Winterwood

by Patrick McCabe

  —Daddy!

  I could see the cleaner passing by the school window, looking up intermittently and lugubriously gazing out, as though utterly perplexed by the strange world beyond.

  I would have given anything to go to the pub. But I didn't have any money and wasn't due to get the dole until Thursday. So I just started walking back towards the hostel and Drumcondra. I was crossing the canal bridge when the fear came over me and I found myself just standing there. The voice came drifting thinly to my ears.

  —That was a very stupid thing you did, Redmond, you don't want anyone to know you are in Dublin. Don't ever do a thing like that again.

  I lowered my head in abject humility.

  —Yes, of course. Yes, of course, I know, I replied and resumed my journey in the echo-specked dusk.

  It just wasn't enough for me. To be told, like a child, when it would be acceptable for me to see my daughter. It made me sick even thinking about it. I could hear her saying:

  —Why does it have to be this way? Is there any reason for it, Daddy?

  —None that I can think of, darling. None that I can think of in the wide, wide world, Imogen, my beloved pet.

  I sat in the common room for a couple of hours, turning the pages of Where the Wild Things Are.

  —Oh no! I'd hear my sweetheart say, recoiling from some big scaly dragon or other, pressing her fists up to her face as the lovely glow of the night light burnt on.

  1991

  Three: My Little Pony

  I WAITED IN TEMPLE BAR, knowing they'd come by sooner or later. I won't pretend it didn't shock me when it happened though. I knew the restaurant. We'd frequented it together, once upon a time. But it wasn't called Rudyard's now — it was a pasta place, where they ate alfresco, an indication of what was to come, the Temple Bar area developing into the epicentre of Dublin's hedonistic empire, a playground exclusively populated by louche adolescent Euro-ramblers and indigenous chemical-fuelled youths vertiginously wading in the currents of an ever-expanding opalescent ocean, shorn of history and oblivious of religion. It was a bright evening - fresh and crisp. A forlorn mime artist was halfheartedly juggling coloured balls close by the Central Bank. Imogen was wearing this sparkly top with a heart-shaped bag thrown across her shoulder. She was nine now, and wore her hair in a ponytail. She was holding her father's hand as she chatted, non-stop, as usual. The seagulls seemed to blow like random flecks of saliva. It was too much to deal with, no matter how much I thought I had prepared myself for it. I had to have a drink - one. That was all I had the money for. It failed miserably to fortify me.

  I stood in the alleyway across the street from the restaurant. As I looked in the window, the sight saddened me so much I can't find the words which might adequately describe it. Imogen was throwing her head back with her fists up to her face, laughing away at some joke he had told. In front of her on the table was a Knickerbocker Glory. Her father was helping her to eat it. I watched her sink in her long-handled spoon, right into the middle of that great big multicoloured ice cream mountain. Her new father was wearing a casual diamond-patterned jumper. My vision became somewhat blurred as I stood there in the cobbled alleyway, with streams of people sweeping past me. I heard something about the Temple Bar Music Centre. John Martyn was playing there, a girl said in passing. 'May you never,' I heard her sing. Another song that Catherine had loved - 'May you never lay your head down without a hand to hold.'

  Imogen had always been crazy about pizza. Every Sunday I'd bring her to Deep Pan, close by our flat, which was on Lonsdale Road in Kilburn. She'd cry: 'Pineapple - yay!' and Catherine would say: 'It's salami for me!'

  After they left the restaurant, I was still a little unsteady, not yet wholly back to myself. But I managed to keep them in sight. They caught a taxi on Aungier Street. People will tell you there's no such thing as real coincidence. That synchronicity etc. is just so much waffle. But it did seem remarkably strange to me that scarcely five minutes later, after the taxi had pulled away and after dazedly wandering into a shop, the first thing I came upon happened to be a video of My Little Pony. And not just any old copy of it either, but the very one I remembered watching with Immy — The Enchanted Mask, in fact. Where Rainbow Dash, Minty and Wisteria are going to the magic castle with Sunny Daze. I remembered it especially because Pinkie Pie wasn't in it and Immy had been very disappointed by that. My heart was thumping furiously from the moment I saw it. It started me thinking about Imogen and her toys. I can't tell you how excited she used to get about all those ponies and their crazy adventures in Ponyville: the two of us singing the theme song in Queen's Park - Imogen being Pinkie Pie and me being Kimono.

  —Do the 'afraid' things, she'd say and I'd scare her.

  Pinkie Pie was the 'scarediest' pony.

  'Boo!' could even qualify as a scary thing for her.

  But she always loved it when the time came to comfort her. When the scary things were all over at last.

  —They won't come back, will they, the 'afraid' things?

  she'd say.

  —Of course they won't, Pinkie Pie, I'd tell her.

  —Can we watch it again? she would say when the video at last had come to an end.

  And I'd say, real cross:

  —No! You know you've watched it twice already, Immy!

  I would not.

  —You certainly can, Pinkie Pie! I'd say and laugh my head off.

  I'd have let her watch it a hundred times if she'd wanted.

  A hundred and fifty.

  She could watch the video till the tape wore away as far as her father was concerned.

  It just used to floor me the way that girl could giggle, with her little shoulders rocking back and forth. Then we'd have ourselves a glass of Ribena. She always liked one before she went to bed. But I never told Catherine - because I knew she'd go mad. She didn't like her drinking it at all. Additives, and so on.

  It was our little secret, I told Imogen to remember.

  —Our little secret, she chuckled, 'The Secret of Ribena'!

  In the common room of the hostel you had permission to watch videos after 6 p.m., provided no one else objected. When I went in there was nobody else around. Just this one fellow, a rough-looking labourer, jowly, in his mid-fifties. When I asked him did he mind if I put on The Enchanted Mask he said no.

  As a matter of fact he watched it with me.

  —They're sortae like the Care Bears, aren't they, mate? he suggested. Same type o' thing - right?

  He was from Glasgow, he told me. He was correct. Sunny Daze and Rainbow Dash and all the rest were, in fact, very similar to the Care Bears. With all the action taking place in this incorrigibly pink, totally candyfloss world. About halfway through I heard him asking me some questions about the football match but he didn't persist when I demonstrated no interest.

  Later on he told me he'd been working on the oil rigs for years. Before things - well, went wrong, he said.

  —I worked on Piper Alpha, he said. I was asleep down below the night she went up. I'll no' forget it. Tell ye the truth, I've no' been the same since. I seen flames that night 300 feet high.

  He was very interested when he heard I'd once worked for a newspaper. He asked me would I be interested in hearing his life story? Maybe write it up: 'The Inside Story of Piper Alpha'. But he said he had lots of stories to tell. Not just depressing, awful ones like that.

  I was in no humour for hearing anyone's story. I'd had my fill of stories. In any case, I had my suspicions that he'd never been near Piper Alpha at all. That, like Strange, he nurtured this image of himself as some unique, great trailblazing adventurer. When he'd probably, in fact, been living in dosshouses for years.

  I told him I'd see him later and left.

  A couple of nights later my sleep was interrupted by the sound of a street party, with a boombox thumping away outside, the piercing whistles and pounding drums seeming to wane before resurging with a renewed vigour that seemed not just invasive but deeply provocative, in fact. The p
erspiration was running off me as I got up, although the weather hadn't been particularly hot. I went down to the communal kitchen to get myself a glass of water and was scooping some ice cubes into the glass when I heard the kitchen door suddenly slam. I dropped the glass. Then froze as I heard:

  —Bastard! Fucking bastard!

  At that point, I could have sworn I smelt the loathed dampness.

  —O Jesus, I groaned, as I glimpsed my face in the window. It was chalk-white.

  —Bastard! the oil-rigger repeated, before launching into an unnecessary torrent of vile invective. My relief - when I realised who it was, and also, of course, who it wasn't — was immense. Piper Alpha stood before me, quaking. It gradually emerged that he had been bitterly aggrieved by my earlier reluctance to lend what he described as 'a sympathetic ear' to his experiences.

  I had no option but to persuade him that he'd been mistaken. Which he hadn't. His appraisal of the situation had been, in fact, entirely accurate. I hadn't been listening to his tiresome 'life story'. Not to a single word he'd said. But I made us some tea to mollify the cretin. We sat together at the table. He must have been droning on for at least three hours. Eventually, his eyelids began to droop.

  —I think that's enough for tonight, don't you think so, Dominic, my friend? he said as he stood up and pushed back the table. Adding, charmingly: I thought at first you were a bit of a cunt, but now I think you're all right.

  Catherine used to say:

  —You can be canny, can't you, Redmond Hatch? Quite resourceful when it serves your purpose? Not at all the innocent you like to pretend. Must be your rural background. That old native cunning we often hear about.

  I smiled at the recollection of my wife's tender ways.

  Then I heard Piper Alpha bidding me goodnight, shambling off, suitably placated.

  As I stood there, out of nowhere, I experienced this appalling image of Imogen — screaming on Piper Alpha as the oil-rigger cried:

  —She'll be burnt alive!

  It was as though she were there in that hostel kitchen. Right there screaming and begging me for help.

  —The afraid things! The afraid things, Daddy!

  Why, I asked myself, ought I to think of such a thing? What had prompted me to—

  Then I saw her again: a silhouetted dwarf behind a ragged fence of fire. Her arms reaching out in tortured appeal.

  —Ah, I heard a familiar voice whisper, have you gone and lost your precious little friend? I lost mine too. He drowned one day, in the sweet factory river.

  I went back to bed but, once again, sleep proved impossible. I couldn't stop imagining Imogen in Bournemouth. She was wearing this daft little floral bikini and every time Ivan shouted she raced along the shore to the water. And stood like she used to, pressing her fists up to her face. I wondered had Ivan ever actually brought her to the seaside? Ivan, in so far as I had been able to make out, was a very good father. He definitely spent a lot of time with her. Assisting her with her lessons and, generally, being as dutiful as he could. I thought of Catherine lying there on the Bournemouth sand. Removing her sunglasses and looking over as she said:

  —If I didn't love you, I'd marry John Martyn. I'd marry him and call him 'sugar lips'.

  I found myself laughing, exactly as I'd done back then.

  —'May You Never', I had said to her with a chuckle.

  Once she had actually said she'd got married too young and that she hadn't really lived her life fully. That she liked being — adored, certainly. What woman didn't? But only up to a point. She wanted to be loved for herself, she said. I wondered had they discussed it in the classes? All I knew was - it hadn't bothered her before. And it made me sad. Because, deep down, I couldn't seem to stop it. But you can analyse too much. You can analyse all you like. People have problems and that's all there is to it. The fact is, whether we like it or not, there are no single, identifiable reasons for love coming to an end. All that happens is that one day it just stops. You wake up one morning and you say to yourself:

  —Where's it gone? I wonder, where could our love have gone?

  I didn't say it because for me it never happened. I never woke up thinking that in my life. I know Catherine did —but not me. It might have been better, perhaps, if I had. But that simply wasn't the way things had happened.

  I'd literally spend hours daydreaming about them. Daydreaming about them and the lovely life they lived. I could see Ivan and Catherine on holiday, sitting in the lounge bar in the cool of a Greek summer evening. Sipping cocktails and listening to the music - just a piano player going through standards. Not John Martyn or anything like that. 'Cavatina', maybe, or 'Unchained Melody'. Ivan's hand would move across the table quite slowly — before reaching hers and touching it ever so gently. The French windows would be thrown open and you'd be able to feel the salt breeze on your face.

  —This is a long way from Dublin, you'd hear him saying, it's a long way from Dublin and Ballyroan Road, Rathfarnham.

  —It certainly is, my darling, she'd reply.

  It was an idyllic scene and was the one which — against my better judgement - impelled me, irrationally, to decide to go out to their house one evening, completely on the spur of the moment. Immediately I arrived I knew something was wrong. The garden gate was chained, which it never was, and the house was enfolded in a desolate quiet. Their estate car was nowhere to be seen. I thought that perhaps they had actually moved house, or perhaps even had left the country altogether. My head was reeling as I stood there, quietly devastated on that leafy suburban road. It was as though I was standing on the top of Slievenageeha Mountain, and Imogen was waving to me from far away, her voice growing fainter all the time.

  —Don't leave me, Immy! I cried, helplessly, plunging my face into my hands.

  When I got back to the hostel, I became preoccupied again with thoughts of the photo. The hostel was silent, apart from the strange noises that often trouble an empty building. I couldn't settle - I kept walking around, searching here, there and everywhere. Then it began to dawn on me —the unthinkable had happened. The utterly unthinkable. The photograph was gone!

  I was perplexed. It became so bad I was actually moaning!. But then, almost instantaneously, I found myself swept up by a wave of the most intoxicating pleasure, when I discovered in its place an even more beautiful and tantalising image — the most delectable portrait of Catherine Courtney!

  Or, should I say, what could have been a delectable portrait of my ex-wife. If she hadn't been in the company of her Maltese lover, as they gazed so rapturously into one another's eyes.

  They were obviously having a real good time. It must have been 110 degrees out there, on the illicit weekend they'd shared in Malta. In Valletta, the capital, when Catherine had told me she was going to be in Cork, visiting her 'terribly ill' mother in hospital.

  The most unacceptable aspect of the humiliating court procedure was being told how and when I might see my child. Pieces of time being fed to me like crumbs. I would rather never have seen her at all than accept those terms. I mean, your blood is your blood, as they used to say in Slievenageeha. In the long run, it's thicker than anything. And Immy was my blood-kin. That was my nature - she was my heartbeat. And I couldn't have changed that even if I'd tried. I'd finally accepted it that night in Bournemouth.

  And once that has happened, there is no going back. I appealed for strength and felt a powerful influence surging through me.

  —You won't be on your own - you can rely on me to shield you from wind and weather, Redmond. I'll always be there - till the very last pea is out of the pot, till the angels quit heaven's golden halls. Be assured of that.

  My first intention had been to call to the house in Ballyroan Road, as soon as I knew for sure that Immy was on her own. With a story for her to the effect that I'd arrived over from London on a surprise visit and that her mother and Ivan were waiting - at this very moment! — in a hotel we'd secretly chosen in Killiney Village. A sort of impromptu get-together, I'd intend
ed to say. The more I thought about that approach, though, the less sure I felt that she'd be convinced. Catherine would probably, over-protectively, have instilled in her all sorts of latent anxieties. In the end I decided to dispense with that altogether and instead concentrate on the 'final meeting with daddy' scenario. I was going away to America for good, I'd tell her, and had just wanted to see her one last time. I went to the doctor and got some more sleeping pills. I was happier than I'd been in a long long time as I crushed some capsules into a saucer that day, whistling along Drumcondra Road with my couple of bottles of Ribena.

  —Ha, 'The Secret of Ribena!' I laughed, kind of giddily.

  I had established over a period of time that Ivan and Catherine did their week's shopping in Dundrum every Sunday afternoon. Imogen rarely accompanied them on these trips — why I didn't know but was soon to find out. It was as if everything was falling perfectly into place. At every turn I was being ably, if slyly and subtly, assisted, it seemed. For example, when I was going through the RTE Guide what did I discover? Only that on Sunday afternoons, RTE were showing reruns of My Little Pony I I was really startled when I came across that. But, of course, at the same time, it was lovely to know about it, for it made me feel confident that everything had been ordained to run smoothly and without incident.

  And that soon we'd be arriving at our own special place, which up to now had existed only in the mind and in the memory of a chiming, bright, revolving carousel.

  I knew in my heart that my precious angel would recognise me straight away, and that she'd probably be lost for words as soon as she saw what I'd brought as a present: Where the Wild Things Are, of course. Which did indeed prove to be the case. She started jumping up and down, to the extent that I actually had to take pains to calm her, sharing a few of our private little stories. Then I explained to her how I was going to America for 'quite a while', that I'd been given a job on the New York Times and was only back in Dublin for 'one special reason'. More than anything I wanted to get away from the estate but I couldn't afford to appear agitated. It was at that point I saw it, when she looked at me and smiled, and I knew then for sure that the hand of heaven was aiding and abetting me. There could be no mistaking the light that came into her eyes - almost imperceptible as it was. But there could be no mistaking that it had been there. I shivered in a private moment of acknowledgment and gratitude.