Bullfighting (10 page)

Wild.

It wasn't funny.

He'd stop at the chipper on the way home.

It wasn't funny.

He wasn't going anywhere on Sunday. Mick and his fuckin' twins.

 

He woke before Ciara got into the bed.

—Hi, she said.

—Hi.

—I don't want to have sex with you.

—Fine.

She climbed in. He didn't have to move. He was lying on his side of the bed. She lay back, and turned. She put her hand on his shoulder. She patted it – he thought she did. He felt her breath. He could smell it. No wine or anything – just toothpaste. He was asleep before her – he thought he was. And she was there when he woke.

She came into the kitchen. The girls were still asleep.
They'll be delighted to see you
. It was business as usual, although they managed to avoid touching or looking at one another.
So are you back, or what?
She cleared the old plates off the table. She got a cloth from the sink, wiped the table and put four bowls and four spoons on the place mats.

—We'll have to talk, she said.

He chopped a banana, to put on top of the girls' cornflakes.

—Okay, he said.

He threw the banana's brown skin in the bin, so the girls wouldn't see it and object. He looked, but Ciara wasn't in the kitchen.

She'd gone up to wake the girls. He could hear the squeals. He didn't want to hear them laughing; she didn't deserve them – he didn't want to think that. He turned on the radio, to get the news. He was bang-on, half-seven. He actually listened.

He ran to the hall.

—Come down, quick!

—Why?

—The news! Come on!

They all sat in front of the telly and watched the Icelandic volcano erupting.

—Amazing.

They looked at the cloud as it grew and curled.

—It's all ash, he told them.

—What's ash?

Erica's question – it was one of those brilliant moments. Kevin and Ciara looked at each other. They smiled. There were no coal fires in the house and neither of them had ever smoked. The cooker was electric. Nothing was ever burned. There was no real religion, at home or in school, so Erica had never noticed the grey thumbprints on Ash Wednesday, on the foreheads of the old and the Polish. A child like Erica could get this far without knowing what ash was, until she saw it spewing from a mountain.

—It's like dust, he said.—Burnt.

—What burnt?

—Stone, I think. I'm not sure.

—Stone?

—I think so.

—You, like, can't burn stone.

—If it's hot enough, you can. Lava.

—It's scary.

—It's only a cloud.

They sat and watched, and ate, and gathered the expertise. Ash killed planes; it attached itself to the turbine section of the engines.

It was an act of God.

—What's that?

—Nature.

It had nothing to do with climate change or the economy. No one was to blame. All flights in and out of Ireland, in and out of Europe and everywhere, were cancelled. The airports were crowded and shut. There was no escape.

—Does that mean there'll never be any more planes?

—No, said Kevin.—It doesn't.

He looked at Ciara.

—It's just for a while. Things will get back to normal after the ash drifts away. Or falls.

—Falls?

—Yeah.

—Will it hurt?

—No, said Ciara.—It won't.

H
is parents went to the chipper after funerals. Bill found this out when he drove them home from one – the dead husband of his mother's long-dead sister. He'd driven them there because the church and the graveyard were down the country, in a small kip of a village that seemed untouched by the now dead boom, except for the fact that the priest was Polish. His father wasn't happy driving off the main roads any more, and his mother had shrunk. She couldn't reach the pedals.

So she said.

Bill had said he'd bring them, and they'd climbed into the back of the car like they were his kids and they were all going off on a picnic. Already, he was making it up. He couldn't wait to tell his wife and kids – his real kids.

He even bought them ice creams on the way.

He didn't actually do that, but it was what he told Hazel and the girls when he got home. He saw the big cone outside a shop ahead of them.

—D'yis fancy a 99?

—Ah, no, said his mother.—It wouldn't be right.

—Go on. Where's the harm?

—Alright.

He had them licking away in the back of the car while he turned off the main road, onto a glorified lane that was all corners and gear changes.

They found the village. He drove through it before he knew they were there.

There was the mass. The priest sounded like a culchie who'd spent his childhood in Eastern Europe.

—Paddy was populler wit' al' the neighbours.

—He was not, he heard his father whisper.

—Shush, Liam.

There was the walk to the graveyard.

—There's the clouds now, look.

—We'll be drenched before he's buried.

—We might make it.

—Wait and see. The bastard's up there, orchestrating the whole thing.

The coffin was lowered and they went back to the village's one pub for coffee and a few sandwiches. Bill met cousins he didn't know he had and an uncle he thought had died in 1994. He kissed a woman's cheek because he thought they were related, then watched her filling a tray with empty cups and bringing it through a door behind the counter.

They went back to the car. His father climbed into the front this time. Bill turned the car towards Dublin.

—All this fresh air, said his father.—It's not good for a man.

—I was surprised there were so many there, said his mother, in the back.—He was a cranky enough little man.

—It's a small town, said his father.—A village. They'd have to go.

—I wouldn't have gone.

—You were there.

—That's different, said his mother.—He was my sister's husband.

His father turned – groaned – so he could look at Bill.

—That was how I ended up with your mother, he said.—Her sister dumped me for the bollix we just buried.

—Don't listen to him, said his mother; she was laughing.

—A fine bit of stuff she was too, said his father.

—Ah now, said his mother.—She had nothing on me.

—She had morals, though, said his father.

—Ah, Liam!

Bill could laugh. He could enjoy their company and listen to them flirting. They weren't his parents any more; he wasn't their son. He was a middle-aged man in a car with two people who were a bit older. Once or twice, in a rush that made him hang onto the steering wheel, he
was
their son and the car was full of himself as a boy and a stupid, awkward young man, hundreds of boys and men, all balled into this one man driving his wife's Toyota Corolla and trying not to cry.

He drove back up to the main road, straight past the big ice-cream cone.

—There's a tractor in the field there, look.

—That's the place for tractors.

His father's sarcasm, his mother setting him up, the easy words they'd always petted one another with, even when they were angry, the routine Bill had loved, then hated and hated and hated, until he'd started to hear it in his own kitchen and he saw his daughter – she was twenty-two now – strapped into her high chair, looking from him to her mother, back to him, her big eyes like spotlights following them.

He slowed down, indicated right. They were home, at the corner of the cul-de-sac, a hundred yards from the house he'd grown up in.

—No no, said his father.—Go on ahead. You can drop us off at the chipper.

—The chipper?

His mother, behind him, explained.

—We always go to the chipper after a funeral.

—That's right, said his father, and Bill could hear him shifting in the seat so he could look at Bill full on.

—Grand, said Bill.

He looked in the rear-view, made sure there was nothing behind them, and kept going, to the row of shops, Costcutter's, Ladbrokes, the chemist, the chipper. None of them had been there when Bill was a kid. The chipper had been a hardware shop.

—Mind you, love, said his father, to his mother.—The amount of funerals we're going to, we might have to pick and choose.

He patted his stomach. He actually thumped it.

—We can't be eating chips every day.

—I don't know, said his mother.—I have the waist I had when I was ten.

She was probably telling the truth.

There was a space outside the chipper. Bill took it. He looked over his shoulder, at his mother.

—There y'are, Miss Daisy.

—You're a better-looking man than Morgan Freeman, she said.

—Who's Morgan Freeman?

—An actor, said Bill.

—Black, said his mother.—He's very good.

—What was he in?

—Lots of things.

They hadn't moved to get out of the car. There was a queue inside the chipper, five or six people.

—Do you bring the chips home? he asked.

He was hoping they wouldn't expect him to wait.

—Usually, yes, said his mother.

—But not today, said his father.—There's another funeral on the agenda.

The ex-President, Paddy Hillery, had died. His hearse would be going past the top of the road, on its way to the graveyard in Sutton.

—We're going to go up and watch, said his father. He opened his door. Bill heard him groan as he got one leg out and leaned forward.

—That rain's staying away.

Bill got out and opened the door for his mother. She looked so small, just a little head and a coat. He'd never get used to being much taller than her.

He kissed her cheek.

—Enjoy the funeral.

—Paddy Hillery was a decent man, she said.—Not like the crowd that are there today.

—You're right there. Seeyeh, Da.

—Good luck.

He got back into the car, reversed slowly, and watched them walk, slowly, into the chipper, to the back of the queue. His father stood aside to let her go in first. She was taking her purse from her coat pocket. He decided not to hit the horn. He went on to work.

In the version he told the family later, he watched the funeral with them. He added the chips to the 99s. He planted himself beside them, the three of them sitting on a wall – he had to lift his mother – as they watched the ex-President's hearse go by, and the limos with the widow and family and the country's leaders.

—Here's poor Paddy now.

Politicians had always been known by their first names, even nicknames. But that had stopped. It was surnames only now.

—He wasn't the worst.

—He had a bit of dignity about him.

—That's it, said his father.—Over. These cars here are just caught behind the funeral.

—We'll go home, so, and watch it on the telly.

Bill didn't know why he did it, why he embellished, or just made up, his parents' lives. They didn't need it.

But he did.

He started going to more funerals with them. The ones that needed a bit of travel. He'd drive them there and home. Men his father had worked with, or their wives, even their children. Cousins of his mother's. Old friends, women his mother had gone to school with. They'd make a day of it, stop for coffee, look at a monument. He stayed clear of the local funerals, the old neighbours. He didn't want the conversations.
What are you up to these days? How many kids is it you have?
He didn't want to talk to men he'd once known who'd lost their jobs so recently they still didn't understand it.
Great, great. Yourself?
There'd be too many middle-aged women who used to be girls, ponytailed men he used to play with, a mother he'd fancied – in the coffin. Fat grannies he'd kissed and – the last time he'd gone to one of the local ones – a woman with MS, shaking her way to a seat in the church, the first girl he'd ever had sex with.

And there were the Alzheimer's stories. The parents of friends he'd grown up with. He'd listen to their children while they waited outside the church for the hearse and told him about the Saturday mornings or Sunday afternoons, the drive to nursing homes out past the edge of Dublin, sitting with the women or men who'd reared them – who'd helped rear Bill – who hadn't a clue who their children were. There was the angry, roaring woman who'd been lovely, and the man – he'd trained Bill's under-15s Gaelic team – who claimed he'd piloted his plane into both Twin Towers. There was the eighty-seven-year-old grandmother who'd slept her way to the top.
The top of what? She never says. She just likes saying ‘Fucked'. She never fuckin' blinks.
And the man who'd gone to school with Robert Mugabe.
They were all bright sparks, the Mugabes
. The stories, the laughter, followed quickly by the violence, stenches, stares into nothing, silence.
Jesus, Billy, you're lucky
.

 

He phoned his parents every Sunday night. His father always answered and immediately got rid of the phone because his hearing aid was roaring.

—I'll hand you over to your mother!

He'd hear her walking across the room to take the cordless phone from his father.