Departures (6 page)

Harry's wife Eleanor had been a clever woman, and she'd known her nephew well, but even she had not been able to plug every loophole in her will. She had stipulated that if Geordie valued his inheritance he would have to “provide” for Harry, but she had not required that he provide for him himself. When we took over the abandoned house beside Harry's three months after Eleanor died, Geordie was still trying to rid himself of his uncle. He had by this time discovered that all Harry's cronies were dead and that most of his neighbours were in the same state of decrepitude as Harry himself. The list of people requesting home help or the attention of a social worker was a long one, and Geordie was not inclined to wait. The only option remaining was to have his uncle taken into care, but as there was nothing seriously wrong with him he could not be institutionalised without his consent, and this Harry simply would not give.

Harry was proud of the fact that he had no need to move. His wife had seen to it that the house in Park View Terrace was indisputably his and that everything in it was in his name. Moreover, Harry did not want to move. He and his wife had been married in that house; his daughter had been born in it. He had christened his grandson in the Presbyterian church around the corner and had walked with his son-in-law in the park across the way the night before he'd immigrated to Australia with Melanie and the boy. Harry watched the changes in the photos his daughter sent and which he carried with him whenever he went out. The boy had grown bigger, every year taller and with ever more chestnut hair. Melanie was fuller, more like a woman than the girl he had reared, but still she sent her greetings to the neighbourhood as she did to the friends from her childhood she had left behind: Who looked after her garden now that Mrs. Baird had died? What about the Stadium—had they finally torn it down? And Olive Street, Yew Street, Ottawa and Chief—were they all still there and the same as before?

His daughter wrote to him faithfully every fortnight, and Harry would read her letters aloud to his nephew as soon as they arrived. The wee girl's counting on me, George, he'd say when he finished. How could I move away?

Geordie soon tired of his cousin's abject affection for the Road. He visited his uncle as infrequently as possible and begrudged him even that small fraction of his time. Yet despite his appearance Harry was quite fit for his age. His bones were not brittle, he had never smoked, and with luck, the doctor had told his despondent nephew, he could very well outlive them both.

Geordie had a reputation for seizing opportunities, and he did so with ferocity. Our arrival in the Woodvale was just such an opportunity, for my father was the candidate
for whom Geordie had been searching: neither too old nor too young, in perfect health, conveniently located and seldom away from the house. Moreover, he was economical. Squatting was illegal; far from demanding a wage in return for his services, my father could be induced to provide them for free, in return for Geordie's silence.

Though my father never spoke of the arrangement, Geordie made sure that it was well-advertised. The butcher, the grocer, the doctor, the chemist, the girl at the bank—all were provided with the new information that my father, not Geordie, would be acting as Harry's emissary from then on. Overnight he became a public figure, beseiged by a notoriety for which by nature he was utterly unprepared. In the past he'd been known largely as Maddy Andrews's husband, and he had been happy enough in his own identity to accept the other without distress. As he had grown older people had noticed him less and less; after my mother died he went out so seldom he might not have been there at all. Accustomed, then, to anonymity, he now was forced to exchange greetings, or worse, make conversation, with every convoy of prampushing women and battalion of men who had ever known Harry, Geordie, or any of their relations. Errands which used to take him at most two hours to accomplish now took him at least four, and often much longer still.

Rather than simply play along with Geordie, agree to every imposition without comment or complaint and then, once he'd gone, just continue as before, my father became obsessive. The old man was just as he'd predicted, quiet and undemanding, yet no matter how much my father did for him, he felt his efforts were inadequate, that somehow he deserved to do more. The irony was that looking after Harry need not have involved a great alteration in my father's way of life. When my mother was alive no workday
passed without his having something waiting for her when she got home—a new book, or flowers, or a moderate bottle of wine—and with us he was just as generous. If he went shopping in town he always returned with sweets for Nicola and socks or pants or running shoes for Stephen, whose energy soon outdistanced every pair he received. For me he would bring things in installments too expensive to purchase in one go; I remember a microscope, a doll's house, and the complete works of poets and playwrights he'd recommended that I read. He would willingly have done the same for Harry even if Geordie had never found us out. As it was, he did no more for him than he had done for his wife and continued to do for us now that she was gone; he simply took no joy in what he did.

My father blamed no one but himself for his ability to be blackmailed. He accepted his predicament as a punishment just and sound, though gradually he recognised his need for at least a temporary reprieve. He couldn't, however, reconcile himself to abandoning Harry without legitimate cause; a job, he decided, would be a good excuse to get away. Moreover, he needed the money: he'd bought food on credit and an anorak for Harry, and he owed money to the local electrician who had hot-wired the house for us before we moved in. All those bills still had to be paid. When he heard that the Wimpy's near the City Hall was hiring, he inquired in person and was amazed when he was offered a job.

The franchise preferred its product to be sold by attractive young women, so only they got jobs behind the registers. Those less fortunate were assigned to folding boxes lined with grease-proof paper in the back recesses of the kitchen. The more intelligent of the young male applicant pool were placed on the fryolators and grills, while those
with acne, unusual hairstyles, or unseemly tattoos were hired to wrap the burgers and arrange them on the warming shelves behind the counter. My father, a bit of an embarrassment in his undersized overall and red-and-white striped cap, was relegated to sweeping the floor.

He was given the night shift on Mondays and Wednesdays, the two slowest evenings of the week, and his wages were paid in cash. It was his request that we stay away from the Wimpy's on the evenings he was working, although once, against his wishes, I did go to see him there. I knew what it was that made him find it so demeaning, and I had wanted to tell him that he had no reason to be ashamed. My mother had always objected to uniforms of any kind, and had discouraged us from professions in which all employees were required to look the same. While clothes, she warned me, could not make the man, they could sometimes tell him what kind of man he was.

And yet my father did not mind his job, I think; so I left before he saw me, and without speaking to him as I'd planned. Protected by the invisibility too often accorded those engaged in menial tasks, he had no need to speak to anyone, and no one spoke to him. The noise of scolding parents and of orders placed and altered did not disturb him. The restaurant had two levels, both of which were partitioned into smaller areas by the artful arrangement of large, white troughs of plastic vegetation. From four o'clock until midnight my father moved his mop from one end of the place to the other, taking a ten-minute break every so often to wait for the floor to grow littered with cartons and cold chips before he started the process over again. At the end of eight hours he changed his clothes and went home, through the silent town with its derelict arcades and grim police patrols, up the empty, unlit Road to the house.

In so small a city as Belfast, it was inevitable that Geordie would discover that my father had a job, and when he did he could barely contain his glee. As far as he knew, the government offered no reward for turning in squatters, but informing on those who were working while claiming to be unemployed paid fifty pounds per head. The first night he came to our house to gloat, he lingered on the doorstep for a full twenty minutes while our dinners cooled and the dust from the street blew into the hall, leaning against the doorjamb and smoking through his teeth and chatting about times getting tough, making ends meet, doing whatever necessary in order to get by. Every so often afterwards he'd drop by unannounced to comment on the few additions my father's wages bought and which Geordie's keen, intrusive eye invariably managed to spot. When he was gone my father would sit as if physically drained. In the end, unnerved and anxious, he turned to his brother for advice.

My uncle's response was typical. In the days before experience had honed his business sense, he had accepted a brown and yellow, five-berth caravan as partial payment for property he'd bought, then sold; this he now proffered for our use.

His voice cheery, unwilling to accept the problem as real, he suggested we get away for a while, have a holiday, forget about the whole thing. He'd run us down himself if we wanted, and we could give him a ring when we wanted to leave.

Caught up in the spontaneity of the notion my father agreed, though he made sure to look in on Harry before we left. The caravan was just outside of Newcastle, usually a popular seaside resort. But in early March it was still dark and sparsely populated; few people cared to spend their wages in a town with little else to offer than a few
enshrouded amusement halls and a fitful, troubled sea. Even at peak season my mother had always preferred Portrush. She liked to walk the path beside the bed-and-breakfasts where the wind was strongest and the smell of salt water was sharpest on the air. There was a set of swings at the far end of the most distant pier, and it was there we could always find them, once we'd eaten our fill of candy and ice cream, had gambled our pennies on the miniature horses, and had no more money left to spend. I stayed with them once when I was too sick in the stomach for food or for rides and watched them play. With hair unpinned she shook her head at him—Don't go so
high!
—and he stood behind her, just out of her reach, sometimes pushing gently, sometimes catching hold of the swing as it came back to him and clasping her tight around the waist so that she sat suspended for a moment with her feet unable to touch the ground before he let her go and she swung out again towards the sea. Don't
push
so high, she'd tell him, and then she'd pump her legs madly and make herself go higher still.

There were swings at Newcastle, too, but only the frame remained, the seats and chains having long ago disappeared in that mysterious way to which most public facilities seem prone. While my father waited at the bottom of the slide with outstretched arms, I held Nicola's hand as she slid down to meet him and told Stephen when he asked me that the swings were inside for the winter and if we came again in spring he could play on them then. It was warm for the season and we stayed late, loathe to ring my uncle and get ready to leave. When we got into Belfast on Sunday night it was after ten, though the light in Harry's parlour was still on. My father could see him seated at his desk and decided to leave him be. By half past the hour we were all in bed.

When my father found him the next morning Harry was already three days dead, blue-skinned and as stiff and straight as the chair he'd died in. His expression in death was neither peaceful nor disturbed; he'd had a heart attack while replying to his daughter, yet neither of their letters revealed anything that would have brought it on. While Stephen fetched the doctor, who rang the hospital and the police, my father gathered the pages and put them away with Harry's other papers before the officials arrived. When they got there, the constables took my father's statement and the doctor took his pulse, checked us all for signs of shock, and sent someone down to find George. Then the medics took Harry away.

I remember the funeral and the viewing before it as a pathetic affair, dimly lit and poorly attended. Geordie had not bothered to ring his cousin in Australia, having decided, under the circumstances, that the funeral should take place as soon as possible and with the minimum of fuss. Harry had no family left in Belfast to make recriminations or to raise the issue of Eleanor's will, but Geordie knew the accusations were sure to come as soon as Melanie heard the news, and he had no intention of being taken unprepared. Even before he'd seen the undertaker he'd paid a visit to his solicitor to discover if his share of Harry's savings had been compromised by the death.

In a room with mustard walls, plush russet carpeting, ornamental brass fixtures, and casual, sling-back chairs, Harry's coffin was incidental, its lid propped up behind it against the wall. The four of us arrived in the same black frocks and trousers we had worn when my mother died and had not put on since. Following my father's example, we each peered briefly into the coffin and moved our lips like his before going on to clasp the cold hands of Harry's nephew, who sat alone in the front row and accepted our
offers of sympathy without a word. In the hallway where we waited while they nailed the coffin shut, I watched my father turn to Geordie and begin to speak, but Geordie cut him short and turned away. The solicitor stepped in then, a tall man in an iridescent suit. Something made me leave Stephen with Nicola and cross over, imbued with a sense of purpose I'd seen once on my mother's face when she'd defended my father against a man who'd pushed him outside a restaurant in Shaftsbury Square. We'd gone out for supper on a wet night when I was still the only child, and after the meal we called a taxi to take us home. The man came out from a bar across the street and stood for a moment swaying in the rain before he came over to us. Orange bastard, the man said gratuitously, and then he'd pushed my father and knocked his glasses and his hat to the ground. My mother raised her umbrella with both fists around the handle and swung it down from behind her head as a blacksmith smites an anvil, and the man fell down in front of her on his knees. During the ride home she sat between us, holding a handkerchief to my father's bleeding temple, one arm around his shoulders, the other around mine. The tears were bright against her cheeks yet I could see no trace of anger in her eyes. I stood in the doorway of their room as she put my father to bed; then we went downstairs and she made us both a cup of tea.