Authors: Roddy Doyle
O'Reilly wondered if Alina had heard her. She was facing O'Reilly, but her eyes were huge and far away.
—Do you understand that, Alina?
—Yes.
—You're fired.
Alina nodded.
—As of now, said O'Reilly.
—Yes.
—You can stay the night, then off you fucking go.
—Yes.
—Stop saying Yes, Alina, said O'Reilly.
But she wasn't looking at Alina now. She was searching for a phone number and balancing the baby on her shoulder as she walked over to the window and the pram.
—I'll have to stay home tomorrow, said O'Reilly. —So, fuck you, Alina, and life's complications.
She gently slid the baby from her shoulder and, her hands on his bum and little head, she lowered him into the cradle of the pram.
She heard the scream.
—No!
—Fuck off, Alina, said O'Reilly.
She didn't turn, or lift her face from the pram. She kissed the baby's forehead and loosely tucked the edges of his quilt beneath the mattress.
She stood up. She looked down at her son.
—There's only one baby in there, Alina.
She had the phone to her ear. She began to speak.
—Conor? she said. —It's O'Reilly. We have to cancel tomorrow's meeting. Yes. No. My Polish peasant. Yes; again. Yes. Yes. A fucking nightmare. You can? I'll suck your cock if you do. Cool. Talk to you.
O'Reilly brought the phone down from her ear at the same time that Alina brought the poker down on O'Reilly's head. The poker was decorative, and heavy. It had never been used, until now. The first blow was sufficient. O'Reilly collapsed with not much noise, and her blood joined the urine on the rug.
Mr O'Reilly was inserting his door-key into the lock when Alina opened the front door.
—Alina, he said. —Bringing Cillian for a stroll?
—Yes, she said.
—Excellent.
He helped her bring the pram down the granite steps.
—Is he well wrapped up in there? said Mr O'Reilly. —It's a horrible evening.
—Yes, said Alina.
—And yourself, he said. —Have you no coat?
He looked at her breasts, beneath her Skinni Fit T-shirt, and thought how much he'd like to see them when she returned after a good walk in the wind and rain.
Alina did not answer.
—I'll leave you to it, he said. —Where's O'Reilly?
—In the playroom, said Alina.
—Fine, said Mr O'Reilly. —See you when you get back.
Alina turned left, off her usual path, and brought the pram down a lane that ran behind the houses. It was dark there, and unpleasant. The ground wasn't properly paved or, if it was, the surface was lost under years of dead leaves, dumped rubbish and dog shit. But Alina stayed on the lane, away from streetlights and detection. She pushed straight into darkness and terror. She held her arms stiff, to keep the pram as far from her as possible. And, yet, she felt each shudder and jump, each one a screaming, shuddering baby.
At the end of the lane, another lane, behind the pub and Spar. Alina stayed in this lane, which brought her to another. And another. This last one was particularly dreadful. The ground was soft, and felt horribly warm at her ankles. She pushed hard, to the lane's end and fresh air. The sea was now in front of her. Alina couldn't hide.
She knew what she had to do.
But now she wasn't pushing. The wind shook the pram, filled the hood, and lifted it off the ground. She heard the cries – the pram landed on its wheels, just a few centimetres ahead, and continued on its course. Alina had to run behind it, pulling it back, as the infant ghosts, their murderers or demons – she did not know – perhaps their spirit parents, she did not know, as all of them tried to wrench the pram from her. She heard the wails, and under, through them all, she heard the cries of the baby, Gillian. Her adorable, intelligent Cillian. Now gone, murdered by the murdered infants.
She refused to feel the cold. She didn't pause to rub the rain from her eyes. She held onto the pram and its wailing evil, and she pulled and pushed the length of the promenade, a journey of two kilometres, to her goal, the wooden bridge, the bridge out to the strange island.
They found her in the sludge. She was standing up to her thighs in the ooze and seaweed. She was trying to push the pram still deeper into the mud. They found the baby – they found only one baby. The quilt had saved him. He lay on it, on top of the mud. The tide was out, but coming back. The water was starting to fill and swallow the quilt. They lifted the baby and the struggling woman onto the bridge. They left the pram in the rising water.
He can't find himself on the registration form.
—Excuse me?
—Honey?
—There's nowhere for me to tick. Here.
He points to the section on the form.
The woman looks at him. She looks over her glasses.
—African-American, she says.
—I'm not American, he says.
—You sure? she says
—Yeah, he says. —Yes.
She takes the form from him. She looks at the categories – White, Non-Hispanic; African-American; Hispanic, the rest – and she looks at him.
—Well, she says. —What
are
you?
—Irish, he says.
He's three days gone. Three days in New York. His name is Declan and he's buzzing. He's been up on the Empire State Building, he's been zinging around on the subway, he's been in Starbucks on the corner of Lenox Avenue and 125th Street. Harlem. He still can't get over it. He's been in Harlem. He's walked past the Apollo, he's bought a T-shirt in the Footlocker. Cheap too, great fuckin' value.
He's wearing it now.
—Irish? she says.
—Yes, he says.
—Well, here, she says.
She's friendly; she's nice. She writes
OTHER
beside Hispanic. And a little box.
—That's yours, honey.
—Thanks, he says.
—Sure.
That's great; that's done. He's registered. Here. In college. In America. The land of his ancestors.
He's back out on the street. It's freezing; fuck. The hands are cut off him; he'll have to get gloves. But he loves it, he loves it. Broadway – for fuck sake. He walked that way this morning. He'll give this way a go. Broadway. Broadway. Another Starbucks. God, it's great. He hasn't slept since the plane. He's here.
The Harlem Renaissance. That's what he'll be working on. The Harlem Renaissance and its influence on Irish literature. He doesn't know if he'll find any; he's chancing his arm. But it got him his visa, so fuck it.
A supermarket. He goes in. He'll be feeding himself.
He just got sick of it one day. Sitting in a tutorial, when he was in Second Year, in UCD. The lecturer droning on about Irish writing and its influence on the world – Joyce, Yeats, little country, big prizes. And the others around him nodding away, like they were part of it. Nod nod, pride pride; the smugness. It had got on his wick.
There's about twenty-eight different kinds of milk. What the fuck is 2 per cent? All he wants is white.
—Were they never influenced by anyone themselves? Declan had said.
Gasps, snorts; folders clutched.
—Well, said the lecturer. —Who?
—The Irish lads, said Declan. —Did they never read a book themselves, like?
The lecturer had smiled.
—Come on, Declan. The Greeks, the Romantics, you know—
—No one a bit more recent, no? said Declan.
—Well, who? said the lecturer. He was still smiling.
—Like, the Harlem Renaissance, said Declan.
And he watched as the lecturer's smile became a different kind of smile, and that was that. Ireland's gift to the world? Bollocks to it. Declan would prove that Harlem had kick-started Ireland's best writing of the twentieth century – or at least some of it. And, if he couldn't do it, he'd cheat; he'd make it up. Yeats had died clutching his copy of
The New Negro.
Beckett never went to the jacks without
The Souls of Black Folk
under his arm.
So here he is. Two years later. Still looking at the milk.
—For fuck sake.
—You're Irish, right?
—Yeah.
—Awesome.
—Eh. Thanks.
—Bye.
—Bye.
That's nice. They talk to you here. That would never happen in Ireland. He chooses a carton with a cow on it; you can't go far wrong with a cow. And a few apples. And one of those yokes of salad – lettuce and that. He'll start cooking next week.
He starts tomorrow. Meets the Professor. Gets dug into the books. Home to Harlem.
His grandad came from Harlem. Met his granny in Glasgow, during the war. She worked in a hotel – he can't remember the name. She was seventeen, and on her own. She'd come over with her sister, but the sister had moved on, to Coventry. And she'd met his grandad. At the back of the hotel. He was getting a kicking – they stopped when they saw her. They ran, and she picked up his cap. And she watched him get up. He stood up slowly, deliberately, like he'd meant to be down there – that was what she'd said. What she'd told Declan, when his mother wasn't listening.
—He was only gorgeous, she'd told him. —Absolutely beautiful. The blood and all.
Declan can see him. His grandad. He's always seen him. The bleeding, the uniform, smiling at his granny. Putting the cap on, so he can take it off again.
—Thank you, Miss.
—Lovely, lovely manners, she'd said.
—I'm going to find him, Granny, Declan had told her, again and again.
—Good little lad, she'd said. —And when you do, you can tell him I was asking for him.
She's looking at Declan. And she isn't smiling. She's the Professor. At the end of a very long corridor. It took him ages to find her. He'd read all the names on the doors as he passed, looking for her door. They're all fuckin' professors.
—Is this a personal thing? she says.
Declan has just told her that he wants to prove the influence of Harlem on twentieth-century Irish literature.
—How d'you mean? says Declan.
She nods at the window.
—That's Harlem out there, she says. —You're, what?
She looks at the file on her desk.
—South Irish?
—What d'you mean? says Declan.
—You are not from the North. The Ulster.
—Oh, fair enough, says Declan. —Yeah, then. Yeah. I'm South.
—So. Why?
—Why what, like?
He was late. He couldn't help it. He forgot that the ground floor was the first floor here, and he got out of the lift at the wrong floor and spent ages walking up and down, wasting his fuckin' time before he asked someone the way. He hadn't been that late, though. Ten minutes. No big deal.
—You are late, Mister O'Connor, she'd said.
—Listen, she says now. —This has been my office for six years and you are the first Irishman of colour to walk in here and you are also the first man or woman of any colour to suggest that Harlem had anything to do with Ireland. So, again. Why?
She still isn't smiling. She won't be either, he guesses. If this was Ireland, she'd be putting on the kettle.
The Ulster.
For fuck sake.
There's another reason he's late. He slept it out.
—Well, he says.
Declan never sleeps it out. Never. But the days just caught up with him; he hadn't slept since he'd arrived in New York. One minute he'd been chatting away to his new room-mate, trying to ignore the fact that the guy was still stunned that Declan was black. The next minute, Declan was awake, and late.
—Well, he says now.
Marc is the room-mate's name.
—With a C.
—Fair enough, Declan had told him. —I'm Declan. With a K.
—Cool.
—Well, he tells the Professor. —Yeah. Yes, I suppose it is. Personal, like.
—I am not interested, she says.
—What? says Declan.
—I am not interested.
She closes the file.
Declan's mother hated his granny's stories.
—They're all bullshit, she said. —I wasn't born during the war. I was born in 1950. And in Dublin, not in bloody Glasgow.
To be fair, she'd only started telling Declan this when he was old enough to hear it. And she was years too late. Declan still saw the hotel, the alley, his grandad, his granny, no matter what his mother said.
—And anyway, said his mother. —Look at yourself. You're not even black.
—God love her, said his granny.
—I am not interested, says the Professor.
And Declan is annoyed.
—You should've told me that before I bought the fuckin' ticket, he says.
And, now, she smiles. But it isn't a good, now-we're-talking smile.
—The Irish and their famous profanity, she says. —Charming.
—Did you get here on a sporting scholarship? says Declan.
—I beg your pardon? she says.
The smile is gone.
—Well, says Declan. —You were indulging in a bit of the oul' stereotyping there. The Irish and the profanity, like. So, I kind of thought, you being black and that, you must have got in here on a sporting scholarship. So, was it basketball or the sprinting?
—Am I expected to apologise?
—Or the beach volleyball? I couldn't give a shite if you apologise. I fuckin' swam here, by the way.
His arse is telling him to get up and leave. But he stays.
—She
was
born in Dublin, said his granny. —But in 1945.
—Why did she say 1950?
—God love your innocence, said his granny.
The Professor stares at him.
—So, she says. —Explain.
And he does. He starts with his granny and his grandad. He tells her about Ireland and about being black and Irish. He tells her about first reading
The Souls of Black Folk,
about the question repeated in the first paragraph of the first chapter: 'How does it feel to be a problem?'
—The problem is but, he says. —I'm black and Irish, and that's two fuckin' problems.
She laughs.
—Hey, Deklan!
It's later. It's Marc. He's sitting in a corner, on his bed, facing the door, wearing his shoes. Ready to run.
—Hey, says Declan.
—How was
your
day, man?
—Not too bad, says Declan.
He opens the fridge. His milk feels lighter.
—Hey, Marc, have you been helping yourself to my milk?
—No way, man!
—Good, says Declan.
He takes a gulp.
—Mind you, he says.
He sits on his bed.
—The milk in Ireland is much better.