by Finn Óg
“How are you, wee lamb?”
“Good,” was all she said.
“How did you get on with Sinead?” he whispered. “Did you have fun?”
“I luffed it,” he heard her say.
“You loved me being away?”
“No, Daddy, I luffed having fun with Sinead, but I luff having you home more.”
That wouldn’t last forever either, so he was happy to take it all in. He wandered towards Sinead with his barnacle still attached.
“Someone’s been missing you,” she said smiling.
Sam lifted his chin slightly from Isla’s shoulder. “She has just told me she loved the last few days.”
“She wasn’t on her own,” said Sinead. “We had great craic.”
“Thank you so much, Sinead.”
“How’s Áine?”
“She’s ok. She’s worried she’s let you down, though.”
“What?” said Sinead, almost angry at the notion.
“Why did Áine let you down?” Isla earwigged into the conversation.
“Never you mind, nosey little lady. Jump on board and we’ll be down in a minute.”
“Aw-wuh.”
“Go on, Isla. Two minutes.”
Isla huffed off. “Just two minutes,” she mimicked mockingly.
Sam’s body made a move and then stiffened – he didn’t know whether to hug Sinead. He never knew. Hugging didn’t come easy. He’d had female friends who double cheek kissed incessantly on nights out and random meetings. They did the rounds with everyone but left him lipstick free. Now that Shannon was gone his cuddles were for Isla. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to hug anyone else – he just didn’t know how to.
“Cup of tea?” She threw him a lifebelt.
“Maybe something stronger?”
“Not for me. I’d better get back to Áine tonight if she’s in bad shape.”
Sam tried to ignore the stirring of disappointment in him.
Sinead skipped over the guard rail and down the companionway like she’d been sailing all her life.
“How did you sleep? The rocking can be hard to get used to.”
“Like a baby,” she said.
Sam looked around. The galley was pristine, just as he’d left it. Nothing had changed except for a few new paper and card creations made by Isla, with obvious adult assistance.
“She’s gutted at the result of the trial. And …” He paused.
“What?” said Sinead, pouring from the whistling kettle.
“Well, he’s out now, so you both have to take care. It maybe wouldn’t do any harm to get offside for a while – a holiday or whatever.”
“I’m way ahead of you,” she said. “I booked us a week in Majorca. Cheap as chips.”
“And she was ok, Isla?”
“She was good as gold, Sam. You have a little gem there. I luffed it, too.”
Sam could see she was genuinely happy with her time spent with Isla.
When she left she spared him the difficulty and put out her hand. Sam shook it gently, his eyes saying more than his mouth.
“Thank you, Sinead. Really.”
“Don’t be daft. You were doing me a favour minding Áine.”
“Let’s look at your flat security again when you’re back.”
“Oh-kay,” said Sinead in a deep voice, mocking his deliberate deflection.
Sam closed his eyes in realisation.
“Don’t worry – you’re right. Come down and we’ll sort it.”
“Have a nice holiday.”
Sinead turned slowly and moved away. He almost called after her, but then didn’t – couldn’t. He watched her all the way to the top of the marina. He wanted her to turn and he didn’t want her to turn.
He went down below. “Where did she sleep?” he asked Isla.
Sam had made his bed up for Sinead, expecting her to use it.
“In my bottom bunk,” Isla said. “Why?”
“No reason,” Sam replied absently.
He wasn’t sure what to make of that or how he felt about it. But it was confusing nonetheless.
Not once in the weeks Anthony had been cooped up in the room had anyone knocked on his door.
He looked at the old radio alarm clock, its red digits glowing fiercely. Five fifteen in the morning. He panicked that he’d been caught observing the late-night liaison, so he just lay in the bed, seized.
The door cracked open. “Get up. You’re wanted for a wee walk.”
He could just make out the slimy green kelp on the son’s arm as it held the door. Anthony’s heart battered hard. This is it, he thought. They’re gonna take me out and do me.
The son just stood there, unsure whether Anthony had woken. “You need to get up and come with me. You need to hurry up.”
Anthony had no choice. He swung his legs out of bed, socks still on – the house was bloody freezing. He reached out for his hoodie and pulled on his jeans and trainers.
They crept across the landing and Anthony noticed the parents’ door open a fraction – the darkness concealing whoever was looking out. He somehow knew it was the mother.
The son pulled on a jacket and they left the house. Anthony’s alarm increased when the son stepped over the gate with a movement that looked like second nature - leaving Anthony wondering whether he had actually watched someone else creep out at night.
“Where are we going?” he managed.
“Down to the front,” whispered the son. “No talking.”
They walked downhill for what felt like a mile; the noise of the sea building with every few feet. They turned a corner and walked up a slope. Anthony could make out movement at the harbour wall, creaking, and an unusual tapping noise.
The son stopped. “We’ll stand over here,” he said, motioning to a concrete structure with a pitched roof.
“What’s happening?” Anthony asked.
“Your car’s on its way.”
“We’re doing it now?” After such a long and unexpected wait Anthony found himself suddenly reluctant despite his desperation to escape the house and his crusty clothes.
“Doubt it,” was all the son said.
Anthony could hear a vehicle approach, heavy. Within a minute a van pulled up and stopped.
“That’s it,” said the son.
“What? I was told a car. I’ve never driv a van before.”
The son shrugged and gently shook his head.
The driver’s window rolled down. “Hello?”
The son stepped forward. “Here,” he said.
“How am I supposed to get in there? There’s gippo bars,” a country-sounding voice whispered.
Anthony and the son stepped forward to look at the height-restricting barrier designed to prevent traveller families setting up a caravan site beside the harbour.
“Oh, right. There’s another car park higher up,” he offered.
“Fuck sake. You walk up there and I’ll swing round,” growled the man, who drove up hill.
The son beckoned Anthony follow him but Anthony refused to go.
“I’m not going anywhere in that van,” he said.
The son stared at him, shrugged again and stomped off up the hill.
Anthony debated running. If he took off, they’d get him for sure – he had no money and no idea where he was. What was the van for? There had been no mention of a van. And where was Grim?
“Fuck’s wrong with you?” The van driver somehow appeared at full height, right in front of Anthony. He was enormous, clothed in black with a woolly hat pulled down to meet what might have been a beard, but Anthony couldn't make much out in the gloom.
“Nothin’, nothin’.”
“C’mon well,” said the man turning and leaving Anthony no choice but to follow.
Suddenly it just didn’t feel like he was about to be slotted.
They walked fifty feet and the man told Anthony to get into the passenger seat of the van while the man climbed into the driver’s side. There was no sign of the son
.
“I’ve never driv a van before,” Anthony began to turn towards the driver.
“Don’t look at me,” the man growled.
Anthony’s eyes shot forward where the morning light was slowly lifting the veil on his surroundings. He could just make out some rocks and the outline of a few boats. “Sorry,” he muttered.
“There’s a motor coming – a Ford Mondeo. Ye know the kind?”
The man’s accent was alien to Anthony. It was northern and southern all at the same time.
“No,” he confessed.
“Ye know a Ford?”
“Yes.”
“She’s a saloon.”
“Right.”
The man could see this wasn’t helping Anthony.
“Silver.”
“Ok, ok,” he said, eager to please.
“Key start, but y’need to mind y’erself, for it’s the key that sets things in motion, y’understand?”
“Uh-huh.”
“D’ye understand or d’ye not?”
“No,” Anthony confessed.
The man sighed. “Ye start a car ordinary like this.”
The man’s accent was confusing Anthony. Some words were garbled together into one phrase and others were almost spelt out. Anthony eyes followed the man’s hand from the top of the wheel to the ignition, where he clicked the key two notches.
“The next one turns her over, ok?”
“Ok.” He could hear his voice shaking.
“But when ye get this other motor, and ye have her in place, ye have to kick the key the other way, see?” The man rotated the key anticlockwise. “Ye will need to turn the wheel a wee hair just to get her to click into place.” The man’s hand wiggled the steering wheel a tiny fraction.
“Ok,” Anthony said.
“Right, so,” said the man as a car approached.
It passed their little car park and turned into the area where Anthony and the son had stood. The pair sat in silence for few minutes and Anthony could feel the man staring at him. Still he hadn’t the courage to look up from the dash.
“There’s another fella coming,” the man said. “Don’t be looking at him either.”
“Ok,” said Anthony.
“Ye just get out when he arrives and head back to your digs.”
Anthony began to panic again. He was only a short walk from the house but he’d been so on edge by events that he had no idea where he was in relation to the house. He flinched as the passenger door opened and he glanced to his left in fear before remembering he wasn’t to look at the new arrival.
“Ok, on your way, son,” said the new man – who sounded just like the first.
Anthony climbed down from the cab, eyes to the floor.
“Yer motor’s down below,” said the second man. “Key’s under the front wheel arch, nearside, wedged in the spring.”
Anthony didn’t follow but wasn’t about to say so.
“Know what y’er about, then?”
Anthony stared at the ground and said nothing.
“D’ye understand everything?”
Anthony just nodded, noticing that the second man was wearing grey surgical gloves.
“Speak up now, son, if there’s something y’er not right with.”
The man had detected his uncertainty but Anthony was too scared to say that he didn’t really understand any of it. Instead he deflected.
“I don’t know where the house is,” he muttered.
“Ye wha?” said the first man.
“Where I’m staying. It’s the first time I’ve been out. I don’t know how to get back.”
“Fuck me,” said the first man.
“Well, we don’t know where it is,” said the second man. “How did ye get here?”
“There was someone with him,” confirmed the van driver.
“Well, where’re they?”
“Good question,” said the van man.
“Look, son, we’ve been here too long as t’is. Ye’ll ha’ta find y’er way back yersel’. We can’t help ye wi’ that.”
Anthony nodded. He just wanted the men gone and his embarrassment to end.
“Good luck ta ye,” said the second man, who hauled himself into the cab in Anthony’s place. The van growled to life and pulled off.
Anthony turned to the pier below, now exposed in the grey dawn. He thought for a few moments – if he got going he might identify the small gate before most of the neighbours woke.
7
“Why have you lifted up all the floorboards, Daddy?” Isla looked at the mess. The boat looked completely different when stripped back. “Will I get the screwdrivers?”
She was a handy wee woman to have around. She could identify tools and understood how they worked. Like a surgical assistant, but oilier.
“I was looking for something. I was going to have it all back in place by the time you finished school but I ran out of time.”
In truth, he had only confirmed what he already knew: there was no money left in the bilge. It had been worth a shot, though. At one stage he had acquired so much cash that a sealed cellophane bag could well have gone missing or been washed into another underfloor compartment by the movement of the boat under sail.
But, no, every last note was gone. He sat and thought about the tens of thousands he and Isla had managed to burn through. They’d decoupled from society after Shannon’s murder, sailed through the Med, round Ireland, round Scotland, footering about France and west coastal Europe. Sam hadn’t thought twice about the spend – it felt almost justified. They had been hurt, wronged, aggrieved; they had a chasmic hole in their lives and, as such, money seemed pointless. Pointless, at least, to be frugal with. They had eaten out, gone on trips and treats, anything that allowed Isla to smile again – if even for a short while. He craved that happiness in her. It was like a ketamine blast to the sternum – it didn’t take the pain away, but it made him care just a little less, for a little while.
They’d stayed in marinas instead of swinging on anchor. It was more comfortable and easier with a small child in tow – but it was also more expensive. They’d done Disneyland Paris twice, gone on adventures and stayed in the odd hotel. It broke up the long sails and the nights of cards and reading stories from books. And he’d kept Siân, their boat, in pristine order, no expense spared.
Of course, the cash had been ill-gotten in a way. He had amassed it while working for Sinead or his little friend Fran, liberating prostitutes, trafficking victims and even seafarers from slavery and captivity. Cash was easy come by in such settings. Unsuspecting and incapacitated pimps, jailers and ships’ officers often had bundles of money lying around. He had lifted the spoils as justification for the risks he was taking – if caught the consequences were the clink or the crematorium.
There had been well over a hundred thousand euros at one point. He’d spent a quarter of it on the boat, given a quarter to a Libyan woman and her daughter to set them up for a new life in Ireland and fluttered through the rest with Isla. He sat, still and silent, a niggling and unattractive proposition knocking around his head. He lifted the laptop and tapped in “benefits Northern Ireland”.
Sam had never claimed. Not one penny. But then he hadn’t paid taxes since he’d left the Marines. He looked at the requirements: talk of National Insurance contributions, employment history, address details and skills. It was far from encouraging. The navy had presumably paid his Insurance stamps, but he’d worked off book ever since and his abilities were in leading men at sea or in the sand. Not ideal. He had no idea how he could begin to explain keeping a child for two years with no visible means of income. It could open a bag of snakes if he finally declared himself and asked for state help. Then he looked at what he was entitled to, which confirmed for him the futility of it all. He could earn more scraping boats.
And so he’d clambered over the side of Siân and walked ashore where he accosted the sheepish boatyard owner.
“You need a hand,” Sam stated rather than asked.
“With what?” the yardman asked nervously.
“Here, in the boatyard. You flat-packed my van and I can’t afford to pay for it. I need a job – you need help. I know what I’m doing, so …” He left the implication hanging with a shrug.
“Ehm … well, yeah. You … you want to work for me?”
“Not really,” said Sam. “But yeah.”
The yard was close to Isla’s school, the boat was tied to its pontoon and it suited just fine. Working in the boatyard meant he’d be able to drop off and collect Isla from school.
“Right,” said the yard owner surprised. “Not sure what I can pay you, though. And the work’s, like—”
“I know the work. I did it for long enough. I can rig, do hull repairs, fix sails, most stuff.”
“What I have is cleaning and polishing, driving the crane—”
“Well, I can do that better than you can obviously.”
The man’s chest swelled in irritation. “What would you be looking?”
“Twenty an hour.”
“I couldn’t even pay you half that.” The yardman almost sniggered.
Sam gave him that look – the Halloween face, Shannon had called it. When looking out he felt it to be little more than a blank stare, but she’d explained that when he deployed it, recipients felt the reaper had arrived.
“Maybe I could give you half that.”
“I’ll start in the morning. Six o’clock.”
“I don’t start till … ok, six o’clock. I’ll leave a list of stuff on the door of the shed.”
“That’ll do well.”
Sam stomped back to the boat having just interviewed himself, negotiated his own salary and dictated his working conditions.
“Wanna take a stroll?”
The boss looked at his wife. He knew what that meant: someone had called the council offices she cleaned. She was always on the same floor at the same time every day. Any one of the phones could ring and she would answer provided she was alone. Very occasionally an overenthusiastic worker appeared before seven o’clock and she would ignore the phone, which would be picked up by the keen employee: “Hello, hello, hello,” only for the handset to be replaced. When that happened she was forced to wait until the following day to collect the message for her husband.
