White Lies

by Mark O'Sullivan

OD

  On that Monday morning after the St. Peter’s match I was wrecked. The thought of going back up to the town park and having another dose of Snipe Doyle would have been awful even without the hangover. Then there was the trouble with my knee.

  That must have been the third or fourth week I’d woken up the day after a game and felt those agonising darts of pain. I never felt anything during the game, except that sometimes when I turned too sharply the knee would seem a bit weak and then the sensation would pass. As the weeks went on, I knew I was getting more and more cagey about turning, and I was beginning to wonder if Tom Mahoney noticed.

  I guessed it must be cartilage trouble; I should have done something about it but, at the time, football was too important to me. I knew we could win the league and I had to be part of it. Even then, before the storm broke, I was trying to prove that at least in one way I was better than Seanie Moran, that the team needed me more than it needed him.

  Seanie was tall for a left winger, and he fancied himself as a cross between Lee Sharpe and Matt Le Tissier. Tricky, so casual he almost seemed lazy, but the laziness was a stunt to put the full back off his guard. The problem for me, at centre forward, was to guess when he was actually going to take on his man and put over the cross.

  Off the field he was deadly quiet, but not in the casual way he had when he played. He always seemed to be thinking, worrying and keeping it all to himself. I could never put the two sides of Seanie Moran together. I didn’t trust him. He didn’t talk to anyone, especially not to me, and I reckoned he thought he was too good for the likes of me, too well-off to be mixing with the son of a down-and-out.

  His father, Mick Moran, was a building contractor and developer and hired out heavy machinery. We used his stuff at the park, cement mixers and all that stuff. The Morans had two holidays in the sun every year. Seanie had a permanent tan.

  He’d been in my class all through school and a month never went by but some teacher would say, ‘Why can’t you be like Seanie?’ or ‘If you worked half as hard as Seanie you’d be top of the class.’ I needed that kind of talk like a hole in the head. Football was the only thing I was Number One at, but he was getting better and I knew I was slipping. The worst thing of all was that I depended on him so much. Most of my goals came from his crosses or through-balls. After a goal, we never even shook hands.

  Every time I got another dart in the knee I’d think of Seanie, and on that morning Seanie never left my mind. Going downstairs I had to hold on to the banister and in the hallway I limped along by the wall. Jimmy wasn’t in the kitchen when I got there, but I couldn’t help noticing that the table had been cleared. I’d never realised it was so grotty until then, but I thought nothing of it. My stomach wasn’t up to eating so I left for the park before he appeared from wherever he was hiding.

  All the way there I was in agony, using the walls and gates along the way as a crutch. Every hundred yards or so I had to stop for a breather – luckily there was no-one around to see me struggle. By the time I reached the park I was managing to get by on my own two feet but I couldn’t hide the slight limp like I’d been able to do before. The last person I wanted to be like was Tom Mahoney, but there I was, sharing his trademark limp.

  The town park was about three-quarters finished at the time. It was a two-acre site at the edge of town; we’d brought it from a rough field to this in five months. The front area of the site was ready to take the swings and slides for the kids’ playground. At the far end from the road we’d planted trees, to enclose an area for people to sit on the stone benches we’d lugged in and cemented together. In the centre of this area we’d built a huge rockery around a fountain which was a statue of a fish spitting into about four feet of water.

  To the left and right of the rockery were two patches of grass with the borders dug out for flowers. Around the fountain and the grass we were laying a pebble path for people to dawdle along – the old folk, the mothers with their prams, the unemployed with nothing better to do. Sometimes I wondered if I’d end up spending my days sitting there or walking around in circles. Looking at a stone fish.

  The first person I saw that morning was Beano. He looked worried. Which is hardly news. As I came in by the gate, he pointed to the cabin, over at the right side of the park, from which Snipe kept a watch on us. I should have had the sense to walk around by the back of that prefab unit, but I didn’t feel like sneaking about like a frightened slave. So I hobbled past the open door.

  Snipe didn’t notice me at first – stuck into the racing pages of The Sun, more than likely – and I thought I’d gotten away with being a half hour late. Before I got to Beano’s side, I heard Snipe yelp, ‘Ryan!’

  I ignored him and grabbed a shovel. He stuck his round little face out the window of the cabin.

  ‘Over here, you chancer. Now!’

  Beano took the shovel from me and started to pile some pebbles into a wheelbarrow.

  ‘Go on, OD,’ he whispered. ‘His bite is worse than his bark.’

  ‘Not funny, Beano.’

  ‘Please,’ he said. I knew he meant that if Snipe lost his rag he wouldn’t only take it out on me but on Beano too.

  I remembered how Beano had saved me the embarrassment of turning up at Nance’s at one in the morning. For his sake, I limped over to the cabin. As I came in, Snipe shoved his newspaper under a folder of plans for the site.

  ‘Well?’ I asked, looking at the desk where a corner of The Sun was sticking out. ‘Any developments in the political situation?’

  He cut me with a look.

  ‘Or the Michael Jackson story? Is it true he’s having a baby?’

  I don’t think he even got that one.

  ‘You’re half an hour late – again.’ My knee was reminding me of its pain. I was having trouble standing so I sat on the edge of his desk.

  ‘Get your rear end off my plans.’

  ‘I can’t stand,’ I said. ‘I hurt my leg in the match yesterday.’

  He fixed his rugby-club tie, his touchstone of respectability. He fingered it like it was sacred.

  ‘A soccer player!’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t last five minutes in a real game. I’m docking you, Ryan. Now get out there and do something.’

  He’d threatened to dock me before but never gone through with it. I wasn’t worried. The crack about the rugby bugged me more – which only proves how scattered my head was, to let something stupid like that get to me. Still, I was able to stay calm. I lifted myself from the desk and breezed out the door – holding it all in; a million miles, I thought, from breaking point.

  Naturally enough, me and Beano had a rough morning after that. I didn’t mind too much since I was the centre of attention because of my goal against St. Peter’s. Just the same, when it got to lunchtime, I was sore all over from the lifting and dragging and trying to keep the weight off my knee.

  I wasn’t in the best of form for meeting Nance. Too much caught up in my own misery, I wasn’t up to appreciating hers. Last night’s tiff was just that, a tiff, the kind of thing we’d got over before. It didn’t even occur to me to wonder why Nance came into Super Snax. Usually we met after I’d finished there and she’d be back from her own house or from the shop May worked in.

  Beano stood up when she came in. He always did that. I never got around to asking him where he picked that up. Probably from a Jack Nicholson film. He was a Nicholson addict, throwing in lines from his films every so often and usually getting them slightly or badly wrong. He made an excuse about having to go somewhere and went. I wished he’d stayed. I mightn’t have been so unpleasant with Nance if he had. If ‘if’s were pounds, I’d be a millionaire.

  ‘Have a chip,’ I said without looking up from my plate, feeling sorry for myself. She sat opposite but didn’t speak for a bit. When I glanced up at her she was looking away. At the same time as I was thinking how beautiful she was, the back of my knee felt like someone was sticking an ice-pick in it. I must have groaned or let out a sharp sigh or something beca
use she looked at me suddenly with her big brown eyes. For a split second it was like she was staring at a stranger.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

  I told her about the knee and about my wonderful morning at the park. She didn’t react as I’d wanted her to. There was no sympathy. She didn’t even get mad and tell me she was tired of listening to my complaints, though I guessed she was.

  ‘What about you?’ I asked trying to disguise my disappointment.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yeah, what kind of morning did you have?’

  After a moment she told me about her morning as a charlady for Jimmy. I freaked. I didn’t think of asking her why she’d skipped school, I was so mad.

  ‘You had no right to be poking around up there,’ I told her. ‘He had a skivvy for eighteen years and he never thanked her for it.’

  Then she stuck the knife in.

  ‘Did you thank her?’

  I couldn’t get an answer out and I was afraid I was going to lose it. Then she softened.

  ‘Don’t you want Jimmy to make a new start?’

  ‘I’m up to here with Jimmy’s new starts.’

  ‘And I’m up to here with you, OD.’

  I threw my fork onto the plate. It hit the tomato sauce and sprayed the front of her school blouse with red droplets. She didn’t seem to care. She stood up and gave me one last look, as if she was waiting for me to say something. I wanted to apologise but all I could think of was Jimmy. If he could say he was making a comeback, why couldn’t I? That was what all this was about, I thought, wasn’t it? I said nothing. When she reached the door and had pushed it out, she called back over her shoulder, ‘You’d never think of asking why, would you?’

  But I was still thinking about Jimmy up at De Valera Park, not about Nance. She was already out of sight when I shouted at the swinging door, ‘Cause he’s a dumb dreamer, is why!’

  I pushed away the plate and told myself we’d make up later, when we’d calmed down. What’s a few harsh words between friends, I thought. Like a fool.

  NANCE

  It was going to be a long afternoon and it was getting colder. I could have gone home and waited. I could have gone up to Jimmy’s again. Instead I went back down to the river. There was no plan in my head, just Jimmy’s ringing words – ‘don’t let it wait’.

  I drifted along the same stretch I’d been on earlier, until I found the spot of flattened grass where I’d been sitting. This time I didn’t care about the damp. If I got a cold out of sitting there, I’d have something else to hide behind.

  After a while, I broke off a long branch from a tree over-hanging the water and began fishing absent-mindedly for my bag. I was surprised at how quickly I found it. Raising it up on the stick, I held it away from me so the water would pour out. Then I opened it and lifted out the sodden telephone directories.

  There was an ‘05’ and an ‘06’. The ‘06’, I knew, covered parts of Tipperary, Clare … and Limerick. Heather Kelly from Limerick. My natural mother.

  I went through the soggy pages as carefully as I could, but they kept coming away in my hand. Eventually, I found the Kellys. Two pages of them. I counted the ‘061’s for Limerick. Two hundred and sixteen! I ditched the phone book back in the water.

  ‘Don’t let it wait,’ I heard Jimmy say over and over. The notion of finding Heather Kelly took hold of me. Crazy ideas went in and out of my head. Hiring a private detective, putting an ad in the Limerick Leader. In the end, I got nowhere but I felt calmer. Somehow, I felt that now I’d decided to search for Heather, a way would reveal itself. One thing I was sure of: Tom and May would know nothing about my search, not if I could help it. I didn’t hate them. I wasn’t sure any more how I felt about them. It was after four by now, and from where I sat I could see the crowd from our school going home. Time to face the music.

  They were both waiting for me when I got in. May was quiet but kept staring at me; for a mad instant, I imagined she’d figured out what was wrong. I even imagined that look she gave me was one of understanding, until it became clear that it was just plain incomprehension written all over her face.

  I had always been the perfect daughter of a perfect family. We were comfortably off. A nice detached house in the best part of town; a good car but not a flash one; summer holidays in Spain, Portugal, France. Tom and May never wasted time on anything that wasn’t useful. And I played my own part to perfection. I was good at school, at games, I stayed out of trouble – even when I was with OD. Apart from the usual rows that all families have from time to time, there had never been any real conflict between the three of us. Not until now.

  Tom was holding nothing back. He sounded like he was more concerned with his own reputation than anything else.

  ‘The bloody embarrassment of it,’ he raged, ‘making excuses for you all day and no idea where you were. What the hell are you up to?’

  I wasn’t going to tell him any lies. Lies, other people’s lies, were at the bottom of all my troubles. So I said nothing at all.

  ‘Why?’ May asked in a whisper. I almost said, ‘Why what?’ but I kept my silence.

  Tom was losing patience. He looked at the shelf where I usually threw my bag when I came in.

  ‘Where’s your schoolbag?’

  ‘It’s gone,’ I said evenly.

  ‘Gone?’ May said.

  They both sat down at the kitchen table and I was left standing before them. It was like the principal’s office at school, or how I imagined it might be if you were in trouble. Not that I, being so perfect, ever was.

  ‘What did you do with it?’ he wanted to know, but his voice had none of the authority you’d expect in a principal’s office.

  ‘I threw it in the river.’

  ‘Sit down, Nance,’ May said. ‘Tell us what’s wrong.’

  I tried to resist her pleading eyes but I couldn’t. Tom was shaking his head in disbelief. He didn’t seem able to lift his eyes.

  ‘And your books? The whole lot? In the river?’ he was asking the table.

  ‘No.’

  They looked at each other and May picked up the question he was afraid to ask.

  ‘I burned them all last night,’ I told her. ‘That’s what started the chimney fire. I’m sorry about the fire.’

  ‘What is it all about?’ Tom asked. ‘It’s something to do with OD, isn’t it?’

  May took his hand, trying to change his line of attack. He pulled away from her and went on.

  ‘I warned you about him, Nance,’ he said. ‘He’s bad news, always was, always will … ’

  I let him rant on because nothing he could say frightened me more than seeing him draw away from May like that. I wondered if my search for the truth would drive them apart even further, and the temptation to tell them I’d found the photo was growing. If he hadn’t kept going on about OD I might have given in.

  ‘You had a row with him, I suppose,’ he said, ‘and now it’s the end of the world. For God’s sake, Nance, I thought you’d have more cop-on than that.’

  Then I surprised myself. I said something I hadn’t planned to say. As soon as I did I knew it was true.

  ‘I’m not going out with OD any more,’ I told Tom. ‘This has nothing to do with him.’

  ‘Since when?’ he asked suspiciously.

  ‘I didn’t burn my books because of OD,’ I said. ‘I went mental and I can’t explain why … I don’t know why.’

  May came around to my side of the table. Her arm was over my shoulder. It took a huge effort not to pull away as Tom had done.

  ‘Is it the exams?’ she asked. ‘Don’t think we’ll judge you by how many honours you get, Nance. We just want you to be happy.’

  I didn’t answer. By now, I was playing for sympathy, my best chance of escape from this unpleasantness. Tom was thinking hard. I suppose it was his way of dealing with things: thinking about the practicalities of getting me back on the rails, the school-rails.

  ‘I’ll sort out the books,’ he said. ‘D
id you burn your copies and notes too?’

  I nodded.

  ‘We’ll work something out,’ he told May. ‘I’ll tell them I was tidying out the place, after the chimney fire or something, and dumped Nance’s stuff by acc–’

  ‘I’m not going back,’ I said.

  ‘In a few days,’ May said hopefully. ‘You need a break from studying.’

  I released myself from her hold and got to the door. When I looked back at them I saw them as if they were in a photograph, could almost see the jagged-edged fold like a shaft of lightning between them. In a few days maybe I’ll go back, I thought. If I find Heather Kelly. But not before.

  And, I thought, this is not my fault. This is your own doing, the two of you. I’m not your little black baby any more. I’m the daughter of Heather Kelly and a man whose name I don’t know. I belong to a different race or in some limbo between two races.

  In my room, I found a biro and an old notepad. The little cuddly bear with the glowing heart on the head of the paper seemed to be laughing at me for believing in innocent love. Dear OD, I began, wondering if the three pages left in the notepad gave me enough space to put down everything I felt. A quarter of a page was enough. When you leave out the real reasons and the passing of blame and the pain of being let down, there’s not much to say in a goodbye letter.

  I found a coat and went up to Beano’s house, at the far end of De Valera Park from OD’s. I asked Beano to give the letter to OD. He smiled his mad smile, but he knew better than most of us what was going on in the real world. I was sure he had no doubt about what was in the letter.

  ‘The park’ll be finished in a month,’ he said. ‘OD won’t hang around waiting for the next scheme. I bet he’ll go back to school.’

  ‘I don’t think so, Beano.’

  ‘But he might, if …’

  If I was still around to persuade him, he meant. He still hadn’t pocketed the letter; he was holding it out so that I could have taken it back if I’d wanted to.

  ‘Give it to him as soon as you can,’ I said and turned to go.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘I’ll be meeting him at half six …’