Mr Lynch’s Holiday

by Catherine O’Flynn

  ‘What?’

  ‘The return flight.’

  ‘What about it?’

  Eamonn rubbed the side of his face. ‘When are you going back?’

  ‘Oh. A fortnight. I thought that was long enough.’

  Eamonn let this sink in.

  ‘I never imagined you travelling abroad.’

  Dermot nodded as if agreeing and then said, ‘Spain’s a fascinating place. The different regions and cultures, the separate histories, even separate languages. Of course the Generalisimo tried to do away with all that.’ He paused to take a drink before adding: ‘“Extremadura – Home of the Conquistadores.”’

  Eamonn looked at him, waiting to see if there was to be any expansion on this chapter heading, but his father had fallen silent again.

  He found his gaze returning to the Aston Villa holdall on the floor between them. Its provenance was mysterious given that his father had no interest at all in football and yet Eamonn had no memory of life before the bag. It had travelled with Dermot every day to the garage, filled with a Thermos of tea, sandwiches, a jumper and whatever library book he happened to be reading. In latter years, when his mother’s health had grown too bad, it had served as his father’s shopping bag. Somehow, despite its many years of service, it was in pristine condition. It was his father’s emblem, the essence of him distilled.

  ‘And Laura? How’s she now?’

  ‘She’s OK.’

  ‘At the shops, is she?’

  ‘She’s gone away for a few days. A research trip.’

  ‘Oh. She’ll be back before I leave though, will she?’

  ‘Maybe. Depends on how the research is going, I suppose.’

  ‘What is it she’s studying?’

  ‘Oh … no … she’s not studying. She’s writing. A novel. Historical fiction.’

  This last he said in a voice not quite his own, as if he were uncomfortable with the words.

  ‘A novel! Well that’s something, isn’t it? Why not? They’re all at it. Look at that one. She’s done well out of it, hasn’t she?’

  Eamonn nodded, waiting for the inevitable.

  ‘J. K. Potter, is it? I’d say she has a bob or two by now.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Dermot smiled. ‘You know, your mother used to think you might be a writer? Some idea she had in her head, back when you were young, like. Wrote some story about a dog, I think it was, do you remember?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ah, you do. A dog that could talk. What was he called?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Patch or Spark. Something like that.’

  Eamonn closed his eyes. ‘Flash.’

  ‘Flash! That was it. Flash the talking dog. The teacher said you had talent too. Your mother thought you’d be the next big thing.’

  Eamonn said nothing. He noticed Dermot looking at the array of unwashed dishes lined up along the floor by the patio door. ‘Don’t mind those.’ He stood and started piling them up. ‘Just about to clear up when you came. You know how it is.’

  Dermot leaned slightly to the left to see how far the dirty plates extended. ‘Will she mind me being here? You didn’t have any warning.’

  ‘Laura?’ He dumped the plates on the hatch. ‘She won’t mind at all.’ And it was true, he knew she’d have been delighted to see Dermot.

  There was a long silence before his father spoke again.

  ‘I like to have eggs in the fridge. Your mother liked an egg every day and I can’t eat them like that, but I like to have them handy for the odd occasion when I fancy one. I can go weeks between them.’

  Eamonn felt something settle upon him: the discomfiting notion that he was now responsible for his father. Given Dermot’s conversational halts and leaps Eamonn wondered how he could ever hope to distinguish between oblique verbal gambits and full-blown dementia.

  ‘The thing is, they have the dates, don’t they?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The expiry. So the box will sit there with five eggs in for weeks and then one morning I’ll notice that I have two days left to eat the lot of them and I do it. Scrambled, poached, fried, whatever you like. I get through them all!’

  Eamonn thought the sermon on the egg had come to an end, but after a few moments’ silence Dermot turned to him and concluded:

  ‘The expiry dates. They’re great things.’

  3

  He looked back at Eamonn’s block, identical to all the others around it. ‘Do you have many there in the maisonette with you?’

  ‘It’s not a maisonette. It’s not Castle Vale.’

  ‘What do you call it, then?’

  ‘I don’t know. Apartment block. It doesn’t matter.’

  He remembered this habit of Eamonn’s: correcting what you said, but irritated when you asked for the right way to say it. ‘So, are there many others in there with you?’

  Eamonn mumbled an answer he couldn’t catch.

  As they walked down the road he thought that Lomaverde didn’t in fact look that different to the low-rise parts of the Castle Vale estate. Or at least Castle Vale when it first went up in the 60s. All very spick and span and modern. Eamonn, he was sure, wouldn’t appreciate the comparison. He could be very grand at times. After university he’d come back to live with them for a few months, rising at eleven, taking a good hour over his breakfast, his newspaper spread out all over the table, the radio switched from Jimmy Young to Radio 4. Kathleen would wait on him attentively, spending a fortune on the inedible-looking muesli he favoured. ‘The English Gentleman,’ Dermot would say to Kathleen. ‘To the manor born.’

  They walked in silence, keeping to the pavement, though there were no cars to be seen or heard. Junk mail was visible sticking out from every letter box, flyers for mobile phones and estate agents lay inert, here and there, on the street, unhurried by any breeze. He stopped to appreciate the heat of the day. He stretched out his fingers as if in the bath. It was bad for you apparently. That was the latest thing. Even the sun. He considered taking his jacket off.

  He cast a sideways glance at Eamonn. A ghost in a cap. An unearthly glow around him where the sunlight bounced off his white skin. He’d inherited the pallor from his mother, a soft, milky tone apparently impervious to the strongest sun. Dermot’s own skin was a complex mottling of red and brown. He had a flash of his hand, dark and covered in hair, resting on Kathleen’s white brow. He heard again the muted pipe music, felt the carpeted hush of the funeral parlour all around him and turned his thoughts to something else.

  ‘Work going well, is it?’

  ‘Yeah … OK … you know. Up and down.’

  Dermot couldn’t ask more without revealing that he couldn’t remember, or possibly never really knew, exactly what it was Eamonn did. It was enough anyway.

  They followed the road as it wound its way down through the development, zigzagging lazily back and forth in wide swathes. He was used to the confusion and noise of Birmingham streets: UPVC porches, leaded plastic windows, swaying buddleia, stone cladding, paint-daubed wheelie bins, gnarled pigeons, dead cars, decorative pampas, monkey puzzles and feral privet.

  Here all was hushed, planned, discreet. His eyes took time to adjust, to identify the basic features. It was a good ten minutes before he noticed that every window and door was shuttered. He thought at first that it was a way to block out the sun, but gradually he picked up on the general air of desertion. It put him in mind of the old Sunday-afternoon matinees on the telly, cowboys riding into empty Mexican towns. He and Eamonn used to watch them together. Squat men with big moustaches asleep under their sombreros, church bells clanging in the distance, heat haze blurring a stranger’s approach.

  Slowly he started to discern a difference between the houses that had never been occupied and the handful that had but were currently empty. A dead potted plant on a patio here and there, an occasional nameplate under the buzzer. He noticed that the ones showing some evidence of habitation also had signs on their gates or on their shutters.
The signs were in different colours, but always the same two words. ‘En Venta,’ he said aloud. He guessed at its meaning. He wondered if Eamonn had a destination in mind.

  From a distance everything had looked pristine and controlled, but now, as they walked, he began to spot instances of disrepair and chaos. Cracks in pavements and fault lines along the road. An electric cable snaking along the street. Lawned verges overgrown and weeds at their perimeters. He saw the empty swimming pool, strewn with grit and pine needles, a stray cat curled up in the corner. He had already noticed plenty of jobs he could do at Eamonn’s place. He thought again of Castle Vale. It had taken longer for the cracks to show there.

  He knew something of the workings of places. The daily rhythms, the ebbs and flows. He was familiar with the different heartbeats of the suburbs, the inner ring, the outer ring, the windblown regeneration zones. All with their separate pulse points: the Asda, the job centre, the bookies, the daycare, the mosque, the cemetery, the school. Lomaverde appeared to have no such places. Neither had it, as far as Dermot could see, any people wishing to get to or from anywhere. Given the absence of passengers and destinations, the lack of bus stops at least seemed less surprising.

  Towards the lower part of Lomaverde the development became more ragged. Six dwellings stood half completed. He took in the abandoned cement mixers, piles of breeze blocks and sacks of sand. The road continued down past them for a hundred or so yards before coming to an abrupt end. Beyond the final kerb the land reverted back to scrub, the hillside dropping away to the sea. They walked to the furthest point on the road and stood together, gazing out at the horizon.

  It was a while before Eamonn spoke. ‘So there you go. Lomaverde in all its glory.’

  Dermot nodded. He got the picture. He’d read about places like it in Ireland. ‘How many of you are there?’

  He waited while Eamonn counted in his head. ‘Fifteen. Permanently. All foreigners like us. Maybe another twenty or so Spanish owners. Second homes. They don’t come much, only to dust and air them for potential buyers.’

  ‘Are there any of those?’

  ‘Not so many, I suppose.’

  Dermot looked around at the half-finished houses. ‘What’s happening with these?’

  ‘Hmmm …’ Eamonn seemed intrigued by the question, as if he had never considered it himself. ‘I’m not really sure.’

  ‘Well, is any work being done on them?’

  ‘No, not now. Not for a while really.’

  ‘A while.’ Dermot nodded. ‘How long would that be, then?’

  ‘I suppose … it must be about nine months. Last September – that’s when we heard the developers had gone bust. And vanished.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Not really been much in the way of maintenance since then either. I hear the sprinklers at night sometimes still. I suppose someone forgot to turn them off. Sorry. You’re not really seeing it at its best, been a while since anyone cut the grass. It used to be … you know … short. All that.’

  ‘Is there any prospect of it ever being finished?’

  ‘Well … I think … not currently, no.’

  Dermot rubbed his face with his hand. ‘Can I ask how much are you in for now?’

  Eamonn screwed up his face. ‘Pfffffff – hard to say really.’

  ‘Roughly, like.’

  ‘Roughly … roughly – I’d say the mortgage is somewhere in the region of a hundred and two thousand euros now. We put down a big deposit.’

  ‘Right.’

  They were silent again for a while before Eamonn turned to Dermot and gave him a small smile. ‘Ours was the third property to be bought. We got in early. Before the rush.’ He paused. ‘Mom always thought I was cleverer than I was.’

  Dermot said nothing.

  Eamonn kicked a stone out over the hillside. ‘Still, it’s not so bad. I mean, it’s a nice place. Quiet. Plenty of time to think.’

  Dermot looked back out at the horizon. A distant ship was heading towards Africa. He remembered something in his pocket and reached for it. He held a small paper bag out to Eamonn. ‘Do you still like these fellas?’

  Eamonn didn’t seem to hear him.

  ‘Coca-Cola bottles? Is that right? Do you still eat them?’

  Eamonn turned slowly. ‘Cola bottles?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  He peered cautiously into the bag as if it contained spiders. ‘I haven’t eaten them since I was about ten.’

  ‘Seemed to remember you eating them sometimes when you came out on the buses. Devil to find now, they are. Can’t get them round the corner any more. I found these over in a place in Shard End the other day. Thought maybe you were missing them.’ Eamonn just stared at him. ‘Maybe you’ve gone off them. You don’t have to have them if you don’t like them any more.’

  Eamonn reached out and took one. He held it up to examine it. ‘No sugar on it.’

  ‘No, had an idea you preferred the ones without the sugar on.’

  Eamonn brought the sweet slowly to his lips. ‘I do.’

  Dermot nodded. ‘Good. I’m glad I got them, then. That’s something I got right.’

  4

  It was a large flat, not much furniture, tiled floors. The sound of his father busying himself had been filtering through his bedroom door for the past two hours. Footsteps this way and that, washing up, kitchen cupboards opening and closing. Before that he had heard him go to the toilet at midnight and again at three. Eamonn must have slept briefly, then, as he’d thought it was Laura in the bathroom, and he’d experienced a moment of peace before he woke fully and his thoughts became jagged and unmanageable once more.

  He had dreamed he was holding a baby with shining eyes. The baby had spoken and he had called to Laura in amazement, but she had not come, and he could not tear his eyes away from the face of the infant to look for her. Awake he felt the ache of the baby’s absence but now he saw that it had not been a baby in the dream at all, but a fluffy kitten, and the banality seemed only to compound the loss.

  He had been willing himself for the past hour to get up and attend to any one of the things that needed attending to. The folder of unmarked work, the lack of food, the piles of laundry, his father. He turned in bed and tried to imagine once more that it was Laura, not his father, on the other side of the bedroom door. He pictured her clutter on the side table. The oversize and now filthy teddy-bear key ring, bought to help locate keys in her cavernous bag, staring up at him with an unjustified expression of self-satisfaction.

  He had told his father a partial truth. Laura had gone away for a few days to research the novel. What he’d omitted to say was that she had returned from the trip five days before Dermot arrived. He’d omitted to say this because it was as yet unsayable. It was as yet unthinkable. It had happened, that was undeniable, but it had not yet resolved itself into any kind of comprehensible action. He had found her in the bedroom, moving from rucksack to wardrobe. She was wearing a top he hadn’t recognized. There was a time when they’d known all of each other’s clothes, had shopped together, had sought each other’s advice and approval. He wasn’t sure when that had stopped. As he watched her, he had tried to imagine what he would think if he was seeing her for the first time, walking towards him along the street. What would he make of her hair? Those sandals? That vest? And what might she make of him? He imagined them passing each other by. The thought of it made him want to touch her gently, to lay a hand on her arm. It was only then he noticed that she was putting clothes in – not taking them out of – the rucksack.

  He had not seen it coming. He found himself repeating that phrase. Laura had disputed it. She said he was deceiving himself. If that was true, he’d told her, he was doing a good job of it. He felt that if he had seen it coming he might have said the right things. But he had not.

  She needed time to think, she had said. She needed to get away from him. She was going back to her parents in England. She would be in touch. But she didn’t answer her phone. She didn’t reply t
o his emails or his texts. After eight years she had left him alone in a terrible, featureless limbo.

  He wasn’t sure if it was the lack of sleep, the lack of food or simply the lack of Laura that was causing the hallucinations. Several times since she had gone, lying in his bed, apparently awake, he had heard strange sounds at night. A heavy vehicle – a lorry or truck – chugging past on the road outside in the early hours. Such a vehicle would have a purpose and therefore no place on such a purposeless road. He wondered at the symbolism of it. What clumsy metaphor was his subconscious trying to deliver? One night he thought he heard footsteps and voices beneath his window, but when he looked there was nobody there. In the days since Laura’s departure he’d been keenly aware of his isolation, the only occupant in an otherwise empty block, in an otherwise empty street.

  A knock at the door made him jump.

  ‘Eamonn?’

  He closed his eyes tight.

  ‘Eamonn. Are you awake yet?’

  He said nothing.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

  A long pause. ‘Yes. Please.’

  ‘Right. There’s no milk I’m afraid … or tea bags. Except some that smell like toothpaste.’

  He lay still.

  ‘I thought I’d walk down to the town and get a few things. You don’t seem to have much in the way of food. I’m not sure what you normally have for your breakfast but all you have in is a jar of gherkins and a tin of grapes.’ There was a pause. ‘I didn’t even know you could get grapes in a tin.’

  Eamonn ran his hand over his face. ‘You can’t walk to the town, it’s over four miles away. I need to get the car battery recharged.’

  ‘I can walk that right enough.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ He sensed a reprieve. His father had always been a great walker. He’d enjoy it.

  ‘I am, yes.’

  ‘OK,’ he called from beneath the cover, ‘well, maybe I’ll stay here. I can get on with some stuff while you’re out.’ He closed his eyes, but waiting for him behind his eyelids was an unwelcome vision of an elderly man in inappropriate clothing, struggling with bags of shopping in the blistering heat.