‘Leave it, Jimmy,’ he pleads. ‘He’s not worth it.’
The tears are flowing down Clem’s cheeks now. He makes strange hegging sounds as he struggles to hold in the cries he’s bottled up inside maybe all his short, unhappy life. Jimmy tries to break free of Sean. Tom comes running out of the sitting room with his football under his arm and stops dead when he sees them push and shove against one another. He’s holding himself like he needs to go to the toilet.
‘I’n afwaid,’ he cries.
Jimmy gives up the fight. He looks down at Tom and reaches out to touch him. Tom flinches, but he doesn’t run to Mam or to me. He doesn’t know what to do. His eyes are big with yearning like the eyes of starving children. And I realize Mam has that look too. All of us do. Even this stuttering mess of a kid on our doorstep.
‘Do you have anyone at home with you now?’ she asks him as she picks up Tom and comforts him.
‘No. Sham done a runner after Da got done,’ he says. ‘Mam might come back, though.’
‘Do you have any idea where she lives now?’
He shakes his head. Jimmy has retreated to the stairs leading down to his room.
‘We’ll find her,’ Mam says as she rocks Tom in her arms. ‘Go on home now.’
‘Thanks, missus.’
‘I shouldn’t have hit him,’ Jimmy says and Sean goes back along the hallway to him.
‘It’s OK, Jimmy,’ he says. ‘You didn’t hurt him. He didn’t hurt you, did he, Clem?’
‘No, I’m fine, not a bother on me.’
‘I should’ve removed myself from the situation,’ Jimmy says. The words, rolling off his tongue like he’s practised them over and again, catch all of us by surprise. ‘That’s what I’ve got to learn, Dr Reid said. When under stress, remove yourself from the situation, find a quiet place to sit and … and … something else …’
He’s ringing beeps on his watch and the sound doesn’t freak me, only makes me grieve. He turns away and disappears from view down the stairs to his room. Clem should disappear too, but he doesn’t have the sense to.
‘I done good, didn’t I?’ he asks of Mam.
She doesn’t answer him. From the rest of us, he chooses me again.
‘Didn’t I?’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Yeah, you did.’
Clem heads down the granite steps. As he reaches the bottom and I’m about to close the door, he stoops down and gathers up Tom’s green tractor. He flicks the front wheels and watches them spin. He flicks them again. He looks up at me and smiles sheepishly. We meet halfway on the steps and he hands over the tractor.
‘Eala?’ Sean calls from above. ‘Everything OK, Eala?’
‘Yeah, no sweat.’
Clem’s staring at me, wide-eyed with puzzlement.
‘I didn’t know your name was Eala,’ he says. ‘I didn’t even know Eala was a name.’ He looks away to his left. You can’t see the junction where the accident happened from here and yet, somehow, I sense he’s picturing it in his mind. I’ve no idea where this is going, but I know it’s going somewhere that matters.
‘Eala is the Irish for swan,’ I tell him.
‘He was trying to get up off the ground and I was holding his head together and telling him, “Don’t move; don’t be moving.” But he kept trying and he kept saying, “Eala’s singing tonight, Eala’s singing tonight.” I didn’t know what he meant. Then he passed out and a woman came along and she was shouting, “It was your fault, I seen you!” and I done a runner.’
I can’t speak and Clem thinks I’m blanking him out of contempt.
‘It wasn’t my fault, Eala,’ he says. ‘Sham was following me cos I sold some gear too cheap. I got the prices mixed up, like. “Fifteen,” I said. Fifty it was.’
Still I can’t speak and Clem turns away. When he reaches the street, he glances back. I raise a hand and get back a tentative wave. I climb the steps to the front door in a pure daze. With each upward step, I’m telling myself that I was the last thought on Dad’s mind and it’s the kind of little girl’s secret I never imagined I’d have again, the kind I’ll always keep.
Mam and Sean haven’t moved from the hallway. Now all three of us stand here. Me by the front door, Sean at the sitting-room door, Mam at the head of the half-basement stairs. Tom’s head rests on her shoulder, his eyes closed. He’s taking deep breaths of Mam’s aroma and carrying it into sleep with him.
I want to go down to Jimmy. Sean glances worriedly towards the stairs and I know he does too. But all of us know it’s Mam who needs to go down there and know how she must decide. The haunting, almost human wail of a cat reaches us from the dark outside. I go to Mam and raise my arms to take Tom from her. Time falls on to my hands, each second heavier than the one before. She lays Tom on my shoulder and heads downstairs. I hear the door open below, her soft call.
‘Jimmy?’ There’s no answer. ‘Jimmy? Where –’
I hear her footsteps cross the room, the catch of the toilet door, a punched-breath shout.
‘Lads! He’s gone! He’s gone!’
35
The kitchen is less crowded, quieter. It’s quarter to five in the morning and we’re waiting for first light so we can go searching again. Mam sits at the head of the table and I sit beside her. She’s got the cordless house phone in her hand. We both stare at the tablecloth like we’re expecting some kind of map to appear on the blank white linen. There are four other chairs at the table, but no one else sits. Keeping their distance from Mam, I suppose, but she hasn’t erupted for a good half-hour now. We’ve all been at the receiving end. Starsky too when he was here earlier. In fairness, he took it well. Brian was standing over by the sink with Sean, not knowing where to look. He’s still there.
‘I’ve got every squad car I could muster out on the roads,’ he told her. ‘And we’re going through every lane, every vacant house in the town, the industrial estates and –’
‘So what are you doing sitting here?’ Mam said. ‘What are we doing sitting here?’
‘We can’t organize search parties until morning, Judy.’
‘But it’s so cold out there,’ she cried. ‘Don’t you realize how bloody cold it is out there?’
And it is cold. Minus two, the temperature indicator showed when I was out in the Mercedes earlier with Martin. We drove over to the house on Friary Street. Martin used a wrench to break the padlock on the gate. No, demolish the padlock. He kicked in the front door when he realized his key didn’t fit any more and we listened to one another’s bellowing echoes in the empty rooms long after there was any point to it.
Then we went out to the golf club because the River Walk ends there. He swept the velvety green course with his headlights from the car park. He swept it again from a gate at the other end of the course. I should have known it was a pure waste of time, but I suppose you do these things because you can’t think of what else to do and you have to keep on the move.
Sean and Brian met up with Starsky at the Head-Up Centre prefab, but had no luck there or in the old dance hall alongside. They drove slowly along the road that leads out to Alan’s house in Borris, talked to Peter Foran and searched the fields around the house with him. Nothing. It was getting harder to believe that Mam was wrong about the river. She’d spent the last few hours going up and down both banks with Fiona and a couple of Guards until, eventually, they persuaded her to come home.
Back at the house, we’d all carried the cold inside with us on our breaths. The heating wasn’t on and none of us thought to go to the switch in the utility room. Fiona made coffee and no one drank it.
Since Starsky and the other Guards left, barely a word has been spoken except in brief, whispered conversations. We all manage to contain our unease somehow or other until Martin blurts out,
‘Is there somewhere we haven’t thought of?’
Mam rounds on him. I don’t want to look at him suffering her wrath, but I can’
t help it. I hadn’t realized until now that he’s been wearing a short-sleeved summer shirt all this time and is shaking uncontrollably. He’s a pure wreck. I ask myself why I’m not in the same state. I ask, but I don’t have an answer.
‘Haven’t you done enough damage already, Martin?’ Mam says.
‘Judy,’ Fiona Sheedy says. ‘That isn’t fair. I know you’re –’
‘And you too. None of this would’ve happened if he hadn’t set his heart on that house, that ridiculous fantasy.’
‘It’s not fantasy, Judy,’ Fiona insists. ‘It’s independent living, a chance to regain a sense of self-worth, to relearn boundaries, all of that. And hope too.’
Mam’s not having any of it.
‘You and your bloody psychobabble. Boundaries, self-worth, independent living. I’m sick of hearing all that crap. I’ve been using the same stupid psychobabble with my clients all these years. And where has it got any of them? What kind of lives have they got? What kind of life can Jimmy ever have outside these four walls?’
Fiona sets down the coffee mug she’s been nursing at the worktop and approaches the table. Mam’s hostile look doesn’t work on her and she sits down. I suppose she’s seen a thousand looks like that. Including mine. But I’m with her this time, hoping she’ll find the right things to say.
‘Jimmy’s already living his own life, Judy. He has been for months now. The Head-Up Centre, new friends, new interests, new hopes. You’ve seen him up there, how relaxed he can be, how helpful he is to everyone, how popular he is.’
‘And this is where it’s led,’ Mam says. ‘The river.’
‘He’s not in the river,’ Martin puts in. He comes halfway across from the breakfast counter and stops like he’s forgotten where he’s going. His trousers sag from his thin frame, his black shoes are covered in mud. Poor little rich man, I’m thinking. ‘No way. No way is he in the river … because … because he can’t be.’
It’s a pretty lousy effort at reassurance and he knows it and Mam does too. She turns towards him. This is Judy’s hauteur, but infinitely more poisonous.
‘Are you getting some kind of tax break for giving the house to Head-Up?’ she asks him. ‘Is that your game?’
‘Ah, jeez, Mam,’ Sean says, but Martin raises his hand. ‘Let her beat me up,’ he seems to be saying.
‘Well, after all,’ Mam goes on, ‘you couldn’t sell that house now if you wanted to, could you, Martin? Nobody’s buying with this recession going on, right? So you might as well cut your losses, get a tax break for handing it over to a charity. Plus you get the bonus of acting like your only concern all your miserable little life hasn’t been money, money, money, yeah?’
Grief makes wounded animals of us. I already knew that in spades. But wounded animals can cut you to pieces. Especially if you stand there and take it, which is what Martin does. Fiona is smarting too and though she holds back, the effort shows. She’s not the psychologist now. She’s a woman watching her partner get a hammering he doesn’t deserve.
‘If it wasn’t for the likes of you and all the other greedy little bastards wanting more and more, this country, this whole bloody world, wouldn’t be in –’ Mam’s running out of steam, losing track of whatever argument she had in mind. ‘We wouldn’t be in this awful, this impossible mess … we’d have a decent society, a decent health service … we’d have kids like Clem Healy off the streets and getting the chances they deserve … We wouldn’t have to depend on the charity of rich little shits to take care of our … our …’
Martin waits until the silence belongs to him and then he speaks very quietly.
‘Judy, listen. The Head-Up people were fundraising for a house here long before I got involved, long before Jimmy had the accident. I was able to make it happen more quickly and I was glad to. That’s all. And yeah, maybe money was my god for too long, but at least I have something to give.’ He falters. ‘Something to give the best friend I ever had and that I miss like … like I miss Angie … More even. More than I miss my own child, Judy.’
There’s maybe ten feet between Mam and Martin, but it’s like they’re looking at one another across all the years, all the way back to when they were teenagers in love and all the way forward through the good times and the bad times and the worst times that have brought them to this exhausted early morning. Mam lowers her elbows on to the table and holds her head in her hands.
‘Eala,’ she says. ‘Find a sweater for Martin. He’s freezing. And turn on the heating.’
I’m glad to have something to do. Fiona gets up from the table too and goes to Martin. She wraps her arms round him and his head dips on to her shoulder and stays there. Brian glances at me as I go by. Worried for me, but trying to make a smile of it and I return the favour. I wish I could hold him now, but that will have to wait. I head into the utility room and flick the heating switch. The burner kicks into action and settles into a steady roar like a far storm. I head upstairs.
The darkness is a relief from the scrape of raw light on my eyes this past hour. I stop halfway up the stairs, press my fingers into my closed eyelids until the stars come. I go on. Sean’s room is in its usual chaotic state. Half of his clothes are on the floor, which in a weird way makes it easier to find a sweater for Martin. I take a peek in at my own bed where Tom sleeps with the fingers of one hand tangled in Jill’s hair and the fingers of the other resting on his little football. Jill doesn’t stir. I don’t know how she got him to sleep with all the panic earlier on. I owe her big time.
At the door of Dad’s workroom, I hesitate. It’s slightly ajar, which is unusual. Then I remember that we checked all the rooms earlier and probably left it open in our hurry. At least, whoever checked it, Mam or Sean, did. I looked through the first-floor rooms, not the ones on this landing. This would be too weird, Dad hiding in there all this time. My heart thumps as I push on the door. I turn on the light. It blinds me for a few seconds.
The workroom is perfectly tidy again. Books on their shelves, the drawing blocks stacked away, a new sheet pinned to the drawing board, the Timberland peaked cap straightened on the mannequin’s head. Everything awaits his return. And, of course, there’s nowhere to hide in this room. You’re either here or you’re not and he isn’t and never will be again.
I go and sit on the revolving high chair. Give me a spin, Daddy, I promise I won’t get dizzy. I close my eyes and set myself in motion. Round and round I go, swirling onwards and upwards into a darkness that’s not fearful because, out at its far edge, I sense his calm presence and know that I’ll never fall as long as I never forget he’s there, always there. Round and round I go. Dad, don’t let Jimmy do anything foolish; don’t let him be cold or afraid out there; don’t let him be hurt or broken any more than he already is; don’t let him hide himself from us. I slow down to a stop and wait for my whirling brain to catch up with me.
Something has changed. The air feels vivid and, outside, the dawn chorus has started up. The birds are going crazy with excitement and it’s like they’re these beautiful creatures with no memory and every new day is such a blast for them and every new sky such a vastness of light, they can’t help singing. When I turn off the drawing-board lamp in Dad’s workroom and look out the window, night has begun to give way to day.
I head back down to the kitchen. Everyone’s in exactly the same position as when I left, which seems impossible because it feels like I’ve been gone for ages. Not everyone. Brian’s gone. Sean sees my disappointment. He makes a cigarette-smoking gesture and nods at the back door. I wish Brian didn’t smoke, but you can’t have everything, I suppose. Martin and Fiona let go of one another. I give him the sweater and he pulls it on. It’s a few sizes too big for him and he gives Fiona a wry smile.
‘I’ll do some breakfast,’ she says and reaches for the kettle on the worktop.
‘Let me,’ he says. ‘You shouldn’t be on your feet so much.’
Some instinct draws my eyes to h
er stomach. No major bulge or anything, but I give her a questioning look anyway and she nods. I’m glad for them.
‘Is there a toaster?’ Martin asks me. He’s got some colour back on his cheeks. Quite a lot, actually. ‘We should eat.’
I fish out the toaster from the press by the cooker, the bread from the silver bin. No matter what kind of day it’s going to be, I’m thinking, you have to get ready for it. I wash the coffee mugs. The hot water stings the chill pleasantly from my hands. It’s all so weirdly ordinary, this busy but hushed beginning to a new day.
The back door creaks inward. The shock of cold lingers on Brian’s face like stunned surprise. No, it is stunned surprise. I smell the smoke and realize the cigarette is still between his fingers though he’s stepped inside.
‘What?’ I say.
‘Jimmy’s next door. I saw him passing by one of the upstairs windows.’ He cops on to the cigarette in his hand and looks at me apologetically. ‘The back door is open out there. I saw it from the wall.’
Chairs scrape back. Mam and Sean and me are on the same wavelength, but it doesn’t help us move any more quickly. Each of us sick to the stomach, knowing how Jimmy had come to loathe Mrs Casey. Each of us petrified.
‘Do you want me to go?’ Martin asks.
‘No,’ Mam says too sharply and softens her refusal. ‘No, I’ll go. It’s OK. Everything will be OK.’
‘I’ll get in by the back door,’ Sean tells her. ‘And let you in the front.’
She nods and we unfreeze ourselves. I follow as she heads out to the hallway. I feel Brian’s hand on my shoulder as Mam reaches the front door.
‘Do you want me to come with you?’ he whispers.
‘Better not,’ I say. ‘Ring your dad. Tell him … tell him he should come over.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘I’ve no choice, Brian. I have to be.’
I run to catch up with Mam. She’s already climbing the steps up to Mrs Casey’s door when I get outside. There’s a plastic message bag hanging from the doorknob. From the pebbles of our drive to the roof of Mrs Casey’s house, the waking world is frosted over, but I hurry through it without slipping or sliding. Sean lets Mam inside as I reach the foot of the steps. I hear her calling. Her voice is coaxing, forgiving.
My Dad Is Ten Years Old Page 23
