Father

The flight is a blank. I wait at the baggage carousel for fifteen minutes before I remember I haven’t brought any luggage.

I had forgotten rain. It is early morning yet the Dublin sky is so dark it might be a winter afternoon. Mater Hospital, I say to the taxi man with as little drama as I can manage. Ah, nothing serious? says he. Hope so, says I, sitting back and staring out the window. In the rearview mirror I see his mouth laughing the laugh of the ignoramus. The city is miserable with the fat cries of seagulls. I thought the familiarity would excite me. I had told myself I loathed going back but it isn’t true, I’m thrilled, thrilled even by the chattering taxi man who pierces me with asinine questions. I tell him I keep up with news. They have it all on computer now, I say, in the hope of heading off the lecture. He goes on and on, filling the car with a changed Dublin. Too late for me now it is, all this boom. I’m fiftyeight. It’s fellahs your age will be making it. He manages to make me a stranger in my hometown. The Dublin epidemic: to let the newly returned know they do not know their city. I have always loved this city. People talk. They are articulate and funny and hardy and hopeless at confronting reality and I like them. As we draw nearer to the city centre, depression pools about me. Familiar sights clamour, invading the husk of myself. An advertisement for Smithwick’s beer. My throat is dry from travel. The greenness of Irish buses. An advertisement introducing a fast route from Dublin to New York. It must be great over there, he says. Once, coming home from her studio, I told Holfy that the best thing about New Jersey was the view of Manhattan. Her laughter; her womanly laughter possesses me. I look at my watch. I would have breakfast in Bewley’s, get a taxi back to the airport, buy a ticket there and be in Greenwich Village by five. I could buy some cakes in that patisserie on Bleecker Street. I imagine her driving through the Holland Tunnel with the windows rolled up tightly. I could be waiting for her to push backwards through the door, arms laden with work. I could be sitting there, waiting for her to set down her camera equipment and lift her head with slow surprise when she hears me humming. Trouble is, he says, the taxis over there is like cages. You have to be fenced in.

*   *   *

In his hospital deathbed, Daddy tells me I was such a lovely little boy. Full of zest, he says, smiling. He is smiling into the past at the ten-year-old boy who idolised him. Who ran to get another bucket of hot water. Who squeezed the water out of the dirty rag into the gutter. The boy who loved working. The boy who didn’t want to go home at the end of a long summer day when other boys were enjoying the freedom of their holidays, my freedom being a man like Daddy.

—Like a young gazelle, he says.

—I was.

Full of immense fondness for his lost son. He smiles as if that boy will emerge out of the disappointment standing before him. Daddy, I want to say, I didn’t want to go home after the day’s work because I knew there’d be a fight. You’d pick a fight with Ruth. They took it in turns. I worked hard with you Daddy because I didn’t want to go home to our screaming life. You never knew anything, Daddy. You are a stupid and selfish bastard and you don’t deserve me at your side. I look into his bleary eyes and am moved to a lie.

—Those were the days.

—You’re right, there. No truer word spoken. Zest. You were full of zest. Is Canning still annoying you?

—Not any more. I don’t work at the spraying now. I’m in New York now.

—A kick in the chestnuts is the only answer for cornerboys like him. I grew up with his sort. They put a shirt and tie on and think they’re different. Where did you say?

—In New York.

—Aren’t you the big shot. You won’t reck us now. You’re your own man now with your own face.

I nod at him, wanting to get out but his eyes lock on me, he’s not done, knows these last days are his.

—Don’t remember do you, what you said after your mother left?

I should have left before the drugs mixed with nostalgia started working on him. I shake my head for him.

—One night you were crying in your bed and I came over to you and you asked me who would you look like now that she was gone. Everyone always said you were the spit out of her eye and you were worried you wouldn’t look like anyone now that she was gone. And I told you you’d look like yourself and that every day you’d look more and more like yourself. You used to ask me, Do I look like me today? And I’d say you look very much like you. There’s a lot you forget about yourself that your old Da remembers, don’t forget that. We’re not all gobshites just because we don’t have the secondary school education. If you ever see her, your mother, tell her there’s no hard feelings.

—None from you maybe. Maybe when I’m kicking the bucket I’ll feel the same. Not now though.

I phone Ursula and listen to the beeps on her machine. Busy girl. I go for a drink, call her again, go back to the Mater, he is sleeping. In the morning he will tell me he hasn’t slept a wink. I call her again. Still the machine, even more beeps. I walk down Eccles Street and stand at the corner thinking about what to do. Toetapping on the corner. What to do to do to do. Muriel has said I can stay with her. She made no mention of Ursula but the invitation says it all. I cross the road to get a bus into town. The 16 passes, going the other way. I recognise the driver from the years getting the bus out to Clastronix and wave. Only people I know anymore are strangers. I stare across at Birmingham’s where we often went for a drink when we lived over Youkstetter’s. She would meet me there after I came out from visiting Ruth. Should call it The Waiting Room. Or The Morgue. Before and after. No bus comes. Impulsively I wave down a taxi and ask him to go to the house in Dalkey.

Her car isn’t there. I think about going back into town and staying at Muriel’s but then decide I’ll wait. I pay the driver and walk up the driveway. Willy is sitting there, watching me. She rises up off the windowsill, stretches, and jumps pertly onto the gravel. She’s got big. Lost the kittenishness. She walks over and rubs against me. No sign of Vomit. Out hunting. Vomit was always the wild one. I sit on the bench in the front garden. No sound anywhere. The cat jumps up on me. Darkness falls about the house. The cat drifts off and after a while I hear the flap slap back and forth. She’s gone into the heat. A light goes on in the house and startles me, making me feel like a thief. Through the high window over the hall door I see her turning slowly on the stairs, her back to me. I walk up the garden, and passing the garage, realise the car must be in there. She would have cleared everything out by now. Bye bye books. The overhead sensor picks up my form and the outside light comes on. I knock on the door. She pulls the curtain aside and looks out. A slow unlocking of bolts.

—You got here fast.

I start to tell her to back off. The news of my father will deflate trouble, at least for now. She turns and I see the bruises on her face. She shifts and faces me. She is centuries older. The hall is quivering with silence.

—What happened your face?

—Hi husband still.

She closes her eyes.

—I was attacked. Didn’t Mum tell you?

—Attacked?

—On the hill. They got in the car. Come in. Welcome home.

Vomit runs in between our legs, meowing.

—Who did?

She closes her eyes again.

—The children. The hill on the corner where the car sometimes stalls. It cut out and as I was starting it one of them jumped in beside me and shouted to the other to push it. I just started it again and then the others got in the back. They made me drive around. It was a blast. She goes ahead into the kitchen. I am taken aback by its vastness. She has had all the downstairs walls demolished. She lies on the sofa by the fire and pulls the blankets up around her.

—Want some tea?

—Where did it happen?

—What do you mean where? The hill. Where the car cuts out. It doesn’t matter where. They did things to me.

She stops talking and lies back down. I lie down beside her and hold her tightly, expecting a struggle. But there is no struggle. She is motionless on the sofa like a drunk. I see the card I sent her from New York propped up over the fireplace. Two signs like interstate directions over a highway: Men who comb their hair to hide their bald spots. Women who put too much effort into relationships.

—I bet they’ve burned out the car. Pigbastards. I’d love to roast their smelly balls.

—What did they do?

I dread the answer.

—They felt me. They put their hands all over me as I was driving.

—Why didn’t—

I stop myself. Lord save me from asking stupid questions.

—I’ll live with the whys, thank you. There were two boys and Darina. One of the boys was Larry. I don’t know who the other one was. I hate them. I hate her most of all. She put her hands between my legs. She spat in my hair. I drove them around for an hour. Jesus I was so stupid. I always lock the doors.

I can’t believe she is telling me this. I can’t believe the children from Irishtown followed her. What was it with them?

—Have you reported the car?

She looks at me with tired, cynical eyes, an older woman now.

—I told the police. It won’t make any difference. Why won’t they leave me the fuck alone?

—Where’s your mother?

—At work. She’ll be here soon, she says, looking up at the clock on the mantle. I told her not to phone you. There was no point in you coming home.

—She didn’t. At least she didn’t get me. My father is dying. I got the call yesterday. I didn’t know about this.

—That makes me feel better—really. I didn’t want you here because of this, because of them. Sorry about your Dad.

—I would have come.

—Easy on the sugar. Want to see around the place? Lot of changes.

—It looks wonderful. Never imagined it could not feel damp. You shouldn’t get up.

—I’m fine. Just tired.

The stairwell is the only part of the house that is not done up, bare walls, the newel missing from the top of the staircase. We go into the bedroom. Her bedroom. I am a guest who knows where the hot-water bottle is kept, which drawer stores the cutlery. The photograph of the two of us taken on top of the Empire State Building is gone. The colour scheme is the same as Bath Avenue. She has held on to some of our choices—if she ever thought they were ours. I tell her about Daddy, that he really is dying.

—Where are you staying? I don’t mean to sound rude.

—I’m staying with an aunt.

—The Muriel I met at Ruth’s funeral. She’s a character.

—Yup.

—You’re quite the Yank.

—I used to accuse you of that.

We smile at the history between us.

She is asleep now, deep in the drowning nightmare. A juggernaut screeches to a halt outside, its brakes hissing and sighing. She whimpers in her howling sea. I wait for the tension to leave her body, ease onto the bed and rock her slowly in the nest of my lap. She clings to safety. Her eyes open, full of shock and relief. She stares into my face, still fighting the maw of waves. I speak without thinking.

—I want it to work. I want us to be together.

She turns her head into the pillow. What to do with the bag of feelings I have left for her? What to do with everything that’s gathered like dust in some forgotten room? All the intimacies that made up our life.

*   *   *

My father dies happy with the inaccurate knowledge that I love him unconditionally. There is no reason to forgive a life of profound ignorance. The insignificant moment of his death is a lame reason to forgive sixty-two years of a life flooded with self-absorption. There is no resentment. I will not wound my life with bitterness. But I will not cajole myself, or be cajoled into some cathartic understanding of who he was and why he was the way he was. He was wrong too long. There is no resentment. There is no absolution. Would need to know all to forgive all. I know more than enough. How can one know a man who lived every spare moment in front of a television, believing in his heart that his wife might walk back in any moment and all would be well?

Back at Muriel’s house I start to cry and people are relieved by my brief. I am not crying for him. I am crying for Budgie, the blue bird we had when I was five. We fed him too much and he used to sit on the bottom of his cage, incapacitated with fatness. His nails were curled like the swirls on a snail’s shell. I’d hold Budgie’s scared body in my hand and my father would clip his nails. We were in a hurry to get to Mass and he cut a nail too high up and Budgie bled and died. I never forgave him for being in a hurry out to Mass. I watched him pass the collection basket down through the congregation, smiling at everyone. My father had a smile for everyone. Except us. Daddy: everyone’s handyman.

*   *   *

I am gardening in the front when her father comes with that woman he married after he divorced her mother. He asks if he can do anything. If. You can go fuck yourself.

—She’s resting.

—We shouldn’t disturb her then.

—Not at all. You’ve driven so far. She’d be upset if I didn’t wake her.

He leans against the car, cornered. Even in the vulgar face of drama we are cripplingly polite to one another. Rachel is her name, the woman he married. Rachel. Chalk squealing on a blackboard. Everyone was so surprised, so shocked with his choice. I think her a perfect selection after Ursula’s mother: a mannequin who spreads her legs for him. He walks around the garden looking at the roses, flattering this and that. His forte was always to stand in the garden and talk of greenfly and blackfly and aberrations. Now he babbles about how well we have done. He is of the brigade who gets too nice too late. He hoicks up the knees of his pants and squats to sniff the Peace rose. He looks up at me, vaguely guilty eye, like a dog caught in the middle of a shit. He stands abruptly and goes up to the house. He approaches it as if it is a sleeping tiger. Rachel asks me about the flowers. She is being a woman, engaging the man. Talk to him. Ask him questions. He will adore you for adoring him.

—Flowers are such an important part of us, she says.

—Fuck flowers.

She looks at me a long minute. I continue digging.

—I could fuck on them perhaps, on their petals. Hardly with them.

I stop digging, lean on the trowel.

—I’m sorry.

She shrugs. She is used to not existing. I can think of nothing to say that makes a difference. Sorry. A word to make me feel noble to myself. I lift the small tree out of the boot of the car and sit it on the gravel. It looks tremulous, nervous of its surroundings. I cut off the black plastic holding pot. Roots.

—They don’t get on, do they, she says, looking back to the house.

—No. He doesn’t like women, not even his daughter.

She smiles without feeling.

—Rachel, it’s not a great time. I didn’t mean you. I’m sure he—

—You should have been a priest. No, a bishop. The speaker of great truths.

I set the tree in the bed, push in hills of soil around its base. Go away. I want all of them to go away. Rachel standing there aware of the freshness of her beauty, of what it allows her; her breasts suggest she has solutions. Every time I meet her I try to like her and fail.

—Why did you marry him?

—For the sex. Why did you marry her? Surely not the money.

I look up at her answer and she pouts her disappointment. I had hoped the question would get rid of her but instead it satisfies her. She must be asked that question often.

—The truth is even more shocking. I married him so as not to be alone. Yippety doo dah.

I press the soil in firmly with the heel of my foot. Already, it is establishing itself, its tiny leaves finding a breeze. She refuses to go.

—An altruistic gesture?

—What?

She nods towards the tree.

—You’re not going to be here to see it grow, are you?

—No.

She reaches out and touches my arm. I can’t bear to think about any of this. She has mouthed words that no one else would dare. This is the one thing I do like about her. We go up to the house and put the kettle on. He must be still up there in her bedroom. The memory of her parents’ divorce when she was six flashes into my mind. He had gone into her bedroom and pleaded with her to stay, to choose him. The air is damp. I wish I was in New York. Wish I was lying on Holfy’s warm body. I make the tea; a truce. Rachel tells me about her life in Stillorgan. Of raising Ursula’s brothers and sister. Her words blur in my mind; they become past tense, her life is decided, resolutely directed. As she talks (it’s about how the children play on her not being their mother) I catch sight of a toy on the kitchen shelf. It’s the little Latvian doll I bought for Ursula the day Holfy and I had lunch in McSorley’s. We came out of the pub a little drunk, and it was raining and we took shelter in the doorway of the store. It’s a little wooden russian doll. It sits beside the tea canister, untouched in its cellophane wrapper.

Our life ended with the completion of the house. The state of the marriage went in inverse proportion to the state of the house. If it were a graph, it would be a clean X. The strange patterning of lie. Ursula explaining about Fibonacci numbers. He loves me, he loves me not. It will always be he loves me, she explains. Nature and numbers colluding. Only if the flower is complete, I say. Yes, she says, it depends on perfection. The smell of her cunt is as vivid as the smell of cut grass. I am a fool.

*   *   *

As I’m walking them both to the car he says that Ursula is in a bad way. He is impressed with his courage to say something as intimate as a feeling his daughter might be having. He manages to sound like a rather perplexed doctor. Rachel moves, on the verge of being the soothsayer. She stops herself. I resist the involuntary urge to nod, to agree with him in any way. He looks down, kicks the tyre of his Volvo.

—You’ll work it out, so, he says.

His nose twitches at the air; gesture made; he’s gone the extra mile; more than many a man. Vomit wanders up the driveway. When she reaches us she arches, looking for a reason to ignore us. Rachel stoops and pets her. Even in her stoop Rachel acts being a woman; she flattens the back of her skirt beneath her buttocks as she bends; flattens the front of it when she stands. Always a woman wanting to be wanted.

—Do you want to know?

—I beg your pardon?

—Do you want to know about Ursula and me? About working it out.

—You don’t have to go into—it’s not our business, the details of your—

—Because if you want to know I’ll tell you. But if you don’t want to know that’s very good too. You can have it either way but you can’t have it both ways.

Her father is exhausted. Even with the sun glinting off his heavy spectacles I can see the struggle to contain his anger. A woman passes by at the end of the drive looking at the house as if it’s a dress she’s considering buying. Gooooey, I yell, waving to her. She hurries on. The old man makes a decision. He’s going to drop the pretence. He puts a hand on my shoulder.

—You do whatever you think is right in the eyes of God. Let’s leave it at that.

He pats me on the shoulder and gets into the car. I am stunned, not by the aggressive hand on the shoulder (I am used to the patronising pats of other men) but by the mention of God. I expect God to appear and tell us all to go to hell. Rachel extends her hand. I want to hurt her, to make sure the old bastard’s day worsens:

—Good luck, whore.

—It’s not about luck, sweetie.

She winks, seats herself with ladylike aplomb in the car, and waves as she closes the door. I can tell he’s asking her what was said. Drive David, she says loudly. The core of us in aloneness. Rachel is nearer than any of us. She knows herself and knows too she can live with him without compromising what matters most in her life. Strange, I never thought of Ursula’s father having a first name. I sit on the garden bench long after they’ve gone. He was a child once, had a mother yelling David at teatime. A lawn is being mowed somewhere, far enough away to sound nothing more that a bee buzzing. The sun, exhausted, has given the last of its heat to the day. Night comes. The bathroom light goes on. Timid tinkling. The pull of the toilet chain and a clang. No flush. Another pull, more violent. Nothing. I rise to go and help her with it. The light goes out. I stop halfway across the lawn. Already back in bed by now.

Separate, it’s what we both want.

I walk down to the village. The phone box is on the corner near Haverty’s. Great craic going on inside. I push the phonecard in and punch the thirteen digits to reach Holfy’s voice. Her machine comes on, more soothing than any drink.

—It’s me. I’m here—

She picks up.

—Here? Where’s here? You’re never here.

—Funny.

—I’m just in. I was stuck in the Holland Tunnel for—

—I love you.

—Yeah?

I smile. The American intonation mixed with her Icelandic gravel charms me even now. I have a pain in my stomach with yearning for her. A group stumble out of the pub, roaring with drink. It’s odd to see people drunk on the street. One of the women is pushing a pram, and yelling at her husband not to piss up against the wall.

—It’s the locals out of the pub. It’s noisy your end too.

—They’re making another movie. I had to walk from Horatio with my equipment.

—Move away from the window. I can’t hear you.

—I am away from the window. I’m in bed.

—In bed?

—On it. Want to do it?

We laugh the giddy, greedy laugh of happy lovers, rush to fill the precious silences to make the most of the call. There’s a violent beating on the roof of the phone box. Rain, come thunderously without warning like the threat of a clenched fist.

—We need rain here. The humidity is worse since you left.

Finally, she asks about the funeral just as the phone pips. I give her the number and wait with an elbow on the cradle, the phone to my ear. Nothing but the fierceness of the rain belting down. The pubs are closed now, the streets deserted; lashed into silence by the sudden storm. Nothing but wetness. A car approaches; the glare of its headlamps catching me full in the face. Blackness. Slosh. Evidently, she can’t get through. I decide to wait two more minutes. Shame whistles through the door and I hum to stop myself from thinking. My father is dead. The rain looks like it will go on forever. I’ll wait until it ends. The phone rings, its loudness echoing.

—I’m sorry. A client called as soon as I hung up. She’s a bitch. I had to take it.

—I want to be back with you. It’s over with her. I’ve told her.

Silence. Tiny international beeps. Tell her it’s over.

—Holfy?

—I’m here.

—I want to be with you. I’ve told her I’m leaving.

I bite my lip on the lie.

—It’s not my call.

—Fuck that. What do you know? We’re at each other’s throats. I can’t help her.

—Don’t leave her for me. Leave her for you.

—Such devastating fucking wisdom.

—I mean it.

—I am leaving her for me.

—I don’t believe that.

I slam the phone down. Her voice goes on in my head. I hope she calls back to hang up on me. The rain has a grudging ceaseless look at it. It’s weakened, running noiselessly down the phone box. The phone doesn’t ring. I rifle my wallet for a phone card but know already I used the last one. It feels like winter has slipped inside my coat. If Ursula is up, she might be worried. Still enough feeling left for worry, perhaps. I tear the cover off the telephone book to use as a hat and set off up the hill. At the top of the first steep rise, where the car stalls, I pause. I look out across the city. A scattering of higgledypiggledy goldenwhite lights that is Dublin. Lights sparkling as if they have nothing better to do than look magical. To the east, nothing but blackness, the scooped neckline of Dublin Bay and its seawaves washing up against the city. A ship far out in the bay. The tremendous noise of the sea slapping against Bray harbour, slapping too into the scoop of Sandycove, into Scotsman’s Bay, into Dun Laoghaire pier where it washed clean over us that day and we kissing near the lighthouse, and across the bay; slapping its old song against Howth. And deep in the middle of its waters, away from the bobbing city, the sea is silent. The sea is nothing but silence. Silence and waiting. So much is hidden.

The light’s on in the kitchen. I go up to the bathroom and dry myself, put on a dressing gown I haven’t worn in almost two years, am surprised by the shortness of the sleeves. She’s sitting there with a glass of brandy and a hot-water bottle cradled to her stomach. I can’t bear the silence, the silence of last day.

—Any better?

—No. But no worse.

She manages to smile at herself, at me, at old quotes.

—You were out?

—Yes. It’s pouring.

I look down at the floor, count the tiles. No lies. No lies anymore.

—I don’t want to be scared walking down the street. I don’t want to lose who I am to them.

She starts to cry; a horrible wail, out of her stomach, out of an untouchable pain. She rocks forward on the chair. I look away from her, at the russian doll. Too much said already. Say no more. Say no more. My hands tremble.

—Walk away. Walk away. You’ll be walking away your whole life. Prick. You’re a prick.

I close the door quietly through her screaming.

—Next time, ring her from here. Prick. You’ll get your death of cold walking up that hill in the rain. What would the cunts of America do, then? You twofaced Prick.

I go into the study. A crash. Another one. Flipflap of the cat door. Another crash. She starts to howl. I lie on the sofa and cover my ears. I leap up and run into her as she is hobbling to me.

—What do you want me to do, walk the street in search of them and kill them? It happened. There’s nothing we can do. It’s a sick place. It’s life.

—It’s not about that. Jesus you’ve got better—worse—at changing the subject. It’s over. We’ve ended this so many times. Just go. You’ll have your cut soon enough. Then go. Just go.

—Fuck the money.

Vomit jumps off the bed and goes out.

*   *   *

I wake to exhaustion. Darkness. For a horrible moment I wonder why the street is so quiet, thinking I am in New York. It’s still night. Not a sound. Not even a gurgle from the water tank. £1,263 for his funeral. More money for Jennings. Great business, have to do nothing but wait. The garden sensor light comes on like a question; a black flash past the window; a light tink on the gutter. The birds are awake, waiting for something to happen. It’s nearly six. I can’t work out if it’s morning or evening. At this time of year it could be either. The sky is untelling. A freight boat out in the bay, small moving lights offering hope like a thick delivery of post. A black flash startles me; I hold my hand up against the expected blow. But it’s just a bird, diving. She lands, pecks amongst the foliage, traps a twig in her beak and rises up. Another tink and teeny scratchings as she finds her place; a flutter, a coo of happiness. There’s a perceptible lightness in the sky but perhaps I’m adjusting to the night. No, it is morning; disc of a sun, no bigger than a penny, slipping palely from the sea. Rising with regal deliberation. It was like this in the beginning. The sun glints and is lost to the hopeless Dublin clouds. I lie down again. We fucked like there was no tomorrow once upon a time. Threw her prosthesis out the window one night because she wouldn’t turn around to me. What fun it all was. No more. No more any of it. I turn over on my side. No more will her lap mold itself into the elbow of my knees. I turn over on my other side towards the back of the sofa and emptiness. No more will I smell her after sleep. In Dorset Street, we had to do it just before eight o’clock in the morning otherwise Mrs. Tweedy upstairs might hear us. Of a weekday morning she’d be up and down to Mass in St. Saviour’s in Dominic Street. Ursula didn’t want her hearing anything and Mr. Tweedy off half the time with Mrs. Arkins from Joseph’s Mansions. We knew by the church bell we had to stop and get up because she’d be on her way back with the Irish Independent and twenty John Player Blue.

She is in the garden, weeding. The electric kettle is hanging by its flex on the trellis. Cutlery is scattered on the lawn, a fork stuck in the grass like a bizarre game. The wooden wine rack caught in the bushes. Vomit is sniffing at the steam iron lying on its wounded side. Wedding presents, all of it. No matter.

—You were on the phone to her last night.

—On the phone to whom?

She nods and keeps weeding.

—I don’t care. Really. Do whatever you like. Out in the open. Hide it. Whatever you like.

—I was out walking.

*   *   *

Her mother is the first to come. She doesn’t bring Mulvany, for once tactful. Ursula and I are sitting in the kitchen with Muriel. The funeral was horribly quiet. No eager handshaking. I get up to put the kettle on. Muriel gets up too. Ursula’s mother looks at me.

—They’ll want sandwiches, she says, pushing the bag across the table. I look at her, at the bag; cheese, tomatoes, ham, mustard, bread, butter, lettuce. I start making sandwiches. Through the open window, my eye catches sight of the kettle hanging out of the fence. Go easy on the butter, Muriel says. You can tell he didn’t pay for it. I concentrate fiercely on the job. This will all be over soon. Holfy: we will never be like this.

The hall door is shoved in, discreetly. Uncle Aidan. He puts his arms around me, the smell of stale cigarette smoke coming off him. Memory of Ruth. I try not to lean against his solid comfort. He holds me longer than I want and I feel myself stabbed inside. I push away from him.

—What are you doing here?

—Acting the fool. Is the tea on?

I look over at Ursula.

—You need a bit of makeup, he says, his voice going soft. Ursula laughs through a torn voice.

—That priest was full of shite. No offence anyone.

He lights up, looks for an ashtray.

—There’s no smoking here, you.

—I’ll go out, so.

He makes a face at Muriel and goes out into the garden.

We pile up the sandwiches. Aidan hisses at the cats, picks up the kitchen utensils and shouts in the window.

—I haven’t ruined your garden installation, have I?

She looks out in the garden and shakes her head, laughing.

—Is it alright then if I bring in the kettle for a cup of tea before we’re all parched?

He always has the right tone.

Nothing left here now. Nothing.

I visit Medbh and Brefini. They have television now, something they never believed in, that he never believed in his Trinity days when he was all up the workers. She mutes the sound on the box. They have another child whose name I don’t know. I hand the single toy to Una.

—You’re to share that with the baby.

—Her name is Hazel.

We all laugh except Una. She stares at me, a vagueness in her eyes, remembering me. She rattles the toy for sound.

—His name is Lamp Chops. He’s on the telly in America.

She looks again at Lamp Chop and fires him in the corner. Little bitch, applerot of her mother’s eye. Brefini cooks a bit of dinner and no one mentions Ursula. They are going to enroll Una in Irish dancing classes. Brefini plays the piano they’ve just bought so he can play and his daughter can dance along to it. I dislike them, a couple I’ve always liked. I drink most of the bottle of wine I brought and tell them funny stories about New York. Brefini offers to drive me home but I insist on a taxi to avoid any meaningful talk that Brefini might have planned. Standing up to go I see a face I know on the television. Medbh turns and looks at the screen and asks me what’s up. It’s Mr. O’Neill, the Taoiseach’s press secretary, fat-faced, hurrying through a door. Have you not been following it, ask Medbh. He’s great entertainment—one of the brown envelope brigade. Look at the scowl on him.

—He did my father out of money. I don’t need a tribunal to tell me who he is.

I tell the taximan to drive through town in the hope something will show me the Dublin I left. Nothing. The party’s over. O’Neill in court. Maybe Da was right, what goes around comes around. Jesus. Becoming the father. Medbh is the great force in the home, Brefini relegated to husband, father, man to be organised. No intimacy between them. How utterly awful to be able to read the life of a couple. Like brother and sister. Maybe it gets that way with all marriages. I tell the taximan to drive out to the old house in Irishtown. A light on and music. I’m tempted to ring the bell, tell them it’s my house—my wife sold it without permission. Just to see their faces.

—Mister, are we sitting here all night?

—Dun Laoghaire.

—You want to go to Dun Laoghaire now?

—No. I want to go to Dun Laoghaire.

—No need to be smart about it.

We drive in silence. He’ll talk. Eventually he’ll talk. I can’t think my own thoughts. I wait for him to talk.

—I got the mother-in-law drunk last night. And she a pioneer.

—Is that right?

—True as God. Injected the oranges with gin. She made a bit of a fruit salad after the dinner. She was hilarious with drink on her.

He lets me out at the pier.

I walk to the lighthouse and look out at the light sweeping the sky. I sit with my legs dangling over the edge. An icy wind blows in. Waves crash and slosh on the granite boulders. Foul sea. Foul wild sea. As good a time as any. The headlamps of a car shine on me.

—Are you alright there, boy?

The Garda Siochána come to pluck me from a wet death.

—Come on, so. Up out of that.

I go home and lie in bed. Imagine Holfy on me. Tonguing me; caressing me out of myself that first night. The shock when she punched me. Holfy knows who I am, what I am. Some women have the instinct of knowing men. Moments shatter. Ursula buying a flash for my father; bringing him up soup she made. His eyes on her; loving the switch to caring daughter-in-law. Knowing nothing of the people around his bed. His left hand is what I remember. Fingers black with nicotine. Lining up butts in the bedside locker in the hospital. The uncontrolled gurgling from his guts. Him falling into a stupor. Feeling death off him as tangibly as I felt it off Ruth. I should have talked to him. I felt sorry for him when I saw how terrified he was of dying. His face full of desertion. It took his fear for me to see him for something other than the misogynistic shit he was. But what use talking. There was never any understanding between us.

A truth that’s told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent. My last image of my life with Ursula is of the cats basking in hypnotic sunshine. Willy is sitting on the bonnet of the car. Vomit is stretched on a branch of the lilac tree. And Ursula is walking back to the hall door. A rather undramatic ending yet an ending nonetheless.