Between avoiding banging the toolbox against my leg, and trying to avoid my wet body, Richard doesn’t know which way to look or lean. I lead him to the living room, and start to tell him what I need him to help me with, but he can’t focus.
‘Why don’t you … fix yourself first?’
I roll my eyes. Patience. It is true that we revert to the childhood versions of ourselves with family members. At least it’s true of me. I spent most of my adolescence – and twenties, for that matter – rolling my eyes at my very particular brother. I hop back towards the stairs.
Dry and dressed, I meet him in the living room where he can look me in the eye properly.
‘I want to take down these photo frames but they’re, I don’t know, screwed to the wall,’ I explain.
‘Screwed to the wall,’ he repeats, looking at them.
‘I don’t know the terminology. They’re not on a string, hanging on a nail like the others, is what I mean. The photographer hung them for me, like he was afraid they’d fall off in an earthquake, as if that would ever happen.’
‘You know there was an earthquake twelve years ago, twenty-seven kilometres off the coast of Wicklow in the Irish Sea with a three-point-two magnitude, which was ten kilometres deep.’
He looks at me and I know that he’s finished speaking. He mainly speaks in statements, and rarely opens these up for discussion. I don’t think he realises this; he probably wonders why he doesn’t get responses. His conversations work like this: I deliver some information, then you deliver some information. Any following of natural links away from the subject is liable to confuse him. To his mind, these digressions from the main topic of discussion are not valid.
‘Really? I didn’t know we had earthquakes in Ireland.’
‘There were zero reports from the public.’
I laugh. He looks at me, confused, he didn’t intend it as a joke.
‘The largest earthquake to hit Ireland was in 1984, the Llyn Peninsula earthquake, which measured five-point-four on the Richter scale. It was the largest known onshore earthquake to occur in Ireland since instrumental measurements began. Dad says they woke up when their bed slid across the floor and hit the radiator.’
I snort with laughter. ‘I can’t believe I didn’t know that.’
‘I made you tea,’ he says suddenly, pointing to the coffee table. ‘It should still be hot.’
‘Thanks, Richard.’ I sit down on the couch and sip. It’s perfect.
He studies the wall and tells me what screws are in and what he’ll need. I listen but don’t absorb any of it.
‘Why do you want to take them down?’ he asks, and I know that this is not a personal question; he’s asking because he wonders about the wall, perhaps about the frame, something that will have a bearing on his taking them down. It’s not a question about feelings. But I live and think more in feelings and less in function.
‘Because people are viewing the house and I want to protect my privacy.’ Despite having discussed my private life in front of an audience and allowing it to be made available online for everyone to hear.
‘You’ve already had viewings.’
‘I know.’
‘Did the estate agent advise this?’
‘No.’
He looks at me for more.
‘It just seemed unfair, to me, that when people come to the house I hide the photo of Gabriel and me in a drawer but Gerry stays on the wall. If I’m putting one man away, I should put them both away,’ I say, knowing how ludicrous that would sound to somebody like Richard.
He looks at the photograph of Gabriel on the mantelpiece but doesn’t respond, which I suppose I expected. We don’t usually have deep and meaningful chats.
Richard gets to work drilling the wall and I do some ironing in the adjoining dining room, where I pile my washing when people aren’t viewing the house.
‘I met Gabriel for a drink last night,’ he says suddenly, unscrewing his drill bit and replacing it with another. His actions are slow, methodical, sturdy.
‘Really?’ I look at him in surprise.
I don’t think Gerry and Richard had ever been for a drink in all the years we were together. Not alone anyway. And even when together, it was my brother Jack that Gerry was drawn to. Jack was my cool brother, easy, affable, handsome, and Gerry looked up to him when we were teenagers. Richard, to Gerry and me, was the difficult, wooden, rather nerdish, boring brother.
After Gerry’s death, that changed. Richard stepped up. I was able to identify with him more as he navigated divorce, the loss of his sturdy predictable life, and I counselled him through new life choices. Jack, in comparison, seemed shallow, unable to reach the great depths that I needed or expected. People can surprise you when you suffer through grief. It’s not true that you discover who your friends are, but it’s true to say that their characters are revealed. Gabriel is always pleasant to Jack, but he’s allergic to his smart-suited and booted business friends. He says he doesn’t trust a man who carries an umbrella. Richard smells of grass, and moss, and soil, salt-of-the-earth scents that Gabriel can trust.
‘Did Jack go too?’
‘No.’
‘Declan?’
‘Just Gabriel and me, Holly.’
He drills again and I impatiently wait.
He stops drilling, doesn’t say anything as if he’s forgotten.
‘Where did you go?’
‘The Gravediggers.’
‘You went to the Gravediggers?’
‘Gabriel likes his Guinness. They serve the best Guinness in Dublin.’
‘Who arranged it?’
‘I suggested the Gravediggers, but I assume you mean the meeting. Gabriel called me. Quite nice. We’d been meaning to connect since Christmas. He’s a man of his word.’
He turns the drill on again.
‘Richard!’ I shout and he turns it off. ‘Is he OK?’
‘Yes. A bit going on with his daughter.’
‘Yes,’ I reply, distracted. ‘Was that what it was about? Divorce talk?’ Richard’s children are nothing like Ava. They sing in choirs, play cello and piano. If you asked them about sambuca, they’d ask what key to play it in. His wife had broken his heart even further when she married an acquaintance of theirs, a professor of Economics. ‘Or was it about the car accident? I think he’s dealing with it worse than I am.’ I want to ask if it was about the PS, I Love You Club, which would be the obvious issue, but in case it’s not, I don’t want to have to bring it up and therefore discuss it. Richard missed the family conversation at Sunday lunch and to my knowledge it hasn’t been brought up again.
‘A little bit of all those things,’ he says. ‘But mostly he’s concerned about the club you have befriended.’
‘Ah, I see. And what did you tell him?’
‘Your shirt is on fire.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Your shirt, on the ironing board,’ he points.
‘Oh, flip it,’ I lift the iron from my T-shirt, revealing a burn mark on the fabric. I always do stupid things in Richard’s company and use expressions like ‘flip it’ as though we’re in an Enid Blyton book. I don’t know whether it’s that I always do stupid things and only notice in his company, or if it’s his company that brings it out in me.
‘You should soak it immediately in cold water for twenty-four hours. Wet the scorch mark with hydrogen peroxide, wet a clean white cloth with peroxide then place it over the scorched fabric and iron it lightly. Should get rid of the burn.’
‘Thank you.’ I have no intention of doing any of that. This T-shirt is now officially a bed T-shirt.
He notes that I don’t do anything he has suggested. He sighs. ‘I told Gabriel that it’s a very courageous, giving and valiant thing for you to do.’
I smile.
He lifts and removes the picture frame. ‘But that’s what I told him. I think you should tread carefully. Everyone seems to be afraid you’ll lose yourself, but you should consider it being him you l
ose as a result of doing it.’
I look at him, surprised by this rare display of emotional intelligence, and then realise conversations about me are being had behind my back. Everyone is afraid I’ll lose myself. And which is more important, finding myself or losing Gabriel?
The moment has passed and Richard’s looking at the wall.
It’s covered in deep, ugly holes from where the screws punctured the wall, the paint colour darker than the faded paint that surrounds it. It also seems that my photographer had made several other attempts to get a screw through and failed.
Six ugly scars in the surface.
I place the iron back in its holder and stand beside Richard.
‘That looks awful.’
‘The photographer appears to have struggled. He hit the lath a few times – the wooden strips behind the wall.’
There are four more frames to be removed; in our failure to cull mementos of our magnificent wedding day from the hundreds of options, they cover the entire alcove.
‘The holes need filler and then to be sanded and painted. Do you still have the same paint?’
‘No.’
‘Would you choose another paint for the wall?’
‘Then that would be different to all the other walls. We’d have to paint the two rooms.’
‘The two alcoves, maybe. Or you could wallpaper over it.’
I ruffle my nose. Too much effort for a house I’m selling for the new people to move in and repaint anyway. ‘The buyers are going to want to repaint anyway. Do you have filler in your toolbox?’
‘No, but I could get it this afternoon and come back tomorrow.’
‘I have a house viewing tonight.’
He leaves it up to me.
I look at the scars on my wall that had been hidden beneath our happy, smiling, wrinkle-free glowing faces. I sigh.
‘Can you put it back up?’
‘Indeed. But I suggest hanging it on one nail. I don’t trust drilling it back into the holes, and I don’t want to make new ones,’ he says, rubbing his fingers over the enormous gashes.
I give up on the ironing and watch as Richard hammers in a nail and then hangs the photo in the alcove, back where it was. Gerry and me, heads together, beaming. Posing by the sea on Portmarnock beach, across the road from the house I grew up in, beside the Links Hotel where we had our reception. Gazing into each other’s eyes. Mum and Dad beside us, Mum grinning, Dad caught mid-blink, the only one where he didn’t have his eyes closed. Gerry’s parents too, his mum’s stiff smile, his dad’s awkward feet. Sharon and Denise as bridesmaids. The same archetypal photos from so many wedding albums all around the world, and yet we thought we were special. We were special.
Richard steps back and surveys his work. ‘Holly, if you’re worried about balance, you could leave Gabriel’s photograph out on the mantelpiece. It would be considerably easier to make that amendment than the former.’
I appreciate his suggestion. He cares. ‘Me cuddling up to two different men, Richard; what would that say about me?’
I wasn’t really looking for an answer. It was implied in the question, but he surprises me.
He pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his forefinger. ‘Love is a tenuous, rarefied thing. Something to be prized and cherished, displayed for all to see, not hidden away in a cupboard, or to feel ashamed of. The photographs of both men would perhaps say to others – not that you should bother your mind with those thoughts – that you are considerably fortunate to have the indubitable honour of safeguarding the love of not one, but two men in your heart.’
He goes to his knees to tidy the contents of his toolbox.
‘I have no idea who you are or what you’ve done to my brother, but thank you, strange being, for visiting us here and departing these wise words from the shell of his body.’ I hold out my hand to him, professional, businesslike. ‘Please be sure to return him to his original state before you leave.’
He gives me one of his rare smiles, his solemn face creasing, and shakes his head.
Later that night, when I’m in bed, I hear a smash. With Gabriel’s phone number ready to dial, terrified the house has been broken into, I grab my crutch, intending to use it as a weapon, and try to make my way quietly downstairs in the dark, which is difficult and turns out to be clumsy and noisy as the crutch whacks against the wooden bars of the banister. By the time I’ve reached the bottom of the staircase, I’m sure my sleuthing has been audible from the end of the street. Heart pounding, I flick the light switch in the living room.
Turns out the photographer knew what we didn’t. His flimsy string wasn’t strong enough to carry the weight of his heavy frame and glass. Gerry and I lie on the floor covered in broken glass. Gerry and I are all dolled up, me covered in layers of make-up, posed, with limbs placed at awkward but meaningful angles. My hand on his heart, ring on display, his eyes looking into mine, our family surrounding us. If I was to do it all again, I wouldn’t do that. We were more real than that, but it wasn’t captured.
Then there’s Gabriel and me, relaxed, laughing, hair blowing across our faces, more natural, frown lines and freckles visible. Our photo is a selfie with an indistinct background. I chose to frame it because I liked how happy we look. He beams at me from the mantelpiece, and seems to snuggle me more closely, smug at his win.
19
Of all the areas in the shop, the trinket display is my favourite. It’s an old drawer unit that Ciara found, a chunky old-school dresser with three wide heavy drawers and on top stands a discoloured mirror that is so covered in black spots you can’t see your face. I love this unit, and chose it specially for the trinkets. The top of the unit contains pieces, the first drawer is pulled out slightly and also displays items, the second drawer a little more and the bottom drawer all the way out, so that it dips because of the weight and sits on the floor. The owner said her mother used the bottom drawer as a cot for her babies. This is the section children are drawn to, but nothing is of any significant value – not that we know of, anyway – and usually items are priced at twenty euros or less. My favourite pieces are the pillboxes, compact mirrors, jewellery boxes and decorative spoons, along with the hair-slides and brooches which are specific to this area and not to be placed in the jewellery section. A new arrival perfect for this trinket display is a jewellery box that I discover wrapped up in newspaper, in a cardboard box. It is mirrored, the lid is embellished with crystals, emerald, rubies and diamonds, of the costume variety. Inside is a velvet insert with sections for individual pieces, where some of the jewels that have fallen off the top sit snugly. I give a gentle tug and the velvet insert lifts, allowing it to be used as a box.
‘What you got there, magpie?’ Ciara interrupts my thoughts. Today she is dressed as a 1940s glamour puss, all red lipstick and a black-netted head veil, a shoulder-padded dress that squishes her boobs up the V-shaped neck, a leopard-print belt sucks her waist in and sends her hips oozing out. She wears this with floral print Doc Martens.
I lift the box to show her. She examines it, leaving fingerprints where I’ve already cleaned it.
‘Pretty.’
‘I’m going to buy it,’ I say quickly, before she suggests keeping it.
‘OK,’ she hands it back.
‘How much?’
‘Work overtime tonight for free?’ she asks hopefully.
I laugh. ‘I’m going for dinner with Gabriel. It’s been a while, so I’m not cancelling.’
‘OK, well if you can’t work tonight, you can’t have the box.’ She pulls it away as I dive clumsily for it.
‘Ow,’ I wince, hurting my ankle in the process.
She dangles it higher in the air.
‘I’m going to report you for employee bullying.’
She sticks out her tongue and hands me back the box. ‘Fine, I’ll ask Mathew. Good luck with Gabriel, and tell him I’m …’ she pauses as I throw her a warning look. She thinks Gabriel is angry with her for making me take part in the podcast, and t
herefore angry with her for my involvement with the club. I keep telling her to stop apologising, he’s not angry with her, just me, but I don’t think that’s true. He seems to be irritable with everyone these days.
‘Tell him you’re what?’ I ask.
‘Nothing,’ she finishes her sentence.
‘Easy. I tell him you’re nothing all the time,’ I grin, wiping her fingerprints off the mirror.
At one of our regular spots, Cucino, an Italian bistro near his house, I find Gabriel seated outside. It’s a cool evening but the gas heaters give it a greenhouse effect and make it feel as though we’re in the midst of a balmy Italian summer.
He kisses me and helps me into my chair, laying the crutches on the ground beside us. I scan the menu and choose instantly. I always get the same thing. Gnocchi in burned butter and sage sauce. I wait while Gabriel chooses his dish. He’s leaning over the menu, forehead furrowed in deep thought and concentration but his eyes aren’t moving over the words. I watch him pretending to study the menu. He lifts his glass and takes an enormous slug of wine, then eyes back to the menu, back to the same place. I study the bottle on the table. Two glasses gone already.
‘What do you call a zoo with one dog?’ I ask, finally breaking the silence.
‘Hmm?’ He looks up.
‘What do you call a zoo with one dog?’
He looks at me blankly.
‘A shih-tzu,’ I say, smiling.
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