The Shelter of Neighbours (24 page)

‘Endorphins,' he said kindly. ‘An end to all orphans.'

‘Yeah yeah, I always get that wrong.' I hung up my coat and asked him why he wasn't at work. He's a civil servant, high enough up.

‘Day in lieu,' he said casually. In loo. ‘Would you like a cup of coffee, Linda? I'll make it. Sit yourself down at the fire.'

I always lit the fire first thing in the morning, so I'd have something to cheer me up when I got in from my walk.

We had the coffee and chatted and then he asked me if there was anything I needed. He stared at me as he said this and I had this strange thought: Denis is making a pass at me. But I dismissed it as soon as it came into my mind. Of course he wasn't. As if to prove that I was wrong, he said quickly, ‘I could cut the grass for you.'

For example.

So that's what he meant.

‘No no,' I said hastily. ‘I can do that. Anyway, it hasn't even started growing yet.'

‘I meant it metaphorically,' he said drily.

A metaphor for what? I wondered.

Actually, there was something I needed. The bolt on the back door had come loose and I'm terrible with screwdrivers. So I showed him that and he said, no problem. I fetched the toolbox from the garage and he fixed it in a jiffy, and then went off, calling, ‘See you later.'

I assumed he meant he'd see me for dinner – I was with them almost every second evening at this stage. But Tressa didn't call over to ask me that evening.

That got me thinking that I had misunderstood the meaning of Denis's visit – my first, instinctive, reaction was correct, I thought, he was up to something and somehow Tressa knew or guessed, or he confessed to her. And now they were avoiding me.

I felt dreadful. I ate some bread and cheese for dinner, watched
tv
– I never had the energy, or the will, to do anything more active; when I read, the words slipped away from me like leaves in the wind, and I couldn't be bothered raking them back. I lay awake for ages; then, when I saw it was 2 a.m. and I'd been awake for three hours, I took two sleeping pills.

No invitation the next evening, either. That was three in a row; I hadn't seen Tressa for three days. By far the longest stretch of not seeing her since the death.

The fourth day was Friday. I was considering frying a rasher and sausage for my dinner and then watching
The Late Late Show
, or else going upstairs and committing suicide by taking an overdose of the sleeping pills, when the doorbell rang.

‘What's up?' Tressa asked. ‘Are you
ok
?'

‘Yes.' I looked at her questioningly. She looked as usual – cheery, in her work clothes, a navy suit with a pink-and-white striped blouse.

‘I was in London – I suppose Denis told you? I asked him to look in on you. I hope he did.'

I hugged her.

And everything was normal again.

A week later Denis dropped by again.

‘Hi,' he said. He wasn't wearing a coat, although it was raining. ‘Just thought I'd drop in to cheer you up.'

Up went my antennae. But I shoved them back down.

I asked him in.

‘Is Tressa away?' I asked, although the minute I did, I realised it was the wrong thing to say.

‘Oh, no, no,' he said. ‘She's gone up to see her mother, that's all.'

So she was away, for a few hours, anyway.

Denis went into the sitting room, without being asked, and sat down by the fire, also without being asked.

‘You're looking well' – he nodded approvingly at me – ‘it's great the way you keep it all up.'

‘Stiff upper lip,' I said, continuing the ‘up' theme. Three ups in less than a minute.

‘You've great courage,' he said. ‘No, no, I really mean it. I don't know how you do it. You just keep going.'

Then I started to cry.

The tears just jerked out of me, without my volition, as if he had turned on a tap.

(I know now what it was. Sympathy. Nobody had really said anything so sympathetic, so encouraging, to me in ages. Nobody had praised me for surviving and putting on a brave face. Acknowledgement of the effort I was making was what he gave me, and it opened the floodgates.)

He put his arm around me. He held me for a minute or two. The heat from another person's body, especially a man's body, is precious when you haven't felt it for months. It felt so natural, and warm, and necessary, as it seeped into me, through the thick cotton fleece and the T-shirt I had on under that, right into me. An electric current … I don't know what. It seeped in. Then he started to stroke my hair just the way I rub down the cat. She likes it, too.

I don't think it was a ruse. More an opportunity seized, by both of us. An understanding that this was what I really needed, and the friendly, decent thing to do was give it to me.

Of course, I felt guilty when I thought of Tressa. But not very. I somehow convinced myself that she wouldn't mind if she knew, she'd understand, being so understanding about everything. And so generous. And at the same time I assured myself that what she didn't know wouldn't worry her. And at the same time, too, I knew that the last thing in the world I wanted was for her to know, and that if she found out, I'd feel like jumping into the sea and drowning.

And at the same time I felt pleased, fulfilled, delighted, the way I always felt after sex. It cheered me up – like jokes. Sex and jokes made me happy, but sex was better than jokes.

It didn't happen very often. Denis called over when he could, when he had the time and when she was away, because of course we didn't want to upset her. We didn't discuss the details of the thing – never mentioned Tressa, in fact, although we talked about everything else. Denis was a great listener, much better than Frank ever had been. You could – I could – tell him anything. I began to see it as something good, and beneficial, that was doing me a lot of good and wasn't really doing her any harm, as long as nobody else knew what was going on, and as long as she didn't.

The dinners continued, too, but not as frequently, since I was getting stronger, and going out more myself, anyway. Not with men, of course – there was no question of that; if I hadn't sex with Denis, I wouldn't be having it with anyone; it would have to be with a man I trusted completely, a very good friend. No, it was my women friends I was going out with. Still, we three had dinner about twice a week, alternating houses now. The tripartite relationship didn't change. We joked and laughed and discussed the news and the books we were reading – I was reading again. Tressa didn't seem to suspect a thing and we gave her absolutely no reason to.

I looked better. I knew it. Sex is a good cosmetic and I was seeing Denis once a week or so – he was good in bed, as I suppose these womanisers are. (I had no illusions about him. He didn't say, but I guessed I wasn't the first woman he had had outside the marital bed. I hoped I'd be the last because I didn't want this to stop, it was too delicious, too charming, too good … too handy. He was a friend as well as a lover. My neighbour. And still not a husband, not boring. Much better in bed than Frank ever had been, too. He knew things about my body, and wasn't afraid to try new tricks. We trusted each other, in bed, and reaped rewards.)

He never came over when Tressa was home. Audrey saw him, though, coming in and out to me – she often stood at her window upstairs, looking down at the road and seeing what was going on. I didn't think she suspected anything – Denis and Tressa had always been coming and going to my house, so why would she? But one afternoon – this was in May – when Denis was walking back, she was in her front garden, watering some bearded irises (magnificent) she had growing along her dividing wall. I was watching from my window. I always watched Denis as he went back, I never wanted him to leave. There she was, in her black jeans, a jumper and orange anorak, her hands in big white gardening gloves. Denis walked past and nodded – he hated her, too. She accidentally on purpose sprayed him with water from her hose. ‘Hey!' he said. ‘Watch it.' She didn't seem to say sorry. Or anything. Just turned the hose back on the irises, spraying them for dear life.

After that, he stopped coming over. And the summer went by and autumn came.

Months later I was in the kitchen, where I spend most of my time. It was a cold enough day in October, about eleven thirty in the morning. I hadn't gone for my usual walk because it was raining. For exercise, I was scrubbing the floor. Two birds with one mop.

I heard a strange sound, from the door.

A sort of humming sound.

Before I could investigate, I saw what it was from where I stood. A saw. Someone was sawing around the bolt on the kitchen door.

Someone was trying to break into my house. Anyone who observed me knew I was always out of the house at this time of day.

My first impulse was to get out of it as fast as I could, by the front door. I didn't want to confront a burglar. And I could call the Gardaí from the front.

But I had a better idea.

I was inspired. And I can only guess that this clear headedness – as it seemed to me – came about because Denis had called in the day before, after quite an absence, and I was feeling empowered, as the word has it. Empowered to think, to plan, rather than freeze and flee. (This is the key to survival, I've read somewhere, even in a situation of extreme danger like a plane crash. Most people freeze and die. Some people behave rationally, think and take action, and they have a chance of survival.)

The fire was lit. I watched the saw making a little track around the lock on the door. The robber had sawn three-quarters way around it now. In a few minutes, he would be in.

I went into the front room and plunged the poker into the flames.

I let it stay there for a full minute, until it was red hot.

Then I tiptoed to the kitchen door and waited.

Waited.

Seconds passed, slowly – time is so strange.

Slowly, each second like an hour.

I worried that the poker would cool down. Disastrous. But I didn't dare go back to the fire for fear he'd get in.

Then the piece of wood fell out, onto the floor near my feet. And a hand came through the hole.

Covered in one of those white plastic gloves doctors wear.

The hand was smallish – probably some young thug; there are lots of them in Lourdes Gardens over at the other side of the railway.

I had a momentary qualm. What if it were a child? But no child would do what that hand was doing. Such a deliberate, clever break-in.

Down went the poker onto the hand. Hard.

A scream rose into the air outside. The smell of melted plastic and scorched flesh rushed into the kitchen – how quickly smell travels, the house was full of that smell in no time.

I didn't even hear the robber running away, as I went back and replaced the poker on its stand, and sat down, completely winded by the adventure.

I drank a glass of water. Then I went up to the attic and checked the suitcase where I'd stashed away my money. That didn't make sense – since the robber hadn't got in, how could he have stolen my money? But I checked, anyway. It was there, all of it. Of course nobody had found it.

I was exhilarated and frightened and sick, all at once.

I needed to talk to someone.

Saturday. Tressa and Denis would probably be home – I hoped just Denis.

So I ran to their house to tell them what was happening – I assumed nobody else would try to break in that day, although the kitchen lock was now exposed.

Their door was open, oddly enough, so I walked in without ringing.

And in the hall the smell assailed me.

The scorched flesh, the melted plastic.

Tressa sobbing.

‘It'll be
ok
.' That was Denis. ‘Just hold the ice to it. Just hold the ice.'

I don't think I ever told him about the money. I told him a great deal, but hardly that. So I don't understand what Tressa was after. I never did anything about the attempted break-in. Did not go to the guards, did not mention it. But I did bring my money to the post office and deposited it there. Nowhere is safe but what can you do?

Some days later a ‘For Sale' sign went up on Denis and Tressa's house.

‘They've moved,' said Audrey. The first time she'd spoken to me in years. She was foostering around in her jungle of a garden.

‘But it's just gone on the market,' I said, looking at the sign as if it could tell me something.

‘Rented an apartment. Can't wait to get out of here, apparently,' she said. Her voice was nonchalant. But she smiled, as if she had said something funny. ‘They're looking for a million,' she went on.

‘Hm.' I felt nothing at all. ‘Well, let's hope they get that,' I said.

‘They won't get anything near it,' she said with satisfaction. ‘They'll be lucky to get half. Or to sell it at all, the way things are going.'

I didn't feel shocked, or sad, or anything. I went on my walk, to keep the endorphins up.

And when I came home, and was sitting by the fire drinking my morning coffee, it came to me, like the giant waves they talk about, or like a ghost from the other side bearing a true but bad message. That, no matter how lucky you seem to be, in the end there is nobody taking care of you. No god, no friend, no husband, no lover.

No neighbour.

In the end you're on your own.

The Buildiners

My mother, whom my father calls the Tiger and we call Mammy, is marching purposefully into the Buildins. She's wearing her khaki raincoat, which has a military look to it, and her striped scarf, black and orange. She's on the warpath. Or, more accurately, on an intelligence mission: we are searching for my missing bike. It vanished from our road, where I was out playing this morning. I left it outside when I ran into the house to do a number one. (I told my mother I'd parked it at our garden gate but actually I'd left it standing on the middle of the road several doors down.) I'd spent the previous two hours cycling up and down, up and down, on my pride and joy, my blue Raleigh bike, my three-wheeler. I never called it a tricycle; I don't think that word was known on our road. My granny and granda, who gave me my most precious presents (my big plastic baby doll, Barbara, with the red and white frock, also plastic; my electric train), had given me this three-wheeler for my fourth birthday (they were put to the pin of their collar to pay for it, my mother said). It was by far the best bike on our road, and I was in no way shy about pointing this out to my pals – Annette, the smug owner of two dozen jigsaws; Janet, a frail only child whose mother took a nap in the afternoons (cue for half the neighbourhood, Janet's ‘friends', to run wild in her house); Deirdre, whose claim to fame was that her mother was a Protestant; and Miriam May, with hair the colour of straw, curled into corkscrew ringlets, which framed her tiny, pale face like a judge's wig. I would give them a go on my bike in exchange for a favour I judged to be of exactly equivalent value. It might be a long session with the shiny, sweet-smelling, animal jigsaws in Annette's house up the lane, which itself had a provocative look, on account of having no windows on the street side. Or two goes on Miriam's yellow scooter. A ‘lend' of one of Deirdre's
Noddy
books – she had half a dozen. Swapping, bartering, exchanging was a way of life with us. We were as good at calculating value and risk as any actuary by the time we were four.

The Buildins were the dark side of our absorbing world. In them lurked the enemy: the children who were rough. Mammy the Tiger kept us from them. Or tried to. The Buildiners wore raggedy clothes, and they were visibly dirty – at a time when none of us had a bath more than once a week and hair-washing was a laborious task that took half the day, and was avoided by everyone, washers and washees, as much as possible. The Buildiners, of course, were said to have nits in their hair, and they spoke a different version of Dublinese from ours, which sounded like a foreign language – but one we could understand all too well. You kept your ears open as you sneaked past the Buildins, stepping around sleeping dogs, black and slimy, who would bite you if you looked at them the wrong way, and carefully avoiding looking at the children, especially the older boys, who had pointy shoes, tight trousers, and flick knives. Looking was the big taboo. ‘Hey, young wan,' a Buildiner might call, if she caught you engaging in that nefarious activity. All girls of whatever age were called young wan by them. I thought it was a bad word, like feck, and the sound of it scared me. ‘What are ye gawkin' at, young wan?' they'd shout out, and I'd scurry on, scared to death. I didn't know what they would do to me, if they got me, but it would not be nice and would involve knives.

Buildiners usually kept off our cul-de-sac, apparently having as little wish to be in our territory as we had to be in theirs. And we weren't allowed go into the Buildins on our own, except on Saturday afternoons, when we crossed the main yard to Miss Fontane's flat. Miss Fontane was a dancing teacher and, puzzlingly, she was very nice, in spite of living in the Buildins. Her flat was spacious and attractive, a good deal cosier, with its thick red carpet and potted ferns, its walnut piano and oak gramophone, than our house. I didn't know how to reconcile Miss Fontane and her long, black hair, her red lipstick, and fluttering feet in their minute black ‘poms', with the image I had of the Buildins in general. I didn't know how someone like her could live there, and how inside the grim brick walls so much comfort and warmth, so much music and cheer, could hide. I supposed she was the exception that proved the rule.

Which was: keep out.

But now we're in the enemy heartland because, naturally, the Buildiners were the prime suspects when the three-wheeler was found to be missing.

‘God help us, Helen! They must've sneaked down the road when nobody was looking,' my mother said, in thoughtful dismay. ‘You couldn't be up to them, the so-and-sos, could you?'

Now she's leading us across the main yard of the Buildins – a big concrete ground surrounded on three sides by the stern, red-brick faces of the flats. To call it an atrium or courtyard would give the wrong impression. It hasn't a trace of the greenery, the elegance, that those words suggest. Not a tree, a shrub or a blade of grass relieve its rawness. It's the colour of stainless steel saucepans, or gun metal, and looks like the exercise yard of a very large prison, or some planet that is incapable of supporting organic life. The only living things in it are the Buildiners themselves and their skinny dogs; and the only inanimate thing that is not as bare and functional as a prison yard is a handball alley blocking off the sky. Even that has a penitential look. Nobody plays handball there, ever, although boys are always playing soccer down at that end of the yard. We can see them doing that right now, kicking a battered old ball and shouting as we cross the main yard, ears and eyes alert for ambushes. Good, the enemy is preoccupied. We make it across the first bastion.

But there's no sign of the bike.

On we go, round the corner, into the back lane of the Buildins. This is the very worst part, where the dogs are slimier and the children cheekier and the flick knives sharper than anywhere else. The lane is too narrow to admit any sunshine, and the gutters are so thick with litter you'd think rubbish was growing in them, like some sort of depraved, evil flowers. The entryways to the flats – which are open to the weather – give off a sour smell, the smell, we think, of profligacy, of wanton laziness. (Now, I know, the smell of poverty.) The windows on the ground floor at this side of the Buildins have iron bars on them.

And in there, in one of those dark, foul entries, we see my three-wheeler.

Two young fellas are with it, one sitting on the bike, the other just standing there. One is wearing a cap, pulled down tightly over his head almost to his eyes, even though it's quite a warm day. It's not a cap, actually, but a leather helmet, the kind Biggles wears. These helmets look tough and aggressive. Buildiner boys often have them; ordinary respectable boys wear school caps, made of soft cloth, blue or wine or bottle green. Under their tough helmets these two boys have the hard faces that a lot of the boys in the Buildins have – they're cynical and weary, desperate, by the time they're seven. Already by then they know nobody is on their side – especially not the teachers, or the priests, or the mothers like my mother, who hate their guts. They are constantly on guard.

‘Give me that bicycle,' says my mother, in a rough voice, roughened by anger and something else.

‘I will not,' the boy on the bike says. He's about eight. There's a bead of green snot at the end of his nose and the skin all around it is red and raw, although otherwise he's very washy, even for a Buildiner.

‘Indeed and you will,' says my mother. ‘For two pins I'll put the guards on you and yez'll be off to Artane before you know what hit yez.'

‘It's my bike,' he says, without conviction. He stays sitting on the saddle, clutching the handlebars. His knuckles are blue.

‘Now, where would the like of you get a bike like that?' my mother says, smiling. She sees a funny side to it now.

The three-wheeler stands there, in the dark and filthy porch. With its royal blue paint, its white mudguards, shining chrome handlebars, it gleams like a messenger from some other world. Not the world of our road, which is just a few steps up the social ladder from this one, but the world in the stories my mother reads to us at bedtime, that paradise where children roam carefree and pampered in snow white socks and Mary Anne shoes, to experience great adventures or solve difficult mysteries, then return home to their lovely houses. It's a world to which she wants us to belong. These boys would not know such a world exists.

The boy with the Biggles helmet remains on the bike. The expression on his face changes slightly. His eyes lose that hard, but dead, look they had, and begin to sparkle with anger. His friend, too, stiffens, and scowls at us. He puts a hand in the pocket of his shorts.

I wait for my mother to react, to say something else. But her face has changed, too. It's rigid, with something that might be disbelief, or fear. She looks helpless.

We all stand there, as if we were turned to stone. We are like statues in the life-size crib at Christmas, gathered around the baby Jesus in the stable. Except we're in the Buildins, and we're gathered around my three-wheeler. I keep an eye on the hand in the pocket.

‘Davy!' A loud Buildiner woman's voice shouts from somewhere upstairs.

All of us jump, startled out of our paralysis.

‘Come up here, your tea's on the table!'

The voice is loud, but also soft and kind. It's not what you'd expect to hear in a place like this. Not at all what you'd expect.

‘Come on up now, love, don't be lettin' it get cold on you.'

The two Buildiners exchange glances. The one who is standing with his hand in his pocket shrugs. The one with the helmet – Davy; he has a name, an ordinary name – sighs deeply. He climbs down from the bike. He stands and looks at it for a minute, and then at my mother and me. Then, suddenly, he spits, not at us or even at the bike, but at the ground. And the spit comes slowly from his mouth, like dribbles from a leaky tap, rather than the angry liquid bullet you might expect. My mother looks surprised, but not annoyed. I look at the little puddle of spittle on the ground just beside the back wheel of the bike. The boy looks at it, too. It's the same colour as the snot at the end of his nose, with a dark red trace in it. He snuffles and takes a long look at the bike. His eyes aren't angry any more. He looks tired. The two of them turn and walk away, up the dark stone stairs to wherever they go when they're not out and about, breaking windows and robbing things.

‘Well,' my mother says, taking hold of the bike. ‘That's that.'

She looks tired, too. She starts to push my three-wheeler down the lane towards our own road. It doesn't occur to me to ride it, here in the Buildins. At this stage in my life and for a long time to come I'm only allowed to ride my bike on my own road, where it is safe to be.

Learning to ride

Riding a three-wheeler is child's play, in every sense of the word. The tricycle is rooted to the ground, by the force of gravity, like a bed or a table. It just happens to be on wheels. All you have to learn is how to turn the pedals and you're in motion.

A two-wheeler is obviously different, seeming to defy some physical law of nature. How do they do it? that is what I wondered, watching them: the older children, and grown-up cyclists.

The man next door, for instance. Tony. Every morning he went to work on a high black bike. He just swung his long leg over the bar and off he sped, light as a bird in the air. (My father had an old black bike, too, but it had lain unused in the garden shed ever since he got the car – an ancient Morris Eight. He used to go everywhere on his bike, and now he went everywhere in his car. He never walked, except inside the house.)

Imelda Fogarty, ten years old, had a two-wheeler. A lady's bike. It was a good bit smaller than Tony's and I could easily mount it. But when I tried to move, I fell off immediately. Why? Imelda laughed and said, ‘It's cinchy!' But she couldn't tell me how to do it. ‘It's easy-peasy,' she said. ‘You just do it!' And up she'd hop and fly down the road. Even though she was silly, and had her ears pierced, she could perform this miracle. She could even cycle without putting her hands on the handlebar for several yards at a stretch.

It was very frustrating.

When I was seven, I woke up on Christmas morning at about 4 a.m.

At the end of the bed I shared with my sister was a biscuit-faced doll with blue eyes and yellow hair and a pale yellow nylon dress with lace trimmings. There was a heap of other presents on the bed, and two grey socks hanging on the bedposts, lumpy and dumpy and stuffed to the gills with sweets and oranges and amazing little wind-up toys all the way from China.

And just inside the door, something light and elegant and perfect: a bicycle. A two-wheeler.

My heart leaped. I hadn't even asked for a two-wheeler, but Santy had brought me one, anyway! How clever of him!

We ran into our parents' bedroom to tell them the good news.

‘No, no, Helen,' my mother said sleepily. ‘The two-wheeler is for Orla.'

My sister.

Orla smiled smugly, although she didn't even want a two-wheeler.

The doll in the yellow frock was also hers.

I wondered if there was some mistake? It didn't make sense. And how did my mother know what Santy had intended?

She insisted that she did know, and enumerated the presents I'd got, which were many, but none of them was anything as desirable as the two-wheeler.

The bike was quite small – considerably smaller than Imelda Fogarty's Raleigh. It was a little small for me, in fact. But I wouldn't admit that, even to myself, and persisted in believing Santy had intended it for me, and that my mother was mistaken.

The bicycle didn't even look like a bicycle, but like a motorbike, the sort of motorbike a soldier might have, since it was painted the same grey-green colour as a jeep. Even though it was clearly second-hand, even though it didn't look like any bike I was familiar with, it was the most lovely thing I had ever seen.