MY CALMNESS DESERTED me as soon as I closed the door, and I began shaking so hard that I could barely stand up. It was the thought of turning my back on him that frightened me the most. What if he decided to go for me? What if his confusion and fear turned to rage, like it had in the night? What if he waited ’til I was on the stairs, with Dee in my arms, and then came after me with his fists flying? What if I turned around and found him standing beside me, the goblin-boy’s hungry look on his face?
There was a dull clunk from our room. It wasn’t much of a sound – perhaps he’d bumped into something – but it shot a flare of panic through me that almost made me piss myself. I bolted from the door, stumbled over my tangled feet and slammed into Ma and Dad’s room. Dee was sitting in the middle of their bed and she jumped in fright at my wild-eyed entrance.
I grabbed her and spun to go, but she immediately began to squall.
‘You said me a jockey, Pap! You said me a jockey!’
Jesus! I dropped to one knee, my eyes on the shut door across the hall. She scrambled from my arms and over my shoulder and clung to my back like a little pink monkey.
‘Giddyup, Pap!’
I staggered to my feet and warily carried her into the hall. She was kicking her chubby little legs, knocking her heels into my ribs and bouncing up and down in an attempt to get me to make horsey movements. But my eyes were on my bedroom door and I sidled down the hall, keeping my body between her and it.
‘Giddyup! Giddyup! GiddyUP!’
We were at the head of the stairs now, me half twisted to keep my eye on the door, she bopping up and down like a lunatic on my back.
‘Stay easy, Dee. Stay easy for Pap.’
But she just kept bopping up and down and telling me to giddyup, so that I had to turn and make my way properly on the stairs for fear of her pulling us both over.
At the turn in the staircase I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise up in a stiff ruff, and I felt sure that when I looked around he’d be there: his face white, his eyes black, his hands reaching. But he wasn’t, and I managed to get Dee into the kitchen, without somehow dying of fear or breaking both our necks.
She slithered from my back just as Martin and Dad were shepherding Nan in from the garden. The kettle on the hob began its high-pitched whistle, and Ma started fussing over tea. No one noticed my rubber-legged stagger around the kitchen table and my shaky collapse into a chair facing the stairs.
Ma pucked me on the back of the head as she crossed behind me with the tea things. ‘Say hello to your Uncle Martin.’
I pulled my eyes from the stairs and gave what felt like a very pale-lipped greeting to the men. They were helping Nan with her coat; neither of them looked my way. Nan just nodded and smiled in that vague way she had when she hadn’t a clue what was going on. Dad swung Dee up into his arms.
I went back to staring at the stairs.
Ma pucked me again on her way back to make the tea.
‘Where’s your brother?’ she asked, and the horrible joke of that question had me snorting a hysterical little laugh out my nose. I don’t know, Ma. I think I might have lost him.
‘He’s having a wash, Ma.’
She put the teapot on the table, giving me the fish-eye. ‘What’s up with you?’
Whatever way I looked up at her, Ma stopped dead. ‘What’s wrong, Pat?’
I wanted to tell her – I really did. I felt like it was written all over my face anyway. I felt like I was sitting in front of her, the very picture of someone screaming help me help me help me at the top of my lungs. But obviously Ma couldn’t read me, or I wasn’t as transparent as I thought, because she just kept standing there, waiting, that questioning frown on her face, and I just kept looking at her, saying nothing.
I’ve never felt Dom’s absence more keenly than I felt it at that moment. He should have been right there beside me, like always: explaining, involving, assuring. But there was a whistling void that should have been filled with his voice. He was silent. And so was I.
I have a headache,’ I muttered. ‘
Ma put the back of her hand to my forehead. ‘You feel hot,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if you come down with pneumonia, leaping in and out of the sea like eejits. Put a spoon of sugar in your tea, it’ll buoy you up.’
She moved off, and I recommenced my vigil of the stairs. A spoon of sugar in my tea. Of course. Problem solved.
I felt the family, as if far away and underwater, gradually gather around the breakfast table. They put Nan opposite me, and she sat nodding and smiling at everyone. Food was doled out, tea was poured. I kept my eyes on the stairs, moving my head if someone got into my line of vision, responding only to pass plates from left to right, hand over the milk, accept the breakfast that remained untouched on my plate.
Dom would come down and it would be a joke. He would come down and he would grin at me and he would mouth gotcha and I would kill him and it would all have been a joke.
‘I hadn’t realised you came here every year, David,’ said Uncle Martin, on the moon somewhere, making polite conversation. ‘It’s an amusing coincidence, isn’t it?’
‘How do you mean?’ asked Dad, his voice equally distant. ‘Pass the butter, will you, Olive love?’
There was no sign of movement upstairs. No sound at all.
‘Well, with Cheryl having grown up here, it’s funny that Olive’s family would choose Skerries for their holidays.’
I vaguely registered a charged pause in the conversation, but my attention was aimed upwards. I was looking at the painted boards of the ceiling. Listening.
‘You didn’t know?’ asked Martin.
‘That Mam grew up here? Don’t be ridiculous, Martin. Sure, Mam was a Royalette. She was raised in Dublin.’
‘No. Skerries. I’m sure of it. Cheryl only moved to Dublin in her late teens. I thought you knew that. It’s no big secret, though she never did speak much of her life before she married Father.’
‘Yeah. Well. I doubt she got much encouragement to.’
I barely had time to register the dryness in Dad’s voice before I finally heard what I’d been waiting for. I looked up again. There: a subtle creak on the ceiling. And following on from that, a whole series of quiet movements: footsteps, a soft scraping, a door opening and closing.
My eyes snapped to the stairs.
‘They had their own ways, those two,’ said Martin.
‘I suppose so,’ huffed Dad. ‘Mam always said she was born on the stage of the Theatre Royal. Dad seemed happy enough for her to leave it at that.’
Dom was standing at the top of the stairs now. I knew it. I could feel it. He was standing and listening, the bedroom doors all closed around him, the bathroom door shut at his back. My brother, standing in the little airless closet that was the upstairs landing, looking down the steps and wondering who lay at the foot of them, listening to the voices of his family and wondering who they were. No, no. That’s wrong. He’s grinning. He’s imagining me imagining him and he’s grinning.
Ma asked, ‘Do you want a hot drop, Martin?’
There was a soft scuffing on the stairs and I was trying not to pant now, gripping the table.
‘Thank you,’ said Martin. ‘I would.’
He was at the turn in the stairs now, coming down slowly. I saw his knee, then his leg as he came around the corner. Then Ma leant forward to pour Martin his tea and blocked my view. I stood up suddenly from my chair, leaping to my feet so as not to lose sight of him as he entered the kitchen.
My abrupt movement drew everyone’s attention to me, so Dom and I had a moment to make eye contact when he hit the bottom step. He just stood there, one hand on the wall, looking shocky and uncertain.
My voice was dry as chalk when I said, ‘Come here and sit by me.’
Ma and Dad glanced at him and I saw identical frowns crease their foreheads.
‘You look a bit ropey,’ said Dad.
‘Only to be expected,’ said Martin. He smiled at Dom. ‘You’ve all been through a rough time.’
‘Have a cuppa, love,’ said Ma, pouring Dom a cup and lacing it with the cure-all sugar.
‘Come here,’ I said again, ‘and sit by me.’
He lurched across the room in jerky steps and dropped clumsily onto the chair beside me. We sat side by side like two broken robots, stiff and awkward, as the breakfast table slowly regained momentum around us. He laid his hands on either side of his plate. His shoulder was only inches from mine, and I could feel cold rippling off him. It was like sitting beside an open fridge. No one else seemed to notice anything. Were they blind?
Ma was cutting Dee’s breakfast into little pieces, her mouth a firm line of concentration. Dad and Martin had gone back to unravelling Nan’s past. Dad was fiddling with a piece of toast by his plate, crumbling it slowly and methodically with his free hand. Nan was off with the fairies, humming gently to herself and gazing at the tablecloth.
Only Dee seemed in any way perturbed by Dom. She was sitting on Dad’s knee, filching toast and bits of bacon from his plate. When Dom sat down she’d begun to smile but had quickly stopped and stared at him as though he were a puzzle she couldn’t quite work out. Slowly her puzzlement turned to concern, and as I watched, she leant closer in to Dad. Her little fist tightened in his shirt. A small frown grew between her sandy eyebrows.
‘Daddy?’ she said. ‘Who dat?’
She was staring at Dom, and I wondered what it was she saw that the others couldn’t. I looked at him from the corner of my eye. There were waves of cold rising from him that made the hairs on my left arm stand up. The left side of my body was skittering with goose flesh. Dom seemed afraid to raise his eyes and just kept staring, staring, staring at his plate of congealing food. His profile was familiar the way a mask would be familiar: all the planes and hollows in the right place, but none of the spirit. ‘Daddy, who dat?’
At the quiet repetition of her question, Dom seemed to realise what Dee was asking and he snapped his attention to her. She flinched under his startled gaze and tugged Dad’s shirt in earnest.
‘Daddy! Who dat boy?’
Dad stopped talking and looked down at Dee in exasperation. ‘What is it, love?’
At the same time, Ma reached over for her. ‘Dee, come here and eat your own breakfast. Poor Daddy hasn’t had a bite of his yet; it’s all gone into your tummy!’
Dee was protesting and pointing. ‘But who dat boy? Who dat boy?’ But no one was really paying her any attention.
Dom was so tense that I swear his body was vibrating slightly. His hands had curled to fists on either side of his plate. His eyes were roaming the surface of the table as though there may be a code written there in butter smears and breadcrumbs that would give him some way out of here, an answer to the question of how to escape.
I pushed down a surge of nausea. What was I going to do? No one but Deirdre seemed to see anything wrong. I glanced at Mam, Dad, Martin – quick little flashes of glances. They were perfectly at ease. The cold was rolling off Dom like a fog. His little sister had just asked who he was. And yet they didn’t seem to have a clue that there was anything wrong.
Then Nan spoke, her voice warm and clear and connected with life, just as it had been the day before that bloody stroke, before she had been pushed off the edge of the world into the grey nowhere she now inhabited.
‘Francis, you look so cold, dear. Drink your tea. It’ll heat your belly.’
We all stopped talking. Oh God. It sounded so like Nan – our proper Nan: The woman who spent three weeks a year travelling with her cronies. The woman who lived for her garden, and read two books a week. The woman who would sing ‘Second Hand Rose’ and do the Charleston at the drop of any old hat. I hadn’t realised how badly I’d missed her, until I heard her speak in that voice again.
She was smiling at Dom in that way: that kind, straightforward, trustworthy way. The way that let you know she’d never bullshit you and she’d never betray you. She gestured at his tea. ‘Drink it up, Francis, it’ll do you a power of good.’
Dom stared at her, confusion and hope vying for dominance in his face. He made a funny noise in the back of his throat, and everyone looked at him in sympathy. They assumed he was upset because his nan thought he was someone else. But I knew different. I understood, suddenly and with a jolt, that Nan knew him – I mean she knew him, the him inside Dom. Nan knew him. But he didn’t know her. I could see how he longed to know her, how he needed to know her, to have one little thing here that he could hang onto, that could anchor him.
But it did him no good. He searched and searched her face for some clue, and I could tell he found nothing. Nan gazed serenely back at him, her eyes filled with the same clarity of recognition she would have given me only nine months earlier.
‘Who do you think he is?’ I whispered.
Mam shushed me with a wince. ‘Just play along with her, love,’ she said to Dom. ‘She thinks you’re someone else.’
He turned and looked at her with Dom’s brown eyes, his confusion, his sorrow almost physical. But I am someone else, that look said. He turned back to Nan, searching her face again, and in a bright flash of understanding I realised he was going to ask her who she was. He opened his mouth to speak, and I reached under the table and pinched him hard on the thigh. Shut up.
At the same time, Dad leant over and took Nan’s hand in his. ‘That’s Dom, Mam,’ he said gently. ‘It’s Dom.’
Nan smiled around at her son, a look of genuinely amused bewilderment on her face.
‘David,’ she said, ‘what on earth are you talking about?’
Dad gasped; it was unbelievable to see her like this. It was as though the last terrible nine months had never happened and here she was, Nan, back after a long trip, giving us the dry-eye and laughing along with us under her breath.
‘Mam?’ asked Dad, far too much hope in his voice.
Nan’s clear-eyed amusement clouded over into confusion. Her face crumpled into the strained, polite smile that had been her permanent expression for so long. Dad’s hope faded as his mother searched his face, trying to recall who he was, trying to catch the gist of a conversation already lost.
‘I thought . . . ’ she said. ‘Wasn’t . . . ?’ She looked over at Dom and smiled uncertainly. ‘Francis?’ she asked. She paused, then just drifted off, her eyes slipping over the surface of things, sliding absently to the right of us; remembering or forgetting, who knew? But not with us anymore. Not like she had just been.
There was a soft knock on the door, and it broke what threatened to become a heartbreaking silence. Ma leapt gratefully to her feet and went to answer it.
It was one of the old biddies. She came in laughing and shaking her head, scattering bright raindrops from the lacquered white helmet of her hair. It was the tiny one, half a head shorter than Ma, and all decked out in sprigged cotton, wafting floral scent. She brought the glittering sunshine of a fresh spring day through the door and stood in its radiance, hands clasped, looking around the room with an expectant smile on her face.
‘Well, now . . . ’ she said.
Ma realised the old doll wanted an introduction and, with a tolerant little roll of her eyes, presented her to each of us in turn. ‘Margaret, you know our son, Dominick.’
Dom surprised us all by standing and gravely extending his hand. It was a gesture so alien to my brother that Ma actually laughed. But this wasn’t Dom, was it? It was the Dominick-thing. It was the goblin-boy. It was Francis, and he had, it would appear, impeccable manners. He offered his hand as a matter of course; as a token of politeness so ingrained in him that only unconsciousness would have prevented it. You could tell by how quickly he was out of his chair and had his hand extended, by how smoothly he said, ‘Pleased to meet you, ma’am.’
The old biddy blushed like a girl and took his hand.
She’ll feel how cold he is, I thought. She’ll scream.
But the old lady just smiled. ‘What lovely manners,’ she said, already turning her eyes to me.
‘This is our other boy,’ said Ma. ‘Patrick.’
I nodded, incapable of a smile, and the old lady tilted her head. I could hear her thinking to herself, Ah, here’s a sullen one.
Dee played the shy cat and buried her head in Dad’s shirt. Uncle Martin reached across the table and shook the old biddy’s hand. ‘How do you do?’ he asked.
‘Well, I’m fine, thank you,’ she replied, turning her attention to Dad. ‘David, how are you?’
Dad forced a smile onto his face and shrugged. ‘I’m grand, Miss Conyngham. How’s your sister?’
‘Oh, same as ever. At war with the world.’ She laughed at her own joke, then turned her speculative gaze on Nan. ‘And who’s this?’ I knew by her voice that she could already tell Nan wasn’t quite with us.
‘This is my mother,’ said Dad. He got up and crossed the room to hunker by Nan’s chair. He spoke gently to her, snagging a thread of her attention somehow. ‘Mam? This is Margaret Conyngham, from the back house.’
Nan blinked at him, then her eyes wandered in fits and starts to where the old biddy stood with her hand extended, a patient smile on her face. The two women looked at each other for a moment. Then I saw a jolt of unexpected recognition hit the old biddy. Her smile fell. ‘Oh my,’ she said. She sank into a stiff crouch by Nan’s knee, and took Nan’s hand. She pressed it gently and gazed up into Nan’s face.
Hello, dear,’ she said. ‘How have you been?’ ‘
Nan just kept staring with wary concentration. Eventually the old biddy nodded, cleared her throat and looked down. She spent a silent moment gazing at Nan’s hand, which lay twined in her own. She seemed to be struck by this: the sight of two old ladies’ hands, all naked joints, paper-thin skin and fine blue veins.
How strange to suddenly notice one’s hands,’ she murmured. ‘‘How fragile they look.’
She carefully placed Nan’s hand back in her lap and straightened. Then she smoothed down her skirt and blinked, slowly looking around the kitchen at things only she could see.
‘God bless us and save us,’ she said quietly to herself. ‘Isn’t life a kick in the trousers?’
Dad went to ask something, but before he could speak the old biddy shook herself and laughed and filled with sunshine again. She turned a beaming smile on my mother, her teeth too perfect to be anything other than dentures. ‘You have a phone call, dear! Best not keep them waiting. They’re calling from Dublin!’ Ma raised her eyebrows in pleased surprise and began to escort her to the door.
‘Me come?’ asked Dee, hopping down from her chair.
The old biddy held out her hand. Dee ran to take it, and they accompanied my mother up the garden path, disappearing together into the bright spring morning. The kitchen – filled with light now – was momentarily silent in the sparkling aftermath of the old lady.
Then Nan snorted in amused disgust. ‘That wasn’t May Conyngham,’ she said.
‘May Conyngham?’ cried Dom. He ran to the door, staring up the garden path as if trying to get another look at the old biddy. ‘May,’ he whispered.
‘Imagine, Fran!’ Nan said to him. ‘Imagine that old dear trying to pass as May.’ She gave a sunny little laugh. ‘Oh, what a hoot!’
Dad sighed in exhausted frustration. ‘Come on, Mam, let’s get you in by the fire.’ Martin rose to his feet, with the intention of helping get Nan settled.
Dom dithered by the door, tense and wide-eyed, his attention torn between Nan and the garden where the others had disappeared. He was looking more than a little crazy. I went to stand by him.
‘Dom,’ I murmured. ‘Let’s go upstairs.’
‘Stop calling me that!’ he hissed.
He watched as Dad and Martin manoeuvred Nan up and out of her chair. His eyes smouldered with rage as they took her by the arms, apparently infuriated by the sight of the two big men on either side of a fragile, confused old lady.
‘Where . . . where are you taking me?’ she asked as they hustled her into the sitting room.
Dom went to shoot after them and I grabbed his arm to stop him. It was like grabbing ice. His flesh was so cold that my fingers sizzled. I let go, crying out and clutching my hand. He came to me immediately, leaning close to comfort me. ‘It’s alright, Lorry,’ he whispered. ‘I won’t leave you.’
His breath was like dry ice on my face; his fingers burned as they touched my arm. I pulled away from him. How cold was he? How cold could anyone get without . . . ?
Dad called from the other room. ‘Stop fluting around, you two, and clear the table.’
Dom turned to glare through the door at him. ‘What will they do to her?’ he said.
‘Dom,’ I whispered. ‘Just go upstairs. Please? For me? Just go upstairs and wait while I clear the table.’
He shook his head, his eyes on the sitting-room door. ‘I’m not leaving you with them. Not anymore.’
He was standing with his back half turned to me, his shoulders hunched, his fists raised slightly. My fingers were still tingling from where I’d grabbed him. My cheek burned from where that icy breath had come from his mouth – from Dom’s mouth – and frozen my skin.
‘Dom,’ I said suddenly, ‘eat your breakfast!’
I didn’t know where that had come from; the words sounded ridiculous even as I said them. But Dom was so cold. He was cold as a corpse. And I wanted him warm. I wanted him alive. And people who are alive eat, right?
Dom turned to me in surprise. Then he laughed. It wasn’t a Dom laugh, by any means, but it wasn’t a scary-movie-creature laugh, either. It was a genuine laugh, a kind of a delighted laugh.
‘Alright,’ he said. ‘All right, Lorry. I’ll eat my breakfast.’
Jesus, that made me want to punch him. ‘I am not Lorry,’ I ground out. ‘I’m Patrick, and you’re Dominick. You’re Dominick Finnerty. Got it?’
He gave me a very level look, and sat down. ‘Eat your own breakfast,’ he said, taking up his knife and fork.
It became a battle of wills to finish the congealed mess on our plates, and I was pretty sure we’d both be dead of heartburn by the end of the day. But I crammed it down so that he’d cram it down, maintaining eye contact all the time. When we were finished, he helped me clear the table and then stood behind me, emanating cold, while I washed the dishes. All his attention was focused on the sitting-room door. I could hear Dad and Martin in there, chatting; the TV was on.
‘Why are you just standing there?’ I hissed, my elbows deep in suddy water, goose flesh in scattered patches up and down my back. ‘Why don’t you just go upstairs?’
I’m looking after you,’ he whispered. ‘I’m watching your ‘back.’ He glanced at me briefly, looking me up and down with his dark eyes. ‘I’m keeping you safe, Lorry. Until you’re back in your right mind again.’
Then he turned his attention back to the door, his shoulders hunched, his weight balanced evenly between his two feet, standing vigilant and ready should anyone try to get past him to me.