She places a refuse bag on the lid of the wheelie bin and looks up and down the street, the black bins have not been collected for three weeks, a gull is feeding from a black bag left against a wall, its side torn open by an animal, perhaps a fox during the night, its contents spilling onto the path. She shoos at the bird and claps her hands while the gull studies her with a stony look then opens its bill to reveal a dark swallowing gullet. She will go upstairs and run a bath for Molly, she heats a cup of milk and searches the press for cocoa while listening to the foreign news, the rebels have pushed the Defence Forces into retreat, the fighting will soon reach Dublin. She stands by the bedroom door watching Molly propped on a pillow with her knees to her chest reading her phone. It is as though she has become separate from them all, foreign almost, like some other child in some other house, the girl hardly saying a word anymore. Eilish places the cocoa on the dresser and picks up an old teddy, seeing it blinded, its eyes replaced by buttons, she does not remember sewing them on. Drink up your cocoa while it’s still hot, she says, I’ll run a bath for you now. Molly lifts her face from the screen and meets her mother with a look of clear water. Mam, she says, I want you to listen, we need to go, we need to leave before it’s too late. Eilish is looking down at her right foot freeing itself from the shoe, the weight of the body borne by the legs, the weight of the world borne by the ball of each foot, the absorbent metatarsal bones, the soft toes beaten all day long, she wants for Larry to rub her feet and then she’ll take a bath. And what about your grandfather? she says, who is going to mind him, he’s getting worse all the time, and what will your father do if he’s released without warning, you haven’t thought any of this through. Molly reaches for the cocoa, wraps two hands around the mug then takes a sip closing her eyes. People from school have left for Australia, Canada, others have gone to England—— And where would we go, we have nowhere to go, it costs a lot of money to go someplace else. We could go to Áine and wait for Dad to be released, you could apply for an academic visa. Molly, the government will not give Ben a passport, they wouldn’t renew Mark’s passport either, you know all this. She finds herself in the bathroom fitting the plug into the bath, she runs the hot water and tests it with her finger and enjoys the stinging rebuke, returns to Molly with folded arms, begins to smooth the duvet. Look, she says, I haven’t been an academic for a long time, and anyhow, this is not going to go on much longer, we don’t live in some dark corner of the world, you know, the international community will broker a solution, there are talks going on right now in London, this is how it goes, first there are stern warnings and then there are sanctions and when the sanctions don’t bite they bring everyone around the table, they’ll broker a ceasefire any day now. Something in Molly’s look enters freely into her mother’s thoughts, she is roaming around, sifting truth from falsehood, Eilish is forced to look away. Mam, what’s going to happen to Mark? Eilish is turning for the door and stops. Mark? she says, I don’t know, how am I supposed to answer that, he’ll be fine, I just know it, I have to take your grandfather for his scan tomorrow, it’s going to take forever to get him out of the house, you know what he’s like. Mam, I tried his phone, Mark’s phone, the number’s been disconnected. Something has rolled across Eilish’s mouth, she is moving through the room bending to collect the clothes on the floor, she is standing in the bathroom staring at the steaming water, what rises and dissipates, what comes into expression moment by moment yet cannot be known, this feeling always of possibility giving rise to hope. She wants to go into the bedroom and take Molly’s hands and say everything is going to be fine, she remains before the wicker basket and drops the clothes and feels herself falling from her arms, this feeling they are all falling towards something that cannot be defined by anything she has known in her life.
She knows the room beyond the door, the efficient, bird-like movements of the consultant, her father seated beside her smoothing the creases from his trousers. She wants to run her knuckles down the white-stubbled cheek, to take his hand but doesn’t, twice now he has said he would rather be at home. She reads the ticker on the state TV news, the headlines speak of ordinary things, a world that belongs to the past or to a present that lies in strange parallel, in one world there are announcements about new appointments and budget cuts, in another there are rumours of a mass killing by government forces, civilians rounded up and executed, the receptionist behind the glass sips at tea from a takeaway cup. Dad, she says, I want you to come and live with us until this is all over, I don’t want you to be on your own, it will be good for the children too. I’m perfectly happy where I am, he says, I’ve been living on my own since your mother died, next thing I know you and your sister will have sold the house from under me, I know what the two of you are like. Dad, what are you talking about, who’s going to buy a house right now with so many people leaving the country, you can take the dog with you, we can put a kennel out back—— I just told you, I’m managing fine as it is, I have supplies, if I need anything I’ll drop into Mrs Doyle’s on my walk with Spencer. Dad, Mrs Doyle’s shop has been gone for at least twenty years. She stands from the chair looking down at him. I need a coffee, she says, I saw a drinks machine in a corridor back there, do you want some tea? What time do we get back? he says, I told you I don’t like the bus. She is watching the painting behind Simon’s head as he scowls at her, the sudden rupture of peonies into flower. Dad, I asked if you want some tea. Simon shakes his head as she squats down to the sleeping child in the buggy, pressing the back of her hand to the puffed red cheek, the jaw tucked under the upper lip. I’ll be gone just a moment, she says, take his hand if he wakes up. The red door swishes closed behind her as she walks the long corridor, the drinks machine is not where she thought it was, she stops by the security desk and asks for directions, she had it all wrong, the machine is close to the hospital entrance. She is standing before the machine searching for coins when her phone begins to ring. Yes, she says, this is Mrs Stack, the female voice introducing herself as somebody from Bailey’s school, she doesn’t catch the name, a secretary no doubt. Mrs Stack, your son has been absent from school on an irregular basis these past two weeks, we put a letter in his bag for you to sign and he gave it back with what looks like a forged signature. A man standing behind her begins to huff, she turns and mouths an apology and steps away from the machine. I’m sorry, she says, this is news to me, I had been dropping him off to school but of late he’s been taking the bus, I will find out tonight what is going on. Mrs Stack, there was an incident at the school last week involving your son. An incident, what incident, please, call me Eilish. It occurred in the classroom, your son was in clear violation of the school’s speech and harassment policy. I’m so sorry to hear this, what did he do? Your son was engaged in inappropriately directed laughter and—— I’m sorry, I don’t understand what that means. It means, Mrs Stack, that Bailey was mocking the teacher, disrupting the class, this kind of behaviour goes against the school charter. Yes, of course, I understand, though I find that strange, Bailey is very fond of Mrs Egan, she doesn’t strike me as someone to put up with any nonsense. Mrs Egan is no longer teaching at the school, Mrs Stack, she was placed on extended leave in March, I am handling all principal duties for now. Eilish is silent a moment watching Mrs Egan being escorted from the classroom, trying to form a picture of the speaker on the phone, sensing some vague outline of the woman, a smallish mouth and pinching face. I’m sorry, she says, I didn’t know about Mrs Egan, Bailey didn’t say, I didn’t catch your name by the way when you introduced yourself at the start of the call. My name, Mrs Stack, is Ruth Nolan—— Please, call me Eilish, so who is Bailey’s teacher now? I am teaching Mrs Egan’s class. Oh, so you are the teacher he laughed at. Unfortunately, yes. So why did he laugh at you? I want you to understand, Mrs Stack, that his laughter was inappropriate and goes—— Yes, yes, I know, but I have to ask, were you a teacher for long, Miss Nolan, before the party put you in charge of the school? I don’t see what this has to do with anything. If my son was laughing aloud then I’m sure he saw something to laugh at, as though that were a crime, for goodness’ sake, I’ll speak to him when he gets home about the truancy, but for now, if you don’t mind, I have to go. Her hand is shaking as she coins the drinks machine, she folds her arms and watches the machine growl coffee, she pays again and selects tea for her father, he said he didn’t want tea, he’ll have some tea anyhow. Seeing her son’s face before her as she walks the corridors craving a cigarette, she has taken a wrong turn, the sign for the memory clinic is the other way. When she shoulders through the red door she sees Ben alone in the buggy, Simon is not in the waiting room. She knocks on the reception glass and asks if her father has been called inside, perhaps he went to the toilet? she says. She places the hot drinks down on the seat and unlocks the buggy and wheels it backwards through the doors. She leans into the men’s room and calls inside, speaks with a security guard by the hospital entrance, the man speaks into his radio, a second security guard arrives and asks for a description of her father, as she speaks she is making excuses for Simon, look, he probably just went for a wander and got lost, he might find his way back. When she finds him he is in the canteen seated under the television before a sandwich. He picks up a stainless steel jug and pours milk. She glides into the seat across from him and places her hands on the table and looks into his eyes while he leans back and puzzles at her. So you decided to have some lunch, she says. I’m having a quick bite to eat while your mother sees the consultant, he says, you should get yourself a sandwich while we’re waiting. He is smiling now and for an instant she is a child, watching him eat, the pink tongue lolloping an escaping prawn, a smear of mayonnaise on the corner of his mouth. He is looking for a paper napkin when she hands him one and he wipes his mouth then reaches out and touches her cheek. Don’t worry, he says, everything is going to be alright. She watches his face trying to return the smile, she watches his hands, like sand the wrinkled skin as though the tide had gone out past his knuckles.
Another decree is announced on the news, the listening to or reading of any foreign media has been prohibited, news channels from abroad will be blocked and an internet blackout starts from today. That’s ridiculous, Bailey says, how can they just turn it off like that? I don’t know, love, they can do what they like, they want to control the flow of information, they don’t want us to know what’s going on. So what am I going to do now, how am I supposed to live? You need to get ready for school, I’m coming with you on the bus, your jumper is on the chair, the internet might not come back for a while. Bailey is leaning into the fridge. There’s no milk for my cereal, he says, is there a ban on that as well? There was plenty of milk there yesterday, you’re the one drinking it all the time. In the evening she takes the stepladder and stares blind into the attic, pulls herself up, the narrow beam of her torch searching for an overhead light, there appears to be none. She will have to have a word with Larry, chief bearer of items up and down, the attic is your concern, you can’t expect me to climb up here with only a torch when you’re not around. The torchlight shows where Mark shoved the Christmas tree and the boxed decorations. What a mess he has made amidst the refuse bags full of old clothes, the children’s toys in boxes, suitcases full of oddments and clutter she was afraid to throw out. She pulls at an old suitcase and unfastens the clip realising she does not want to see in, looking in she meets what she does not want to see and shuts it, stands motionless amidst the hanging smell of dust. This feeling the attic does not belong to the house but exists in its own right, an anteroom of shadow and disorder as though the place were the house of memory itself, seeing before her the remnants of their younger selves, the self folded, packed into boxes, bagged and discarded, lost in the disarray of vanished and forgotten other selves, the dust laying itself down upon the years of their lives, the years of their lives slowly turning to dust, what will remain and how little can be known about who we were, in the closing of an eye we will all be gone. It is then she is met with the feeling that Larry is beside her, she turns to look and meets her grief, she is balling her hands and shaking them, telling herself over and over that what Carole said cannot be true, nobody knows what is true anymore, telling herself that what she feels isn’t grief, it has to be something else, grievance is grief dressed in the clothes of hope. She must escape down the hatch into daylight, she opens the suitcase taking out what she saw, a leather bracelet belonging to Larry. She is standing very still sensing the bracelet with her fingertips, seeking who they both were, Molly is calling out from the base of the stepladder and she remembers what it was she came up for, the portable radio is in an old plastic bag, she hands it down through the hatch. She takes the radio to the kitchen table and wipes it with a cloth, Molly watching behind her. What are you doing with that thing? she says. I want to hear the news, the real news on the foreign service, not the lies we are told here. No, not the radio, that thing on your wrist. Oh, it used to belong to your father. She touches the bracelet and pulls the aerial to its length and turns on the radio, she cannot believe the batteries still work, the room filling with warm static as she dials through the long-wave frequency, a strange electric pinging descends into a swish that belongs to her childhood, to distant cities sounding at night in alien tongue. Molly fingers the chrome edge of the radio. I suppose we’re going back in time now, she says, soon we’ll all be riding bicycles, washing our clothes by hand and speaking of having tea when we mean dinner, we’ll no longer know who we are, I can’t conceive of myself as a person without the internet. There is light in Molly’s eyes, a glimmer of happiness hiding in her heart. Eilish slides the leather bracelet from her wrist and holds it out to her. He’ll want you to have it, she says, just don’t tell your brother, where is he anyhow, it’s almost curfew, he knows full well he’s been grounded. I don’t know, he went out soon as you went to the attic, I told him not to go but he warned me not to tell you. She finds herself watching by the front window, she tries to call Bailey again but he doesn’t answer. At seven o’clock she walks out onto the street watching a white van go past, she waits a moment watching the road and then sleeves her coat and calls out to Molly. I’ll be back in a few minutes, ring me if he gets back while I’m out. She walks with her hands tensed listening for any approaching cars, the roads silenced as though by a switch, whispering to herself the words she will say in case she is stopped by a patrol, I’m sorry but my youngster didn’t come home on time, he’s only twelve, I’m just taking a look around the block. Bailey is not in any of the usual places, the wall by the corner, the playground near the school, she is returning home when she sees him kicking a ball off the kerb, he is chatting with some kid she doesn’t know, he waves goodbye then dribbles the ball and lifts his eyes absently before her. She cannot speak her fear, this fear that blackens like ink the blood and misshapes the mouth into rage, seeing the soured look before her. So what if I’m late? he says, I’m home now, aren’t I, don’t be an old fussbag.
The queue outside the supermarket carries around the corner to the bottle bank, two soldiers are waving people through in groups of three or four at a time, the queue shuffles forward a little then stops. She parks the buggy and frees a trolley, tries to place Ben in the seat but he bucks and kicks his legs as though she has just pulled him feral out of a hole, he screams so much she lets him stand inside. A woman pulling on a trolley beside her nods at Ben with a smile. He’d buy and sell you in an instant, she says. Eilish returns the smile without looking at her face, scowls at her son bouncing up and down in delight. She should have made a shopping list, people are panic buying but she cannot think what she needs most, everybody wants the same things, bread and pasta and rice, all the bottled water is gone. She stops before the tinned food section and sees the stocks are low, she is speaking to Ben who is seated now, playing with the contents of the trolley. We need powdered milk for you and condensed milk for the rest of us in case the ordinary milk runs out, you just don’t know what’s going to happen, it probably doesn’t matter anyhow, you stock up on one thing and it’s always another that runs out. She is standing at the deli counter when she sees a man in shirt and tie moving sidewards through an aisle nosing a clipboard. Excuse me, she says, are you the manager? She follows him to an office door painted the same off-white as the wall, she wouldn’t even have noticed the door but for the fact he has opened it and gone through. He emerges again fixing a sheet of paper to the clipboard. So, he says, you want to apply for a position at the store, did you bring a CV? No, she says, I just saw the ad on the noticeboard outside, part-time work would suit me right now, though I haven’t worked in food retail before. OK, the man says, let me take your details and we can get back to you, soon as I can get this damned pen to work, what did you work in yourself? She waits a moment while a discouraged voice calls out over the intercom for a teller, the music resumes that is not music at all but a pleasant, smearing noise. I have been in full-time employment for almost twenty years, she says, I was in senior management in biotech until now, I am a molecular biologist by training, I have a PhD in cellular and molecular biology, but there’s not much work the way things are right now. The man has stopped scoring the pen and meets her with a look that makes her feel like a fool, she thinks she is overdressed. The manager turns his eyes towards Ben who is revving his knees up and down in the trolley, he rubs at a half-grown moustache and tries to smile but gives up. Well, OK, he says, let me just write your name and number down, it’s only part-time work stacking shelves in the evenings, we’ve had a few others applying for the job, quite a few actually, but we’ll get back to you anyhow. She will not remember this face, already it belongs to the plain and sorry faces that have looked away, seeing how this face has already been told, seeing how all faces have been told, this face that speaks of all creation, the terrible energy of the stars, the universe smashed to dust and made over again and again in deranged creation. She lifts her son and stuffs him into the trolley seat and does not give a damn for his shrieks as she fills the trolley then joins the long queue by the checkout, staring at the contents of the trolley, the two-month supply of tinned food, baby milk, toilet roll and detergent, it is then she is struck with the feeling that what is occurring is implausible, she wants to laugh out loud, watching the moist, hairy neck of the fattish man before her nudging a trolley filled with beer and toilet roll, watching the people in line around her and despising what she sees, the common run of mankind, what are they all but animals in docile servitude to the needs of the body, tribe and state. When she steps outside past the soldiers Ben is licking a stick of cheese, she is afraid to take him out of the seat and put him in the car, she cannot remember where she parked the Touran. She walks the length of the car park then circles back and sees the buggy in the trolley bay. You stupid fool, she says, what were you thinking, how are you going to get all this home? For a moment she stands watching the shopping and then she folds the buggy and puts it in the trolley and begins with it towards the exit, stepping out onto the path along the main road, recalling what she forgot to buy, washing up liquid, treats for the kids, the crackers Simon likes, the trolley wheels catch on the pavement and then one of the wheels begins to drag. She kicks at the wheel and looks at her watch then begins to walk home, the shadows beginning to define the edges of the afternoon.
She wakes to the sound of war come like some visiting god, a hammering fury that brings out a hammering in her heart, she cannot find the light switch, her hand padding blindly until she finds it fallen behind the bedside table. There is nothing to see outside but a lone gull pearled in blue light on a chimney top, a gauze of fine rain. Every dog in the area is baying at the noise as she pulls the window closed, looking down at Ben, the puckish smile on the sleeping face, the small fists surrendered above his head. She cannot find her dressing gown and unhooks Larry’s from behind the door, her hand is caught in the sleeve and cannot push through. She moves through the house trying to see ahead, the world branching into impossibility, the dread thing visible in the growing light from the kitchen window, two columns of dark smoke adrift over the south suburbs, a helicopter gunship nearby, she cannot guess how far, perhaps three or four kilometres away. She turns on the radio awaiting the news and steps outside to the washing line, watching the trees in roseate light and wondering what it is they can know, perhaps it is true what they say, how the trees sense the air and speak their terror through the ground, letting other trees know that peril has come, what sounds in the sky like some all-consuming fire chewing wood in its mouth. She drops the clothes in the basket and looks down at her hands and does not know why she remains so calm, another door has been opened, she can see this now, it is as though she were looking out upon something she has been waiting for all her life, an atavism awakened in the blood, thinking, how many people across how many lifetimes have watched upon war bearing down on their home, watching and waiting for fate to come, entering into silent negotiation, whispering and then pleading, the mind anticipating all outcomes but for the spectre that cannot be directly looked at. The electricity stutters and the lights grow dim and a fluttering sickness passes through her belly. The worm is turning, Bailey says, and she watches his face thinking he is too tall for his age, in the past few weeks he has bolted and stands taller than Molly, a shadow growing over his lip. Molly’s eyes are fixed upon her, they are waiting for her to declare something, she does not know what to say. We need to get ready in case the power goes, she says, you guys need to eat breakfast and get ready for school. School? Bailey says, I’ll eat breakfast but I’m not going to school, there’s no way the schools will be open anyhow with all this going on, I just don’t see the point. She places a box of breakfast cereal on the table and turns on the state television news. The government has issued a series of new decrees, all schools and third-level institutions have been closed with immediate effect, citizens have been ordered to stay at home except to buy food or medicine or to provide care to the elderly or sick. When she turns around, Bailey is standing behind with his hands on his hips. See, he says, I told you the schools would be closed. Wipe that smile off your face, she says, I want you to go around the house and find whatever batteries we have, gather together the candles. She has errands to run, she needs cigarettes and alcohol, she must get her boots reheeled, post some medical forms for her father. She rings Simon and gets through on the fourth call. The dog has gone berserk, he says, he thinks it’s Halloween outside. Dad, she says, did you see the news, is everything alright? He is shouting again at the dog. Sorry, he says, I didn’t hear what you said. Never mind, she says, I can see dark smoke from here. There’s somebody knocking on the door, he says, hold on a moment—— She hears the clink of the phone put to rest on the console, the opening and closing of the front door, Simon bellowing again at the dog. There’s nobody there, he says, bloody messers outside. Dad, I want you to stay inside, please don’t take Spencer out for a walk, do you hear? The line goes silent and she can hear the dog growling as though sanctioned to speak for her father. I need topsoil for the garden, Simon says, can we go later this week in the car? When she hangs up the phone she does not move but stares at the base of her thumb where she has scored a series of erratic moons with her thumbnail. She goes upstairs and changes into jeans and a black sweater and brings the baby down and slides him into the highchair. I’m going to nip out to the corner shop as soon as Ben is fed, she says, I need money from the ATM, we need some other bits and pieces. Molly’s face aghast before her. What’s wrong? Eilish says. Leave Ben here, she says, you don’t need to bring him. I told you, love, it’s safe for now outside, anyhow, I’m only going around the corner. She watches Bailey go to the fridge and take a look inside. Make sure you get some more milk, he says, we’re almost out again.
She walks listening to the sky, the unknown muddled with the familiar, the periodic release of gunfire and a percussive booming that leaves behind a strange and shattered silence. Only an odd car on the road or passer-by, the brake cable on the buggy is causing the wheel to click and she wonders if she’ll be able to get it fixed, she has not noticed the rain has ceased until she is standing before the ATM and lowers her umbrella, the machine is not even out of order but out of power, the screen cracked as though struck by a brick. Across the street a man is shading his eyes as he watches the sky, three helicopter gunships moving southwards like a slowly fragmenting arrowhead. The saddler’s is closed and the shutters are down on the fruit and veg shop where somebody has scrawled in blue paint HiSTOrY iS THE LAW OF FOrCE, a fist drawn beside it. She follows the road seeking another ATM, recalling something her sister said, the self-satisfied voice on the phone, history is a silent record of people who did not know when to leave, the statement is obviously false, she is telling this to Larry, seeing him seated across the kitchen table trying to hide his I’m-not-listening face while playing with his phone. History is a silent record of people who could not leave, it is a record of those who did not have a choice, you cannot leave when you have nowhere to go and have not the means to go there, you cannot leave when your children cannot get a passport, cannot go when your feet are rooted in the earth and to leave means tearing off your feet. The ATM at the bottom of the road shows a letterbox of broken light on the screen, a sign on the window of the corner shop in sharpie pen says, No Dairy, No Bread, a sad face drawn beside it. The shelves inside are half empty, she grabs some bruised bananas, a roll of bin bags and batteries, selects two chocolate bars and points to the cigarettes, regards the items before her with a frown when the teller tots them up. I’m sorry, she says, how much did you say the cigarettes are? The teller opens his hands and takes a sleepy look towards the door. What am I to do? he says, everything is at a premium, see how you get on someplace else. Her rage has clouded all before her, she places the bin bags down on yesterday’s newspaper and cannot choose between the batteries and the chocolate, she puts the batteries to the side and says how much for the chocolate and the bin bags without the cigarettes? She slides the change from her hand and the words fly from her mouth and carry her to the door. You’re going to look like a right dickhead when this is all over, everyone will know what you are.
Ben is whining to be free of the buggy when she turns onto St Laurence Street and sees a heavy military truck blocking the road, government soldiers in full combat gear, other soldiers with open jackets and black T-shirts piling bags of cement into a checkpoint fifty metres or so from the house. A soldier standing at the corner bends to his knee and readies his weapon while another begins towards her with a flat, gloved hand asking her to stop. She has ceased to breathe as though the gloved hand were upon her throat, she wants to make a signal to say that nothing is untoward but is afraid to move her hands. I’m sorry, she says, I live on this street, I’m trying to get home. The soldier circles his hand in the air as though instructing a car to turn around. This street is closed for now, he says, no pedestrians are allowed. For an instant she is met with some sense of expansion as she watches the soldier’s face, the angry brow aslant over the green eyes, the weaponed body that speaks of absolute force, and yet what she sees in the soldier’s eyes is a skite of uncertainty, she is speaking with a boy no older than her son. Look, she says, I live at number 47, I have a child to take home for his lunch. She finds herself pushing the buggy towards the soldier and meets a look of panic in his eyes, he speaks quickly into an earpiece radio while a second soldier calls for her to stop, an officer in a dark beret stepping crisply towards them. I’m sorry, she says, I just want to go home, my house is there. The officer does not follow her pointing finger but asks for her ID. Let me just get it from my purse, she says, the purse is in my bag, I have to take it down off my shoulder. Two civilians are helping to build the checkpoint and she knows one of them, an odd-jobs man from the flats nearby, an ex-junkie with hardly a tooth in his mouth, she cannot recall his name, last year Larry gave him twenty quid to clean the gutters. She is told to place the bag on the street and hold it open, her hands shaking as she unzips her purse and takes out her ID, the officer’s eyes tracking from her face to the child’s. This is a war zone, he says, my men are under strict orders to shoot, stay at home until further notice. Yes, of course, she says, bowing her head, she begins to walk quickly away and sees a cement bag fall off the truck, it splits on the ground and the breeze takes hold of the dust and disperses it around the soldiers as though a dervish had come among them from some foreign war with its eyes closed and its arms held out.
War shapes itself around them, gunfire that sounds like pneumatic drilling, shelling that drums the earth and sends shudders into the house, the windows and the wooden floors rattling while Bailey watches the TV with the volume turned up, the radio beside her reporting the movements of the rebels, the areas within the south city under siege. It’s such a beautiful day outside, she says, how many days a year do we get like this? There should be ice-cream lemonade in the garden, Ben plashing in the paddling pool, Molly and Bailey wrestling over the hammock. Instead she is looking out upon a broken colonnade of oil-dark smoke rising from multiple sites, the June heat trapped in the house as she keeps the windows and French doors closed, she will only open the windows at night. She tries again to ring her father but the networks are down and his landline makes a disconnected tone, counting the days since they last spoke, seeing him taking the dog for a walk into who knows what, she is standing at the door to Molly’s room. The girl will not get out of bed, she picks at her food and will not look at her mother. Come on, Eilish says, please, I need you to snap out of this, the fighting will soon come to a stop. She pulls the girl into a slack embrace then lets her go, watching her as though her mind can be seen, this mind that has drifted slowly into absence. The electricity begins to stutter and then an outage dissolves in an instant the constant of electrical hum to an elemental quiet, the piercing and steady irruptions of war entering freely into thought. She tells herself it is the sound of pebbles rolling on a tin roof, the sound of a nail being hammered home, the exhaust of an old car giving out, the house alarms in the area ringing until one by one they fall silent. Bailey goes upstairs and sits with Molly on her bed watching a movie on a laptop with a pair of earbuds shared between them while Eilish tries to read a novel downstairs, a sudden noise outside sends her upstairs holding the book in her hand, she is standing in the bathroom and flushes the toilet without having used it, she cannot remember where she placed the book. In the afternoon she sits by the bedroom window waiting for a detailed report on the BBC while Ben naps in the cot. The news comes on and she turns it off shaking with rage, thinking, this is not the news, this is not the news at all, the news is the civilian watching the soldier outside her home as he lolls on a sandbag playing with his phone, the news is the assault rifle resting against the sandbag, it is the soldier’s laughing mouth, it is the fast-food wrappers and coffee cups strewn about the asphalt, it is the retired couple from up the street who have decided that they want to go, the news is their quarrel in the driveway, it is the woman flapping her hands about what cannot be taken in the car, it is the husband who shuts his face to his wife, it is the black bag the woman holds in her arms like a child, it is what is inside the bag, the news is the entire contents of the car, it is the boot the man has to sit closed, the news is the driveway gated for the last time, the house dark at night, it is the traffic light stuck on red for a week before it goes dark, it is the car that will not be allowed through the checkpoint, the news is the shrinking air on the streets, it is the shuttered shops, the windows ply-boarded, it is the hoarse dogs woofing throughout the night, it is the eldest son who does not call anymore because it’s too risky to call and nobody knows if he is dead or alive. She watches an army officer riding down the street on a nodding black horse, the build of the thing, she thinks it is a Friesian sport horse, the rider’s hands quiet on his lap, his dark boots gleaming to the knee. How he moves within some serene and regal bearing as though he were but an emissary of the law of force, the soldiers at the checkpoint come to standing and the officer does not dismount but waves his crop as though casting incantations into the air. She watches the horse rotate an ear without turning its head, it is listening it seems to something beyond the uneasy stillness, the whisperings of a tall conifer, the radiation from the sun upon its leaves, it can hear the death that awaits with open arms all over the city, the death that waits to be let drop from the sky. Of a sudden the house begins to hum and the bedside light has come on, Bailey shouting with joy downstairs, the TV is back on in the living room. For a moment she is met with the feeling there is no war but some military exercise outside on the street, the horse committing a smooth turnabout, the rider dressed not for combat but for an equestrian outing it seems, the brown leather band across the chest and the emerald green tie, the hooves clicking a military tattoo on the asphalt. A smiling buddha in a T-shirt leads a cooking demonstration downstairs on the TV, the microwave clock blinking neon-green, the fridge humming a low and steady tune of the always-was. So much to do now that the electricity has returned, she stuffs laundry into the washing machine and selects a short cycle and recharges the laptops and phones and reheats rice and a casserole, trying again to reach her father, seeing him eating his dinner cold, reading by candlelight, shouting at the dog. She calls Bailey to the table and spoons casserole into a bowl and brings it upstairs to Molly who won’t come down, the electricity stutters and is gone again as she reaches the landing. She smacks the bowl down on the bedside table and stares at the face that will not look at her, pulls a headphone bud free, pulls her into sitting by the arm and puts the bowl in her lap. Look, she says, I’ve brought you your dinner, I’m not even going to ask that you eat with us downstairs but please make some attempt at eating this while it’s still hot. She goes downstairs and Bailey watches her across the table while Ben smacks the food tray and lets fly the spoon. What are we going to do about Molly? Bailey says. I don’t know, she says, I just don’t know, can you get me a fresh spoon from the drawer, look, your sister is unwell, I think she’s depressed, it is very hard to get an appointment right now. Bailey makes a thinking pout with his mouth. She needs to spit it out, he says, that’s what she’s got to do and then everything will be alright. Spit what out, can you get me a spoon? The worm, he says, I’m talking about the worm.
This airless heat and how it gums the sleeping mind and sticks to dream, she is outside in her nightdress and bare feet, she must tell the soldiers about her son, standing before the horse agleam in the true and deepest colours of night, the animal’s heat passing into her hand, knowing this smell not of the horse but of the man, the voice that belongs to the detective inspector, John Stamp, the eyes watching down at her. You have come to me for the truth, he says, let me show you something of that. He holds in his hand a mirror and what she sees is a face that is not her own but that of some old hag, John Stamp withdrawing the glass and when she looks again there is nothing in his hand. It is impossible to see the true self, he says, you can only see what you are not or what you want to be—— The horse gently drifting backwards, it lifts its head and snickers at some knocking noise behind it. The real is always before you but you do not see, perhaps this is not even a choice, to see the real would be to deepen reality to a depth in which you could not live, if only you could wake up—— The horse is bowing, moving away, I forgot to dress, she says, looking down at her feet, I’m cold, I need to go into the house—— Bailey is standing at her bedroom door yelling for her to wake. I am awake, she shouts, hearing a whistle and then a violent vibration as though something had burrowed by explosion into the earth. It’s getting closer all the time, Bailey says. She is afraid to look out the window, tells Bailey to stand by the door. The street in early light, the checkpoint empty but for a youth who stands alone at the junction and looks as though he is awaiting command to place his weapon down and go to school, a Toyota Land Cruiser slowing past. It stops at the checkpoint and two heavily armed soldiers step out leaving the doors open and call towards the youth. Bailey is sitting on his father’s side of the bed rooting through the bedside drawer. What’s this? he says, holding up something she can’t see. Put that back will you, she says, come on, we need to get this mattress downstairs. She strips the duvet and sheet off the bed and is talking quietly with Larry as they bend the mattress out the door onto the staircase, the trouble we had getting this into the room and the fun we had after, she is pulling the mattress down the stairs but Bailey cannot bend it around the newel, he has just got it through when the mattress asserts itself straight again and smacks a picture off the wall, the photo tumbling past her until it strikes the hallway floor. She is bracing against the weight of the mattress, Bailey is pushing too hard or not holding on at all, slow down will you, she says, you are going to knock me down the stairs. I’m not doing anything, he says, the mattress has a mind of its own. They walk the mattress into the living room and place it against the front window, a pall of dark smoke winding slowly over the rooftops, the soldiers and the Land Cruiser are gone. What do you think? Bailey says. I think it best if we live downstairs for a while, she says, the fighting might not come too close but it’s probably best if we sleep down here. Her phone is ringing upstairs and she runs to get it. Dad, she says, I’m so glad you got through, I’ve been trying to ring you for ages, we’ve had no electricity for days, is everything alright where you are? I was just in the garden, he says, there’s an infestation of English ivy coming from next door, he’s doing it on purpose, you know, I cut it back last year but it’s coming in over the walls and the shed roof, it’s going to strangle everything I planted, I’ve called over and knocked on his door but he won’t answer, tell me, I can’t find the long-handed shears, I suppose you took them without asking. She is holding her breath trying to summon the face she has known all her life, seeing instead the broken likeness of an image on water. Dad, she says, I’ve been so worried, I don’t know when I can get across to you. Don’t worry about me, he says, I’ll be fine. Oh, she says, I’ve just remembered, I think I have them in the shed. Have what in the shed? The shears, you gave them to me when I was cutting back the fuchsia, look, are you sure everything is alright, do you have enough food, is there anything you need right now? When she hangs up the phone, she is standing before the photo lying face down on the floor. She picks it up and sees Mark as a child with his thumbs up emerging from the mouth of a waterslide, the wooden frame loose though the glass is still intact, she cannot recall where the photo is from. Saint-Jean-de-Monts, she says aloud to herself. What was that? Bailey says from the living room. What was what? she says, looking at his face and seeing Mark, there is a likeness there after all.
A quick cold shower, the last perhaps for days, she calls for Molly to go downstairs then locks the door, stands before the water with gritted teeth then steps in. Her hair is coming loose in her hands as though she were dreaming it. It washes by her feet like some dark aquatic plant and when she steps out of the shower she fishes it out and flushes it down the toilet. The sudden exchange of heavy weapons fire and she goes to the window and tries to see out, it is impossible to know how far away it is, the warm blue sky over the trees, how many days have passed since Molly last tied a ribbon, it must be two weeks. She finds herself standing before Molly with her hands on her hips. I asked you please to go downstairs, she says. Molly watching her strange-faced and then she begins to shout, we’re going to die, we’re going to die, Eilish yanking her by the hand, she pulls her out of bed, telling her enough is enough, walks her into the bathroom and runs the shower and undresses her, puts her under the water without regard for the cold, watching the slight, white body make no resistance but for the lifting of an arm to cover her breasts. You are not going to die, Eilish says, I just want you to go downstairs, the fighting is not going to come near the house. Eilish steps into the shower and begins to wash Molly in hurried strokes with the flannel, she bends to her knees to wash the girl’s feet, Molly is shivering, Eilish still wearing her clothes, her knees are sodden, the arms of her blouse wet through. You have to snap out of this, she says, who is it you want your father to meet when he comes through the door, the daughter he left behind or a ghost? She looks up towards Molly and sees a smiling, vacant look. But Daddy isn’t coming back, Molly says, he isn’t coming back because he’s dead, didn’t you know, did they not tell you he is dead, I wonder why. The hand stopped upon the body, the breath caught in the throat, the flannel falls from her hand as she hinges slowly to standing. She has taken Molly’s chin between finger and thumb and lifts her face the better to see into the eyes that swivel in refusal to look at her. Don’t you ever say that again, she says, don’t you ever even think such words, your father is not dead because nobody said so, I don’t know what you might have heard but none of it is true, right now there is no truth, you don’t know and nobody knows, the truth of anything cannot be known. What has been stored in the body, what has been locked in the heart gives release through Molly’s mouth into sobbing, her hands squeezing the air, Eilish pulling her into a hug, whispering to her, stroking the back of her head. We have entered into a tunnel and there is no going back, she says, we just need to keep going and going until we reach the light on the other side. She lathers Molly’s hair, softly palpating the skull, sensing the mind through her fingers, what it is she must think about life, this mind that was so full of the world but now that world has gone, the world poured from her eyes. She dries Molly with a yellow towel then wraps it around her and sits her on the chair. What is it you used to say to me about hockey, you never lose, you either learn or win, we are learning now don’t you think, I need you to come back to me, I need you more than ever. Molly lifts her face but the face is empty and unguarded as though all the pain had gone and there is only looking now, looking out from an uninhabited body, the voice whispering. Why do I feel this way if he’s not dead? she says, why do I feel it in my chest all day, it’s there when I’m asleep, it’s there when I wake in the middle of the night, I feel as though something’s dying inside me, that’s what it is, I’m afraid that what’s dying inside me is the part of Daddy I hold in my heart, that’s what makes me so afraid, I want so very much to keep him in my heart but I don’t know how. Eilish moves to take Molly’s hands but Molly puts up her hands to stop her. I dreamt the other night he came back, she says, it was nine o’clock in the evening and he just came through the door and kicked off his boots and put his slippers on, he was at work all along and couldn’t find his phone, it was as simple as that, he took his dinner and sat down beside me on the couch and put his arm around me and then I woke up. Eilish is stroking Molly’s hand, watching the eyes wide open and stricken with the heart’s burden, seeing the heart flutter in the pit of her throat. Your father is with you all the time, she says, even while he’s gone, that is the meaning of the dream, your father came home to remind you that he is always here with you because your father is always alive in your heart, he is here with you now with his arm around you, and he will always be here because the love we are given when we are loved as a child is stored forever inside us, and your father has loved you so very much, his love for you cannot be taken away nor erased, please don’t ask me to explain this, you just need to believe it is true because it is so, it is a law of the human heart.
She wakes into living room darkness unsure if she has slept at all, the time on her phone says twenty past one, Molly cradled in her arm, Bailey asleep on a mattress beside them, the cot pushed to the wall. For how many days the shelling and gunfire has continued, the fighting stopped for the night but her body does not believe the silence, a sensory prickling in her nerves, the banging deep in her skull. She turns to Molly inhaling from her hair the fading scent of jasmine, sensing the mind at peace beneath the sleeping breath, to reach in with her hand and pull the terror out by the root, to caress the mind back to its old shape. Something has winged from the dark of her mind and she holds very still, then turns from Molly, gets up and goes into the kitchen. The sky in astronomical twilight, watching the trees rooted in the earth, thinking, there will be goodness again, there will be high and happy voices, the sound of feet seeking for slippers and the clicking of bicycle wheels through the porch. She watches a flare search the night sky like some bioluminescent fish drifting absently through an ocean dark and is met again with the thought she left behind in the other room, it has followed her into the kitchen, it is standing before her now and she doesn’t want to hear, the thought that says it is her son who is helping to bring upon them this destruction, the thought that says her son cannot return until the destruction is done. When she wakes again it is to a storm of heavy weapons fire, the baby standing in the cot calling out mama, she holds him in her arms shushing him, rocks him back and forth on her knees, the involuntary pinching of her shoulder blades every time a blast sounds nearby, the children like drugged sleepers to the noise. The dawn reaches into the house through the kitchen window, the light falling over the flung shapes of the children asleep on the floor where the coffee table used to be, the table pushed against the wall with the children’s schoolbooks and the cups and plates from last night’s dinner on top of it. Male voices call out to each other in the lull between gunfire, for a moment she imagines Sunday morning football, overweight men shouting for a pass of the ball, another voice starts up and something catches at the base of her throat as she listens to the flat, unceasing monotone of a government soldier on a megaphone. Everybody in the area can hear, he could be a manager at the supermarket announcing cost reductions at the meat counter. We are sending someone to find you, when we find you we will know who you are, when we know who you are we will identify your families and then we will go get them. A shell detonates and sends a wrinkle into the earth and the man’s voice is gone. She tells herself to take a breath, she lies down with Ben in her arms and tries to sleep but cannot, she must have dozed because when she opens her eyes she sees that Bailey has gone from the room, he is not in the kitchen, he has gone upstairs to the bathroom and locked the door. Come down here right now, she shouts, how many times have I told you not to go upstairs? She has followed him with Ben in her arms, she bangs on the door, open up right now. She can hear him trying to flush the toilet, he unlocks the door and meets her with a sheepish look then points towards the cistern. It won’t flush properly, he says, there’s no cold water in the tap either. She looks at the sink as though she does not believe him. How many times have I told you before not to go upstairs, use the bucket in the kitchen if you have to. The sullen face turning away as though she were at fault. There’s no need to give out, he says, I forgot, that’s all, there’s a reason why a bear shits in the woods you know and not in the fucking kitchen. She watches him slump downstairs dragging his hand on the railing and then she checks the tap in the sink, the kitchen tap has no water either, she has been saving water in plastic bottles just in case but they might not have enough. They toast bread for breakfast on the gas fire in the living room and watch cartoons on a laptop, Bailey eyeing a slice of cold toast that Molly has not eaten, his hand slides across and in instant it is gone. Eilish beside the radio listening to the reports, the government forces are in retreat, she says, the rebels have advanced through the south city as far as the canal. Past twelve o’clock Bailey touches a finger to her wrist. Do you hear that? he says, it sounds like the fighting’s stopped. They eat a cold lunch of tuna, olive oil and bread disbelieving the silence as it continues into the afternoon, the silence growing dense and disquieting, it is the silence that speaks of gathering force, it is the silence that awaits the next round of shelling, it is the silence of the wolf before the knock on the door of the house made of straw. She tells the children to hush a moment hearing an engine slow on the street, there are male voices, nothing can be seen from the front window when she pulls the mattress back, she does not want to go upstairs, the trembling air as she peers through the curtains in her room and sees two unshaven men beside a Nissan pickup truck stopped alongside the checkpoint. A man in improvised battle fatigues and tan running shoes stands with an assault rifle strapped to his chest, it looks as though he is trying to get a signal on his phone, another man in T-shirt and jeans and a weapon slung from his shoulder, he lifts a baseball cap to scratch at the nape of his neck. A Jack Russell with pointed ears watches from a window across the street, four weaponed men arriving on foot with dust and dirt on their faces, their clothes a motley mix of civilian dress and army surplus clothing. They begin to pull the checkpoint apart, dragging sandbags by the ears to the side of the road and stacking them, the toothless ex-junkie has returned offering out cigarettes and lends a hand dismantling the barrier he helped build. So this is freedom, she thinks, but her heart cannot free itself, watching the rebels she cannot call out her joy, it is not joy but relief, it is not relief but something that awakens her deepest fear, the cold she cannot warm away, the thought that circles every other thought, what if her husband and son do not come home? Watching down upon these men as they stand on the street lighting cigarettes and trying to get a signal on their phones, she is overcome by loathing, seeing not men but shadows parading the day born from darkness, seeing how they have made an end of death by meeting it with death. How quickly the flags have been taken down from the houses, not a single one remains. In half an hour the soldiers are gone and the road is clear and people are stepping out of their houses, Gerry Brennan sweeping his yard while an enormous balding man in a blushing pink T-shirt stands by a poodle with its leg cocked to a tree. I want to go out, Bailey says, seeing a youth passing down the street, I want to go and get ice cream.