‘Did you say anything bad about someone?’
‘Yes. About my cousin Michael.’
‘I see. What did you say?’
‘That I hated him.’
‘Anything else?’
‘I called him a you-know-what.’
‘I don’t. Tell me it out straight, good boy.’
‘I said he was an out-and-out bollix.’
‘Indeed. Anything else?’
‘I said he was a flute.’
‘Flute as in a pipe?’
‘As in down below, Father.’
Silence.
‘Hmm. Why did you call him such names?’
‘He made me mad.’
‘Why?’
‘He’s always saying that my brother has cancer, and he hasn’t. He has a lump on his leg, that’s all.’
‘So you said the first thing that came into your head?’
‘I did, Father.’
‘You do know that you shouldn’t hate anyone, isn’t that right?’
‘Yes, Father.’
‘You’re going to try not to hate anyone, isn’t that so?’
‘Father.’
Leaving the confessional booth, I see Nana standing over Michael, her arm draped across his shoulder. She is leaning over him, whispering. When I draw near I see tears rolling down his cheeks. He doesn’t care who is watching.
All the way home, he is silent, and his silence is catching for we’re silent as well, too afraid of saying anything in case it turns out to be the wrong thing. A word could be enough to start him crying or to spark his temper. As we turn the corner at City Road, and enter Albany Road, a thought comes to me. I sense that there are uncomfortable truths among us: I don’t know what they are. But people don’t break down in church without reason. And Nana is aware of Michael’s reason, or at the very least is partially aware. And kitchen talk from John and Paula are other jigsaw tiles. And Bill … why is it every time his name is mentioned the air freezes over? Michael’s face seems to fill with strain: it’s like his life is fine until our cousin’s name is mentioned. And when the name is said, my aunt, uncle and grandparents stand like monolithic boulders in a stone circle staring at him.
In the depths of night, I toss and turn. With gentle street noises from Albany Road drifting to my ears, I put the pieces of the weeks together. I think Glen is in trouble, for sure, and the realisation sickens my stomach and brings an ache to my heart. As for Michael and Bill … well, like the adults, I have no idea about what we should do about what we know.
Love in a Cold Shadow
Gone. Blue beret, blue cravat, Irish tricolour flashes, the lot. Burned, he said, in the range. The accomplice sat in at the table having breakfast, smiling.
‘Tim, where are they, really?’
‘Mammy burnt them. She said she burned them, I didn’t see her burning them. I just smelt them. They made a very grey, smoky smell.’
Tim’s seven. He’s my only son from my first marriage. I’d a daughter, Nancy, but she caught meningitis and died. Nance was 5. She’d be 9 now. Tim has no memory of her. Sally’s my first wife. She’s 39, slim, and keeps her hair short and blonde. She wears earrings, and has a small birthmark on her earlobe. She used to be self-conscious about it.
Tim stays with me. It suits Sally; she’s taken up the threads of her acting career. She got bit parts and walk-on parts in some TV soaps and short films last year. Since then, not much. She’s honest about her lack of work. There’s a play opening in the city next week that she hopes will run for a few weeks. Then there’s talk of a TV commercial.
I arrived early to collect Tim. Kildare are playing Usher Celtic in the final in the afternoon, and I want to get dinner over and cleaned up before heading off to watch the match. Judy’s my second wife. I met her through a dating agency. She’s got a 16-year-old son called Ian. We don’t get on. But he gets along with Tim, and that’s important. Judy and he have gone to visit his father in London. He’s dying of cancer; has it in the prostate.
Sally stayed on in the family home. She bought out my share of the house. I gave my share to Judy, who in turn handed it to Rob, her ex, to buy him out. That was four years ago. All done amicably, I have to say, considering. At the time I felt we were all trying to out-civilise each other.
‘Hi Bob,’ Sally says, pink towel wrapped around her hair.
She’s off on a shoot today. A commercial, I think, promoting venison. She’s got lumps of the stuff in the freezer. Christmas presents, she says, the ultimate alternative to turkey. Sally’s a vegetarian, and hasn’t eaten meat of any sort since she witnessed her uncle taking an axe to a dead turkey’s head. She says she’ll never forget that evil bastard, doing such a thing in front of a 5-year-old.
‘Fine … I was just asking Tim about my UN stuff.’
‘Oh, that … I burned all that rubbish.’
‘Rubbish? I didn’t think it was rubbish.’
‘Well, you should have collected it like I told you to do ages ago.’
‘Did you burn everything?’
Sally stands at the sink, looking out at her small garden, the climbers on the walls that have stopped climbing, the rose bushes growing wild, the sweet wrappers mingling with the weeds.
‘Except the medals,’ she says quietly. ‘They’re in the press in the sitting room.’
Sally doesn’t ask what I want them for. She blames my overseas trips for breaking up our marriage. Eight times abroad, four tours of duty in Lebanon, two in Cyprus, and one apiece in Iraq and Bosnia. There is an overseas veterans’ reunion being held in the Royal Hotel in Dublin. The gear I want is part of the function’s dress code.
Sighing, I leave for the sitting room, where Sally has torn down the wallpaper and emulsioned the walls in primrose. The chandelier I’d always thought too large for the ceiling hangs, monolithic, the spectre of many arguments, oval light bulbs piping up from imitation candleholders, strings of glass beads … highly ornate, ridiculously expensive.
I find the medals. Six medals mounted on a strip of board, their ribbons stained with primrose paint, and the medals with white metallic paint. I hear the door closing.
‘I’m sorry,’ Sally says, leaning against the wall, her hands behind her back.
‘You’re a bad bitch.’
Turning about, I make to walk past her. Sally holds her hand up, her chin going in a little with determination.
‘You need to hear what I’ve to say.’
I look at the medals on my palm, and then put them in my jeans’ pocket.
‘I’m going away,’ Sally says.
‘And?’
‘I won’t be coming back.’
Right now, I don’t care where she goes. She is dating some Scot who talks through his teeth. I can’t think of his name. A good-looking fellow with a hungry gleam in his brown eyes. He writes songs and poetry, strums the guitar.
Well, tell me, I think, before I grow a minute older in your presence, tell me. She owns the house, so it’s not about signing papers. What then?
‘We’re moving to the States.’
‘Yes. In what way can I help?’
If there is a smidgeon of sarcasm in my tone, I don’t care.
‘I want to bring Tim with me.’
Something cold hits me all over. I’ve minded Tim since he was 3 years old. She couldn’t be serious.
‘No way.’
‘He wants to come with me.’
‘Of course he’d bloody want to go with you … what else do you think a child would say to his mother, eh?’
I rub my neck. It aches. I am not going to become embroiled in an argument with Sally. She’d only make me lose my rag and say things I don’t mean. Besides, arguing with Sally is a well-worn route I never want to travel again. I
walk by her, into the hall.
‘Tim! Come on, we’re leaving.’
Tim calls back, ‘Ah, Dad.’
‘Now, son, come on.’
Waiting in the car, I watch Tim kiss his mum goodbye, take his pocket money from her and put it in his weekend bag. I ignore Sally’s tight wave, and drive up the street a little more quickly than I’d come in. I couldn’t bring myself to mention what Sally had said.
That evening, Judy rings and says that Rob has passed away. She is staying on for a while, longer than anticipated. She says that Rob left her everything: house, money, car, everything. He never stopped loving her. When she says that, I think I am going to get sick into the phone. This Rob she’s gone soft on is the same one who’d beaten her to within an inch of her life. I say nothing, then think that my saying nothing is to blame for Judy’s sudden coolness, and say that Rob was a fine man.
Judy kept pressing to find out what was on my mind, so I told her.
‘I’ll do gaol for her,’ she says quietly, willing to serve a prison sentence for the pleasure of harming her. Judy says such things quietly when she is serious about it.
‘He won’t go.’
‘You’ve asked him?’
‘No … no, I haven’t.’
‘Well you should. That’s the first thing you need to sort out.’
I haven’t asked Tim because I fear what he might say. Tim loves Sally. He looks forward to spending his weekends with her. She goes out of her way for him on these days. Making tea, I study Tim. He is lying on the red-and-black rug in front of the TV, watching Wrestlemania. Nance … there’re times I can’t help looking at Tim and seeing his sister beside him. I’ve an ache in my heart; an ache I share with Sally, an everlasting bond of grief, if not a unifying bond.
‘Tim?’
He looks up, eyebrows raised. Taking a deep breath, I ask. Tim’s cheeks redden. ‘I don’t know what to think … I don’t like the idea of Mammy leaving, and I don’t like the idea of leaving you and Judy.’
‘You have to decide, Tim …’.
Tim clashes his action figures off each other, then stops.
‘I don’t suppose you and Mum will ever be friends again?’
‘No, no. Not close friends, son.’
Tim’s blue eyes moisten. He bites his lip.
‘How do I tell Mum I don’t want to go?’
I am saddened that he’s been nudged into making a major decision at such a tender age. It bites at my heart, souring my stomach.
Sally doesn’t believe me when I ring to tell her. She says I’ve influenced Tim, have turned him off the idea of going to the States. No matter what I say, she won’t be convinced. I tell her to come around and find out for herself.
‘I wouldn’t darken that cow’s door,’ she says.
It hurts.
‘If you thought anything of Tim, you’d darken any cow’s door.’
‘Not hers.’
‘Rob’s dead. Judy’s gone over to take care of the funeral arrangements. Be brave and say what you’ve been saying when she comes back, right to her face, right. Fuck you, Sally, fuck you for all of this hassle.’
She’d got me going. I think she’d set out to do just that. She always knew how. You live with someone long enough, and you get to know the easiest routes to rile them. A certain cough, a shoe left lying about, a suspicion of unwashed hands coming from the bathroom, forgetting to tuck something important in the grocery trolley, telling her you can’t afford to pay for something when she knows that you can. A marriage full of skirmishes, in which I usually held my own.
The next day, I bring Tim right over to Sally’s house. We see the Scot on the way out, walking toward his car. He issues smiles, a wave, but doesn’t delay any.
We follow Sally down the hall into the kitchen. The air smells of burned toast, and a drop of marmalade sits like a fat, yellowy tear on the breadboard.
‘Tell your Mum what you told me, Tim,’ I say gently.
Tim looks at Sally. His chin dimples. I know he is about to cry, and would if he spoke.
‘He thinks America is too far away to go just yet. What he’d like to do is visit in the summer and see if he likes it there … then he can stay if he wants.’
Sally puts on a smile. Tim hasn’t yet lifted his head.
‘And he’s loads of projects to finish in school; he can’t leave them behind unfinished.’
‘I understand, Tim … that’s okay. And you will visit next year, won’t you? I’ll come over and bring you back with me, is that okay?’
Tim’s nod is almost imperceptible.
After he went out back to play, Sally put on the percolator. An aroma of fresh coffee fills the air. She’d been quiet in herself for the last few minutes,
talking with Tim, trying to stem his quietly falling tears. No, she wasn’t mad at him, and his idea was the best. It’d give her time to buy a house, and set things up for him. He’d be coming out to a lovely room, and by that time she’d know all the best places to bring him. It had taken a few minutes for Tim’s tears to subside.
‘I see Nance in him,’ I said, over black sugarless coffee.
‘Yes … he has her eyes.’
‘I meant what I said … I’ll encourage him to visit you … not that he’ll need encouraging.’
Sally sips at her tea.
‘I’ll be doing my own encouraging.’
‘Right …’.
We make to leave when Sally says she has work to find. Kisses and hugs for Tim, and a reservedness towards me, like someone taking in a cold food she doesn’t like. I bring Tim to the cemetery. We aren’t long there when Sally arrives. She parks behind my car in front of the grave. She puts her carnations in vases. My own flowers are in side-urns, flanking the granite headstone. There are moments when we are a complete family again.
Big Sis’s Little Trouble
For weeks, leaflets and brochures had been deposited everywhere a body might sit or lie or shite in our house. Information concerning Pro-life, and some other crowd called Anti-life. It was all to do with having a baby or not. I didn’t read into the stuff too deeply, and some of the words made no sense to me. I think tossing a coin is probably the best way to solve a problem that people can’t agree upon. But maybe life is too precious to decide on the toss of a coin; if it is life, I mean like before you’re actually born – I don’t know.
I had strong suspicions that Big Sis was planting these things – sowing seeds like. She probably got the idea from Mrs Doran down the road, who brought a coffin into her dying husband’s bedroom. But Bollix Doran – everyone calls him Bollix because he is one – got better, and now he sleeps in the coffin in the spare room. We’ve got a few oul’ ones like Mrs Doran in the estate – ones that go out and buy next year’s Christmas presents on Saint Stephen’s Day. Da calls them ‘Oul’ cunts’. He says this about anyone he thinks has gotten one up on him. I used to think the world was full of cunts.
Da said, as he settled his arse into the table, ‘I don’t know who’s leaving all those leaflets in the jacks, but he’d want to quit.’
He’d? He was accusing me. I’m the only other one in the house with a mickey. But I kept my mouth shut, because I sensed big news was coming from Big Sis. Big Sis with the big arse and bigger tits and big fluffy black hair and big blue eyes Jesus Christ himself would have got down off the Cross for, if he wasn’t already down for her other goodies.
Da has a thick face, like he is always in bad humour, but he laughs a lot. He watches that old shite, Father Ted and Only Fools and Horses and M*A*S*H, on the plassie, and he says M*A*S*H reminds him of his time in the army. Well, Ma told us he was never in the army. He was with the sandbags – the reserves – and gave it up after a week scrubbing dishes in Lahinch barracks. He’s a painter decorator, and he hates the Poles b
ecause they undercut his prices. We all thought he was going to collapse with a heart attack when he answered a knock on the door and two Poles offered to paint the outside of the house for €150. They said Mister B. Lox Doran sent them down to ask. Bollix is sore at those who didn’t visit him when he was dying. Da said he wouldn’t go see the hoor off, not even for two free tickets to watch Ireland play Brazil in the final of the World Cup.
Ma handed us our dinners, and gave out to Little Sis for not setting the table properly.
‘I did, Ma,’ she said.
Da said, ‘You did in your hole … where’s the salt? Have I to use my finger as a knife?’
‘Red, language,’ Ma warned.
Little Sis went to get the salt cellar and a knife, asking herself what his two legs had died of.
‘Did you say something?’ Da asked.
‘No,’ Little Sis said. ‘Jesus no, I never said something.’
Ma sat into the table, and frowned at the burnt pork chop on her plate.
‘We need to start going to Mass,’ she said.
I couldn’t figure out how a burnt chop made her think of that. Da shook his head. He isn’t into God and shite like. She started slagging Da then, teasing him. She said she used to love rubbing his carroty hair. He’s little on top of his head now, except a couple of wisps making a last stand. Freckly head. She calls him ‘Red’, the name a headstone to lost thatch.
I also had half a suspicion that Little Sis was aware of Big Sis’s dilemma. Little Sis is skinny with hardly any diddies. Her hair is skinny too, and so are her lips. Both of my sisters think that I’m a prick and a ladyboy wannabe. They’ve said so to my face, which they also insisted was an exaggeration, meaning I had less than a face. Up until I was 10, last year, I used to go into their bedroom, then they banned me when I started noticing and saying stuff about their figures. They said I was ogling their bodies. I suppose I was. But I was just being curious; not being a pervert. I understood where the girls were coming from though, because we have a pervert in the family, on Ma’s side. Uncle Johnny is someone we never talk about, or the things that he did when he was a priest. He’s in gaol somewhere in England. Da said if he ever laid eyes on him he’d ram a broken beer bottle up his hole. Which hurt Ma, because Uncle Johnny’s her brother, and she knew him before he grew fond of feeling up children. She says a collar does wicked things to a man’s thinking process.
Deadly Confederacies Page 3