‘You could’ve rung me,’ I say. ‘You’ve got my number.’
I almost laugh, but it’s more mad than funny that I’ve come out with the title of one of Dad’s Undertones songs.
‘I knew you wouldn’t answer,’ Brian says. I sense him watching me, but I stare ahead.
We’re moving more slowly. It’s like walking and talking is suddenly as difficult as singing and acting at the same time. I’m looking for swans, but I don’t see any. Maybe they have more sense than we two have and are sheltering somewhere. We’re close to Blackcastle Bridge. From back here where the only street light is out of action it feels like I’m peering from the dark at a place I’ll never reach because my legs ache with dread of hearing what he has to tell me about Sean.
I’m not sure I even care about what my brother gets up to. I hate him so much for being the one Dad confided in. I know Dad was worried that Sean might go totally off the rails, that he had to deal him a major dose of reality. Keep going the way you are and you’ll end up in jail for clocking some kid with a beer bottle. Fine. But fair to me? No. The way I see it, I’d have been better off going wild, hanging out on the streets instead of being the sensible type. Then I’d have heard his secret first. Then I’d have got closer to him than I ever actually got.
‘Say whatever you have to say, will you?’ I tell him. ‘I’m pure freezing here.’
Brian stops up and I face him. He looks older. Beaten up. The bridge of his nose is slightly flattened after the break. Under his left eye, there’s a recently healed scar and I can’t honestly remember if that was Dad’s doing too. I think I prefer this version than the pretty one.
‘Sean is stalking Clem Healy,’ he says.
‘How do you know?’ My breath flutters and sets my heart thumping. ‘You two don’t even talk any more.’
He’s not so sure he should have started this. He looks around him like he’s the one being stalked.
‘I know because he asked me to help him. I told him no way. He knows what those Healys are like, but he’s planning something. I’m sure he is.’
‘What am I supposed to do about this? Like I don’t have enough to deal with already?’
‘Look, Eala, all I know is the kid is terrified. And my guess is he hasn’t told his old man yet because that guy will go ballistic if he hears what’s going on. He’s done time for assault before. Assault and worse.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Like drug-dealing. You should know.’
And the swans come. Not a bother on them. Two, three with their young. Seven in all. Floating upwards against the current. The whole crazy world of people nothing to them. Brian tracks them too. He’s leaning on the stone wall. I watch him watching the swans.
‘Before we came to town, we used to live in this small village outside Cork,’ he says. ‘And there was this field near my grandfather’s house, really low-lying it is and it gets flooded every year. I mean, there isn’t even a river there. And every year the swans come to that field. Incredible, isn’t it? It’s like they know, man, like they know exactly when that water’s ready for them. I really missed that when we came to live here.’
‘Why did you move?’ I ask.
‘Dad got a promotion,’ he says. ‘So we all had to follow him to this dump.’
I don’t know why I feel so touchy about him insulting our town. It’s not like I’m pure in love with the place or anything.
‘You’re old enough to move away if you want to,’ I say.
Act your age, not your shoe-size, Angie tells me. I’m tired. Tired of being angry, tired of being hyped up all the time, tired of pretending I don’t like Brian.
Angie’s having a good chuckle at me. If this was Jill crying on your shoulder, Eala, you’d be gone in a flash. I blink Angie away. I don’t avoid Brian’s eyes when he turns to me. I wait for something to happen, but he doesn’t know what to do. No, of course he knows what to do. He’s having second thoughts about whether he wants to do it with me. And now that he’s taken a good long look, he’s decided maybe not. He looks at the river again. It feels like he’s stolen something from me. Something I’ve never had. I’m all hollowed out, so empty it hurts.
‘I should head home,’ I say.
We walk down towards the turn into my street. The river whispers like a spreading rumour. She thought he fancied her; how dumb is that? Big deal, Angie says. Plenty more fish in the river. The sea, Angie, and I can’t swim.
‘How’s Jimmy doing?’ he asks.
‘If you really wanted to know, you’d call around and ask him yourself.’
‘I know I should,’ he says. ‘But I can’t.’
‘Yeah, you’ve fallen out with Sean so Jimmy can go take a run and jump. I’ll walk the rest of the way on my own, thanks.’
‘That’s not why.’ He’s come to a halt again, but I keep moving.
‘Right, so it’s what, then? Starsky won’t let you? Or your mother?’
‘Not exactly. It’s … complicated.’
As I turn the corner into my street, I look back at him. He hangs in the shadows, trying to look dark and mysterious.
‘Stuff your complicated, Brian.’
I’m already on our street when I hear him again.
‘I’m sorry, Eala.’
I stop up like it’s me who’s been hit with the hard-helmet missile. Except I don’t fall over. There’s a gang of kids coming towards me with their hoodies up and though I can’t see their faces, I feel sure Clem Healy is among them. They drift closer. No Clem. Angie’s at it again. You can’t go wobbly like this every time you see a hoodie, Eala, you wear the flipping things most of the time yourself, ha, ha!
‘Stuff your sorry,’ I call out and the kids are looking around to see who I’m talking to and looking at me like I’ve lost the plot because Brian’s back around the corner. They go by me.
‘Eala,’ Brian calls and I hear the kids repeating my name, hamming up the plea in Brian’s voice and laughing their pimply little faces off.
Then I remember his story of the swans and I feel like a pure airhead for falling into his sweet-talking trap. I bet he knows that Eala’s the Irish for swan. So, he invents this cute little fable for me like I’m a five-year-old being tucked in for the night.
‘And stuff your feckin’ swans,’ I tell him and the young lads are in hysterics over at the river wall.
‘Eala?’ Brian says. ‘Eala.’
I keep walking, keep hoping he’ll follow me.
He doesn’t.
20
The madness never ends. And the horrible thing about madness is that it’s as funny as it is sad. So I stare in by the half-basement window at the brightly lit room and a part of me weeps and the rest of me wants to guffaw like the boys back at rehearsal or the kids on our street a few minutes ago.
Dad’s bed is a trampoline for Tom. He bounces up and down, clapping and laughing as Dad, decked out in one of his blue Zidane jerseys, dances with the Ice Queen. Dad can’t dance. He never could and never wanted to. But he’s having the time of his life in there. Grinning from ear to ear as he looks down at the Ice Queen’s feet, trying to get the moves right.
For the Ice Queen it’s a more serious business. She’s got this stern, determined expression and though she’s smaller and thinner than Dad, she pulls him about so easily he might be weightless. It’s like one of those dumb celebrity dance programmes on TV. Because I can’t hear the music out here on the drive, the whole scene seems even more farcical.
Mam’s car isn’t here. I check the time on my mobile. I ignore the 3 MESSAGES RECEIVED. Almost half past six. It’s the first time Mam’s been late home since she went back to work. Then again, this is the latest I’ve been home too in a long time.
As they begin to twirl around, Dad’s left hand is on the Ice Queen’s waist, his right arm outstretched alongside hers. His head is thrown back, his eyes closed. They speed up and I know they’re spin
ning too fast. The Ice Queen takes off and flies across the floor towards the bed. Tom dodges away in time and she lands beside him. Dad stands there with his right arm still raised and starts to laugh. I hear the Ice Queen because she’s shouting.
‘Stupid man. Stupid, stupid man. You hurt me!’
I rush forward and bang on the window. Tom waves at me. He’s laughing so hard that two great yellow trails of snot hang down from his nose. Dad’s not laughing. His head is bowed and he plays with his watch. The Ice Queen turns to the window. I can tell she’s pure relieved it’s me and not Mam standing here. She looks right through me like I don’t matter and I’m away round the corner of the house like a raging Argos making for the back door.
The path alongside the gable end is slippy with evening dew and I slide right down on my bottom and it’s wet and it hurts and why can’t life stop playing these ridiculous games with me. I get to the back door and charge in. Dad still stands at the centre of the room, but now the Ice Queen is holding him. His head is resting on her shoulder and she’s rubbing her hand along the scar above his temple.
‘Jimmy, Jimmy,’ she says. ‘Marta make mistake. Not Jimmy.’
I can’t get any words out. I can’t move my legs. I feel Tom’s arms clutching me. He’s hiding his head in the folds of my skirt. Whimpering, which kicks me into gear.
‘Don’t touch him,’ I warn her. ‘You have no right to touch him.’
She steps away from Dad. She’s afraid, but not of me. Afraid she’ll lose her job more like. Bet your life you’ll lose your job. Dad doesn’t know what to do or where to look, which makes him seem so gormless I totally lose it.
‘I heard what you said to him. How dare you. Soon as Mam hears about this you’ll be out on the street where you belong.’
‘I said I was sorry,’ Dad tells me. ‘And Marta said she was sorry. So it’s OK. It’s not problem.’
‘It’s not a problem,’ I say.
Tom is sobbing and holding on tighter to my legs. I want to push him off me. What’s happening to me? Don’t I love anyone any more?
‘He can’t even speak English now because of you.’
‘Eala.’ She stresses the a at the end of my name, stretching it out until I’m at breaking point.
‘I was just kidding,’ Dad says. ‘Course I can speak English.’
‘Jimmy, you don’t let her touch you. D’you get it? And you don’t touch her. She’s a stranger. It isn’t … it isn’t right. Right?’
His forehead seems to bulge and throb with the effort at understanding. He starts pressing the buttons on his watch and the beeps are horrible to hear and his confusion is horrible to see. Horrible.
‘She’s not your friend, Jimmy,’ I say.
‘Yes, she is. She’s one of my best mates. Her and Alan. And she’s the ballroom dancing champion of Moravia. Right, Marta?’
‘Alan?’ I say.
‘I go home,’ the Ice Queen says.
‘Yeah, why don’t you?’ I say. ‘Go back to Moravia and whatever you got up to over there besides ballroom dancing. Pole dancing, was it? Or, no, lap dancing, maybe?’
I don’t know where all this is coming from, but it feels good to throw some dirt at this woman. I’m getting to her. The ice in her pale blue eyes is melting. Tom lets go of me. He sits on the floor and sobs into his fists.
‘Maaa … meee,’ he sniffles.
‘Aw, Tomas,’ the Ice Queen says and the name comes out like ‘dumb ass’. She takes a step forward. I move between her and Tom.
‘His name is Tom not Tomas. And don’t you come near him.’
Dad moves at last. He walks over with that dragging step of his and picks up Tom.
‘Aw, Tomas,’ he parrots.
‘His name is Tom,’ I insist. ‘Call him Tom.’
‘Names don’t matter,’ Dad says.
‘They do matter. You have no bloody idea how much they matter, Jimmy.’
The TV screen catches my eye. A DVD on freeze-frame and I freeze too. The girl with the mad red curly wig. Her mouth wide in mid-song, her eyes raised heavenwards. I know this DVD so well, I can tell what the next line of the song is and it sings itself in my head, though I don’t want it to.
‘You had no right to play this DVD,’ I tell the Ice Queen.
‘But Jimmy love this “Tomorrow”.’
The glare of headlights coming directly at the front window blinds me. Mam’s car pulling into the drive. The lights go off and the Ice Queen now stands within arm’s reach of me. It feels pure weird like she’s not walked towards me, but floated.
‘I’m going up right now to talk to my mother about you,’ I say. ‘ So pack up your –’
‘You are not good for Jimmy this way,’ she says. I could easily hit her and she knows it, but she doesn’t back away. ‘You love too much.’
I’m in her face.
‘English, dumbo, we speak English here,’ I say and I remember Jill telling me about a young Polish kid who was bullied in First Year with these exact words. I’m sickened. From above us, I hear the front door close out and Mam calls.
‘Hi all!’
Pure upbeat, like ‘I have a life again’. Lucky her, Angie says. Before me, a weird transformation takes place. The Ice Queen morphs into Miss Understanding Mark Two. Her eyes are wide with sympathy. A tear emerges. One tear.
‘My father is dead last year,’ she says. ‘I am not happy also.’
I sweep by her and head for the stairs. First chance I get, Mam, I’ll burst your happy little bubble.
21
I’ve been here all evening in my room except for the five minutes it took to eat my dinner. I’m waiting for Mam to snap so I can have a go at her. She’s had to cook the dinner, get Tom ready for bed, sort out Dad for the night. I told her I had to study, that I was falling way behind at school. Which is true. The falling behind bit. As for study, I haven’t opened one book. I tried to listen to some music, but I don’t have the heart for it tonight. Four hours have passed and I’m fit to explode.
It’s not easy to get this door open without a creak, but I manage. Not a stir from the house below. Quiet there is, but no peace. Not in my head anyway. I head down the stairs. No light under Sean’s door, which means he’s out on the street, trailing Clem and heading for a showdown with the Healys. The door of Mam’s room is slightly ajar. Tom’s asleep, cuddling into his green tractor. Weird, the things kids can find comfort in. Pity it doesn’t stay like that.
I find Mam in the sitting room. It’s stiflingly hot in here, though we don’t light the fire any more. There’s something bleak and empty about a fireplace when there are no dancing flames. The TV’s turned off and she’s listening to a CD. She’s stretched out on the sofa in the sitting room like she’s posing for some boho photo shoot. Her eyes half closed, her fringe a veil, her thighs showing as her dress slides up. I want to grab the glass of red wine from her hand and throw it in her face. I want to ask her why she’s listening to music again after all this time.
It’s one of her choral things. Arvo Pärt, her favourite composer. The Woman with the Alabaster Box. I know the piece because I’ve heard it so often in the past, though not since the accident. A few years ago, she and Dad went to a concert of this guy’s music in Dublin and she came home in an ecstasy because Pärt himself had unexpectedly shown up. ‘She’s fallen in love with a beardy old Russian monk!’ Dad joked. ‘Estonian, actually,’ she said, ‘and unfortunately he’s married with kids.’ I was ten or eleven and I remember being right thick with Mam. What was I like? What am I like?
‘Eala,’ she says, her eyes still drowsy. ‘Makes me want to go back to the choir, that music does. Soon maybe.’
I don’t answer. She wants to go out singing her hymns while our lives are going down the tube?
‘Did you get loads done?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘Do you want to know why?’
Her head does a kind
of lazy roll and she looks at me.
‘Because I caught that woman dancing with Dad. Dancing.’
‘I knew about the dancing,’ Mam says. ‘Marta asked me if it was OK and I thought why not? It’s good for his coordination and why shouldn’t he have a bit of fun?’
‘But it’s crazy,’ I said. ‘She’s supposed to be a carer, not a flippin’ dance instructor.’
‘Eala, she was making conversation with Jimmy the other day and mentioned the ballroom dancing and he kept pleading with her to teach him. She did the right thing. She came to me first.’
‘Yeah, well you didn’t see what I saw. Dad gets the steps wrong and she goes flying and she called him stupid! “Stupid man”, she said.’
‘But we all lose the rag now and again with him. We can’t wrap him in cotton wool, you know. And she was very apologetic.’
‘I don’t believe this. She tells you she’s making a monkey of your husband and you’re going, “Fire away,”’ I said.
‘Sit down, Eala.’ She taps the sofa, raises a hand towards me and I pass up the invitation.
‘Well, here’s something you don’t know, then. Sean’s stalking Clem Healy.’
She sinks further back on to the sofa. It’s the wine, I’m thinking, and the hushed tones of the a cappella singing from the CD player. She’s half-cut and the world is all harmony and nothing’s a problem.
‘I’ll talk to him,’ she says and I wait for more, but nothing comes.
‘Don’t you care about anything any more? Apart from your job. You stay so late, you must really love it.’
‘I wasn’t late at work. I went for a drink.’
‘Some stranger is fondling your husband. Your son is playing with fire. And you go on the razz? With who?’ And it dawns on me. ‘Miss Understanding.’
‘With Fiona, yes.’
She puts the glass on the coffee table and sits back again, but not so elegantly. All coiled up and dishevelled, she lets her skirt ride up embarrassingly high. For God’s sake, cover yourself up.
My Dad Is Ten Years Old Page 12
