CURRAGOWER FALLS
EARLY SEPTEMBER
Kate could never quite make up her mind whether she loved or loathed September. A flurry of withered leaves danced over her feet as she scurried down the steps of the Clare Street campus and set off briskly for home. Snatching a quick glance at her watch, her heart skipped a beat. She was cutting it fine. She quickened her step. She had to make it home before five. Not a second later. It was a new routine, now that summer break was over. It had been harder with all the idle time this year. Things had been different when they’d had the beach house.
Today had been difficult. Once upon a time Kate would have jumped at the chance of becoming assistant head of the Visual Communications Department. She would have been thrilled to bits. But that was before there were other demands on her. She should have been elated at being offered the position so soon after her return to the workforce. Instead, she felt a bittersweet sadness at having to turn it down. Life was about choices and this was a choice she had to make.
Simon Walsh, the head of department, had looked at her in disbelief.
“This is a windup. You’re teasing me, right?”
With a heavy heart, Kate shook her head.
“But, Kate, you’re the best person for the job,” Simon protested. “You know that. I know that. I know you’re only just back but you’ve got the talent and you know this department like no one else.”
“I know that, Simon. And I’m flattered. Really, I am. But things at home, you know . . .” She hesitated. “It’s just not that easy. The job I have now I can manage. Assistant head is a whole other proposition. Extra responsibility, more time here on campus. I have thought about it. Believe me.”
Realizing she was serious, Simon ran a distracted hand through his long hair. “There has to be a way. I was so looking forward to having you as my wingman.”
Again, Kate shook her head. She’d made up her mind.
“I’m sorry. There’ll be other equally suitable candidates. Anyway, surely the job has to be openly advertised?”
Disgruntled, Simon had taken off, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his crumpled linen jacket.
Already Kate was at the Abbey Bridge and a gust of wind pulled at her slackly fastened chignon, threatening to loosen it. A man on a bicycle swept by, close to the curb. She smiled to herself. It appeared he had every worldly good he owned in his pannier. A black and white dog with attitude sat in the basket up front. Again she looked at her watch. There were scarcely fifteen minutes left. Would she make it? In the old days she might have taken the car but they had only one car now and Mannix had it today. Her laced-up boots started to chafe against her skin as she broke into a jog.
Suddenly, Kate heard the pounding of feet from the rear. Two guys with white hooded tops ran past her. It wasn’t clear if one was the quarry and the other the prey or if they were running together. Moments later a squad car screamed through the evening traffic pursuing the two fleeing creatures until they disappeared through an alleyway and out of sight. Unperturbed, Kate continued her journey, the satchel full of papers clapping up and down on her hip.
This was a city where the haves lived side by side with the have-nots. A city whose messy bits were not hidden from view. Even though these encounters were common enough, Kate was always cautious making her way home past the inner-city housing schemes by the old walls of the city. She was panting now. She glanced again at her wrist. Five more minutes to go.
Once she got to the ancient walls of King John’s Castle, Kate could just about see her house across the river. She could imagine it in her mind’s eye, just around that bend of houses that overlooked the falls. Kate liked this part of town. She liked the fact that it had probably looked largely the same over the span of centuries. Thomond Bridge with the falls on one side, the low humpbacked rolling hills on the other. The whalebone-white arches of Thomond Park Stadium in the distance. The Treaty Stone with the somber bulk of St. Munchin’s Church across the road. The boardwalk.
She scurried over Thomond Bridge, her calves hot and sweaty and her hair eventually escaping and swishing about her face in the wind. Her mouth had gone dry. Why the hell had she not ended that last lecture just five minutes early?
Rustling through sheaves of papers and the crumpled tinfoil of hastily eaten sandwiches, Kate searched for the jagged clump of keys at the bottom of the canvas bag. She managed to stumble through the front door just as the church bells began to chime five. She’d made it!
“Fergus? . . . Izzy? . . . I’m home.”
Kate clambered up the stairs to the kitchen, heart in her mouth.
There, curled up in a blue fleece blanket in a corner of the chaise longue, staring intently at the clock on the wall, was Fergus. He looked from her to the clock and back again. The TV flickered busily at the other side of the room.
“See, I told you,” said Kate, out of breath. “I told you, five o’clock. Home by five.”
“I see that, Mum. It’s five o’clock now. But you’re very nearly late . . .” He turned back to the TV.
“Whew!” she mouthed to Izzy, who was leaning over the breakfast counter in an apron.
Izzy knew only too well the consequences of her mother arriving after the agreed time. She too had witnessed that thinly veiled anxiety, seen it erupt and spew out great torrents of anger and confusion, blistering the remains of an evening. And yet this evening, Fergus’s response didn’t register the relief it normally did when Kate walked through the door.
This evening there was something else. Something else was eating him. Kate’s fingers itched to ruffle his curls but Fergus hated being touched on the head. Instead, she laid a hand on his shoulder.
“Good day?” she said to the back of his head.
Izzy looked up from her homework on the counter, looking grave.
No response from Fergus.
“Good day, Soldier?” she asked again.
“All right, I guess . . .”
It was then that Kate noticed the familiar hairy creature hulking its way across the screen, mammoth knuckles scraping the pavement, the anguished roar of frustration as it beat its breast in pain.
“King Kong?” Kate looked at Izzy.
Izzy nodded.
So it had been a bad day. King Kong always made an appearance after any unsettling incident or unhappy encounter. The great lumbering creature seemed to act as a salve. What did Fergus see in him? Was it the primal anguish and confusion of the beast?
Kate filled with dismay. This was the second time this week already. In fact, King Kong had graced their TV screens more times this term than all of the previous year. Shoulders slumped, she went to the hallway and hung up her purple jacket and the satchel of project proposals that now seemed doomed to remain unseen for the evening.
Returning to the kitchen, she put her arms round Izzy, squeezing tight. None of this was fair on Izzy. Kate had to constantly remind herself and others that her daughter was only eleven. As the money had slowly dried up, Izzy never questioned, never complained, accepting every new cutback and economy with stoicism. Music lessons gone. Ballet classes gone. The only thing left was Girl Guides.
Izzy tried hard. “Don’t worry about us, Mum, I’ll mind Fergus when you go back to work”; “I’ll walk Fergus home from school”; “I’ll help Fergus with his homework.” Inasmuch as anyone could help Fergus with his homework, Izzy tried. She tried her little heart out.
“Is Dad home for dinner? He promised to take me to Guides tonight.” Izzy undid the apron and handed it to her mother.
“He’ll be on his way,” Kate responded with more conviction than she felt. Mannix’s behavior had been erratic in recent months, but he had a lot on his mind with the new job, and anything was better than all those months of unemployment.
Alone in the room with Fergus, Kate set to chopping peppers and onions. Every now and then she looked over at the velvet chaise longue that she had personally reupholstered. Fergus was cocooned and fetal under his blanket.
“Today not so good then, Soldier?”
Fergus’s face suddenly blotched up and he bit his lower lip. Kate stopped chopping.
“There was writing,” he said. “On the wall.” Dislodging his glasses, he screwed a fist into an eye socket.
Kate’s heart sank. “What do you mean?”
“Writing on the wall in the school yard over by the wheelie bins. They were all laughing. Everyone was laughing . . .”
He rubbed the other eye now, desperately trying to keep in the crying.
“I don’t care,” he said. He twisted the blanket.
“What did it say?”
How stupid of her! How incredibly stupid! How could Fergus tell her what it said? He could scarcely read. Even after five years of learning support, reading did not come any easier. They were going to have to go private. She knew that. She’d known it for some time. But it was the money. Always, the money. They’d do their own research, find their own therapists.
“Who was it, Soldier?” she asked this time. “Who was it that wrote on the wall?”
Fergus looked at her as if she already knew.
“Frankie?”
Of course.
“It was Frankie, wasn’t it?”
Silence.
A tough kid with a shock of lice-ridden carrot hair, Frankie Flynn was a latchkey kid. In the beginning, Kate tried tolerance. Frankie Flynn didn’t have it easy. His mother discarded her fluffy dressing gown only to go to her evening job in the off-license, and it was said she was paid in kind.
“I’ll sort this out, Soldier,” said Kate calmly. “I’ll take time out tomorrow and go to the school.”
Fergus shot up.
“No!!! You are NOT to go to the school,” he screeched. “If you go to the school I will NEVER EVER talk to you again. EVER. And stop calling me Soldier!” He ran from the room dragging his blanket behind him.
Kate was stunned. Onion fumes mixed with tears of hurt for her child. She needed a moment to think. Going to the window, she edged herself into the wicker seat suspended from the ceiling and looked out at the river. An elderly couple huddled over the handrail in the riverside park. They were throwing scraps to the swans below. A young mum pushed her toddler in a miniature car propelled by a long plastic handle. A couple of joggers ran past in conversation and continued on up the boardwalk. Some pleasure craft had moored on the far side of the river, over the weir outside the seventies LEGO-like office block that hung somber and gray over the water. The silhouette of buildings on the far side of the river was a curious mélange of old and new. Striking and gauche. Elegant and unremarkable. A microcosm of the city at large. It was a view Kate had grown to love as much as she loved this house with its upside-down layout.
Their house had been the place to be at on New Year’s when fireworks rained down against the castle walls and bled in multicolor on the water below. Kate stared out now at the late evening sunshine, a golden glint on the ripples over the falls. The tide was ebbing and there would be fishermen out in the shallows later. Urban fishermen who pitched up with crocked bicycles and bits of old shopping bags. She often wondered if they ever caught anything.
She closed her eyes, feeling the soothing warmth of the low sun caress her eyelids. When she opened them again, the elderly couple was shuffling off, possibly uneasy with the appearance of a thin man pulling a mastiff terrier on a chain—the animal’s chest broader and more menacing than its owner’s.
Click. The turn of a key in the door downstairs. Mannix. Kate felt her chest grow tight. His steps were heavy on the stairs. One at a time now, not like they used to be.
“You look chilled . . .”
That smile—brilliant as always. That was what she had fallen for—his smile. His shirt still looked fresh and crisp against his sallow skin. In his hand he held his laptop.
She half-smiled, not wanting to start the evening on a sour note.
“The kids?” he asked, draping his raincoat over the back of a breakfast stool.
“In their rooms.”
“Good. Good.” He rubbed his chin pensively and took a few steps toward her. He stopped then as if he’d thought of something.
“All right?” she asked.
He took a few more steps and then sat gingerly on the edge of the chaise longue.
He cleared his throat. “Look, Kate, there’s something I have to tell you . . .”
“There’s something I have to tell you as well,” she interrupted. She would have to get this out of the way.
“Okay, then . . .” He hesitated. “You first.”
• • •
She told him about Fergus. About the episode in the school yard—the latest installment in a catalog of incidents that now seemed to be descending into a regular pattern of bullying.
“That little prick!”
Mannix shook his head, his face gripped by a spasm of anger.
“So, what’s this? This is the third or fourth time since the new school year. So our Fergus is that little shit’s latest punch-bag?”
Kate’s stomach knotted. It was true. It looked like Fergus was set to be Frankie’s target for the year. First, there was the disgusting incident with the sandwiches, then the sports bag soaked in urine, and now this.
“Fergus doesn’t want me to, but I’m going to the school. I’ve decided.” Kate stood up wearily out of the chair and padded across the polished floorboards.
Mannix shook his head. “And just what do you hope that will achieve? Come on, Kate. You know what we’re dealing with here. Look what happened to that Polish kid’s dad . . .”
“What Polish kid?” asked Kate.
“You know, the scrawny fella. What’s this the kids call him? Oh, yeah—Polski Sklep.”
“I know who you mean—what happened to his dad?” Kate remembered Polski Sklep being bullied and knew that his mother had gone to the school to complain. But she wasn’t aware of any repercussions beyond that.
“Oh, Kate! You don’t think his father’s two broken ribs happened by accident?”
“What do you mean?” The knot in her stomach pulled tighter.
“Polski Sklep’s father is . . . was . . . a bouncer at a nightclub in town. He got beaten up in the lane outside. That was down to Flynn’s old man.”
“I thought Frankie Flynn’s dad was in prison.”
“And you think that stopped him?”
Kate sighed.
“How do you know all this, Mannix?” she asked, her plan of action now looking futile.
“Spike.”
Spike was Mannix’s brother. The other half of the O’Brien brothers. As Kate tossed the vegetables onto the sizzling wok, her face set in a frown. Spike would know. He was in the nightclub business. Spike was in any business that he thought would make him money.
“Hi there, honey.” Mannix’s face softened at his daughter, who’d floated silently into the room. She was neatly dressed in her Girl Guides uniform. “Oh, shit . . .” he added.
“Aw, Dad, you haven’t forgotten, have you? You said you’d take me to the Guides tonight.”
“No, no, of course, Izzy, that’s fine. It’s just that . . . no, never mind. Of course I’ll take you.”
Izzy looked at her mother.
“You told him, then? About Fergus?”
“Yes, I told him,” said Kate, doling out four equally sized portions into black patterned noodle bowls.
“What exactly did Frankie Flynn write on that wall?” Mannix looked at Izzy.
Izzy hesitated a moment as if she didn’t want to say.
“Well?” said Mannix.
Kate held her breath.
“Do you really want to know, Dad?”
“I really want to know,” said Mannix.
“‘Fergus O’Brien is a fucking spastic,’ that’s what it said.”
Kate felt like she’d been slapped across the face. For a few moments none of them said anything. Mannix’s eyes narrowed.
“Did it, now?” he said eventually.
Izzy looked from Kate to Mannix, slowly drinking in their reactions.
“I hate Frankie Flynn.” Izzy’s voice was ice-cold.
“Don’t you worry about that little bollocks,” said Mannix, circling his daughter’s waist.
“Mannix!” Kate protested, but noticed the profanity had softened Izzy’s expression. She had the makings of a grin. Father and daughter were alike in so many ways. Quick to anger, quick to judge, impetuous.
“What are you going to do?” Izzy wasn’t letting it go.
Kate squirmed, her parental authority under siege from the piercing stare of her young daughter. The truth was she didn’t quite know. Not yet.
“Let’s have dinner, Izzy,” she said breezily. “It’s not your job to worry about this. It’s mine and Dad’s. Go downstairs and get Fergus, will you?”
Izzy opened her mouth as if to speak but clammed it tightly shut again.
“K,” she muttered.
“Sticks and stones may break my bones but names can never hurt me,” rhymed Kate, but her words rang hollow and trite. Izzy turned her back, but not before Kate registered the look of disgust on her daughter’s face.
The meal was stilted and awkward, Mannix trying to cajole Fergus without actually addressing the issue, Kate aching to smother her fragile eight-year-old with love. She’d give him anything she could to protect himself. Anything to boost his self-esteem. If Fergus could only walk into that school with his head held high, maybe then he wouldn’t wear the mantle of a victim quite so readily. If she could just conjure up something to make him more resilient, more robust. Maybe then Frankie Flynn would move off to prey on someone else. It wasn’t a noble solution, she knew, but at the moment all she wanted was Frankie Flynn to leave her son alone.
Even though she’d prepared the meal just the way he liked it, she half expected Fergus would leave his meal untouched. Surprisingly, in between monosyllables, he ate. He did his usual circle trick with the vegetables. He picked a yellow pepper from the yellow pile, a carrot from the orange pile, and then some onions. And back to the yellow pile to start all over again. He was trying his best to put on a brave face in front of his father.
Izzy ate her meal in moody silence. As Kate cleared the dishes she knew they were going to have to do something about Fergus, but for the life of her she didn’t know what. Something would come to her over the course of the evening. She went out to the hall to retrieve her satchel in the hope of going over some papers.
Mannix passed her in the hallway carrying a flowery pillowcase.
“Domestic skills at last?” Kate raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, this—it’s for Izzy, something for Guides, I think.” His lips grazed her cheek as he breezed past, freshly showered and having swapped his suit for jeans.
“I turned down that job today, by the way.”
Given the amount of agonizing she had gone through, she was surprised he hadn’t asked her about it already.
“Job?” He looked at her blankly.
“The assistant head of department? The job that Simon offered me?”
“Oh, that . . .” he said dismissively. “Sexy Simon will have to look for his assistant elsewhere, I guess,” he added sarcastically.
Kate felt hurt. It had been silly of her to expect any acknowledgment or recognition of what she had just turned down. Mannix had somehow gotten it into his head that Simon’s interest in her was more than professional. But Kate couldn’t help feeling let down nonetheless.
“Ready, Izzy?” Mannix shouted, going down the stairs.
At the bottom, he turned round. “Oh, Kate, by the way, I’m calling over to Spike for a bit. We’ll talk when I get back, okay?”
“Spike?”
“Kate, don’t start. Give the guy a break.”
Her expression must have said it all.
“I didn’t say a thing,” said Kate. “Pints in the Curragower Bar, then?” She kept her tone even. It wasn’t as if they could afford them.
“No, Kate. I’m going round to Spike’s flat. See you later,” he said, sounding resigned. He ushered Izzy out the door and slammed it a little too forcefully behind him. Kate sighed. She should have bitten her tongue.
Just before heading up to the study on the third floor, she looked in on Fergus’s bedroom and was alarmed not to see him there. Not on the bed with his Nintendo. Not making models with his K’NEX. As she stood in the twilight she heard a heavy panting sound coming from the other side of the bed.
“Fergus?” she said tentatively, walking around the bed.
More huffing and puffing.
“What on earth are you doing?” Although it was perfectly obvious what he was doing.
He stopped then and propped himself up on one arm.
“Push-ups. Thirty tonight. And more tomorrow. I’m going to get up to a hundred a night.”
“Isn’t that a bit much?” He’d never shown any particular interest in gym work before. Still, she smiled, glad to encourage any new endeavor.
“It’s not too much . . .” he huffed. “I’m going to be a beast!”
“A beast?” Kate laughed.
“Yeah. I’m going to become an absolute beast. And then I’m going to kick the living crap out of Frankie Flynn.”
The smile froze on Kate’s lips.
“Oh, but Fergus, that’s not . . .”
He glanced up briefly, and then without answering he went back to his push-ups. Kate shut the door softly. She definitely had to talk to Mannix about this.
• • •
With a slew of papers spread out on the desk in the study, Kate tried to concentrate. She stared at the letter she’d received last week from Oberstown House, the young offenders’ facility. They’d invited her to make a presentation to their further education students. Again, she was conflicted. The logistics were difficult. That was a trip the whole way to North County Dublin, a longer day at each end, and more upheaval for Fergus. As much as she relished the idea of broadening their student base and making their courses more accessible, she knew where her priorities lay.
Next, Kate attempted to jot down some advice on the portfolio proposals her second-years had handed in. But the words swam around in a slurry of language. What advice could she offer her own child? She looked around the book-lined room and at the woven tapestries hanging on either side of the long sash window. Darkness had now fallen and the lights from City Hall shimmered on the river.
And then it came to her. She spent so much time worrying about the future. Their future. Fergus’s future. But the time was now. She needed to do something now. Putting the sheaf of papers to one side, she turned on the desktop and settled herself into the office chair. An hour must have slid by easily before she found what she was looking for.
“Oooooowwww!!!” came an agonized howl from down the stairs.
Good Lord—what had Fergus done now? Tearing down the stairs, she nearly went over on her ankle. There, in the gloom, was Fergus, doubled over, holding on to a foot.
“What happened?” She rushed to comfort him.
“My toe is all messed up,” he said, sobbing.
“How did that happen?” His big toenail had split and blood was seeping out from underneath. On closer inspection, she saw that the edge of the toolbox was poking out from the cupboard door underneath the stairs. He had stubbed his big toe on the corner. She didn’t doubt the pain and he was in full throttle now. The injury was the final straw in his day of humiliation.
“Dad . . . I want Dad . . . Get Dad!” he howled.
“Let’s put a plaster on first. He’ll be home soon, Soldier,” she said, trying to placate him.
No go.
“Get Dad now! I want my dad now!”
The bleating descended into a pitiful moaning. Her heart went out to him. She wanted to scoop him up and squeeze him and cuddle the pain out of him. But it was no good. He wanted Mannix.
“Okay, okay, okay . . . hang on, I’ll phone him.”
The stark light of her mobile lit up in the gloom. “Calling Mannix mobile.” It went to voice mail. There was no point in leaving a message. Fergus wanted him now. She knew what she should do. She didn’t want to, but she knew she had to. She’d have to call him. She’d have to call Spike.
“Calling Spike mobile.”
No answer. She’d try the apartment landline.
“Hi, Spike, it’s Kate.”
“Kate—my favorite sister-in-law!”
Kate squirmed. She was Spike’s only sister-in-law.
“Can I have a quick word with Mannix?”
She heard his breathing and could almost see his languid movement as she heard him drawing on a cigarette.
“Sorry, Katie. No can do. Haven’t seen my bro for weeks.”
“Oh, I see . . . Oh, well, then . . .”
“But if he pitches up, I’ll get him to give you a bell, all right?”
Spike was enjoying this—the fact that Mannix had lied to her.
“No problem—I’m sure he’ll be home soon.”
“I’m sure he will, Katie.”
She hated being called that. And he knew it.
“Thanks.”
Now she wished she hadn’t called.
“Where’s my dad?” Fergus said, sniffing, still in a heap on the floor.
“I don’t know,” she said snappily, sympathy for her son now replaced by a gnawing sense of unease. “I don’t know where your dad is.”
It was only then that she remembered Mannix had wanted to tell her something when he’d come home from work. As she coaxed a bruised Fergus upstairs with hot chocolate, she tried to dampen the worry that had lodged in her gut.
Where was Mannix? And why had he lied about going to Spike’s?