Mr Lynch’s Holiday

by Catherine O’Flynn

  One afternoon, settled in Lomaverde, leaning back against the wall of the shallow end of the pool, he had squinted at the horizon. A transformation had taken place. The beauty had become invisible. Blue sky, blue sea, blue tiles. What once was sublime had become banal. He knew he’d made a mistake. A few weeks later the pool was empty and he knew then too that there was nothing he could do about it.

  8

  Dermot searched high and low and still there was no sign of it. He wondered if Laura could possibly have taken it with her. He tried to picture her struggling with it down the road. It seemed only marginally less likely than the fact that his son, at the age of thirty-three, did not own an ironing board. Based on Eamonn’s appearance, he shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was.

  He laid his shirt out on a towel on the dining table and did the best job he could. Afterwards he sat on the futon and tried to read his book. It was a history of Spain he’d ordered from the library. On the flight over he had been absorbed by its accounts of Los Reyes Catolicos and their efforts to drive out the Moors. He had been particularly taken with the tale of Boabdil the Unlucky, picturing him sighing as he looked back over the Granada he had surrendered. He thought now of the poor souls he’d heard about the other day, washed up on the beach, never even getting a glimpse of their lost land. The book kept championing the great gains made by Ferdinand and Isabella, but Dermot found them an unsympathetic pair. Intolerant, you’d have to say, by anyone’s standards.

  He looked at the clock and strained his ears for any signs of life from beyond Eamonn’s door. He’d begun to think of it more as a crypt than a room. He imagined his son lying in state on his bier, the shutters closed tight to keep out the sun’s rays. He thought Eamonn may as well have stayed in Birmingham for all he ventured out or appeared to care about the world outside. The only thing he seemed to do was look at his computer. He said he was working, but his face showed no sign of concentration or thought, just blank-eyed absorption in whatever it was he saw in the glow of the screen. The flat mirrored his lifelessness. He had never been handy. Kathleen always said Eamonn had been graced with brains, not brawn, but Dermot couldn’t see that it took much brawn to put a line of sealant around a bath, nor any evidence of brains in not doing so. There was scant furniture and what there was seemed placed without any particular thought or care. It felt a makeshift rather than a homely place, the desire to leave evident in every corner.

  And then there was Laura, the invisible woman. He wondered when Eamonn might reveal what in God’s name he had done with her. There was nothing of hers that Dermot could see around the flat.

  Eamonn had lost things often as a boy. Maybe all children did, Dermot didn’t know. Jumpers, pumps, Matchbox cars, marbles, all of them vanished into the chaos of his days. It was a great mystery to Dermot where they went. He remembered being careful as a boy, cherishing the things he had, jealously guarding any small space he could call his own in the house. Perhaps because Eamonn was an only child he could afford to be careless and leave things lying around. Maybe they had spoiled him and not taught him the value of his belongings. Whatever the reason, his absent-mindedness was remarkable. It was made worse by his inability to conduct a logical search. He could not grasp the connection between a missing item and his own previous whereabouts. He would waste hours searching in places he had not been. Climbing a tree to search for a guitar. Looking in his wardrobe for a bike. The physical location of things seemed entirely mysterious to him, unrelated to any action of his own. Had his missing Action Man turned up on the top deck of the 43 bus, Dermot imagined Eamonn simply shrugging and putting it down to the unknowable shiftings of the world and its contents.

  He read another line and then closed the book. He did not enjoy unpunctuality. Sometimes, as a driver, with circumstances beyond his control – six inches of snow, a motorbike gone under a lorry, stuck behind Slow Joe McEvoy – he was late. But not often. With very few exceptions, unpunctuality was a choice, and Dermot chose to be on time. He walked over and knocked on Eamonn’s door. ‘Are you awake in there?’

  Indistinct murmuring.

  ‘Eamonn. Are you awake? It’s quarter to one.’

  He heard the clatter of something falling to the floor, followed by swearing. ‘I’m awake. I’m awake.’

  ‘They’re expecting us at one.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘For goodness’ sake, Eamonn. Are you not up?’

  ‘Oh … Is it lunchtime already?’

  ‘It’s quarter to one. They’re expecting us at one. I don’t want to be late.’

  ‘Are you not ready?’

  ‘Of course I’m ready. I’ve been sat here ready for the past thirty minutes. I’ve been waiting for you!’

  A pause. ‘Look … you go. It’s you they invited really. They could see me any time. They wanted to meet you.’

  ‘Eamonn. I don’t know them. They invited both of us.’

  They had bumped into them on the way back from the barbecue the previous evening. An English couple. Friendly. Polite. Nice people. The kind who, like him, would consider lateness as ill-mannered.

  There was more noise from behind the door and then it opened. Dermot recoiled a little at the sight of his son stood in nothing but a pair of boxer shorts, white as a sheet, hair sticking up in the air, eyes screwed up.

  ‘Dad, they’ll be delighted to have you. They just want to make you feel welcome. I’ve got a load of work to catch up with anyway. They won’t miss me. I’m not sure they were even expecting me to go along.’

  Dermot looked at his son and then at his watch. He turned and left without saying another word.

  As he walked along the street he couldn’t think of another time he had gone to a stranger’s house for lunch. He couldn’t think of a time he had gone to a friend’s house for lunch. He didn’t, until Eamonn had introduced the word, even eat lunch. He ate dinner in the middle of the day, and dinner was a sandwich, a cup of tea and a look at the Mirror or the Evening Mail. Back when he was working he might have chatted to some of the other lads, maybe played a hand of cards afterwards in the canteen, but only because they were there, it was never an arrangement. Socializing was done in the evenings at the houses of friends, or at the social, or in the pub. You drank and you chatted and you had some laughs. He didn’t know what you were supposed to do in the middle of the day. Kathleen would have known what to expect. She would have read about it in a magazine. She’d be briefing him now at the doorstep, picking at imaginary stray fibres on his shoulder.

  ‘Hello, Dermot! It’s so lovely to meet you.’

  A woman with short, bobbed, silver-grey hair was smiling at him.

  ‘Hello again, Jean.’ He stood on the step, awkward. ‘I’m very sorry now, but I’m afraid Eamonn can’t come. He has a terrible amount of work to do and …’

  Jean laughed. ‘Oh, don’t worry at all. I’m sure he has better things to do than sit and listen to us going on. Come in, come in.’

  Jean and David lived in a large detached house with views towards the sea. It had more furnishings than Eamonn’s apartment – pictures on the walls, sofas, a few ornaments on shelves and cabinets – but something about it still felt empty and new.

  David emerged from the kitchen, shook Dermot’s hand and offered him a drink. Dermot asked for a cup of tea, realizing too late that Jean and David were both drinking wine.

  They sat out on the patio, where a table was laid. It was David who served the food. Some sort of salad. Dermot noticed David was wearing an apron and that he didn’t take it off. Dermot had worked alongside people from all over the world, all ages and levels of education, but he did not know people like Jean and David. People like Jean and David neither used nor worked on the buses. The English middle classes, like Emperor Penguins, Dermot knew only from the television.

  ‘So how long have you been free from the shackles, Dermot?’ asked David

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘When did you retire?’

  ‘Oh, right
. Well, I clung on as late as I could. They let you stay on a bit on the buses, so I was there till I was seventy, but then Kathleen – my wife – her health was getting worse, so I gave up and looked after her. I was doing that till the end of last year. Five years in total it was. She passed away in November.’

  ‘Yes, Eamonn told us. I’m sorry, it must be hard for you on your own,’ said Jean.

  ‘I’m not as badly off as I might have been. I’m not like some fellas my age who can’t even cook a bit of toast.’

  ‘Eamonn must be a comfort to you as well.’

  The thought had never really occurred to Dermot, but he nodded and smiled. ‘I think you two had the right idea though. This is the way to retire. A lovely place like this.’

  ‘Oh, we’re always reminding ourselves how lucky we are.’

  ‘Luck has nothing to do with it. You made a decision. The rest of us are too stuck in our ways.’

  Jean smiled. ‘Well, we both retired in 2006 and we just felt we’d served our time. It had always been a dream of ours to live out here. We loved the country, had been coming every year to different parts. We just thought: “You only live once and life is for living.” You know how it is.’

  She must have been around the same age as Kathleen but they seemed worlds apart. Life wasn’t about living for Kathleen, life was about striving and sacrifice and offering things up to God. She’d believed a reward was waiting for her.

  ‘Well, you did the right thing, it’s a very nice spot here.’

  ‘It is, yes,’ said David, ‘beautiful coastal walks. The hills stretch for some miles. Really spectacular views.’

  ‘And the food,’ said Jean, ‘is just wonderful. You can buy such a range of fresh produce all year round. Everything just seems to taste so much better. I mean, we miss having local shops. Sadly they haven’t materialized, but we enjoy the walk down to San Pedro.’

  ‘Yes, it’s a day out! Tell him about the swordfish, Jean.’

  ‘Oh, yes, Dermot, you must get Eamonn to take you to the market in Agua Blanca. The swordfish there is to die for. Absolutely mouth-watering. And the market itself is just delightful. The ladies all in their white aprons – spotlessly clean. Everything so immaculate.’

  He thought he might have heard conversations like this before. Jean and David reminded him of the people he saw in the kind of slow detective programmes they showed on a Sunday night. Nice people, sitting around dinner tables, discussing fish and drinking wine. He always dozed off before Del Boy got his man.

  They were eating a fancy fruit salad when he saw something move out of the corner of his eye. He had noticed it earlier and assumed it was a bird, but this time he turned to look and saw instead a small security camera mounted on the back wall of the house.

  ‘Did that come with the house?’

  David followed the direction of his gaze. ‘Oh, that. No.’

  Dermot watched the camera swivel once more. ‘It’s a good one, I’d say – looks very professional. Better than the ones we had on the buses anyway. You fitted it yourself, did you?’ But when he looked back David was disappearing into the house with a pile of plates.

  Jean seemed embarrassed. ‘Sorry, David finds it a little difficult to talk about.’

  ‘Sure, I’ve no idea about them, I wasn’t meaning to sound like an expert.’

  ‘No, not the camera, the burglaries. Twice now. Just twice, I suppose you could say, but it’s enough.’ She paused. ‘They waited till we’d replaced our original belongings and then they took them all again.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  She gave a tight smile. ‘As you can see, we’ve replaced everything again. You can’t let them win.’

  ‘Did the police never catch them?’

  ‘They did in fact. A long time after. Professionals apparently. Been doing it up and down the coast. I’m glad they were caught, though of course that’s not to say someone else won’t have the same idea and do it again.’ She fell silent for a while, before saying, ‘There’s that unpleasant sense of being observed. Someone keeping tabs on our comings and goings. Watching us. Preying upon us. You can’t help worrying it will happen again. It plays on your mind.’

  David returned with coffee. ‘Here we are! Sorry that took longer than I thought. I hope Jean wasn’t subjecting you to tales of the grandkids. Once she gets a captive audience she can be merciless.’

  Dermot smiled. ‘She didn’t mention them once.’

  David pulled a face. ‘Well, you’re in for it now, then.’

  Jean flapped her hand at him. ‘Oh, ignore him, Dermot. Do you have any grandchildren?’

  ‘I don’t, no. Eamonn’s our only child.’

  ‘Oh, I’d always assumed he came from a big family.’

  Dermot said nothing.

  ‘Well, you need to tell Laura and him to get a move on and make you a granddad. David is pretending to be cool about it, but he’s as besotted with our grandchildren as I am.’

  ‘How many do you have?’

  ‘Just two. Our daughter Rachel has two little ones – George and Olivia.’

  David sat down beside her and put his hand on hers. ‘Careful, love.’

  ‘David’s worried I’ll get upset.’ As soon as she spoke, tears filled her eyes. ‘Oh, goodness, I’m sorry, Dermot. What a fool. It’s just we do miss them so very much.’

  David patted her hand. ‘The plan was for them to come out every school holiday, and of course we’d be popping back often too, but it hasn’t worked out that way. Unfortunately Jonathan, Rachel’s husband, was made redundant shortly after we came out here. A terrible shock – but you know how it is – it’s the same all over. So – well, with one thing and another, everything is a little stretched all round.’

  Jean turned to him. ‘We’re hoping to get back for Christmas though, aren’t we?’

  David chose not to answer and said instead, ‘It’s not so bad though, is it? Have you told Dermot about the Skype?’

  Jean brightened. ‘Do you use Skype to call Eamonn?’

  Dermot had no idea what she meant and shook his head.

  ‘Oh, you must, it’s free, you can chat as long as you like and it doesn’t matter. Better still, it’s on the Internet, so you can see each other. We see the kids on our computer screen and they can see us on theirs.’

  ‘Oh?’

  David nodded. ‘Actually, Dermot, it’s virtually the same as being there. Isn’t it, love?’

  ‘Oh, it’s funny. We Skype them all the time now, often we haven’t any news for each other, but it’s just nice to see them, to be there … almost.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said David, ‘it’s not a big deal any more, we do it so often. No need for everyone to gather around the computer and have a big, formal conversation. Now it’s often just a quick “Hi” to Rachel or Jonathan, and then they take the laptop and put it in the room where the kids are.’

  Jean laughed. ‘George, he’s the little one, only four, he might trundle over and say, “Hello, Granny and Grandpa,” and tell us what new toy he has, or what he did that day at nursery, and then Olivia will come and chat for a minute or two, but then they just get on with whatever they were doing and we can just sit and watch them as if we’re in the room with them. It’s so lovely, just natural and relaxed, sometimes they completely forget we’re there.’

  ‘Yes!’ said David. ‘Last week they went out and didn’t even say goodbye, just left us there in the playroom, wondering where they all were.’ He laughed.

  Jean shook her head. ‘Well, we’re no better, we sometimes fall asleep in front of the screen. It’s just so soothing, hearing their voices. You know, sometimes, when we’ve felt a bit anxious about things here, we can just open the computer and straight away you feel that sadness lift. If we’ve had difficulty sleeping at night, we’ll find we nod off the next day when we’re there listening to them. It’s odd though, isn’t it, David, waking up an hour or two later and seeing the empty room?’

  ‘Yes, it can be. If they
see we’re asleep, they don’t wake us, they just leave us and go off doing whatever it is they need to do.’

  She nodded. ‘You see the empty room and you say, “Is anybody there?” and it’s a bit like a seance. I’m not sure who the ghosts are, them or us.’ She was quiet for a moment. ‘I suppose it must be odd for the kids.’

  They sat in silence for a while, Dermot looking at his hands. Eventually Jean turned to him and smiled.

  ‘And do you like word searches, Dermot?’

  9

  The same faces at every funeral. The same but fewer. It reminded Dermot of the game Eamonn and the other kids used to play at birthday parties. When the music stopped – the desperate craning of necks to see who didn’t have a seat, who had been banished from the contest. It was the same thing now. Every few months a phone call and then a funeral, each of them wondering whose turn was next. Some deaths were shocking, others expected, others still felt long overdue. The florid, thickset ones were the first to go – stomachs pushing out their shirts, bacon every morning, beer every night, yellow spots in their eyes, they knew well themselves they would never live to see their kids married. Mick Fitzsimmons went at forty-two, collapsed in the car park of the Cash & Carry, a massive coronary. Others clung on despite all the odds. Nell Gahan, with her pills and her sticks and half her life spent in the doctor’s waiting room, was still scuttling about like a Dannimaced cockroach, whispering prayers at every graveside.

  Their promises to keep in touch and plans for future get-togethers ‘in happier circumstances’ never came to anything. There was an acceptance: they saw each other only when someone died. Long, bitter-sweet afternoons, sitting in the orange sunlight of a back lounge or function room. Recalling faded capers and well-worn one-liners. Half-hearted gossip still about long-ago scandals and comeuppances. Confiding small tragedies of estranged siblings and nervous illnesses. Endless ham sandwiches and double measures of Jameson’s. Joe Fahey still failing to get his round in, Jim Scanlon as full of it as ever. At funerals, sitting with old friends, they felt their true selves, but later, in living rooms with televisions on and grandkids racing around the sofa, they would be tired and irritable and wonder why they’d wasted the afternoon with a bunch of relics.