Departures (12 page)

For a time she tried to discipline us while we were together in the House, to play more a big sister's role than a mother's, but eventually she found this too distracting and gave up on it altogether. When she was away from him she sat in debilitated silence, poking the coals or staring out the window; most evenings she parked, openmouthed and vacuous, in front of the TV. For six days out of seven she was listless and depressed, yet so trite was the image she conjured that something inside me sneered
even then. I could feel no empathy, no understanding for her at all. Perhaps as a consequence, I no longer feared her, and was soon challenging her authority even outside the House.

More than any murmur of gossip, it was this change in our behaviour towards her that first roused my father's suspicions. Stay in, she'd say, and we'd go out; leave that, she'd tell us, and we'd cover whatever it was in palm prints and smudges, so determined were we to do the exact opposite of whatever she decreed. My father, distracted from his track lists or the television by an unusually flippant bit of cheek (which, like all others, went by unchecked), would watch her watching nothing, her eyes vacant but never dull. With what appeared to be clinical detachment, he observed the gradual decline in my performance at school and Mandy's sudden, unprecedented reputation as a “difficult” child. To him such developments were merely a part of growing up; he expected a child's bad behaviour to be directly proportional to its size, and children were bound to lose interest in schoolwork, just as one might lose an old mitten or a mismatched sock—such things could always be replaced by something better. But when my mother failed to draw his attention to or even pass comment upon these changes, he began to wonder why.

He was not alone. After an unrewarding stretch during which they periodically quizzed both Mandy and myself and sent notes home with us which we invariably destroyed, a barrage of teachers-cum-social-workers eventually appeared in person on our doorstep to inquire if everything was “alright” at home.

Had it not been for their involvement, we might well have gone on indefinitely as we were. Though something had certainly changed, whatever it was had had virtually
no effect on our day-to-day routine. The house continued to be cleaned, albeit with less energy. My father's meals continued to be ready whenever he required them, and he was not the kind of man to notice a decline in the aesthetic quality of his food. And if his children had grown somewhat more wild than they had been before, at least they were no more poorly behaved than any other on the Road.

But my father hated any intrusion into his privacy; he hated the false solicitations of strangers and their hesitant, obtrusive probing into what he devoutly believed to be none of their business. To his mind there could be no validity to their protestations of mere friendly concern. Because they called round on a Wednesday, my father, who only by accident was in to receive them, was caught disastrously off guard, and endured the ensuing interview in visible discomfort. Though he offered them tea and sent a boy round for chocolate biscuits while it brewed, he was unprepared for such domesticity and bitterly resented having been placed in a situation where he could not help but feel a fool.

For they could not have chosen a worse time to call. Whether for fighting or spitting or using profanity, I'd been sent home early from the House and had taken Mandy with me when I went. But my mother, blinded and deafened and struck stupid by love, had failed to register the fact of our departure and so remained behind on her own in the Craft Room with the other children and Big John, leaving my father to explain her absence to the two quietly observant faces who had come to call. Oh, is she a volunteer with the community house, then, Mr. Millar? they asked, and I watched his face flush with anger and shame as he lied.

He did not tell my mother of the Social Service's concern for her family's welfare; he did not tell anyone, but
still she learned of it from the Road. So pervasive appeared the communal knowledge that my father began to find it difficult to pass his associates outside the wine lodge, let alone go on inside. His pride was dependent on appearances and on what others thought of him; it did not well up from any source within. Had they called him a cuckold, he would have hung his head and believed, just as he had when he'd been told he was unemployable, that he was too old for night school, that he was “too Belfast” and would never fit in overseas.

My father had never been a particularly inquisitive man, let alone a demonstrative one. He preferred to suffer most things in silence or ignore them completely rather than confront them head on. But these encounters with his peers annoyed him. He knew they ridiculed him for allowing his wife to indulge in any antics whatsoever, however innocent. To curtail her involvement with other men was, after all, the reason he'd married her. And so he decided to revisit the House.

On the day my father came, Big John had set most of us the task of tearing strips of newspaper from the vast outdated pile in the corner of the room. He positioned those remaining round an old porcelain wash basin and from a safe distance directed us in the creation of a crude papier-mâché mixed from flour, water, and powdered glue. Though we had been given a plastic spoon and the broken handle of a brush with which to mix it, these tools were soon discarded in favour of the more efficient if less tidy method of simply using our hands. Big John, intrigued, perhaps, by the pleasure it gave us, plunged his own hands beneath the murky, oatmeal-coloured waters and caught momentarily at our groping fingers, pulling them down still deeper into the cool, trembling gel that had settled at the bottom. My mother, who had been
primly cutting paper with a pair of blunt-tipped scissors, now joined in enthusiastically, squealing in mock horror whenever someone's hand grabbed hers. When my father appeared in the Craft Room door to claim his wife and children, she was up to her elbows in wet newsprint and paste, her new frock speckled with flecks of white flour, her nose still wrinkled and her lips still pursed in distaste from the moment before when, at some child's urging, she had gingerly tasted the glue.

Considering its potential, it was a disappointing moment. Silence did not fall upon us; the general chatter and splash continued uninterrupted. No one stared, no one passed comment; my father made no accusation and my mother expressed no surprise. Instead, he spoke only her name when he saw her, and she came to him like a dog, or like one in a trance, immediately and without protest.

Had she not behaved so meekly at that moment, had she not exhibited such cringing humility but had instead told him that in all the time they spent together she had never so much as touched this other man and whenever she addressed him she always called him Sir—but she told him nothing. Had I been older and less likely to be spiteful, I could have been her witness and her ally, and perhaps I would have been believed. After all, when I was not in the House I was just in front of or inside our own, and so was she. She could not have managed to slip away unnoticed, and she never offered any pretext to get away. Nor was she the kind of woman who would fondle her lover in the local community house in full view of children. Once, at her request, when I'd shown her my textbook on Greek mythology and she'd seen the picture of naked Perseus, she'd flushed like a virgin and hastily turned the page. But because she would not defend herself, I assumed, as did my father and everyone else on the
Road, that the rumours were true, that she must have been guilty of something, that perhaps she'd even gone to him or let him come to her as soon as her children had left for school.

Within days my father'd left her. He took us with him when he went, an unusual decision for a youngish man without a job. He'd have crossed a body of water to keep her from him, or so he said, and I suppose he did, in a small sort of way, when he crossed the Lagan to the other side of town. But after five days of his brother's whining, his sister's refusal to cook for or clean up after him, and his parents' tremulous demands upon his time and money, he decided to bring us back home.

The house was empty when we returned. Just as he had gone to his mother, so she had sought shelter with hers, returning to the same small room whose yellow curtains and Pierrot clown decor had remained unchanged and waiting for just such an emergency since the day she had left thirteen years before. In later years my father's family blamed her even for that, claiming hers was the easier move, her mother being bright and healthy and having no other responsibilities that might have distracted her from the care and support of her daughter. For two weeks nothing was washed; we ate no breakfast, had school lunches for dinner and various take-aways for supper and tea. He could drink more easily with his friends at the pub but when he came home he could not sleep—and still his pride would not allow him to speak of her, let alone go after her and ask her to come back. Then one afternoon she simply reappeared, and because he did not acknowledge her presence one way or the other, she put her things away in their bedroom up the stairs and did not leave again.

They remained together for another three years, until
my father joined the army and went to serve overseas. Mandy and I stopped visiting the House, and eventually a combination of arsonists and vandals closed it down. With admirable opportunism, the church organised a complete philosophical overhaul of its mission in the community and reopened a more overtly Christian rendition of the House in another part of town, but by then Big John had returned to America. He never wrote back to us, not to the House or the volunteers, not to the church which had employed him, or to me when I sent a query at the age of seventeen demanding to know the truth. Perhaps he had been her lover, but it didn't seem likely; perhaps he had no idea what part he'd played in the episode at all. I meant to ask him the day he left from Aldergrove, and arranged to go along with a small crowd from the old House with that purpose in my mind. The party had been organised to send him off, to see him board the big, bright plane that would take him home and make sure that he got away without complication or distress. But there were delays on the motorway, an accident or an incident, I don't remember which; and when at last we arrived at the airport he was already gone.

Rise

This is a list of the things that went missing: half a metre of green nylon netting, a small quantity of stainless-steel gauze, a bolt of cheesecloth, two pairs of forceps, eight sheets of plywood and a box of syringes, half a dozen light bulbs, a spool of wire, a fret saw, a hammer, and a packet of needles.

It's that boy, my uncle Vincent said. What did I tell you about that boy?

Now hold on a minute, my father said.

Hold on, nothing, my uncle answered. That's who's done it. And it's your own fault for taking in strays.

Alright, we'll go see him, my father said, but when we got to the house he wouldn't go in. Instead he went up to a man in his shirtsleeves who was leaning in a doorway on the other side of the street. The man staightened up when he saw us coming, and the girl on her knees in the hallway behind him sat back on her heels and set her brush down.

Michael Hagan, my father said. D'you know if he's in?

He is, the girl said. He's been in for a week.

He's sick, the man said.

Why, what's wrong with him?

That woman's what's wrong with him, the girl said. She took a sponge from the bucket beside her and slapped it down heavily onto the floor. Good bloody riddance if she has gone away.

They don't know what's wrong with him, the man said. He took sick last Sunday and he's been bad ever since.

Is it serious?

Could be, the man said. His mother's with him. A couple of times now she's sent for the priest.

A bad time to visit, then.

No, go on over, the girl said. She'll be glad of the company. It's been ten days now and he's not said a thing.

In the kitchen of the house we found a woman standing, her back towards us, making tea. Steam climbed from the mouth of the lidless kettle, but the woman's grip on its handle was bare. There were cakes on the table, a pile of cores and torn strips of peeling half-wrapped in newspaper on the edge of the sink, and the room was rich with the scent of cinnamon, the air just above the open oven still quivering with escaping heat.

Mrs Hagan? my father said, and she turned.

Yes?

How is he?

Just the same. No change from this morning.

Is he eating?

Not a thing. I just took him soup but he wouldn't touch it. I tried porridge earlier but he left that, too.

And what about you, how are you doing?

Oh I'm alright, the woman said. I'm bearing up.

Have you sent for a doctor?

The woman looked at my father, at his tie and his spectacles, at the pen in his pocket and the briefcase in his hand.

Aren't you the doctor?

No, my father said, no. Just a friend.

From inside the cardboard box he carried came the fluttering sound of confetti falling, of raffle stubs tumbling before the draw. He offered the box like an explanation, and all of a sudden the woman's face cleared.

Oh, aye, sorry, she said. I do know you. You're the one who got him that job.

She led us up a narrow staircase, assisting each step with both hands on the rail. The woman's ankles were as thick as her calves, and I could hear the quick, uneven clouds of her breathing escape from her open mouth as she climbed.

That was awful good of you, she said on the landing. He liked that wee job.

Eight months before when my father found him—legs wide apart and fists on the table, staring down at a tray full of Bull's Eyes and Moon Moths my father had pinned the previous week—the jimmy he'd used to lever our window was in his back pocket, and the sack he'd brought to put things in was lying still empty at his feet. So what do you think of the royal family? he'd asked without warning. My father had spent the past forty-eight hours on a bench outside of Intensive Care; he'd stared at the boy in the black leather jacket, at his close-shaven head and the tattoos on his arms—trying to distinguish the uneven letters, to see in the purples and blues of the symbols an emblem he recognised, a slogan he'd heard—and said nothing.
Citheroniidae,
the boy had continued, they come from America. Only they're lumped in with the Saturnids now. Reclassified, my father had answered. That's right, the boy'd said. Seems they were silkworms, after all.