by David Park
‘You’d be better getting a decent breakfast into you and leaving the books for later,’ Marie says as she slithers into the kitchen on the whispering tongue of her worn slippers.
He throws the book into the briefcase as if he has been caught reading pornography. ‘Just something I have to look over for work. You didn’t need to get up.’
‘You’re not going out of here without a proper breakfast in your stomach,’ she says, bending down to get the frying pan out of a cupboard.
‘I’ve been thinking, Marie, that maybe I should try to watch my health – cut down on fried food, all that sort of thing,’ he says nervously, unsure of her reaction.
‘So my cooking isn’t good for you any more?’ she says. ‘You seem to have done all right on it so far.’
‘No, I’m not saying that. Just that I’m coming to an age when I have to be careful. That’s all.’ He’s grateful that at least she has not called him Mr High and Mighty as she has done twice before when she felt irritated by him or told him that she knew him when there was a hole in the seat of his pants.
‘Listen, Francis, if you knew anything at all, you’d know that the experts say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day so get those papers off the table.’
No one speaks to him like she does. Thirty-five years of marriage and she still has an edge that he has softened but never vanquished. He looks at her face that without its normal heavy mask of make-up appears soaped and crimped. The bacon hisses and spits like a cornered cat as she layers it into the pan.
‘If you ever bothered to look you’d see that I’m using olive oil to cook in. All the way from Italy. No grease.’
‘Has the Pope blessed it?’
‘You’re bloody funny. Not so funny when you were back and forward to the bathroom last night. What’s the matter with you?’
‘Might’ve got a chill. Not sure. Hope it isn’t the old prostate.’
‘Maybe you should get a check-up. Do you know how they check it?’
‘Yes I know and I’m not letting old McCann do that to me – he’s been trying to do it to me for years. Bloody SDLP voter all his life. He’d just love the chance.’
He gathers his papers carefully and slips them into his bag. A slow seep of half-hearted light is beginning to dissipate the mist, gradually giving jagged edges back to the world. The kitchen fills with the smell of sausages and bacon. She’s doing eggs and soda bread as well. Thank goodness he hasn’t showered and dressed yet or he would be going out smelling like a greasy-spoon cafe. The buzzer on the front door sounds as she sets the heaped plate in front of him. They both pause and look at the camera and seeing it’s Sweeney she says, ‘I haven’t got my face on yet,’ then goes back upstairs as he heads to open the front door. A personal rule – no one but him ever sees her without her face on and sometimes not even him.
‘Misty,’ Sweeney says as he closes the door and follows into the kitchen. When he sees Gilroy sit down to his breakfast he stands at the end of the table and says, ‘Cultured, very cultured.’ It’s his current favourite joke and for Gilroy it’s beginning to wear thin but he says nothing and signals him with the fork to sit down.
‘Who’s driving?’ he asks.
‘Micky,’ Sweeney says, staring at the plate.
‘Where’s Marty?’
‘Taking his mother to hospital for some tests.’
‘Has he had the car somewhere safe all night?’
Sweeney nods and pours himself a cup of tea.
‘And did you tell him about his dress? He looked like a bloody gangster last time. And another thing – he drives too fast.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll tell him.’ Sweeney’s eyes linger on the plate. ‘Franky, do you think that sort of start to a day is good for your cholesterol? Clogs up the old arteries.’
Before he can answer Marie returns and offers Sweeney some breakfast. ‘Wouldn’t say no now, Marie,’ he says, opening his coat.
‘You’re not worried about your cholesterol then?’ Gilroy asks.
‘Ignore him, Ricky, he’s beginning to sound like an old woman,’ Marie says.
‘A good breakfast never hurt anyone,’ Sweeney asserts, winking at Gilroy. ‘When it’s your turn, it’s your turn – that’s what I say. No point being miserable.’
‘What about the driver?’ she asks. ‘I’m sure he could put something in his stomach, give him a shout, Ricky.’
‘Who’s going to watch the car?’ Gilroy asks but feeling already that the tide is flowing against him.
‘You can see it on camera,’ she says. ‘It’ll be all right. The lad’ll probably spend the rest of his day twiddling his thumbs and half-starving to death.’
Then as Sweeney goes to call him in, Gilroy shouts, ‘While you’re at it, why don’t you invite the rest of West Belfast? Tell them we’re starting a breakfast club!’ For a second, as he listens to the door being opened, he imagines the mist flooding into the house and snaking through the rooms until everything is swallowed by it.
‘Morning,’ Micky says as he stands at the kitchen door rubbing his hands together in embarrassment at being so far inside the house. He’s wearing a suit with a mandarin collar and a black shirt. Gilroy inspects him and decides that he passes muster apart from the large gold earring in his right ear. Marie tells him to sit down and asks about his family, remembering that he’s a wife and young child.
‘They’re dead on,’ he answers as he looks at the food on the table. ‘Saw them last week.’
‘Thought you could probably do with a bit of breakfast,’ Marie says, working the pan again.
‘And keep an eye on the car as you eat,’ Gilroy says as he mops his plate with the last piece of bread.
‘To be honest with you, I don’t think anyone would be interested in stealing it,’ Micky says, staring at the screen. ‘It’s a bundle of scrap really. There’s no acceleration in it at all. I was talking to Marty and he thinks the same. Be a bit of a problem if we ever had to step on it to get away from something like.’ He looks up apologetically as if he’s just said something indelicate. ‘Know what I mean?’
‘We know what you mean,’ Sweeney says, glaring at him.
‘Marty knows this guy does imports and quality second-hands. We could look around if you want. Maybe something with tinted glass or a four-wheel drive even.’
‘There was sand everywhere the last time I was in it,’ Gilroy says. ‘Half the bloody Buncrana beach by the look of it. If somebody didn’t rake the guts out of it every weekend and bothered to clean it out now and then, the thing would probably go at twice the speed. What’s the schedule, Ricky?’
Sweeney sets down his knife and fork and takes a black diary and tape recorder out of his inside pocket. ‘First you’ve an hour’s worth of constituency appointments – I don’t know why you put it in. You’re pushed for time. Then at eleven it’s Stormont for the meeting about the new legislation and over lunch you’re meeting the delegation of Dutch youth workers. After lunch more work on the child-protection business, this time some voluntary groups like Childline and the NSPCC will be represented; at three, twenty minutes with some American guy called Jack Donaghy who wants to talk about doing a portrait – some political series he’s doing.’ Marie sniggers and rolls her eyes. ‘And at five-thirty a fitting for the wedding.’
‘That’s the most important appointment of your day,’ Marie says, pointing at him with the knife, ‘so don’t be late.’
‘I won’t. This guy Donaghy – is he the real thing?’
‘Don’t know much about him really,’ Sweeney says, making a note in the diary.
‘Find out who he’s done. What his reputation is. What his style is. If we decide to do it I don’t want looking like I’ve two heads or a hump.’
‘Like the dog’s bollocks,’ Micky says as he is handed his plate. ‘Thanks, Mrs Gilroy.’
Gilroy and Sweeney stare at him as he tucks in with gusto and when Gilroy looks at Sweeney he merely shrugs in reply. Gilroy stan
ds up and girds himself with the dressing gown. ‘I’m going to get changed,’ he says, pausing to stop behind Micky’s back and ask, ‘Are you keeping an eye on that car?’
‘Haven’t taken my eye off it, Boss.’
‘Don’t call me Boss.’
‘What should I call you?’ he asks as Sweeney smiles behind his raised cup.
‘Francis will do just fine,’ he says but when he is halfway up the stairs he hears the words Lemonade Man and three voices joining together in laughter, Marie’s a lilting descant over the other two.
He stands in the shower and waits for it to turn warm. It seems to take longer every morning. He cowers out of the way of the cold water and as he squirms to avoid its spray there’s a sharp twinge at the bottom of his spine which makes him swear. It feels like payback time for all those nights on the run, sleeping on floorboards, in damp roof spaces, the back of a car or any other temporary shelter. He thinks, too, of the squeaking, brightly polished toe-capped boots of the squaddies as they gave him a leathering, their synchronised footwork inflicted to the score of breathless abuse delivered in sharp shards of accents that sounded strange to his ears – Brummie, Scottish, Geordie – the voices part of the disorientating geography of pain.
He tries cautiously to straighten his spine and stand erect under the water but there is something about his body he no longer fully trusts. He cups his testicles gently and tries to find comfort in the warmth of the water. But before he can stop himself he thinks of Ricky and himself on the blanket in a shit-smeared cell and the moment when the warders used the hoses to wash them down. He closes his eyes as if to blank out the memory and lets the water’s full force hit the crown of his head, holding his hand like a visor over his eyes. Shading the water, shading what you do not want to remember. He thinks of the day ahead and it feels measured and cribbed, drained of expectation or joy. Meeting after meeting, a torrent of talk channelled through the rigid sides of procedures and agendas. Why is it not possible any more to just sit down and have a talk, sort things out over a slow drink? He thinks of the china cups, the saucers and the neat little sandwiches that vanish in one bite. Sometimes the only people in the room he recognises as people are the women who serve the tea and sometimes, too, he wants to try and talk to them, tell them he lives in a house much like theirs, that he knows what it’s like to bring up kids on not much money. Sometimes he wants to flirt with them, to say that they are more real, more beautiful and more important to him than any of the suits, but even they have their strict codes of conduct and because they come from the Protestant estates up the road, he knows they probably still think of him as the Antichrist.
There’s a phrase from Larkin in his head which he struggles to re-form like some half-remembered tune. Something about the emptiness under all we do. He drips out of the shower, leaving a trail of damp prints, decides that they need to install a fan as he looks back at the black mould grouting the bottom row of tiles, then shaves himself carefully with an electric razor. He stands naked at the mirror and it strikes him that his body is beginning to turn into an old woman’s with its incipient breasts and protruding little pot of a belly. There’s a solar ring of grey hair round his nipples and he tries to shave it off, nervous in case he nips himself. He puts his finger to his cheekbone where a little spider of broken capillaries is starting to spin its web. Then when he has finished shaving he applies the moisturiser Marie has bought him and insists he uses.
He had forgotten about the wedding fitting. If only it were possible to forget about the wedding so easily. Christine, the last of his four children and his only daughter they want him to give away. He supposes it might be a chance to talk to Justin, something he has not really done, and get to know him a bit better. Try harder to like him. He goes to the wardrobe and looks at his three suits, picks one that’s slightly greyer than the others and lays it on the bed. Armani? Armani his arse. He would like to meet whoever it was cooked that one up. Nice soundbite – former terrorists in Armani suits – but if their paths ever cross he will be able to tell him that the only suits he has ever owned all came from home-shopping catalogues. And anyway if he wanted to wear an expensive suit is he not entitled to as much as anyone? Does it really mean that he has sold his principles or forgotten what the struggle was about? The title poem in his Larkin is about a wedding but it is one of the longest ones so he’s not tried it yet. Will it offer any answers to how he feels, tell him how to cope with the burning loss that is festering in his heart? At twenty-five and hardly out of university is it not too young? And if he was married at eighteen it was because they lived in a narrower world with none of the windows or opportunities that are open to her, so why does she not take her time, look around a bit? This Justin that they hardly know two things about, if he really loves her he would wait a while longer, give her time to breathe in the possibilities of life. She was always his favourite – perhaps that was inevitable with three sons – and now he feels as if someone has come in the darkness of the night and robbed him of the thing closest to his heart. He suddenly feels inexpressively sad, so momentarily unbalanced that he sits on the bed and masks his eyes with his hand.
Something is happening to him. Maybe it’s the menopause because he has read that it happens to men as well. He feels increasingly sentimental about things in a way that sometimes makes him feel vulnerable and foolish. A memory of his father coming home after another futile search for work and slumping at the kitchen table with the shame of failure smouldering in his eyes. Yeats’s poem about the Irish airman not caring whether he lives or dies. An old song by the Beatles on the radio. He tries to shake the moment away, stares at the wet prints of his feet and wonders what it has been all about. For the people? For Ireland? It is a strange thought but several times during the last few months he has been afflicted by the idea that Ireland does not exist. Like God it’s just perhaps some concept that has no meaning apart from the one you construct in your head. He feels the shame of his thoughts, the traitorous serpent of doubt snaking through his lifetime of commitment, trying to undermine all that he has achieved. For a second he finds respite in his anger at himself but then after the first flush passes he thinks of how soon he must walk down the aisle of the church and give away what’s most precious. All his life he has given away parts of himself – years which he should have spent with his children, the birth itself of Rory; the right to take his family downtown or anywhere public; the right to live an ordinary life and never having to look over his shoulder. So why does this feel so unfair?
‘What’s wrong, Francis?’ Marie asks. He hasn’t even heard her footsteps on the stairs. For a second he almost tells her that he feels sad but instead says that he feels a little dizzy. She takes his temperature with the palm of her hand. When he sees the concern in her eyes he feels ashamed of his weakness and tells her that he’s all right. She sits beside him on his bed and suddenly he’s aware of his nakedness.
‘You’re right, I am turning into an old woman.’
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Her tone is soft as if she is speaking to a child and she puts one hand on the back of his neck and kneads the flesh.
‘I don’t know.’
‘I’ll ring the surgery and arrange an appointment – it doesn’t have to be with McCann. There’s a couple of bright young women now. One of them could see you. Do your prostate test if you like.’
‘So long as they take their rings off first.’
‘You’re tired – that’s all. Why don’t we try and get a weekend away somewhere after the wedding? Maybe go to Dublin or something.’
‘Do you think she’s doing the right thing? You don’t think that she’s rushing into it?’
‘Only time will answer that but if it’s what she wants to do then all we can do is help her get on with it.’
‘I’m not keen on a lot of this wedding stuff – feels a bit over the top some of it. A bit too showy. Too flash. Like bloody Posh and Becks.’
‘Listen, Francis, you spend ha
lf your life worrying about people thinking you’ve changed or got above yourself. If you had your way she’d get married in the parochial hall with a blind fiddler playing in the corner. Why don’t you just turn up in your blanket and be done with it? If it’s what she wants she can have it and to hell with what anybody thinks.’