Mr Lynch’s Holiday

by Catherine O’Flynn

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know she’s gone.’

  Dermot kept quiet.

  ‘She said she needed time to think.’

  ‘Not for ever, then?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘How long since she went?’

  ‘Ten days.’

  ‘Do you know where she’s gone?’

  ‘Back to England. She said she was going to stay with her parents. No one answers the phone.’

  Dermot hesitated. ‘Did you do something to upset her?’

  Eamonn shook his head, unable to speak for a moment. ‘Yes. Lots of things, I suppose.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say, son.’

  ‘There’s nothing to say. I just thought I should tell you.’

  ‘Maybe she’ll see things differently after a few weeks back home.’ He knew if Kathleen were there she’d have plenty to say. She’d blame the girl, say she was a fool, but Dermot had always liked Laura. His sympathies should be with Eamonn, but God knows it couldn’t be easy putting up with him all day, every day.

  Eamonn got up and and walked towards the house. He stood looking at it for a few moments and then turned back to Dermot. ‘Do you remember taking me somewhere like this in Ireland?’

  ‘Like what? An old ruin?’

  ‘Yeah – well, not a ruin exactly – just an old house, derelict.’

  ‘I don’t know. Sure we went to lots of old places. Where was it?’

  ‘Don’t know. I suppose it must have been the summer holidays, but it was just you and me. I don’t know where Mom was. I just remember wandering around an empty house, holding your hand. You showed me a room that had toy soldiers all over the wallpaper, and in the corner there was –’

  ‘Something scratched into the wall.’

  Eamonn looked at him. ‘Yeah! The letter “D”. D’you remember?’

  Dermot saw his brother’s small hand carefully carving the letter.

  Eamonn shook his head. ‘I’m an idiot. You must have lived there. I think I thought the “D” was some magical coincidence, I never thought you’d done it.’ He paused. ‘But that wasn’t your house in Liscannor.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t in Liscannor and it wasn’t me.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘There were two “D”s. A small one inside a big one. My brother Dominic did it. Dominic and Dermot.’

  ‘Dominic. He was the younger one?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, where was that?’

  ‘It was in Longford. Drumlish. Where I was born.’

  ‘How come we only went once?’

  Dermot shrugged. ‘There was nothing to see. The family scattered after Mammy died. I went to live with my granny in Liscannor when I was fourteen. I went back to see the house that time with you and I didn’t go back again.’

  ‘Did the others move to your granny’s as well?’

  It seemed odd to Dermot that Eamonn wouldn’t know these things.

  ‘No. We all went our separate ways. Patricia had already entered the convent, and Peggy followed her. Joe went over to Liverpool. Gerard to the Christian Brothers in Dublin.’

  ‘Is that when Dominic went to America?’

  ‘How could he? He was a boy of twelve. He couldn’t emigrate to the States for years.’ Dermot looked over at the house. ‘He and I used to have some adventures exploring places like this. There were enough of them about. Old ruins, not all big houses. Often just little ramshackle cottages, abandoned in the Famine. It was our idea of fun. We’d set up dens in them. Sometimes we were brave volunteers under siege by the constabulary. Other times we were gold prospectors, surrounded by Apache Indians. I was always the boss, of course, barking out orders to Dominic. “Barricade the windows!” “Take cover!”’

  Eamonn smiled. ‘So where did he go?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When you went to Liscannor.’

  Dermot saw the lines of toy soldiers on the walls, faded, as they were when he’d returned with Eamonn. ‘Nowhere. He stayed where he was.’

  He stood brushing crumbs from his lap. ‘Come on, then. Let’s go in and see what treasure we find.’

  20

  With the pain of separation came the relentless mental churning – the grinding business of processing, interpreting and conjecturing. Their final conversation played somewhere in Eamonn’s head all day, every day. Each line, paused, analysed, redrafted, erased. It was like an illness, his brain infected, his thoughts overheated and circular. He tried, without success, to drown out the playback. He did not want to recall the things she had said. Remembering the words led to the same awful conclusion: he had driven her away; he had broken everything.

  ‘You’re leaving me?’

  ‘I have to think. I have things to work out and I need to be away from you to do it.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Eamonn, things haven’t been good between us. I need some clear space to think.’

  ‘Things have been fine.’

  ‘You’re self-deceiving. You can see exactly what I see, but you won’t admit it.’

  ‘What can you see?’

  ‘You’re not yourself. You’re lost. You’re so unhappy here.’

  ‘So you’re leaving? That’s going to make me happier?’

  ‘I’m not leaving you. I’m going to …’

  ‘… Think. Yes I know. You said. About what? About leaving me?’

  ‘About everything. There are things I need to work out.’

  ‘What? Sums? Crossword clues?’

  ‘No.’

  They were both crying now.

  ‘So you’re going? Leaving me behind? Laura …’

  ‘I just need time to think.’

  ‘You don’t love me any more.’

  ‘You know I do.’

  ‘I don’t know anything.’

  He exercised some restraint in his texts, though this in truth had more to do with his contempt for SMS as a means of communication than any real self-control. Texting seemed a retrograde step to him, like trying to have a conversation using Dymo Tape. Since she’d left, he’d texted her just once, every day.

  His emails were more expressive and expansive, often disastrously so. He had not been able to resist occasional late-night outpourings. Regrettable lapses into florid self-pity, woundedness, the odd, empty accusation to try to even the score. The next day he would send an even longer apology, retracting certain points, reiterating others. Laura, wherever she was, whatever she was doing, was being bombarded with upwards of a thousand words a day, one half of them at least apologizing for the other half. Among that latter half were his first, tentative steps into poetry. Not verse, he was horrified to see in the cold light of day, so much as broken prose and half-remembered Joy Division lyrics, probably no better and possibly considerably worse than the solipsistic ramblings of American Web developers that Laura had once had to edit.

  If she waded through the almost fifteen thousand words he had rained down on her in just over a week and a half, she would by now be aware of the general gist. He loved her, he was sorry if it hadn’t always shown. He was sorry he had been so miserable. He would change. He would make a go of their life there. He vowed to make her feel loved again. He had over the course of the one-sided correspondence listed every single episode in the last fifteen months where he considered he had behaved shabbily. He wanted her to know that he understood. He insisted that he didn’t want to pressure her. He said he wanted her to take as long as she needed to think. This was the only thing he wrote that lacked any sincerity at all.

  He’d discovered that deep uncertainty opened the door to all kinds of forgotten playground voodoo. A childhood superstition had resurfaced: if you stopped expecting something to happen, then it would. The fact that a mail or a message had yet to arrive only indicated that he had not been thorough enough in exorcizing expectation. Each morning he sat before his closed laptop attempting to empty his mind of all hope, his eyes squeezed shut in a state of non-prayer
. She would not have emailed, he told himself over and over. She was not yet ready. He could not hurry her.

  21

  He opened the wardrobe. The combined scents of dust, wood and perfume settled upon him. Here were the clothes Kathleen hadn’t needed in her final years. The best coats, the going-out dresses, the wedding hats and silk scarves. They were folded neatly on shelves or hung from good wooden hangers, some still in the polythene sheaths of dry-cleaners; after years of such delicate handling he couldn’t bring himself to let them drop into the bin bag he had ready beside him. He went over to the other wardrobe and reached for the suitcase on top. He laid it on the bed and started to fold the dresses and coats gently into it before stopping short. He would need the suitcase back and that would cause a problem at the charity shop. He pictured them tipping the dresses out into a heap on the counter and handing him the case. He wondered, should he have waited for Anne’s help before he started with all of this? He took the dresses out again and laid them on the bed. He dismissed once more the idea of the bin bag and went in search of an alternative. He settled in the end for some of the good-quality carrier bags that Kathleen used to keep in the understairs cupboard. Large House of Fraser, Marks & Spencer and Debenhams carriers she had accumulated and preserved over the years. ‘Is this what you were keeping them for?’ he asked aloud.

  Back upstairs, he sat down at her dressing table. It was unsettling to see his reflection in the mirror. He was used to seeing her face framed there, engaged in various arcane ministrations. He unzipped the large padded bag in front of him and the weighted compacts and pots slid out on to the surface. Here were the tiny tools she had used to perform her adjustments: miniature paintbrushes for her eyes and lips, compounds of colour and powder, a hundred different mysteries encased in shellac. He suspected they could all go in the bin, but he would let Anne make that decision. He started opening the drawers on either side of the dresser, mechanically reaching in and pulling out the various different subspecies of underwear and letting them fall into the bag. If it had been he who had gone first, she would have had to contend with only one drawer of pants and one of socks. He did not try to fathom the purpose or classification of the different items, he knew only that some were slippery, some springy and some tendrilled and knotted.

  At the back of the bottom drawer he felt something solid. He reached in and pulled out an old shoebox, the lid held on with elastic bands. He placed it carefully on the bed and studied it for a moment before removing the bands and lifting the lid. Inside were bundles of letters in faded blue Airmail envelopes. He lifted a bundle; they felt light and insubstantial. He sat on the bed, the letters on his lap. In all the years he’d seen only a handful arrive. He had thought them sporadic updates, occasional good wishes, but they were the ones that had slipped through the net. The rest had been hidden from him. Their arrival, their reading, their storage – all concealed.

  Later he gathered together the eight bags he had filled, put on his jacket and cap and set off for the parade of shops around the corner. He was buffeted by a stiff breeze, the bags bumping against each other and against him, but he kept up a good pace. When they were courting Kathleen would pull back on his arm and say: ‘Can’t we stroll? Do we have to march?’ and he’d slow down for a few yards, but the brisk pace always returned.

  The woman in the charity shop didn’t seem thrilled at the sight of him and his bags. She looked to Dermot like the type not thrilled by very much at all. She asked him to drop them on the floor at the rear of the shop and showed no inclination to examine their contents. When he returned past the counter he felt the need to say: ‘It’s good stuff in there, well looked after too.’

  She nodded and smiled as if he were simple. As he was leaving he noticed a mannequin in the window. He imagined passing by in a few days’ time to see it dressed in Kathleen’s clothes. His wife rendered in white, polished plastic, surrounded by piles of jigsaws and DVDs, watching his comings and goings.

  ‘God Almighty,’ he said aloud, and hurried out.

  He went home and sat, still in his jacket and hat, looking at the envelopes scattered across the bed. When it grew dark he gathered them together and put them back in the box. He felt its weight in his hands. So many words and only half the conversation.

  22

  The afternoons had always been difficult. Even with Laura there he had often found them long. Any promise the morning held seemed to burn off in the sun, and the night with its surrender to alcohol, or whatever other distraction could be found, remained a distant spot on the horizon. Since she’d gone the afternoons were deep, dark holes that he had to carefully edge his way around.

  Still studiedly avoiding his mounting pile of work, he wrote an email to her, a follow-up to the one he had sent in the morning. He sent her his daily text. He refreshed his in-box in case she had been moved to reply straight away, but found only some submitted assignments from students and a couple of mails from friends in England. He left them unopened. There were already a dozen messages from friends awaiting replies he could not write. When he and Laura had first arrived in Spain, he’d send entertaining little summaries of their new life to pals back home: amusing misunderstandings, baffling encounters, culinary discoveries. Now he found it impossible to transform his daily life into anecdote. Moments of despair did not alchemize into nuggets of wry self-knowledge. Moments of despair only turned into hours and then days.

  He regretted now not joining his father on his afternoon stroll. He felt the silence build steadily like snow falling around him until it seemed a palpable presence in the apartment, pushing him out. He closed the laptop, put on his hat and stepped out into the heat. He would call on someone. He would talk to another human being.

  It was punishingly hot and the summer had yet to take hold. It had taken him only a few months of living in Spain to realize that there was nothing wholesome or cheering about the sun. The sun was straightforwardly malevolent, its hostility relentless. He lived his life coated in creams and charms to ward off its evil.

  He walked with no particular destination in mind down the middle of the road, the silence as heavy as the heat. Increasingly he felt something curdled in the atmosphere of Lomaverde, though he did not know what. Whatever it was, it was there in the glare of the midday sun as much as the night-time shadows of his room: a presence, a watchfulness. It was a generalized sense of unease not helped by slaughtered chickens and tales of the Civil War dead. It was ridiculous to think of ghosts and yet he felt himself sometimes irrationally fearful. He wondered if it was possible to be haunted by phantoms of an unrealized future. The lives that never came to Lomaverde. He imagined disembodied Dutch retirees, floating French Web editors, semi-transparent Danish designers, but these conjured-up presences remained banal rather than spectral in his mind.

  The real ghosts of Lomaverde were the cats, legions of them now, snaking up and down stairwells, darting for cover at every footstep, yowling by the bins at night. Eamonn was fond of cats. Having grown up with Mr Socks for a pet, it was impossible for him to understand why the animals were seen as superior or haughty. Mr Socks was as affectionate as he was dim-witted. Sometimes, when Eamonn was little, feeling the loneliness of an only child, he liked to imagine that Mr Socks was his brother, but then the cat would get his head stuck in a crisp bag, or run around with a pair of Eamonn’s pants stuck to his paw, and Eamonn would feel the need to dissolve the familial link. As a schoolboy he had read that come nuclear Armageddon, cockroaches would inherit the Earth, but in the smaller, less radioactive collapse of Lomaverde it was feral cats who were making hay. And these survivors were nothing like Mr Socks. They had not been spoon-fed rabbit-flavour Whiskas or given Dairylea triangles as a regular treat. They were skinny and twitchy. Eamonn had no idea where they had all come from. He had seen one once in Nieves the sales manager’s office and somewhere in his mind lurked the theory that the tubby tabby reclined on the photocopier was the unlikely progenitor of the sprawling street gangs that now roamed
the development. Whoever the original settlers were, they had been deceived, just as their human neighbours had, by the promise of good times and, more specifically, plentiful food to come. They had bred prodigiously and now there were too many of them for the leftovers and scraps of such a sparsely settled community.

  He thought of Roger ranting about the cats and felt an unexpected surge of fondness for him. There was no polite conversation with Roger, no space for silence or thoughts or doubts. Eamonn realized that what he wanted to do more than anything at that moment was drink cold beer and listen to someone loud and inattentive.

  His only qualm was Cheryl. She would join them and she would not allow Eamonn to be a passive observer. She would demand responses, interaction, capitulation of one sort or another. She communicated by shaking her big hair, alternating arbitrarily between disdain and flirtatiousness. He and Laura found her frequently hilarious. The pouting and the flouncing, the dialogue straight out of a bad soap opera; her entire conversational repertoire a ragbag of tired, old lines she’d been hoiking around since her heyday. She was not like any woman he had known. She was older of course, but it wasn’t just generational. She seemed a different species, an exotic creature, a cartoon – both funny and fascinating. He found her face remarkable. High cheekbones, fiercely shaped brows, grey eyes. She looked like an evil queen from a children’s book. A superbitch from an 80s TV movie. She had glamour, he supposed, a kind of harshness about her clothes and make-up. There was something both anachronistic and ridiculous about her, but behind Eamonn’s laughter was confusion, because a part of him still fell for it.

  This small, unwanted attraction was fed by a sense he had that she was there for him, available. That Roger and Cheryl wanted both Laura and him. There had been times when the flirting had turned into something else. A queasy, usually drunken blundering into sexual territory in conversation. It was always the older couple who initiated it – hypothetical questions, stories they’d heard, a kind of probing. Once Cheryl had cornered Laura and interrogated her about her sexual history. Laura had attempted to laugh it off, but Cheryl had seemed irritated at her unwillingness to tell all. On another wine-soaked evening, Roger had appeared to suggest that they swap partners but then insisted it was just a joke.