Mr Lynch’s Holiday (16 page)

He waited with the others until the Sister came and let them in. Visiting time started at 6.30. She opened the door at 6.31. Third night in a row she’d kept them waiting. Still making her point.

Kathleen was at the far end of the ward. He went to the cot first.

‘Is he going to wake up soon?’

‘He’s only just gone off.’

‘Oh.’ He leaned over and kissed her.

‘He had his bottle and he was asleep within minutes.’

‘I thought I’d be able to give him his bottle tonight.’

‘Sister said it was better to get it out of the way before visiting time.’

‘She looks at us as if we’re litter blown in off the street. She’d be happier if there were no fathers to deal with at all.’

‘She’s an old boot.’

‘Have they said when you can go?’

‘Maybe tomorrow, or the day after that.’

‘You should both be at home. Not this place.’

‘I wish I was in the General. At least I’d have some pals there.’

He looked at the baby again. ‘How’s he been?’

‘Miserable most of the time. You’d think I was beating him. He pulls a face that would break your heart.’

Dermot smiled, stroking the baby’s face lightly. ‘What about you?’

‘Just a bit tired. Did you bring me anything?’

‘Some magazines.’

She looked at them.

‘What? Did I bring the wrong ones?’

‘No. They’re fine. I’m just sick of magazines. The same rubbish in every one.’

‘Also a box of Maltesers and a bottle of Super Jaffa.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Well, I thought they’d get a better response from you. Are you sure you’re OK? You seem down compared to yesterday.’

‘I’m fine. I just want to go home.’

‘I know, love.’ He looked at the cards on the bedside table. ‘Did you have any visitors this afternoon?’

‘Just Rita Barry.’

‘She talks enough for four people.’

She was quiet for a while.

‘She said something I can’t stop thinking about.’

‘What was it?’

‘She looked at him and said, “Well, God bless him. He’s a little miracle. Just what you were praying for all that time.”’

Dermot looked at her. ‘That sounds like Rita Barry all right.’

‘Is that what she thinks I was doing when she saw me down at church?’

‘What?’

‘Praying for a baby? Asking God for something? Like he’s a shopkeeper?’

‘This is playing on your mind? Something the Barry woman said? God’s sake, Kathleen.’

‘Maybe she’s right.’

He saw now she was worked up.

‘We had all that time. We both worked all the shifts we could and still there was time. I used to pray: if I wasn’t to be a mother, what was I to be? What was his plan? I helped out in
the parish. I visited the sick. I typed the newsletter. I arranged flowers and spent hours listening to the twitterings of Rita Barry, Pat Quinlon and Margie Maher, which believe me would try any saint.’ Her voice was louder now. He worried others would hear them.

‘I don’t understand why you’re upset.’

‘But maybe it was all with an ulterior motive in mind. Do you see? Maybe it was all saying: “Look at me, God, I’m a good person, why can’t I be a mother?”’

He rubbed his face. ‘Well, what’s wrong with that? I thought you were supposed to ask God for things you wanted.’

‘Is that all prayer is? Begging letters. I thought it was meant to be a conversation.’

‘I don’t know what you want me to say. You seem to be arguing with yourself.’

‘I don’t want you to say anything.’

She was quiet for a moment before saying: ‘I hold their hand when they go.’

‘Who?’

‘If there’s no family. One of us will sit with them when they’re slipping away. I hold their hand so they’re not alone at the end. I sometimes wonder – is someone waiting to take their hand on the other side? When they pass I search their faces for any sign of knowledge, for a clue. What is it they see, Dermot?’

Nothing, he thought. Nothing at all. He pushed the thought away and took her hand, speaking quietly. ‘Should I talk to the doctor?’

She shook her head. ‘It’s not like that. I’m fine. I’m not blue. I’m happy, you know that, never been happier since he was born …’

‘But what?’

‘It just makes you think, doesn’t it? Birth, death. That’s when
you think about these things. When I do anyway. About God. About what it means.’

He wanted then to tell her how much he loved her. He wanted to tell her to forget about God. He tried to think of something to comfort her.

‘Maybe you could try speaking to Father Phelan when you get home? Isn’t that what he’s there for? He must be there for something.’

She smiled at that. ‘I’ve tried to talk to him sometimes in the past, but he never seems to listen.’

Dermot was unsurprised. They didn’t listen. They had no answers.

‘Well, he’s not there for much longer. Maybe the new priest will be better.’

‘Probably another old relic who thinks women are there to make cakes and sing sweetly.’

‘You’ll soon disabuse him of that belief.’

She laughed and he felt a surge of hope. Maybe this was the push she needed. If the lack of a baby had led her to the Church, maybe now she would pull away. End her search for whatever it was she thought she was looking for.

He took his hand from hers and laid it on the baby’s back, feeling the rabbit pulse of his heartbeat. ‘What are we going to call this one?’

She leaned over and stroked the baby’s head. ‘I don’t know. We had so many prepared, but then you see him and none of them seem right at all.’

‘I had Peggy on the phone from the convent last night. She rang to offer her congratulations and tell us that he’d been born on the day of St Polycarp.’

‘Polycarp? What was he, patron saint of fish?’

‘Burned at the stake apparently. When the flames couldn’t touch him, they stabbed him to death.’

‘Good God.’ They both started laughing, becoming momentarily hysterical before getting control of themselves.

She looked at him. ‘I was thinking. If you want to name him Dominic, I’d understand. I’d be happy with that.’

Dermot thought. ‘No. He’s his own man. He deserves his own name.’ He hesitated. ‘But maybe as his second name. I’d like that.’

‘There we are, then. Halfway there.’

‘Your mother would have appreciated an incline like this.’

They walked along the shaded side of the street, the sun finally weakening its grip and sliding down the sky.

As with so much his father said, Eamonn could think of no particular response.

‘Was a time she was a devil for the slopes.’

‘Right.’

‘A real terror.’

‘Because she liked hills?’

‘On her bike! She was a devil.’

‘Mom? On a bike?’

‘“Handlebars Hegarty”, that’s what we used to call her.’

‘“Handlebars Hegarty”?’

‘Back when I first knew her, she was awful windswept-looking, like she’d just stepped in from the storm. She’d be out on it any hour of the night or day, cycle back on her own from a late shift at the hospital, she would, no lights, like a bat on wheels.

‘First time she agreed to go out with me, I was stood waiting for her down at the bottom of Corporation Street. It was hellish busy. Rush hour. I was getting knocked and nudged by everyone hurrying to get home for their tea and I was cursing myself for picking such an idiot place to meet. I was looking for her face in the crowd and then suddenly I spotted it, way off in the distance. There she was, on the bike, coming down the hill towards me, and there were cars and buses and people everywhere, but to look at her you’d think she was on some
quiet country lane. Floating along, she was, without a care in the world, the wind blowing her hair back, the afternoon sun on her face. Handlebars Hegarty.’

Eamonn tried and failed to conjure up a picture of it. They walked on in silence. He found stories of his parents before he was born quite fantastical, impossible to relate to the people he’d grown up with.

Laura’s parents were an open book. Their life together a never-ending panel discussion. He considered unnatural the amount they had to say to each other. Nothing escaped the searchlight of their opinion. They would talk with passion and at length about the local shops, Philip Roth, mushrooms, wheel-clamping, Neil Young, dim sum, their next-door neighbour’s recycling boxes and the mental illnesses of their friends.

His parents, in contrast, were borderline mute. Sometimes they bickered, sometimes they remarked on the obituaries, but generally they coexisted with few words.

‘Your tea is on the table.’

‘Did you get the peas?’

‘I’d say you’d need a coat.’

They chose often to communicate by proxy, with Eamonn acting as a shuttle between them.

‘If your mother wants to get to Brendan’s for lunch she’ll need to get a move on.’

‘If your father doesn’t mow the grass soon, we’ll never find the cat.’

He found it hard to imagine how they talked to each other when he wasn’t around. He wasn’t sure that they did.

As they turned the corner now, Cheryl was standing, apparently waiting for them, on the pavement. Eamonn had never seen her beyond the confines of a house or terrace before. The sight of her on the street was incongruous.

‘Hello, you two. I spotted you from afar.’

‘Is that right?’ said Dermot.

‘I was up in the bedroom, gazing out of the window, and there you suddenly were, like two handsome princes come to rescue a damsel in distress from the terrible ogre.’

‘And where is this terrible ogre?’ asked Dermot. Eamonn looked at him. It occurred to him that maybe his father had had a lifetime of this on the buses. An endless line of Cheryls charmed by his twinkling Irish eyes. He thought of skimpy polyester negligees, of Reg Varney … he made himself stop.

Cheryl waved an arm. ‘Oh, on the couch of course, empty bottles scattered around him, watching the tennis with Ian. Keep me company, won’t you, before I die of boredom.’

Dermot smiled. ‘Well, we couldn’t allow that.’

‘Come and join me on the terrace, we can ignore the tedious people inside.’

Eamonn intervened. ‘Thanks, but we’ve got dinner waiting for us back at the flat. I’ve left it in the oven cooking while we went out for a walk.’ It sounded unconvincing even to him.

‘Oh, Eamonn! Don’t be so bloody boring. Isn’t he painful, Dermot? Just one drink. An aperitif, for God’s sake. That’s only civilized. We won’t let your precious dinner burn, you old woman.’

She marched Dermot into the house. Eamonn stood on the street for a few moments before following on reluctantly.

On the roof terrace she settled Dermot in a chair and then commanded Eamonn to assist her getting drinks from the little bar they had set up there in the corner. Once out of Dermot’s earshot, she spoke sharply. ‘Well, I’ve heard about Laura. Jean let something slip to Becca. Frankly I’m a little hurt, Eamonn, that you didn’t come to Roger and me when this happened. We’re your oldest friends here.’

‘I didn’t really want to talk about it.’

‘You should have come straight over here. We wouldn’t have
had to talk about it, we could have just had a drink like old times. We used to have some good nights. I don’t know what happened.’

‘No.’

‘Well. Now she’s gone, maybe we’ll see a bit more of you. You need your friends at a time like this.’

She touched his arm. ‘All I’m saying is: I’m here if you ever want to talk about it. You’re not on your own.’

He looked at her hand. Golden-brown skin, diamond rings, red fingernails. He wanted to brush it away like a mosquito. He wanted to cry.

Dermot’s voice drifted over to them. ‘Can I give you a hand?’

Eamonn pulled his arm away and walked over to join his father. Cheryl followed on with Dermot’s drink.

‘So, Dermot, you have us all in a stir.’

‘How’s that?’

‘Well, it’s been a while since we had a visitor, and with it being your first time abroad, there seems to be a sense that it’s a bit of an occasion.’

‘Oh?’ Dermot laughed. ‘Like a papal visit?’

‘Something like that. Becca in particular is very animated about it. I assume you’ve heard about the barbecue?’

Dermot and Eamonn spoke together. ‘What barbecue?’

‘Oh, my goodness, listen to you two. You sound as if I’d suggested a funeral.’

‘I don’t want anyone going to any bother for me.’

‘Becca wants to do it; you’re just an excuse. She needs something to lift her spirits. Well, don’t we all? Something to break the monotony. We haven’t had a big get-together for ages. They used to happen almost weekly. Everyone invited, a chance to catch up; but then it all started to go sour. Suddenly it was just a roomful of people moaning and drinking too much. Everyone sick of the sight of each other.’

Dermot looked unsure.

‘Oh, don’t worry, she has it all under control. Listen, I’m sorry if I spoiled the secret, maybe it was meant to be a surprise party. Don’t look so miserable, Eamonn, it’ll be a chance to put on our glad rags and forget our troubles.’

Eamonn gave a mirthless smile.

‘We’ll see if we can put some colour back in those cheeks, eh?’ She turned to Dermot. ‘After that Laura upped sticks and deserted our lovely Eamonn. How could she do that?’

Dermot glanced at his watch. ‘Oh, Eamonn, the dinner.’

Eamonn stirred. ‘Yes, the dinner. It’ll be burned.’

Cheryl stood to see them out. ‘What culinary delight is it tonight?’

‘Chicken,’ said Dermot at the same time as Eamonn said, ‘Chilli.’

Eamonn nodded. ‘
Chilli con pollo
. An experiment.’

Cheryl looked at Dermot. ‘Fingers crossed it’ll be burned.’

They walked back up the hill towards Eamonn’s block in silence. As they climbed the stairs Dermot asked: ‘What did Laura reckon to that one?’

‘Cheryl? OK in small doses, I suppose. Why?’

Dermot said nothing for a while and then: ‘Do any of them have any jobs?’

‘Well, Ian and Becca have their business, but I think it’s pretty much dead in the water. Laura and I did our stuff, everyone else is retired.’

Dermot headed for the kitchen. ‘I worked with a fella named Moran. He retired eighteen months before me. You wouldn’t know it though. He was always around the garage, having a chat with the lads on their break, checking out the buses when they came back in. He shouldn’t have really been there, you know, wasn’t insured to be on the premises any more, but the
gaffer turned a blind eye.’ He paused. ‘Turned out he was slashing the tyres with a penknife. Never done anything like that in his life. The company didn’t press charges. His wife came down and spoke to them. That was the last we saw of him.’ He poured some baked beans in a pan. ‘It does funny things to people. Time on their hands.’