Mr Lynch’s Holiday (12 page)

He asked Eamonn about an old house he’d seen on the first day. Walking along the brow of the hill, he’d glimpsed it in the distance.

‘It’s just an old farmhouse, I think,’ said Eamonn. ‘A
cortijo
.’

‘I thought I might wander over there. Have a look.’

‘Right.’

‘Will you come?’

‘Well, I should really … you know … I’ve got things I should …’

‘Sure, I know, I know, you’re busy with work and all, but just an hour or two. Get a bit of air.’

Eamonn scratched his ear and then slowly closed the lid on his computer. It seemed to cause him pain to do so.

Outside the air already buzzed with heat and flies and the fizz of the electricity substation at the end of the road. Dermot looked out to sea and tried to breathe in the scent of it, but got only the faintly cabbaged tinge of drains and cats.

They followed the road downhill, zigzagging past the shuttered apartments and houses. The sun caught on the metallic lid of one of the empty recycling bins and Dermot was momentarily blinded by the light. When his vision cleared someone had appeared on the road ahead of them. He was dressed in a uniform like a policeman’s.

‘Hello, Eamonn. Hello, father of Eamonn.’

‘Hey, Esteban,’ said Eamonn, walking towards him.

‘I saw you on the cameras. I decide to run down and give
you a surprise. Boo!’ He pointed to the side of one of the houses. ‘I came the quick way, down the steps.’

‘Did you meet my dad already?’

‘No, but Roger told me that your father visit.’ He turned to Dermot. ‘I’m very happy to meet you.’

Dermot held out his hand. ‘Likewise.’

Esteban laughed. ‘Ah! Now I hear the accent! I wanted to shake the hand of an Irishman. I wanted to tell you that I love your country.’

Dermot looked bemused. ‘Is that right?’

Esteban beamed. ‘Ask Eamonn. The first day I hear his name I said, “This is an Irish name.” And I came and said, “Hello, I have a big surprise for you, I know your country very well.”’

Eamonn looked at his father. ‘I had to tell him it wasn’t my country.’

Esteban laughed. ‘When he told me, I said, “So your mother is Irish and your father is Irish? I think Ireland
is
your country.”’

Eamonn muttered to his father, ‘He wouldn’t have it.’

‘Mr Lynch …’

‘Please, call me Dermot.’

‘Dermot. I spent six weeks in your country. In Dingle. Learning English.’

Dermot was delighted. ‘Did you now? Well, fancy that.’

‘Yes. I love Dingle. It’s a beautiful place.’

‘Don’t mention the dolphin,’ Eamonn said under his breath.

Dermot ignored him. ‘Did you travel about much? Did you visit County Clare at all?’

‘Yes, one day we went to the Burren and the Cliffs of Moher. Eamonn said this is where you are from.’

‘I lived there most of my boyhood, yes.’

‘It is a beautiful place.’

‘I suppose it is.’

Esteban laughed again. ‘That is modesty.’

‘We better get going,’ said Eamonn. ‘We were going to walk over to that old
cortijo
, towards Las Cruces.’

Esteban frowned. ‘The
cortijo
? There’s nothing there.’

‘I know.’ Eamonn looked miserable. ‘We’re taking the air.’

‘Very good.’

‘My dad likes looking at empty, old places.’

Esteban turned to Dermot. ‘Then you have come to a good place. Enjoy your walk. Maybe we will talk again. I have lots of questions to ask you.’

‘It’d be my pleasure.’

When they were out of earshot Dermot said, ‘So that’s the security, then.’

‘Yeah. He was one of the original team. We took him back on again when the burglaries started. Laura and I were lucky never to have been hit.’

Dermot wondered if it was luck or the marked absence of anything worth stealing that had saved them.

The walk took longer than he’d expected. From the top of the hill the farmhouse had not looked far away, but the distance had been deceptive. Eamonn had taken them down the hill first, towards the sea, before turning east and cutting across the slope to where he thought the house was. After an hour though they still hadn’t reached it. They ended up climbing back up the hill to get their bearings. They saw the
cortijo
some distance above the path they had chosen and realized that they had descended too far and missed it.

By the time they arrived it was almost midday and they were grateful for the shade. A crumbling wall traced a part of the boundary, and a few trees stood within it. The house itself was stone – large and plain. The roof and windows were long gone, but the iron railings around the small upper balconies remained.

Eamonn peered into the gloom beyond the windows.

‘Did you want to go in?’

‘Let’s have a sit-down first.’

They rested under a tree. Dermot unzipped his holdall and handed Eamonn a bottle of water. When he’d finished drinking, Dermot put a pile of foil packages in front of him.

‘I made some sandwiches. Help me eat them.’

They ate looking towards the house, their backs against the tree. When he’d finished, Eamonn screwed up the empty tinfoil into a ball and threw it into his father’s bag.

‘Dad?’

‘Yes?’

Dermot turned to him. ‘What is it?’

‘I wanted to say, about Laura.’

‘What?’

‘You know she’s gone.’

Dermot kept quiet.

‘She said she needed time to think.’

‘Not for ever, then?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘How long since she went?’

‘Ten days.’

‘Do you know where she’s gone?’

‘Back to England. She said she was going to stay with her parents. No one answers the phone.’

Dermot hesitated. ‘Did you do something to upset her?’

Eamonn shook his head, unable to speak for a moment. ‘Yes. Lots of things, I suppose.’

‘I don’t know what to say, son.’

‘There’s nothing to say. I just thought I should tell you.’

‘Maybe she’ll see things differently after a few weeks back home.’ He knew if Kathleen were there she’d have plenty to say. She’d blame the girl, say she was a fool, but Dermot had always liked Laura. His sympathies should be with Eamonn,
but God knows it couldn’t be easy putting up with him all day, every day.

Eamonn got up and and walked towards the house. He stood looking at it for a few moments and then turned back to Dermot. ‘Do you remember taking me somewhere like this in Ireland?’

‘Like what? An old ruin?’

‘Yeah – well, not a ruin exactly – just an old house, derelict.’

‘I don’t know. Sure we went to lots of old places. Where was it?’

‘Don’t know. I suppose it must have been the summer holidays, but it was just you and me. I don’t know where Mom was. I just remember wandering around an empty house, holding your hand. You showed me a room that had toy soldiers all over the wallpaper, and in the corner there was –’

‘Something scratched into the wall.’

Eamonn looked at him. ‘Yeah! The letter “D”. D’you remember?’

Dermot saw his brother’s small hand carefully carving the letter.

Eamonn shook his head. ‘I’m an idiot. You must have lived there. I think I thought the “D” was some magical coincidence, I never thought you’d done it.’ He paused. ‘But that wasn’t your house in Liscannor.’

‘No, it wasn’t in Liscannor and it wasn’t me.’

‘Oh.’

‘There were two “D”s. A small one inside a big one. My brother Dominic did it. Dominic and Dermot.’

‘Dominic. He was the younger one?’

‘Yes.’

‘So, where was that?’

‘It was in Longford. Drumlish. Where I was born.’

‘How come we only went once?’

Dermot shrugged. ‘There was nothing to see. The family scattered after Mammy died. I went to live with my granny in Liscannor when I was fourteen. I went back to see the house that time with you and I didn’t go back again.’

‘Did the others move to your granny’s as well?’

It seemed odd to Dermot that Eamonn wouldn’t know these things.

‘No. We all went our separate ways. Patricia had already entered the convent, and Peggy followed her. Joe went over to Liverpool. Gerard to the Christian Brothers in Dublin.’

‘Is that when Dominic went to America?’

‘How could he? He was a boy of twelve. He couldn’t emigrate to the States for years.’ Dermot looked over at the house. ‘He and I used to have some adventures exploring places like this. There were enough of them about. Old ruins, not all big houses. Often just little ramshackle cottages, abandoned in the Famine. It was our idea of fun. We’d set up dens in them. Sometimes we were brave volunteers under siege by the constabulary. Other times we were gold prospectors, surrounded by Apache Indians. I was always the boss, of course, barking out orders to Dominic. “Barricade the windows!” “Take cover!”’

Eamonn smiled. ‘So where did he go?’

‘When?’

‘When you went to Liscannor.’

Dermot saw the lines of toy soldiers on the walls, faded, as they were when he’d returned with Eamonn. ‘Nowhere. He stayed where he was.’

He stood brushing crumbs from his lap. ‘Come on, then. Let’s go in and see what treasure we find.’

With the pain of separation came the relentless mental churning – the grinding business of processing, interpreting and conjecturing. Their final conversation played somewhere in Eamonn’s head all day, every day. Each line, paused, analysed, redrafted, erased. It was like an illness, his brain infected, his thoughts overheated and circular. He tried, without success, to drown out the playback. He did not want to recall the things she had said. Remembering the words led to the same awful conclusion: he had driven her away; he had broken everything.

‘You’re leaving me?’

‘I have to think. I have things to work out and I need to be away from you to do it.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Eamonn, things haven’t been good between us. I need some clear space to think.’

‘Things have been fine.’

‘You’re self-deceiving. You can see exactly what I see, but you won’t admit it.’

‘What can you see?’

‘You’re not yourself. You’re lost. You’re so unhappy here.’

‘So you’re leaving? That’s going to make me happier?’

‘I’m not leaving you. I’m going to …’

‘… Think. Yes I know. You said. About what? About leaving me?’

‘About everything. There are things I need to work out.’

‘What? Sums? Crossword clues?’

‘No.’

They were both crying now.

‘So you’re going? Leaving me behind? Laura …’

‘I just need time to think.’

‘You don’t love me any more.’

‘You know I do.’

‘I don’t know anything.’

He exercised some restraint in his texts, though this in truth had more to do with his contempt for SMS as a means of communication than any real self-control. Texting seemed a retrograde step to him, like trying to have a conversation using Dymo Tape. Since she’d left, he’d texted her just once, every day.

His emails were more expressive and expansive, often disastrously so. He had not been able to resist occasional late-night outpourings. Regrettable lapses into florid self-pity, woundedness, the odd, empty accusation to try to even the score. The next day he would send an even longer apology, retracting certain points, reiterating others. Laura, wherever she was, whatever she was doing, was being bombarded with upwards
of a thousand words a day, one half of them at least apologizing for the other half. Among that latter half were his first, tentative steps into poetry. Not verse, he was horrified to see in the cold light of day, so much as broken prose and half-remembered Joy Division lyrics, probably no better and possibly considerably worse than the solipsistic ramblings of American Web developers that Laura had once had to edit.

If she waded through the almost fifteen thousand words he had rained down on her in just over a week and a half, she would by now be aware of the general gist. He loved her, he was sorry if it hadn’t always shown. He was sorry he had been so miserable. He would change. He would make a go of their life there. He vowed to make her feel loved again. He had over the course of the one-sided correspondence listed every single episode in the last fifteen months where he considered he had behaved shabbily. He wanted her to know that he understood. He insisted that he didn’t want to pressure her. He said he wanted her to take as long as she needed to think. This was the only thing he wrote that lacked any sincerity at all.

He’d discovered that deep uncertainty opened the door to all kinds of forgotten playground voodoo. A childhood superstition had resurfaced: if you stopped expecting something to happen, then it would. The fact that a mail or a message had yet to arrive only indicated that he had not been thorough enough in exorcizing expectation. Each morning he sat before his closed laptop attempting to empty his mind of all hope, his eyes squeezed shut in a state of non-prayer. She would not have emailed, he told himself over and over. She was not yet ready. He could not hurry her.