Departures (15 page)

The stuntman touched his bandages gently.

Bad back, he told the old man as if he owed him an apology. It's going to catch up to me one of these days.

How'd you get it? I asked.

I'm not sure, to be honest. The littlest thing can cause an injury. Bobby Dunn knocked an eye out doing a high dive—there was a match on the surface and he hit it coming in. I've been doing a lot lately with airplanes and
ladders; that kind of thing can throw your spine out of whack.

He carried a chair out from the kitchen and I had him put it where the old man could see, then he excused himself and returned to his survey, tugging briefly at the drainpipe, gauging the likely strength of the gutters, testing the soundness of the moulding and quoins.

I don't know, he confessed finally. I haven't done anything like this in ages. Everything's so high tech these days. I used to work a lot with animals, too, but I hardly do anything like that now. That's how I got started, actually-training horses in Connemara. The first film I did was with Peter O'Toole.

Sargano wrestled lions, the old man said, Bostock boxed with kangaroos.

The stuntman stared at him. That's right, he said. So they did.

I put money on the barber, the old man went on. I'd've liked to've been there. Your uncle, he was living in Lancashire, he wrote me about it, but it wasn't the same.

Not Tom Helme, the stuntman said cautiously, but the old man was plucking at the cuffs on his cardigan and didn't respond. Helme shaved a man in a cage with six lions, the stuntman told me, must be forty, fifty years ago now. He was a barber; he did it on a dare.

So what do you think? I inquired at length. He'd inspected the house now from every direction, and I'd seen him eyeing the distance to the roof of the garage from one of the windows on the second floor. By now dusk had dulled the edges of everything, and although his fingers were as warm as ever still I worried about the old man.

I could make up a rig if I had some boxes, the stuntman offered.

There's a Spar round the corner, I told him. You might find boxes there.

I'd need a lot of them, but, he said, his eyes on our chimney. That drop's thirty foot if it's an inch.

There weren't enough but he took what was there. A cardboard wall rose quickly in front of him, its layers compact and orderly, printed with CORNFLAKES, WHITE CLOUD and ARIEL AUTOMATIC. He found the old sheets my father had used to cover the furniture when preparing a room for the old man's arrival; the cotton still smelled of turps and was stiff as rubber where the paint had congealed. He threw these over the boxes and bound it all loosely with twine.

Don't try this at home, he said when he'd finished, then climbed easily up the drainpipe onto the short roof of our scullery, turned, and sat down.

Not to worry, he said. When I first started out I worked with this fella who used to say there's no such thing as a more dangerous stunt. That was true then, it still is, a little, but there are some stunts now that're more easy than others.

They told him he was finished, never lift'm again, the old man said. In some places they were half an inch deep.

Jesus, the stuntman said. Dick Grace. Now he was one of the greats. Outlived eighteen professional rivals; another four had to quit cuz of injury. He was a mess himself after that accident, right enough—786 square inches, burned so badly his arms ended up webbed to his sides—but he cut the scar tissue with a razor so he could keep on working. It was him used to talk about outwitting gravity. The stuntman laughed softly, then shook his head. Jesus, he was fearless. It just didn't trouble him, the thought he might die.

When I was much smaller my mother told me that should we ever be separated in a shop or department store I was to stand by an exit, and she would come and look for me there. You still remember that? she'd said when I reminded her of it—though I suppose, she'd added, it's not so long ago. She'd been weak, however, and a doctor was coming, so I never did explain the reason I mentioned it—the conclusion I'd come to regarding death. The way I see death, I had wanted to tell her, it's a circular room in which I'm at the centre, and though I fight hard through the people to get to a wall, though I travel along it and feel for a door, the same faces keep passing with the slow regularity of unclaimed luggage, and I end up repeatedly where I began. But no other opportunity ever presented itself, and later I realised what I'd been describing was not death at all, but the waiting room outside it where all the rest of us are.

That's madness, I said.

The stuntman shrugged. We have to go sometime. I suppose he reckoned with the end coming at him it'd do him no harm to meet it halfway.

He stood up. I heard the sound of scuttling gravel, a clump of moss dislodged from our shingles fell swiftly past and vanished into a flower bed, then I spotted his head and shoulders, his elbows cocked on either side, and in an instant he'd levered himself over and was coming towards us across the roof of the house.

It's okay, he called down from the edge. The rig's a wee bit smaller than I'd like it, but you can fall fifty feet on dry land without damage if you know what you're doing. He crossed his arms over his breastbone, his fingers clasping the back of his neck. Backwards and sideways, he explained over his shoulder, and spread-eagled on impact. That's the safest way, usually, for this kind of thing.

He described the mathematics of arcs and projectiles, the various forces that determine a fall, but all I understood of what he was saying was the margin of error, something they'd tried to teach us in school. An explosion in town the previous evening had damaged a gas main near the building, and as we were already facing evacuation we'd gone on a field trip to the Ulster Museum to see an exhibit on the concept of chance. The rest of the group moved on without me while I lingered at one of the first displays, an upright contraption of transparent plastic through which a torrent of ball bearings perpetually bounced down from a single opening into a row of compartments below. Though their descent was described by the force of gravity, it was the force of their knocking against the short, even pegs which were there to obstruct them that shunted them into a bell-shaped curve—and I thought as I watched them repeating the pattern how everything in life was this accidental. Despite all the care of the hands that place us, trying to centre us so we fall just right, still our paths remain unpredictable, we're so easily sent veering by a single peg—success, disaster, and recovery all equally uncontrollable, whatever the odds and calculations.

All set below? the stuntman said.

Out of sight around the corner I heard our gate hum.

All set, I answered. The stuntman nodded and stepped back with long strides, disappearing in sections from the bottom up. Then my father was beside me, our front door key ready between his fingers.

I thought I heard your voice, he said. What are you two doing out here? He touched the old man's forehead with the back of his hand. Are you alright, Da? he demanded. Where's Pascal?

Again the gate groaned and shuddered. My father,
glancing back to see who was coming, said Ah, no, and shook his head.

Now, what did you think? Brian replied before he could say anything.

I told you, my father said. I just wasn't up for it. Why didn't youse stay there, enjoy the match?

Who needs football when there's home entertainment? Jack answered. Just in time, by the look of it. Have a look up there.

It seemed he spun from the edge in slow motion, off by many inches and almost certain to miss the rig, and I thought of the way glass shatters, the regal burst of liquids when they land. The cord around the boxes snapped when he struck them, the sheets leaped up with the sound of someone heavy elbowed out of slumber into turning over in bed, and flattened bits of cardboard shot out from under, scattering leaves and twigs. Grit and plaster pattered softly on the bushes as the pieces stopped revolving and slowly came to rest.

Jack was the first to reach him. He pulled the sheets and cardboard away like a man in a hurry rifling through drawers while my father and Brian followed behind him, stepping gingerly into the path he'd cleared. What I saw first when they finally reached him was the stuntman's chest heaving, the careful way he drew up his knees.

Easy, now, my father said urgently—Hold on! Don't move.

I'm alright, the stuntman said, sitting up. A thin strip of bandage grew taut behind him and he stopped abruptly.

Just wait a minute for God's sake! Brian said. We'll ring for an ambulance. There's a hospital just down the road.

It's okay, the stuntman said, I feel fine. With an effort he stood and brushed the dust from his trousers. Miscellaneous joints clattered irritably as he stretched.

You are one daft bastard, Jack told him with admiration.

C'mon inside, my father said. I don't care what you say—you ought to have someone look you over.

I'm alright! the stuntman insisted. But I could do with a drink.

Good idea, Jack said, we'll go to the local. I'd very much like to buy this man a Bass.

Not me, thanks, said my father, youse three go. I want to get that child to bed. Da? he called, and they all turned with him to look back at us. You okay?

The old man had risen when the stuntman fell. The last time I'd seen him move so quickly I'd been much younger and spending the day with him at his house. A year before that he'd tackled the bare, uneven land that lay behind him and created a pond, and I was keen to see proof of what he'd told me, that from the first bucket of silver he'd spilled into the water had come a whole population of healthy fish. We'd approached the bank quietly but still the pond's rhythms had been disturbed; it was many minutes before they returned. There he is, he'd whispered finally, pointing to the source of that retching bellow whose tremor I'd felt in my own throat and chest. He'd eased himself off the log on which we'd been sitting, I saw his arm strike with a heron's speed, and all at once he was crouching beside me, his shirtfront splattered, the frog with its large golden eyes and vulnerable belly afraid but uninjured between his hands.

I put my hand on the old man's shoulder. He said, You're a good girl, Audrey, and placed his hand over mine.

We're alright, I answered. We're okay.

Punching In

The house was one of the older models, three up, two down, with a toilet outside. They'd had little to put in it when they first moved in; they'd had less still eighteen months later. She'd had no jewelry to pawn, no silver or china, no family heirlooms, no antiques. He had a watch but he wouldn't part with it. Neither one of them would have considered selling the TV. So when the time came when there was no food in the house and no money to buy more, she'd sold all but the two sets of cutlery, two plates, two bowls, two mugs for tea, and a saucepan, and told herself she never intended to entertain.

They'd been together off and on for more than seven years; they'd been married for close to five. During that time he'd gone with other women, been done for reckless driving and accused of assault, stolen from her handbag, and hidden the money from his benefit cheques; only rarely did he manage to hold down a job. Why the hell don't you leave him, Maureen? her sister would ask when they met in the town. Who else'd have me? she'd always say. It was easier to make a joke of it than try to explain.

She had known him all her life, first as children and then in school. She'd taken up with him almost by accident; they'd ended up together at a party once, had been out a few times after that with a crowd, until gradually they were assumed to be a couple, and a rumour had surfaced that they were engaged. She'd had a few other boyfriends when she was younger, but eventually the need to
earn money had taken them away, one to England, another to America; one had left and come back again, but by then he was married with a family of his own. She'd seen that one again recently, with his wife and daughter, when they came into Belfast for the christening. Albert had sent her to the shop for fags, and she'd run into them outside the church on the way. She'd declined their offer to attend the reception, cooed at the infant, and tried to hurry on, but the wife had detained her, chatting about Canada and asking Maureen what her husband had been like as a boy. She'd had a terrible time getting away.

Maureen stood now in the queue at the corner shop remembering the encounter. That one and his wife had seemed happy enough, and she'd been happy for them; she didn't know why she'd been so unsettled, why she'd felt the need to stop in a café for a quick cup of tea when she could just as easily have made one at home. She'd given no thought, until she'd been asked, to the pale, silent boy who'd held onto her tightly on those few occasions they'd gone out on the town, whose features still lingered on the face of the man whose thumb had been locked in the child's firm grip, who had recently stood with his wife who was not from Northern Ireland and agreed to the price of a new house in Bangor. When Maureen did get in, Albert was waiting at the foot of the stairs, angry this time because she had lingered and had made him miss the start of the match. Their own TV wasn't working—he'd broken the plug tripping over the lead—and he'd been planning to watch the game down at the pub. He'd hit with such force that the front door had splintered at the hinges, and she had to call the Housing Executive to get the thing repaired. For a week it hung half open; when the repairmen finally arrived they told her the frame itself
was shattered and would have to be replaced. Sometime next week, missus, they told her, when she asked them how long that would be. Then they removed the door and went away.

“What're you after, luv?”

The woman across the counter was large and in bad temper, the shop busy and she on her own. A full mug of tea and a half-eaten pastry had clearly been sitting by the till for some time. Maureen felt a knot of panic draw tight in her chest, as if those behind her had suddenly surged forward and clamoured to be served.