She paused, took a breath, then got up to go, checking her watch.
“I’ve got to run, but Dee, I just want to say I’m so sorry. I feel like this is all my fault. This is my family. Gerrity is my cousin, Michael’s my son.”
“Don’t be daft, Pauline. This is not on you. Fergal is old enough to know better. I just can’t…” Deirdre shook her head again. Jesus, could she find no better reaction?
Pauline was still standing there. “D’ye think he knew it was Grace’s boyfriend? Did he know she was seeing Neville?” she said finally. “I know Michael didn’t. He thought you wanted the number for Fergal.”
Deirdre shook her head and she felt her stomach churning again. She’d forgotten that part. She was so focused on the act, she couldn’t get past it. But of course, there was this too.
“He might not’ve,” she said, getting up herself but slowly like a granny in a bus shelter. God, she felt so old. “She’s not been talking to him for a while now, not since, you know, that night. I haven’t told him anything other than the fact that she’s going out with an older lad. I don’t think I ever even told him his name. Sure, he’s never been that interested, and then, after he was laid off, he was that down he didn’t speak to any one of us much.”
They fell silent. Deirdre watched the water drifting along in front of her. The water would keep running, the sun would keep shining and the rain would keep falling on everyone.
She had another thought and she couldn’t believe it hadn’t come immediately. “But you know what, Pauline? He might not have known at the time but he damn well knows now. He knows Grace’s boyfriend was in hospital, he’s heard me talking to her about his injuries. He’s sat there like a stone. Not a world out of him. It’s like… I have no idea who he is.”
Pauline pulled her into a hug.
“I knew he was violent, Pauline, we all knew, but I thought… I thought it was just me. I didn’t think he’d hurt someone else, I swear to God. I thought it was just me, Pauline.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Theo slowed his stride to match Neville’s. They were cruising through Stephen’s Green on one of those rare summer days that could make Dublin feel almost Continental. Just as a particular kind of light, in just the right place, maybe catching the eyes or the hair, can make a plain girl shine, the early August sun transformed the city, gilding what MacNeice called the “grey stone, grey water, and brick upon grey brick.” The line always resonated for Theo, marking the difference between Dublin and that place of explosive colours that was his first home. The park was packed with kids weaving wildly on scooters, old lads gossiping on benches in the shade, and office workers sprawled on the grass, jackets and shoes cast off, heads thrown back as they greedily sucked up the lunchtime sun.
They came to the pond.
“Let’s sit down for a second,” Neville said. “It’s fierce hot. Look, there’s a bench over there.”
It had been a few weeks since the beating. Neville’s hand was healing and the bruising on his face was almost gone but Theo knew his friend was nowhere near better. There was something amiss in his slow stride, in the hands that trembled like autumn leaves when he lit his fag, and in the emptiness of his eyes. He wasn’t even angry, which he’d every right to be.
He’d never snitched, of course. The whole thing was a classic string of cock-ups: Neville had given some student friends the last of his product for a rave they were going to. They were supposed to pay him after but of course by then they were skint. Then he discovered he’d left no coke for himself, so he’d gone down to one of the open markets and was picked up by the cops. Luckily, his pockets were still empty so they had to let him go but some tosser must’ve seen him and told Gerrity. That plus the fact that he had no coke and no money was enough. Theo nearly lost the block at the stupidity of it but Neville just shrugged his shoulders, like the beating had happened to someone else. He barely went out now and hadn’t said for sure whether he was going to go back to college in September for his final year. Some kind of spark had been extinguished and it made Theo mad. Mostly with himself.
He’d wanted to confront Michael afterwards. To be honest, he wanted to pound his stupid face to a pulp but he knew that’d be too easy – it wasn’t really Michael’s fault and there was no way he could get to Gerrity. There would be no revenge there, no feel-good resolution. No point kidding himself with fantasies of bumping into Gerrity in a dark alley and smashing his fake smile into the back of his throat. Wasn’t going to happen.
Instead, he’d gone to the dingy apartment in Ballyfermot where he always made his payments, thrown the remaining bags of coke in Michael’s face, and said he’d never work for Gerrity again. Michael must’ve known something like that’d happen but he ranted and cajoled and threatened anyway. It didn’t matter. Theo was done. It was as though some kind of internal clock had started ticking again as he sat on that bench near Finglas Road, listening to Neville’s keening. He’d finally realised how far his life was spinning out of control, and how stupid he’d been to let it get to this point. Or maybe he just hadn’t cared enough. In any case, he had to look after his friend now. It was his turn to be the guardian.
Neville was staring out over the water where seagulls were bobbing beside three elegant swans that looked pissed off at having to share with such bowsies.
“So, Michael just let you go?” he asked.
Theo had been filling Neville in as they’d walked around the park. This was the first time they’d been alone together since what Neville insisted on calling The Smashing.
“You’d want to watch out, Theo. Those guys could just as well come after you. You know things.”
Theo thought back to the meeting on Ha’penny Bridge when he’d said the same himself, only to be mocked by Michael.
“Nah, I’ve nothing on them and they know it. In any case, I’m moving out from my flat tomorrow. Going to stay at the old place with Cath for a while, at least ’til I figure out what to do next.”
“Wait, she’s still in Clontarf?”
“Yeah, still living in Jim and Sheila’s place. Remember I told you she’d some kind of breakdown after she came back from Kenya a couple of years ago? She got out of the whole charity business then. Anyways, she says she’s delighted to put me up for a while. I didn’t tell her anything. She’d only go telling Jim and Sheila and I don’t need them on my case as well.”
They sat in silence for a while. Theo had the strongest notion that Neville had something to tell him. He kept pushing his hair back from his forehead and he always did that when he was nervous.
“I’m thinking of going away myself for a while. I might head over to London to spend a few weeks with my dad’s brother,” Neville said after a while.
Theo was surprised and then immediately not. It made perfect sense. Neville should absolutely get the hell away for a few weeks. Gerrity had made it clear his lads would have no truck with Neville any more – he was out of the game for good – but a bit of distance would be no bad thing at all.
“That’s a grand idea,” he said. “Yeah, bang on. You’ll be able to get well lost there for a while. But you’ll come back for college?”
Neville grunted. It wasn’t clear if he was saying yes or no. Theo decided not to push it. Neville had his parents to go on about that. Not really any of his business either, though it’d be a shame if Neville dropped out. He still had a real chance to turn things around. The world would be his oyster once he had his degree, smart lad like him.
“Have you told Grace? Or is she going over with you, for a holiday, like?”
Neville dropped his head and rubbed his good hand over the plaster covering the other one.
“Nah, I haven’t told her yet and I’m not taking her. She’s got a summer job now and, to be honest, I don’t think I’m that good for her at the moment.” He looked at Theo. “I don’t know what to say to her, Theo. She comes over and I tell her what I’m doing, what I’m reading or the films I’ve watched, but I can tell
she wants me to talk about all this.” He waved his plastered hand in front of his face. “But sure, what am I going to tell her? I can’t tell her how… I mean, what it was like. To be honest, I’m trying not to remember. The last thing I need is to be rehashing the whole thing. I know that I blacked out a fair few times. The lads who did it were wearing balaclavas so I can’t say who they were. I mean they were definitely Gerrity’s lads. He was there when they took me from the car and chucked me in the room, wherever it was. Inside some kind of garage, I think. At least it stank of oil and paint. But then when they took me out again to… well, to do this… I didn’t see him. He might’ve been there but in the shadows. There wasn’t hardly any light. Except for over the table where they had the hammer.”
Theo didn’t say anything. He’d heard it all before and Neville had made it clear he didn’t want any questions asked. He’d not yet figured out what to do with his sudden realisation, while talking on the phone to Deirdre the day he found Neville, that Fergal was the guy he saw in the garage yard. The face had niggled at him for hours but it was only when he was talking to her from the hospital that he remembered the photo she’d shown him one day at the restaurant. He remembered the man in the photo had been smiling, not a bother on him, but it was definitely the same guy.
Theo hadn’t said a word to anyone about Fergal, not because he thought he could use the information one day, though maybe that might be a possibility, but mainly because he really didn’t know who to tell. He didn’t know anything for sure, anyhow, only that somehow Fergal was mixed up in the whole thing. In any case, he hadn’t seen Deirdre since she’d given him Gerrity’s number. He’d ditched the job at The Deep and was living off his savings now. Des had been furious. Theo felt bad but what could he do? He’d shrugged apologetically, collected his last few euros in a little brown envelope, and left. It wasn’t that he really believed Michael and the gang would be looking for him but, if they were, there was no reason to make it any easier than it already was. A fresh start, that’s what he needed.
He couldn’t tell Neville about Fergal and, anyways, Neville didn’t seem to want to know. He just wanted to forget the whole sorry business. Grace could never know. That was for sure. He’d already got the sense from Deirdre that the girl was spitting daggers at her father because of the way he treated her mam. If she found out what he’d done to Neville, Christ knew what she’d do. Putting a spanner in Fergal’s relationship with his daughter might seem like the perfect revenge but it would be a mean-spirited act. Theo was fed up of all the pain. He’d had enough.
So he just carried what he knew around like a stone in his pocket, alongside the memory of his father killing Shema. He couldn’t keep collecting these things. They’d crush him.
His phone rang. It was Jim. He didn’t need this now but fair enough: they hadn’t spoken in a while. Jim had every right to be calling him and he’d no right to refuse to talk.
“Gotta take this, Nev. It’s Jim. You going to be alright here for a minute?”
Neville nodded.
Theo walked away from the bench, towards the pond.
“Howya, Jim? Everything okay?”
“Hello, Theo. Yes, everything’s fine, fine. Just wanted to check in with you.”
There was a short pause.
“Cath said you were moving in with her for a while but she didn’t say why. So we were just wanting to see if everything was alright, like? You’re not in any trouble now, are you?”
A little girl wearing a t-shirt with a picture of a unicorn was feeding the ducks across from Theo but it was mostly the seagulls that were getting the bread, diving in to snatch the crumbs before they even hit the water. The girl was getting angry. She flung the bread as far out as she could but those screeching gulls weren’t to be thwarted and the ducks weren’t getting much. Good life lesson, Theo thought. You can’t always get what you want, little one, and the noisiest, baddest buggers usually get the upper hand.
“Ah yeah, everything’s grand. I’m just a bit short of cash this month. I meant to tell you but the furniture store out on the Dublin Road closed down, so I got another gig in a restaurant but that’s finished now too.”
“A restaurant shutting in the summer? Sure, I thought they’d be taking on staff now, not letting them go. God, things must be bad up there.”
There wasn’t a shred of suspicion there. Jim was the kind of man who would always take people at their word. Especially Theo, even now when the distance between them was deeper and wider than the 200-odd miles between their little cottage near Lough Eske in Donegal and the pond where Theo was standing. Time and all its handmaidens had stretched the physical gap so that it spanned galaxies.
“How’s Sheila?” Theo asked.
He cast a glance over his shoulder. Neville was still on the bench, leaning back now, his eyes closed, as though the walk had been too much for him. He looked tired or maybe not tired exactly. He seemed worn as though the lines around his mouth and eyes had bored deeper into his skin over the past few weeks.
Jim was talking about how Sheila had ‘gone mad for the birds’, buying binoculars and spending hours down by the lake, taking notes of what she saw, where and when.
“She’s like a different woman, Theo. I hadn’t realised how fed up and unhappy she was in the city. I didn’t notice, I suppose, until she was happy again and then I saw it. Isn’t that strange? When you’ve been with someone for so long and you don’t realise they’re so miserable? All the time?”
“Sounds like the move is working out great, so,” Theo said, ignoring the none-too-subtle plea for sympathy and feeling bad because of it. “I’m really delighted for you. I’ll be up now one of the days to check out the new place. Sure, maybe I’ll go birdwatching with Sheila.”
Jim laughed, that deep chuckle that rumbled all the way up from his chest. There was something in that laugh that always reminded Theo of his father. It wasn’t exactly the sound. Maybe, he thought now, it was more his own reaction: the happiness of knowing you’d made the old man laugh. That was surely it. Memories were sneaky like that. They took and took from all your senses so that you couldn’t ever be sure whether what you were remembering was real or some kind of alchemy made from the snippets in your mind and the way your brain reacted to them. So that now, listening to Jim laugh, he was seeing Jim holding the phone hard to his ear and also seeing his father laughing outside their house before the rains came that April.
They chatted a while longer. Theo told Jim he’d broken up with Precious. Jim sighed and said, ‘plenty of time, lad’, and Theo could tell he was sincerely sorry and that moved him, and he thought he really should go and see them when all of this had died down and he’d got back on his feet again, with a job that he could tell them about so that they didn’t feel like they had wasted all those years reclaiming him from a horror they’d never really understood.
After they said their goodbyes, Theo stood watching the ducks and the swans for a minute. He always felt bad after talking to Jim, or Sheila, though she tended to call less, which his friends told him was unusual. It was generally the other way around. He sighed and pulled out his fags. It wasn’t as simple as feeling he’d let them down. More that he had never fully appreciated what they did for him, and maybe all kids felt like that. There probably wasn’t a man or woman in Ireland who was fully what their parents had hoped they would be. People talked about the optimism of youth. It was nothing compared to the blind optimism of parents, in his opinion. He’d seen that a lot. Look at poor Neville. Half his problem was that he didn’t know how to give his parents what they wanted, and maybe they didn’t even know they wanted anything. Expectations. They’d wreck your head.
Theo did love Jim and Sheila but by the time he hit the skids in his late teens, he’d already begun to drift away. He didn’t see himself in them, or maybe it was the other way round. In any case, their relationship began to peter out at some point, the way all parent-child relationships must. And after all, they weren’t his parent
s and once he had been granted asylum when he was seventeen, they weren’t really obliged to do anything for him though, of course, they did and he stayed with them until he went to college.
He had looked up ‘foster’ once in the dictionary. He must’ve been about ten.
Foster – to bring up or nurse, esp. a child not one’s own; to put a child into the care of one not its parent; to treat e.g. the elderly in a similar fashion.
It was a definition steeped in negativity and even his naïve child-self got the message. He was a ‘not’. It wasn’t Jim and Sheila’s fault but there it was.
“Everything alright with the auld lads?” Neville asked as he came back to the bench.
“Ah yeah, they’re grand. Seems Sheila has taken to the birds. Nah, not like that. She’s birdwatching on Lough Eske. Bought binoculars an’ all.”
Neville laughed. “Sure, there’s life in the old horse yet then. Shall we head? I should be getting back. Where you going to now?”
“I’m meeting Cara up at the top of Grafton Street. We’re going for coffee. D’you want to come with us?”
“Ah no, I’ll leave you two lovebirds alone.” Neville smiled. “You were quick off the mark there, Theo. Very smooth. One lady barely out the door and the other coming in the window.”
“Get out of it. It’s not like that,” Theo said, punching Neville playfully on the arm. “Cara and me are just friends. Like the name says, you eejit.”
“Right, I believe you. Thousands wouldn’t but I do.”
They headed towards Fusiliers’ Arch and the exit from the park into Grafton Street.
“So when are you planning to head to London then?” Theo asked.
“Maybe next week. I’ve to sort out a few things first, get some cash, all that jazz. Mam and Dad are not too keen on the idea but they’ll come round. My uncle already said he’d be thrilled to have me over. I reckon he thinks he’ll be getting free babysitting for his three young ones. And I suppose he might. I’ll have nothing much else to do.”
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