KATE O’RIORDAN
The Boy in the Moon

Dedication

For Mam

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

One: Is It Love?

Two: Pendulum Swings

Three: The Hide Man

Four: Seeing Stars

Five: Lining Up

Six: Small Good Things

Seven: Passing Time

Eight: High Places

Nine: Fair Play

Ten: The Sorrowful Mysteries

Eleven: Growing Things

Twelve: Falling

Thirteen: The Boy in the Moon

Fourteen: The Unfit

Fifteen: Perfect Truth

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Praise

Other Works

Copyright

About the Publisher

ONE Is It Love?

Once, when he was nearly four, she found him outside in the garden staring up at the moon with his head cocked to one side. He was silent and very still. She crept up behind him, quietly, so as not to disturb his contemplation. It was a soft twilight in September – low-slung, grainy sky ballasting a swollen, somehow predatory moon. Her son appeared to be entranced. She turned from him and the strangeness of the evening to gaze back through the french windows to the normality of the living-room – soft light, sofas, cushions, padding. Everything as it should be, where it should be – touchstone suburbia, the reassurance of crystal and chintz.

He sensed or smelled her presence but still he did not move. She wondered at his thoughts and then he turned, slowly, widened brown eyes reflecting moonlight for an instant as his gaze settled on her. ‘It’s not a man in the moon,’ he said.

‘It isn’t?’

‘No. Look.’ He pointed upwards. ‘Look. It’s a boy, and he’s screaming.’

She followed the line of his finger, then shrugged. ‘How so?’ she asked.

‘See – two eyes, and there’s a squishy bit for a nose and look – look, mum, I said – there’s the mouth and it’s a bit to the side and it’s open wide, like this – Look, look, like this …’

He held his head to the side at a slight angle, opened his eyes wide, pulled his mouth to the left and yawned it open as wide as he could. She looked up at the moon, then down at him again. He was right. It did look as if there was a boy screaming in the moon. ‘I wonder why he’s screaming,’ she said.

Her son closed his mouth and gazed up again, but this time facing her so that he had to tilt his head backwards and spread his legs for balance. ‘Because he’s stuck there, of course,’ he said.

It had darkened quickly and his headless form with just the triangle of jawline jutting up was in silhouette. She took a step closer. His shoulders began to move up and down.

‘Shh,’ she whispered, ‘it’s all right, darling. It’s all right, Sammy, just your imagination. That’s all it is. Trust me. There really isn’t a screaming boy in the moon.’

He allowed her to hold him then and she rocked him for a while but he would not be consoled. She wondered at the intensity of his grief or pity, she could not be sure what strange emotion possessed him and when his sobs turned into hiccoughs, she put on her stern face – though she was trembling – and draped her voice in a cloak of impatience while urging him to bed. She knew her son and when he required her control and not her empathy.

When he finally acceded to her terse commands and trundled upstairs muttering under his breath, she felt that they were back in their own landscape. Their own familiar territory, where she led and he followed, albeit reluctantly at times, but followed none the less. And she could breathe again, spontaneously, and not with the forced shallow rasps he sometimes extracted from her when he led her into his strange and unfamiliar terrain.

When she looked up at the moon again, a slender tendril of cloud had snaked across the yawning mouth and she felt the sunken, staring eyes bear down upon her. She shivered and scurried back to the cushioned living-room.

‘Darling?’

His head was under the bath water but he heard her call. He stayed below the water’s surface and counted: one, two three, four …

‘Dahling?’

He allowed his nose to break through the skin of water and bubbles. The nostrils dilated and contracted frantically. After ten years, the way she said ‘dahling’ still irritated him. Perhaps he was a bit too simple-minded.but he thought terms of endearment should be just that – if, for that matter, they had to be used at all. Somehow they always sounded affected to him. He had heard other middle-class Englishwomen darling their husbands in the same fashion. They wielded the word, stretched it and sometimes brandished it. It was ‘dahling’ as a form of possession; it preceded an order, an accusation, as in: ‘Dahling, can’t you …’ Never: ‘can you’, a reluctance on the part of the one addressed being taken for granted. ‘Dahling, do you want to change Sam while I get the bottle ready?’ It was a vocabulary rampant with vague, unspoken censures. A minefield. The only time he ever felt in any way sure-footed was after sex, and then the feeling did not last very long.

In Ireland, he noisily sucked his teeth whenever she said ‘darling’. It was an oceanic distance from the barked ‘Mrs’ his father had used to summon his mother. Adult speculation had Brian wondering if his father had called her that in bed: ‘Suck on this, Mrs …’ No. Mrs, what he remembered of her, was born into the missionary position, horizontally inclined (in every respect), nothing doggy or foreign in the bedroom, certainly no saliva – ever. Now, Darling stood at the door of the bathroom, folding Sam’s pyjamas against her chest. She looked pissed off. Ten years of looking pissed off – the wind must have changed on their wedding day. Brian winked at her – to piss her off some more.

‘I’ve been calling you,’ she said. ‘Didn’t you hear?’

‘Have you?’ He sat upright and reached for the soap. ‘Sorry.’

‘How much longer are you going to stay in there?’

‘I’m nearly done. Did you want something?’

‘Christmas Day – which suit do you want me to pack?’

‘You’re not packing for me, are you? Just do yourself and Sam. I’ll do my own … in a minute.’

‘I’m finished with us. Hours ago. Which suit?’

‘The navy, I think. I don’t know. What about last year’s jacket with the grey trousers? Oh, I don’t care. Anything. Pack anything. It’s all the same.’

She pursed her mouth and tapped her foot. He hummed. ‘The navy,’ he said.

Sam called to her from his bedroom. She rolled her eyes and pretended to hesitate. Then she went to him.

Brian sank back into the bubbles once more. He raised his leg and studied it. Flexed the foot back and forth. In the steamy mirror ahead, he could just make out his features. He lowered the leg and turned his head from side to side. Good, blackish and moreover, loyal hair. He stuck his jaw out – not bad in a jowly, just-going-to-seed Irish politician way. He pulled his lips back and gritted his teeth – still there anyway. He lifted his arm and flexed the muscles; they rose from their torpor obligingly enough. All in all, not bad for forty-three. Little satisfied tremor. In a couple of nights, he would be sitting on a stool under the corrugated iron roof of his favourite local, listening to the buckshot rain above, his tongue gliding greedily over a Guinness moustache.

The thought occurred to him that the thing about being Irish was the measuring out your life in Christmases, Easters and slivers of August. It was the same for the immigrant and for those who waited at home. Around the end of November every year, the pull was at its strongest. By December, he would be filled with a quiet anticipation, coupled with an underlayer of dread – on parole and elated for Christmas, an alien again throughout January and February.

The phone rang. He lifted his other leg to study it. Julia was remonstrating with Sam as she ran from his room to answer the phone. Brian listened. It was Julia’s mother, Jennifer, another Darling. Calling to say goodbye and bon voyage and happy Christmas for the third time that day. He heard Julia impatiently say that she did not want to hear the weather forecast. Whatever horrors awaited them on the ferry would just have to be faced. Brian thought of cauliflowers.

Whenever he thought of Julia’s mother he thought of cauliflowers. It was her hair. White and permed into fat florets which framed her plump cushion of a face. Her eyes were blue and discontented, like her daughter’s. Richard, Julia’s father, was a tortoise – slow, unenthusiastic gait and elongated neck – ready for the guillotine from the birth. The skin on his face seemed to droop too under bristled black eyebrows. Most of the time, Brian could not make out his eyes, just two gleams of light beaming out hesitantly beneath their canopies. It was a habit of Brian’s, to make vegetables or animals of people. He had done so since childhood. Julia had begun as a cat and metamorphosed over the years into a pineapple, although she had had her moments of bovine splendour too. He stretched and listened to her trying to get Jennifer off the phone, knowing from the sound of her voice that she was still folding clothes against her chest with the receiver cradled between her head and shoulder. ‘We’ve managed to get to a phone on Christmas Day in the past, I don’t see why it should be a problem this year,’ Julia was saying. She stopped for a while and listened. ‘Jennifer, please stop fussing,’ she continued, addressing her mother by her Christian name, which meant that she was getting cross. Brian shifted up uneasily in the bath and watched the rivulets stream down the black dense hairs on his legs and forearms.

When he heard the click of the replaced receiver he placed both hands on either side of the bath as though he were just about to rise. But Julia was checking window locks downstairs, bolting the french doors to the garden, checking the various alarms while she cleared away any remaining debris from their dinner earlier. He could hear the musical clickety clack of her heels beating out across the tiled and wooden floors below. A swish of drapes closed, another, then another. Click clack back to the kitchen again.

He was in the main bathroom – he had thought she might need to use the en suite. But she would probably keep going for hours yet and shower just before bed, something he could never understand. More doors opened downstairs. The final final check. Julia, he thought, did not open doors so much as assault them. She wrenched handles and entered rooms with the door swinging on its hinges behind her, as if she expected resistance at every turn. She ran up and down stairs, one hand outstretched in vague deference to a banister rail she never touched. She reversed her car with a savagery that made him wince. And she pounced on ringing phones like a cheetah.

Sam wandered into the bathroom, scratching his head. He lifted the toilet seat and peed.

‘Sam,’ Brian said.

‘Dad,’ Sam said over his shoulder. He yawned.

‘It’s late. You should be asleep. We’ve a long day ahead of us tomorrow.’

‘I know. I had to make a pee.’

‘You packed all the toys you want to bring, then?’

‘Mum did it.’

‘So what did you choose in the end?’

‘Just the usual stuff.’

‘Books too?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Did Mum find room for the spaceship in the end?’

‘No.’

‘I’m sure I could squeeze it into the boot somewhere.’

‘She says there’re too many bits. They’ll only get lost.’

‘She might be right.’

Sam yawned again. He was standing motionless, still holding his penis over the toilet bowl.

‘Sam? I think you’re finished …’

‘I know.’

‘Well, what’s keeping you then? Away with you to bed.’

‘I’m thinking of a poo.’

‘Have you got one?’

‘I’m thinking of it.’

‘Go and sit on our toilet.’

Sam shook a few last drops and flushed the toilet. ‘It’s gone back up,’ he said.

‘Hands,’ Brian said.

Sam gingerly dipped his hands into the bath-water suds. His father leaned across to kiss his cheek. Sam wiped the wet cheek with his pyjama sleeve. ‘Fly is a word without a vowel in it,’ he said.

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘I’m only saying.’

‘Bed. Now.’

‘Your willy looks all squishy.’ A final yawn and he was gone.

Brian looked down. He had not realized he had been in the bath that long. He sighed and lay back. Contemplated the knots and gnarls on his raised feet for a moment. Strange thing, the body. Lived in for a lifetime yet there were parts of it, the back of his head for instance, the middle of his back, his scalp, that he had never really seen except in an unsatisfactory fashion in the mirror. This was, of course, quite apart from all the internal bits. The ridiculousness of self was a thought that had often struck him, as a member of a large family, which in turn had led to the affirmation of self in the smallest and most curious of ways, like his pepper consumption. Even now, Brian could not eat his food unless it was practically concealed beneath a black frost of pepper. He wondered if Teresa, the youngest, still spat into her plate before she began to eat. Quite probably. They had all managed to devise ways to repel nimble, filching fingers from their dinner plates … Feet pounded the stairs, but they ravished the master bedroom. He was safe for a while yet. In the en-suite bathroom, Julia quickly shunted out of her clothes and stepped under the shower. She decided against washing her hair, it was too late. She turned the shower off and grabbed a towel, checking the cabinet above the sink as she dried herself for any last forgotten items. The ladyrazor. And an anti-cellulite cream, brown gunge caked around the stopper, which wouldn’t work now anyway even with a blessing from Rome.

She sucked her stomach in and turned sideways. Her breasts were still full enough, quite large and round with tight compact nipples. In the mirror, the left breast always looked larger but Brian pretended not to notice. She reached for the tweezers and plucked a couple of straying hairs around each nipple, then a couple more above her top lip. She lifted her eyebrows without raising her brow, to see what her eyes looked like without the sagging eyelid flaps. With everything sucked in, pulled up, and her eyes looking slightly surprised, she could see what she was like in her twenties. With a sigh, everything collapsed, thirty-eight again.

The skin was still good – cream with the odd curdle. Nothing special about the lips – they functioned; by contrast, the cheekbones were high and almost anachronistic. Blue eyes, just on the turn, a dulling around the cornea. Remortgaged blonde bob – a clone in the schoolyard and Sainsbury’s. She thought about Brian resplendent in his bubbles for the past two hours and waited for the little spring of irritation to well up, but it didn’t. Instead, something fell inside her, a weight, a charge, and she felt herself opening. It was strange how that could happen. Most of the time she felt irritated. And then, suddenly, unexpectedly, her cervix would widen and she would feel confused.

On a straight run approaching a green light, he braked in anticipation of a change; for the same reason, she pressed her foot to the floor. After ten years of marriage, this was the most significant difference she could cite if they ever had to face a divorce court. Not less than everything – she smiled ruefully at her own reflection, and wondered if she would know herself if she met herself in a crowded room. The features were familiar, of course. But expressions were entirely a different matter. What did she look like laughing? Crying? Sad? She had no idea. She was really a composite of someone else’s perceptions. The thought saddened her for a moment. Then the thought of the two weeks ahead saddened her even more, stretching out like the concept of purgatory Brian had grown up with. A spartan fortnight full of everything her middle-class credenda told her was character-forming, wholesome and true, but which in reality inevitably proved to be wearisome, harsh and boring.

Sam was asleep when she tiptoed into his room with the towel around her. She could see his face from the crack of light which the landing offered, and his head: a miniature universe. Beside him lay the spaceship, contrived to tug at her heart, which was by Sam’s and Brian’s standards made of granite or something entirely extra-terrestrial, a Plutonic ice-ball. Sam snuffled in his sleep. Brian hummed from the bathroom. They were so entirely dependent on her. Awake, asleep, she ruled them. She gazed at the spaceship. It was full of tiny men and women. For a moment, she swelled like a god.

Sam’s dark hair stood up, electrocuted. His long eyelashes cast spiky talons on his cheeks. He was plump, like Jennifer. Julia could see him, years from now, like some tiny Nero, all white curls and cherubic smiles, fiddling while London burned as she, maternal mentor, looked on approvingly. Sam snored. She went to him and stroked the demerara freckles along his cheekbone. He sighed. All softness and light and complicated layers which gave voice to the man he would become. A man. Sam. It was an impossibility. He was too innocent to belong to either sex. She bent to kiss him and his curled fist opened slightly to indicate that he knew she was there.

Thus far, a self-contained little boy, content in his singularity, with an adult vocabulary holding forth in a high-pitched squeak. The gusts of her anger sometimes pinning his ears back, making him blink before she uttered a word. His silent disapproval thereafter sending her panting to the fridge for comfort.

He resisted her embrace for a moment, as she knew he would. But then plump arms wound around her neck and he breathed sweet, unpolluted breath on her. She felt ashamed of her own scent. He tugged at her neck and inhaled deep within her hair.

Outside his room she stood for an instant recalling his first day at school. She had stood by the classroom door and watched him melt into an alien world of masculine declensions that she could never decipher for him. Nudges and back thumps and rushes for the door, each boy trying to outdo the other. The girls huddled in sinister little groups of twos and threes, the boy group swelling to encompass more and more until they heaved in one great throbbing caterpillar, chewing up the playground. She was excluded. After years of being there, the only thing, the only one, she had to be satisfied with nothing responses.

‘What did you do today?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Who did you play with?’

‘No one.’

‘Where did you play?’

‘Nowhere.’

She had found it extraordinary that he was already inculcated in the language of silence, of non-committance, of secrecy, at the age of five. What was there to hide at five? Everything, it appeared. Even more secrets now that he was seven. Sometimes, she felt envious of the silent vocabulary that passed between father and son.

‘Sam.’

‘Dad.’

Everything reasserted by the vocalizing of one another’s name. Sometimes, she felt very alone, stretched out on a rack of inarticulacy. And then Sam would turn to her with one of his blistering, knowing smiles, the ones reserved for her alone, and she felt a renewed confidence. Confident enough to direct them again. For that was what they seemed to want of her.

Not so bad, really, she thought, forcing moisturizer into the parched pores of her forehead. On a good day, in her lemon suit, the grey nubuck pumps and seven deniers, she could still draw herself up, stretch herself out – so taut she could hear herself ping.

In the other bathroom, Brian was humming louder and louder which meant that he was expecting – no, inviting her intrusion any minute now. She pursed her lips and left him to it.

Brian wondered what he had been thinking about for the past half-hour – the blanks were growing longer these days. Nothing much most probably. Some old crap about his own reflection or his sense of self. It worried him mildly that he had succumbed so easily to the self-absorption of Julia’s class – anomalous to his upbringing, he thought with satisfaction. There was grit and hard grind for you. He gave himself a flinty look in the mirror and pulled the towel between his legs, just rough enough to smart a bit. Now so.

He padded, still dripping, into the bedroom. The suitcases were stacked up neatly by the door. His clothes for the morning lay draped across one chair, Julia’s across the other. She was already in bed, reading. Glasses perched on the end of her nose. ‘You’re wet,’ she observed, turning a page with a licked thumb.

He stood by the end of the bed and slapped his palms against his chest. ‘And yourself?’ he asked hopefully.

‘Dry as in Gobi, Sahara … Martini.’

‘No change there then.’

She peered at him over the rim of her glasses. ‘We have to be up at the crack of dawn,’ she said.

‘So?’

Julia sighed, allowed the book to drop to the floor, folded her glasses shut with a click. She studied him for a moment with her head cocked to the side. Is it love, she wondered? After so many years, she felt what she could only describe as ‘shy’ on occasion. There was something slightly embarrassing about making love with your partner. Snorting like a zebra one minute, rubbing Ariel Ultra into the skid marks on his underpants the next. The groping hands of night that would not dare to fondle by day. Waking from an erotic dream in the half-light of a winter’s morning to grab your partner’s frayed pyjama collar – ‘You’ll do.’

Middle-aged sex was nothing if not safe; no need for health exhortations there. It was comfortable and reliable, warmth and familiarity tinged by a certain something unpleasant like the smell of your own sneaky fart under the bedcovers. And safe, God, safe as houses.

There had been moments. They had tried whispering obscenities or, in Brian’s case, little affected grunts, nothing earthy or guttural, no uhhhs, and so patently out of sync that she had bopped him on the back of the head one night: ‘Shut up.’

Understandably perhaps, he was very quiet for a long time after that. Not so much as a gruntlet to dilute the lonely sound of two bodies wearily shunting into each other in the dead of night.

She wondered if every marriage was as smelly underneath the perfume sprayed on for friends and family. Below the surface: strata of unresolved, residual odours – like decay – so that the simplest gesture or caress took on a thousand resonances, rekindled a thousand rancid grudges. Briefly dispelled by ropy buttocks pumping up and down in mechanical despair, beneath which slappy thighs spread just wide enough for entry. Tentative arms reaching out under as yet unsoiled sheets, always ready for rejection – as if it were the only thing that could be counted on. Keeping each other company in the end as if that were an end in itself. She often thought of all the miserable elderly couples out there keeping each other company. Now, for a brief moment, she wanted to cry. She felt that she should – for the passage of love, or what passed for love, or something like it.

‘Tempt me,’ she said.

‘I thought that’s what I was doing,’ Brian responded plaintively. He whipped the towel off and grinned at her. Sometimes he harboured dark thoughts concerning his wife. Sodomy up an alley by a mad, defrocked priest with a club foot – that would soften her cough. He fantasized doing it himself on occasion. On the premise that she was generally softer, a bit soporific, the day after sex – still vocal, of course, but less strident – he’d figured sodomy would buy him a week at least. However, although she was open to most things, the servants’ entrance was most definitely bolted. He had got as far as accidentally on purpose losing his way one time. Just a little prod to see how she would react. Then a cheesy, shame-faced grin when she had craned around incredulously.

‘Where do you think you’re going? Piles, remember?’

Remembering her piles was not high on his daily agenda, in truth. But he never forgot them again.

Now, Brian began to rotate his hips in slow wide circles. He hummed a striptease tune and wriggled his backside. Fair play, I’m a tryer, he thought. Julia watched through slitted eyes; well, he’s trying and I don’t see anyone else there, she thought.

The journey in was always the same for Brian. He felt that he was travelling to a safe, familiar place. Nothing to harm him there, just a warm enfolding darkness where there was no need for the cutting quality of words. Where he could just be without having to worry about what or who it was that he should be. She was soft and fragrant as a pineapple inside. They fitted one another. It was as simple as that. They just fitted. He kissed her mouth, remembered a porn video they’d watched together and told her that he was seeing her stretched out on the bonnet of a car.

‘Colour?’

‘What? Oh, red.’

Julia twisted her mouth to the side. It would be red – high-gloss polish, perfect for rippling cellulite. She wondered who it was he really had over the bonnet. There were times when she had a genuine craving for him, but tonight was not one of them. She had to suppress a sneeze – always a martyr to her polite upbringing.

‘I’m coming,’ Brian gasped.

She thought: Don’t let me stop you, dear.

He thought: I don’t know why I don’t just go down to the local abattoir and shag a dead sheep.

He blinked. She twitched. He yawned. She sneezed. He came. She didn’t.

They curled up. She reached for a wad of tissues.

He thought: I could divorce her for less.

She thought: The sheets need changing anyway.

They thought: Not so bad. Must do that again some time soon.

‘Sore pet?’ he joked, a throwback to the days when they used to skin each other.

She thought: You’d have to pump a bit harder than that, buddy. ‘Mmm,’ she responded, because she might need him again.

She wrapped his arms around her waist and ground her buttocks back against his damp crotch. Nestling in for the night. He kissed her sweaty neck. The kindness of it, she thought, imagining her on the bonnet of a red car.

A high wind pulled up at the bathroom window, out of nowhere. Julia sighed. They were safe. Brian snored softly.

Oh yes, it was love all right. A build-up over the years, invisible most of the time, but always there, always returning, accreting like plaque on teeth. And just as ineradicable. Brian snored again, Julia elbowed his ribs. She fell asleep – contented.

Sam provided their wake-up call at dawn. He tried to burrow between them, prising their bodies apart. Brian reached bleary-eyed but frantic for his pyjama bottom. Julia wrapped the duvet around her naked buttocks. Sam burrowed deeper.

‘Sam, you’ll be on a psychiatrist’s couch for life if you come any closer,’ Julia managed. She flailed an arm backwards, connecting with Brian’s nose.

‘What’s a – that thing you said?’ Sam asked.

‘A man you’ll have to see for a long time if you touch your mummy’s bottom.’ Brian wriggled into the pyjamas.

‘Like this, you mean?’ Sam deftly slid pinching fingers under the covers.

Julia yelped and threw herself halfway across the room. ‘Sam! You know better than that. What have I told you about touching bodies … other people’s bodies, and allowing them to touch –’ She broke off. Everything turned into a lesson one way or another.

‘You’re always squidging me,’ Sam said.

‘That’s different. I get paid to squidge your bum.’

‘I do yours for free.’ Sam beamed.

‘Do you want to reach eight?’ Brian asked. ‘Bugger off downstairs and I’ll be down in a minute.’

‘What’s …’ Sam was peering under the covers.

Julia couldn’t think what Freudian nightmare lay waiting to be revealed. She grabbed at his hand. ‘You heard your father. Bugger off. Do some drawing or something while you’re waiting for us.’

‘I’m bored of drawing.’

‘Read then.’

‘I’m bored of reading.’

‘Just bugger off anyway.’

‘I’m bored of buggering off.’

Brian raised his hand. ‘Move – or I’ll skelp you.’

Sam curled his top lip. ‘Yeah, sure you will.’

‘Come and give Mummy her morning kiss,’ Julia wheedled. That should do it, she thought. ‘Mwah, mwah, mwah,’ she went to Sam’s cheek, looking up to check if Brian was annoyed, as she intended. He was.

‘God Almighty,’ he exploded, ‘I can’t be up to ye’re games. Sam, go now, before I boot you up the arse.’

Sam giggled and ran from the room. They were under his control again. Brian looked at Julia; she shrugged.

‘He’s a character,’ Brian said proudly.

‘He’s a little shit,’ Julia reciprocated and lowered her eyes to hide her own pride.

Brian hummed; he grabbed at his clothes, trying to conceal his excitement. Home.

‘A bit excited, are we?’ Julia teased.

‘Don’t start,’ Brian said. He had to scowl to suppress the little shiver of delight which coursed through him.

Surprising herself, she hugged him. Ah, baby, she thought.

He yawned and stretched. Thought: Got you.

TWO Pendulum Swings

Alarm bells were ringing. Julia swallowed a mouthful of bile and toothpaste and shouted downstairs: ‘Brian? Are you deaf? Sam’s got the alarm going again … Turn it off and give him his breakfast.’

In the hall, Sam added to the cacophony. Arsenal vs. Manchester United: ‘Goooal! Yes! Bergkamp has done it again. Yes! Yes!’

He was prostrate, punching the air with his fist when she flicked the alarm off and signalled him to the kitchen with a pointed finger, which he ignored. Brian was already there, crunching on toast while he read his horoscope in yesterday evening’s paper. He remained standing, however, just in case she thought he was doing nothing to help. Julia shovelled Coco Pops into a bowl for Sam, thinking that they might at least lend a uniformity of colour when regurgitated later on the ferry.

‘I don’t know why we have an alarm anyway.’ Brian flicked to the sports results. ‘I mean, nothing ever happens when it goes off, and besides, there’s nothing much to rob here, is there?’

Julia downed a glass of orange juice. ‘I guess the alarm is to ensure that no one discovers that fact, don’t you think?’ she said in a levelled tone. Her thin smile said: Failing accidents and breast cancer, thirty maybe forty years to go.

In the hall the ball thumped against the front door. ‘That’s it! Arsenal have clinched it with a mag-nificent goal. Arsenal two hundred and twenty-three to Manchester’s lousy two. And the crowd are going crazy …’

‘Alarms, shutters, infra-red lights and the like, all to advertise what you don’t have. It’s a bit nuts, you have to admit,’ Brian offered. He looked up. ‘I’ll bring the bags down, will I?’

Julia studied her fingernails. ‘You do that,’ she said. ‘And Brian?’

‘Yeah?’

‘I have never wished you a slow, agonizing, horrible death. I just want you to know that.’

As the car pulled away from the house, Julia took one last lingering look back. Her gaze took in the bleached winter bones of the magnolia tree in the front garden and the mellow red bricks of the double-fronted Edwardian house with its large white-framed, multipaned windows. The middle-class dilemma, she thought: more work, bigger house, more work, bigger house, more work, biggest house – death. Big house sold by son to pay for drug habit.

It really does sink, she realized, the heart; it was nearly in her stomach, on its way to her ankles. But there was no way out of it this Christmas – Brian’s sisters would be home from Australia, the first visit in fifteen years. Besides, for some reason entirely unfathomable to her, Sam loved the place. She had refused to accompany them last summer. Off they went – Sam waving goodbye at Heathrow from his perch on Brian’s shoulders – to the rain and wind and the absurdly contrasting stoical countenance of Brian’s father and his equally stoical dog. As it happened, they returned wearing two well-entrenched tans while she was wan and pale from a fortnight’s rain in London.

Sam was in a daze in the back. She craned her neck to check on him. He was staring out the window through bleary eyes. It was still a watery dawnlight. The streetlamps glowed orange against the pallid sky. Julia reached her hand back; Sam grazed it with his own, then contemplated the window again.

‘How long more?’ he asked.

‘We’ve only just left,’ Julia said. ‘Hours to go yet. Play a game of football in your head.’

She watched him in the rearview mirror while he mouthed a running commentary, legs twitching, head jerking from side to side, as he headed the ball into the net. She wondered if any passing drivers would have sympathy for them and the mentally retarded paraplegic in the back.

They drove on through dark, sleepy suburbs. A preponderance of Indian restaurants in one area, followed by DIYs and bleak boarded-up shopfronts in another. Truck-drivers congregated in a caff on a corner, sipping from steamy mugs, staring out morosely at the infrequent passing cars. Julia wondered where they had come from, where they were going. What did they do when they got there? Turn around and do it all again? Not surprising then that they looked so baleful, slumped over their coffee cups. Brian fiddled with the radio dials. Sam fell asleep.

A light rain slanted against the windscreen. The M4 snaked ahead, its grey lanes empty and forlorn-looking. It suited her mood. She looked at Brian from the corner of her eye. He had that fixed quality to his stare which she sometimes found a bit discomforting. He appeared to blank out for whole chunks of time. Since she had known him, there had been times when she’d felt that there was a vacuum deep within Brian, but the impenetrable glaze of nothingness in his eyes masked it entirely. A pie-chart with a slice taken, five minutes missing from a clockface. She attributed it to the fact that he was a surviving twin. Perhaps it was inevitable that there should be an enduring lacuna in the survivor. She couldn’t say; certainly Brian said nothing. He had had a twin; he died; end of story. Fell over a cliff. Matter-of-fact, just like that. Julia had laughed. It wasn’t intentional, but the way he’d said it was so perfectly in tune with her first introduction to Brian’s spartan homeplace – here is the house, here is the field, here is the cliff at the end of the field, here is the cliff at the end of the field which Noel fell over – that she had almost expected him to mime ‘here is Noel, falling over the cliff.’ She simply could not help herself: ‘Was he pushed or did he jump?’ Brian had glowered at her all day after that.

‘I’ll have to stop at the next service station for petrol.’ He cut across her thoughts.

‘Why didn’t you fill up last night?’

‘Didn’t think of it.’

‘If we stop it will wake Sam up.’

‘So he wakes up.’

She glared at him from the corner of her eye and silently mimicked his last statement with an exaggerated shrug. The shrug which had first attracted her to him. He was so casual. Nothing fazed him. Went into computers because he had had to put something down on the form to apply for the government student grant. Straight from the farm to bollocksing up other people’s computers for them. Milking cows or suckers, what odds? Same shit in the end anyway. Easygoing, hard-working, dumb guy. She had liked that. Thought it was honest. Only he’d turned out to be neither dumb nor particularly hard-working – easygoing, certainly. So easygoing, she thought, that when he walked, one buttock had to wait a second or two for the other to align itself. Easy like treacle pudding, horrendously sweet at first but then you became immune to the taste. Even grew to like it – but only to a degree, of course. She figured now that the very reasons you chose a partner were the same reasons you divorced them. Brian chuckled. He had caught her mimicked shrug.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘You.’

‘What about me?’

‘You’re so sharp sometimes I wonder that you don’t cut yourself.’

‘Sometimes I do.’ She smiled in response and settled back with her eyes closed.

She would make an effort, a real effort, she decided. She would just let them all get on with it. Even if the sisters from Australia proved as ghastly as she expected. They regularly sent Brian photographs of themselves and their families framed in cardboard hearts, with little printed notes: G’day from Aussieland. ‘Oh God,’ she sighed aloud.

It was while she was Speech Therapist attached to the North Middlesex, eleven years ago, that she had first met Brian. He was installing the brand-new top-of-the-range computer system into the hospital. The same computer that caused her colleagues’ faces to redden and their fists to clench involuntarily over the next few years, every time it was mentioned. Brian swore that it had nothing to do with his inputting skills that the damn thing chose to offload its data in such an arbitrary fashion from time to time.

She had liked his smile, the way he chatted as amiably to the dinner women as he did to clerical staff. Liked the look of him too, the soft burr of his accent, the constant self-deprecation which usually conceals a healthy arrogance, but which in his case turned out to be warranted well enough. She had liked the fact that he had made a hundred assumptions about her too, felt inclined to prove to him that she was not the archetypical middle-class Hampshire lass he took her to be – even if she was. Moreover, she was a middle-class Hampshire lass (with thighs) fast approaching thirty, desperately busy, happy, ambitious, hectic, social – single. And single every Friday night with a skip of chips and a vat of Chianti.

Even back then, his lack of urgency, which she equated with lack of ambition, irritated her. There had been moments during the past ten years of marriage when the air around him irritated her simply because he was breathing it. Still, they had sort of stumbled into wedlock, though she had never quite figured out Brian’s motivation. He said he loved her. There was no reason to suspect otherwise. She said it too, on occasion. I love you. I wuv you. I weally wuv you. What was that supposed to mean? Until she woke up one morning to find that after ten years of acute, possibly terminal irritation, she had fallen in wuv with her own husband. Now that was scary.

Brian chuckled to himself. He could see Cotter’s spittle glistening quite clearly on the dangling rasher rind, while Cotter cast a slit-eyed glance around the schoolroom. Everyone kept their eyes and heads well down, except for Padraig in the back, of course. Brian was selected again.

‘Oy, you, Donovan. Put that in the bin there for me.’ Cotter sucked the rind into his mouth one more time, then wriggled it again. Brian opened one eye, holding on to the fleeting hope that maybe Cotter meant Edward this time. But the schoolteacher’s whiskey eyes were fixed on him. Edward snickered behind him – Cathal too – as Brian stood up with an inward sigh. He promised himself that he would puck shit out of them later in the yard.

Cotter did his usual trick, holding on to the rind for a second so that Brian’s fingers slid along the spittle before it was in his grip. Then Brian made a mistake: he turned his mouth down at the corners. He tried quickly to upturn it again, but he’d been caught.

‘Oh, now,’ Cotter said expansively, ‘oh, now, what have we here at all?’

Brian threw the rind into the bin and returned to his desk, but Cotter was in no mind to continue with the morning’s lessons anyhow, not with the hangover he had on him and now that he had some serious tormenting to do. Brian winced when he heard his name again.

‘Oy, Donovan. Up here, boy. That’s right … Stand here beside me and explain that little girly face you just did.’ Cotter did an exaggerated moue of disgust for the class, and they sniggered obligingly.

Brian picked them out one by one in his head as he gazed up at his teacher, rounding his eyes innocently. ‘I – I don’t know what you mean, sir.’ Just a little stutter for effect. Cotter liked stutters; mostly he laid off Edward for that reason. Stutters and stammers were suitably deferential, they showed a respectful hesitancy. All of Cotter’s children were hesitant, respectful and speech-impaired.

Brian weighed up the odds: on the one hand, slow crucifixion by whiskey withdrawal throughout the long day ahead of sums, catechism and English; on the other, instant gratification by means of extradition of torture into waiting repository of stupid boy who asked for it. Brian knew which one he would choose. He lowered his eyes humbly and awaited his fate. Cotter farted. That meant he was excited. Brian feared the worst. He looked up and followed Cotter’s sadistic gaze to the back of the classroom where it fell on the grinning, rocking figure of Padraig, the class half-wit. Brian groaned.

‘Oh, now,’ Cotter began, farting again. ‘Master Donovan, sir, you’re telling me that your lips did not … What way will I put it at all?’ He craned forward. ‘Ahh, twitch? Did they or did they not twwwitch when your, ahh, fingers encountered my, ahh, saliva?’

‘They never twitched, sir. I swear it – on my brother’s life, sir. I swear it.’ Brian had time for a thundery glance in Edward’s direction.

‘So you’re not a gedleen then?’

‘Oh, no, sir.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. I am. Because I won’t have gedleens in this classroom and so I won’t – except for the girls themselves, of course.’

The girls, including Brian’s twin sisters, twittered appreciatively. The veins stood out on Cotter’s nose; his eyes, of now indeterminate colour, filled with patriotic tears.

‘Because’ – he had to stop for a plaintive snort – ‘because, one of these weekends, any day now, I’ll be expecting you lads there to march by my side, to march like MEN, and what’ll we do, lads?’

‘We’ll take back the North, sir,’ resounded the chorus.

‘Aris!’ Cotter shrieked.

‘We’ll take back the North, sir.’

‘Spoken like men.’ Cotter dabbed his eyes. He reached under his desk flap and pulled out a Woodbine, fingers trembling poignantly as he struck the match. ‘A bit of spit won’t put us off now, will it, young Donovan?’

Brian shook his head. ‘No sir.’

‘You’ve a mind to share Padraig there’s victuals with him so, I’m taking it?’

‘’T’ wouldn’t be fair to him, sir, but I’ve a mind to do it if it – if it would help the North, sir.’ Brian’s mind cast desperately around for a way out. He couldn’t think fast enough. Maybe he should try a bit of cheek to incense Cotter into a strapping, but then he might end up taking the strap and the worst of all punishments anyway; there was no time, damn it, Cotter was farting with every draw on his cigarette which meant it was all over bar the shouting.

Brian turned his head. He gazed over the bowl-and-scissors haircuts, delighted to a lad that it was not them facing the worst of all possible fates: Victuals with Padraig. The same Padraig who came to school every morning resplendent in his one grey suit and navy blue tie, all of twenty-five if he was a day. But there was no place else to send him. So he came to school and rocked and beamed his way through every lesson, until Cotter rang the bell for break or victuals and then Padraig came into his own, unwrapping slices of lard, two Ginger Nut biscuits and a heel of white bread. This was washed down with a screwtop sauce bottle of milk, and that was the problem. Padraig never quite got the hang of his eating co-ordination. He licked his lard, stuffed the bread into his mouth, then shoved the bottle neck into the mixture – and chomped. While he chomped and sucked, he also beamed. Padraig was good-natured. He was compelled to smile or laugh through every meal, which meant that his food was compelled down his chin. When that happened, his tongue was compelled after the food which had escaped it, so he ate and drank and beamed and retrieved, all simultaneously. Brian’s heart sank. He knew what was expected of him. To the right, by the window beaded with slanting rain, Edward’s eyes shone with belief. Brian had no great desire to disappoint his younger brother, but he felt aggrieved. He had done nothing so heinous as to merit this, the worst of all possibles. Cotter’s eyes gleamed. He reached for and tolled the bell. Brian slouched to the back of the class and nudged Padraig sideways.

Padraig was already rifling through his small cardboard case for his lunch. He licked the slab of lard and offered it to Brian. Brian licked, then turned away. All heads craned back towards them. Padraig bit into his slice of bread. He chortled to himself happily. Nobody blinked as the bottle neck intruded into the hedonistic mess. Glug glug. A merry Padraig extruded the bottle, leaving a glutinous residue of lard and dough and milk encasing the top. Not a breath as Padraig extended the bottle toward Brian. Cotter released a resonant volley for Ireland from the forefront of the room. Brian held the bottle; he blinked rapidly; his hands trembled. He pursed his lips. He clamped them to the glass, shuddered for an instant, then drank with such fervour that the classroom erupted into cheers and roars of such approbation as to make Cotter keel sideways headlong into the bin harbouring his own beloved bacon rinds. He was so overcome by fervent love of his country that he called a halt to the rest of the day’s lessons, and pronounced that from that day forward, 19 April 1966 would be remembered as the beginning of the South’s incursion into the North’s silent but awaiting bay. Brian stood for his bows. He was twelve. And triumphant.

‘What are you laughing at, Dad?’

‘Oh nothing. Nothing.’

‘You must have been laughing at something,’ Sam persisted.

‘I’ve forgotten already.’

Sam grumbled to himself as Brian pulled into the service station. Julia was pretending to be asleep. He filled the tank and joined the motorway again.

‘Are we there?’ Sam asked.

‘Not yet.’

‘Mu-um …?’

‘Shh, she’s sleeping.’

‘How long more?’

‘Couple of hours. Go back to sleep.’

‘I wasn’t really asleep. I just had my eyes closed.’

‘Well, just close your eyes some more then.’

‘Let’s play something.’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know. I Spy maybe?’

‘All right. I spy with my little eye something beginning with M.’

‘Em … Mum?’

‘No. Motorway. Your turn.’

‘You didn’t give me a fair chance …’ Sam was about to protest.

‘Do you want me to take over?’ Julia interrupted, shifting up on her seat.

‘OK,’ Brian said.

‘Pull in.’

‘I thought you meant with I Spy.’

‘Pull in, pull in. I’ll drive now.’

‘You’re not supposed to stop on the motorway.’

‘Pull in.’

Brian sighed and stopped on the hard shoulder. They swapped seats. The rain was pelting down in fat crackling drops. Julia swerved out on to the motorway. She was nervous, he understood, about the journey, about the destination. He experienced a spasm of pity for her. And then he felt a spasm of pity for himself, because he would pay the price for her nervousness.

Halfway across the Severn Bridge, Brian turned to Sam. ‘We’re in Wales now, Sam.’

‘How long more?’

‘Oh, we’re a few hours off Pembroke yet.’

Julia stopped at the next service station and they all got out. She stalked ahead to the Ladies with Brian and Sam following behind her. When she came out again, Brian was standing by the large rain-streaked windows, sipping coffee from a cardboard cup.

‘Where’s Sam?’ Julia asked.

‘Isn’t he with you?’

‘What do you mean?’

Brian held the cup in mid-air. ‘He followed you.’

‘No he didn’t – I thought you were taking him to the Gents.’

‘He ran off – after you.’ Brian held his gaze steady and sipped from the cup. ‘Check the Ladies, will you?’

‘Jesus Christ.’ Julia cast him a contemptuous look and whirled around. Her feet pounded the floor away from him. She returned within seconds, breaking into a run as she approached. Brian frowned and sipped again; he knew he should be doing something but he was overcome by the peculiar sensation of being grounded that he experienced whenever Julia charged into action. ‘He’s not there.’

‘Don’t panic. He’s probably in one of the shops.’

‘Well? Are you going to stand there drinking coffee all morning or are you going to help me look?’

Brian drained the last of his coffee and observed over the rim the whitening of her face and the clenching of her left fist. ‘Take it easy,’ he said, deliberately drawing his words out slowly. ‘C’mon, you check that one there’ – he nodded toward the newsagents behind her – ‘I’ll check the Gents.’

As he headed for the Gents he saw her running up and down the aisles in the shop. They met by the window again. ‘Not there,’ he said with his mouth pursed, jerking his head back toward the male toilets.

‘Jesus – Jesus Christ – Jesus Jesus Jesus.’ Julia was frantically looking around her. ‘Run around, quick,’ she shouted over her shoulder.

‘Julia, it’s …’ he called out, fixing a smile on his lips for the people who had begun to stare at them. He shoved a hand into a trouser pocket, formed his mouth into a whistle and broke into a trot after her.

‘Sa-am!’ Julia was calling. She stopped suddenly and turned. ‘Not after me, you fool. You check upstairs.’

Brian veered toward the escalator; he took the steps two at a time. There were probably video games up there, that’s where Sam would be. He started to run to the left, stopped, turned and walked to the right, his mouth still silently whistling. He checked the upstairs grill room, the toilets, the shops. His palms were sweaty by the time he returned to the escalators. Then he whistled aloud and descended with both hands in his pockets. There was no sign of Julia at the bottom. He raised his eyebrows and gazed around.

She came running from the area behind the shop. Her skin was stretched tightly over her face, her blue eyes opened wide and unblinking. She stopped stock-still when she saw him. Her mouth opened. ‘You’re sure he’s not upstairs?’ She panted.

Brian shrugged and his forehead creased into a frown. He gazed out toward the carpark.

‘The carpark?’ She was screaming now, people were beginning to stop and edge toward them, attracted perhaps by the almost palpable scent of her fear.

‘Sam would never leave the building on his own,’ Brian offered. He could feel the skin on his own face begin to tighten and stretch.

‘On his own?’ she shrieked. ‘But what if someone told him that we were there?’

He fervently wished she had not said that. ‘He’s here somewhere, let’s look together,’ he said, brushing past her outstretched arm. ‘Where are the video games in this place?’ he called over her shoulder.

She ran after him. ‘At the back there,’ she pointed.

They looked around. A boy not much older than Sam pulled and hauled at a lever and stared into the flickering screen. ‘He’s not here.’ Julia’s voice sustained a quavery note that set Brian’s teeth on edge. ‘I’m going to the carpark – you stay here in case he appears,’ she said.

He watched her from the glass doorway. Her hair was matted to her scalp by rain as she ran up and down the labyrinth of parked cars. He saw her stop for a moment to catch her breath with her torso bent forward and her hands resting on her knees. She glanced up and he could feel her eyes sear him from the distance. He looked around for a security guard. Julia burst through the doors, blinking rapidly. ‘Jesus. Jesus,’ she said.

‘I’ve been looking for a security guard,’ he said.

‘And?’ She looked around hopefully.

‘Haven’t seen one yet,’ he said.

‘He’s got to be here,’ she said. It was a question, he realized too late. She brushed past him and ran up the escalator.

‘He’s not –’ he began but she was gone. Brian started to run around the downstairs shops and eateries. He ran in circles. Around and around. He kept ending up by the video games. That was where Sam should be. The boy was still there, staring at a blank screen now. He gazed up at Brian.

‘A boy,’ Brian gasped, ‘about this high – dark wavy hair, freckles, brown eyes, red raincoat. Have you seen him?’

The boy looked around for his parents. He shrugged. Brian ran back to the escalators. Julia was pulling her wet hair back with two hands and shouting at some man in a uniform. Brian heaved a sigh of relief. A uniform. At last. But the uniform was not looking very reassuring; his face wore a decidedly worried expression as Julia gesticulated at it. Then the uniform turned and ran up the escalator, speaking into a radio at the same time. Brian’s heart beat twice, then seemed to stop; he had to remember to breathe. Julia’s expression was dazed when she turned to him. She staggered backwards with her hand over her mouth. Brian approached slowly but her other hand began to make a waving motion, a film clouded the blue of her eyes. Brian remembered to breathe again. He took another step but she ran sideways and crashed through the door of the Ladies.

She was blacking out. Little sparks of light erupted then vanished on the periphery of her vision. Her heart felt like a huge dysfunctional machine within her chest. It hammered down on her ribcage. Beads of sweat solidified on her forehead. She ran to a sink and splashed cold water on her face. A long, slow moan erupted from the pit of her stomach; she felt it carry up, through her gut, into her lungs, strum silently on her vocal chords for a moment, until it broke free and the sound made her body shudder. She saw little fat legs kicking, she heard the muffled sound of his terrified screams, she saw his exposed, vulnerable white belly, she heard him call her name … She splashed water again. Her legs could not sustain her weight. They buckled. She hunkered down and from some unknown corner of her consciousness she saw, beneath the cubicle door which skirted the floor by a foot, a pair of white sneakers, standing perfectly still, perfectly aligned, and perfectly familiar. She dry heaved and called his name. The lock on the cubicle slid back. A brown eye peered through the crack.

‘Mum?’

‘Oh, Jesus. Jesus. Sam. Sam darling – Sam darling …’

He ran to her. She clutched at him. And had to turn her head away to stifle the dry heaves. Sam was crying. He shook her shoulders. ‘I only went to the video things,’ he said, ‘then I couldn’t see you or Dad so I came in here in case the bad men … like you told me …’

She had to swallow a mouthful of saliva. ‘It’s OK now. I’m here. Mummy’s here. It’s OK, darling …’

They rocked together for some minutes. A woman entered the toilet area and stood staring indecisively at them. A drunken mother perhaps? One of those drug addicts? Julia gazed up at her and laughed. She had to force her grip to loosen on Sam’s shoulders. He would show bruises tomorrow. When his crying subsided, she staggered to her feet, reached down and scooped him up. He clung to her. She covered his face with kisses and carried him out to his father.

Brian was standing beside the security guard. As Julia approached with Sam’s head nestled between her cocked head and her shoulder, a cry went up from the surrounding onlookers. She ignored them, she ignored the visible double take of the guard. She ignored the woman to her left who repeatedly made the sign of the cross over her breast. Gimleteyed, she approached Brian, who did not move, did not emit a sound or display a single, solitary show of emotion. He stood motionless, his hands by his sides, his face white and taut-looking. Sam turned and reached out his arms.

‘Dad,’ he said.

‘Sam.’

Julia felt life itself drain from her arms as she surrendered her grail to the outstretched arms before her. People clapped. The security guard moved to disperse them just like on the television. Sam was nuzzling the side of Brian’s face. Brian’s eyes met hers for an instant, then he hooded them and whispered something to his son. Julia swung past the dispersing crowd, the newly officious security guard, the glass doors, and as she headed for the car, she felt her shoulder bag slap against her waist in a rhythmical, rain-drenched adagio. She reached the navy blue estate and slumped against it. Inside, she could see the meticulously packed suitcases, the crates of wine, the well-concealed Santa boxes – Sam’s new bike, his puzzles, his stocking-fillers – and she felt entirely alone for a moment. As if in a way Sam had really been taken from her. She lifted her head and gazed at the approaching sight of Brian with his arms wrapped protectively around Sam. Even at this distance, she could see the tremors still quake through Sam’s otherwise limp body. She wrenched at the door, then remembered that Brian had taken the keys from her.

Julia was silent for so long that Brian instinctively knew that she was mouthing to herself first, the familiar litany of his past transgressions. He could feel little waves of sympathy emanate from Sam in the back. Brian stared blankly ahead. The trick with Julia was to keep apologizing, over and over again, in the same modulated tone and never to flinch or show her a wound, because if she saw a gash or suspected one, she would tear at it with her teeth. Brian cleared his throat, it was difficult to get the timing right in these matters. ‘I’m very sorry,’ he said.

He could see her shoulders stiffen. Her palms clapped together silently. ‘It is one thing to try and bring up your son as best you can,’ she began, enunciating each word as if speaking to someone learning English, ‘but it is quite another to have to do so in direct competition with a father who would appear to have some sort of a death wish for his son …’

‘I am really sorry,’ Brian said.

‘What is it with you? Is this a macho thing between fathers and sons that I haven’t been told about – or are you just inconceivably stupid?’

‘I thought he was with you.’

‘Did you think he was with me the time you took him up the loft ladder in your arms?’ She flexed her lips. ‘You walked down that ladder – frontways – with a two-year-old child in your arms. A week later, you fell from that ladder yourself and broke your arm …’ Her foot was tapping. ‘Did you think he was with me the day I caught him running around the garden with a secateurs pointing up at his throat? Or the day I just happened upon you chopping wood in your father’s shed with your three-year-old son behind you, swinging – swinging, I say – an axe over his head? Hmm?… I didn’t hear you …’

Brian rubbed his jaw. This was a two-hour job, easily. He longed for Pembroke. Sam had covered his ears in the back.

‘This is going to be a bad one,’ Sam said.

‘Of course I have only myself to blame really,’ Julia continued. ‘I mean, you’d think I’d know by now that I must not under any circumstances, not even for one lousy fucking second of the day, allow my son out of my sight when his kamifuckingkaze father is around –’

‘Mum, you used the fu word. Twice,’ Sam interjected.

‘I know, Sam, and I apologize. Forget everything I’ve ever told you – you may, from now on, occasionally use the fu word. All right?’

‘I do already in the playground sometimes,’ Sam confessed soberly.

Brian observed from the corner of his eye the double tic of Julia’s features as she digested that bit of information. He felt a sharp spasm of love for his son, aware of what he was trying to do. But Julia was in mid-flow and would not be appeased until she had tasted blood. She was working herself into a frenzy, fisting the glove compartment and crashing her knees together.

‘… And another thing,’ Julia continued. ‘Sam is seven now. Old enough to notice things. I won’t have your father drinking from his saucer like he does, do you hear me? He can bloody well use a cup like the rest of us, at least while we’re there … And that dog – that dog is not to come inside the house while I’m in it – filthy, flea-ridden creature …’ She continued, without stopping for a breath, saying all the things she had vowed to herself that she would not say.

Brian adjusted the windscreen wipers to accommodate the sweeps of rain which made visibility almost negligible. He stuck his tongue in his cheek and tried to wander in his mind to a safer place. Instead, he thought of last Christmas. He had rarely been so miserable. A misery he could see etched on the faces of Julia’s parents and her sister also. Carol, Julia’s only sibling, younger by six years, had spent her time slipping into the kitchen after Brian, lighting surreptitious cigarettes and downing extra stiff measures of her Canadian rye so that she could fix a smile on her face before she returned to the living-room for yet another of Julia’s party games. Charades, Happy Families, What’s My Line … Evening after interminable evening. Julia had collapsed into bed each night, exhausted from entertaining. Brian had almost felt sorry for her, but he felt sorry for Richard and Jennifer too when he saw them put aside their newspapers with weary sighs and teeth-gritted smiles when Julia’s exhortations for them to join in grew steadily sharper and more demanding. There was something so desperate about the way Julia entertained, as if, in a way, she were following a manual, some guide to happy families, only she had missed out on a whole slew of the rules and could not allow for a moment’s silence.

It would not be such a bad thing, Brian always thought, to end up like Julia’s parents. They were mild, easygoing people, comfortable in company, comfortable with one another. While they took on. the forms of a cauliflower and a tortoise separately, together he saw them as a gentle sudsy lather, the kind his hands made when he rubbed them with those half-cleanser, half-moisturizer bars of soap. A dissonant note had struck him one evening when he tasted those suds in the bath. They looked so creamy, so enticing, but the reality was just like soap, bitter and harsh as any disinfectant.

Sometimes, he saw their eyes narrow in wonderment as they gazed at their eldest daughter, as if they could not quite figure out where she had come from. She was impatient with them. When her mother clapped her knees and said: ‘Shall we have some tea?’ Julia invariably snapped: ‘You want tea? Then make it – Just make it. It’s your decision.’ And Jennifer would flush most miserably, move to rise but Julia would be in the kitchen already, flicking the kettle on and crashing cups on to saucers, in an access of guilt, Brian understood. Once, Jennifer had whispered to Brian: ‘We should have called her Matilda,’ but that was the closest she ever came to a direct criticism.

‘Sometimes I think you do these things just to hurt me,’ Julia was saying.

‘Mum, leave Dad alone now, he’s said he’s sorry,’ Sam said.

The gurgle was out. Brian bit his lower lip. But it was too late. She had caught it.

‘What?’ she spat. ‘What did you say?’

‘I didn’t say a thing.’

‘Yes, you did. You went “hmmph” – I heard you.’

‘I feel sick,’ Sam said.

Julia craned around. ‘Sam, stop whingeing.’

‘I’m not whingeing. I really do feel sick.’

‘Do you want me to stop?’ Brian asked.

‘Roll your window down a bit and take deep breaths, Sam,’ Julia ordered.

Sam fumbled with the window. He breathed in and out in an exaggerated fashion.

‘Better now?’ Julia asked. Her voice had softened.

Sam nodded his head. Brian looked in the rearview mirror. He met Sam’s eyes and crinkled a smile with the corner of his own eyes. Sam beamed.

They drove on in silence for the rest of the journey, Julia pressing an imaginary accelerator to overtake other cars on the single-laned, winding road which took them the rest of the way to Pembroke. Theirs was the second last car on to the ferry. The roll of the vessel was almost immediate. Julia craned back to check on the sprawled, white-faced figures on the Pullman seats behind. Sam was moaning softly.

‘The rest of my natural,’ she cackled, just loud enough for Brian to hear.

They were going to break the journey in County Waterford to spend the night with Brian’s brother, Edward: a two-and-a-half hour drive still ahead of them once the ferry docked.

It seemed to Brian that a million years had passed since they had left London by the time Julia indicated into the close of houses on the outskirts of the town where Edward lived. He had to admire the unerring way she had arrived there having only ever visited once before. She drew the car up to the correct house. Edward opened the front door. He had a brush and pan in his hands. Julia got out and hauled Sam from the back seat. Edward made for Brian’s side of the car. Brian rolled the window down and they slapped one another on their forearms. Edward leaned against the car murmuring his greeting. His clothes were soaked in an instant. Julia lunged at the front door, prodding Sam in front of her. She called over her shoulder: ‘It’s raining, for Christ’s sake …’

Brian and Edward followed her in. She was already by the fire in the living-room, stripping off Sam’s vomit- and cola-stained clothes from the ferry trip. Sam hugged his body, his knees trembled, his teeth chattered.

‘Hi, Edward,’ Julia continued to address him over her shoulder, ‘listen, run a hot bath for Sam, will you please? He’s frozen … And Brian? Check the fridge – Sam needs something hot to eat, it doesn’t matter what. Are there eggs? Fine. Scrambled eggs and toast. If there’s any bacon there, bacon too –’ She suddenly checked herself and cast Edward a cheek-splitting smile. ‘Sorry, Edward, we’ve just had the most horrendous journey.’

Edward, who was looking slightly dazed, shrugged and moved a step closer to his older brother. ‘No p-p-problem,’ he said.

Julia’s shoulders lifted. She’d forgotten his stutter. Brian thought that it should be inscribed on her tombstone the day she first met Edward and he asked her what she d-d-did and with a perfectly straight face, without so much as a blink, she had responded that she was a speech therapist.

Edward shot upstairs to run the bath. Brian headed for the kitchen. Sam began to slowly defrost by the fire. The welcome smell of frying bacon made him lick his lips in anticipation. Julia smiled and moved to help him to the bathroom.

‘I can walk,’ Sam said haughtily.

She squidged his naked bottom as he passed and he squealed. Brian smiled and began to hum in the kitchen. Edward rejoined him and opened a couple of beers. They talked about the rain, the journey, Edward’s house, his new job as an accountant for the local sugar factory. Although his clothes still stank and his hair still plastered itself across his scalp, Brian felt a warmth, an ease permeate through his sodden body. This was a nothing conversation in which he could participate. It carried no hidden messages, meandered toward no hidden agenda. It was complete in itself. A circle of nothingness yet within that circumference, somewhere in the vacuum, lay mutual childhoods, shared remembrances, secrets told in trust – lifetimes. For a moment, he felt happy and secure. He always felt like this around his siblings: Edward, younger by two years; the twins in Australia, who called every month and, despite a gap of fifteen years since he had seen them, Brian still felt that familiar sense of ease when one or other of the slightly Australianized accents greeted him on the phone. Then there was another brother, Cormac, the second youngest, in Edinburgh: Brian rarely met him these days but they stayed in touch; and finally the baby of the family, Teresa, married in Dublin with six children of her own. She had visited him in London a couple of times but did not care much for Julia, although she had never said as much. Two children had died apart from his twin Noel: a stillborn girl before Brian and an older boy, of meningitis, when Brian was three. A couple of miscarriages as well. Their mother had lasted long enough to bear the others and succumbed to breast cancer not long after Teresa was born. Now, Brian was the eldest. He saw the gleam of admiration in Edward’s eyes as he watched his brother deftly flick the bacon over. Brian pointed at the fridge and Edward intuitively understood that butter was required.

Sam and Julia came downstairs. Julia still looked exhausted but Sam’s cheeks glowed, his dark hair was slaked to the side and he looked renewed and cosy in his Batman pyjamas. He sat by the table and held his fork and knife up. Brian dished out the food and rumpled Sam’s hair. Julia was feeling guilty so she rattled on at length about the new kitchen decor, to make up for her earlier surliness. Edward stood with his hands by his sides, unsure where to place himself amidst this admiration. He showed her the new washing machine. She oohed appreciatively.

During the meal, Brian noticed that Edward never stuttered when he was addressing Sam. He inscribed the notation on a part of his brain, certain that Julia would comment on the same thing tomorrow. Sam was kind to Edward, Brian further noticed, in a way that children could be kind to elders who were somehow different. He felt proud of his son and, sitting there, mopping up the bacon grease from his plate with a swatch of bread, proud of his wife too. She looked so ethereal, so pale and almost vulnerable-looking. He longed to touch her. She lifted her gaze from her plate and cast him a smile. He could see the complex vein patterns stand out, throbbing and bluish on the sides of her smooth milky forehead. Instinctively, he reached out and wiped a speck of food from the corner of her mouth. He saw her smile again, and saw Edward’s look of wonderment, and he realized, a little sadly, that his action had not been so instinctive after all.

Edward suggested that he might take them for a little tour in the morning, if they agreed, of course, and weather permitting, of course.

‘We’d love to, wouldn’t we?’ Julia said, her gaze taking in Sam and Brian, ‘but it’s bound to be terrible, isn’t it? … The weather I mean …’

Julia took Sam to bed. Brian had to go to the toilet upstairs. He stood outside Sam’s bedroom door and listened to them. He loved the sound of Julia’s voice when it crooned and coaxed Sam to sleep. She could be so gentle, so irresistible; he could feel his own lids heavying, his breathing decelerate.

‘… Beyond all measure of space and time and …’

‘… Everything.’

He heard.

‘Sorry I was so cross with Daddy.’

‘’S’ OK.’

‘I’ll be the nice mummy tomorrow, I promise.’

‘OK.’ A loud yawn.

‘Sam?’

‘What?’

‘It’s not really OK to use the fu word.’

‘I know.’

‘Am I a horrible mother?’

‘No. You’re lovely.’

Brian smiled and crept downstairs. Later, when Edward had gone to bed having poured two enormous brandies for his guests, Brian turned to Julia. ‘You are lovely,’ he said.

‘Am I?’ She flushed prettily.

‘I’m sorry about … earlier today. And all the other times. You’re quite right, I am careless with Sam sometimes.’ He sighed and swallowed a mouthful of brandy. It left a pleasant little sting on his tonsils. ‘It’s just that – well – I just don’t want him to be afraid all the time –’ Brian broke off and smiled sheepishly. ‘Maybe it’s a father thing …’

‘But why should he be afraid?’

‘Like I say, maybe it’s a …’ Brian shrugged, he reached for her hand. ‘Anyway … Forgiven?’

‘Yes.’ Julia smiled. She cast him a sidelong glance, unsure if she was picking up the right vibes. The steady gleam of his blue eyes told her that she was. He stared meaningfully at the rug beside the still blazing fire.

‘Here? Now?’ she asked, a giggle catching at the back of her throat.

Brian raised his eyebrows. Julia drained her glass and shunted toward him on her knees. As they made love with their ears straining for any creaks on the stairs, she thought about the absurd revolutions within an ordinary married day. The pendulum swings through every contrasting emotion – five minutes – the difference between anger and reconciliation, love and hate.

THREE The Hide Man

Jeremiah preferred to do his own killing. That way, they got to use every scrap of the carcasses. He would slaughter up to twenty of the lambs at a session, sometimes a couple of aged ewes as well, if they were past breeding. The eviscerated bodies hung on hooks in an outhouse, awaiting collection by the local butcher’s truck. For some reason, they always reminded Brian of a line of strung-up babies. He got the job of sifting through the offal, selecting the finer morsels – liver, heart, kidney – for the butcher, the lesser – intestines and stomach – for his mother to boil up in a film of stomach lining later. She stewed the heads too, in a large cauldron over the open fire in the kitchen, making a broth with carrots and parsnips. The air was filled with the high sweaty scent of mutton.

The blood dripped from Jeremiah’s butcher’s block into a channel which ran into a tiled pit. When this was full to overflowing, either Brian or Edward used a bucket to tip the blood into a large square vat where it half congealed beneath a canopy of buzzing flies until Brian’s mother found the time to make black puddings. If they slaughtered a couple of heifers too, the contents of the vat could stand at nearly three feet deep. Occasionally, if the evening was warm and when all the work was done, Brian and Edward would squelch along the bloody channel in their bare feet, the soft, still-warm blood oozing between their toes like heavy cream.

Jeremiah’s method of slaughter was quick and effective. He caught the wriggling lambs high up between his waist and the inside curve of his elbow – one fast jerk of his arm and the neck snapped with precision. While the animal cast about on the ground in its death throes, Cathal or one of the twins would swing him the next keening lamb by means of its hind leg. Brian tried his father’s method once, but only succeeded in half wringing the creature’s neck so that it lay paralysed on the ground, staring up at him with terrified, unblinking eyes. Then he heard his father’s impatient growl as he swung the beast up to finish the job.

Cathal’s posh cousin, Martina, from Dublin, liked to visit the farm to watch the lambs playing in the higher fields. ‘Aren’t they sweet?’ she crooned.

‘You mean to eat?’ Brian said.

She cast him a disgusted look and flounced away in her pink petticoat. As Brian watched her take delicate faltering steps over the backyard, to protect her black patents, he had the curious thought that she was a bit like a little lamb herself. Sometimes after that, he would have erections as he watched the prinking babygirl steps of the lambs being led to slaughter. In later years, when he first heard of sheepshaggers, he remembered those eleven-year-old erections with a measure of discomfort. For all he knew, maybe that was how it started.

Apart from the one roast leg of lamb each Easter Sunday which the family could afford to keep back for themselves, the best thing about the slaughtering months was the hide man. Brian thought he was like a devil, appearing out of nowhere, twice yearly, to collect the animal hides. He was a tall man from the Midlands somewhere, with an accent which sounded strange to Brian and the others.

‘Talk some more,’ Cormac would plead.

‘Ahv no time for fooking tak and so ahant,’ the hide man always responded and then talked for hours anyway, but they could understand little of what he said. He smoked constantly, a fag butt clamped perennially between his thin lips, yet Brian never saw him strike a match and the fag was always the same length, curling smoke directly into his nostrils and up into his eyes, which Brian never managed to get a good look at either, because they were always tightly squinched against the smoke. He wore a long tan coat, down to his ankles, streaked and stiff with dried blood. Brian could smell him coming from the top of the road. He smelled like the bowels of hell.

By the time he arrived, the pelts in their separate outhouse looked alive again as they writhed with rats. The hide man carried a thick blackthorn for that purpose. The children jostled for space in the doorway to watch him swing the stick like a hurley, batting the rats into every corner. On occasion, an extra large black male would stand his ground, staring and hissing balefully, a moment off striking. In that moment, the hide man would suck on his cigarette, draw the stick back with silent expertise and launch it like a javelin into the jaws of the enemy. ‘Tak me on, woodyeh, yeh fooker yeh.’ He never missed.

He gave Brian a penny once, blackened copper with red specks of meat on it.

‘What’s that for?’ Brian asked.

‘Fir bean a gude lahd, I sees dah.’ The hide man tapped the side of his nose. ‘Pu dah i yoor mout now, dasas whir Ah allus kipt me muneh.’

That was the same day the hide man saved five-year-old Cormac’s life. Brian was down the fields about to bring the cows up for milking when he happened to glance up toward the outhouse where his father was still busy at work with the lambs. Two short skinny legs stuck up from the blood vat, kicking frantically in the air. Cormac had fallen in head first and could not lever himself out again. Brian broke into a run, desperately trying to estimate if he could cover the distance in time. He raced uphill, shouting at the top of his lungs to his father who he figured must have seen Cormac’s legs by now but continued with his sheep-skinning anyway, when the hide man rushed out from the pelt outhouse and grabbed one flailing ankle, pulling a dripping, choking Cormac from the blood. The hide man shook him by the leg until Cormac’s lungs could fill with air again and he let out one earsplitting scream which brought his mother crashing out from the kitchen, baby Teresa hanging off her remaining breast.

The hide man gently deposited Cormac beside his father, who did not look up. Brian could not be certain but he thought he detected a note of censure behind the hide man’s jocose tone. ‘Saf now, aher his thravels.’

Jeremiah darted a sideways glance at his wife to prevent her from moving to comfort her by now hysterical son. She stepped back obediently.

‘He can travel away,’ he said, indicating Cormac, ‘we’ve plenty more where he came from, at home.’

Brian turned and went down the fields again to the cows. Later, he got his penny from the hide man.

‘You were twitching in your sleep again,’ Julia said drowsily.

‘Was I?’ Brian stretched and yawned. ‘What time is it?’

‘Nearly eight.’ Julia looked from her watch to the window. She groaned. It was a sharp clear morning. Touring time.

Edward was already in the kitchen preparing breakfast. He cast her a shy smile and waited for her to greet him first. ‘What sort of cereal does Sam like?’ he asked.

‘Oh, he eats anything. Anything at all. What have you got?’

Edward checked the cupboards; rows of unopened, newly purchased cereal boxes filled the shelves. A solitary rusted tin of tuna competed for space. ‘Everything,’ Edward said. ‘I like cereal.’

Julia stood and pretended to study the cereals. She lifted them out and frowned. ‘This one, I think,’ she said, putting the Rice Krispies on the table.

‘I like those too,’ Edward said, pleased. She had chosen the only opened box.

She studied him from the corner of her eye as he made toast, buttering the slices with the seriousness he seemed to accord to everything. He had the same colouring as Brian, dark with blue eyes, but there the resemblance ended. Edward was tall and concave. His shoulder blades stood out, his stomach and back appeared almost as one, as if a ladle had scooped out the centre of him. His hands were white and very long; the flat-topped fingers flexed constantly, moving in and out like the delicate tentacles of a sea anemone. He wore black-rimmed, round spectacles, behind which his eyes sustained long-lashed nervous blinks for seconds at a time. Sometimes, he reminded her of a slender shaving of Brian.

Sam was about to say he hated Rice Krispies when she silenced him with a look. He finished his bowl obligingly and leaped up for the dreaded tour. Brian was doing his older brother hearty act – she pinched her nose and forced an enthusiastic smile on to her lips.

They headed off in Edward’s small hatchback so that Brian could check the engine out. He knew as much about engines as Julia knew about the sexual proclivities of greenfly, but that was not the point. She had often observed how Brian’s family used material goods like trophies, so that they might praise one another indirectly. It was not the done thing to say ‘you look good’ or ‘you must be doing well to afford such a big house’, instead engines or brickwork or employment contracts were studied with great seriousness and sagacious noddings so that the nodder might take an active part in the acquisition, in the success. Thus, Edward’s car was pronounced a ‘right little runner’, the perfect vehicle for the single man. Julia could see Edward visibly swell. He was seated in front with Brian driving. She had elected to sit in the back with Sam for reasons of her own.

Sam was in one of his dreams. His brown eyes stared out of the window in glazed fascination. She wished that she could tap his head open like an egg and crawl inside for a look around. When he inhabited his own little world like that she felt excluded. And she had to hold her breath sometimes to stop herself from clumsily treading with heavy footfalls into his own private space. It was difficult standing back observing. She was aware that she allowed him a leeway, a licence she could never countenance with her husband. But even at that, she still had to hold herself mentally back at times so that Sam might breathe, so that he might blossom into himself. The temptation to nip and tuck, to prune, was overwhelming.

Brian, or so it seemed to Julia, required nothing of or from Sam save that he be there; she, on the other hand, felt a profound sadness that she seemed to require not less than everything for the same reason.

There would not be another. Her womb had been in trouble even before Sam. She lived under a constant threat that the men in white coats would one day, and one day soon, whip it out to fling the empty redundant sac on to a waiting platter. She hated the idea of that barren space they would leave inside her.

Julia allowed her eyes to stray from Sam. Outside, a fretwork of colours drifted by. The fields to the right were irregular in shape and hue. They were not only green, she observed, but russet and brown and occasionally black. They stretched out over a gentle incline. Dark copses of trees clustered around gleaming homesteads: this was anglicized country. Neat, symmetrical, an undulating version of Surrey or Sussex. To the left, the land flattened and stretched, the unhurried waters of the Blackwater river carved a python conduit through the unusually prostrate landscape. The car followed the curves of the river, passing through rich, fertile farm country. They drove past mature escarpments of trees on the right bank, where large grey-flagged houses with unmistakably English bay windows looked out across the valley below. Houses accessed by long avenues of rhododendrons interspersed with gaunt Scots pines, their lower branches amputated or simply worn away by time. It was a solid landscape. Aged and sure of itself like an old Italian painting. Julia sighed with contentment. She was reminded of her home in Hampshire.

‘Da-ad, tell me about the school again …’ Sam was pleading.

‘Sam, you don’t want to know, believe me,’ Edward laughed over his shoulder.

‘Go on,’ Sam urged.

Brian laughed. Julia could envisage his stretch. She clamped her lips together.

‘Well, what do you want to know?’ Brian was saying. ‘That it was a two-mile walk with one room and one teacher who was a sadist?’

Edward threw his head back and guffawed.

‘What’s a sadist?’ Sam asked.

‘A person who enjoys inflicting pain on others.’

‘Oh, that was old C-C-Cotter, for sure,’ Edward said.

‘Tell me about the day he beat you so bad, Dad – you know, the day you had to go to the hospital for the stitches.’

Julia’s ears pricked; she had not heard that story before. She saw Edward’s shoulders stiffen. ‘T-t-that wasn’t –’ he began but Brian cut across him.

‘You’re turning into a right ghoul, Sam,’ he said.

‘What’s a –’

‘Sliced my ear open and half the side of my head that day he did,’ Brian continued, ‘with that bloody strap of his. I think the buckle caught me. It could have been my eye, mind you.’

‘He hit you with …’ Julia tried to access the conversation but Edward was guffawing again.

‘Remember the rasher rinds?’ He nudged Brian’s arm and pulled an imaginary length of rind from his mouth. ‘Hoy, you lad, put that in the trash …’

The way they were nestling their backsides into their seats augured a long trip down memory lane. Julia had no desire to accompany them. Then her gaze softened. Sam’s eyes shone, he wanted to take it all in, the child laying claim to the adult’s past. Quite understandable really. Their sugar-coated past was a safe place for Sam. She remembered a day not long after he had started school: she had stood beside him while they waited in the playground for the bell to toll him into class; he stood still, gazing into space while other boys brushed against him and urged him into play with elbow nudges and little inoffensive kicks, and she had realized that he was pretending to daydream, pretending to be fixated on some distant bush or other, but his legs were trembling. This was his defence. He had caught her eye and his own widened, imperceptible to another, but she had caught the little flash – he was warning her off. Then suddenly, his body jerked into action. His legs carried him away to the boys amongst whom he wrestled, kicked, elbowed and asserted himself. And she had smiled to herself in confusion, glad that he was finding his way, glad too that he was able to interpret a language which was alien to her.

‘I’m going to pull in up here,’ Brian was saying. He pointed to a spot where the road widened and a castle stood on the left behind a smooth green park with trees protected by wooden slats arranged in circles.

‘T-t-this is where I thought we might stop,’ Edward said.

They got out and stood with the castle as a backdrop for photographs. Julia craned around and stared at the severely grey stone building. It was most definitely a castle, with square, serrated turrets, scratch-like windows scoring the bleached stone in linear sets of three, and narrow rectangular minarets with blunted tops scraping the blue-white sky behind. It stood on a hill, surrounded by evergreens and straw spires of naked poplars. It was at once ugly and beautiful. She sighed and felt glad that Edward had proposed this tour. She felt her body begin to relax. Her toes curled in her boots. She laid her cheek flat against Brian’s shoulder for another picture. The air in her nostrils felt crisp and spicy, full of rotting leaves, river and implacable grey stone.

Brian and Sam found an empty can for a football. Julia strolled behind with Edward. ‘Sam loves listening to you and Brian going on about your childhood,’ she said.

‘He d-does?’

‘Brian makes it sound like some sort of childhood Eden,’ Julia continued. ‘Was it like that for you too?’

She had only been making idle conversation so the vehemence of his ‘no’ took her by surprise. Edward would not meet her eyes, his shoes scuffed the kerbside.

‘I d-didn’t mean to sound so …’ His voice lowered, as though he were afraid that Brian might hear. ‘S-some of it was OK, I s-suppose, but m-mostly I remember b-being c-cold and hungry and …’ He shrugged, made to move on, but Julia’s outstretched hand prevented him.

‘And what?’ she asked.

‘Af-Afraid, I suppose.’ Edward smiled self-deprecatingly. He looked ahead to Brian. ‘He w-wasn’t though.’

Julia was curious but her gaze had followed Edward’s to where Brian was allowing Sam to cross the wide main road on his own. ‘Brian …?’ She called and broke into a trot after them.

They all headed toward the stone hump-backed bridge which crossed the river, with Sam trotting in front. A sharp cathedral spire pierced the sky to the left. Julia bunched her fists and placed them on the stone ramparts of the bridge. Below, the Blackwater bisected the park in front of the castle. Willows, birch and drooping alders leaned their denuded branches down to the swirling waters. The valley stretched ahead, tree-filled, green, curvaceous. She sighed again. There were signs of life in the castle: mellowed light emanating through latticed panes from one wing only. The sight was somehow reassuring. Black crows circled overhead, but the River Blackwater was not black at all. It was multicoloured, purple and green and silver where the sunlight grazed across its eddying surface.

Edward leaned sideways across the stone wall to take a picture of the castle. He turned to her and she knew from the expression on his face that she was about to receive a discourse on local history. She quickly bypassed him and plunged her hands into her coat pockets. Edward signalled with a jerk of his head forward that they were to walk on across the river and up the winding road to the village. Julia turned to urge Brian along too. And her knees nearly gave way beneath her when she saw what he was doing. She opened her mouth to bark a command, then, fearful of momentarily distracting him, she swallowed the rocks in her throat and uttered her words in one strangulated gasp: ‘Brian, for Christ’s sake, Brian …’

Sam was standing on the bridge wall. Brian had one arm wrapped around his son’s knees. Sam took a step forward, smiling at the horrified expression on Julia’s face. She quickly glanced down at the river – it was at least a forty-foot drop – then up at Brian and Sam again. She wanted to jump forward, she wanted to scream, but she was terrified that any sudden movements, any sudden sounds might sway their concentration. ‘Get – him – down,’ she hissed.

‘It’s all right.’ Brian waved his free arm. ‘Look, I’ve got a hold of him …’

‘Down. Now!’ Her voice was rising inexorably, she was still too petrified to move.

Sam took another step forward. Brian was holding on to the leg of his son’s jeans.

‘Relax,’ Brian urged. He cast a look toward his brother and she saw his eyes roll slightly backwards in their sockets. ‘It’s all right,’ he repeated.

‘Jesus, Brian,’ a pale-faced Edward interjected, ‘it’s not all right, boy, it’s not all right … Get him down, in the name of God …’

Julia took a tentative step forward. Sam giggled. He took another step. She raised her arms towards him. He took another step. Instinctively his arms widened in response to hers. Her fingertips tingled, they summoned him to her, she could feel his body already, her arms ached, she took another step.

At that moment, a van came across the bridge too quickly from the village side. The driver braked suddenly on his approach to the bridge but was forced to coast through on a wing and a prayer. Julia leaped forward. Brian blinked rapidly. Sam’s arms were still outstretched. She saw him take a step backwards. She saw Brian’s shocked face. She saw his hands grapple with air. She saw the pinchful of jeans between his thumb and forefinger which was all that remained of his hold on Sam. She saw Sam waver as the soles of his sneakers rocked back and forth for an instant against the stone of the bridge; his outstretched arms flapped wildly, pushing back the air behind him. She saw Brian’s white bloodless thumb slide along denim until his fingers pinched together, holding – nothing. Sam’s mouth formed a soundless O, his widened, terrified eyes held hers as he sailed back into empty space. He fell with his mouth open, looking up at her. He was silent. Until a sound, like no other, indicated that he had reached the end of his journey. Brian froze. Julia straddled the bridge and gazed below. Edward restrained her. Sam lay spreadeagled, his lifeless eyes gazing directly into hers, his mouth in a perfect circle, his legs already being pulled by the current of the river while his torso grazed the ground. A thin trickle of blood seeped out from behind his head where it had hit a jagged rock. The river tugged at him, pulled him to it. Inch by inch his body succumbed until, with arms outspread and his eyes and mouth still open, he was swept along, a bobbing, inconsequential twig.

And then, someone started screaming.

FOUR Seeing Stars

Her thoughts naturally inclined toward gravity and the human propensity for making the inconceivably huge, small as – apples, say. The apple had represented falling for the longest time, from Adam and Eve’s fall from grace to the apple which clunked Newton’s crown, giving him gravity in the truest sense, to the decadence of the Big Apple.

The longer she pored over her books, the more it became apparent to her that the jargon for immensity had long been rendered vitiate by the scientists. Bereft of a language grand enough, they had had to resort to the terms of their childhood. Big bangs, black holes and superstrings. And when they gazed upwards, to their own galaxy, cerebral though they were, milk was what came to mind.

She, of course, was looking for Sam, in stars, in milk, in language.

Although she understood little of what she read, she could not put the books down. Sometimes, in the early hours of the morning, she would find herself staring at a series of complicated equations which made no sense to her, but she liked the fact that they made sense to someone.

At times it seemed as if anything was indeed possible. The passage of a particle from A to B had to be allowed what was called a sum of histories, so that from the possible, theorists might extrapolate the probable. It was even possible that in an infinite meta-universe anything that is possible will happen an infinite number of times in an infinite number of places. It was also possible, if not entirely probable, that everything she saw in the night sky was there for no other reason than to sustain life on a tiny blue planet orbiting an insignificant star near the inner edge of one of the spiral arms within the Milky Way galaxy.

It was possible that there were other universes, other dimensions which existed within these universes and consequently other laws of physics which would be comprehensible only to intelligent life observing these laws. And she wondered if in some contractionary state of the universe, in some inexplicable dimension, if there might not be a moment, a moment which would occur infinitely, when, in a reversal of time, Sam would swoop upwards to land on a stone bridge and fall into her outstretched, waiting arms.

Jennifer could not understand why Julia was so adamant about going to Ireland. Five months on, it was time to put away the books and face the harsh reality of his nonexistence. Julia could neither summon the energy nor the inclination to explain to her mother that she had to be where Sam was buried, a place he loved – but more importantly, a place where she might find him. She could not see him in Hampshire.

He had fallen from her, succumbed to gravity, aptly named she considered, being in effect its own open grave.

The force of the wind made her take a step back. It blew from the west, from the horizon, straight at her from the expanses of the Atlantic. She stood on the crest of a high peninsula which trailed into the sea like a crooked finger separating two bays. Ahead of her, across the quartering sea, another mountainous peninsula dipped into the waters, hidden in part by the hummocked back of an island. Below, small fields with grey dry-stone borders gradually declined in terraces to the ocean. Her gaze moved slightly to the right. The house, whitewashed over dry stone, faced the west at an angle so that its narrow gable end caught the worst of the gales. Behind it, the long rusted corrugated-iron shed was sheltered to some degree by the house. Sheep plucked at the stubby grass in a field to the right of the shed and stone outhouses. A few threadbare pines stood in an emaciated line, offering little protection. Other farmhouses spread out widely spaced and equally exposed along the decline. The scent of turf fires coupled with the pure salty air was a heady combination. Julia breathed in deeply and coughed. Her lungs were not used to such purity.

Above, the garish white sky with patches of milky blue raced inland, casting shadows over the landscape one moment, bathing it in a flat white light within seconds. She watched a spool of light unwind from behind a low dark cloud over the middle of the bay; where the light fell on to the grey sea, it made turquoise circles on the water’s surface.

She returned to her car and drove down the narrow winding track, indicating left at the second turning downwards. The dog, a black-and-white collie or what remained from the fleas, circled the car and barked half-heartedly. She pushed him away and stood by the door with her hand on the latch, then she decided to knock.

He had a tea-towel over his shoulder and the sleeves of his striped, brushed-cotton shirt rolled up to just above the elbows. He stared at her for a moment as if trying to remember who she was, then, with an almost imperceptible nod of his head, gestured her inside. She ignored him and returned to the car to pull her suitcases out; at the door again she stood in front of him and lifted her eyebrows. He did not reach for the suitcases.

‘You’re staying,’ he said. It was not a question.

‘Is that all right?’ she asked.

He did not respond but inclined his head slightly again. She followed him in, dragging the suitcases after her. He made directly for the stairs which led off the downstairs kitchen, which was in effect the lower half of the house. At the top, he opened the door of the bedroom where she and Brian used to sleep. Nothing had changed. The same nylon flowery quilt covered the small bed, two walnut lockers on either side, an oak wardrobe, bare floorboards and the drawn orange sateen curtains casting an eerie rufescent glow around the room. It smelled of must, salt, an accumulation of dust and something sweet too, something sugary like the grainy scent of stewing blackberries. She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, ‘the other.’ She jerked her head back toward the door behind her. He opened it without a comment.

It was Sam’s room. A tiny cell, eight by eight, a single bed along a narrow window that faced directly on to the sea, a highbacked chair and hooks forced into the stone walls to carry clothes hangers. A lamp without a lampshade on the chair. That was it. She nodded. ‘Thank you.’

‘D’you want tea?’ he asked. The way he said ‘tea’ sounded like ‘tay’.

‘Please,’ she responded. ‘That would be nice.’

He returned downstairs again. She gazed around the room. Seagulls gyrated just beyond the window panes. They called then swooped then called again in rapid staccato shrieks as they soared up on a lift of wind. She thought that they must surely make the loneliest sound in the world, but she remained untouched. The bed was hard when she sat on it. The horsehair mattress had a deep indent in the middle. She ran her finger around the circle.

Downstairs, she watched him scald the battered aluminium teapot. He allowed the hot water from the kettle to lap around three times, discarded it into the basin of dirty dishes in the sink and scooped up three tablespoons of loose black pungent tea-leaves from a tin.

‘Will you want milk?’ he asked over his shoulder.

‘Yes, please.’

‘There’s none,’ he said. ‘Today,’ he added.

‘That’s all right. Black is fine.’

They sat in silence and sipped from chipped mugs without saucers. He sifted a huge amount of sugar into his cup directly from the packet on the table. The cup looked awkward in his hand, he sat the base of it in his curled palm and forced his head low enough to meet the rim. She figured the rarely made gesture of not using the saucer for his tea was in her honour. She almost wished he had, she had never seen anything quite so clumsy-looking.

The dog scratched at the door outside. Julia moved to let him in.

‘Lev him out,’ Jeremiah said, without looking up.

The dog ran in anyway. He made for Jeremiah and performed an intricate series of circles with his tail tucked between his hind legs and his top lip moving up and down over his teeth in an ingratiating obeisance. Jeremiah lashed out with his leg and sent the whimpering creature sprawling toward the door of the back kitchen.

‘Maybe he’s hungry,’ Julia offered tentatively.

‘He’s always hungry.’

‘When do you feed him?’

Jeremiah looked surprised, if a slight lift of his eyebrows might be interpreted as such. ‘There’s no especial time,’ he said after a while.

He bent forward and sipped. Julia blew on her hot tea and studied him from under her lashes. He was a tall man, taller than Edward and leaner. His face was a mesh of deep grooves, so dark some of them that she had wondered in the past if her nail would be impregnated by dirt if she slid it along one of the deeply etched lines. His eyes were an electric blue, like Brian’s, under thick white eyebrows. The full head of hair was white also, standing on his crown in cropped thickets. The dog looked on from his chosen corner and thumped what was left of a tail against the wall behind him. Julia thought him an incredibly stupid beast to be so endlessly and pointlessly hopeful.

She lifted the teapot and filled both their cups to the brim again. Jeremiah ignored his full cup and scraped his chair back. He left the room for the outside yard with the dog rubbing against his black wellington boots with the rolleddown tops. Julia sipped the now tepid tea and stared into the ash-strewn open fireplace. It dominated one wall of the room with an oak settle to the side of it and two armchairs with lumpy cushions of indeterminate colours facing into the hearth, two dingy crocheted blankets draped over the backs of both chairs. That was the living area. She was seated in the kitchen area, with a tall dresser to her back dotted with woodworm holes, and the handmade trestle table with four rush-seated chairs in front of her. To the left a few makeshift cupboards led to a belfast sink which sat under an uncurtained sash window.

Beyond the sink stood a few shelves, a curiously ornate leather armchair and a grandfather clock with a sallow face which appeared to be in good condition. Just behind the clock a door led to the back kitchen which contained a grimy stove; a gleaming white fridge, which Julia had purchased herself some years past; a tiny angular cubicle with a shower and toilet, which she had insisted on installing at the same time as the fridge, not feeling well disposed toward using the outside toilet; and a mat with a blanket along one wall which was Jeremiah’s bed. He had not slept in the third upstairs bedroom since the death of his wife.

Her feet scraped back and forth over the stone floor rolling bits of grit beneath the soles of her shoes. She held the cup suspended in mid-air while her unblinking eyes slowly roved around her surroundings.

The door opened behind her letting in a swirl of unseasonally cold May air. Jeremiah approached the hearth with lumps of turf pressed against his chest. He allowed his hands to drop and the rich brown peat fell to the floor. His head inclined toward the fire and then he left again. Julia reached down to pick up a block. It was rectangular in shape, the outside bone dry and wispy, reminding her of loose tobacco. When she broke the block in two, the inside was dark and shiny smooth like treacly fudge and smelled of wet bog. She crumbled the dry outside texture with her fingers, allowing the matted strands to drop to the floor. Then she decided to finish her cold tea before she set about making the fire.

Hours passed. The sky was darkening outside. Julia sat by the table cradling the untouched tea in the cup of her hands. She stared blankly at the lumps of turf on the floor. A mouse, like a tiny dark missile, shot across the room and disappeared under the door to the back kitchen. Her eyes darted after it for a second then returned once more to the turf. Around her, the furniture dissolved into an inky formless mass. An occasional gust of wind rattled the window panes, the grandfather clock ticked into the otherwise silent room.

Thus far, her reception was wholly reminiscent of the first time she had ever set foot in this house. Jeremiah had not attended their small wedding in London and, on their first visit as a couple, had greeted his newly-wed son with some barked order or other. In his haste to comply, Brian had entirely forgotten to introduce Julia, who was left staring around the kitchen with a steadily sinking heart. She had extended her hand but Jeremiah had turned away, with just a nod of his head acknowledging her presence. She had thought then that he was singularly the rudest, most ignorant man she had ever met. She had wished that Brian might at least have had the decency to forewarn her, even a little. As the nightmarish week continued, she came to realize that Brian saw nothing wrong with his father’s behaviour. He just wasn’t ‘much of a talker’, Brian’s phrase to counter her furious nightly whispers.

Julia had wondered if she was especially unwelcome because she was not Irish, not Catholic. But in truth, she came to figure that it didn’t much matter one way or the other. Once they crossed his threshold, Jeremiah gave people things to do, as if, in a way, they could have no other reason for being there in the first place. He had even tried it with Julia – handing her a mop and bucket one day, his eyes grazing the floor meaningfully. ‘Not one hello, or welcome, or how are you,’ she had hissed to Brian later in bed, ‘but a bloody bucket thrust into my hand.’ Brian had laughed. That meant she was accepted, he had tried to explain. Shared work – a communion of sorts. Julia had remained sceptical, but she did wash the floor, for Brian’s sake.

Over the years, she had built up a barrier of indifference to Jeremiah. Resigned to visits when she had forced herself to tick off the days, and sometimes minutes too, until they could return to civilization again. Resentment growing again once Sam was also of an age to follow Jeremiah’s terse commands with an eagerness she had never encountered at home.

And now the strangest thing. Here she was, hoping to stay for an indeterminate time with this least comforting of men. Yet, the last few months had brought about a hasty resketching of Jeremiah in her mind. She had come to wonder if his own griefs throughout the years had made him so diamond hard. There was something in that she could identify with, something familiar amid all the estrangement of recent days. Perhaps it was a longing for his silence which had drawn her here so inexorably. At a time when everyone was trying to find some words of consolation, she had known instinctively that he would offer none. Perhaps, in his own taciturn way, he understood.

When Jeremiah returned he was carrying a small tin pail. He switched on the single, shadeless light overhead. Its wattage was low, serving only to illuminate the immediate area in a shadowy, orange light. He quickly set about the fire, soaking balls of paper in petrol first and heaping the turf on to the flames. As the warmth hit her face, Julia shivered and realized that she was quite frozen.

Jeremiah moved about behind her. She heard him wash his hands. Then he washed the dirty dishes within the sink. After a while she detected the acrid smell of lard melting on the stove in the back kitchen followed by the unmistakable odour of frying fish. The dank, dark kitchen seemed to come alive with the scent. She transferred her attention from the turf to the perfumed air around her. She had had no idea that fish could smell like that. By the time Jeremiah emerged carrying two plates, Julia’s mouth was full of saliva. She had not eaten for nearly two days. The time it took to load up her car and travel here.

He cut slabs from a crusty batch of bread, lathered them with butter and laid them directly on the table. There was a herring and one potato cake for each of them on the plates. He put two forks beside the plates, sat down and began to eat. Without looking at her he nodded toward the tin pail by the sink. ‘Goat’s. She gave a bit if you want it.’

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