A Bit of News

Published in The Irish Times December 1st 2011

I can count on one hand the number of times my dad has picked up the phone to call me. In fact I can count the number on just three fingers, and each time he started with ‘your mammy just wanted me to ring and ask/check/remind you...’ So his most recent call, to my mobile, while I was at work, was as much a surprise to me as the others only this time he began differently.

      ‘I’ve had a bit of news and I thought I should ring to let you know.’

     I squeezed the phone tighter, in my mind I repeated the phrase, ‘please let it be a new car’, but the tone of his voice and the ache in my stomach told me that this wasn’t going to be his bit of news.

     ‘Oh yeah?’ I tried to fake a lightness in my tone.

     ‘Well I was telling you that I had to go for a few tests.’

     ‘No.’

     ‘Did I not tell you?’ He sounded surprised, he was better at faking. ‘Well I had them and the results were pretty much as expected.’

     I wondered if this was good or bad.

     ‘It’s not looking great,’ he said. ‘It would have been a lot better if they’d found it sooner.’

     I slumped over the desk, raising a hand to my forehead to cover my face from the people around as I searched for the right thing to say. In the background I could hear his dog barking, I pictured his big slobbering face as he scratched at the back-door.

     ‘Is the dog looking to get out?’ was the best I could come up with.

     ‘Ach don’t mind him, he’s just annoyed because your mother wouldn’t bring him to the shops with her.’ He paused for a moment, I felt he was working up to saying something more. ‘Would you take him?’

     ‘To the shops?’

     He laughed, just a little snuffle of a giggle. ‘No, not to the shops ya eejit. Would you take him for me? He’s a bit too much for your mother to handle on her own.’

     ‘Yeah, no problem,’ I said. He couldn’t have known there were tears in my eyes, I was getting better at faking. ‘Sure the kids are mad about him.’

     I leaned further into the desk, covering the mouthpiece to clear my throat before asking, ‘Do you want me to come over?’

     ‘Maybe on Saturday,’ he said. ‘I don’t want any fussing.’

     I searched again for something practical or sensible to say. ‘Well is there anything else you need, anything at all? Do you need money?’ I cringed when I said it.

     ‘Oh that’s the other thing I meant to tell you.’ He was giggling again. ‘I didn’t want your mother coming in to the consultant with me, you know how she gets sometimes. So I sent her out to get me a quick-pick for the Lotto. Five numbers, fifteen hundred quid. Am I lucky or what?’

The White Zimbabwean

A mostly true story

He was tapping on the front door of our office, very gently at first then a little firmer, his face pressed close to the glass panel. The sun was shining brightly outside and he was shielding his eyes with one hand as he tried to see in. When he saw me approaching he moved back a little  but when I got to the door the first thing that struck me were his brown puppy dog eyes looking up at me through the glass. I could see him clearly through the door. He was, I guessed, in his mid forties, very smartly dressed in a dark blue blazer, grey slacks and what looked like an old school tie. Unusually for such a sunny day he was carrying a neatly rolled umbrella, not the short collapsible type so common nowadays but a full sized man’s umbrella, black with a curved wooden handle. As usual our bunch of office keys was hanging from the lock so I turned them to unlock the door and pushed it open.

     Our office door was unusual in that it opened out onto the street. Strictly speaking it was a fire escape but we used it as our front door to save walking back through the building, up one level and down again before cutting through reception only to come out five metres away on the same street. Leaving the keys in the lock was a bad habit we never really got out of. The kids from the flats down the street would habitually grab the door handle as they passed by to check if it was open. Once, when we’d left it unlocked they’d opened the door, pulled the keys from the lock and took off with them. We could hear them running down the street screaming with laughter. A couple of hours later a nice honest looking teenage boy had brought the keys back and apologised. He looked like the kind of honest looking lad you would send to the hardware store to get a spare set of keys cut.

     ‘Kids, ye can’t be up to them,’ said the locksmith smiling at me as I wrote him a cheque for the new door locks. To make matters worse our key for the locks on the roller shutter outside our door was identical to the keys on the other two roller shutters further down the building so all of those locks had to be replaced as well.

     ‘Don’t forget to add on the VAT,’ said the locksmith and he smiled at me again.

     Pushing the door out to open it took the man with the puppy dog eyes by surprise. He stepped back to let the door swing open but appeared anxious not to step back too far. It seemed to me that he was hoping to be invited in. As the door swung out I kept my feet in the office and leaned out towards him, resting my weight on the handle. Without really thinking why, I slid my thumb down over the keys to protect them.

     ‘I’m very sorry to disturb you,’ he said. I thought at first he was English, quite well spoken but there was something else in the sound of his voice. ‘I hope you don’t mind me knocking on your door,’ he was very hesitant, ‘it’s really very embarrassing, I’ve never done anything like this before.’

     I couldn’t quite place his accent, not English, definitely not Australian or New Zealand, not South African either.

     ‘I’ve had to leave my home in Zimbabwe.’ Ah, that was it I thought. ‘It was all done in a terrible hurry,’ he went on, ‘I couldn’t take anything with me. I’ve just been to the embassy and they say I won’t be able to get my money for another three weeks.’

     Everything about him said respectable, nothing stood out, his grey-flecked hair was neat, his face lightly tanned and clean shaven, his clothes were smart not flashy, but something about him was odd, nothing I could point to directly but it was there nonetheless. Rather than invite him in I stepped outside. He was a good bit shorter than me which had the effect of accentuating his appearance of looking up to me as he spoke.

     ‘Have you tried the Refugee Assistance Office?’ I asked. It was on the next street up from ours and I’d often seen a queue of people waiting outside.

     ‘I have,’ he said, ‘and they said they would look into it but there’s nothing they can do for me at the moment. Look,’ he said, ‘I’m really very sorry to have to ask you, I’ve never done anything like this before and I’m very embarrassed but I badly need some money. I’ll have to find somewhere to stay tonight. Do you think you can help me?’

     I was watching him intently looking for any sign of weakness in his expression, any shiftiness and as I watched him speak, watched him cringing with embarrassment as he begged me for money his eyes were filling with tears.

     ‘I’m not sure I can help you,’ I tried.

     ‘Anything at all would help, I’d be ever so grateful,’ he answered and a tear trickled down his cheek.

     What was I to do?  I just wanted him to disappear, to never have met him but here he was, standing before me, a grown man begging me for help, crying. I slid my free hand into my pocket and pulled out two bank notes, a ten and a twenty. He looked at the money in my hand as I passed him the ten and put the twenty back into my pocket. He kept his hand extended toward me.

     ‘Thank you so much,’ he said, ‘but do you think you could give me any more, I’m really desperate.’

     ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, knowing that he’d seen the twenty, ‘but I need that myself, that’s all I can do.’ I stepped backwards into the office pulling the door closed, feeling mean and foolish and cheated. I looked down to lock the door and when I looked up again he was gone.

     Later the same day I had a lunch appointment with the Facilities Manager of my biggest customer. We would meet up every so often and to be honest, it was more of a social lunch than a business lunch. We’d arranged to meet in a small Italian restaurant in Merrion Row, roughly equal walking distance between my office and his which suited us both. The restaurant is closed now I can’t even remember its name, but I do remember it as having the best tasting Tiramisu I’ve ever eaten. Dave was a slightly larger than life American from a small town just outside Boston. He had a dark bushy beard that did nothing to hide the friendliness of his face. I really liked this guy and enjoyed our lunches together; it was always a pleasure to be in his company. All through lunch the earlier incident at my office had been playing on my mind and when we’d finished eating and were enjoying our coffees I couldn’t help mentioning it to him.

     ‘Here’s a moral question for you,’ I said leaning forward. He looked at me with raised eyebrows over his cup.

     ‘Oh yeah, what’s that?’ he said.

     I told him my story of the very respectable man with the puppy dog eyes who’d knocked on my door and begged me to help him. Dave listened intently, leaning on one elbow and tugging gently on his beard as I gave him a full account of what had taken place. When I’d finished he sat back in his chair smiling in amusement.

     ‘That was a scam, Ron,’ he said, ‘I hope you didn’t give him any money.’

     ‘But he was actually crying in front of me,’ I said.

     ‘You did, you gave him money didn’t you.’ Now he was rocking back in his chair, laughing at me.

     ‘Well what would you have done?’ I asked.

     ‘I’d have kicked his ass, that’s for sure.’ His American accent seemed even stronger on the word ‘ass’.

     ‘But it was only a tenner,’ I said. I was feeling very defensive now and quite sheepish, ‘if the guy was genuine then I’ve helped him a little and if he wasn’t...well it was still only a tenner.’

     His shoulders were shaking with laughter, ‘Oh Ron, Ron. You’re too soft, you really are. Hey, ya know what? This might be a good time to ask you for some more discount on our account.’ I couldn’t help laughing with him now.

     For the next week or two I became a little obsessed with what had happened. In every social situation I found myself, be it with friends or family or work colleagues I would find myself steering the conversation in a certain direction before finally saying, ‘Okay, here’s a moral question for you.’ Then I would tell them my story. Each time I retold the story I found myself accentuating what had happened. I never exaggerated as such, or added something that hadn’t happened but I did try to argue the Zimbabweans case as strongly as possible. To show him in the best possible light as it were. Without exception, everyone I asked, male or female, young or old said I was a fool.

     ‘He was a scam artist,’ they would say.

     ‘I know it was scam,’ I’d answer, ‘I probably knew it was a scam from the moment I slipped my thumb down over the keys, but the man was standing on the street in front of me, crying. What should I have done?’

Paddy's Will

Shortlisted for the 2011 Hennessy Literary Awards

Paddy wasn’t an easy man to like.

     ‘I’m not an easy man to like,’ he said ‘I was told I can be very abrasive.’

     Talking was difficult for him. The tubes in his nose had made his throat so dry his voice was no more than a whisper.

     ‘A brave man told you that Paddy,’ I said and he smiled at me.

     At the end, when he was physically at his weakest, he never changed, never softened his words.

     ‘You’ve been a good friend to me Gerard.’ He called me Gerard when he wanted to tell me something important, ‘but you can be an awful gobshite sometimes.’

     I was sitting in my usual seat at his bedside and he’d called me Gerard at least once every day for the previous three weeks.   

     ‘Did you hear me?’ he asked.

     ‘No.’ I lied.

     ‘I said you can be...’

     ‘Yea, I heard ya.’

     The cancer in his belly had sucked out every ounce of flesh from under his skin. The stocky man that he used to be was long gone. Only his eyes and the way he looked at you were the same. And his voice, weaker but still the same.

     ‘Brush my hair before Mary gets here.’ And his hair, that was the same too.

     Mary was Paddy’s wife and he adored her, not that he’d admit it. None of us thought he’d ever settle down, but late one Thursday night about six years ago she got into the back of his taxi. He got chatting to her, she chatted back to him and that was that. No kids though. I knew he would have liked kids and she definitely wanted them.

     ‘I reckon I’m firing blanks,’ he’d said to me one night after a few pints, ‘I mean the amount of girls I’ve ridden over the years, I should have a dozen kids by now.’

      I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.

     When Debbie left me it was Paddy that got me through. I never saw it coming, was so shocked that she was gone I could hardly find the strength to get out of bed. When I did show up for work I was worse than useless and they let me go. I’d no money for rent so the landlord gave me notice. It was Paddy that got me going again. He’d ring me in the morning to wake me.

     ‘What are you up to today?’ he’d ask and I’d make up some story so he’d leave me alone.

     ‘I’ve to go down to Spar,’ I’d say, ‘to get some milk and bread.’

     He’d ring again later to make sure I went. When I started to get my head back together he gave me a few shifts driving his taxi and when I told him I wanted Debbie back and for everything to be like it was before, he turned to me and waited until I was looking him straight in the eye.

     ‘That would be great,’ he’d said, ‘I know you idolised that girl and you’d make all sorts of allowances for her, and maybe she will come back, and if she does and you manage to sort everything out between you, just remember,’ he stopped until he was sure that I was looking directly at him, ‘just remember, she’s a cheatin’ bitch and she’ll always be a cheatin’ bitch.’

     I was staring at him like a zombie trying to take in what he’d said when he slapped me in the face, not hard but hard enough to wake me up and I stayed awake. Debbie never came back and I stopped waiting for her.

     Paddy lent money to people who needed it. Nothing was ever written down.

     ‘Keep everything simple,’ he’d said.

     If you needed to borrow five hundred euro he’d lend you the five hundred and you paid back six, plain and simple. He only loaned money to people he knew and he never offered, they had to ask. Occasionally, if a payment was very late he would call me.

     ‘I just have to collect a few bob,’ he’d say, ‘I’ll need you to mind the car when I get out.’

      He liked to bring me with him. I have a tough looking face, not rough looking but tough and I can handle myself if it comes to it. One time we pulled up outside a house on a fairly rough looking road. A man, about thirty, was mowing the grass with an electric mower. He was a big lad, heavy, not fat though, looked like he worked out a bit. Paddy got out of the car, I sat in the passenger seat, watching. Paddy had his back to me so I couldn’t hear what was said but your man was obviously pleading poverty, pulling his pockets out of his trousers. All of a sudden Paddy leaned down to the mower, pulled the cable out of it and hands it to your man. Then he picked up the mower and carried it to the boot of the car.

     I opened the door thinking I’d help him but Paddy calls to me real loud, ‘That’s ok Ger, he won’t cause any trouble, he knows which side his bread is buttered.’

     I looked at your man standing there holding the cable in his hand. He looked back at me and then looked down at the ground where his mower used to be.

On the day of Paddy’s funeral I hesitated before stepping up when the hearse arrived at the church.

     ‘I want you to carry my coffin,’ he’d said. ‘My brothers will carry me too, but I want you at the front.’

     Terence, Paddy’s eldest brother nodded to me, then he nodded towards the front of the coffin.

     ‘Paddy said,’ he said.

     He wasn’t heavy to lift but I can still feel the edge of his coffin on my shoulder.

About two months later I was standing on the back step of Paddy’s house looking out at his wooden shed. The path leading up to it was cracked and covered with weeds and grass.

      ‘Gerard, I need you to clear out the shed for me,’ he’d said as he handed me a padlock key, ‘I don’t want anyone else to do it, only you’.

     The kitchen door behind me was open and I could feel the warmth of the house on my back.

     ’Do you want a cup of tea before you start?’ It was Paddy’s wife Mary. His widow now. She was standing at the kitchen window, her arms folded across her chest, looking out at the shed.

     ‘No, maybe in a bit. I think I’d better make a start.’

      I looked at the key in my hand, feeling it’s smoothness with my fingers then walked down the path. The padlock was well oiled and the door swung open easily. The shed was stacked with junk.

     ‘When you open the door you’ll think the shed is full of junk,’ Paddy had said, ‘but there’s some good stuff in there so take your time sorting it.’

     Half-empty paint tins, rusting garden tools, three rakes, one missing some of its teeth, a coil of perished garden hose, two bicycle frames, three bicycle wheels without tyres. I lifted each item out and placed it on the grass then stood up to straighten my back. When I looked into the shed it seemed to be just as full as before I’d started.

      ‘And don’t just stand there looking at it,’ he’d said, ‘get stuck in, it won’t be that bad.’

     I started again. Two old paint tins filled with assorted screws and bent nails, an electric lawnmower that looked new but had no cable, a dozen planks of rough wood. The first plank I lifted stabbed me in the hand with its splintered edge.

     ‘Mind you don’t get splinters,’ he’d said, ‘some of the timber is very rough.’

     I pulled a long splinter out of my palm, squeezed a bead of blood then sucked it.

     ‘How’re ya gettin’ on?’ It was Mary. I hadn’t heard her walking up behind me in her slippers.

     ‘Grand, yeah. No bother.’

     ‘It’s just rubbish, isn’t it?’ She was looking at the stuff lying on the grass.

     ‘Yeah, so far anyway.’

     She saw the blood on my hand and took my hand in hers. Her hands felt warm and soft as she rubbed the splinter mark with her thumb. 

     ‘Mind Mary for me,’ he’d said. ‘She always fancied you anyway.’

     I put my hand behind her neck and pulled her towards me so her forehead pressed against my lips. She slipped her arms around me. When I looked at her face she was crying.

     ‘Make us a cup of tea, would ya?’ I said.

     She smiled at me then and wiped her eyes.

     Watching her go back into the house I knew I loved her and I wondered if she could ever love me. 

     All that was left in the shed was an old kitchen table and some bread boards from a baker’s van leaning against the back wall. I grabbed three of the boards but as I lifted them another two fell away from the wall to reveal a blue zip up sports bag.

     ‘You might find an old sports bag’ he’d said, ‘that’ll be important Gerard.’

     The bag felt heavy in my hand as I lifted it onto the table. It looked like one of those bags for carrying a bowling ball but Paddy never bowled. I thought maybe I should call Mary and let her open it with me. Then I thought maybe she wouldn’t like what she saw so I’d better take a look first. I pulled the zipper. After an inch it jammed so I closed it again then pulled it back, harder this time. The zipper snagged in the same place but kept moving and opened about six inches. I pushed the sides apart and peered in.

     ‘Don’t be afraid of it,’ he’d said, ‘it’s not a dead body or anything.’

     I closed the zip again, my hands were shaking. I stepped out of the shed to go and get Mary and stopped. I didn’t think I should leave the bag where it was, but I wasn’t sure I should bring it into the house. I stood frozen unable to go forward or back.

     ‘What’s wrong, what is it?’ Mary had seen me from the window and come out onto the step.

     ‘What? I’m not sure. I’ll bring it in.’

     I went back into the shed, picked up the bag and holding it in my arms like a baby I carried it into the house passing Mary on the step. I brought it into the living room and sat on the couch. Mary followed me in and sat beside me. I could feel the heat of her leg pressed against mine. I put the bag on the floor in front of us and pulled back the zipper, it gaped open. The two of us sat there with our hands on our knees staring down into the bag.

     ‘How much do you think there is?’ Mary whispered.

     ‘I don’t know, but there must be thousands.’ The bag was packed with money. Some of it bundled into wads with paper tape around them, some sticking out of envelopes, more of it loose. Tens, twenties, fifties.

     ‘I’ve never seen so much money,’ said Mary. She was still whispering, ‘Where did it come from? He wouldn’t have robbed it, not Paddy.’

     ‘Everything I do is legit.,’ he’d said to me, ‘well, not according to the taxman, but you know what I mean.’

     ‘No – nothing like that,’ I whispered.

     She slipped her hand on top of mine wrapping her fingers around my palm squeezing it. Her hand felt small in mine as I squeezed her back.

Almost two years later Mary had twin girls. She idolises them, we both do. Once a month, on a day when the weather suits we wrap them up warm, put them in their big double-buggy and walk them up to the graveyard to tidy Paddy’s grave.

     ‘Don’t forget to come and visit me,’ he’d said, ‘and keep the grave tidy, nothing fancy, just tidy.’

     I drive the taxi now. Mary owns it and I drive it, mostly night shifts so we have the days to ourselves. Nothing feels better than to come home on a cold night, slipping into the bed beside her and the way she wraps herself around me to warm me up.

     ‘Don’t come home smelling of chips,’ he’d said, ‘she hates that.’

Published in The Irish Independent - July 2011.

The UI Man

 Selected story for The Lonely Voice Short Story Competition July 2011

Frank had been working with his boss on the new January price lists when he asked him for the time off. ‘I need to take a couple of hours off Harry. I’ve to go for a check-up.’

     ‘Ah yeah – shouldn’t be a problem,’ said Harry not looking up from the pages of figures in front of him.

     ‘Grand. Friday the 28^th of February then, I should be in by lunchtime.’

     ‘When?’ Harry was looking up now, peering over his glasses at Frank. ‘The 28^th of this February?’

     Frank nodded.

     ‘But that’s the end of the financial year Frank. It’ll be all hands on deck here. Does it have to be that day?’

     ‘Well I’ve been waiting to get the appointment Harry, I don’t want to cancel it now.’

     Harry sat back and took his glasses off. ‘What’s wrong Frank?’ he asked, then hesitated. ‘Nothing serious is it?’

     Frank could feel an ache of panic in his stomach. ‘Ah no Harry, just a check up, but I want to get it done.’

     ‘But Jesus Frank, not at the year-end though. End of the month is bad enough but we’ll be up to our clackers.’ He sat forward and put his glasses back on. ‘Give them a buzz and get them to put it off for a couple of weeks.’

     Frank had phoned the hospital and put it off. Two weeks later Harry had waltzed in to the office and told Frank he was going to be away himself at the year-end.

      ‘The missus has me under pressure,’ he’d said. ‘A last minute special offer... sure you’ll be grand...we’ll go through all the figures when I get back.’

     So when Frank should have been attending for his appointment back in February he was up to his clackers in stock-taking and paperwork while Harry was sunning his clackers in Tenerife. Well he showed him, Frank thought. By the time Harry got back, every nut and bolt was accounted for. It took him all through that weekend and late nights for a week but it was worth it.

Or maybe it wasn’t, he thinks now. When he'd phoned the hospital the next available appointment was five weeks later, and then there’d been the nurses’ strike, or go-slow, or work to rule, or whatever they wanted to call it so it was put back again to the middle of June. His appointment is not until half past nine and it’s only a quarter past but the waiting room is already almost full. As the young receptionist with bright red fingernails types his details into her computer he looks around the room, counting the number of seats. He likes counting things, six rows of eight that’s forty-eight and two more at the window is fifty, a number that he finds satisfying for no real reason. Like the way he always sets the volume on his car radio to an even number. The waiting room serves six different doctors and as far as he can tell everyone is here for a 9.30 appointment. I’ve been waiting five and a half months, he thinks, so another few minutes won’t hurt. He takes the first seat in the second row.

It’s been a lot longer than five and a half months since his problem started, he remembers. It’s probably been a couple of years, certainly since before his fifty-fifth birthday and that was eighteen months ago. Angela had insisted they go down to Fogarty’s for a carvery lunch.

     ‘To mark the occasion’ she’d said.

     His birthday had fallen on a Saturday so he’d suggested they should do something special, maybe go away for the weekend, they didn’t like parties, well Angela didn’t. She kept putting him off and in the heel of the hunt nothing happened and they just went for a carvery.

     So they had their lunch and Angela was following him out to the car when she said, ‘Ah Frank, you must have sat on something, the back of your trousers are all stained. The seat must have been wet.’

     He remembers the pain in his chest when she’d said that, he knew what it was and it wasn’t the seat.

Most of the chairs in the waiting room are occupied now and every so often a nurse appears from the corridor at the other end of the room to call out a name. There are different nurses and Frank reckons that each consultant must have his own. He wonders which nurse is his and how far up the queue he is now.

 ‘You’ll have to go and see about it,’ Angela had kept telling him. He didn’t tell her but he’d already been to see Dr. Wilson about it months before.

     ‘You have UI,’ Dr Wilson had said after he’d examined him, ‘It’s not unusual for men your age Frank. You don’t seem to have any other problem so it’s probably just a weakness of the pelvic muscles.’ Frank was only half listening to him. ‘You can do some exercises to help. I’ll give you a leaflet, but if you can’t sort it yourself I’ll have to refer you to a consultant, you might need a little op..’

     He’d sat outside in the car reading the leaflet. UI - Urinary Incontinence it said, then gave a long list of possible causes. Not the kind of thing to boast about to your mates in the pub, if you had mates in the pub. From then on he was careful with himself, kept going to the bathroom regular never leaving it until he needed to go, doing the exercises from the leaflet he kept in the back of his wallet.

      Angela bought him heavier cotton underpants. ‘Just in case,’ she’d said.

     Then he started wearing two pairs at a time. He was only caught out once more, well once more by Angela; there was usually something there most nights. They’d been sitting in watching the Late Late on RTE, he was half asleep when the doorbell rang and without thinking he’d jumped up from the armchair to answer it. That did it and Angela sent him upstairs while she went to the door. It was only kids messing, playing knick-knack.

     The next day she came home from the supermarket and handed him a packet of Always pads. She didn’t look at him when she handed them over, just pushed them into his hands and said, ‘The instructions are on the back, I’ll get you more when they’re gone.’

It’s half past ten on the waiting room clock. Frank stands up and walks over to the reception counter leaving his newspaper on the chair.

     ‘Your consultant’s been delayed’ the receptionist tells him, pressing a red fingernail to a spot on her chin. ‘He isn’t actually here yet.’

     ‘And when were you going to tell me?’ asks Frank.

     ‘I’m trying to keep your appointment open,’ she says, her voice hardening. ‘By rights, if it goes after eleven o’clock we’re into the next session and I’ll have to arrange a new one for you, but that might be another six weeks.’

     ‘You’re joking me,’ says Frank, ‘I’m here since a quarter past nine.’

     ‘I know,’ says the girl. ‘Do you want to leave then?’

     ‘Do I want to...do I want...?’ He’s not sure if she’s asking him a question or taunting him. ‘No I don’t want to leave,’ he hisses. ‘I’ll wait.’ He walks back to his seat, straightens his newspaper and sits back down on it.

Angela had stopped sleeping with him. There was never anything said, she just stopped coming to bed. At first she would make some excuse to stay up later than him and then sleep on the couch. That played havoc with her back so instead she would tiptoe up to the spare room.

     ‘You were fast asleep,’ she’d said, ‘I didn’t want to wake you.’

     She said the same thing three nights running. Then she didn’t say anything but she still didn’t come to bed. All her makeup and cleansers are in the spare room now.

     And she was always asking him if he’d washed his hands, wouldn’t let him lay the table or help with the dinner. If he offered to make a cup of tea she’d jump up herself and say, ‘You’re grand, I’ll do it.’ A couple of times he’d made her a cup without asking and she’d taken it from him, but she didn’t drink it. She just left it on the table beside her to go cold. Now that he thought of it, he couldn’t remember the last time she’d touched him.

     And he had to sit in his own armchair she’d said. That didn’t bother Frank, he always sat in his own armchair beside the fireplace, with the pictures of Angela’s nieces on the mantle. What did bother him was that she wouldn’t let anyone else sit on his chair. The night Tom and Mary came over he was mortified.

     About twice a year Tom and Mary would come to their house for a drink or they would go to theirs. They were the only neighbours that they were really friendly with. Frank thought they were very nice people, very ordinary, no airs and graces about them. Angela made a terrible fuss when they arrived, running around clucking like a mother hen.

     ‘I’ll take your coats,’ she’d said. ‘Mary give me your coat there, Frank get Tom and Mary a drink, what will you have, I’ll put these coats upstairs, oh Mary your coat’s lovely, I’ll have to be careful I don’t give you back one of mine when you’re going, sit down sit down, Frank will you get the drinks.’ She nearly took her eye out with the door as she rushed out.

     Frank was just coming back into the lounge from the kitchen carrying two glasses of wine when Angela came back in the door from the hall at the opposite end.

     ‘Oh Mary!’ she says grabbing her arm. ‘Don’t sit there, that’s Frank’s chair.’

     Poor Mary, thought Frank, she didn’t know where to put herself. Her face went bright red and she hopped up.

     ‘Sit over here Mary,’ said Angela plumping up the cushion on the other armchair. ‘You’ll be more comfortable here...and Frank is a bit fussy about his chair,’ she added.

     ‘I’m not,’ said Frank as he handed Mary her glass of wine. ‘Not really.’

     The conversation carried on but every time Frank looked at Mary he felt embarrassed and looked away. He tried just talking to Tom but his mind kept drifting back to Mary and what she must be thinking. They didn’t stay late. Mary said she was very tired and hoped they wouldn’t mind. When they were gone Angela tidied up and washed the dishes in the kitchen. Frank flicked on the telly. Nothing was said.

Just before eleven an older couple come into the waiting room. She’s a big imposing looking woman, short grey hair cut a little severely and wearing a long cream raincoat. Frank thinks she looks a bit like the actress Joan Plowright in a very bad mood. He thinks her husband looks a bit shook, very unsteady on his feet. He’s probably about sixty, not much older than himself but he looks a lot older. He looks like he used to be heavier and taller than he is now, as if he’d shrunk. The woman walks him over to Frank’s row so he tucks in his feet to let them pass. She’s in charge, no doubt about it, thinks Frank.

     ‘Sit here,’ she says to her husband lowering him into the seat next but one from Frank. ‘I’ll get you checked in.’

     Frank nods to the man as he sits down but he doesn’t seem to notice. Looking at him close up he thinks his face is familiar then realises with a shock that the man looks quite like himself. Frank catches his breath. Dear God, he thinks, is that what I’m going to look like? Do I look like that now?

     ‘Right,’ says the woman when she comes back from the counter. ‘I’ve told them you get tired so they’ll have to see you quickly.’ She plonks herself down on the seat between Frank and her husband. Her bulk presses against Frank and he has to move sideways in his seat to make room. ‘I’m not sitting here all day, that’s for sure,’ she says.

     Her husband is called almost immediately. ‘Mr Gilligan...Mr Gilligan?’ calls the nurse.

     ‘Right that’s us,’ says the woman reaching forward to the back of the chair in front of her to pull herself up. ‘Come on, come on, the sooner we get in the sooner we’ll be out.’ Her husband winces as she takes hold of his arm and pulls him up from his seat.

     Frank watches as Mr Gilligan shuffles slowly away from him along the row of seats to follow the nurse. As the nurse turns to lead them to the doctor’s office Mrs Gilligan puts her hand on his back and pushes him. He staggers forward and puts his hand on the wall to steady himself, then walks on. Frank feels his stomach sink.

     She pushed him, God almighty she pushed him, he thinks.

     He feels his body starting to shake. He can’t stay sitting so he stands up, then sits down again. Then he stands up and turns around on the spot. The man in the seat behind looks up at him.

     ‘She pushed him,’ says Frank.

     ‘Mr McCarthy...Mr McCarthy?’ It’s a different nurse calling.

     For a moment Frank stands where he is, facing the wrong way, his arms tight by his sides, his fists clenched.

     ‘Mr McCarthy?’

     Frank takes a deep breath. He feels himself becoming calmer, relaxing. He stands straighter then turns to face the nurse. As he walks toward her she smiles briefly before leading the way down a small corridor and into the last office on the right. ‘Mr. Eglington’ is written in red marker on a piece of paper stuck to the door. The consultant, a man about his own age and height but heavier and going bald is standing behind a small wooden desk, head down leaning on his fists as he reads a file. Frank stands in front of him looking at the pale freckled skin on the top of his head. The nurse closes the door and comes to stand at the side of the desk. Nothing is said. Frank can hear the man breathing and he can hear his own breath too, even and deep.

     The consultant looks up at him, ‘Ah yes, the UI man.’

     ‘No,’ says Frank.

     The consultant looks startled. He looks down at his file again, running his index finger across the lines muttering to himself then looks up at Frank. ‘Not the UI man?’

     ‘No,’ says Frank.

     The consultant looks over at the nurse then back at the file and then at Frank. ‘Mr. McCarthy?’ he asks.

     ‘Now you’re talking,’ says Frank quietly. ‘Don’t call me the UI man. My name,’ he says, leaning forward so their faces almost touch, ‘is Frank McCarthy, and you’re late.’




Read to an invited audience in The Irish Writers' Centre, Dublin - July 2011.

A Christmas Story

Ted Cusack follows the exit sign that directs him down a corridor between HMV and Footlocker, but when he gets to the end it takes a sharp right turn and stops in front of a pair of grey steel doors that are marked ‘Emergency Only’.

     ‘Bugger.’

     He rests his plastic shopping bags on the floor and rubs at the red marks the handles have made on his fingers. He hates shopping at any time of the year but this is ridiculous, he thinks. What possessed him to come to the shopping centre on the last Saturday before Christmas and what had he been thinking when he bought all of this food? He looks down at the bulging carrier bags at his feet. He has enough there to last him a week. And it’s not as if he needed to get anything that he couldn’t have got in the local shop. Sometimes he thinks that he only does the things he does because they’re the things he would have been doing if Carol was with him. Her routine is his routine.

     Instinctively, he pats his trouser pocket to check for his wallet then picks up his bags and turns to walk back up the corridor to the mall. He sees the young boy, standing facing the wall leaning on his raised arms, crying. He thinks that he looks about seven or eight years old and his first thoughts are to go to him. No, his second thoughts are to go to him, his first thoughts are God almighty, what will people think if they find an old man in a corridor with a seven year old boy balling his eyes out. He really wishes Carol was here now, she’d know what to do, but he can’t just ignore the child and sneak past, and anyway that might look even worse. He’ll have to do something, say something anyway, so he steps closer to him.

     ‘Why are you crying’ he says. ‘What’s wrong with you?’

     As soon as he speaks he knows his words sound cross so he tries to soften them with a smile as the boy turns to look at him.

     ‘Well?’ he says.

     There’s that tone again. He widens his smile until he realises he must look really creepy and shuts his mouth again.

     The boy doesn’t seem surprised to see him standing there. He’s stopped crying and his breathing is gradually returning to normal with a last hiccupping sob.

     ‘I know you,’ says the boy.

     ‘Do you?’

     ‘You’re the...you’re Mr Cusack. You live on my road.’

     ‘Do I now?’ He knows the boy was about to call him The Grump. Carol had told him that that was the nickname he’d been given by the neighbours’ children. ‘And what’s your name then?’

     ‘Jamie.’

     ‘Jamie? And what age are you Jamie?

     ‘Nine.’

     ‘Nine? You look an awful lot older than nine,’ he lies. ‘I thought you might be ten or eleven maybe. And why are you crying?’

     ‘Because of Santy,’ says the boy.

     ‘Santy? What about him?

     ‘He’s a fucker.’

‘There you are!’ It’s his mother. The look of panicked worry on her face melts into relief as she finds her child then changes again into polite recognition as she notices Ted Cusack standing beside him, but on the way to recognition it passes for the tiniest fraction of a moment through horror. She’s quick to conceal it but it was there and he saw it.

     ‘Mr Cusack?’

     ‘Yes.’

     ‘I’m tenderloin,’ she says as she kneels in front of Jamie and dabs at his cheeks with a scrunched up tissue.

     Did she really say tenderloin? ‘I’m sorry what?’

     She looks up at him. ‘I’m Glenda Moyne, Jamie’s mam; we live on your road.’

     ‘Oh yes,’ he says, ‘I know. Jamie was just a bit upset...about Santy.’

     She looks into her child’s face. He thinks she might be a bit embarrassed and when she stands up and turns toward him he sees her cheeks are pink.

     ‘Santy...in the grotto,’ she nods her head back towards the shopping mall, ‘told him that he might not have enough money for all the toys that every child wants this year.’ She smiles a little smile. ‘You know how things are at the moment, with work and the cutbacks and all.’ She reaches out to her side and takes Jamie’s hand in hers.

     ‘Oh I do, I do,’ he says, but he doesn’t really. His house is paid for and he has a monthly pension that he can’t spend, but having plenty of cash in his pocket makes him feel secure. He gently presses the back of his hand against his trouser pocket to check for his wallet. ‘It’s not easy,’ he says.

     ‘He’s not even the real Santy,’ says Jamie and they both look down at him. ‘He’s only one of his helpers so how does he know how much money Santy has? And what does Santy need money for anyway?’

     ‘That’s enough Jamie,’ she says.

     ‘He’s a fucker.’

     ‘Now that’s enough!’ she shouts. He can see she’s angry now. Angry and embarrassed.

     Jamie pulls his hand out of hers and goes back to stand facing the wall, arms folded tightly in front of him, forehead resting against the cold concrete.

     ‘Don’t mind him, he’s just a bit upset,’ he says.

     She’s about to turn to the boy and then stops. ‘How’s Caro...Mrs Cusack? Is she any better?’

     ‘Not really,’ he says. ‘They’re keeping her in for the moment, until after Christmas anyway.’

     ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Well please God she’ll be better in the New Year.’

     ‘Yes,’ he says. But he knows she won’t.

     ‘Well I’d better get back to what I was doing,’ she says, ‘I don’t know where the time has gone.’ She reaches into Jamie’s folded arms and comes out gripping one of his hands in hers. ‘Say goodbye to Mr Cusack,’ she says to the boy.

     He doesn’t even look up. She smiles apologetically and turns to walk away.

     ‘Eh, as a matter of interest...’ he calls after them and she stops to turn around. ‘What was it he wanted that Santy can’t afford?’

     ‘Ah, don’t mind him,’ she says, ‘he has a list as long as his arm.’

     ‘A Nintendo Wii,’ says Jamie. ‘All my friends have one.’

     ‘They do not,’ she says tugging his hand. ‘Don’t mind him Mr Cusack. A happy Christmas to you, and wish Carol...Mrs Cusack a happy Christmas for me, would you?’

     ‘I will,’ he answers, but she’s already gone.

He looks down at the bags still in his hands and stoops to rest them on the floor. He holds his red welted hands up in front of him and rubs them together but it doesn’t help the ache in his fingers. He picks up the bags again and shuffles out of the corridor to battle his way across the maelstrom of bumping, barging people ignoring the tinkling Christmas music to the opposite side of the mall and another corridor identical to the one he’s just left, apart from the big green sign that says Car Parks.

     He has to rest his hands again and steps into a shop doorway for a moment. As he bends to drop his bags he glances in through the window at a display of computers and enormous flat-screen televisions. In the middle of the display is a pyramid of white and blue boxes with a picture of a fat Santa sitting on top of them. The fat Santa has a speech bubble at the side of his mouth that says ‘Nintendo Wii – Fun for all the Family - €159.99.’

     He pats his trouser pocket and feels the comforting bulge of his wallet then picks up his bags and walks away. €159.99 for a bit of plastic, he thinks. It’s no wonder Santy has no money.