In These Dark Places

by Stephen Duffy

  There was one other option open to him, but proud man that he was, he was having none of it. All three of us, myself, Rob and Saoirse, in conclave by the fire in the living room, pleaded with him to go to Granddad for help. The old man was minted, mean, but minted. Where he had come by his money we never knew, and we knew better than to ask. But we were sure, we were full certain that if he was asked for help, he would surely give it. We put this argument to our father but it was a waste of time. Like I said, he was having none of it.

  ‘And be beholden to him? You must be mad! Isn’t it bad enough that we live under his roof and have to abide by his ridiculously pious rules? Take him into the business? It doesn’t even bear thinking about. No! I can see where you’re coming from with this, and I can understand that you’re worried, but my answer is no. That’s the end of it! We’ll get by somehow, we always have and we always will. If I have to re-mortgage the yard then so be it. Now, I don’t want to hear this ridiculous idea mentioned again. Is that clear?’ It was, it was crystal clear.

  I had always believed that one day I would inherit the business. Three shares obviously, equally divided between myself and my siblings, but it would be to myself whom the daily running of the company would be entrusted. Rob had a great future ahead of him. A pragmatic young man with a passion for architecture and an unerring eye for shape and form, he was a mere six months from achieving his dream. He’d laboured long and hard through five years in Bolton Street to earn his degree and he was now approaching the end of two years postgrad work. As soon as that was done, with the allure of its iconic skyline entwined with his dream to contribute to it, New York beckoned.

  As for Saoirse, she too was following her passion, determined as she was to make a life for herself from her love of all things horticulture. She had been accepted by the College of Agriculture up there in Multyfarnham and had set off that September. I was so happy for her, to be chasing her passion, pursuing her dream. She had always been green fingered, had always preferred to be down in the dirt rather than carry on with make-up, fads and fashion. They were silly, childish things to her. To see the new sprouts of a carrot crop, or the stalk of a tomato plant bent backwards with the weight of its fruit did more for her than posters of heart-throbs or the latest must have denim jeans. I suppose that she had picked it up from Granddad, God knows she had spent enough hours with him up on his allotment to have caught the planting bug. Yeah, I would be the one to stay at home and take the reins of the company, qualified for nothing else but to breathe. Yes, the business would come to me when my father eventually hung up his overalls.

  That winter however, as his customers became something seldom seen and as my father dipped his personal account more than once just to meet the mortgage payments and utility bills, that prospect was evaporating faster than rain from a hot tar road on a warm May day. My father took to the drink. He took to it in a way that without even thinking too much about it, we all knew it was a bad thing. The occasional pint or two on the way home from work became five or six. Occasional became regular. Five or six became ten or twelve and the little money which was left in his account was soon pissed up against the wall or went towards lining the pockets of Dick McDonald, the local bookie, as Dad chased one long shot after another in the hopes of scoring big and getting the business back in the black.

  As November darkened the days calls from Git Murphy down in Foley’s became more frequent.

  ‘It’s your Da again. Come on down and get him, bring him home. He’s pissed again and mouthing off at anyone and everyone.’

  More often than not he’d come without a fight. The walk home, with himself staggering in and out of the gutter while bemoaning what life had thrown at him, seemed to, almost overnight, become a regular and accepted part of life that winter. As business dried up, my shifts in the yard grew shorter and shorter. By the end of November, I found myself shuffling into the Labour Exchange down in Bride Hill, my dignity left firmly by the door. Two days after that I got what was to be the final call from Git Murphy.

  ‘Get down here. Now!’

  It was a long walk down to Foley’s. The urgency in Git’s voice had unsettled me. The high pitch of his whine rang in my ears as I made my way into town. There was a fear in his tone, a desperation I had never heard before. A crowd had assembled outside the pub. Hawkers intent on seeing the spectacle, looking for morsels of gossip to chew over, spread, earn kudos. Bastards. There was broken glass on the path by the door. As I drew nearer a hush gathered. I couldn’t hear their whispers but I could see them as they looked from one to the other. There were looks of pity too. I could feel their embarrassment also, their mortification for me, for my father. The crowd parted as I reached it to reveal Git himself standing in the porch. He was wringing his hands, his handkerchief a twisted knot between his knuckles. A pained frown of exasperation pulled his face tight.

  ‘Git,’ I said. ‘What’s wrong? Where’s my father?’ He jabbed his thumb towards the door to the bar.

  ‘He’s in there, Gabe. He’s, well, I don’t know what’s gotten into him. He went mad, just crazy like.’

  ‘What did you do to him? What…?’

  ‘Don’t be too quick to point your finger there, young Gabe. It’s all on him, it’s all on your father’s head. Now, I want you to get him out of here right now. I want him gone. And when you get him home and get him sobered up you can tell him that he’s welcome here no more. Get him gone now and I won’t call the police.’

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘Just get him gone, Gabe.’

  I pushed through the gathered gawkers as they strained their necks to catch a peek into the bar, each one of them eager to grab an eyeful. Something more to chew on over pints, back fences and in the supermarket queue. Small town, small minds.

  I pulled the door firmly shut behind me as I entered, hoping at the very least, to preserve some of my father’s dignity. But the crones had their heads up for the gossip and no sooner had the door shut behind me they had their faces pressed against the glass like animals at feeding time. The bar was lit only by the five electric flambeaux which topped the counter. The resulting gloom was silent and the room was apparently empty. There were half consumed pints on tables and on the bar too. A cigarette smouldered in an ashtray sending up a blue ribbon of smoke which on reaching the ceiling bellowed out and fell as an all-encompassing yellow haze.

  ‘Dad?’ No answer. Not a single word, grunt or shuffle. I turned my head back to the door. Git Murphy’s pinched face was wedged against it, his features distorted by the patterned glass, his eyes wide and staring. He shooed me on with a wave of his hand toward the end of the bar. I turned back to the gloom and called out again.

  ‘Dad? Are you in here? It’s Gabriel, I’ve come to take you home. Git said… He said that you weren’t feeling too well.’ There was a shuffle from the end of the bar. Worn shoe leather on cold tile. A sonorous sigh. ‘Dad?’

  ‘Go home, Gabriel. Go home, son. It’s all over. We’re done for, lad.’

  ‘I’m taking you with me, Dad.’ I was walking towards the end of the bar when I noticed the television set. It was one of the old Fergusson’s, all bells and whistles. Top of the range, well, back then at least. It was perched high up in the corner on a mahogany shelf and it was turned off. It would be forever. Its matt grey screen was starred and cracked, black fissures radiated outward from the Guinness bottle now firmly wedged in the glass. The window beside it was smashed too.

  ‘Jesus! What did you do, Dad?’

  ‘The Lord’s name, Gabriel.’

  ‘Really?’ I asked as I rounded the bar. ‘You’re going to preach on that when you’ve gone and…’ The sight of him froze me mid-step. It wasn’t my father, it couldn’t possibly have been. This pathetic heap crouched on the bar room floor could not be the man to whose bearing and persona I aspired. But it was him. The face yawing up at me out of the gloom was indeed that of my father. Yet, it was different somehow, older, more fragile. I couldn’t
help but notice his puffy red-rimmed eyes, the cake of dried snot matted in his moustache, the frantic fidget of his hands.

  ‘What happened, Dad? What’s wrong?’ I crouched down beside him and slid my hands into his oxters to try and get him to his feet.

  ‘You look like your mother when you make that face.’

  ‘What face?’

  ‘That condescending, judging face. You look like Fr Jessop too.’

  ‘Jesus, don’t say that!’

  ‘The Lord’s name, Gabriel!’

  ‘Honestly, Dad? You sound more like Granddad every day. You’re really going to run with that again as I’m scooping your drunk arse off of a bar room floor beneath a telly that you no doubt have ruined? Talk about the pot calling the kettle…’

  ‘I made a balls of it, son. It’s gone, all of it. All gone.’

  ‘What is?’ I asked as I got him to his feet. He steadied himself on the bar and stared at me. His was the look of a child about to reveal a horrible truth to a parent. Tears welled up to the edge of his eyes and rolled down his cheeks. It was a pitiful thing to see him in such a state, this fine strong man who was my father. To see such a proud man reduced to tears and snot, whimpering like a toddler who has lost his favourite toy while all of the gawkers whispered and grinned behind me, it broke my heart. This man, this symbol of everything that was good in the world, the very epitome of what I believed it was to be a real man, a good father, a great person, had been shrunk down to nothing more than a snivelling wreck.

  With his hands set firmly on my shoulders he fixed me with a gaze so intense that I could do nothing but lower my eyes to the floor. I was ashamed of him and he knew it. That my father could bring shame to our family was something up until that afternoon I would have never thought possible. But it was the truth, I knew it, and so did he.

  ‘Look at me, son. Look at me when I’m speaking to you.’ His breath reeked, whiskey and stout combined in a pungent vapour in the inches between us. ‘We’re done for, lad. The shop is…’

  ‘Is what?’ I asked, my eyes still cast down at the floor.

  ‘It was a sure thing, well, it was supposed to be a sure thing. Den McCredie said so himself’.

  At the very mention of that name I knew what had happened. Den McCredie was the local bum, worth nothing for a penny, he’d lost his house, his kids, his missus to the horses. A sickening, crystal clear realisation broke over me and I felt sick for discovering the truth. I snapped my head up, my eyes locking with my father’s. It was his turn to study the floor tiles as he shrank before me.

  ‘How much were you in for?’ I asked.

  ‘It was a sure thing.’

  ‘How much?’ I was shouting now, all thoughts of the gawkers gone from my mind.

  ‘It was a sure thing. A sure thing!’

  ‘Dad, I love you, you know I do, right? But I swear by Christ that if you say that again I’ll plant you where you stand!’

  ‘You can’t, you… Don’t you dare speak to me like that!’ I shrugged his hands off of my shoulders and grabbed him by the collar.

  ‘Listen to me, you’re in no position to be indignant with me! Now, how much did you lose?’

  ‘It was doing so well.’ I shook him violently. ‘The last fence. It fell at the last bloody fence.’ He began to weep again. A piteous sigh whistled through his thin, grey lips. His legs gave out and his shoulders slumped. Had I not had a hold of him he would have gone back down to the floor. I edged him to a stool and sat him down. Crouching down I brought my eyes level with his. I put my hand on his shoulder and using all of my restraint, I asked him again.

  ‘Dad, you’ve got to tell me, okay? I need to know just how bad it is, alright? It can’t be as bad as you think, these things never are. Sure, don’t you always say that yourself?’ Another sigh, long and laboured.

  ‘Oh, it’s bad this time, Gabriel. As bad as it could possibly be.’

  ‘How bad?’

  ‘I’d re-mortgaged the yard, the business… the cheque came through last week, it cleared today… I was jarred. I honestly thought it was a sure thing, so I…’

  ‘Sweet Jesus, no! Please say that you didn’t…’

  ‘Every last penny of it, son. I thought that if…’

  For the first and only time in my life, I hit him. I punched my father. I knocked him out cold.

  12

  I don’t recall very much of the days and weeks after that fateful day, that horrible day when my right fist shattered the unity of our family. It was something which needed to be done, well, so Rob said anyway. He had it coming was his constant mantra during the aftermath. My father didn’t speak to me for a while after the incident, as the family came to call it. He came around after a time, so did Saoirse and I can’t tell you how happy I was for that. To be at odds with my father was hard enough, but to be a loggerheads with her, well, that was something too hard to bear.

  It was sobriety and good sense which put my father back on the straight and narrow. And Granddad, of course. Who could forget him? Rode in on a white horse did that fella, moneybags breaking the poor mare’s back and himself itching for his pound of flesh. I do believe that, if I think on it long enough, there is a memory there. A memory of that terrible day when my father signed over the business, his livelihood, my inheritance, to Granddad. Oh, there’s a memory there alright and it’s not a good one. Yeah, I’m sure of it, if I go wandering back there through the entangled shreds of memory I can see it sure enough. I can see that sly grin on Granddad’s face. That cunning grin betrayed him. Having finally gotten a hold on my father good and proper, he had found it next to impossible to conceal his delight and I remember now how much I wanted to punch him for it.

  It is true that he saved the business, saved my father, saved the family. But his terms were harsh. He took a controlling stake of sixty per cent, the price of my father’s forty was to be paid back monthly over twenty years. He sacked my father’s accountant and brought in his own. He laid off three of Dad’s men for no better reason than that he had never liked them. Worst of all, the stipulation on which the entire deal hinged, the business was to be sold, lock, stock and barrel upon my father’s retirement. It made absolutely no sense save for the fact that it gave Granddad the hold over my father which he had craved for years.

  ‘Sure what’s the point in that?’ my father had asked. ‘Sure I might as well let the whole thing go now if that’s the case! What about the kids? The whole point of trying to save the damn thing is for them. It’s their birth right!’

  ‘You’d get pennies on the pound if you were to let the bank take it now and you know it. Besides, when you gift your children you ruin them for the world,’ Granddad had countered. Archaic, pointless sentiment. ‘Those are my terms. Now you can bitch and whinge and moan about it all you like, but it won’t gain you an inch. So, waste your time, lose your livelihood. Declare yourself a bankrupt if that’s what you want. Or you can sign the contract and we can be done with it.’

  And just like that, my future was changed. A few simple words and the cogs which drove the gears of my life slipped a little further and I was thrown onto a path which would eventually lead me to here, talking to you. Before the ink of my father’s signature had dried I knew what I had to do. I had to leave, I had to get out. The business, my father, Granddad, damn them all to hell. I had to go.

  As December 1973 rolled around there was still a job for me in the yard, it was there for the taking if I had wanted it. I didn’t. By then, Granddad had taken to making a daily thing of his, ‘inspections’, and the at first hourly sojourns down to yard gradually became half days, before long he spent his whole day down there. He’d sit by the office door watching all and everything, barking uselessly pointless orders over the Tannoy System. It got to be that I couldn’t bear to be there when he was, so I went to my father and told him that I was done, I was quitting the yard just as soon as I could find something else. In the meantime I would work the two late nights and Saturday mornings. They were the
only shifts when Granddad wasn’t around. It would hurt my pocket there was no denying that, but if I wanted to maintain the somewhat tenuous good relations with him, it was best to steer clear of Granddad when he had his foreman’s cap on.

  I’ll never forget the look on my father’s face when I told him that I was turning my back on the business he had built up from nothing. He had toiled day and night over the long years, shed blood, sweat and tears for it and I was going to walk away from it just like that. His was an expression of utter defeat, a look of total betrayal. There was no malice, no flare of temper, just a silent, resigned and broken look of acceptance. I had seen such a look of hurt and hopelessness before, but at that particular moment, I couldn’t recall where or when. I only remembered how much it had moved me at the time, how deeply it had made my heart hurt.

  Having cleared the air with my father, that December I found myself with plenty of spare time and very little money. Ellie too, was working part time, temping for a woman on maternity leave at her father’s car dealership. With little else to do and having successfully navigated that awkward, decorum riddled initial phase of our relationship we spent all of our free time together. Long walks in the woods was a favourite pastime. For the first time in many a long year I brought another soul to my secret place, The Dell.