This Is How It Ends (2 page)

“Fair enough,” he said.

He raised his stamp and brought it down with a little thump on the page. Closing the passport, he handed it back to Bruno. Slowly, as if he had all day.

“Tell you what,” he said. “If that crowd are still in charge after the election, come back to me, and we’ll give you asylum all right.”

Bruno wasn’t sure if he’d heard him right.

“No offense, now,” the young policeman added, worried all of a sudden that he’d gone too far.

“No offense taken.”

And Bruno was tempted to say something else but he didn’t. He slipped the passport into the pocket of his jacket, picked up his carry-on bag, and moved off.

He was still smiling to himself as he waited at the baggage carousel. Fancy that, he thought. Back home, joke with an immigration official and they start taking out the rubber gloves.

But it got him to thinking. By the time he’d spotted his bag snaking towards him, he’d made a pact with himself.

If the Republicans win, I’m not going back.

THE RAIN STARTED
just as she was turning her key in the basement door. A spill of rain, sudden and violent. She dashed inside and slammed the door behind her. The dog only just managed to squeeze through the gap in time.

“We just about made it, Lola. We would have been drenched!”

She’s been talking to the dog more and more lately. Sometimes she finds herself addressing full conversations to her. It can’t be a good sign.

Lola was hovering at the empty water bowl, standing there with her tail swaying expectantly. Addie took the bowl and filled it up from the tap and Lola drank noisily, emptying the bowl in seconds.

Then Addie filled the kettle from the neck and switched it on, leaning back against the counter while she waited for it to boil.

She glanced over at the clock on the wall and saw that it wasn’t even ten. She had the whole day ahead of her, the whole morning and then the whole afternoon and after that the evening. Suddenly, she couldn’t face the thought of it. She couldn’t for the life of her think how she would get through it.

As she stood there, leaning against the kitchen counter, a tiny puff of optimism took hold of her. She seized upon the possibility that she could visit Della. She could text her and suggest they meet for coffee. An upbeat text, she wouldn’t want to come across as needy. But then she remembered that today was Della’s library day. She had signed up to help in the school library. She wouldn’t be free for coffee. Addie felt the tears rising in her throat. She found herself yet again peering into a deep well of despair.

Do you ever feel like doing yourself harm? That was the only thing that the counselor had wanted to know. She was just covering herself. She was terrified Addie was going to kill herself and she’d be held responsible. So she kept asking, do you ever think about doing yourself harm and Addie said no, even though it was a dirty lie.

How many times a day does Addie think about it? More than two, fewer than five, the fingers of one hand. She thinks about it and then she thinks about the reasons not to. Lola. Her dad. Della and the girls. The possibility that things will get better.

It flits across her mind and then it floats away again. She knows it’s not an option. She’s just turning the handle of a door she already knows is locked.

Lola was sitting on the ground in front of her, her head elegantly raised, her tragic spaniel eyes fixed on Addie’s.

“Don’t,” begged Addie, her voice cracking. “You’ll make me cry. Please don’t make me cry.”

And she got down on her hunkers and wrapped her arms gently around the dog’s wet little body, burying her face in the fur at the back of her neck. She closed her eyes and collapsed into the dog for comfort. Lola staggered and then steadied herself to take Addie’s weight. A smell of damp sand, of salty shells and the creatures inside them, it was overpowering. Addie had to pull away. She got to her feet again just as the kettle reached the boiling point and switched itself off.

A small victory, she had managed to regain her equilibrium. She made the coffee and heated some milk for it in the microwave. There was enough hot milk left over for another cup, but that was as far as she would allow herself to plan ahead. She took her cup over to the table and sat down. She sipped the hot, milky coffee, looking out through the patio doors at the rain falling on the back garden. Concentrating on just the coffee and the rain, she was determined not to think about anything else.

She was just about to get up and fill her cup again when she heard a pounding on the ceiling above her. One, two, three short thumps, the signal that he needed something.

She forced herself to sit there for another minute before she went up to him.

OUTSIDE THE TERMINAL BUILDING
, there was a line for taxis. Groups of people in their summer clothes with sunburned skin were pushing trolleys piled high with big cases. Everybody seemed to be smoking. Bruno felt out of place and very alone.

When he got to the front of the line, an usher waved him forward.

“How many?”

“Just one,” said Bruno apologetically.

He opened the door of the taxi and tossed his bags inside, then he climbed in after them. He leaned back against the seat, relieved that the trip was nearly over. It was a moment before he realized that the driver had turned around. He was looking back at Bruno expectantly.

The driver was saying something, but Bruno couldn’t understand him. He was having trouble with the accent.

“Pardon me?”

“I said I’m not a mind reader. You’ll have to tell me where you’re going.”

“Oh,” said Bruno cheerfully. “I’m going to Sandymount. Could you take me to Sandymount, please?”

He hardly had the words out of his mouth before they were pulling away from the curb.

Bruno leaned forward into the gap between the two front seats.

“Do you happen to know any hotels or bed-and-breakfasts in Sandymount?” he asked. “I need a place to stay.”

The driver looked back at Bruno through the rearview mirror.

“Anywhere in particular in Sandymount?”

“Is there a beach? Maybe we could find something near the beach.”

The driver was still looking at him. “Fair enough,” he said. He sounded unconvinced.

“I have family there,” added Bruno. But the driver didn’t seem interested.

Sandymount. That was all his sister had been able to remember. She’d written it down for him on a scrap of paper and he’d copied it into the inside cover of his guidebook. “They lived right on the beach,” his sister had said. But that was all she could recall. There was no guarantee they’d still be living there.

He would look them up in the phone book, that was the first thing to do. And if they weren’t listed, he could always start asking around. Somebody was bound to know them. Even if they’d moved, maybe there would be a forwarding address, maybe someone would know where to find them. As the taxi sped through the city, Bruno worked through all the scenarios. He worked through them methodically and he came up with solutions. The only thing he didn’t contemplate was the possibility that they wouldn’t want to see him. It never even occurred to him.

The taxi swung round a tight little traffic island. Then they drove over a wide, ugly bridge. To Bruno’s right, the river cut a path all the way through the city. Low gray buildings lined the quays on either side of the strip of quiet gray water. When he turned to the left he was looking at boats. Cruise liners and cargo ships leaned against the quay wall, little yachts moored precariously in the middle of the river. Beyond them, he imagined, must be the sea.

The taxi stopped in a line for a tollbooth. In the silence Bruno became aware of the car radio. The accent of the woman reading the news was delightful to him. He leaned forward in his seat to savor it. To Bruno, it was a voice from the past.

“The latest polls from the United States show the Democratic candidate Barack Obama gaining on his Republican rival John McCain in the key battleground states. In Ohio, where voters have chosen the winner in the last eleven elections, Senator Obama now holds a three percent lead over Senator McCain. The two candidates are due to go head to head in a second televised debate tonight.”

Bruno smiled.

So much for getting away from it all.

OF COURSE IT’S SO
obvious now, in retrospect. It’s hard to imagine that it could have turned out any other way.

When you see this guy, sitting at his desk in the Oval Office, his long arm draped in front of him to deliver that famous left-handed signature. When you see his lanky frame emerging from the entrails of Air Force One, his palms held up to the cameras, his lovely wife standing beside him, he looks like he belongs there. It’s hard to imagine anyone else in his place.

When you turn on the news and you hear them say, for the hundredth time, that the property market is in free fall. When you hear them predict that the recession will be deeper than expected, that the bill for it will be bigger, you’re not really surprised. Because it seems pretty clear that it was always going to turn out this way. It seems like things have reached their natural conclusion.

But what you have to remember is that back then, nobody knew how it was all going to end.

T
HE TRAFFIC WAS THINNING
out day by day. It was very noticeable, there were fewer cars on the road.

From his vantage point in the front window, Hugh was perfectly placed to observe this.

“I’m conducting a study,” he said. “I’m counting the cars for a ten-minute period every morning. There are undoubtedly less of them. You notice it in the evenings too.”

He looked like a big pathetic bear sitting there marooned in his Carver chair, his two paws set in plaster of Paris, right up to the elbows. The white casts resting on the gleaming mahogany surface of the desk. His leather-bound diary open in front of him, the fountain pen lying redundant in the crease between the pages.

“Oh really?”

She was trying to sound interested. But she was tired this evening. To tell the truth, she was tired most evenings. It was getting dark earlier every day. You could feel the evenings closing in. Addie was glad of this. Less daytime to fill.

Hugh was peering down at the string of headlights moving along the Strand Road.

“Less people going to work, I suppose.”

“Less work to go to.” And she should know.

“More joggers.”

“Yeah, there are more people in the pool these days too. They’re trying to keep their spirits up, the poor things. It’s not easy, you know, being unemployed.”

But he wasn’t listening to her.

“I might write to the
Irish Times
,” he was saying. “Get a piece of paper and a pen, will you? I’ll have to dictate it to you.”

“Is this the right time for me to remind you that I’m your daughter, not your slave?”

“Is this the right time for me to remind you that you’re the reason I’m in this bloody predicament in the first place?”

HE FELL OVER THE DOG
, that’s what happened to him.

He was coming out of the kitchen, carrying a glass of wine in each hand. He didn’t even notice Lola sliding past him, her little body flattened against the wall. He was calling out to Addie, telling her to put some cashew nuts into a bowl and bring them up. He didn’t see the dog crossing out in front of him until it was too late.

All his instincts told him to save the wine. When Addie came running to see what had happened, he was on his knees on the hall floor, still clutching the two glasses by their stems.

Miraculously, they hadn’t broken. The wine had spilled, of course. It had been flung far and wide as he fell. There were burgundy splatters all over the walls. But the wineglasses themselves were unscathed. The stupid bloody glasses, they’d only cost one euro each in the hardware.

Both his wrists were broken, he knew that straightaway. It was the wrists that had taken the full force of his fall.

NOW HE SPENDS HIS DAYS
counting the things he can’t do.

“I can’t even wipe my own bloody arse,” he said. He was back at the hospital for his outpatient appointment. Looking for sympathy, looking at least for a laugh. Not that you’d get it from these people. Humorless bloody lot.

“Very unfortunate,” said the young orthopedic fellow they’d sent in to him. “What did Oscar Wilde say? To break one wrist…”

He’d have preferred somebody he knew.

“Better off with someone you don’t know,” they’d said. “Keep things simple.” Since when was that the way things were done?

Little did he know they’d passed his file along like a live hand grenade.

“I’m not paid to take that kind of grief,” said the surgical registrar. “It’s a job for a consultant.”

The nurses were all giggling and the matron had to step in. “Professor Murphy is a patient like any other,” she said. “Now, can we show him some respect?” Which only made them snigger all the more.

They passed him right down the line. The last one in, a self-important young Corkman, just back from a stint in Boston. He was the one left standing when the music stopped. Baptisms of fire were mentioned. There was talk of paying your dues.

“I’m happy enough with how this is mending,” the Corkman said, looking up at the X-rays on the wall.

He dragged out his vowels like an American. It made him sound silly.

“Very straightforward Colles fracture,” he was saying. “Named after a Dublin doctor, the Colles fracture. But of course, you’d know that. Anyway, we’ll have another look at it in a fortnight, but for the moment I’m happy enough. Keep the fingers moving, easier said than done, I know. And come back to me in two weeks. You can make the appointment outside.”

But of course coming back to the hospital again was out of the question. It had been an exercise in humiliation from start to finish, from the moment Addie had stopped the car at the front door and rushed around to help him out. The looks from the hospital porters, he’d seen them smirking. And the nurse on duty at outpatients hadn’t seemed to recognize him. She’d asked him for a referral letter. She’d actually called him dear.

“They seem to think I’m a patient,” he’d chuckled as he was ushered into the examination room. He was trying to be jovial, trying not to throw his weight around.

“Excuse me if I don’t shake your hand,” he’d said to the young fellow. What was his name again? Impossible to keep track of all these chaps, there seemed to be new ones appearing every day. Some of them didn’t look old enough to be in long trousers. But they had ideas about themselves, these guys, the way they spoke to you.

“Hugh,” the fellow had said. “I hope you don’t mind me calling you Hugh? The thing is, until those casts are off, you
are
a patient.”

He should have said he bloody well did mind. These fellows, where did they get the idea that everyone was their equal? They went off to Bristol or Brisbane or Bahrain for a few years and as soon as they came back they started calling everyone by their first name.

No, no. Coming back to the hospital was out of the question.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to send somebody out to me next time,” he said. Trying to reassert his authority. “It won’t be possible for me to come in again.”

He had caught the look between the nurse and the young consultant. But they said nothing, so he decided he’d won that round.

“How did you get on?” Addie asked when he came out.

“Oh, fine,” he said. “Touch of the poacher turned gamekeeper. They’re all on their guard.”

Five more weeks, they’d told him, before the casts would come off.

But he doesn’t see how he can do five more weeks. He doesn’t see how he can do five more days.

HOW DO THEY PUT UP
with him?

That’s what a lot of people ask themselves. Those girls, they say, they’re good to him. How they put up with him, God only knows! Just be glad you’re not one of his daughters, that’s what the nurses say. Can you imagine!

When they were children he would sometimes bring them to the hospital with him on Saturday mornings when he had nobody to mind them. He would deposit them at the nurses’ station while he did his rounds. Addie remembers the way the nurses would crowd around to look at them as if they were animals in a zoo. The chocolates would come out and they’d be encouraged to have seconds.

Questions would be asked, innocent questions. Questions that wouldn’t have seemed impertinent at the time. Addie would never have guessed they were prying.

Did your daddy pick out that dress for you? Isn’t he a great daddy? And where do you go to school? And who minds you when your daddy’s at work? And what’s your favorite dinner? And your daddy cooks that for you, does he? Isn’t he a great daddy?

Addie would have been too polite not to answer. She would have answered them eagerly. She would have sat there, swirling chocolate around in her mouth, her legs dangling off the swivel stool, and she would have sung like a canary.

Not Della, Della would not have been so easily led. Even now Addie remembers her refusing their chocolates. She has an image of her sitting there tight-lipped and glaring. Della was never one to let good manners get in the way of her principles.

The next thing they knew, their father would come flying back up the corridor and the questioning would stop as if he’d clapped his hands. God, he was handsome then, he was a matinee idol. The jet-black hair and the flashing eyes and the high color. Patrician to his fingertips, the voice resonant with that innate authority he carried around with him.

Back then, Addie thought he was in charge of the whole hospital. She thought he was revered by all around him. A king in his kingdom, the way he would sweep through the corridors, and people would nod respectfully and bend their heads as he passed. It’s only now she knows that it was fear he instilled in them. Truth be told, it was hatred.

The strange thing is that none of this matters to Addie. He occupies a place in her heart that’s beyond reason or logic. She remembers him plaiting her hair when she was a little girl. The smell of aftershave and soap, the smell of his freshly ironed shirt. The sportsmanlike way he would sit himself on the edge of a kitchen chair, his legs spread wide apart and her standing in between them. With his big doctor’s hands, he would divide her hair into three strands and weave them into a perfectly acceptable plait, tying it off with a rubber band. Then he would take her shoulders and firmly swivel her a hundred and eighty degrees, beginning again on the other side. He never tugged. His plaits were almost as good as the other girls’ plaits. Only now does she know, you’re not meant to use rubber bands to tie up your hair. Rubber bands tear at the hair, you’re meant to use bobbins. But how would Hugh have known that?

After her mother died, Addie used to wake up lonely in the night. She would creep out onto the landing and sneak into his room, going around the base of the bed before climbing in on the far side. Without even waking he would pull her in closer to him. They would sleep together like spoons, his huge arm around her, her face nestled into the rough cotton sleeve of his pajamas.

Addie remembers this of him, and she can forgive him pretty much anything.

IT WAS ONLY AFTER
dinner that she remembered to play his messages back for him.

They were sitting in the dark with their drinks. The TV screen spread a deep blue light over the room.

“We never checked your messages today.”

“No, indeed.”

“Do you want to listen to them?”

“Not particularly, but I suppose we had better do it anyway.”

There was no way he could use his mobile. It had taken Addie hours to work out how to forward his calls through to the landline.

She went over to the desk and hit the button on the answering machine.

A creepy computer voice filled the air, all synthetic waves.

“You have one new message in your mailbox.”

He winced as he waited. But what was about to come was worse than even he could have imagined.

“Hi there. This is a message for Hugh Murphy! I wasn’t expecting to find you so easily.”

A big exuberant voice, unmistakably American.

“You don’t know me, but my name is Bruno Boylan. I’m an ambassador from the New Jersey wing of the family!”

They both froze, their eyes locked on each other in horror.

“My dad was Patrick Boylan, your mom’s cousin. Which makes me your second cousin!”

He pronounced the surname with too much emphasis on each syllable. The way he said it, it sounded like BOY-LAN.

He had the tone all wrong too. He was frighteningly cheerful. It was having a terrible effect on his audience.

“You may remember one of my sisters came to stay with you once. That’s going back a while…”

They remembered. Lord, did they remember. It was as if she were there in the room with them again, that dreadful girl. The frizzy hair, the train tracks. The unbearable accent.

“I was afraid you might have moved, it’s been so long…”

There was an animal alertness in the room now. They were bracing themselves for what was coming next.

“…I’ve just arrived in Dublin and I was hoping I could stop by to say hi.”

He read out a long number, a cell-phone number as he called it.

“…you may have to put a one in front of it. Look forward to catching up with you!”

A silence followed as Addie and Hugh stared at each other. It was so dark now, they could hardly make each other out.

Hugh was the first to speak.

“Good God.”

Addie gave a nervous little laugh, more like a splutter.

“Tell me we’re going to wake up and realize this is all a bad dream.”

They were both looking at the answering machine as if it were a bomb.

“Quickly,” said Hugh, “erase the message. We can pretend we never heard it.”

Addie jumped up and went over to turn on the floor lamp behind the desk. The room was suddenly flooded with yellow light. She bent over and hit the erase button on the machine.

“What if he rings again? What if he leaves another message?”

“Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.”

He leaned forward to take another long sip of his whiskey, the straw spluttering indecently as he sucked.

“I’ve just had a horrible thought,” said Addie. “You don’t think he has the address, do you?”

“Highly possible. We mustn’t take any chances. We mustn’t answer the door.”

Addie giggled nervously. “Listen to us. You’d swear we were under siege.”

But Hugh wasn’t amused.

“This is no laughing matter,” he said. “Under no account is that man to be entertained. I am in no humor for some fool American in search of his roots. I have more than enough to preoccupy me at the moment, thank you very much.”

And he was right, of course. They were in no fit state to welcome a stranger into their wobbly little circle.