was practically no budget, he had come up with the idea of a series of panel displays. Each one featured an image of the iconic Tá poster so blown up t
hat it looked purely graphic. Each individual panel would then be printed in muted versions of the colours from the rainbow flag. The content was being provided by an in-house archive that had been donated to the library, but Finbarr had volunteered to look through the boxes at Wilde Times. He thought he might find some images he could use on the exhibition stands. Now, as he sat staring at the stacks of assorted back issues, jumbles of club flyers, community pamphlets and hundreds of old photos scattered in front of him, he wasn’t so sure.

  There were bars Finbarr had never heard of: Bartley Dunne’s, Rice’s, Lynch’s, the Viking, the Hirschfeld Centre. Of course, there were also pictures from the George, which still existed, and he did know well. Drag Queens and barmen dominated most of the photographs, but occasionally he would come across an image of drinkers sitting around a table or attending a meeting. Their black and white eyes met the camera and Finbarr marvelled how brave these people must have been. What risks had they taken just to be themselves in Dublin in the seventies and eighties? They smiled at him from the past, happy despite never knowing how bright the future might become. They sat, not touching, only showing the camera what they could of their happiness. Finbarr thought of his uncle Connor in Mullinmore. Had he known these bars and men existed? He doubted it.

  Finbarr thought of the boy he had been when he’d arrived in Dublin, the way he had entered into the gay scene, never questioning its existence. He wouldn’t have been able to articulate it at the time, but now he could see that the boy from Mullinmore had firmly believed his pretty face and blond hair had given him the right to be desired and pursued. Looking at these pictures of unremarkable men and women, he realised how deluded and foolish he had been. He had never had the right to party. These people he would never meet, or have the opportunity to thank, had been to all the dull meetings and inconvenient demonstrations, just so that he could dance to Katy Perry and kiss men in the back of cabs.