The Breezes (15 page)

When I reached the door, I heard him mumble something. ‘What was that?' I said.

‘Merv's dead,' he said.

‘Pa,' I said, ‘I– '

‘Go away, John. Leave me alone now.'

The train starts up its whining, rumbling engine.

Merv Rasmussen. I can see him on the tennis court, serving underarm because his hump, big as a boulder under the sweaty, clinging white shirt, does not permit a full overhead
swing of the racquet …Despite the handicap, Merv was a more talented, less erroneous player than my father, the one with the groundstrokes and the positional sense to play the odd winner. But the two of them – at least, on the two or three times when, for one reason or another, I watched them play their doubles matches, usually from the vacant umpire's seat – never blamed or criticized one another. In fact, they said very little to each other at all, even after the game, when they sat in their track suits and drank a shandy each at the club bar. They simply enjoyed being there together – or, more accurately perhaps, not being there; because when they played they must surely have embraced the self-vanishing possibilities of the sport, so that for the duration of a set or two and of a drink thereafter there would be a welcome respite, a time-out, from the existences of Eugene Breeze and Mervyn Rasmussen, railway executives, family men, taxpayers and whatever other onerous identities they laboured under off the court.

Well, Merv has certainly been released from himself now; only Merv is not playing tennis.

The train has started moving again, rumbling uncomfortably as it slowly eases free of the embankment and open fields, efficiently sprinkled with cows, come into view. I return to my seat.

The lady is worrying out loud about her dog. ‘My nephew,' she is saying, ‘he's a doctor, he usually takes the dog in while I'm away, but he can't today because he's away at a conference. He'd said he'd be back on the Friday, but now he won't be able to come back until the Sunday. Or until this evening, at the earliest. Not before Saturday night, that's what he said.' She rubs at a bump on her face. ‘I'm just hoping that nothing has happened to her. She's all alone in the house and she won't understand it. The girl next door is supposed to feed her, but she's very particular about who feeds her and I'm just worried that she won't eat. She's a very nervous dog, the vet said so. He said she needs a lot of affection, and she gets terribly upset if I'm away.'

The man makes a noise of acknowledgement but continues to read his paper.

Dogs. When I arrived at the dogs' home on Tuesday morning I asked the fellow at the enquiries desk – Tony, his badge said – whether a basset bitch had made an appearance. ‘She should be wearing a blue collar and a disc with her name on it – Trusty Breeze.'

Shaking his head gloomily, Tony, a thin man with a scrupulously ironed white T-shirt, tapped into his computer. ‘I don't think so. We've got a basset, as it happens, but I don't think she's called Trusty.' He tapped again. ‘Mabel,' he said. ‘We've got a Mabel. That's a pretty name, isn't it?' He stood up and clasped his hands. ‘Still, we'd better check, hadn't we?'

I followed him into a small covered courtyard surrounded by three levels of kennels on each side. It stank. The air resounded with yelps, barks and howls of every kind. Apart
from the greyhounds – and there were greyhounds everywhere, silently curled up into sad balls – I couldn't identify the breed of any of these strays, their snouts looming from the dark cells as they pressed against the grilles. They were all mongrels, it seemed, unbred, unwanted nothing dogs.

Tony stopped. ‘This is she,' he said.

Inside the cell, the sleeping dog lifted its head a fraction from its front paws and opened a baggy red eye. It paused for a slothful moment, regarding us. Then it slowly got up, shook itself, and came forward hopefully, tail waving.

The cage was too dark for me to be sure. I went down on my haunches to get a better look. ‘Trusty,' I said. ‘Trusty.' No response. ‘Mabel,' I said, and immediately the dog reacted, barking.

I stood up, defeated.

Everywhere locked-up dogs bayed in frustration or lay slumped and dispirited. ‘What happens to them all?' I asked.

‘Well, we keep them for a week, and then we assess them, and then the suitable ones are put forward for the sales,' Tony said. ‘Most of them find new homes, you know.'

‘What about the ones that don't?'

‘Well, we have to think of the dog's welfare,' Tony said defensively. ‘If it can't be found a home, or if it's sick, well, we have to put it to sleep.'

We looked at Mabel. She was gaping at us expectantly, her mouth slightly ajar. ‘They'll be plenty of takers for her, I'll bet,' I said, trying to find something positive to say.

He looked pained. ‘Well, actually, no,' he said. ‘Mabel is unsuitable for sale. She's very aggressive, poor thing. She bites everything that moves. I was hoping that you might be her owner.'

I left the dogs' home depressed. Trusty had been missing now for two nights and a day.

But, I thought to myself as I drove back to Pa's, you couldn't blame her for running away. She had been rampantly on heat, after all, and when the burglars had broken in she had quite naturally grabbed the opportunity to break out. Trusty had responded to a call of the wild which was not of her making.

Good luck to her. Let her have her shot at true freedom, at
finding an alternative to the human regimen. Even dogs must long for escape, for some alternative.

The problem was, there was no alternative to living at home with Pa. Rockport was not a hospitable wilderness in which she might thrive, with grassland where a pack of fellow hunters could be found and joined; there was only the city and its streets, and that was no environment for a dog, certainly not one as domesticated as Trusty. Trusty's normal routine was a bowl of cornflakes and a slice of strawberry jam toast in the morning, followed by a quick turn around the block with Pa before he set off for the office, followed by a day spent snoozing around the house, followed by another, longer, walk and some lamb chops or spaghetti carbonara or whatever else Pa was cooking up in the evening, and then maybe a late-night stroll in the moonlight. Trusty was not accustomed to rifling through rubbish pails at dawn or drinking from puddles. I pictured her stumpily wandering around Rockport, frightened and disoriented. All it would take would be one speeding car and, bang, that would be it, curtains. No one had ever said that dogs enjoyed an afterlife.

But what more could I do? Offer a reward? Put up
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS DOG
? posters? It was bad enough having pictures of my father plastered all over the place.

I opened the front door of the house, dropped the car keys on the entranceway table and walked through. There was no sign of my father. Don't tell me he was still in bed.

Up I went. Yes, there he was, just as I had left him two hours ago, curled beneath his duvet as disconsolately as one of those abandoned greyhounds. The cup of tea I had placed next to his bed had not been touched.

I did not try to stir him. I simply said, ‘Trusty's not at the kennels. If any basset hound turns up, they'll let us know.' He did not respond. I stood there for a moment. ‘Here,' I said, putting that morning's issue of the
Crier
next to his bed. ‘When you get up, you may want to take a look at page three. You'll be in for a nice surprise.'

He rolled over on to his other shoulder, turning his back to me.

I took a seat on a chair cushioned with dirty clothes and
began to smoke a cigarette. I became more insistent. ‘Look,' I said, ‘you can't just lie here all day. It's twelve-thirty. Please, Pa, get up. Please.' More silence. I gave up. I had to go. I was meeting Angela at one. ‘I'll be back tonight,' I said. ‘OK?'

I went to the bathroom, rinsed my mouth with toothpaste and checked myself in the mirror: clean-shaven, wearing the black crew-neck which she had bought me as a birthday present, and jeans. Not too bad – but then not too great either, with the slightly overlong nose and colourless skin of the Breezes.

I caught the bus to the city centre.

It took me a couple of attempts to find the discreet entry to Angela's gym, which was hidden in the basement of an office block occupied by an insurance company. I went down the stairs and stood uncertainly in the lobby, a light-filled, cream-carpeted space where tropical trees sprang vigorously from barrels of earth and green murals depicted shoals of fish. Symbols on the wall pointed towards a restaurant/bar, a swimming pool, a sauna and rooms for aerobics, weights and changing clothes. I approached the receptionist, a young woman dressed like a banker, and stated the purpose of my visit. She responded by producing a bright yellow visitor's badge and pinning it to my chest. ‘I suggest that you wait in the bar,' she said, turning towards another arrival.

I followed the signs, going past glass-walled exercise rooms where perspiring professionals ran, rowed and cycled while they gazed at televisions hanging from the ceiling. I had just caught sight of the restaurant entrance when to my left I noticed a young woman with red boxing gloves attacking the pads held up by a fitness instructor. It was Angela, her long neck glistening beneath the dark rope of her hair.

She was wearing dark blue Adidas cycling shorts and a white T-shirt which adhered to her damp compacted breasts, the nipples plainly visible. The instructor, his body a pure aggregate of muscle, loomed enormously over her. Give me three, I could hear him say, now give me three more, and she reacted automatically to his commands, hitting the pads with a grimace of determination. Jab, jab, jab, the instructor shouted, and again she obeyed, her slender arms shuddering as they uncoiled towards him.

On she went, oblivious of my presence on the other side of the glass, now launching a combination of uppercuts, now holding up her hands and simply moving her feet. Keep moving, shouted the trainer, keep that head down. Angela threw more punches, a series of hooks this time, and then more still. She began to grunt with the effort, grunting every time she threw a punch: uh,
thud,
uh,
thud,
uh,
thud.

I felt myself physically weakening. I had no idea that she boxed.

OK, that's three minutes, the instructor said, unlacing her gloves. Let's warm down.

He pulled out a mat and they lay down on their backs alongside each other, their legs slowly flexing in unison. Then he got up, and while Angela stayed on her back and continued with leg exercises, he began firmly massaging her temples and her scalp, her head disappearing into his huge hands.

I couldn't watch any longer. I went to the bar and bought myself a bottle of beer.

She came in five minutes later fully dressed, washed hair pulled tightly back from her face, cheeks flushed. She looked beautiful and strange. ‘Darling,' she said, and she kissed me, and I smelled the smell she has.

We sat down at a table next to the windows that gave on to an interior courtyard with a pool and ferns. ‘I'm starving,' Angela said. ‘Let's order straight away.'

I looked at the menu: expensive. A tenner for a grilled chicken sandwich. And that was the cheapest item.

Angela said, ‘Don't worry, have what you want. This is on me.'

‘Why? Have you had another pay rise?' I asked ironically.

She looked coyly at her menu.

I said, ‘You haven't really, have you?'

‘Well, yes, I have,' she admitted, smiling shyly.

‘Well? What are you on?'

‘Johnny, that's embarrassing.'

‘Embarrassing? This is me you're talking to, remember.' I waited for a reply. ‘So?'

She hesitated, then looked at me. Her eyes were still that deep, dark blue. ‘Sixty,' she said.

Sixty thousand.

That was almost twice what Pa made – had made. That was almost ten times what I could hope to scratch together in a year.

I kept cool. ‘They've doubled your salary,' I said. ‘Nice one.' I reached for my cigarettes.

‘You can't smoke here, Johnny. It's a health club. I'm sorry, I should have told you.'

‘That's all right,' I said. I glanced around the room. I was the only man who didn't have freshly combed wet hair and who wasn't wearing a suit.

The food arrived. I ordered another bottle of beer.

We started eating. ‘It's been a while since we've done this,' I said. ‘I hardly know what to say.'

‘I know, Johnny, I'm sorry.' Angela said, ‘I've missed you, you know. You're looking very handsome.'

I said, ‘I was so worried on Sunday night, I was so worried that something had happened.' I touched her leg with mine. ‘Things haven't been easy,' I said. ‘We've had some bad news. Pa's been fired.'

She looked at me, clearly upset. ‘I know, it's terrible,' I said. I sighed. ‘He's not taking it well, you know. It's knocked the stuffing out of him.'

‘Johnny,' Angela said. ‘Johnny, I …' She reached across the table and took my hands in hers.

A bleeping noise suddenly emanated from under the table. Angela reached down and retrieved a mobile telephone from her briefcase. She spoke briefly with the caller, then said, ‘I have to go, my love.' She rose to her feet.

I said, ‘But we haven't finished our food.'

I stood up and followed her to the till. Once outside in the sunshine, we kissed, and it was wonderful to feel her ribcage pressed against mine and her moist, giving mouth. I held her by the waist and said, ‘We're all right, aren't we?' She blinked affirmatively. ‘When are we seeing each other again? Does it have to be Monday? Can't it be sooner?'

‘I'm supposed to be in Waterville for the rest of the week,' she said. ‘But I'll try,' she said. ‘I'll call you, darling.'

I walked her back to her office and watched her disappear
through the massive revolving door. I caught a bus home, feeling a little better about things. Then I thought, how come she never told me she had a mobile phone? Why don't I have the number?

I became aware of a needling pain behind my right eyeball.

The bus reached my stop. I alighted and walked heavily home. Peace and quiet. That was what I needed now. Rest.

Rosie was back. She was sitting in the squalor, smoking a cigarette. She had kicked off her shoes but, this detail apart, she was in full uniform – hat, scarf and all. Steve was in the kitchen.

I remained standing on the threshold of the sitting-room. I toed aside some pieces of smashed crockery. ‘Well?' I said. ‘What are you going to do about this?' I kicked at a paperback, sending it fluttering against the wall.

‘I'll clear it up,' Rosie said flatly. She switched on the television and stared intently at the images of an afternoon game show.

‘Well, just do it soon,' I said. I made sure, by the tone of my voice, that she understood that I was serious.

At this point, a choice of action presented itself. I could either go to my bedroom and slam the door behind me in my displeasure; or, having said my piece, I could be amicable and try to foster an atmosphere of goodwill, love and harmony – what is sometimes known as a family atmosphere. I had a headache. I chose concord.

‘So, what's new?' I said.

Rosie changed channels with a jab of her thumb.

I restrained myself by walking through to the kitchen. ‘How's our hero?' I said, switching on the kettle.