Our Little Cruelties

by Liz Nugent

  Afterwards, we sat naked, tracing our hands over each other’s bodies, talking about how much we cared about each other, how good we felt together, and then, consumed by lust, we delved again into each other, tasting and touching and caressing, together in ecstasy.

  Later, we found out that was the name of the drug. Ecstasy. In the following years, it seemed like everyone took it, but I feel like we were the first. I was never a drug taker, so perhaps it affected me more than most, but Susan’s ardour matched mine that day and when we melted away from each other late that night, it was as if a beautiful dream was crumbling. We got a lift back to Dublin on Luke’s tour bus, holding hands under the table, while everyone around us celebrated with drugs and booze. Luke offered us more pills, but I think we both knew we had transgressed, that the loss of control was something we would have to deal with. I was sober enough to know I couldn’t invite Susan back to my grotty house, and when the bus stopped at the end of her road, I hoped she’d ask me to come with her, but she kissed me chastely on the cheek, thanked Luke for the brilliant concert and said she’d see me next week at work. Luke, in his own selfish world, had noticed nothing.

  The next morning, I woke with The Fear. All of the previous day was hazy. Had we really talked about running away together and opening a bookshop by the sea? Had I told her that I loved her from the moment I saw her? Had we even mentioned Will? We definitely talked about how emotionally connected we felt. And yet, in the cold light of day, I was sure the words were hollow. Even if we had meant them, they were artificial, drug-induced, fantastical. Her body had been amazing, and the sex better than with anyone I’d ever been with before, but was that the drug too? Had I imagined some of it? Had I been tripping?

  Susan and I avoided each other in the bookshop. The manager asked if we’d had a row. And then we did have a row. When finally we were forced into unpacking boxes together, Susan told me that I shouldn’t have seduced her. I baulked. We had seduced each other. She conceded it was the drug, insisted she had no romantic feelings for me and wanted to forget it had ever happened.

  Spurned, I turned nasty. ‘So you don’t want to run away with me?’

  She burned crimson. ‘You mustn’t tell Will. It would kill him. I’m going to look for a job elsewhere. We can’t continue to work together any more, Brian. It’s just too awkward.’

  I was miserable. I went back to teaching in September, a full-time position. I hated it. I couldn’t settle to anything. At least, with my increased financial security, I was able to rent a small one-bedroom flat in Ranelagh. For months I sat around waiting for Will to dump Susan, waited for her to discover that he was cheating on her, waited for him to get bored and move on, but at Sunday lunches, they seemed closer than ever. And then, in late October, Will announced he had three pieces of good news. First, Susan and he were moving into a house together. My heart sank. Second, they were getting married. I stared at her as he popped the champagne cork, and my heart flipped in my chest. He filled a few glasses and passed them out. I couldn’t drink mine.

  ‘And in even better news, Mum, we’re going to make you a granny!’ Mum leapt up and hugged them both, though declared that she would not countenance being called ‘Granny’. Mum was not the type to disapprove of sex before marriage. I think Dad would have been horrified.

  ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ she said. ‘How pregnant are you?’

  Susan faced my mother as Will placed a proprietorial hand on top of her head. ‘Oh, we think about fourteen weeks, past the danger zone anyway. We’ve decided to let the baby’s gender be a surprise.’

  ‘Surely, the baby is enough of a surprise?’ I said. ‘You didn’t plan it, did you?’ I tried to keep the spite out of my voice.

  Susan did not look at me but laughed. ‘Well, all the more champagne for you!’ she said and Luke swiped the bottle and filled his glass to the brim.

  ‘A baby? Seriously?’ he said.

  Will glared at him. ‘What’s your problem?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Luke and the mood grew tense.

  Luke became morose and drank everything in the house before Mum told him he should leave. She commented on how quiet I was. ‘Loads of homework to mark when I get home,’ I said. I had been silently doing the maths in my head. ‘About fourteen weeks.’ About. If it was sixteen weeks, it could be my baby. I kept trying to catch Susan’s eye, but she looked everywhere except at me.

  Mum admired the modest diamond engagement ring and discussed wedding dates with them. ‘Of course, you’ll have to tie the knot before the baby comes!’

  As I was leaving, Will said, ‘You haven’t congratulated us yet, Brian.’

  ‘Haven’t I? Sorry. I’m so happy for you.’ I tried to get Susan to look at me. ‘You’ll make a brilliant mum.’

  ‘Yeah? And what about me?’ said Will. ‘I’ll be a brilliant dad too.’ I could see he was happy, proud and excited.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘a brilliant dad. Congratulations.’

  30

  1979

  I wished Paul had been my brother instead of Luke or William. Our birthdays were a few weeks apart, and we were first cousins because our dads were brothers. We even looked alike, although there was nothing wrong with his nose. Paul was blond like me. My brothers had darker hair. We were in the same class in school and sat beside each other. He lived around the corner.

  Paul and I shared comics and sweets and catapults, unlike William who shared nothing with me, or Luke who just gave me anything of his that I wanted because of God. I heard Mum say that Paul was spoiled by Aunt Judy, but he wasn’t. He got all the same stuff we did, he just didn’t have to share it with anyone. Except when he shared it with me.

  Uncle Dan’s house was much smaller than ours. But they didn’t need as much room as us. When I had a sleepover at Paul’s house, it was fun to sleep on the floor beside his bed on a pull-out mattress. We could have midnight feasts and play with our soldiers and dinosaurs long after we were supposed to be in bed. We never did that at home. Luke was always scared that everything was a sin. When lights went out, Luke closed his eyes and crossed his hands over his chest. ‘In case the Lord takes me in my sleep,’ he explained.

  Paul saved my life once. We had a joint eighth birthday party in his house. We never had birthday parties in ours. I was excited. His mum, Aunt Judy, had cooked two cakes, one with Dennis the Menace on it and the other with Gnasher the dog. We were both big fans of the Beano. We even had the badges to prove it. It was October, even though my birthday wasn’t until the following month and Paul’s had been three weeks earlier. Though it was pretty wet outside, Uncle Dan had bought a Swingball set and we all took it in turns until Will whacked the ball too hard and it detached from its string. My brothers had been invited along with our school friends. Will was throwing his weight around, reminding everyone that he was the oldest. Luke clung to his scapular medals and gifted Paul a book about St Paul that he’d bought with his own money.

  After it got too cold for Swingball, we went inside and Uncle Dan said we could play hide and seek. It wasn’t going to take long to find anyone, but I knew Paul’s house better than everyone else and I knew exactly the right place to hide. There was a false floor inside their airing cupboard. I think Paul and I were the only people to know it was there. We found it by accident and we never told his parents because we kept our secret treasure in there: the spud guns that we weren’t allowed to have, the old-fashioned money stolen from Uncle Dan’s box, the gun holster that we’d found on a rubbish tip – at least we decided it was a gun holster, it may just have been a small broken leather satchel. I reckoned if I scrunched myself up small and tight, I could just about fit under the false floor. So that’s what I did and then I moved the piece of flooring on top to cover myself completely. Only it got airless quickly, and I lost all my energy and there wasn’t enough room in the space to kick the lid open, and then I started feeling dizzy and sick. One of our school friends was doing the seeking and I guess it was probably ten minutes befo
re they realized I still hadn’t been found. I had fainted by then, and it was Paul who worked out where I must be hiding. He raised the alarm when he found me purple and motionless.

  I don’t remember much about being found, but I remember their next-door neighbour, Dr Hallinan, rushing in and I remember being hit hard on the chest and crying.

  I was completely fine the next day, but Paul had saved my life. His dad nailed down that floor afterwards and we were banned from ever playing hide and seek again. It turned out to be a dangerous game. At another party on our road just a year later, a little girl got trapped between two panes of glass, a foot apart, and the window had to be smashed to release her. But if I worshipped Paul before that day, I was even more steadfast in my loyalty to him afterwards. We spent all our time in each other’s houses. We cut our thumbs with sharp knives until they bled a little and swore ourselves to be blood brothers.

  After Paul died, I wondered if that bloodletting might have caused the poison that killed him. He got sick so gradually that it became kind of normal. Before that party, he had complained of pains in his legs and his mum said it must be growing pains, but I didn’t have growing pains. At first, he was home with a flu or a cold for a few days, and then he had to go to hospital for tests, and then there were more tests, and then his hair fell out, but that was cool because we both loved Kojak and I’d bring him lollipops. He didn’t run around much any more, but we were happy to discuss the characters in our comics, and then his mum gave him a magic set and it wasn’t even his birthday and we learned how to do all the magic tricks.

  I missed him at school, but I visited every chance I got, whether he was in hospital or at home, except for Thursdays when I had judo. Sometimes, I’d visit and he’d be asleep and I wasn’t allowed to disturb him, but I’d write him notes about funny stuff like Mr Gallagher’s moustache or Father Matthew’s sandals with the purple socks underneath.

  I never thought for a second that he was going to die. I’m not sure I understood what death was, though Luke was always talking about it, and crucifixion and resurrection, but the idea that I would never see Paul again, that we’d never do our funny walks and our secret codes, I didn’t know how to cope with that.

  Paul died the day we went to see the Pope. I remember nothing about the Pope – except that Luke went apeshit at the Mass and we spent hours looking for him. Afterwards, when we got home and learned that Paul had died, Luke got hysterical and screamed that it was his fault, and I was paralysed by fear. How could my friend, my blood brother, be dead? I threw up and everyone was upset. Even Will went out to the garden and stayed there for an hour by himself. Dad was trying to pacify Luke – and it turned out Luke knew all along that Paul was dying because Mum had told him. Paul saved my life, but Mum said there was nothing I could have done for him.

  The days after his death were colourless and pointless. The yellow-and-white papal bunting and flags everywhere felt so wrong. There was nothing to celebrate. I felt that I’d be better off dead too. At the funeral, the boys in our class made a guard of honour for the coffin. Our teachers came and handed out tissues and even the roughest and toughest boys used them. Luke wasn’t allowed to come because everyone was afraid he’d make a scene. I never saw so many people crying. Even the choir kept breaking down in the middle of hymns and having to start again. Uncle Dan was openly sobbing. Aunt Judy could barely stand up. I realized, suddenly, they didn’t have other children. They only had Paul, and now they’d lost him. Mum bawled her eyes out and Dad tried to be strong but kept making this weird choking sound as he tried to contain his emotion. One of the guys who carried the coffin down the aisle tripped and nearly dropped it, and part of me hoped the coffin would fall and break open and that I’d get to see my friend one last time. I’d pick him up and carry him away and find a way to fix him. It was the worst day of my life. I was never going to another funeral ever again.

  31

  1976

  It is one of my earliest memories. We were all small, just five, six and seven years old. I was in the middle, distinguishable from my brothers by my blond hair and crooked nose. We were in the back garden of our house, playing or fighting. In those days, we were not big or strong enough to do lasting damage. Playing and fighting were the same thing. Mum was inside, behind the open French doors in the sitting room, ironing, with the radio on. She was careful about sun damage to her skin and we were at all times slathered in lotions. Before that day, as far as I can remember, she protected us all equally.

  We had sticks in our hands and, by some stroke of luck, mine was the biggest. William, the oldest of us, was trying to grab it out of my hand while I tried to wallop Luke with it. Luke was jabbing his stick at me in the manner of a sword-wielding pirate, but I was already conditioned to carry everything with two hands and my grip was stronger and carried more heft. I lashed William across the middle of his back with all my tiny might, releasing a wail of injustice from his shocked red face. Mum knocked on the window, shouting at me to leave William alone. I shouted back that I hadn’t done anything, even though I had, but then we all turned to the sound of a low growl.

  Crouched in the side passage of the house, hackles raised, was an Alsatian dog, teeth bared, snarling, ready to pounce. While Mum, oblivious, continued to shout at me that ‘William doesn’t tell lies!’ we were frozen with fear. I remember that feeling, knowing that something awful, even catastrophic, was about to happen, and nothing I could do would prevent it.

  The dog leapt into the air and crashed into the middle of us, knocking us all to the ground like skittles. Mum came barrelling out of the sitting room, capsizing the ironing board, with a heavy table lamp in one hand. It was the closest thing she could grab. She swung it towards the dog and pulled at William and me with her free hand and ran with us towards the house. Luke was left out there, cornered by the slavering dog, screaming, hysterical as he reached for one of the abandoned sticks, but I watched as the jaws of the dog wrenched his ankle and the animal tossed its head from side to side as if trying to unscrew Luke’s foot from his leg. I turned away then, in terror, but caught William watching the scene unfolding, his eyes narrowed as if studying the incident for something he might like to explain later.

  I looked to Mum, who was watching also, blank-eyed. ‘Get Luke!’ I screamed. She lurched outside again, slamming the doors behind her to keep us safe, and this time she had the pipe of the hoover in her hand. She landed it squarely on the dog’s head and it released its grip on Luke’s leg, running away down the side passage, never to be seen again.

  She ran and closed the gate behind it before returning to Luke, whose lower leg was a bloody mess. He was no longer crying but pale and shaking. ‘Why did you leave me out here?’ he shrieked.

  William and I looked at each other. We did not have the vocabulary then to articulate what we had always felt but somehow, from that day on, knew. That we were loved more.

  In later months and even years, that story became family lore. Mum would laugh and say she should have had three arms that day. She lied that she had grabbed William and me in each arm. In the retelling, the dog grew in size and breed. It was a Doberman before we heard of Rottweilers. Its fangs grew in length and sharpness. Luke’s foot nearly had to be amputated apparently, when in reality he had suffered only flesh wounds. We had gone to pick out a wheelchair for him, according to William. Dad said it was the first time he’d heard of a sabre-toothed tiger escaping in suburban Dublin. Mum said it would never have happened if Dad had fixed the handle on the side gate. Dad might tease William and me, and call us Mammy’s Boys, but we knew it was better to be in a gang of two than to be on your own.

  Luke never said anything on these occasions, even when it was decades behind us. We all knew the experience had scarred him deeply, but it was one of our family’s little cruelties to revisit it, often.

  32

  1989

  I was in my final year of an arts degree in college, studying French and philosophy with no idea of what I wa
nted to do when I graduated. Three evenings a week, I waited tables at a pseudo-French restaurant where the only French thing was the word restaurant.

  I was good at French but most of the philosophy went over my head and I couldn’t wrap my mind around the concepts of Kierkegaard and Confucius and Aristotle without my head exploding. With French, I could get to grips with the language, the history and the culture, but in philosophy I resorted to learning off the text in our books and regurgitating it to pass exams. I half wondered if the examiners even read our papers. The guys in my class were earnest about all this and would sit around discussing nihilism and obscure Dutch cinema. They bored the hell out of me. French lectures were much livelier.

  Luke had stopped attending lectures in engineering to sing in a band. Mum said he was always doomed to failure, but Luke’s band was the talk of the campus. Everyone was saying they were the next U2. I rode on the coat-tails of their success. Even though we attended the same university, I rarely saw either of my brothers. Will had graduated the year before and had got a job as a trainee on a film, The Courier. The way he talked about working ‘on set’, you’d swear he was directing it, but he clearly loved it and had found his career path, even though I think his job was to fetch coffee for the crew. I was treading water. I’d decide what I wanted to do later. I assumed it would come to me, like a lightning bolt, or that I would naturally gravitate towards some job or other, but at the time, I had no idea what that was.