Always You (9 page)

‘Look, I gotta go.’

‘But I’ve only just got here,’ he said.

‘I know. Sorry. I’ll see you another time, eh?’ She glanced at their parents and said, quietly, ‘Let’s talk in the hall.’

He followed her out into the narrow hall and watched her take a black jacket with shiny patches on the elbows off a coat peg by the door and put it on. Her hands were shaking so much she could barely do up the zip. But it wasn’t nerves. He’d seen her like this before. The muscles in his stomach contracted. She looked like a tramp. A down and out. ‘Does Ma give you the money I send every month?’

‘Yeah. But …’ She glanced at him then looked away. ‘But things are so expensive. Two growing boys. I’ve tried really hard but …’

‘But what?’

‘I’ve got myself into a bit of trouble, Cahal.’ She looked at him directly now, her eyes full of pleading and something else. Fear. ‘I owe some money, like. Listen, you couldn’t spare me five hundred, could you? This guy I owe money to …’ Her voice trailed off and she shook her head.

‘Five hundred pounds?’ How had she managed to borrow so much? She and her boyfriend lived on benefits. He swallowed the lump in his throat and the wad of money in his pocket burned like a hot coal. It would be so easy to give her the money. But would she pay off her debt like she said? Or squander it on drink and drugs?

He shook his head and she said, quick as a flash, ‘A hundred, then.’

He folded his lips together.

‘Fifty,’ she said and placed a thin and bony hand on his arm. ‘Give me fifty.’

‘Okay.’ His eyes stung. Blinking, he took the money out of his pocket, peeled off the notes and handed them to her. She stared at them greedily.

‘Thanks Bro,’ she said absentmindedly, as if her thoughts were already elsewhere. Then she opened the door and disappeared.

Back in the lounge, Malachy made no effort to get up so Cahal went over and offered his hand. His father’s face was red and heavily lined from too much drinking and smoking. His looked at Cahal’s hand before shaking it, then said, ‘So you came to see us.’ Then he looked back at the TV. His hair, receding from the brow, was thin and white and the front half of his ruddy head was almost bald. What hair clung to the rest of his head was carefully combed down with greasy hair cream and he’d put on a few pounds since the last time Cahal had seen him. Malachy had always thought of himself as a bit of a looker and even now, in old age, he was vain.

‘Aye,’ Cahal said over the sound of the adverts and sat down on the sofa opposite his father.

Mechanically, Malachy put the cigarette in his mouth and inhaled. His eyes narrowed to slits as he blew smoke out in a thin line. ‘It’s been six years.’

Cahal tensed, the anger in him, which was always at the ready in the presence of his father, coming to a simmer. ‘Haven’t I offered for you to come out to Australia year after year? The only time you came was for my wedding.’

Bridget came through the door with three mugs of tea on a small melamine tray and a plate of custard creams. As soon as she sensed the atmosphere in the room, the tight smile on her face disappeared. She handed tea to Malachy first, then Cahal.

‘Ach, now, you’re only in the door and you two are arguing,’ she said, with faux breeziness, holding the plate of biscuits out to Malachy like a peace offering. During the handing out of the tea and biscuits, his father exchanged neither glance nor word with his wife. She sat down on the edge of the sofa beside Cahal with a chipped brown mug in her hand. ‘Will you turn that TV off, Malachy?’

He grunted and partly complied by turning down the sound.

‘I was just saying to Da that you never come out to Australia, Ma,’ said Cahal taking a sip of the too-strong tea, the smoke stinging his eyes. He’d given up smoking as soon as he got to Australia, on insistence from a non-smoking hippy housemate. ‘If it’s a question of money, you know I’d take care of that. Haven’t I offered loads of times before?’

But instead of answering him, Bridget looked at Malachy, and clutched the silver crucifix hanging around her neck. He said, knocking ash into a glass ashtray that had been nicked from a pub, ‘We don’t need your money.’

Bridget looked at her lap and Malachy took another drag on the cigarette. ‘What do we want to be going out to Australia for anyway? It’s too frigging hot.’

Cahal’s blood boiled but, for his mother’s sake, who sat mute and tense beside him, he held it in check. ‘To see your grandsons? Anyway last time you came in summer – you should come in winter. The weather’s not so different from Ireland then.’

‘I can’t come with this leg.’ Malachy gave Cahal a stony stare and blew a cloud of blue smoke into the air between them. Cahal’s stomach muscles tightened even more and he tasted metal on his tongue. He’d forgotten how much he hated his father.

He looked at his father’s supposedly dodgy leg and shook his head. A lorry on the docks had backed into him thirty years ago, fracturing a bone, and it had prevented him from working ever since. He’d always been remarkably mobile, however, when it came to collecting benefits – now it was a state pension – and getting himself down to the betting shop and the pub at every opportunity.

Cahal turned to his mother and tried to engage her in eye contact but her eyes darted about like minnows. ‘So why don’t you come on your own, Ma? You could travel there with me in May for Jed’s birthday. I’m only going for a fortnight’s holiday and we could travel back together too. My treat.’

Her eyes lit up with hope but she looked at Malachy, not Cahal.

‘Your mother’s not going anywhere.’

‘Why not?’

‘Someone has to stay here and run the house.’

Cahal turned to his mother but she was already shaking her head, her eyes full of the desperate pleading that he had seen there hundreds of times before. She put her hand on Cahal’s thigh, ever the peacemaker, and he bit back the retort that had sprung to his lips, the instinct to protect his mother just as acute as when he’d lived at home.

‘Anyway,’ said she with a weak smile, removing her hand. ‘How are the weeuns?’ She put the mug to her lips, and sipped.

‘Not so wee now.’ Cahal pulled out his wallet. He handed a photograph to his mother and she set her mug of tea on the floor. ‘That was taken just before I came away.’

‘Look at the size of ’em,’ said Bridget, holding the photo with both hands at arm’s distance. ‘Especially Jed.’ She sighed and handed the photo back. ‘Do you see them much?’

‘They come to me one night a week and every other weekend. These next few months are going to be hard … not seeing them. You keep the photo, Ma.’ She pressed it to her chest with a grateful smile and he felt guilty that such a small gesture meant so much.

‘Here, have a look, Malachy,’ she said, but before she could rise from her seat he replied, without taking his eyes off the TV, ‘I’ll see it later.’

‘And this guy of Adele’s … what’s his name?’ said Bridget brightly, looking at the photo again.

‘Brady,’ supplied Cahal.

‘So they married, did they?’

‘That’s right.’ Cahal stared at a patch on the carpet, worn thin with use, and tried not to resent the interloper in the home he still paid for. It was one of the reasons he was here. When Brady had moved in, he’d felt redundant, his manhood diminished somehow. He told himself that such Neanderthal emotions had no place in a modern world, that it was better for the boys that their mother was happy. But, still, it stuck in his gullet like undercooked pastry. It had nothing to do with his feelings for Adele – he no longer loved her – but he could not deal with the fact that another man was now effectively father to his kids.

‘He’s moved into your old house?’ said Malachy, hitting Cahal’s raw nerve. He paused and looked quizzically at Cahal, as if he hadn’t understood the conversation that had just taken place. ‘With
your
weeuns?’

‘Sure, I told you that the other day,’ snapped Bridget.

Ignoring her, he took another drag on the cigarette that was now little more than a stump and shook his head. ‘I would never have let that happen.’

‘Of course you wouldn’t,’ snapped Cahal. ‘Because you’d be completely incapable of putting the needs of your children first.’

His father smiled, the first since Cahal had come in. And it chilled him to the bone.

‘So you’re working for a phone company over here then?’ said Bridget, staring at Cahal, her thin eyebrows high on her brow.

Malachy coughed and stubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray. He banged his chest with his fist. ‘I told you not to buy those cheap cigarettes, woman. You know only Benson and Hedges agree with me.’

Bridget said, ‘I’ll get them next time, Malachy.’

Cahal took a deep breath and told himself to stay out of it. Hadn’t he tried for years to get her to leave him? ‘Telecommunications. I’m leading a change management programme for an Australian company, ATS. They’ve taken over VTS.’

Bridget’s face brightened. ‘I’ve heard of VTS.’

Malachy picked something off the tip of his tongue and looked at it. He would have no idea what change management was but it’d be nice if, just once in his life, he could acknowledge his son’s success. ‘And you think they’ll listen to you?’

In that instant Cahal was a boy again, on the day he’d come home from school, burst into the lounge where his father was nursing his recently injured leg on a footstool, and told him that he’d won the third-year English prize. His father had laughed without humour. ‘Made a mistake, did they? Don’t be getting above yourself, Cahal. You’ll leave school at sixteen and get a job just like your brother Sean did.’ He tapped his leg with his walking stick. ‘About time you started earning your keep.’ Then he’d picked up the paper and opened it, obscuring his hateful face entirely.

But he’d proved them all wrong, Cahal thought angrily, looking around the childhood home that held so many, awful, memories. Cahal Mulvenna, whom no one, least of all his father, had ever expected to amount to anything, had made something of himself.

‘Oh, will you look at the time,’ said Bridget, with a glance at the sunburst clock on the wall. ‘We’re supposed to be down the club.’ She leapt off the sofa and scooped up the empty mug that Malachy had discarded on the floor.

Cahal frowned. ‘You never said anything about going down the club on the phone. I’d have come earlier.’

‘But we always go on a Friday,’ she said, looking at the carpet.

‘Well you can miss it this once, can’t you?’ said Cahal, slightly incredulous. He’d only been in the house twenty minutes.

‘Your mother doesn’t like to miss her bingo,’ said Malachy. ‘And they do pensioner’s rates at the bar.’

Cheap drink was the real reason they were going then because, to Cahal’s knowledge, his father had never put Bridget’s wishes before his own.

‘You could come too and have a pint with yer Da,’ said Bridget tentatively.

Cahal looked at his father. ‘No, I don’t think so. I’m driving.’

‘You could stay the night,’ said Bridget, and she went on, warming to the idea as it grew in her mind, ‘The back bedroom’s full of junk. But you can sleep on the sofa. I have some blankets somewhere. Maybe up in the attic. They might need a bit of an airing mind. It can get a bit damp up there …’ She looked hopefully at Malachy – and he looked at the TV.

The idea of sleeping in this smoke-filled room under damp, musty blankets filled Cahal with horror. Already he felt sick with the fumes and he hadn’t been here half an hour.

‘Thanks Ma,’ he said without looking at her as he couldn’t bear to witness the disappointment on her face. ‘But I’ve got to get up for work in the morning. I’ll need clean clothes.’

‘Oh, well, another time,’ she said with the brisk resignation of a woman used to handling defeat. She hovered over him, looking into the mug he held between both hands. ‘Are you going to drink that tea?’

Cahal shook his head, stood up and handed her the mug. The cigarette smoke made him light-headed – or was it the tangle of emotions in his stomach?

‘You’ll come and see us again?’ said Bridget, standing in the middle of the lounge looking so small and worn down that his heart went out to her, in spite of the anger he felt towards both of them.

‘Of course I will, Ma.’

At the front door, he shrugged on his coat and pressed a thick wad of twenty pound notes into her palm. She shook her head half-heartedly, one eye on the cash, the other on the door to the lounge where Malachy still lay sprawled in front of the TV.

‘Take it,’ he whispered, touching her cold fingers. ‘There’s five hundred there.’

Her eyes opened wide in astonishment and he said, ‘Grainne says she owes someone five hundred pounds.’

His mother scowled. ‘It’ll be Beaky,’ she said. ‘He runs everything round here.’

‘I want you to give three hundred to him. To him mind, not Grainne. Tell him he’ll get the rest next week. The rest of the money’s for you and the boys. You get them what they need. Don’t give any money to Grainne, now. And see that you treat yourself too,’ he said, though he knew that she would not. Some of the money would go on cigarettes and whiskey to keep his father happy, the rest on things for his nephews.

‘You’re a good brother. And you’re good to yer old ma,’ she said, closing her gnarled, arthritic fingers around the cash.

His throat was so tight it hurt. He looked around the shabby hallway and whispered, ‘If you’d left him I would’ve looked after you. You know that, don’t you, Ma?’

She placed a hand on his arm and blinked into his face. ‘Knowing that you are well and happy in the world is enough, Cahal. Try to understand that.’

He didn’t understand, and he never would, but he smiled anyway to please her and placed a kiss on her wrinkled forehead.

Down on the street the big teenager was waiting, leaning against the car with his arms folded, looking pleased with himself. Cahal nodded.

‘She’s fine,’ said the lad and patted the paintwork with the flat of his hand. ‘I’ve not let any of them touch it,’ he said.

Cahal nodded his appreciation and got the keys out of his pocket. The boy, who showed no sign of moving, cocked his head to one side and said, ‘Me Da says you’re some kind of big shot in Australia. Is that right?’