“Stand up, Mary.”
Sean jams the blades of the digger into the ground, and they thud into the grass. He pulls the handle apart. Looks over his shoulder at his sister.
“Mary, stand up.”
This time she does and walks over to a rock, pretends to write on it with a blade of grass.
Lifting up on the handle Sean grits his teeth, uses his arm muscles, can feel them strain. A chunk of earth lifts up, a core
of dirt between the spades of the digger. Thin white roots throughout, a worm turning over just under the surface. Sean closes the handle, flips the clump over onto the ground and starts in again. Tips down, jam in, pull the handle apart, lift out. He turns to see if Mary is watching but she’s busy with her rock. Sean starts again, further down the post hole, the earth coming up in one swift move.
One by one, Dermot sets Abbey’s clothes over the shower curtain rod. They’re still damp to the touch. Putting his face close to them, Dermot can smell Galway Bay in the fibres, and the hand soap Abbey used to wash them. If they’d been dry the morning she left she would have taken them too, and he’d have nothing but her empty drawer and a fear of filling it.
In the kitchen Dermot opens the cupboard to the right of the sink. On the lower shelf: four plates, four bowls, an assortment of glasses, all of them mismatched, muted patterns. They’re clean and stacked, as Abbey had left them. On the middle shelf, teacups and saucers, and on the top shelf the bag of vitamin capsules given him two years back by Faherty. Reaching right of the vitamins Dermot pulls down a sheaf of papers—Abbey’s Irish notes. Verbs written out neatly in his hand on the top sheet; she’d copied them on the sheet below. There are also a few phrases, “She lives in Ireland, Tá sí ina cónaí in Éirinn,” “I am Irish, Is Éireannach mé.” Even though Abbey had no idea what part of Donegal her grandparents came from.
Dermot finds what he’s been looking for: Abbey had jotted Angela’s number and the number at Connor’s on the first sheaf of paper. Tomorrow he’ll call her at work, to make
sure she’s coming home. Walking from the kitchen to the front room he stares at the telephone number, knocks his leg against the arm of the couch. The place is a kip. Books are stacked on the big table, along with a number of dirty cups; the rug is covered in dog hair and there’s a water-stain along the trim. Tomorrow Dermot will get up on the roof, retie the thatch. He’ll borrow a ladder from the lads working next door. This place was a barn when he bought it. Two cows, a donkey and some sheep had all herded themselves in from the rain, slept on a straw bed in what is now the front room. Dermot remembers that it was months before the reek of shit and piss was finally out; the heavy must of wet fleece had stayed longer, as if it was worked into the stone. It was Fitch’s place at the time. Dermot took it and nine adjoining acres, used the money from his inheritance.
When he thinks about his parents and about the house he grew up in, what he thinks of most often is going to the solicitor’s, getting the keys. He’d walked up Leinster Road in Dublin, knowing the sale would go through that afternoon. He’d even sold the furniture, remembers standing in the entry way, leaning against the door jamb, thinking that nothing had changed, that if he lifted the chair in the living room the leg marks would go down two inches into the carpet. His father had spent years in that chair, one ear to the radio, eyes closed,
The Irish Times
on the table beside him. He’d worked twenty-three years as a typesetter in the
Times’
D’Olier Street offices and his son had never seen him crack open the paper at home. Dermot had gone into the kitchen and placed his hand on the handle to the cupboard door, thinking: toaster, butter plate
and small plates above, two of the saucers with nicks along the side—one with a thin crack across the middle. And when he’d opened the cupboard, things were exactly the way he’d expected, although the butter plate was clean and empty and there weren’t any crumbs around the toaster. In his old bedroom the spread was pulled back, the brown wool one, as if his parents had been expecting company, as if they’d thought “Dermot is coming home and he may want to stay.” There was a way his mother’d had of putting him down at night. She would push her lips into the hollow of his cheek, then wipe the kiss away, laughing. In the end she’d outlived Dermot’s father by seven months, had spent that time in and out of hospital trying to find a complaint—“Sure, my heart’s going,” one week and then on the phone to Dermot about her arthritis the next. The doctor said she’d died of want—to be with her husband, to sit in a chair and know he was beside her. “We should all be so lucky,” he’d said as he pulled the X-ray down off the back light.
Dermot didn’t want Dublin, not back then. He’d been shoring up in a rooming house in Clifden, working the lobster traps, and that was enough for him. Although the landlady’s clanging was driving him away; all afternoon she’d be in and out of the various apartments with a metal cleaning bucket, the clank of it hitting the floor. She’d sing under her breath, and the walls were thin as parchment. Missus McGuire was her name. She’d knock on Dermot’s door to tell him supper was ready, and stand there until he answered, craning her thin, lined neck up and over his shoulder to see what state the place was in. The sea had saved him. He was out on the boat at all
hours checking traps, lifting them out of the water, both arms straining. The smell of the sea all around him, the glistening Mannin Bay waters draining off the catch.
Fridays, Michael would come up from Galway after sitting in on meetings at the University. He had just started lecturing there after leaving Trinity, and though no one at the University in Galway wanted an Englishman on staff, there were only one or two conservancy experts in the country and Michael was one of them. And Michael was both a brilliant scholar and willing to teach. He’d picked up some Irish, sat on a number of boards, signed on with the Wetland Unit to show his commitment. Although there was no end to his complaining on the nights when he drove up to Clifden to see Dermot.
Usually they met for drinks at Mahones. Dermot would come down in the Mini, right off the boat, smelling of diesel and algae. Michael would be in a suit or dress pants and a collared shirt, would roll up his sleeves as the night went on. It was Michael’s easy company that buoyed Dermot during those years. He remembers the nights at Mahones, their odd pairing and the looks of the locals, as if he and Michael were on show—the Englishman and the ex-professor who spoke Latin to the lobsters he hauled into his boat. Their regular waitress at the time was a woman called Janey, all of twenty, with wide hips and blue eyes. One night she turned and smiled at Michael when the two of them came in. She walked over to the table in long strides. “Those legs,” Dermot mumbled, watching her, and Michael shook his head.
“Hey ya,” Janey smiled at Michael, picking up the two empty pint glasses left at the edge of the table.
“How’re ya?” She looked right at him, waiting for an answer.
“Grand, thanks very much.”
“Two Guinness,” Dermot said.
“Be right back,” she’d replied, winking at Michael before she turned to go.
Dermot started to ask a question but stopped himself. Michael raised his eyebrows and lifted his shoulders. “I have no idea.”
“None?” Dermot eyed him warily.
“None. But I’m fine with it all the same.”
“Sad day when a Brit can get laid in Ireland.”
Except for nights at Mahones, Dermot kept to himself. He wrote away to foreign universities, pounding out his credentials on an old typewriter with a sticky “e,” seeking a post in mediaeval studies. He had no recommendations and knew that anyone who called Trinity would be told he wasn’t suitable. The rejections came one after the next, Missus McGuire sliding them under his door then inquiring at tea what the business from Zurich might have been, saying, “My, Mr. Fay, but you seem to have lofty ambitions.” After a while Dermot would fill out formal applications with an addendum saying that he was qualified but too liberal for Ireland. He would cite Joyce’s problems with publication and go on for pages about how repressive states cripple the educated. He signed these with a great flourish and mailed them promptly before he’d time to reconsider.
In the end, after six years in Clifden, Dermot cleaned out Fitch’s old barn and turned it into some semblance of a home.
He took two wingback chairs from his parents house for which he paid the new property owner twenty pounds. When Dermot was a boy, his parents had sat in those chairs every night over tea while he was shushed to the back of the house for bed. They’d be sitting there again in the morning, and his mother would rise from her seat when Dermot came in. It was as though they’d never even gone to bed. He didn’t miss them once they were gone. He’d understood this when he left behind the photographs, the radio, the cake plate that was his grandmother’s. There were too many weighted objects in that house; his mother had been unable to have another child, and his parents’ hearts were hung with that sadness so that everything about them, every object touched by them, seemed tinged with regret. No, he didn’t miss them. What he missed was being a boy: waking up to the smell of toast and eggs, the cutlery spaced out on either side of his plate on the far side of the table; his mother getting up to ruffle his hair and serve him. He missed being sure of things—where to sit, where to go, who to come home to.
Frank
THE Italian restaurant Angela has chosen is packed—typical for Temple Bar on a Thursday night. Abbey slides into the booth next to Fenton. A candelabra on the table, napkins folded like swans. Over by the far wall a man in a tuxedo sings an aria, his a cappella almost eerie. People speak in hushed tones so as not to disturb him. The waitress, a busty woman in a black dress, drops off four menus, introduces herself as Irene. A waiter comes along a second later with a basket of warm bread. Angela excuses herself and heads for the loo.
“Do you like Hornby?” Brendan asks Abbey. They’d just been to the films where they’d seen a movie based on one of Nick Hornby’s books.
“I’ve only read
High Fidelity
.”
“Did you see the film version of it?”
“No. But I remember John Cusack was in it.”
“They made it so American.” Fenton sounds disappointed. “
Fever Pitch
is the best.”
“Do you follow football, Abbey?” Brendan raises his eyebrows in Fenton’s direction.
“Not really.”
After Angela comes back, Irene brings a round of water and takes the order for drinks. Doesn’t write anything down, just spins the silver bracelet on her right wrist with her left finger. She has a small tattoo, two Japanese symbols, on the inside of her arm. “Back in a min!” She turns on her heel and walks away.
Fenton leans in towards Abbey’s shoulder and looks at her menu. His aftershave is musky and pleasant. “What are you havin’?”
“The eggplant penne, I think.” Abbey looks across the table to Angela.
“Yeah, the penne’s good,” Angela says, tapping her teeth with her fingernail, glancing at Brendan. “How’s the fettucine alfredo? Have you had it?”
“It’s grand, yeah.”
“I’m for the mackerel.” Fenton closes his menu. He leans back against the booth’s velvet upholstery, turns to look at Abbey. Abbey doesn’t want him to think this is a date but she hasn’t brought up the fact that she’s living with Dermot. And she knows Angela probably didn’t mention it to him either.
The waitress drops off the drinks and takes their order. The boys dig in to the bread. The conversation goes back to football and the Hornby football novel, and then on to Brendan’s work at an indie recording company two streets over. He offers Abbey a tour sometime and she agrees. Waits for an opportunity to mention Dermot, but it never arrives.
What surprises Abbey most is how much fun she has. After dinner the four of them go to Blackhouse Records then to The Mean Fiddler to dance. Angela knows the doorman there, a guy called Buzz whose real name is Fergal. He has a microphone headset on and when he sees Angela, he pulls it off to kiss her. Dance music comes down the stairs from the club, fills the street.
“Goin’ in?” he asks. There’s a queue of about fifty people waiting behind a yellow rope.
“Is it all right?” asks Angela. Buzz usually comps her.
“Ah, it’s grand. There’s some big CD release job goin’ on but it’s a good crowd.”
He lifts the second rope at the foot of the stairs and lets the four of them in free, says “Four V.I.P’s coming up,” into the headset in his hand.
Inside the music is deafening and the crowd pressed in tight. The whole room smells of sweat. On stage, two English DJs spin dance music, adding their own mix over an album that sounds like it’s straight out of the 1980s. People jump up and down in front of the stage, everyone to a different rhythm. Abbey can feel the bass line thumping against her chest.
“I’ll get us drinks.” It’s Fenton beside her, shouting into her ear. When he comes back he hands her a pint of lager, tips his glass to hers; the foam spilling over the rim. He licks his hand and smiles. He’d told her at dinner that he’s twenty-four, which makes him just two years younger than Abbey. “An older woman,” he’d said, as if things were well underway between them. Abbey takes a sip from her pint and nearly spits the lager back into the glass. She looks up at Fenton and
shouts over the music, “What is this?” “Bud!” he mouths, giving her a thumbs-up.
Fenton takes off his leather jacket and Abbey hands him her coat, watches as he walks over to a booth set up along the wall, puts their stuff over the end of it, asking the girls who’re sitting there if they’d mind. They watch him saunter back towards Abbey and it occurs to her that he’s probably considered a bit of a catch. He has a wiry build, the kind girls seem to go for, cropped black hair, sideburns, and almost girlish, doe eyes. He showed up for the film in dark jeans that were folded up at the hem, and a white T-shirt, like something out of a Calvin Klein ad.
Fenton nods sideways towards the middle of the crowd. “This music’s not my thing, but do you wanna dance?” Abbey turns around and looks towards the bar but Angela is nowhere in sight.