No Goodbye (7 page)

Greg came home from the hospital. His face is all bashed and bruised, and he has a big bandage on his fingers. Some of his friends called to see him, and I brought in a cake on a big plate, and in a few minutes they finished every bit of it.

Daddy says I have to help him mind Greg. It’s kind of like being a nurse.

Daddy said he would read stories to me at night, but on the second night he fell asleep in the middle of the story so I tickled him to keep him awake. He’s getting much better at making dinners and tonight’s was yummy.

Mummy was on the phone again. She was angry that Dad didn’t tell her about Greg and the hospital. She really misses us. I think she will come home very soon.

The swimming pool is packed. The screaming and shouting and splashing bounces off the walls and echoes all around and the sun beats down on us through the monstrous, domed, glassy roof. It’s like being in a giant steambath. Greg has stayed at home in bed playing his walkman because he’s not well enough to go swimming yet.

Dad is half-walking and half-swimming as Grace bobs along in her armbands beside him. I want to practice lengths, to get a good steady rhythm going. The chlorine is very strong today and it stings my eyes. Everyone will think I’ve been crying.

Conor is standing at the side of the pool, peering into the water and trying to make up his mind whether to dive or not.

‘Lucy!’ Dad calls. ‘Will you stay with Grace for a few minutes? I want to go for a bit of a swim on my own.’

Grace pretends to be a mermaid and splashes along beside me. Dad swims strongly through the crowds of
learners and proud parents and weekend swimmers.

Every weekend now it’s the same. Dad takes us somewhere special: the zoo, the wax museum, the National Gallery. You name it, we’ve been there. At this stage we’re bumping into the same people, mostly dads and their kids. You can spot them a mile off as the dads are usually trying to read the paper and have a bit of peace. Our Dad doesn’t like us hanging around the house. ‘We all need to broaden our minds.’ That’s what he keeps telling us. We might even be going away with him for a few days.

Gran says that Dad is a reformed character. I’m not sure what that means, but I guess it means a whole lot better than he was. Last week he went to our school and told the principal about Mum and the trial separation. I wish he hadn’t, because now Mrs O’Malley is always watching me. Every morning she asks me, ‘How are things at home?’ If I yawn or look tired, she wants to know if I’m getting enough sleep. At lunch-break she walks down by my table and secretly checks that I have enough food and that it is nutritious!

‘Come on, you lot! Out of the pool!’ Dad shouts.

‘The whistle is due to go in about four minutes.’

Grace’s teeth are chattering. A quick splash under the warm shower, and then I wrap her in her big yellow towel. I’m freezing too and I hate the feel of cold, wet togs sticking to my skin, but if I don’t do her first she’ll get all upset.

‘Grace! Sit on the bench! Sit still!’

The floor of the dressing room is really wet, and if your clothes fall on the ground it’s just awful. Grace keeps hopping around the place. She knocks her T-shirt down, and I put it on backwards, hoping she won’t notice the wet patch near the shoulders. Then I drag on my own clothes and quick as a wink head out to the car and the others.

Dad and Conor are busy not talking, listening to the radio. With his wet hair and nervous face, Conor looks a bit like a twitchy mouse.

‘Well! Where is it to be?’ asks Dad, yawning.

‘The shopping centre,’ pleads Conor.

‘The park and the swings,’ begs Grace.

Since Dad hates shopping, it’s a good guess where we’ll end up. I don’t want to go with them. I say I want to be dropped at Gran’s.

It seems strange to be standing here outside my grandmother’s front door. I feel like Little Red Riding Hood come to visit, except that I’m wearing a red sweatshirt instead of the cloak. Dad has gone to the playground with the others. I press the bell, and hear the chimes ring through the narrow hall. No reply!

Maybe she had to go out. I should have told them to wait. I ring it again and listen for the jangle.

I could let myself in. Granny keeps a key hidden under the pot of geraniums on the left-hand side of the door, just in case of emergencies. Dad keeps telling her that it is too dangerous, that a burglar might find it some day and break into her house. But Gran is always losing and forgetting things – her bag, her cardigan, her glasses, the book she’s reading – so I can understand it. This is her way of making sure she can always get back into her own house. I wait a minute or two, listening to the sound of magpies fighting in the overhead trees. Just as I crouch down to lift the flowerpot, the front door opens.

‘Lucy!’ Surprise and accusation fill her voice.

‘Hi, Gran!’ I blush.

‘I’ve changed my hiding place,’ she confides. ‘It’s
under the rock near that lavender bush now.’ I nod.

‘Don’t bother telling your father about it!’ she laughs.

She leads me through the dim, narrow hallway to her cluttered breakfast room. The French doors are open, and I’ve obviously interrupted her in the middle of doing the garden.

‘Is everything all right, Lucy?’ Her face is anxious. All I can manage is a nod. It doesn’t fool her for a single moment.

‘Are you sure, Lucy?’

‘I felt like calling … to see you …’ I stutter.

‘That’s very nice,’ she says softly. ‘I’m a lucky woman to have such a good, considerate granddaughter. Come on in and sit down! I was just due to make myself a cup of tea anyway. Then you can come and give me a hand with a bit of weeding.’

She fills the kettle and lights her old gas cooker. Her kitchen is small and neat and smells slightly of pine disinfectant.

‘It’s nice to have a bit of company. Weekends, I’m usually on my own.’

She takes down two white china teacups, two saucers and pale pink flower-patterned plates. At
home all we ever use is mugs. Two chocolate biscuits and a big, knobbly, nutty one on each plate. Then she sits on her chair watching me while we wait for the water to boil. I pull my knees up under me. I’m sitting on the cat’s chair. His two cushions are covered in fluff and give off the smell of cat.

‘Any news from your mother in the last few days?’ she asks, taking a bite of biscuit.

‘She phones. She phones quite a lot, actually,’ I tell her. ‘You know, sometimes you’d think Mum and Dad were best friends. I think my Mum is lonely. She misses us!’

‘I’m sure she does,’ mutters Gran. ‘Act in haste, repent at leisure!’

Steam blows up from the kettle and sprays the tiles with a damp mist. Gran bustles over, makes a pot of tea and carries it to the table.

‘Being left behind – it’s a hard thing,’ she says. When I was a little girl, Lucy, not much older than you, a terrible thing happened. One day my father walked out the door. He just opened that farmhouse door in West Cork, where we grew up – he knew every stick and inch of the place – he pushed open that door as if he was going across the yard to feed
the hens, or check the pigs, or do something in the barn. Only this morning it was different. My grandfather sat in the corner of the kitchen, not saying a word, smoking his pipe. My mother made a breakfast so big that none of us could eat it. Usually she hated wasting food, but this morning it was different. My father hugged me and told me to be a “good girl” and help my mother! He shook my brother Daniel by the hand, and then he was gone, out across the muddy yard, a bag slung over his shoulder. Those were war times and he had joined up.’

She stops, and I can tell she’s remembering every bit of it.

‘Did he die?’

‘As good as! His ship was torpedoed and he was left floating in the sea for a day. He was sent to a hospital in England, then back to the front. He came home about three years later. My grandfather had died by then, but it seemed to me that my father took over his position in our household. Most of the day, he just sat in the corner by the fire. A young man had left us, and an old, broken man came home.’

‘But he didn’t die!’

‘No! Just inside! I can still remember what it was like.’

Her hand reaches out and touches mine. Her knuckles are knobbly and she must have hurt one of her fingers as the nail is black-looking. Her wedding ring seems loose and big on her thin finger. They are old hands. They make me want to cry. She sips her tea and nibbles her biscuit.

Then the tears come, dropping onto the plate and on her tablecloth. She pulls a tissue from her sleeve and passes it to me silently.

I am crying for my Granny and her old working hands. I am crying for a man who left his farm and family, and never came back the same. I am crying for my Mum. I wish she hadn’t had to go away. She must be so sad. And I guess, if I’m honest, I’m crying for ME. It’s as if a big dam is bursting inside me. I can’t stop all the sadness leaking out of me.

Gran just watches and says nothing. She passes me tissue after tissue and puts the used ones in the bin. After a while there are fewer tissues needed. Gran wets a towel and wipes my eyes and face as if she’s cleaning a baby or a toddler.

‘Feel better now, pet?’

It’s funny, but I do – kind of empty and drained out.

Old Max comes in, jumps up on my lap, and makes himself into a ball. He purrs gruffly as I pet him.

‘Don’t get too comfortable there, young lady! Remember all those weeds are a-growing.’

I feel kind of shaky and wobbly, and the sunlight blinds my eyes for a second when I step outside. Gran’s garden is about three times the size of ours. Dad keeps on saying that it is too big for her to manage on her own, and that she should move to an apartment, but she really loves this house and garden. She knows every leaf and flower, and watches it all change from day to day, season to season. She and Max need this garden.

But in one corner there are a lot of weeds, trailing and sneaking and winding everywhere. I pull them or dig them up, making sure to get the roots.

At teatime, Gran makes us a tray of sandwiches, all tiny and neatly cut with no crusts. Chicken, tomato, salad with mayonnaise. Funny, the fresh air and work have left me starving. As I wolf down the sandwiches, I notice Gran has taken only one. Old people don’t
eat half as much as people my age.

‘Growing bodies need good food,’ Gran says, watching me eat.

Gran must be the nicest old person that I know. She was very pretty – well, still is. Every week she goes to the hairdresser and has her hair washed and set. Once the hairdresser put in a bluey rinse by mistake, instead of the honey-gold that she likes, and she was so upset. My Mum had to drive over to calm her down and then ring the hairdresser and complain. She didn’t want any of us to see her like that. She takes lots of vitamins because she is real scared of falling and breaking her hip.

On my way to the bathroom, I stop outside her spare bedroom. It is very small. A big black plastic sack full of scraps of material fills the floor. She’s making a patchwork quilt. Bits of it are pinned together and hang over the velour chair and the bed. She has been working on it for about a year.

‘Gran!’

She comes out into the corridor and catches me looking at the room. She knows what I’m thinking.

‘Lucy! This room is such a mess. Some day soon I’ll get round to fixing it up, and maybe then you and
little Grace could come and sleep over.’

‘Could I stay tonight?’ I plead.

‘No!’ she shakes her head. ‘It’s not that I don’t want you, Lucy, it’s just that it wouldn’t be a very good idea at the moment - your Dad needs you to be at home.’

‘Oh!’

My grandmother picks up an old photo of Dad, taken when he was a little boy. A boy who looks a bit like Greg, but with longer, floppier hair and dressed in a school uniform, stares out. He’s trying to smile, but there’s something shy about him.

‘That was taken in his last year in primary school. He was about eleven then. Worried about something. He was a good child but it was always hard to know what he was thinking about.’

I stare into the blue-grey eyes of my father as a child, trying to guess.

Gran is searching for something, rummaging in the pocket of her navy cardigan. ‘Got them!’ She dangles the car keys. ‘Come on, Lucy, pet! Let’s get you home!’

The clubhouse seems small and crowded and stuffy today, as if there isn’t space for everyone. I scan the corners for a spare seat.

‘Get lost, Conor!’ Ian mumbles at me.

‘Get lost, yourself.’ I try to sound tough. Ian is doing his best to block my way, so that I can’t sit down. John is pretending to look at a book, so he doesn’t have to see what’s going on.

Brian is shoving up to make a space for me, but Alan gives him a kick with his mud-stained boots. I pretend I’m happy to stand, and fiddle in my anorak pocket for the remaining half of the chocolate bar Dad got me last night. I’ll put it in the club food-box instead of eating it myself.

‘Excuse me!’ I brush past Ian, ‘I want to put something in the tin.’

Ciaran passes me the old biscuit box. It has a pattern of snowmen and Christmas trees on the outside. It is half full – a packet of mints, some chewing-gum, two bags of crisps and a few loose
toffees.

‘Hope that hasn’t gone off,’ warns Alan.

‘No! I only got it last night. I saved most of it.’ I shove it in with the rest of the stuff, making sure the paper is wrapped good and tight around it before I put the lid back on.

John coughs and begins, ‘Now, about next weekend – we need to plan this hike we’re going on.’

This sounds interesting.

‘What day are we going?’ I ask.

‘We
are going on Saturday,’ mumbles John.

‘Sounds good!’ I can’t help smiling.

‘Yeah! Sound’s great, Dolphin, ’cos you won’t be there!’ jeers Ian. I glare at him, but say nothing.

John blushes. ‘My Dad is dropping us off early in the morning on his way to play golf in Rock Mount, and we’re going to hike the whole way back. It’s a few miles.’

‘Not for weaklings,’ sneers Ian.

‘The problem is, Conor, that my Dad can only take four in the car,’ mutters John, holding his head down.

‘I have piano lessons on Saturday mornings,’ Ciaran nods, relieved, ‘so I couldn’t go anyway.’

Mark doesn’t say a word, just stares at his bulging
trainers. I guess he is used to this kind of thing. He should explode, grab them, fling them round the room. What the hell kind of Giant is he anyway?

‘It stinks!’ The words spurt out before I know it. ‘It’s not fair! There should have been a draw!’

‘You unhappy with this club, Dolphin? Well, you know what you can do!’ Ian threatens.

I hate them.

‘Take a hike!’ he jeers.

They all crack up laughing.

I grab the tin, fling off the lid, take back my chocolate and two extra toffees and ram them into my pocket. Somehow, the crisp bags burst and I scatter the crumbs like golden confetti all over the others and make a run out the door.

‘Get back in here and tidy this!’ roars Alan.

‘Go stuff!’ I yell and take off.

My sleeve is soggy and shiny and my eyes must be red and bulgy by the time I get to our house.

Lucy is busy doing her homework, with that big frown that gives her train-tracks across her forehead.

‘Luce?’

‘Uh!’

She’s chewing her pencil and trying to work out a
load of ‘a+b+x+y’s written on her page.

‘You okay, Conor?’ she asks without looking up.

‘Sure!’

‘Hey, Dad left a note for you on the fridge.’

A red plastic number 5 pins my father’s words to me against the white door: ‘CONOR. YOU PACKED THE DISHWASHER THE WRONG WAY THIS MORNING. PLEASE RE-DO IT. –DAD.

Sure is interesting. I get the message loud and clear. Nobody believes that I can do anything right. Now that Mum is gone, nobody really cares about me anymore. This whole family stinks!

Suddenly I find myself bombing up the stairs, pulling my rucksack out of the wardrobe, and starting to fill it.

I’ve had enough of them all.

Walking, you go where you want, when you want … that’s my motto.

I’m a good walker. I often see other kids whingeing on walks, having to be bribed with sweets and ice cream every step of the way. But once you get into a stride, it’s a bit like running.

My heart is punching faster, urging me to start jogging, but I know if do I’ll get tired far faster and won’t be able to go a long distance. So it’s walk, walk, walk.

My post-office savings book and my money are in my jacket pocket. I try and jiggle the shoulder of my bag so that it isn’t so heavy, butt he tug and pressure is making my neck and back ache already.

At first I thought I might head for the city. Catch a bus right into the centre of town. But the streets are dark and lonely at night, and once the big shops are shut only a few restaurants and pubs and clubs are open, places kids aren’t let into. From the park near our house, I can see the sea, all the ships and boats coming in and out of Dublin Bay. I like ships and the foamy pattern of white they weave through the spread of sea-blue. I want to see them up close, maybe even go on one. I sort of know the direction I’m heading, but it’s a pity I didn’t bring that compass I got to go with the water-bottle and belt and torch set about two Christmasses ago. It might still work.

It’s too dangerous to thumb a lift, so I keep my head down and act as if I live around here and I’m on my way home from PE or something. Don’t want to
meet anyone who would know Mum or Dad in case they stop me.

The sprawling shopping centre is closing, a file of cars is pushing out of the car-park and joining the traffic lanes. One by one the shop lights go out, like giant eyes closing down, leaving a glassy grey shape, still and dark. The security man nods to me as he pulls over the low metal barrier when the last car leaves. From here I know the road to take, and most of it is downhill, to Blackrock, Seapoint, Monkstown, that’s the way. Just keep on walking, pass by the puppet theatre – ’night, ’night, puppets, all asleep now – and on to Dun Laoghaire harbour.

A sudden low hum scares me for a second and then I realise it’s the DART train coming, its tickertack of light flashing by me. In the darkness the sea is lapping in, clawing the sandcastles, filling in the pawmarks, footprints and scattered bits of rubbish left on the damp, cold sand.

Part of me is real proud. I never thought that I could walk this far. It must be miles. Bet they miss me at home. Bet they are starting to worry. Let them!