The Breezes

by Joseph O'Neill

  The brooding, the doom and gloom, had to come to an end. And not just for my own peace of mind. Angela didn’t like it. It made no sense to her that someone could be derailed by the simple knowledge of futility. Nobody else seemed to suffer from this problem, certainly no one at Bear Elias. Either that, or they hid it very well. Maybe that was the truth, that people toughed it out secretly, ashamed and anxious, without heroism. They kept busy, stopping up those loopholes in the day when one had nothing better to do than to fall into contemplation, those minutes which, in my case, invariably added up to the small, unlit hours. If you bent your back all day at the office and immediately followed that up with an evening with a hungry, exhausting family and then got up early the next morning and clocked in all over again, day in, day out, that, with luck, should do the trick: send you flying to dreamland the moment your head hit the pillow – like Angela.

  A cold feeling of powerlessness overcame me.

  I rolled on to my stomach, facing the wall. At least Pa was in bed now, with a glass of milk and half an orange inside him. I had peeled it for him myself and presented it to him on a saucer. What a marvellous package of nutrition, with its brightly dimpled, waterproof overcoat and its perfectly segmented contents. How could such a thing come to be?

  I felt hopeful and sleepy. I remembered a green jungle bug which miraculously resembled, down to the last quirk, the leaves of the rare bush that was its habitat: what was the explanation for that wonderful creature? Holed up in this warm mystery, I fell asleep.

  The next morning I arose purposefully and went down to the shops and bought newspapers and coffee and croissants. This, I determined as I returned in the new summery heat, was going to be a good day; a fresh start, even.

  I entered the back way, through the kitchen. I shut the door and jumped, almost dropping my purchases. A shrill, unrelenting tintinnabulation had begun to sound wildly throughout the house. This was Pa’s doing: he had fixed the burglar alarm so that it did not work.

  I ran up the stairs in the din. He was still in bed, lying on his side with his head barely emerging from under the bedclothes. ‘How do I switch off this racket?’ I shouted. ‘Pa!’ I pushed at his unbudging shoulder. ‘What’s the matter with you? Get up. The bloody alarm’s gone off! Can’t you hear? Get up!’ I shouted. I could feel his body tense at the touch of my hand. ‘Pa!’

  Pa turned and swung his arm like a backhand topspin smash and struck me on the right side of the face.

  We stared at each other speechlessly. The alarm kept belling away.

  Finally, he said, ‘The cellar.’ He pointed in no particular direction. ‘The cellar. The red box.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘You pull it,’ he said. ‘The lever. You pull it.’

  I switched off the alarm and stayed downstairs. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe what he’d done.

  A few moments later the stairs groaned with his heavy tread. He came in, hands sheepishly buried in his dressing-gown pockets, and stood at the doorway for a few moments. He said, ‘Johnny, I’m sorry. I just– ’

  I interrupted him. ‘Forget it.’

  He shook his head in dismay. ‘I can’t understand it. I …There’s no excuse –’

  ‘Pa, forget it,’ I said. I inhaled from my cigarette. ‘Now, do you want to go to this cremation or not? If you do, you’d better get dressed and get shaved. We’ve got to go in five minutes.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ll be going.’

  I said, ‘Do what you want. He was your friend. If you don’t want to go, that’s fine with me.’

  An expression of exhaustion crossed his face as he took a deep breath. He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘OK. I’ll be down in a minute.’

  I switched on the television and watched a game show. Shortly afterwards Pa came down, wearing a black suit.

  I drove the car, he gave monosyllabic directions. He knew the way. We were going to the place where the incineration of my mother’s body, already half charred by the thunderbolt, had been completed.

  Outskirts of Rockport passed by, the deep pavements plotted with intensely coloured grass. We arrived. I said, ‘You go on in, Pa. I’ll wait for you here.’

  He sat there for a few moments, looking up at the red-bricked building at the top of the knoll. He had not shaved carefully and a tufty, dirty-white fringe of stubble showed under his nostrils. It was a lovely, slightly windy day. Daisies speckled the lawns of the crematorium.

  ‘You’d better get going,’ I said softly. I undid the catch of his seat belt. Slowly, he got out. I watched him trudge up the shallow slope, head down, body leaning forward.

  I remained seated, smoking. One or two cars drove by. Then I looked up and saw that the doors of the building were closed. The proceedings were under way.

  I knew the drill. The priest. The quiz-show organ music. The sudden alarm as the conveyor belt jolted into action. The irrevocable exit of my mother in her coffin through wine-red curtains into the wall. Then the small reception in the hospitality room, where strongly scented adults shook me and Rosie by the hand and kissed us. Unable to bear it, we made for the garden. That was a hot day, too, with bees at work everywhere, and I was happy enough sitting there on a bench in the sunshine until my sister touched my arm and pointed upwards at the black smoke escaping urgently from the tall cement chimney.

  It was incomprehensible. I said, ‘Do you really think that that’s Ma? It’s not, is it?’

  ‘Of course it is,’ Rosie said. ‘She’s being burned, isn’t she?’ She wrinkled her face. ‘God, sometimes you’re so thick.’

  We went back inside. The reception was coming to an end and our father was speaking with the funeral director. ‘Not for another hour or two,’ the funeral director was saying. He was a cheerful, happy-looking man.

  ‘We’ll wait,’ Pa said. ‘I don’t mind waiting.’

  ‘There won’t be any need for that,’ the funeral director said. ‘We’ll look after everything. We’ll telephone you when we’re ready.’ He looked at us with a kindly eye. ‘The children will want to be going,’ he said.

  Pa was not listening. ‘We’ll wait,’ he said. ‘It’s no bother.’

  The funeral director said, ‘Well, it’s most unusual … And there’ll be another cremation following shortly …’

  ‘I’ll be back in one hour,’ my father said, taking Rosie and me by the hand.

  We went to a coffee bar. From time to time, Pa started to say things. Rosie and I poured sugar in our Cokes to make them fizz. We weren’t thirsty, anyway.

  We went back to the crematorium. Pa said, ‘Stay in the car, you two,’ but we followed him anyway.

  Pa said, ‘I’ve come for my wife. Mary Breeze.’

  The receptionist said, ‘If you would take a seat for a moment.’ Shortly afterwards, the funeral director came in. He presented Pa with what looked like a fun-size cereal packet. ‘My condolences, Mr Breeze,’ he said. Pa nodded and quickly left. Once outside, he turned his back to us and opened the packet. For several seconds he inspected its contents, touching the ashes with his index finger. Then he began walking back towards the car and Rosie and I ran down the slope ahead of him and impatiently clicked the handles of the doors of the station wagon. He leaned backwards from the driver’s seat to unlock the doors. He placed the packet of ashes in the dashboard compartment along with the Kleenex packet and the road maps and the can of engine oil and started the car. Then he switched off the engine and sat there without a word.

  After long minutes of silence, he looked at us. ‘I want you kids to stay here. And I mean it.’

  He retrieved the packet and stepped out and walked down the leafy road and around the bushes at the corner of the block. He thought that we could not see him through the intervening undergrowth; but we could. We could see everything. Looking around to make sure he was unwatched, my father was rapidly sprinkling the powdery leftovers over the flowerbeds that ornamented the sidewalk – were they rose-bushes? Whatever they were
, I had seen it with my own eyes: my mother reduced to fertilizer.

  It’s incredible – her sheer nowhereness.

  17

  The train has stopped again. This time we’re in the outskirts of some town, with a view of clothes lines, underwear and gardens full of bathtubs, shopping trolleys, bits of wood and other junk.

  ‘Are we there yet?’ the woman asks.

  The man sighs from behind his newspaper and I notice the sports page splash: WE’LL BE BACK, VOWS UNITED BOSS. ‘Not yet, madam,’ the man says. ‘I’ll tell you when we are.’

  ‘I don’t want to be late,’ she says. She fiddles with her bandage, revealing an eyeball of pure red. ‘It’s my dog, you see.’

  The man looks out of the window. ‘I mean, this really is quite extraordinary. What possible reason could there be for stopping here?’

  A minute passes. ‘That’s it,’ the man says. ‘I’m lodging a complaint. One simply can’t take these things lying down.’ He opens his briefcase and takes out a pen and a piece of writing-paper. He clicks down the point of the biro, places the paper on his briefcase, which he balances on his knees, and starts writing.

  A few moments later, he puts his pen down and stands up. ‘Would you keep an eye on my stuff?’ he asks, and I nod.

  I cannot resist looking at the letter, which is still on the briefcase.

  Dear Sir or Madam … The paragraph that follows is scribbled out, as is the paragraph below that one.

  At least that’s one letter Pa will no longer have to deal with.

  He was flummoxed by the pulverization of his friend.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he muttered, as we drove back from the crematorium, ‘I just don’t know.’ He clenched and unclenched his mouth and unrhythmically drummed his fingernails against the window. ‘What does it all mean? I mean …’ He stopped speaking, struggling with his feelings, ashamed about burdening me, an innocent whom he had brought unconsulted into the world, with his doubts. Perhaps, too, he was afraid of what my answer might be.

  We reached the pacific streets of the Birds’ District, passing a playground with see-saws and a sandpit where mothers pushed tots skywards on the swings and supervised their gleeful experiments on the slides with the sweet tug of gravity. On an impulse, I pulled over at the supermarket and, while Pa waited in the car, loaded up a trolley with loaves of wholemeal bread, eggs, a kilo of apples, butter, beers, ready-made mixed salad, Brie, mature Cheddar, salami, oranges, cans of soup, toilet paper, tomatoes, two rump steaks, minced meat, onions and bananas. Stuff he liked. And when we got home I made him a sandwich and a cup of coffee, and while he took it easy I filled up the dishwasher, cleaned the kitchen and stocked his fridge.

  Then I checked the mailbox. A large brown envelope stamped with the Network logo fell to the floor.

  I handed it to Pa, who was sitting at the dining-table.

  He dropped it on the table and pushed it away. ‘It’s Paddy Browne’s report. I don’t want it. I’ve had it with them. They can keep their rubbish. I don’t want to hear from those people ever again.’

  ‘What about your action for reinstatement? Are you just going to let that drop?’

  ‘It’s over, John. Can’t you understand? It’s over. There’s nothing I can do about it.’

  I was suddenly angry. ‘What happened to your fighting talk? Are you just going to let them walk all over you?’ I tore open the envelope.

  The covering letter said, Dear Gene, Herewith a copy of the report which you requested. I hope that all is well. Yours, Paddy. I picked up the enclosed booklet. ‘Here we go, it’s a copy of– ’

  After a moment, Pa said, ‘What’s the matter?’

  I passed him the booklet. The authors of the report were identified on the front. ‘Bear Elias,’ Pa read out.

  He looked at me and winked involuntarily with his lazy eye.

  He said, ‘You don’t think that Angela … Surely, she …’

  I pointed. There was her reference number at the foot of the last page, AF/103/2.

  It was Angela who had fired Pa.

  Pa removed his glasses from the reddened ridge of his nose and began pressing and kneading his brow with his fingers, as though desperately trying to reshape the contours of his skull. ‘She was only doing her job,’ he said finally.

  I felt too guilty to reply.

  He picked up the report and thumbed at its pages. He raised the silver of his eyebrows, curved faintly on his brow like moons in daylight, and pointed at some coloured pie charts. ‘What did I tell you? Paddy Browne.’

  Paddy Browne, Pa’s worst enemy, and Angela, a virtual member of the family, a de facto Breeze, collaborating intimately and secretively to produce a report of this kind.

  The bitch. The fucking bitch. So that’s what she’d been doing Sunday night – while I, like an idiot, rotted in her flat, fearing the worst.

  I pictured it: in the early hours of the morning, Angela sits flashing her fingers at the word processor with her long brown hair tumbling over her shoulders while Browne, his jacket long since discarded, informally brings her a cup of coffee to keep her going. He makes a humorous remark to which she replies, refining his joke in the special bantering manner which they have developed over weeks of teamwork; he, in turn, takes the joke one step further, and they both start tittering, delighted with themselves and each other.

  I felt nauseous. How could this happen? Why hadn’t she pulled out of the project?

  A fresh wave of nausea. Surely the report was the full extent of their collaboration? Surely the Sunday all-nighter was purely professional? Surely there was no possibility of a double betrayal, of Angela and Browne …

  I said, ‘I don’t understand it, Pa. I had no idea. She never told me.’

  He was facing away from me towards the garden. Bushes were in blue blossom now.

  I lit a cigarette. Jesus, she was hard. She was so hard.

  Suddenly I was afraid.

  Pa said, ‘We were going to take up golf. And travel – we were going to do a lot of travelling, see the world. We had plans. You kids would be standing on your own two feet and we would have the time.’ He was facing away from me and the backs of his ears loomed in profile from his head. ‘You see, we were a team,’ he said. ‘We did everything together.’ He caressed the table with his hand. ‘She should be here with me right now. I wouldn’t give a damn about any of this if she were here. But she isn’t,’ he said, amazement in his voice. ‘That’s the truth. She’s gone. That’s what’s happened. This is it, you see. She’s actually gone.’

  He cleared his throat. I could not say anything. He was telling the truth.

  There is a noise: it is my fellow traveller, returning with a cup of coffee. He takes a sip and places the plastic cup on the ledge beneath the window and sits back.

  The train jogs. We’re under way again, moving along with a thin clack of the wheels.

  ‘Look,’ he says, almost speechless. I do: the coffee in his cup is trembling so violently that drops have spilled on to his briefcase, staining his letter. ‘It’s unspeakable,’ he says. ‘Simply unspeakable.’

  I make a sympathetic face, but then I leave in order to have another cigarette. This time I push down a window in the train corridor and lean out on my elbows, the smoke from my cigarette disappearing instantaneously in the train’s envelope of wind.

  It was early evening by the time I returned from Pa’s, and a pile of pink sunlight broke into the hallway when I opened the front door. I walked through to the sitting-room. An attempt to clear up had been started but then abandoned. Steve, a crumb-filled plate on his lap, was at full-stretch on the sofa, poring over the latest junk mail – a religious missive entitled ‘Who Really Rules the World?’. On the cover was a picture of the earth held like a cricket ball by an enormous white hand, the index finger taking a grip like a spin bowler’s on a ridge of Asian mountains. I took a look at the pamphlet. Satan governed the world, it explained. There is no need to guess at the matter, it asserted, for the
Bible clearly shows that an intelligent unseen person has been controlling both men and nations.

  I handed Steve back the pamphlet. Looking at him sprawled out there, I couldn’t help feeling a soft gut-punch of disappointment. His famous citizen’s arrest had not given him the push which, I had fleetingly dreamed, was all that he required to propel him into action. My error was clear: I had wrongly assumed that Steve’s position in life was, in its relentless quiescence, like that of the schoolboy’s classic example of latent energy, the static boulder perched on the top of the hill, shown in the diagram with arrows pointing downhill to demonstrate the rock’s potential to rumble down the slope and transform its stored power into kinetic energy. But Steve was not ready to roll, a one-man landslide waiting for that happy impetus which would send him careering down the slope of achievement; he was flat-out on the sofa like a cracked slab-stone in a skip.

  In the kitchen, meanwhile, Rosie was making coffee for one.

  A seen-it-all-before feeling came over me. It wasn’t anything so mystical as déjà vu; it was the letdown that comes with the recognition of unprogressable circumstances which, like unceasing encores of a terrible performance, will recur and recur.

  I soldiered on. ‘I’ve been to Pa’s,’ I said to Rosie.

  ‘How is he?’ she said.

  I dropped into a chair. ‘Not great,’ I said. ‘Merv’s cremation has really knocked him out. I left him in bed. He’s thinking about Ma.’

  I didn’t say anything about Angela. Rosie was liable to go over to her flat and throw bricks though all of the windows.

  I pushed my feet forward into some of that pink dusk light lying around on the floor. ‘When are you going to see him?’

  ‘I will,’ Rosie said irritably. ‘I’ll phone him tomorrow.’

  ‘Why tomorrow? That’s what you said yesterday. It’s always tomorrow. Why not today? I mean, I don’t understand you. Why don’t you just give him a call now and get it over with?’

  ‘Oh, stop whining,’ Rosie said, sitting on the sofa. ‘Move over, Slug,’ she said, rapping Steve’s shins sharply with her knuckles. ‘Ow,’ Steve complained, and withdrew his legs. Rosie took a sip from her coffee, lit a cigarette and, ostensibly aiming at the plate which he held on his lap, flicked the ash on to his trousers. ‘What’s on TV?’ she said.