The Breezes (12 page)

That lightning conductor – we could have done with having it up there a few years sooner.

I turned around with a sudden irritation that I could not suppress. What the hell was he doing? The car was fine, for God's sake. ‘Come on,' I called. ‘Let's get going.'

‘One second, son,' Pa promised, bending deep into the engine, ‘just one second.'

I looked out over Rockport, a model congregation of six hundred thousand human beings. I remembered a history schoolbook illustration of what it had looked like in the olden days: a sea-threatened hamlet hulked over by rain and hills, with a boundary wall raised miserably against vehement casual forces – invaders, floods, wolves, sea gales. A large shanty stood at the centre of the village and a thread of smoke climbed through the hole in its roof. That was where hopeful sacrifices were made in appeasement of the gods, where the population slept together in a warming pack, their bodies each other's radiators, dreaming of security. Now the boot was on the other foot, now Rockport bossed the elements. The earth, the waters, the fires and even the mobile air had been harnessed like a team of horses and made to run and run, towing
the city like a quick chariot. Energy! The metropolis, hot and kinetic, growled and twitched and glittered with its mutations. The traffic moved constantly through streets teeming with dynamized citizens, themselves yoked and consentingly driven by the strong flow of money. Such unity, such output: I could smell them in the industrial aromas that drifted up to me from below. Yes, Rockport had the whip hand now, Rockport had the power. There were no more wolves. Any animals that were not milked or eaten or kept as pets were designated as wildlife and preserved for our enjoyment. The dangerous heaths had been turned into football fields, the dunes splashed delicately with the greens of golf courses, the sea tamed by breakwaters and looted steadily for fish and gases. Invasions were history and hunger was history. Subsistence was no longer the aim of the game: now, by such fabulous cities, we had minimum standards of welfare and economic safety nets – now we had surplus, and from that hilltop it looked as though the dream of security had been realized and wondrously surpassed. It looked as though we were home and dry.

Then came the slam of a bonnet. I turned to see Pa walking over to the driver's door, wiping his hands. ‘OK,' he said, ‘let's go.'

I got back into the car. Pa started the car and ran the engine – and kept running it. I turned my head. His eyelids were fluttering and his Adam's apple ducked rapidly in his throat. His hands were trembling on the steering wheel. ‘Stop the car,' I said. He obeyed me. ‘Now, take it easy,' I said. ‘Just wait a while.'

Again Pa obeyed, breathing deeply and systematically for several moments. Then he started up.

We drove slowly through the car-park. Pa said, ‘You want me to drop you off at home?' I said, Yes, that would be great. He pressed on the accelerator as we hit the road and kept his foot down for some time, which was unlike him. He said ‘That's better, isn't it? You hear how she's running better?' Yes, I said. ‘Tell you what,' my father said after several moments. ‘Here's what we do tomorrow. I'm refereeing in the morning. Why don't you meet me at the pitch? Then maybe we could
have some lunch and watch the United game at the house, have a couple of beers. How does that sound to you?'

I thought about it. Why not? I thought. The chairs – there was no point in kidding myself about them. I was through with the chairs. And Pa could do with the company. And I could do with taking it easy at his place and getting out of the flat, away from Rosie and Steve. I'd get a bus to Angela's afterwards. Yes, I thought, not a bad schedule for a Sunday.

‘Sure,' I said. ‘Good thinking,' I said.

Down we drove, down into Rockport.

It is five to twelve and I am sweating in my coat and I have run out of cigarettes. This cannot go on. This has to end.

I write a note for Angela:
GONE TO DOOLEY'S. BACK SOON, LOVE, JOHNNY.
Then I walk down the stairs of the apartment block and step outside, my umbrella rattling under the lightening rain. The wind has died down.

The walk to Dooley's takes two minutes. Inside, it is quiet as usual. Two men and a woman sit around the corner of the bar and an old fellow is on his own at a table, studying and fingering his glass of whiskey like a grandmaster pondering the endgame. Nothing much else is going on. The gambling machine is popping out colours over by toilets but no one feels lucky enough to play. Up in a nook of the ceiling, images come and go on a silent television that nobody is watching.

I order a pint of Guinness and a packet of Marlboros and pull up a stool at the bar. When my beer arrives I immediately take a long and deep draught. Then I light up. That's better. That's more like it.

I turn around on my stool. A sports programme has started on the television: football. I pick up my beer and move over towards it. Nobody else budges.

A team in red shirts and white shorts is attacking the goal of a team in green. Rockport United versus Ballybrew: the highlights of today's game.

I pick a comfortable chair and sit down to watch. To my surprise, I'm jittery as a fan. I thought that I had grown free from my absurd affinity for this club and the eleven random men who each Saturday, years ago, ran out as the clumsy agents of my dreams. But tonight, for some reason, something is at stake, some stubborn deposit of boyish hope is at risk.

It's simple: if United avoid defeat, they stay up and Ballybrew are relegated; if Ballybrew win, they stay up and United go down.

Up on the screen, the players are running about in a soundless stadium. United have the ball. It's with Thompson, the sweeper, in the centre circle and moving forward; he checks, pointing his arm like a visionary towards the opponents' goal, indicating, perhaps, the long and incisive path that his pass will take, and in my imagination I hear the rumble of anticipation from the crowd; then he kicks it fifty yards back to his own keeper. Thompson's not taking any chances.

Who can blame him? Safety first, that has to be the United motto for the day. Let Ballybrew make the running. They're the ones who need the victory, not us. Besides, we don't have an attack worthy of the description. The United tactic is to pump long balls into the danger zone in the hope that a rebound or lucky bounce will break for them. But no such thing happens this time. The United centre forward, Mulligan, a big, brave, unathletic number nine, hemmed in by green shirts like a man in a thicket, unsuccessfully attempts a jump, his heavy leap taking him barely two inches off the ground, and the ball drifts straight through to the Ballybrew keeper. He, in turn, volleys the ball as far as he can away from his own goal – right across the pitch, in fact, into the hands of the United keeper.

So the game continues, in an erratic sequence of broken, strenuous play. The teams are doing their best, but their best is not good enough; football is just too hard for them. Out of habit, I keep track of the referee. ‘Look at that,' Pa would say if he were here. ‘Look at how he keeps to the diagonal.' The diagonal: this is the referee's beat, along an invisible line that runs across the field between one corner flag and another, a line from which the prudent arbiter should not stray. ‘That's not as easy as it looks,' Pa would say. ‘Although, of course, he has two linesmen to help him out. Boy, what I could do with two linesmen …'

Suddenly we're in the second half and the players are poised on the halfway line for the restart, shaking their shining, lubricated thighs. Only forty-five minutes to go. Only forty-five minutes to hold out.

We cut portentously to a United throw-in on the right wing, a promising position, and I hope against hope: is it possible? Will this be a United goal? The long throw lands at the feet of
Mulligan, his back to the goal at the edge of Ballybrew's penalty area. Painfully he starts to turn, a slow, elbowing swivel which surely will fool nobody; but somehow, by a miracle of shins and knees, he holds on to the ball and, with a barge of his left shoulder, breaks free from the defenders and lumbers into a space …

Shoot! Shoot now!

Mulligan shoots, and the ball hits the crossbar and ricochets into the crowd. Unlucky! Good effort! The camera pans in for the reaction close-up and for a moment the screen is filled with the biblical spectacle of Tony Mulligan looking in anguish at the sky before he shakes himself, snots out of one nostril and runs off to take up his position. And suddenly the sound of the TV is switched on – the girl behind the bar is smiling at me and holding a remote control – and the commotion of the contest enters the bar with a boom, and from that moment rhythm arrives from its mysterious source to infuse and transform the United play, and now there is movement, now the leather sphere has been tamed and is switched fluidly from red shirt to red shirt as we run unerringly for one another, flicking and nodding and back-heeling the ball around like a beach ball, now the wind and rain are dismissed, the imprisoning touch-lines mere scenery. Shot after shot rains down on the Ballybrew end, time and again the ball is scrambled desperately off their line, but it doesn't matter, it's only a matter of time before the goal comes, and time is on our side; the longer the game goes on the more certain the draw, our victory, becomes; yes, every second is another coin in the bank. Surely, the commentator says hoarsely, shouting to be heard above the din of the fans, surely this cannot go on for much longer! Now there are only two minutes to go, one hundred and twenty seconds until we're there.
Here we go, here we go, here we go,
our fans chant,
here we go, here we go, here we go-oh.
A cacophony of whistling sounds around the ground, urging the referee to blow for time, but there is one minute left, and somehow Ballybrew have been awarded a free kick thirty-five yards from the United goal, too far out, in this wind, for a direct shot at goal, the commentator says; but nevertheless United have formed a wall – better safe than sorry – and three players now stand
arm-in-arm ten yards away from the kick, their hands over their balls, their faces pale and unflinching as a Ballybrew player lines up to shoot …

He shoots. The ball strikes a shoulder in the wall, loops into the air and floats bizarrely towards the goal so that the goalkeeper, who has moved a few yards off his line to narrow the angle, is forced to do a backwards flip in order to fingertip it over the bar for a corner …

The keeper crashes to the ground. The ball falls slowly and comes to a halt. It is beyond the United goal-line and between the posts. It is a goal. Ballybrew have scored.

But that's impossible.

That's – no, hold on a minute, that's –

Foul, surely! Offside! No, no, that can't be right! This cannot be happening!

Ref! Referee!

‘Quite remarkable scenes here at Redrock Park,' the commentator bawls, ‘as a cruel deflection puts Ballybrew into the lead – quite against the run of play. But that's football, and I make it that ninety minutes have gone and we're now playing injury time.'

Injury time. There's still a chance. It's a funny old game; it's not over till the fat lady sings.

‘And that's it!' the commentator exclaims, ‘that's it! It's all over!'

The victorious players are piled up in a huge ecstatic heap in the middle of the field, their joyous noises audible in the songless stadium.

We've been robbed. That's all there is to it. We've been robbed.

I finish my drink. What does it matter anyway?

I put some money in the telephone on the bar and ring Angela's.

The voice mail switches on. I'm not here at the moment, Angela says. Please leave a message.

She's changed the message. The message used to say
we're
not in at the moment. And my voice used to say it.

She's scrubbed me out. She's removed me from the record.

I stub out half a cigarette. I mustn't get paranoid. There's going to be an innocent explanation, I know there is.

I slip my coat on. I bet that by the time I get home she'll be back, probably wallowing in a hot midnight bath, her breasts half immersed, her brown hair knotted up above her sleek white neck, her toes waiting for a soaping. In a very few minutes I could be doing just that, or maybe kneading her back as she lies face-down on the bed while she talks about her day – or maybe even having a bit more fun than that. Not a lot has been happening on that front for a while and we're overdue some action.

I quickly walk the distance from the pub to the flat. I run up the stairs, keys ready. I push open the door and prepare to call out, Angie, Angie, it's me.

But nobody, apart from me, is in.

But it's half-past twelve! It's
Monday,
for God's sake!

Unwell, I drop the keys on a table. Anything could have happened to her. I walk in a circle around the room and then without warning I drop through some trap-door and an absolute, electrical sensation of absence engulfs me. She could be nowhere. Angela could be nowhere.

I grab a table with both my hands and lean forward. Block out those thoughts. Think of something else, quick …

But what comes to mind, for some reason, is this image: a hot-air balloon anchored tenuously to the earth with ropes, shifting uneasily in the currents of air, tugging to be gone, to obey the rules of physics and drift upwards into the atmosphere … Memories! These are Angela's remains once she has gone, these are her ties to the earth and all that substantiate her. But what shadowy tethers! I have loved that girl for four years and even I, standing here in her room, cannot bring to mind more than a few moments – and even these are blurred, incomplete snapshots … Walking towards me on a foggy train platform, her head thrown back with laughter; unselfconsciously holding me for every second of our first night together; her eyes closed and mouth slightly agape as she lies on her back in erotic concentration. And if I bring her jumper to my face and smell the brand of her perfume, then, yes, I catch a momentary whiff of her; if I read her letters or
look at photographs, something does come back. But that's it. The laughs, the looks, the moments, the company, the fun, the reality of her, her thereness – all gone. For good. This is what I cannot get away from any more at night, this is what leaves me sweating and sleepless and outraged:
for good.
It happened last night and it's happening now, this crushing realization: soon it will all be over,
for good. In perpetuity.

No. No.

Another cigarette, quick.

Calm yourself, Johnny, calm yourself. It will not matter, death is not an experience, and besides, the eternity that preceded you wasn't so bad, was it? So why mind the one in store? You don't pity the dead, so stop pitying yourself. Grow up. It happens to everybody. It's natural, everything ends.

But I reject that! That is cowardice, not maturity! I am John Breeze, I am alive, I refuse to disappear!

But I will.

Here they come again, all together: disbelief, certainty and freezing fear.

All of a sudden it is as though I am floating. Although I am standing with both feet solidly on the floor, my legs may as well be hanging in thin air. I recognize the feeling. It is that of the boy suspended high up on the seat of a see-saw as three others sit on the grounded seat, outweighing the boy and keeping him up there in the sky against his will. He shakes at the handlebar and kicks his legs, but nothing is changed and he remains where he is, powerless and dangling. A double fear preys on the boy's mind: the fear of remaining airborne indefinitely and the fear of the alternative, the letdown, the crunching drop to earth. Either way, he is helpless and this, in the end, is perhaps the worst, most distressing thing: he is wholly at the mercy of the three others. They know this, and this is the kick they get out of it. They are in charge. The imbalance favours them spectacularly. They are reddening and squealing with the purity of the thrill.

It's frightening; I feel so afloat, so unreal, that I could be in a dream. But I'm here, God damn it, I'm here in the flesh!

I take off my jumper and go to the kitchen to run cold water against my face. Maybe there is something wrong with my
metabolism, or my blood circulation. Maybe the central heating is turned up too high.

I return to the living-room and just move around for a few moments. Then decisively I leap up and catch hold of the solid rim of the bed and hang there like an ape for a few moments until the muscles in my shoulders and arms ache with the weight of my body. I keep hanging there, letting the pain worsen until I'm fighting to hold my grip. Then I let go and land.

I feel a little more awakened. OK, that's a bit better. Now let's put some music on and maybe try another cigarette.

There's an old Beatles album on the turntable. That'll do.

A song or two go by and then on it comes, ‘Here Comes the Sun', George Harrison, and I remember a glittering winter afternoon – was it a year or two years ago? – when this song was playing and this room shone. In the sudden confluence of the music and the light, Angela and I spontaneously looked up at each other from our Sunday newspapers and rose to our feet to hold each other in the luminous centre of the room, grinning at each other with delight, and Angela said, her eyes actually glistening, Is this heaven? Are we there?

I hit the stop button. The needle-arm floats back to its rest.

I drop face-down on to the sofa, eyes closed. My shoes fall from my feet.

But a sleepless minute later, I roll over on to my side to make myself more comfortable, and momentarily my eyes blink open again. There is the praying-chair, six feet away.

Pa asked me to pray for Merv.

I shut my eyes. Forget it, Pa. Dream on.