The Breezes

by Joseph O'Neill

  The victorious players are piled up in a huge ecstatic heap in the middle of the field, their joyous noises audible in the songless stadium.

  We’ve been robbed. That’s all there is to it. We’ve been robbed.

  I finish my drink. What does it matter anyway?

  I put some money in the telephone on the bar and ring Angela’s.

  The voice mail switches on. I’m not here at the moment, Angela says. Please leave a message.

  She’s changed the message. The message used to say we’re not in at the moment. And my voice used to say it.

  She’s scrubbed me out. She’s removed me from the record.

  I stub out half a cigarette. I mustn’t get paranoid. There’s going to be an innocent explanation, I know there is.

  I slip my coat on. I bet that by the time I get home she’ll be back, probably wallowing in a hot midnight bath, her breasts half immersed, her brown hair knotted up above her sleek white neck, her toes waiting for a soaping. In a very few minutes I could be doing just that, or maybe kneading her back as she lies face-down on the bed while she talks about her day – or maybe even having a bit more fun than that. Not a lot has been happening on that front for a while and we’re overdue some action.

  I quickly walk the distance from the pub to the flat. I run up the stairs, keys ready. I push open the door and prepare to call out, Angie, Angie, it’s me.

  But nobody, apart from me, is in.

  But it’s half-past twelve! It’s Monday, for God’s sake!

  Unwell, I drop the keys on a table. Anything could have happened to her. I walk in a circle around the room and then without warning I drop through some trap-door and an absolute, electrical sensation of absence engulfs me. She could be nowhere. Angela could be nowhere.

  I grab a table with both my hands and lean forward. Block out those thoughts. Think of something else, quick …

  But what comes to mind, for some reason, is this image: a hot-air balloon anchored tenuously to the earth with ropes, shifting uneasily in the currents of air, tugging to be gone, to obey the rules of physics and drift upwards into the atmosphere … Memories! These are Angela’s remains once she has gone, these are her ties to the earth and all that substantiate her. But what shadowy tethers! I have loved that girl for four years and even I, standing here in her room, cannot bring to mind more than a few moments – and even these are blurred, incomplete snapshots … Walking towards me on a foggy train platform, her head thrown back with laughter; unselfconsciously holding me for every second of our first night together; her eyes closed and mouth slightly agape as she lies on her back in erotic concentration. And if I bring her jumper to my face and smell the brand of her perfume, then, yes, I catch a momentary whiff of her; if I read her letters or look at photographs, something does come back. But that’s it. The laughs, the looks, the moments, the company, the fun, the reality of her, her thereness – all gone. For good. This is what I cannot get away from any more at night, this is what leaves me sweating and sleepless and outraged: for good. It happened last night and it’s happening now, this crushing realization: soon it will all be over, for good. In perpetuity.

  No. No.

  Another cigarette, quick.

  Calm yourself, Johnny, calm yourself. It will not matter, death is not an experience, and besides, the eternity that preceded you wasn’t so bad, was it? So why mind the one in store? You don’t pity the dead, so stop pitying yourself. Grow up. It happens to everybody. It’s natural, everything ends.

  But I reject that! That is cowardice, not maturity! I am John Breeze, I am alive, I refuse to disappear!

  But I will.

  Here they come again, all together: disbelief, certainty and freezing fear.

  All of a sudden it is as though I am floating. Although I am standing with both feet solidly on the floor, my legs may as well be hanging in thin air. I recognize the feeling. It is that of the boy suspended high up on the seat of a see-saw as three others sit on the grounded seat, outweighing the boy and keeping him up there in the sky against his will. He shakes at the handlebar and kicks his legs, but nothing is changed and he remains where he is, powerless and dangling. A double fear preys on the boy’s mind: the fear of remaining airborne indefinitely and the fear of the alternative, the letdown, the crunching drop to earth. Either way, he is helpless and this, in the end, is perhaps the worst, most distressing thing: he is wholly at the mercy of the three others. They know this, and this is the kick they get out of it. They are in charge. The imbalance favours them spectacularly. They are reddening and squealing with the purity of the thrill.

  It’s frightening; I feel so afloat, so unreal, that I could be in a dream. But I’m here, God damn it, I’m here in the flesh!

  I take off my jumper and go to the kitchen to run cold water against my face. Maybe there is something wrong with my metabolism, or my blood circulation. Maybe the central heating is turned up too high.

  I return to the living-room and just move around for a few moments. Then decisively I leap up and catch hold of the solid rim of the bed and hang there like an ape for a few moments until the muscles in my shoulders and arms ache with the weight of my body. I keep hanging there, letting the pain worsen until I’m fighting to hold my grip. Then I let go and land.

  I feel a little more awakened. OK, that’s a bit better. Now let’s put some music on and maybe try another cigarette.

  There’s an old Beatles album on the turntable. That’ll do.

  A song or two go by and then on it comes, ‘Here Comes the Sun’, George Harrison, and I remember a glittering winter afternoon – was it a year or two years ago? – when this song was playing and this room shone. In the sudden confluence of the music and the light, Angela and I spontaneously looked up at each other from our Sunday newspapers and rose to our feet to hold each other in the luminous centre of the room, grinning at each other with delight, and Angela said, her eyes actually glistening, Is this heaven? Are we there?

  I hit the stop button. The needle-arm floats back to its rest.

  I drop face-down on to the sofa, eyes closed. My shoes fall from my feet.

  But a sleepless minute later, I roll over on to my side to make myself more comfortable, and momentarily my eyes blink open again. There is the praying-chair, six feet away.

  Pa asked me to pray for Merv.

  I shut my eyes. Forget it, Pa. Dream on.

  I roll off the sofa. I go over to the chair and remove the fern and wipe clean the ring of earth the plantpot has left on the uncushioned hassock. I kneel down, resting my elbows on the praying-desk. The wood is rock-hard on the kneecaps.

  OK, God, I’m going to make this quick. Help Merv. Help him to pull through.

  I shift my knees. Help Mrs Rasmussen, too, and the son, what’s his name, Billy. Then I think, What the hell, and I say to God, And help Pa. Help him to get through this weekend and help him to keep his job. Keep him healthy. Help Rosie, too. Help her to find happiness. She’s in big trouble, she needs a hand, she needs every hand on deck. A pause. Help Angela. Please let her be safe. Let her come back tonight. Oh, yes, and Steve. Don’t forget Steve. Keep an eye out for that poor bastard, as well. Make sure he gets back in one piece.

  I stay where I am, leaning hard on the desk.

  Help me, as well, God.

  A feeling of surrealism overcomes me. I remember the poet who took a lobster for a walk.

  Then I remember Ma, but cannot recall her. Ma, who was my mother.

  I get up. I move over to the windows and part the curtains one more time. It has stopped raining. The golden shapes of windows in the houses across the street have disappeared. There is no sign of Angela. Above the rooftops, dark spaces of sky appear where the wind has ripped up the clouds.

  13

  ‘Close the door!’

  The man sitting in front of me leans over and smashes shut the carriage door, killing the draught.

  ‘I can’t believe the rudeness of these people,’ he says to me. He is about fifty y
ears old. Stiff white sprigs of hair jut from his nostrils.

  I raise my eyebrows mutely.

  The man straightens his tie. ‘Mind you, these trains don’t help, do they? I mean, why don’t they have electric doors which open and close automatically? Why do we have to put up with this rubbish? They’ve got electric doors in Holland, France, Germany – they’ve even got them in Italy. Why haven’t we got them?’

  Again, I agree with a meek movement of the face. I glance briefly at the other person in the carriage, a lady in her seventies. She has a bandage taped over her left eye.

  ‘It’s a joke,’ the man says. ‘A bad joke.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ the lady says. ‘I wonder if you might tell me when we arrive in Waterville. You see, I can’t see very well. I’ve had an operation.’

  ‘Of course, madam,’ the man says. ‘But this is the express, you know. We’re not stopping anywhere.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she says, and closes her visible eye.

  The man shakes his head and picks up his newspaper, and finally I’m free to look out through the window at the slowly reversing green fields where, in the distance, a smooth cluster of racehorses hovers up a slope.

  The countryside. I’m out. Rockport is behind me.

  At long last. At long bloody last.

  It has been some week.

  When I came to on Monday morning, the curtains bright as a cinema screen, I pulled the bedspread over my head and shut my eyes. Lying there half asleep, I fantasized for a marvellous moment that if I lay there long enough and let events take their course without me, a time would finally come when my situation would be well and truly superseded and when I might step out freely into a new world apparelled in fresh circumstances, the discarded past lying crumpled in a corner like a worn shirt.

  But then I woke up properly. There was no warm back against which to press myself, no soft-cheeked buttocks and smooth neck. Angela had still not returned.

  I eased myself down the bed ladder and drew aside the curtains. I swung open the window, letting in the noise of the cars and the day. It was the rush hour.

  I telephoned Angela’s office. ‘Extension 274, please.’

  I was put through. A man’s voice said, ‘Yes?’

  ‘Could I speak to Angela Flanagan, please?’

  ‘Hold on,’ the man said. Half a minute later, he said, ‘She doesn’t seem to be around at the moment. Can I take a message?’

  ‘What, you mean she’s not at work today?’

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘It’s a personal call,’ I said.

  ‘Look, I’m afraid I don’t know where she is.’

  I hesitated. ‘This is her boyfriend, John Breeze,’ I said. ‘It’s just that I’m worried about her whereabouts.’

  ‘Her boyfriend? Angela’s boyfriend?’ the man said.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. I felt like a fourteen-year-old.

  He said, ‘I’ll make a note that you rang. I’ll tell her to call you, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ I said.

  But where could she be?

  I took a shower and got dressed in day-old clothes and went to catch a bus home. The woman sitting in front of me was reading a newspaper, ROCKPORT FANS RUN RIOT, the headline read.

  I looked away. The morning, like a footballer running out for the kick-off, was freshly kitted out in a deep blue sky striped by pure trails of clouds. The chestnut trees rocked easily beneath their newly heavyweight greenery and as usual the Rockport traffic moved fluently through clean roads and neat bicycle lanes. It all looked so pleasant and harmonious and according-to-plan. Things will turn out fine, I said to myself. Things will fall into place.

  Five minutes later, I opened the front door of the flat.

  It had been smashed up. The remains of crockery and glass lay on the floor, stains of red liquid spattered the walls, books and magazines were scattered everywhere, my prints had been wrecked and, judging from the heap of forks and knives by the door to the kitchen, the whole cutlery drawer had been hurled to the ground.

  There was no sign of Steve or Rosie.

  I fell into a chair. Don’t tell me we’ve been broken into. Please don’t tell me that.

  The doorbell rasped, then rasped once more.

  I got to my feet and looked out to see who it was. Two big men with crew-cut hair and casual clothing stood outside, shielding their eyes from the sun as they looked up and down at the house.

  Who were these people?

  They rang again, insistently.

  I spoke through the intercom. ‘Who is it?’ I said. I heard an exchange of words. ‘Who is it?’ I repeated.

  ‘Mr Breeze, is it?’ a man said.

  After a moment, I said, ‘Yes. Who is this?’

  ‘We’ve come from Mr Devonshire,’ the man said. ‘We’ve come for the chairs.’

  The chairs. Shit.

  Instinctively I decided to bluff, lie and stall. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘look, this isn’t a good time. Could you come back later? It’s just that I’ve got my hands full at the moment.’

  ‘We’ll only be a second, Mr Breeze.’ The voice was determined. ‘We’ll just be in and out.’

  I rested my head against the wall, trying to think. Then I buzzed open the door. To hell with it.

  The men came in. ‘Well,’ one of them said cheerfully, ‘where do we go?’ He stopped to stare at the state of the living-room. ‘That must have been some party,’ he quipped.

  ‘They’re downstairs,’ I heard myself saying. ‘I’ll show you.’

  It was out of my hands. The men loaded the stools into their van while I stood around watching them. They slammed shut the rear doors of the van, white swinging doors like the doors of an ambulance. ‘Don’t worry,’ the talkative one said as they climbed into the cab and his friend started up the engine. ‘They’re safe as houses with us.’

  I gave him a thin smile. As it happened, my last remaining chance was that the chairs were not safe as houses, that by some miracle the van would crash on the way to the gallery and the stools would be destroyed in the process.

  I went back inside. Fuck it. I was glad to see the back of those chairs. So what if the exhibition did not take place? It didn’t matter, not when you compared it to everything else that was going on. Pa would understand. And let Devonshire sue me if he wanted to. It would be a barren exercise. I was a man of straw, with no assets to speak of, nothing upon which a judgement could be enforced.

  Then I remembered. There was one asset that I did have: the flat. Pa had signed it over to me to avoid death duties. Officially, this place was mine.

  I crumpled into an armchair. Not the flat. Please, not the flat, too.

  And Angela, what about her?

  I sat there, my limbs lifelessly dangling. Then I registered a stinging in my fingers: a cigarette, burned down to the bottom.

  It was ten minutes before I was able to face things. I made an inspection of the flat. The sitting-room was the only room that had been touched and nothing appeared to be missing. So if it wasn’t a break-in, what had happened? I noticed that Rosie’s travelling bag was not in its usual place in the bathroom – which meant that she had gone off to work.

  This wasn’t the work of robbers. This was down to my demented sister. For some crazy reason she had destroyed the place she normally slaved to keep so clean.

  And where was Steve? It was ten-thirty in the morning: why wasn’t he in bed?

  I felt a flicker of concern for the deadbeat. If Rosie had done this to the flat, God knew what she might have done to him.

  Picking up a knife from the floor, I made myself toast with the one slice of stale bread left in the kitchen. I looked for some jam. No jam. Correction: there was jam, but it was in the living-room, at the foot of the far wall, lying in a sticky mass where the pot had burst. That bitch. That fucking bitch. I’d had enough of her crap. She was going to pay for this. The next time I saw her I’d …

  I breathed deeply. I ate the buttered toast.

&
nbsp; I decided to telephone my father at work. I wanted to know how he was after his awful weekend and how Paddy Browne’s report had gone. Most of all, I wanted to hear his voice.

  ‘Gene Breeze, please,’ I said.

  ‘What’s it in connection with?’ the receptionist asked. ‘Is this a customer complaint?’

  I said, ‘No, this is John, his son.’

  ‘Ah, right. One moment, please.’

  I was put through. But the extension number rang and rang without answer.

  I hung up, rang back and explained.

  ‘Let me make enquiries,’ the receptionist said. Moments later, she said, ‘He’s not in at the moment, John. He’s at home.’

  At home?

  ‘You’re sure?’ I said.

  ‘Er, yes,’ the woman said. ‘I …’ She stopped. ‘At least, I assume he is. He’s not here, I know that.’

  I rang off and dialled Pa’s home number.

  No answer. Where the fuck was everybody?

  Brushing perspiration from my mouth, I telephoned Angela at home – nobody there – and again at work. This time somebody else from her department answered, another man, another shithead with a glib tone of voice. No, he said, Angela was still not around. Yes, he said, he’d take a message that I had called.

  Who were all these characters? Were there no women in management consultancy?

  I smashed down the receiver.

  I became aware again of the state of the room.

  I had to get out. I went out and jumped on a bus to Pa’s place.

  The bus climbed up to the leafy suburb where Pa lives, known as Birds’ District because all of the streets are named after birds. A prickling feeling of relief came to me as the bus turned slowly through Merl Street and Crow Street and on to Bluebird Lane, scattering young boys with bats who were warming up for the cricket season. The neighbourhood was changeless. At Canary Street I rang the stopping-bell when I saw the grocer’s, just as Ma had coached me to do almost twenty years ago when together we travelled on this same bus route every day for a week so that I would learn how to get to school. The bus stopped at the corner of Curlew Lane and Turtledove Lane. I jumped off heavily and slowly walked down the street, familiar with each step of the way, with every jutting paving-slab, every manhole and gas outlet, every cleanly shaped hedge. I passed the house where Mr Murphy, the anaesthetist with the home-made nuclear bunker in the garden, still lived, then the house of Dr Michaelson, the mathematics professor who played chess with Pa in the evenings over a glass of Bushmills, then the house of Mr Johnson, the schizophrenic. And then, looking ahead, I saw my father’s silhouette a hundred yards away, hosing the ground in front of him with a strong jet of water. Pa! I shouted, and I waved, and he looked up and straightened, sending an arc of water into the sunlit air, and the moment that followed was a moment from an idyll, my upright father strongly waving one arm, while the other arm, perfectly still, sprayed a perfectly crayonned rainbow over the road.