‘But Mom had you.’
Dermot rubbed his face. ‘She did. But I’d never really shared her interest in religion. It wasn’t such a big deal back when we married. But all those years we were waiting for you, the Church edged its way in. That’s what it does, doesn’t it? Find the chink. She was looking for something. I couldn’t talk to her about those things.
‘Anyway, Walsh came along. Stepped into the breach, you could say. He got her interested in all kinds of things. She started doing night courses – theology, that kind of thing – you know all those books she had. The truth was I wouldn’t have minded doing a few classes myself, wouldn’t have minded going along. I don’t know why I didn’t tell her that.’ He reflected for a moment. ‘I suppose I got the idea it wasn’t really me she wanted to be discussing these things with.
‘He came round the house one time for his tea. She was in a mania for days beforehand. All of a sudden we needed a bookcase in the lounge. I had to build one double quick to show off all our books – only it wasn’t our books that went on it, just hers.’
He was quiet again for some time.
‘She told me once that I had nothing to worry about with Walsh.’
‘What did that mean?’
‘Oh, you know, there’d been talk. Gossip in the parish. I think it was just that the other hangers-on were put out about the time he and your mother spent together. I never thought there was anything like that between them.’
‘Did you not ask her?’
Dermot ignored him. ‘She said: “You’ve got nothing to worry about with Walsh, he and I are just kindred spirits.” She said it to me as if that was OK’ – he paused to take a drink – ‘as if I’d never thought she and I might be kindred spirits.’
They sat in silence for a while before Dermot spoke again.
‘I’ve known plenty of clever people – you get them on the buses – maybe that surprises you, but you do. Philosophers and thinkers of all types – some educated in universities, some educated by themselves. But the thing about clever people is they don’t shout about it. Your mother, for example, she was one. She was brighter than he was, though she couldn’t see it. A few more of those night classes and she’d have outgrown him. Realized how much of his talk was just noise. She and he weren’t kindred spirits. I never believed that.’
‘So he was never a real threat?’
‘Not really. I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s arrogance. I knew her better than anyone. But the problem was, I wasn’t so clever. I didn’t like the man and I let that get in the way of things. I should have let him be. Let things run their course.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I went to see him.’
‘What did you say?’
‘Not much. I didn’t have to. He knew well enough. And he did what I knew he’d do.’
‘What?’
‘He skipped off. Moved on. Another parish. A word in the bishop’s ear. His work with us was done. I think they saw him as a high-flyer.’
‘Where’d he go?’
‘Latin America somewhere – it was probably a short cut to being a cardinal.’
‘That’s far enough. Better than you must have hoped.’
‘I don’t know what I hoped. I don’t know what I thought.’
He was quiet for a while.
‘I found a box when I was clearing your mother’s things. Stuffed with his letters. I counted them. A hundred and sixty-one.’
‘What did they say?’
‘I didn’t read them.’
Eamonn looked at him.
‘You don’t even know that she replied. Maybe he was wasting his time.’
‘You know, you can always tell the married couples on the bus. They’re the ones not speaking to each other. Everyone else chats, but the husbands and wives sit in silence. It makes you wonder: are they silent because they know each other’s minds and there’s no need for words? Or are they silent because they’re imagining conversations with other people? Or is one doing one and the other doing the other? Two different silences side by side?’
‘But they were just letters. Nothing real. You and Mom were happy in your own way.’
Dermot smiled. ‘We both thought the world of you, son.’
Eamonn shook his head, wanting more. ‘But with each other. You weren’t unhappy, were you?’
Dermot studied the backs of his hands. ‘I always loved her.’ He placed them flat on his knees. ‘But I’ve been less lonely since she’s gone.’
42
Eamonn made a big deal of it being his last full day. Dermot found him up and dressed before him in the morning, waiting to embark on a full itinerary. They drove out to a little town on the coast and had breakfast in something that looked like a chip shop but served a kind of extruded doughy thing. Churros, Eamonn called them. He had Dermot say it aloud, making sure he rolled the ‘r’s. They tasted like doughnuts. Dermot said they were nice, but in truth he would always favour a decent fry for his breakfast.
They walked along the front and Eamonn waited on the beach while Dermot took a final swim in the sea. He did breaststroke, slow and steady, watching his arms coming together and moving apart in the water in front of his face. Something eternal in the action. The same eyes seeing the same arms that swam as a boy. The sound of his own breathing. He thought he was never as alone as when swimming. Never so conscious of his own being. Seventy-six years old. He didn’t know what to make of that. He saw Eamonn smiling and waving out at him now and then. He was trying awful hard.
Afterwards in the car Eamonn said that he was sorry.
‘What for?’
‘This past fortnight.’
‘There’s nothing to apologize for.’
‘I’ve been pathetic. I know that. I’m sorry you’ve had to see me like this.’
Dermot shrugged.
‘It was your first time abroad. I didn’t even take you anywhere.’
‘You did so. Anyway, I’ve enjoyed it.’
‘I don’t want you to worry about me. I’m going to change. The other night, the party – that was a wake-up call. I’m going to pull myself together. Turn my life around.’
Dermot looked at him. They sounded like lines he’d heard in adverts. He patted Eamonn’s arm.
In the afternoon they drove to a place in the middle of the desert called Mini Hollywood. It was a tourist attraction and as such exactly the kind of place Dermot imagined that Eamonn would hate. He’d always had a fearful objection to tourists. Kathleen would mention some place Brendan was going to on holiday and Eamonn would say: ‘Full of tourists.’ As if that was that. So it must have cost him something to go to such a place. Dermot knew he was doing it for his benefit.
It turned out it was the place they’d filmed all the old Clint Eastwood films he and Eamonn used to watch together on the telly on a Sunday afternoon. Hadn’t been the Wild West at all, but a desert in southern Spain. Not even Italy. The whole Spaghetti Western name was misleading. Should have been Paella Westerns. Pie-ay-a. That’s how you said it. He’d learned that.
It seemed an unfortunate choice at first. A day out from a real ghost town to a pretend one. He wasn’t sure that tumbleweed was what Eamonn needed to see. They arrived just in time to see a staged bank robbery and a shoot-out. Dermot thought the fella playing the baddie had been miscast. He was more David Dickinson than desperado. It was a bit of fun though. Even Eamonn laughed when Dickinson fell down dead before the shot was fired. Dermot had always enjoyed Westerns, but never John Wayne. Couldn’t stand the man. He used to have fierce lunchtime debates with his mate Ernest about the films of their boyhood. Ernest was loyal to Wayne, but Dermot maintained that Fonda outclassed him in every department. Ernest had gone back to Trinidad in retirement, but each year he sent Dermot a Christmas card with some quote from ‘the Duke’ and Dermot would reciprocate with ‘ain’t no cow country’ – or some other Fonda obscurity.
They took a drink in the saloon and watched young women dressed a
s gaudy prostitutes perform a high-kicking dance. Eamonn looked across at him.
‘Well, you’ve shown great restraint so far.’
‘In what?’
‘I thought you’d have done it the moment we got here.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘The voice.’
‘What voice?’
‘Oh, Dad, come on – it’s the only impression you ever did.’
‘I don’t remember any impression.’
‘You do! You did it all the time when I was a kid.’
Dermot shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, son, I don’t remember.’
Eamonn was incredulous. ‘But you must. That’s half the reason I came here.’
‘What? To hear me do some funny voice?’
‘Yes! I can’t believe you don’t remember.’
‘So, what you’re saying is, you wanted me to do it?’
‘Of course.’
‘Which one was it again?’
‘You know!’
‘I don’t, you’ll have to remind me.’
Eamonn shook his head and then said quietly, ‘Wallach.’
‘What was that?’
‘Eli Wallach. Dad. Can you just do it?’
Dermot frowned. ‘Maybe if I rack my brains.’ Then he leaned in close, pulling back his lips to expose his teeth: ‘“There are two kinds of people in the world, my friend. Those with a rope around the neck, and the people who have the job of doing the cutting.”’
He was taken aback to hear Eamonn laugh. Unchanged since he was ten. A kind of explosive, spluttery chuckle. Dermot looked at him in amazement.
‘My God, son, but you’re an eejit.’
43
They stopped off for dinner in a small town. A strange kind of restaurant, set way off the tourist track and yet apparently Spanish-themed. It presented a fantasy of the country familiar to anyone who had grown up in Britain in the 1970s, all bullfighting posters, flamenco dolls and sangria. It stopped short of portraits of Franco.
‘I think it’s the Spanish equivalent of a Toby Carvery,’ he whispered to his dad.
‘Very nice,’ said Dermot.
The proprietor gave them English menus.
‘I reckon we’re the first to ever handle these.’
Eamonn frowned at the card. ‘The translations are terrible. I need the menu in Spanish.’
‘Don’t call him back. Let him have his moment, son.’
Eamonn shrugged. ‘OK. I’ll have the “Landfill of pork”. Why don’t you try the “Vaporized fish”?’
‘That sounds grand.’
It was late when they left, and a long drive home on empty roads. They had been silent for some time when Dermot asked: ‘Are you tired?’
‘No, I’m OK.’
‘Easy to nod off on a drive like this.’
‘I was thinking about my first night here with Laura. We came in on a late flight. Drove across the desert. Didn’t pass another car for hours.’
‘The roads are quiet here all right.’
‘We’d been excited on the plane, talking a lot, but I just remember silence in the car. Tired, I suppose. Suddenly there was something in the headlights. Huge and white it looked. Then a bang.’
‘What was it?’
‘A wolf. Two of them had run out in front of us.’
‘Good God. Did you kill it?’
‘I don’t know. We stopped the car, but Laura said we shouldn’t get out, in case the other one came back. We sat there in the middle of the road, shaken up. We didn’t know what to do.’
‘I’d say you did the right thing.’
‘I’d forgotten all about it till tonight.’
‘Maybe it’s the full moon.’
Eamonn smiled. ‘It was a clear enough omen really.’
When they got back to Lomaverde Dermot said he wanted to take a look around.
‘But we’ll have time in the morning.’
‘I know, but I’d like to see it at night, one last time.’
They covered the length of the development, walking unhurriedly, saying little. They reached the end of the road, where the tarmac ceded control once more to scrubland, weeds, rocks, and the creatures that lived among them. They stood looking out towards the sea, tracking the movements of distant lights on the water.
‘It’s not all plain sailing,’ Dermot said.
‘What?’
‘Making the crossing. Starting somewhere new.’
‘No.’
‘That sense that you don’t belong. You’re not wanted. It’s hard to shake.’
‘You never really had that, did you?’
‘Didn’t I? We thought about leaving Birmingham, you know.’
‘And going back to Ireland?’
‘No, not back there. Just away from Birmingham.’
‘Why?’
Dermot turned to him. ‘Nineteen seventy-four, son. It wasn’t a good year.’
‘Oh. Yes.’
‘It started before then. It was all kicking off. Your mother was worried. She’d had a few comments at the hospital. Stupid things. Then there was a big hoo-ha about McDade’s funeral.’
‘Who was McDade?’
‘Fella from Sparkhill, your Uncle Mike knew him, drank with him sometimes. Turned out he was a volunteer. Blew himself up trying to plant a bomb in Coventry.’
‘A volunteer? For the IRA?’
Dermot looked at him. ‘Well, it wasn’t the Salvation Army planting the bombs.’ He paused. ‘Apparently some old cow at work had asked your mom why she wanted to be a nurse when all the Irish wanted to do was kill people. Your mother was upset. It wasn’t long before you were due and she got herself in a state.
‘She started worrying about how you might be treated, growing up with people like that about. People judging you just by your name.
‘I told her it was nonsense. She couldn’t be going and getting het up about one daft bat.
‘But she wouldn’t have it, said others were thinking the same thing. I remember saying people weren’t going to start thinking all Irish were terrorists because some lad had blown himself up in Coventry.’
He was quiet for a moment. ‘Sure, I didn’t know what was coming.
‘When we saw the news the next night the first thing I did was ring John Healey to make sure his girls hadn’t been up there; I knew the youngest drank in the Tavern in the Town. I heard from some other drivers that it was pandemonium up there. They’d had to use taxis to ferry the injured to hospital. The coppers were all out at the airport with McDade’s coffin.
‘We heard later that the presbytery over at the Sacred Heart had been petrol-bombed; your mother looked at me and said, “You see? You see what’s happening?” It didn’t matter that there were Irish among those killed. The Irish were still to blame.’
‘Did it get bad?’
Dermot shrugged. ‘There were lots of calls for calm, for reason. Some people surprised you. Do you remember old Mrs Stokes next door?’
‘Vaguely.’
‘I’d always thought she was a bit snooty, but she was very nice to your mother afterwards. She told her to pay no notice to the idiots.
‘I suppose it wasn’t that people thought we were all terrorists, but they thought we probably knew who they were, that we were protecting them. There was a lot of insinuation.
‘To be honest, it wasn’t so bad for me on the buses. There were enough of us Irish, and the rest of them stood by us. There was a lot of solidarity in the garage – the lads had come out for Civil Rights in ’69. But other places were pretty bad. There were walkouts and demos at Longbridge and some of the other big factories.’
‘Against the Irish?’
‘No, no, against the IRA, but some of them saw little difference.’
‘But it all died down after a bit, didn’t it?’
‘I don’t know if it died down, or we died down. We tried to make ourselves scarce – which is some trick when there’s a hundred thousand or more of you. No more St
Patrick’s Day parades …’
‘You were never into all that though.’
‘All what?’
‘All the St Patrick’s Day nonsense – the big hats and the shamrocks.’
‘I don’t know about big hats, but certainly we celebrated St Patrick’s Day. I remember the first parade just after I’d come over in ’50 – there must have been a thousand of us from the buses – we had our own banner. It was a great day. There’d always be a big dance on the night. The first time I met your mother was at one of them. All that seemed to stop overnight.’
He sniffed. ‘After those bombs in London last year …’
‘IRA?’
‘No, the other lot: 7/7 – the bus blown up. I said to Sunny who runs the shop round the corner, I said, “Do you know what’s coming?”’
‘What did he say to that?’
‘He shrugged. He said, “It’s already here.”’
Eamonn followed the light of a fishing boat drawing closer.
‘But you stayed in Birmingham.’
‘We did. We got through it. We didn’t want to leave. It felt like home.’
They’d been standing so long that Eamonn had grown cold.
‘It’s late, Dad.’
‘You go on. I want to stay a while. I won’t be long.’
Eamonn walked slowly, looking up at the moon, bigger than he had ever seen it. It was not the moon he knew. Its familiar, mournful face was lost in craters and shadows. He longed then to be home.
When he looked down there was a boy standing in the road in front of him. They stood immobile, neither breathing. The boy stopped in his tracks, frozen mid-run. Eamonn looked into the wide eyes he had seen before.
‘You.’
His hand reached out slowly towards him. Fully outstretched, still he could not touch him. The boy glanced down at the hand, hanging there in the air between them, and then back at Eamonn. He gave the briefest smile and then he was gone, running silently towards the empty houses.
Eamonn was standing by a cement mixer when Dermot reached him.
Mr Lynch’s Holiday Page 21
