The Companion

by Lorcan Roche

  ‘Tomorrow. Take another. Whole. Day off. OK?’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘I’ll be. Fine. There’s a day. Service. We use. It. All the time. It’s where we found. Dana.’

  ‘Thanks Ed.’

  ‘No. Problemo.’

  When I pretend to look out the window I can see his reflection plain as day. Wisps of long dead hair are moving like weeds underwater, his neck is twisting, his cracked dry mouth with all the cold sores round the edges says, ‘Hey, man. Look at. Me?’

  I don’t turn round. I can’t. In his wheelchair lap his palms lie open, like a Minister in front of his congregation.

  ‘I don’t want. To. Lose you.’

  ‘You won’t.’

  ‘OK. But. Make sure. You. Tell me what. You’re. Thinking. OK?’

  ‘OK, Ed. I will.’

  Which is exactly what we say when we can’t tell them what we’re thinking.

  Just inside the door of The Subway Inn there’s this old-fashioned phonebooth, the kind gangsters used to get shot to death in movies in my head I often think of ringing Dana after a few scoops, but I’m glad I don’t have her number yet, I mean, what the fuck would I say? It’s me, hi, oh nothing, I was just thinking about you for the fiftieth time today. And I remind myself how I’ve been down that path before, getting all obsessional about a woman I don’t really know.

  Sometimes in the hall at night I catch her perfume hanging, like incense. I heard her one day telling Ellie it was Issey Miyake. She put on a Southern accent and said it was her one li’l indulgence, then the two of them started laughing like a pair of old crones and I knew they’d been getting stoned together and it was really hard for me to walk in over the threshold, I felt like a mail-order bride. It was the opposite at home I used to find it really difficult to leave the room when all the family gathered, and if I stopped outside to eavesdrop one of my sisters would always be muttering some sarcastic shit like, Christ, how can one person take up so much space? or When in God’s name is that galoot going to get another bloody job?

  You’ll like this.

  One of my sisters had this boyfriend called Josh, he was this real studious prick with ears, always agreeing with everything my father said Oh I say, bravo and all that mock-erudite shite. I caught him one night when he was supposed to be lighting the fire, my job because it involved going out into the real world for more than five seconds, and there he was, standing at the mantle waving his wet-fish hands about, practising what he was going to say. And, like I already said, I have a major fuckin’ problem with people who practise shit before they say it, myself included. I shook the coal-bucket violently Eh, hello, is this amateur hour? and he leapt out of his baggy skin, seriously, you should have seen the way he went all red, like a tomato with legs, then deep purple like an aubergine.

  You could see him all night waiting for his chance to make some crack at my expense. So, when my old fella made some ancient Julius Caesar pun – Or, more aptly in your case, dear fellow, Vidi, vici, veni — he, Josh, mutters something about the reference possibly going over my head, something about the gaps in my knowledge, the lacunae, not remotely aware that I had better Latin than any of them.

  All of a sudden there’s this excellent silence, even the dog pricks up its ears, and they all know he’s skating on really thin ice, you know, trying to diss me with my own mother sitting there. So I get up slowly. I stretch out like a lion. I walk over to the fire, pick up the brass poker and they’re all watching me now, weighing it in my hand. Then I start giving the fire a real going-over, boom, bang which they all hate since it sends soot and shit out into the room, but no one says anything, not a jot.

  Through clotted sparks and curling smoke see fear increasing in my oldest sister’s eyes.

  20

  Awful-early this morning I passed Ed’s father still in his dressing-gown and I stepped to the side, Good Morning judge, how are you today? but he just sailed past without acknowledging me and it’s not like I’m easy to miss, especially in a narrow corridor where your silk dressing-gown is swishing against the walls, and against my knees.

  I really hate when people pretend you’ve invisible.

  When I came into Ed’s room he asked, ‘Hey man, what’s up?’ which means either I’m getting worse at hiding things, or he’s getting better at finding them.

  When I tell him what happened in the hallway he says, ‘I wouldn’t. Take it. Personally. Guy’s an. Ass-hole.’

  ‘You’re probably right.’

  ‘I’m. Defin-itely Right.

  I tell him how I’d be coming down the stairs at home, and I’d say to myself, Self, come on now, make an effort, he is your father after all but he’d just look up and sigh when he saw me.

  ‘What does he. Do. Your. Dad?’

  ‘Most of the day he hides away in his study, no one knows what the fuck he actually does in there.’

  ‘Tell. Me. About it.’

  ‘In the evening, he comes out and changes his clothes as if he’s been doing something physically demanding, then he sits in his leather armchair puffing away on his meershom, or whatever you call those hand-carved Sherlock Holmes pipes, stroking his chin and saying shit like – “Of course Aristotle says that the essence of drama is catharsis, which is fascinating, because, at one point, catharis was actually the Greek word for menstrual flow.”’

  ‘Who. Else is. There?’

  ‘Me. Ma. The Ugly Sisters.’

  ‘What are they Like?’

  ‘I realize I’m not exactly an oil-painting …’

  He laughs and it’s odd isn’t it, how, in a really close relationship when one person is down the other automatically goes up?

  ‘… But compared to them I’m fuckin’ George Clooney. I’m Brad Pitt exiting the casino with the fountain foaming in the moonlight. I’m Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid astride my horse with the sun setting behind me, it’s lending my hair a nice warm glow and granting my eyes a merry little twinkle and …’

  ‘They’re like. Totally. Ugly?’

  ‘With a capital U, my friend. Hounds of the Baskervilles. One of them actually has a mole with two huge black hairs on it.’

  ‘Gross.’

  ‘I offered her fifty fuckin’ quid once to let me get the tweezers at it which, considering the fact I wasn’t even working, was quite a lot of money.’

  ‘And their. Hus-bands?’

  ‘They’re like the intellectual version of the Seven Dwarfs. They nod at every single thing my old fella says, they go, “Mmm how interesting.”’

  ‘No. Way. José.’

  ‘Yes way. I’m telling ya, Ed, it would make you want to to scream. Seriously, they’d spend half a century discussing the nuances of certain Greek words, and if you got up to pour yourself another glass of wine, you’d hear his voice, like a stuck-up cricket umpire, That’s number three, and by the by, that particular vintage is not exactly inexpensive. For instance, and this is him talking, so think a high, whiney, bagpipe kind of voice – Were you aware … puff puff.

  ‘What’s. That?’

  ‘Well it’s not a fuckin’ train going past, is it? It’s him. On the pipe.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  ‘Were you aware …’

  ‘Puff. Puff.’

  ‘That the Greek word for love – Eros – is but a vowel away from the word for hostility – Eris. Asshole.’

  ‘Major. Ass-hole.’

  ‘To be fair, sometimes he’d come out with the odd interesting one, so you sort of had to keep one ear open. Generally, I’d sit away from them by the fire, with Ma and the dog. We’d have a bottle of wine. They were cognac and whiskey people. One time, he looked over at me, which was an event in itself, and started to tell this story about the Viking word for adolescent or teenager, zinderkund which means fire-child, because teenagers in ancient Scandinavia used to just kip by the fire all day, the lazy bastards. But you see, back then not a whole lot was expected of you, you kinda had this transition year or
two where you could just lie there, staring into the flame, seeing great battles and victories and no one was hassling you to clean your room or any of that shit. I talk too much.’

  ‘No. I. Like. It. Go on.’

  ‘Anyway, he could be reasonably diverting, but boy did the Husbands-to-Be lay it on with a trowel. I swear to God, one time one of them actually clapped and said “Oh, I say bravo!”’

  ‘Je-sus.’

  ‘Same asshole dissed me in front of my mother one time.’

  There’s a pause and he nods as if to let me know that despite what has gone down he still has no choice but to love her, and I’m right to be telling him a tale of filial love and duty. And a very important part of this job is drawing them out, reminding them of people they love and giving them reasons to live, and sometimes we have do that with ourselves, so it’s not like we don’t know how instinctively, alright?

  Anyway, I tell him the tale of catching Josh when he was supposed to be lighting the fire, and the lacunae, and the poker and the dog and the excellent silence that ensued.

  But Ed is expecting a much more dramatic tale of revenge, he wants much more than me staring at Josh brandishing a poker about, which is good, because it means I’ve never really threatened Ed with my eyes. He says, ‘How. Did. You get. Him back?’

  ‘OK. One fine day, Josh left his faggoty suede jacket on the banisters and I swiped the keys, popped the bonnet on his poxy little Nissan Micra and pulled the coils out, which meant it wouldn’t spark. So, it’s time to go, and he gets in and just sits there turning it over, until the idiot completely drains the battery. I told him there was a battery-charger in my old fella’s shed, but he said he was loathe to let someone like me start rummaging under his bonnet. Fine. So I just walk away and he asks about the possibility of calling a taxi and I just laugh and say, “Here? Why surely you must be jesting, Josh,” because, as you know, we lived way out in the sticks.’

  ‘Wick-low.’

  ‘Right. And here’s where it gets funny. He says, “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” Three times. With his head going like ….’

  ‘John. Cleese, when he’s. Beating. The. Car. Fawlty. Towers.’

  ‘Nice one Ed! And he says he has never in his entire academic career once been late for class. So I ask him what he teaches and he looks at me as if I have two heads, and he says he is a Professor of Humanities which I thought was pretty fuckin’ ironic because the little bastard hadn’t a human bone in his body.’

  ‘What. Hap-pened?’

  ‘I offered to give him a lift into town on the back of my motorbike.’

  ‘You have a. Bike?’

  I don’t, but Ed doesn’t know that.

  ‘Yes, a big, powerful mother. A Honda Blackbird. So, he gets on, and you can see he’s real nervous so all the way into Dublin I fuckin’ lash along, mirrors tipping and clipping parked cars on corners, his little corduroy knees colliding with the edges of bumpers and, once, when we swerved in behind a builder’s truck, his pointy fuckin’ forehead missing a big steel pole by the skin of ant’s cock.’

  ‘Ex. Cellent!’

  ‘I can feel him, getting tenser and tenser. He tries twice to get me to slow down, but whenever he taps my back or bangs on my lid, I just drop a gear, whannnnng, open her up even harder. So, we get to Trinity …’

  ‘Matrix. Trin-ity?’

  ‘No. It’s the college where he teaches. And he takes off the helmet, and underneath he’s a sort of greeny-grey, like seagull shit, totally ready to void. And when he walks away, or tries to, he goes all crab-ways, first to one side, then another. That’s when I call his name.’

  ‘Hey. Josh!’

  ‘Yeah. And he turns, and I do an excellent greener.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘I gob, I spit. And it lands real close to his poxy Clark’s commandos shoes, and I say, “You ever speak down to me in front of my mother again I’ll set your poxy little Nissan on fire. Maybe with you and that cunt you married tied up in the front seats. Capiche?”’

  ‘Tot-ally. Excellent. What. Did. He. Say?’

  ‘He tried to tell me that my sister had warned him about me, saying I was deranged, but with his tongue all undone like a fuckin’ liquorice lace he couldn’t speak properly and he ended up saying I was drained and I said, no, actually I was feeling pretty fucking good thanks, it was him who looked all drained, except of course for where he’d pissed his pants.’

  ‘Had. He?’

  ‘No, but I made him look, then I sang, “Made you look, made you stare, made the barber cut your hair.” Bit childish, obviously, but like really playing up the demented whacko brother bit. For effect.’

  ‘Yeah. Fuck him.’

  ‘Fuck the lot of them.’

  ‘Fuck. Your. Old. Fella.’

  ‘Fuck yours!’

  ‘Fuck your. Sisters.’

  ‘Nah man, they’re too ugly. Even for you. If you had a barrel full of mickeys, you still wouldn’t give them a lash.’

  His eyes are moist, he is all aglow inside, like Jesus with a lighted Sacred Heart, and it was Ed driving the big bike like a loon, it was Ed that spat on the ground right near the guy’s boots, just like Clint after he chews a wad.

  He is happy. To have escaped the room.

  ‘Wanna. Watch. Some Star Wars?’

  ‘One condition.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re not allowed duck your fuckin’ head during the Lightsabre fights as if you were Luke, OK?’

  ‘Fuck. You.’

  I put on my Darth Vader voice:

  ‘No, fuck you, Luke Skywalker.’

  I attack him, tickling and tapping, and I say, ‘The Force is strong with this one,’ and I fall on the floor, wriggling around, pretending he’s sliced off my arm at the shoulder. And in our imaginations my blood is spurting everywhere, Picasso patterns are all over the walls, which have ears, but it’s OK because all they can hear are his Fred Astaire feet tapping the pedals with sheer fuckin’ delight.

  21

  Dana passed me in the corridor today, she smiled and said, ‘Hey, Big Guy.’ Then she slowed down to talk, except I was carrying Ed’s stinking bedpan for the rest of the day all I could think was: When she goes home, she will lie on her bed, she will put her hands behind her head, she will tell herself, ‘Jesus christ he probably stinks of shit all the time, I’d never let him touch me now.’

  22

  Down in the Village, near Tompkins Square, there’s a guy with a cardboard cut-out of the President. This guy can take your photo in such a way it looks like the President is listening to you with a quizzical expression.

  I put my arm round the Prez, then I assume these stupid voices mostly to amuse myself.

  ‘Sir, I have to say, I think that quite a few things are wrong with your country.’

  ‘I’m listening son. I genuinely respect the opinions of your generation.’

  ‘Thank you, Sir. Well first of all, I think there’s too much shit on TV. That stuff is like chewing-gum for the brain, it slows the populace down, makes people more and more stupid by the hour.

  ‘I agree whole-heartedly, son. But the First Amendment states that …’

  ‘Sir, with all due respect you need to make an amendment to the Amendment. You need to take Rikki Lake and Gerry Springer and all their ilk off the air, I’m serious here, Mr President, we’re talking about the values and morals of future generations.’

  ‘What should I put on instead, son?

  ‘Well, Mr President, I personally believe you should have more Discovery Channel type things, you know, nature documentaries, anything with dogs and cats, or a feel-good factor. People like animals, Sir. We can learn a lot by observing Nature at close quarters.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I don’t mean animals tearing each other apart Mr President, but things like otters building dams, or how the flying squirrel gradually transformed itself into a bird. I think that by observing other species evolve, it might help us now, in our present, you know, predic
ament.

  ‘These are difficult times for Americans everywhere, son. What’s your name?’

  ‘Trevor, Sir.’

  ‘You Irish, Trevor?’

  ‘Yes I am, Sir.’

  ‘I have Irish blood in me.’

  ‘I know that Sir. I can see it in your eyes sometimes when you’re on the telly late at night.’

  ‘I don’t think so, Son. I haven’t touched a drop in years, I’ve got to go now Trevor, but I’ll have my people look into all of these important issues. I want to thank you for bringing them to my attention. The Nation thanks you, Trevor, and all the other Trevors out there.’

  And I was only messing, but half a dozen people have gathered round and Americans are so easily entertained, I mean they burst into applause if someone so much as farts, and now they’re all clapping and the guy with the camera says, ‘No charge buddy, ya should be on TV at least have your own radio show.’ And then this other guy with a beer-can baseball cap and this huge pretzel in his fist says, ‘Hell, I’d listen to you in the morning, no shit.’ And this wizened old witch beside him says ‘You didn’t kiss that blarney stone, you goddam made love to it.’

  They’re all laughing now it’s incredibly loud and false, they’re slapping each other’s fat backs and wobbling with delight and it’s a bit overwhelming after being sealed off for so long I’m feeling like an alien, and I don’t mean an illegal one, I’m thinking It’s probably best if I head back to the apartment, check on Ed, or maybe just hang out in the park instead.

  Have I mentioned I can nearly see his window from this one bench I like to sit on? It’s near the entrance, just off the street, you’re sort of in the park and outside it at the same time, which is nice.

  At first I think he’s pretending to sleep, then I hear this terrible catch in his chest, it’s as if there’s a wheezy old man trapped inside him which, when you think about it, is exactly what there is.