‘You didn’t answer your mobile,’ Mam says. ‘That’s so bloody irritating.’
‘I didn’t bring it.’
‘Well, you should have.’
It’s like she’s deliberately needling me. And two can play that game.
‘We went up town, right?’
‘You what?’ she goes. ‘You know we have to do this slowly, step by step and he’s not ready to deal with crowds and traffic noise and all that yet.’
I cut her off. I have to know what he lied to her about. Maybe there was another woman after all?
‘He wanted to go for a pint and he had a ten-euro note. I asked him where he got it and he lied to me. He lied to me. Does he lie to you too?’
Her eyes slide away from mine. She’s looking at the family portrait hanging there on the wall. We had it done a few weeks after Tom was born. Sean and me aren’t impressed at the idea and it shows. Sour faces on us both. The Addams Family. That was Dad’s joke.
We hear the door of Jimmy’s room below us open, an upward rush on the narrow stairs. Three steps at a time. Sean. He stops where the stairwell opens on to the hallway, halfway between Mam and me. There’s a bitter twist to his expression and he aims it at me.
‘What did you say to Dad? You’ve really gutted him.’
‘I told him to stop asking me questions. I got thick, right? Like you never do?’
‘Not with Dad, I don’t.’
‘What about the night before the accident? You and your mobile and your jilted-lover crap.’
‘Shut up,’ he says. I know I’ve got to him because his eyes aren’t so much burning now as ready to leak. ‘We sorted that out, Dad and me.’
‘Sorted it out? Yeah, right. He bawled you out and you did a runner next morning so you wouldn’t have to face him.’
‘It wasn’t like that. I had to go into school early. We had a game in Cork that day and the bus was leaving at eight.’
‘So what was your big guilt-trip about, then?’ Angie’s telling me to shut up now too, but I ignore her. I want to lay into Sean and not stop until I break him. ‘How come you couldn’t even go see him in the rehab centre all those months?’
‘Lads, calm down, please,’ Mam says. ‘If we can’t stick together we might as well pack it in.’
A piercing howl from out back startles us. Argos. The second howl isn’t from Argos. It’s from Dad. Sean turns and races down the stairs and we’re after him in a flash. The howling grows louder. From both of them.
11
I can’t believe what I’m seeing out here in the Bernabéu. Brian lies slumped near the high wall between ours and Mrs Casey’s garden. Blood pours from his nose. He’s passed out. At the foot of the wall, one of Dad’s sneakers rests on top of a shrub. I can’t see Dad, but I can hear him. He’s in our neighbour’s garden exchanging yelps and howls with Argos above the rush and scuffle of a fight.
Sean crouches for a moment beside Brian. He’s shouting,
‘Brian! Wake up, Brian!’
Then he’s up and away. Shouting again.
‘Jimmy! Get out of there! He’ll tear you to bits!’
He jumps, grabs the top of the wall and pulls himself up. I reach Brian. Not a stir out of him. I turn him on his side. The bridge of his nose is off-centre. Broken, it looks like. Mam is beside me with a bundle of tissues in her hand. She goes about stopping the flow of blood. Over at Mrs Casey’s the mayhem continues.
‘Jimmy, make a break for it! No, don’t hit him!’
Sean’s screams are joined by Mrs Casey’s. She’s leaning out of a window on the top floor of her house. Her dyed red hair is wild, electrified. She looks like some kind of mad, toothless glove puppet.
‘Get out! Get out of my garden! Leave my dog alone, you savage!’
Sean jumps down into her garden and I run to the wall. I scramble up, tearing my knees on the rough plaster, but I don’t care. At the centre of the overgrown lawn, Dad and Argos do battle. Dad’s wielding one of those long bamboo sticks for holding up tall plants. He’s whipping at Argos and the German shepherd is lunging at his arms. There’s blood on the sleeves of his white Real Madrid jersey and all along the dog’s back. Sean reaches Dad and starts pulling him away. The dog makes a lunge at him, but he dodges to one side. Dad whips Argos again.
‘I’m calling the Guards!’ Mrs Casey shrieks and shoots back inside.
Sean gets a proper hold on Dad, dragging him back towards the wall. Argos keeps up the barking and the threatening growls, but he’s had enough of the fighting. I slip back down the wall. I feel sick. What if she does call the Guards? What’ll happen to Dad then?
Mam is holding Brian up in a sitting position. He’s come to. She holds the red-stained tissues to his nose. He’s pale and dazed and seems like he might pass out again. Mam’s looking in my direction, but beyond me. As he hangs over the brow of the wall, Dad’s tracksuit bottoms are slipping down so that half of his backside is exposed. I want to scream at the ridiculousness of it all. He’s holding his right arm and grimacing in pain. Mam stares over at him like he’s a total stranger.
‘Eala, help Brian here, will you?’ she says, without a hint of urgency. ‘We’ll have to get them both to A and E.’
I take over from Mam and she goes over to Dad, who’s made it down off the wall with Sean’s help. Argos whines and it’s like he’s having an argument with himself about whether he won or lost the fight. Brian is so wobbly and shivering so hard, I can barely keep him upright. His glazed-over eyes seem to see nothing.
‘Are you OK, Brian?’ Stupid question, but what else can I say?
‘Jimmy clocked me,’ Brian says and, of course, I’ve known this all along, but haven’t let myself think it.
Dad’s sitting against the wall and won’t move or let Mam see the damage to his arm. I can’t hear what he’s muttering to her. Sean comes over to us. He kneels down, his head bowed.
‘Sorry, man,’ he says. ‘I shouldn’t have left you alone with him.’
Brian is following some dizzy thought in his head. He wavers, but I catch his fall.
‘We were kicking around,’ he says. ‘And the barking was really getting to Jimmy. Next thing, he tells me he’s going to rescue the dog. He’s being kept prisoner in there, Jimmy says, and I try to stop him, but …’
Mine is the spinning head now. I’m holding Brian tighter than I need to because I’m the one ready to fall. This whole farce is my doing. A few careless, tired words and this is what happens. I need to tell Mam, let her know there’s some reason for all this madness. That it isn’t Dad’s fault. Not entirely.
Brian stirs himself. We help him to stand up. He takes the soggy mess of tissue paper from me and the blood spills from his nose again and down the front of his red Che Guevara T-shirt. He throws away the tissue and uses the T-shirt to stop the flow.
‘Is Jimmy all right?’ he asks.
Take a good look at that pale and battered but still good-looking face, Angie tells me, because this is the last you’ll be seeing of Brian Dunphy.
‘His arm’s reefed,’ Sean says and he mutters under his breath. ‘Psycho.’ He turns and shouts at Dad. ‘You’re a psycho!’
‘Sean, shut up and get the car keys,’ Mam says.
He storms off towards the house. Dad is on his feet in a flash.
‘Sean, I was trying to set Argos free and he attacked me.’
He’s forgotten the pain and his arms hang down by his side. His white jersey and blue French tracksuit bottoms are covered in blood and sweat and clay. His face is streaked too. He looks like the wino we met earlier, complete with begging expression.
‘Judy,’ he says. ‘Why did Argos have a go at me? I was going to bring him out to the country where he belongs.’
‘He didn’t understand,’ Mam tells him. There’s not a lot of sympathy going on in her voice. ‘We have to go to the hospital and get you and Brian fixed up.’
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‘I’m not going back to the hospital,’ he protests. ‘You don’t want me any more, is that it?’
‘It’s a different hospital and we’ll be coming straight home once we’re done, right?’
She puts her arm round his waist and he surrenders to her. Sean is at the back door of Jimmy’s room.
‘There’s a squad car out on the drive,’ he says. ‘What are we going to do, Mam?’
‘I’ll talk to them,’ she says.
‘Are they going to nick me?’
Mam doesn’t answer. She releases herself from Dad and leaves him standing there. He’s terrified. She’s fixing her hair and her dress as she goes and I’m fit to say, How can you worry about what you look like at a time like this? Maybe she sees the resentment in me because her glare is icy, like she’s telling me to keep a lid on it. She takes her mobile from the pocket of her cardigan as she goes.
‘Eala, bring Brian inside and find him a sweater,’ she says, and going by Sean, adds, ‘Sean, bring him in and clean up his arm.’
Him? She might as well have said it, she sounded so bitter. The Bernabéu’s gone dead quiet. I can hear Argos’s every wheezy breath and the evening cold wraps itself around me. Our summer is over.
We troop inside to Jimmy’s room. Nobody speaks. I keep expecting Dad to apologize to Brian, but he doesn’t. He sits on an armchair by the back window while Sean cleans his wounds. Sean doesn’t go about it very gently and I don’t insist that he does. Brian sits on the bed and I wipe the blood from his face and neck, taking care not to hurt him. He’s stuffed two little twists of tissue paper into his nostrils. His eyes are blacking up. He looks ridiculous. But not ugly. I get one of Dad’s zip-ups on him and it’s like dressing an exhausted child.
Out on the drive, Mam is talking to the Guards beside the squad car. Her cardigan is pulled tight beneath her folded arms. Wisps of hair, unloosed from the green hair-clasp that matches her dress, play about her face in the breeze. She’s smiling. She looks scarily beautiful. Both of the Guards are young guys and not exactly hiding their fascination with her. All three of them head out next door to Mrs Casey’s.
‘Are they looking for the Man?’ Dad whispers at Sean.
‘Put a sock in it, Jimmy,’ he warns.
I stay by the window, waiting for them to return. Maybe I’m just trying to avoid looking at Brian, knowing I won’t be seeing much of him ever again. After too long a while, I see the two Guards get back into the squad car and reverse slowly on to our street. But they don’t drive away yet. Mam waits on the footpath, looking up and down the street and I wonder why. Here’s why. Fiona Sheedy’s little red Toyota Starlet pulls in beyond the squad car.
Of course, I’m thinking. Tom. Someone has to mind him while we drive to the hospital. I’d rather take him with us, but it wouldn’t be fair. He’s seen enough accidents and emergencies already. At least he’s slept through this whole episode and I’m glad of that. You’re not The Surprise Addition any more, Tom, I’m thinking. Dad’s The Surprise Addition now. And God knows what the next surprise will be.
Mam comes to the open window by the bed.
‘Lets go then,’ she says. ‘We’re getting a police escort through town. Won’t that be fun.’
I’ve never heard such a cynical tone from her before. The sound of the police siren is ringing in my head, though in reality, it hasn’t actually started up yet.
12
Friday evening in the Accident and Emergency waiting area is busy, but not hectic.
‘Hectic comes later,’ the nurse taking Brian and Dad’s details joked. ‘Then it’s ER minus the pretty faces.’
They took Brian away to the X-ray department an hour ago and we haven’t laid eyes on him since. Sean went out for a smoke half an hour ago and hasn’t come back yet. Dad’s in one of the treatment rooms. He might have been seen earlier if it wasn’t for the boy racer and his bimbo co-driver. Seems he flipped his car over trying out handbrake turns in a supermarket car park. She’s inside having a broken arm seen to. He’s barely got a scratch on him and has spent the last hour on his mobile describing the accident to his mates like a kid down from a carnival ride. He hasn’t mentioned the girl once.
There’s a scattering of others in the ranks of chairs and all of us are watching the reception nurse’s every move like it’s a play in a theatre that’s too brightly lit, and we can’t catch a word she’s saying. At the far end of our row, an elderly couple sits. It’s impossible to tell which one is more in need of attention. They seem equally sickly and shrunken, their clothes hanging loosely on them. But they hold hands. They have each other. Which is more than Mam and Dad will have in old age, I can’t help thinking.
When the A and E entrance door opens behind us we all look back, our heads pulled on the same puppeteer’s string. It’s Starsky. He’s wearing the leather jacket with the collar turned up. His white sneakers screech on the polished floor as he approaches, making a farce of his fury.
‘This is assault, Judy,’ he says. ‘I could do him for this. I damn well should.’
Maybe it’s not fair, but I’m thinking, You didn’t have to tell your father it was Dad who hit you, Brian.
‘Look, we’re really sorry Brian got hurt.’ Mam’s voice rings as harshly as the scrape of her chair going back when she stands to face Starsky. She’s almost as tall as him. He rolls his shoulders and gains himself another inch. He’s not convinced it’s enough. ‘He’s been very good to Jimmy and we appreciate that. I wish this hadn’t happened, but it has. What more can I say?’
‘What more can you say?’ Starsky shakes his head and his bouffant hair flutters in slow motion. ‘I’m out there busting my ass trying to put young Healy away and pinning down Trigger on a drugs charge. And this is the thanks I get?’
‘No one’s asking you to put Clem away,’ she says. Not no one, Mam, I’m thinking.
Starsky steps away, walks a tight circle and comes back.
‘Isn’t there somewhere Jimmy can go?’ he asks. ‘Some kind of sheltered community. Until he’s learned to cope, I mean. Short-term, like.’
Mam raises her chin, the tendons tighten along her neck. Judy’s hauteur multiplied by ten.
‘As a matter of fact, there is,’ she says. That cynical tone again. ‘I can put him in a nursing home, maybe; have him sit with a bunch of people twice his age. Or, better still, I can have him locked away in a psychiatric institution. What do you reckon?’
‘There must be something else,’ Starsky says, but whatever that something is escapes him. Escapes me too.
Starsky takes another short walk. It’s like he has to move his body to kick-start his brain.
‘The plan was we’d go up to Dublin tomorrow to sort out Brian’s accommodation for college,’ he says. ‘What if there’s complications? What if he’s not able to start his course? And Mary? Mary’s climbing the walls.’
I don’t know Brian’s mother, but Jill says she’s nice, though most of the neighbours on their street think her stand-offish.
‘Jeez, Judy,’ he pleads. ‘What am I supposed to do? Pretend this never happened? And if it happens again, something more serious maybe, do I keep turning a blind eye to it? Someone’s going to get hurt, badly hurt. That’s the bottom line.’
‘It won’t happen again,’ Mam says and he throws his hands up in exasperation.
‘You can’t watch over him twenty-four-seven, Judy.’
Starsky drifts away to the reception desk. I listen hard, though I pretend not to. I catch a few words. Overnight. Ward 310. As the nurse directs him towards a corridor to our left, a gang of drunken young fellas make a loud entry to the waiting room. The cold chill I feel isn’t from the breeze sweeping through A and E. I glance across, but Clem Healy isn’t among them, nor is his brother. One of the gang is bleeding from a cut above the eye. Another is half carried, half shunted along between two of his mates. They tone down the aggression in their voi
ces when they spot Starsky eyeing them with contempt.
Like the rest of us, they’re told at reception that they’ll have to wait. Unlike the rest of us, they’re not so accepting. Still, knowing that Starsky’s in the building, they keep a lid on their frustration. When they sit down a few rows back from us, I get the gist of their complaint. The pubs will be closed before they get sorted. The memory of Starsky fading from their soused minds, they keep up a loud, brain-dead banter.
‘Some freaking health service!’
‘They should all be taken out and shot, them politicians.’
‘Too right; shoot them and then sack the lot of them.’
‘But, sure, they’d already be dead?’
‘Wha’?’
‘If you shot them, you wouldn’t have to sack them.’
‘So sack them first and then shoot them.’
‘My ankle’s right sore.’
‘Shut up, Skinner. Why bother sacking them if you’re going to shoot them anyway?’
Oddly enough, in spite of the racket, it’s actually easier to talk. I mean really talk. Honestly. I tell Mam where Dad’s idea for rescuing Argos came from. She won’t let me take any blame.
‘He doesn’t always know where the boundaries are any more,’ she says.
‘I know.’
Mam looks at me, through me, reading my mind in that weird way mothers have.
‘What?’ I say and I’m off covering my tracks and it’s so obvious, but I can’t stop myself. ‘I mean I know about the boundaries thing. Miss U told us, remember?’
‘Something happened downtown,’ she says.
‘No way. We met one of those winos Dad knows … used to know … and it upset him.’
She doesn’t believe me. Or she believes me, but knows there’s more. Her put-upon look of accusation rankles. I’m not the liar here, I’m thinking, Dad is.
‘Mam, a few weeks ago I heard you on the phone to Martin. You were upset. What did Dad lie to you about?’
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