‘Is Roger home now?’
‘No, he won’t be back tonight. He’ll crash out on their sofa. He normally does.’
Now he saw Roger and Ian taking turns with Becca. There was something wrong with his head. Everything was turning to pornography.
‘Eamonn, you need to come to terms with Laura’s departure.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘OK, but you’re not handling it very well; look what happened tonight. Sobbing on Jean’s shoulder. Shouting about circumcision. Constantly playing Lionel bloody Ritchie.’
He put his head in his hands.
‘Look, I’m not trying to make you feel bad. Everyone gets drunk and makes a fool of themselves sometimes, and you’ve got more cause than most, but I just want you to know that if you ever feel you need to talk, you can talk to me. I’m actually a pretty good listener.’ She squeezed his leg.
He kept his head buried. He felt the weight of her hand on his thigh. Normally he would move his leg, find an excuse to gently brush her hand away. Always polite. It had been hard work, constantly policing the borders of their relationship with Roger and Cheryl; this pressure he felt from them, low level, almost imperceptible, but constant. He pondered now the nature of that pressure, the intent within. It wasn’t simply sexual, it was something wider, looser, impelling them to let go, a call for Eamonn and Laura to abandon themselves; to what, he wasn’t sure, as he had always fiercely resisted. He thought of the condor again. The wise bird. The old Eamonn was always resisting, always putting barriers between himself and simple, uncomplicated pleasure: pan pipes, trashy TV, wife-swapping.
‘Have you fallen asleep?’ she asked gently.
He lifted his head from his hands and looked at her. ‘You’re beautiful, Cheryl. I know you know that, but you are.’
She gave a half-smile. ‘I was once.’
‘You still are. You have an incredible glamour.’
‘Not glamorous, please. Only grannies are glamorous.’
‘Something powerful about you. Something different.’
She looked at him and he felt something change in the room.
‘Does he appreciate it?’
‘Who?’
‘Roger, does he know what to do with you?’
She gave him a strange look.
He reached down and slid her hand up to his crotch. ‘I do.’
‘Eamonn.’
‘It’s OK.’
‘I think I should get Roger.’
Eamonn was unsurprised. ‘He likes to watch, doesn’t he?’ He moved his face closer to hers. ‘The old Eamonn would have said no, but the new Eamonn …’ He shrugged. ‘It’s all about letting go.’
Cheryl stood up. ‘Eamonn. You’re very drunk.’
‘I know what I’m doing.’
‘I’m calling Roger.’
He smiled. ‘I’m going with the flow.’
She ignored him and started searching for her phone.
‘I know I’ve resisted in the past, sent out the wrong signals.’
At this Cheryl turned and looked at him. ‘Resisted what exactly?’
‘You and Roger. I know how you must see us. Repressed. Uptight. I don’t know why I’ve fought against it so hard. Not tonight though, I’m past all that, tonight you can have me.’
Cheryl laughed. ‘I can have you? Listen, sweetheart, there are only so many allowances I’ll make for alcohol and a broken heart.’
He stood up and held her hands. ‘I’m saying it all wrong, but you know what I mean. One night. Come on.’ He tried to push her back towards the bed, but she freed a hand and delivered a powerful punch to his nose.
He fell back, holding his nose, a terrible sobriety lapping at his shores.
‘Listen, Eamonn. You’re drunk. I’m trying to keep that in mind, but you’re making it difficult. I need you to hear what I’m saying. You have fantasies about me, fine, whatever, you’re not the first, you won’t be the last, but that’s just what they are, fantasies, and they don’t interest me at all. Maybe Roger and I like to flirt, we like to play our little games, but I thought we were all adults and we knew the rules. Jesus, it’s not the fucking 1970s, Eamonn. I do not and never have thought of you as …’ she trailed off, as if unable to even put the idea into words. ‘I just don’t think of you in that way. Now, you’re upset, but you’ve done your crying now and you need to stop being a boy and start being a man. Laura’s left you. Deal with it. Move on or get her back.’
Eamonn still had his head buried in the pillow when Roger came in.
‘What’s going on?’
She spoke quietly. ‘Eamonn got a bit confused.’
Roger walked over to the bed and, with a small cry of effort, lifted Eamonn over his shoulder and left the room. Dawn was breaking as he carried him up the road.
‘I thought better of you, Eamonn. I mean, I’m not going to hold it against you, don’t worry about that, but I’m just surprised and I suppose disappointed. I mean, if you marry a woman like Cheryl, you know there are always going to be pricks who want a piece of her. That’s how they think, like she’s a fucking cake and they can just take a slice. No understanding, no respect, she’s just a body to them. Those kind of men, they don’t even like women, not really. I never thought you were that type, to be honest. I mean, we’ll forget about this, we’ll put it in the past, you can’t carry these things around with you, especially not in a tiny place like this, seeing each other every day, but just now, while we’re clearing the air, I’m just saying, well, I don’t know, I suppose you’re not the man I thought you were. I’m damn sure your father raised you better than this.’
There was the sound of the buzzer and a few minutes later his father’s voice through the intercom. Roger dumped Eamonn on the ground in front of the door just as Dermot was opening it.
‘Sorry to wake you, Dermot. ’Fraid it didn’t work out at ours; thought he’d be better off back home.’
‘Right.’
‘Do you need a hand getting him in?’
‘No, I’ll be fine.’
Eamonn kept his eyes closed as his father dragged him into the lobby. He lay completely motionless while Dermot went upstairs and returned moments later. He offered no resistance as a pillow was pushed under his head and the blanket placed over him.
‘Night night, son.’
He felt his father wipe away a tear that was making slow progress down his cheek and then everything went black.
40
He heard his footsteps moving quickly and lightly, like a woodland creature scampering from bathroom to bedroom. He got up to catch him, but was too late, hearing the firm click of Eamonn’s door as he shut himself in once more. He knocked lightly.
‘Eamonn, are you awake in there?’
Silence.
‘Eamonn, I just heard you. Why don’t you come out and have some breakfast?’
‘I don’t want any, thanks.’
‘You can’t hide in your room for ever.’
‘I’m not hiding. I have a migraine.’
‘There’s no point feeling bad about last night. You had a bit too much to drink. Sure everyone’s done that.’
Long pause. ‘I have a migraine.’
Dermot sighed. He seemed to have spent a lot of the last fortnight addressing Eamonn’s door. It was reminiscent of the confessional box. ‘Should I call a doctor?’
‘No. I just need to lie in a dark room.’
‘For the love of God. You can’t spend your life lying in a dark room!’
Silence.
He left the apartment and went out for a walk. He’d intended to head down to the town, to get some supplies, make sure Eamonn’s cupboards were full before he returned to England. It occurred to him that that was the kind of thing sons might do for their elderly parents, not the other way round. Not for the first time he considered that his presence wasn’t helping at all. Without him around Eamonn would have to pull himself together. Maybe it was a case of sink or swim. The thoug
ht failed to reassure him. The memory of watching his son dipping beneath the waves was still lurid and nightmarish.
Despite his intention to walk into town, he found himself a few minutes later outside Inga’s door. He was more surprised than she seemed to be at his arrival there. She was putting out food on the street for the cats. A bowl of leftovers and, next to it, a large bag of uncooked rice. He frowned at the rice.
‘What are the cats to do with that?’
But she just smiled and said, ‘Come in. I was just making some coffee.’
He glanced again at the bag of rice and then followed her in.
‘How’s Eamonn?’
He ran his hand through his hair. ‘My wife was always worrying about him. Fussing. It used to drive me mad. He’s a grown man, I’d say. He has a life of his own. Now it’s my turn.’
‘They never stop being a worry.’
‘I don’t know what goes on in that head of his. I don’t pretend to.’
‘Love can make us strange.’
‘I’m not sure it took love to make Eamonn strange.’
She smiled. ‘He frustrates you.’
‘Why doesn’t he go after her? The only fight in him seems with himself.’
‘Perhaps he’s giving her space and time.’
‘Well, give someone enough space and you won’t find them again.’
She looked at him. ‘Is that an Irish saying?’
‘I don’t think so. Though I just said it and I’m Irish. Is that the same thing?’
‘You’re very good. You could do a line in tea towels.’
He seemed to consider this and said solemnly, ‘“The sayings of Dermot.”’
‘I’d buy one.’ She smiled at him again. ‘So. I was going to spend the day painting.’
‘I should go.’
‘No. I’d like you to stay.’
He sat in the same chair for hours. The room itself as absorbing as a picture. The sunlight coming through the window. Inga’s small movements, transferring paint from a palette to the canvas. The painting at the centre of it all. He shifted focus from the abstract blur of colour where her brush met the canvas, to the resolved image of the broken chair that she was painting, to the wider room which framed her. He heard the brush sink into the paint, the creaking of the easel, her irregular breathing as she concentrated. The sun moved across the room, the pool of light shifting throughout the afternoon. He must have dozed off at some point. He woke up and saw the painting, imperceptibly augmented, richer, denser. Much later on, as it started to grow dark, he spoke, unprompted, and she didn’t seem to mind:
‘I wake up sometimes in the night and I can’t work out where I am, or what year it is. I think I’m back in the house I was in as a boy. I think my brother’s asleep in the room with me. It’s like, without Kathleen there to anchor me, I’m just floating about in my own life.’
She stopped to listen when he spoke, but didn’t turn around. When he finished she went back to painting. He wondered when she would think the painting was finished. He did not want her to finish.
‘My brother Dominic died a long time ago. In America. A car crash. He and his wife, both killed. Her name was Della Schwarz. I never met her. Della Schwarz. It’s a nice name to say. She was pregnant.’ There was a long pause. ‘Six months or so. A baby. We got a letter.’
She sat down on a stool in front of her painting and laid the brush on the palette. She didn’t look at him.
‘It was his name in the letter. And she was his wife. He’d sent a telegram when they married, just a year before. It was them all right. I didn’t know him at all then. I hadn’t seen him in years. There were letters, but it was as if they were from a stranger. I didn’t know him as an adult, just this voice in the letters, talking about trains and jobs and roads and hamburgers and the people he had met.
‘It was a lorry that hit them. I imagine one of those big ones you see in American films, all chrome and pipes and a blaring horn. Crossed the carriageway and hit them head on. I suppose the driver had fallen asleep, or was drunk. I don’t know. They must have seen it coming. They must have known.
‘I remember him as a boy, waking me in the night, scared of ghosts, scared but not scared. Scared but brave. He’d call out my name, then get into bed beside me, his body frozen, like he’d been sleeping in the fields, teeth chattering with the cold, telling me about the ghosts he’d seen. I’d squeeze his hand and the chattering would slow and then eventually stop and then he’d be asleep again.
‘I think sometimes you lose people and you barely know it at the time. It starts as a small crack. That’s all it is. It takes years, a lifetime, before you notice what went out through the crack. How much you lost.
‘He sounded happy in the letters. He never mentioned ghosts. He was grown up, I suppose. He was in love. I’m sure she loved him too. He was going to be a father.’ He paused. ‘I can’t imagine that at all, but then … it never happened anyway.’ He coughed. ‘I don’t suppose he was ever scared any more, not as an adult. I hope not. Probably it was Della Schwarz he called for. Terrified for her and the baby, not himself. He was a grown man. Three lives about to end. I hope she held his hand. I hope they both held hands.’
They sat in the dark for a long time until a noise from outside broke the silence. Dermot stood up; Inga looked at him and put a finger to her lips. She indicated that he should follow her to the window. They stood in the shadows looking out at the street. The bag of rice was gone and the food bowl empty. Dermot craned his neck expecting to see the unlikely sight of a cat dragging the heavy bag. He saw nothing, but heard the distinct sound of light footsteps running away.
41
The electricity had been off for five hours. Each time there was a power cut Eamonn wondered if the lights would ever come on again. He thought that one day the electricity company would give up on them. Just a handful of people. More trouble than they were worth. He often imagined himself close to a survival situation. In the last power cut he’d asked Laura if she thought they should start burning the furniture or barricading the doors, but she hadn’t seemed to share his sense of emergency.
It was late now and he wondered where his father was. He emerged from his room and found some of Laura’s scented candles. He put them on the table and lit them. They gave off a peppery smell reminiscent of church incense.
He sat still but his body buzzed. A vibrating pulse, small but insistent. It felt very much as if a tiny creature were trapped inside him.
‘There was an old woman who swallowed a fly.’
A song from infancy. He shut his eyes tight, trying to drive it away. It seemed designed, like so many childhood entertainments, only to perplex or infuriate. The thought of them now still maddening. London Bridge is falling down. There’s a hole in my bucket. Ten green bottles. Small tortures, ceaseless, repetitive, neither funny nor clever, just stupid people saying stupid things.
‘There was an old woman who swallowed a fly.’
She swallowed a cow to catch the dog. He remembered the version they used to play on the radio: a creepy-voiced man, giggling as he sang, as if there were anything remotely funny about the whole grotesque chain of events.
‘There was an old woman who swallowed a fly.’
The song trapped like the fabled insect inside him. He resisted the temptation to smack himself hard in the face.
‘I don’t know why she swallowed a fly. Perhaps she’ll die.’
He had made a list in his room. He smiled to think of it: his great novel had in the end amounted to little more than hundreds of lists. It was appropriate that he should be methodical even in this. A neat array of bullet points – for once the implicit violence seeming appropriate. He looked at it.
Laura gone
Sexually assaulted neighbour
No money
No job
No prospect of job
Unable to write
Unable to escape Lomaverde
Unable to remain in Lomaverde
Source of worry to Dad
It was like striking a match. Each time he looked at it, the self-loathing flaring brightly once more.
As a teenager, unhappy at school, he had once or twice entertained the usual fantasies. Seduced by the grand operatic vision, drunk with self-pity, passing exquisitely miserable hours planning the staging, the note, the playlist, the eulogy. They had never been anything more than desperate bids for autonomy. Comforting fantasies of death, to make life temporarily more bearable. This was not like those at all. He had no vision of after. No note. No self-pity. No self-aggrandizing. No self. That was the point. He just wanted to end. To draw a line under it all.
But despite the list, despite the Internet research, despite even choosing the spot, he knew with a heavy, stone-like certainty that he would not do it. Suicide involved blinding himself to the pain he would cause his father and Laura. Covering his eyes and trying to believe it wouldn’t happen because he wouldn’t be around to see it. Even he was not capable of such self-deceit.
He heard a key in the door and his father came in carrying a torch.
‘You’re up, then?’
‘Yes.’
‘Migraine better?’
‘A little.’
Dermot went into the kitchen and returned with some beers. He sat down on the futon beside him and said nothing for so long that Eamonn thought he had fallen asleep. Then he spoke:
‘Losing someone is hard.’
Eamonn said nothing.
‘I understand that.’
Eamonn nodded. ‘I know.’
‘Your mother too. She would have understood.’
‘Yes.’
‘She lost someone once, you know, someone close to her. She found it difficult.’
‘Who was that?’
‘Walsh. The priest you were asking about.’
‘He died?’
‘No, no. He just got moved on, you know the way they do. Your mother took it hard.’
‘I never heard her mention him.’
Dermot was quiet again for a while. ‘He was a breath of fresh air after Phelan. An educated fella, very energetic, full of the books he’d read and the ideas he had. He and she became pals. I suppose she’d have stood out from the other women that hung around the presbytery. I’d say he’d have been delighted to find someone he could have a conversation with.’ He paused. ‘And I suppose the same was true for your mother.’
Mr Lynch’s Holiday Page 20
