Songdogs (25 page)

‘Time for bed for you too, young man,’ said Mrs O’Leary, coming down and placing a hand on my shoulder. ‘But don’t be disturbing your Mam.’

‘I don’t want to go to bed.’

‘Come on, now, you’ll be okay.’

I looked around at the row of bottles along the counter, sitting there like capstans on a pier, and I reached for a bottle of whiskey, took it by the narrow neck, hid it quickly behind my back and stuffed it into my waistband, untucked my shirt over it. The bottle was cold against my skin. I took a couple of steps around Mrs O’Leary and she said: ‘Don’t do that.’

‘What?’

‘Leave the bottle there.’

‘What bottle?’

‘Come on, now, Conor.’

‘I don’t have any bottle!’

‘Ah, now.’

The firemen had turned around, cigar smoke above them.

‘I don’t have any fucken bottle!’

‘Give it to me.’

‘It’s only 7-Up.’

‘Sure, you’re just a bit upset. It was a bad accident.’

‘It wasn’t an accident.’

‘Ah, now, of course it was.’

I brushed past her and my shoulder hit against her and she stumbled back a little, reached out and steadied herself against the counter. A fireman moved towards me with his arms outstretched. He took the bottle from the back of my trousers, gently, and I was all of a sudden a whirlwind of arms, my fist thumped into his crotch, he doubled over, and I was running for the door when my arms were pinned back by another hefty fireman and tears leaped from me. Mrs O’Leary came across, the rattle of her rosary beads at her neck, saying, ‘It’s been a long night, we’ll tuck you in.’

She pursed her lips, raised her head, told the firemen that it was time to leave, kept her hand on my shoulder as she came behind me up the stairs. The door was slightly ajar, and I saw Mam sitting upright in bed, spectral, with extra jumpers over her nightdress and she was looking in a little mirror and putting make-up on her face. I couldn’t believe it. I had thought maybe she’d still be rocking, but there was a small brown circular pad in her hand and she dabbed it on her face precisely, as if with love for what she might have come to terms with in the mirror. ‘Say goodnight,’ said Mrs O’Leary, and I did, from the doorway. Mam looked up and smiled at me, said she was sorry for all the ruckus, she’d make it up to me the next day, maybe we’d take a trip together. Her voice was perfectly even.

‘Goodnight,
m’ijo.
’

I said nothing.

Mrs O’Leary leaned across me: ‘You can sleep in my bed.’

‘I don’t want to sleep in your bed.’

‘Go on, now, give your Mam some rest.’

Her room was curiously bright and colourful, some paintings on the wall, Saint Lucia glaring down from a wooden frame, beside it a wallhanging with peacocks in strut. Mrs O’Leary knelt down and said some prayers by my bed – ‘There are four corners to my bed, there are four angels there lie spread, one at my head, two at my feet, one at my heart my soul to keep’ – and all at once I felt vacuumed and angry and repeated them after her, a litany of uselessness – even then, at twelve years old, I thought how useless it was, that praying. The exposed hands of a clock moved and I pretended to be asleep as she pulled the sheets around me, folded them back. ‘Be a good lad, now.’ She leaned down and kissed the top of my head, tiptoed from the room. I didn’t want to be tucked in. I ripped the sheets out from under the mattress, made a puddle of them down at my feet. Later I could hear her downstairs in the pub saying: ‘Right now, gentlemen, I think it’s time, don’t you, I’ve said it’s time a million times, they need their rest, have yez no homes to go to at all?’

I got up and looked out the window – cars were leaving the pub, a horn going like the cry of a sick curlew, the fire-engine lights not twirling anymore – and suddenly voices came from down the landing, and I jumped back into bed.

‘Are you okay, Juanita?’

‘I am fine.’

‘Shall I stay here with you?’

‘I am okay, Alice, I am okay.’

‘I’ll stay with the boy.’

‘Thank you, Alice.’

‘Are ya sure?’

‘I am sure,
gracias.
’

And then the shuffle along the landing, and the knob turning and Mrs O’Leary coming to bend over me, moving to a chair that she had by the window, kicking off her shoes, breathing out a sigh in the cold, bringing a coat out of her wardrobe, slowly closing the buttons, a twist of a bottle and a small slurp, settling down into the flesh of herself, sighing deeply again before I fell asleep. When I woke up in the morning, Mam was gone and there was a make-up kit sitting on the bed where she had been, everything silent outside, a small mirror catching the light.

*   *   *

The bathroom lock clicked open and he stuck his head around the door, said: ‘Come on in, for fucksake, before I freeze me jewels off.’

He still had his shirt on, but his shoes and socks and trousers were off. He had put on his swimming togs, the old red ones that he used to swim and prance around in on the beach. Pulled the string tight until the material valley-rippled around his waist, but even then they were miles too big. I was almost afraid to think of him rubbing the sponge against himself. See him turn to dust. Maybe crumple in his own fingers. His hands were shaking when he fumbled with the bottom buttons on the shirt. Strange how embarrassed he was by the nakedness, even with the togs on, using the one good hand to cover himself.

I went to put my arm under his shoulder but he brushed me away, slowly steered himself towards the bath, tested the water with his toes. ‘The water’s too fucken hot,’ he said. ‘I can’t even remember how to make a bath!’ But I tested it with my fingers before he got in and it was simply lukewarm. I was sure he had lost some sense of feeling. The way his whole body gently shook. He went clawing for the soap after it fell in under his left leg. I was going to reach in and get it but he just shook his head. ‘Go on, now, I’m not a fucken invalid, I told ya a million times.’ Left the soap disintegrating away beneath his leg.

‘Right,’ he said, dangling his arm out the side of the tub, like it didn’t belong, a pantomime prop. ‘So tell me about all this travelling,’ he said. ‘Ya almost gave me a fucking heart attack yesterday.’

‘I just wanted to know some things.’

‘Like what things?’

‘About the past.’

‘Christ, couldn’t I have told ya that, Conor? Didn’t I tell ya everything? And you wouldn’t even look me in the eye. Isn’t that right? Didn’t I tell ya everything?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Well, I did.’

‘Maybe.’

‘No maybes about it.’

‘Let’s not fight.’

‘I’m not fighting. Am I fighting? Do I look like I’m fighting?’

He raised his hands from the bath and turned his palms in the air. I turned away and picked his trousers up from the floor, placed them on the radiator to get them nice and warm. She used to do that for me when I was very young, five or six, clacking her way through a hum or a rhyme, neatly folding them first in the crook of her brown arm, weaving out a hand underneath them, smoothing them out, placing them on the radiator, always very precise, afterwards reaching in the cupboard for special soaps, leaning over.

‘I mean,’ he said, ‘it’s all so long ago now.’

‘It’s not really.’

‘We make our mistakes.’

‘We all do,’ I said.

‘Then we move along.’

‘We do.’

‘You learn finally that some things aren’t meant to heal.’

He said it without sentimentality. His voice was as slow as syrup. He let his head loll against the back of the bath and clacked his teeth together, sighed. Outside, through the hazy bathroom window I thought I could see the movement of some birds. I turned back to the bath. I must have looked at him too long and hard, because he turned his head away and then looked back at me again.

‘Conor,’ he said after a moment, raising one hand to scratch at his forehead, ‘d’ya think there’s any way you could put some of that shampoo on me hair?’

‘What’s that?’

‘My arm is sore here. Can’t reach up properly. Gives me a bit of a stab here.’ He rubbed his shoulder. ‘Maybe just help me wash it, you know.’

I stood.

‘What’s wrong with ya?’ he asked.

‘Nothing, nothing.’

‘Ah, it doesn’t fucken matter,’ he said, putting his hands back down into the bathwater.

‘Sure,’ I said, ‘sure I will.’

‘Good man.’

I reached into the cupboard, fumbled around, and got out the shampoo, my hands shaking. He laid his head underneath the water, a boat of bones sinking, got his hair wet, resurfaced, reached his fingers up and ran them through it, still greasy and tangled. ‘Phhhhfffff,’ he said, shaking his head.

‘Are ya right?’

‘Right so. Go easy on it, there’s not much of it left, for fucksake.’

I put a small dollop of shampoo on my hand, told him to wet his hair again, rubbed my hands together. ‘Ya look like a bloody executioner there,’ he said as he rose slowly out of the water. I sat on the edge of the bath and leaned over. ‘Out with the electricity, son.’ He hunched himself up, held on to the handrail, the veins stark and blue. The hairs on his back ran all the way down to the red togs.

The soap piled up at the back of his neck and he gave out a little contented hum as I massaged my fingers into his scalp.

‘She wasn’t in Mexico.’

‘No,’ he said. It wasn’t a question, the way he said it.

‘I thought she’d be there.’

‘Well, now, you can never be sure of anything.’

‘And she wasn’t with Cici.’

‘Why would she be?’

‘Why not?’

I kept massaging the soap into his scalp, around the age spots.

‘I miss her,’ he said.

‘I know ya do.’

‘No, no, you don’t understand, I really miss her. I honestly miss her.’

‘I know, I can tell.’

‘Ya can’t change the past. You know, you try to change the past, but you can’t.’

He let out a long whistle and closed his eyes, and my fingers worked themselves into the soft spots on his head and he almost pushed his head back into my hands and I thought how easy it would be to hurt him, just by mashing my fingers into his head.

‘And Cici, what’s she doing with herself?’ he said after a while.

‘This and that. Nothing really.’

‘Like the rest of us. Still writing poems?’

‘Says it’s not worth a damn.’

‘She’s dead right.’

‘Why did ya give up the photos, Dad?’

‘Jaysus, now, that’s a stupid question. Don’t be rubbing my hair away, now! For fucksake!’

‘Take a dip.’

He took a long time to position himself so that he could go down into the water again.

‘Once more,’ I said. ‘One more shampoo.’

‘Christ, it isn’t that dirty!’

‘Hold still there, now.’

‘And yourself, I mean, are ya making a living?’

‘A few bob.’

He closed his eyes: ‘Ah, this’ll do me for years. I’ll have the cleanest hair west of Waterloo.’

I had put too much shampoo on, and some of the soap fell down from his hair and on to his neck. I reached to scoop it up, left my fingers there, began to wash his neck. His head went forward at first, a little shocked, then laid back into my hands. I felt curious knots in his neck. It was like rubbing cheese. It had that peculiar texture, not hard, not soft. He didn’t budge while I massaged, and maybe his body was relaxing, maybe he was calling things back, because I could feel some sort of melting-away, washing along his neck tanline. The soap bubbled over on to his shoulders and I rubbed it down and over the top of his back, along his shoulders, until I was using both my hands, my fingers converging on his spine – thinking that if I pushed too hard I could crack his whole nervous system – and time seemed to be effortlessly drifting from us, rolling along, until he pulled away and bobbed down into the bath.

‘Soap was getting in me eyes,’ he said.

But I knew what it was and he turned his face away from me, said: ‘I’m grand, so. Leave a man in peace so he can take off his fucken togs.’

I pursed my lips together and nodded: ‘I’ll be outside if ya need me.’

He pulled at the string of his togs as I closed the door and moved as if he was going to take them off.

‘Conor,’ he said.

I peeped back through the crack in the door. ‘What?’

He still had his hand on the string of his togs.

‘I really have no idea.’

‘What?’

‘About your Mam.’

‘That’s all right.’

‘For all I know she could be in Timbuktu.’

‘I don’t think I’ll be going there.’

He made an attempt at a little laugh.

‘Just walked out from there,’ he said. ‘Didn’t even know she’d left until Mrs O’Leary came around and told me. I was knocking the rest of the darkroom down with the big hammer. Turning it to mush. Played it over and over in my head ever since. Thought she’d be back. Swore it to myself. Didn’t give it much thought until a few hours later. Then a day. Then two days. Three. Sometimes I even think she could have walked her way down to the river beyond. She was awful depressed, you know.’

‘The river?’

‘I don’t know. Anything’s possible, isn’t it?’

‘You mean she walked her way into the river?’

‘Maybe.’

‘When?’

‘Maybe that night.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Ah, you can’t be sure of anything, can ya? You can be sure of nothing. That’s the only thing you can be sure of. Nothing. But I miss her. I miss her more than anyone thinks.’

He picked up the washcloth from the shelf and dunked it in the bath, lifted his armpit in the air and began to scrub as vigorously as he could. The water must have been getting a little cold because he shivered a little when he did it. Droplets were dripping from his hair on to his shoulder. The rims of his eyes were red.

‘I’ll get the hairdryer,’ I said.

‘You won’t catch me using that fucken thing,’ he muttered, ‘no bloody way.’

I closed the door to let him take off his togs and scrub himself down. I sat down on the top of the stairs. ‘The river, Dad?’ I said from outside, but he mustn’t have heard me, the bathwater gurgling down the drain.

*   *   *

Water is what we are made of. It has its own solitude. A storm blew in and the search was called off for a few hours. The rain filled the ditches with flow, hammered down on the roof, made small lakes in the roads, the lane impassable. The old man stayed outside and watched as it rifled down. Doubt sunk itself into the searchers, and the rumours were again rife. She had gone to Chile, where she had fallen in love with a military dictator. She had been seen in Dublin with nasturtiums behind her ears. She had taken a boat out into the storm. She was in the mental hospital in Castlebar, behind the big yawning gates. But for me she was home where she belonged – and a letter would come for me one morning.