by Oliver Sands
Nora was at the living room door now, one foot in the hallway, and was checking her watch again. Breeda looked at her aunt’s birdlike neck, and imagined twisting it, snapping it, crushing it.
‘Anyway, give it some thought and we’ll talk more in a day or two. There’s no point in delaying the inevitable. Off you go then.’
Then Breeda was on her feet. She cast a quick glance at the torn birthday card which had started to blacken and contort in the greedy flame, but Nora’s hand was on her shoulder now, ushering her away.
‘Oh, and I think we’ll skip lunch at the golf club later, hmm?’ She nodded at Breeda’s skinned knuckles. ‘Maybe some other time when you’re a bit more … presentable.’
Outside the front door, Nora gave her niece a bright cheerio, using a different voice to the one she’d used indoors. When Breeda turned to close the gate, she saw that Myra Finch had chosen that moment to come out to fuss with her window displays. The two elderly women were leaning into each other and watching her cross the road.
Breeda climbed into the car and noticed a shake in her hand. She struggled the key into the ignition and forced herself to exhale slowly. One day soon she would stand up to Nora. She was sick of being spoken to like a delinquent teenager. Soon, she promised herself. Soon.
As Breeda indicated and pulled out onto the quiet street, she glanced at her rear-view mirror and felt a chill run down her spine. Nora was watching her with the queerest of expressions.
Chapter 10
She didn’t mean to stare at his arse. He had just taken off his tracksuit pants to reveal a pair of black shorts and muscular legs with a shadow of dark hair which grew thicker as it approached his glutes. Breeda watched him through the glass wall separating the fitness studio from the cafe, as he squatted and rolled out his yoga mat. She’d recognized him straight away as the guy who’d bought the flowers yesterday on Main Street. Breeda sucked noisily for the green remnants of kale and spinach gloop at the bottom of her glass and wondered once again who this oddly familiar stranger was. She sat, transfixed, with her rolled-up yoga mat nestling between her thighs. Across the cafe table, Oona sat frowning into her phone, her face still flushed from downward-dogging.
‘Dammit. Dougie’s running late. He’s doing the electrics for the house in Riley’s Hill.’
‘Hmmmm…?’ Breeda continued to suck.
‘Actually, I think he said the new owner is from your old neck of the woods … they come from Dunry originally. I doubt you’d know them. You left when you were a kid, hey?’ Oona looked off into the middle distance. ‘He did tell me the name. It’s a bit weird. Anyway …’ Her voice trailed off, suddenly distracted, and she jabbed a message back to Dougie.
Breeda continued to watch the stranger. He stood and stretched his hands over his head, bending to the left and then to the right. He turned around and caught her looking. She sat up quickly and whacked her knee on the underside of the table.
‘Bugger!’
Green smoothie dribbled down Breeda’s chin. She rocked back and forth and rubbed her kneecap. Oona turned her phone face down on the table and sat back in her chair.
‘You know, I think you do owe me a proper apology, Bree.’
Breeda looked up from her knee. ‘I know, I know, I really—’
‘I don’t think you do know. We were up the walls with worry last night. You could have at least sent us a text, just to tell us you were OK.’
Breeda looked at Oona and saw the dark circles under her friend’s eyes. She deserved better. Breeda held her palms up, embarrassed by the drama she’d caused.
‘I know. You’re dead right. It’s just …’
Oona reached forward and took her hands.
‘It’s just that your head fills with too much noise sometimes, and you can’t control it or make sense of it, so how could you expect someone like me to make sense of it …? I am good at listening, Bree. It’s kinda what I do for a living, remember?’
Breeda did remember. She had visited Oona’s practice once. There were two identical armchairs, sitting across from each other, slightly angled so as not to appear confrontational. A three-seater settee sat under an abstract print, and Breeda had wondered about the rowing couples and families her friend must have guided out of stuckness over the years. Oona worked three days a week, and Breeda marveled at her ability to switch off – she never took her clients’ work home to her and Dougie’s personal life.
‘You look tired, Bree. Trouble sleeping again?’
‘Hmm. Something like that. Listen, Oona, there’s something I need to talk to you about.’
‘Well, walk downstairs with me. Dougie’s giving me a lift before he goes up to Riley’s Hill, and I don’t want to make him any more late than he already is.’
Breeda’s chair scraped on the floor as she stood. She glanced into the studio again, but the guy was lying on his mat now, down the far end of the room, his eyes closed and his focus inward.
Oona was waiting at the top of the stairs, her rolled-up yoga mat under her arm.
‘Bree? Chop, chop!’
Down on the street, Oona looked up and down for Dougie’s car, and then leaned her bum against the windowsill of Cheeses Christ. She closed her eyes and turned her face to the early afternoon sun.
‘Well, I’m all ears.’
When Breeda sat down beside her and stayed silent, Oona cracked her eyes open, and looked at her.
‘What’s up, Bree?’
Breeda gently rubbed the bruising on her hand, trying to find the words.
‘I think I’m cracking up, Oona …’ She shook her head. ‘It’s like I’m in some parallel universe, where everything’s just a wee bit skewiff …’
‘Ah, Bree. I can’t imagine how hard all this must be. But he’s an absolute dipshit in the extreme. I wouldn’t waste—’
‘Oona, this isn’t about Brian O’Dowd.’
Oona closed her mouth and waited.
‘Well – long story short – it would appear that yours truly here had a depressive mother who wrote letters to herself from her dead husband.
‘What?’
‘Yup. She’d chat to his ghost, write herself Valentine’s cards.’
‘Sweet Jesus.’
‘And there’s more.’
‘Go on …’
Breeda paused, fascinated by the absurdity of what she was about to say, allowing herself an indulgent moment to lap up the drama.
‘I found an eighteenth birthday card he wrote to me. I found it in amongst Mam’s old stuff, at five o’clock this morning.’
‘Feck me. Is it any wonder you look wrecked.’
‘Ah, thanks Oona. You’re a pal.’
‘Sorry.’
Oona stood, her brow creased, and looked past Breeda to a display of pickle jars and cheese boards in the window behind her. She nibbled on a piece of loose skin by her thumbnail.
‘But didn’t your Dad …’
‘Yep. When I was twelve …’
‘Jesus. So your Mam was still writing letters and stuff from him, six years after he died?’
Breeda made a non-committal noise.
Oona sat back on the windowsill and rested her chin onto the end of her rolled-up yoga mat. Both women stared vacantly into the middle distance.
‘This is the thing though. Nora said it’s a hoax – said it was just another one of Mam’s moments of madness. But … I dunno, I’m being daft …’
Breeda kicked the wall of the fromagerie with the back of her heel.
‘It’s just … it’s started me thinking, and I can’t get it out of my head now. I mean, what if it was from him? What if my Dad was alive and well, kicking around somewhere … thinking I hated him cos I never wrote back. Imagine …’
Both women breathed out slowly. A small cloud dragged itself across the sun and sent a thin blanket of shadow diagonally over the street. Breeda pulled up the zip on her hoody.
‘But why would Nora lie to you?’
‘I dunno. No reason. As
I said, I’m just being daft. It’s just …’ Breeda remembered her aunt’s face in the rear-view mirror.
‘Do you have it - the card?’
‘No. Nora tore it up and told me to leave the past in the past.’
‘No way!’
‘I know, right?’
The afternoon sun reappeared, and the two friends turned their faces towards it again.
‘What do you remember about him?’
‘My Da? God, what do I remember about my Da? His comb! He always carried a comb in his shirt pocket. He had a great head of hair, jet black. And the smell of tobacco. He’d always be rolling from his little pouch. And Mam would give out to him for smoking by the back door. She’d shoo him outside. And he loved the horses too. Loved the racing on the telly.’
Breeda could remember other things too. The screaming matches in the kitchen, the slammed doors and the smashed plates, but now wasn’t the time.
‘Well, you know what they say …?’
‘What do they say, Oona?’
‘That things come in threes. Last night in the pub you had Myra Finch publicly embarrass you over a mistaken engagement to fuckwit-extraordinare, Brian O’Dowd. This morning you’ve discovered your mother’s a ghost-whisperer who writes psychic letters to your dead dad. What generous slice of headwreck is next on the menu for Breeda Looney?’
‘Ah, thanks!’ Breeda laughed and pushed her friend on the shoulder.
Across the street a car horn tooted. Dougie had double-parked and was beckoning Oona over. Behind him a large tourist coach braked with a pneumatic hiss and waited. Oona gave him an impatient wave.
‘Frig it. Bree, I have to go, or this one will be late for the Riley’s Hill woman’.
‘It’s fine, love. You go. We’ll talk later.’
‘Listen, my advice, for what it’s worth … if your dad is out there somewhere a day or two won’t make any difference. You need a plan.’
‘Respond, don’t react.’ said Breeda, mimicking her.
Oona gave a throaty laugh as she hugged Breeda, then turned for the car. She stopped halfway across the road and shouted back to her friend.
‘You know what, Bree? What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!’
‘I know, right?’ Breeda had started to laugh. It felt bloody marvellous to give in to the lunacy for a moment.
She watched Oona walk around to the other side of the car, still shaking her head, and step her long legs into the passenger seat. Oona was asking Dougie something and got back out of the car. She was mouthing something to Breeda, but an old tractor was now trundling the other way and belching black fumes in its wake. The coach behind Dougie sounded his horn, and Breeda could see Dougie shouting at Oona to get back in. But Oona was standing with her hands cupped around her mouth and was trying again. Breeda could make out the words ‘Rileys Hill’, and she stepped to the edge of the pavement, the sharp stench of slurry hanging on the air as the tractor moved on.
‘The new owner – up on Riley’s Hill – she’s Sneddon. Dervil Sneddon!’
Oona waved a conciliatory hand back at the bus driver, and sat back in the car, shouting at Dougie to calm down. She had barely slammed the door when they screeched off up the road, to leave Breeda walking backwards in a daze. Her thighs met the windowsill of Cheeses Christ, and she sat back down, dumbstruck.
Chapter 11
Breeda remembered exactly the day it had all started to go wrong. It had been a blustery Tuesday morning at school, twenty-five years ago, and double physics had just finished. Religious education was up next and poor old arthritic Sister Jacinta always took ages to hobble up the stairs with her cane. Up until that normal September morning in 1989, young Dervil Sneddon had always been perfectly civil to Breeda Looney. The Sneddon family were quite well-off by Dunry standards. They had a big house on the other side of town, they took a foreign holiday every summer, and Breeda had heard that Dervil had not just a TV, but also her very own video player in her bedroom. Apart from a slightly affected accent, Dervil was just another well-behaved girl who mostly flew under the radar.
Dervil’s twelfth birthday was that coming Saturday, and there was to be a party followed by a sleepover at her house. That morning, as they’d waited on Sister Jacinta to arrive, Dervil stood at her desk and riffled through a stack of flowery invitations which she’d extracted with a flourish from her leather satchel. The din in the room subsided momentarily, then increased to an excited murmur, as girls elbowed each other, and last-minute homework was discarded. Dervil glided benevolently between the desks, handing out the personalized invitations, and as Breeda Looney sat waiting on hers she thought of her fusty sleeping bag back home, and whether she’d need to air it on the line before Saturday. Breeda turned to see Mindy Chen receive her invitation, which meant everyone was invited. Mindy was the Chinese girl whose family had only moved to town last year. They ran the takeaway down by the bookies, but Margaret Looney wouldn’t have Chinese food in the house as it was full of E numbers or MSG or something. Breeda peeked to her left at Sharon Doran’s card, as someone behind her said they’d bring their Dirty Dancing video, while someone else said they’d bring along a Ouija board, but was being told that was too babyish, but sure bring it anyway. Dervil had returned to her desk now, just behind Breeda. Everyone else had been given an invitation, and Dervil sat back down with her hands crossed and her eyes forward. Breeda smiled at her, knowing she was just teasing, and would roll her eyes and flick Breeda’s invitation at her. But Dervil’s eyes had taken on a vacant coolness. She looked through Breeda, as the door opened, and Sister Jacinta stood there stomping her cane with a big red face from the exertion of the stairs.
‘Girls! Settle down. Breeda Looney face forward. Page 53 of your textbooks.’
That day, when the class had finished, Breeda took her time to pack her books away, and let the room empty around her. She wasn’t aware of it at the time, but this was to be the start of a long and steady retreat into herself. During lunch she had hidden in a corner of the library where she tried to lose herself in a book but struggled to stay focused on the words in front of her. When she went to that afternoon’s classes, she forced herself to sit up straight, and tried her best to look as if everything was normal, to rise above her churning hurt. But a few of the other girls had noticed that she hadn’t been invited to the party, and soon word had spread. In that way that girls form alliances, Breeda Looney quickly started to become a bit of a pariah. No-one wanted guilt by association, especially prior to the Sneddon sleepover.
That weekend Breeda stayed indoors and tried to distract herself in TV show after TV show. A sense of unease had hummed persistently in the back of her brain, and she sat cross-legged inches from the cathode ray tube, flicking through the handful of channels and trying to lose herself amongst the pixels on the rounded screen. She would just push it down and ignore it. Besides, her Mam had her own health concerns, and her Dad was laboring over in London. So young Breeda had kept her own company that weekend, mostly passing the time in her room, observing the outside world from behind the thin net curtains.
The belief that she was in some way faulty, that she was somehow guilty of wronging Dervil, started to slowly solidify and take hold, and she muddled on like a child with a pebble lodged under her sock. The following week her classmates seemed only too happy to overlook the defective girl in their midst, to actively ostracize her, and let her watch on from the shameful shadows on the periphery of the school yard.
By the middle of October low, heavy clouds seemed to hang daily over the town, trapping in a permanent state of mizzle. When the other schoolgirls ate their packed lunches inside, and chatted in huddles in the long marble corridors, Breeda would retreat to a sheltered spot behind the tuck shop, where she would stand in her tartan school skirt, the wool damp and heavy with the rain. She would count down the minutes until the bell would ring, when she could once again pretend she had some sense of purpose until it was time to go home.
And so it
was, behind the tuck shop, as she half-heartedly nibbled on a salad sandwich, that she first encountered Father Green.
‘Now there’s a girl with the weight of the world on her shoulders.’
Breeda had jumped, startled, and dropped the sandwich on the wet ground. She looked up to see a young man, around thirty, with wavy dark hair in a black cassock. He was holding a huge black umbrella and smiling like a long-lost pal.
‘Oh dear’. He looked at the damp bread, its contents spilled at Breeda’s feet.
Breeda’s chin had begun to tremble. She dropped her gaze to the ground and felt the mortifying threat of tears. She kept her eyes on his feet. Black socks under black sandals. But it was suddenly all too much for her, the unexpected relief at being noticed, at being seen, by someone – anyone. The tears brimmed and spilled, and she hated her shoulders for giving into their shudders. She hated her face for the pitiful contortions into which it was now shaping itself. Unable to keep up the facade, she allowed herself to crumble.
He had come to her side, his arm around her, as she buried her face in his shoulder and wept silently. That rainy afternoon he’d held his umbrella over Breeda in the playground and said nothing more than, ‘Of course, of course,’ as she sobbed and whimpered. When Breeda blew her nose noisily into his handkerchief he had laughed freely, and then she found that she was laughing too.
‘And with whom am I enjoying a laugh on this lovely soft day?’
‘Breeda. Breeda Looney, Father.’
He held out his hand and she shook it three times.
‘Well, Breeda Looney, I’m guessing the bell is about to ring and you have a class to get to?’
‘Yes, Father …’
‘Father Green.’
‘Yes, Father Green.’
His name was Peter Green and he was a chaplain from the monastery up the road. He was standing in for Sister Jacinta, who’d had a nasty fall, and he would be around for a few weeks while the nun recuperated. He was to take the Religious Education classes and would also be around to give any pastoral guidance, if and when it was sought.
