The Breezes
Joseph O’Neill
A brilliant and darkly comic novel from the Man Booker Prize longlisted author of ‘Netherland’.Fourteen years ago Mary Breeze was killed by lightning – it should have been all the bad luck that the Breeze family were due but, as John Breeze is about to find out, this couldn't be further from the truth. ‘The Breezes’ is John Breeze's account of his family's most hellish fortnight – when insurance policies, security systems and lucky underpants are pitted against redundancy, burglary and relegation – and lose. John (a failing chair-maker) and his father (railway manager and rubbish football referee) are only feebly equipped with shaky religious notions, management maxims and cynical postures as they try to come to terms with the absurd unfairness of lightning striking twice…From the conflict between blind optimism and cynicism, to the urge to pretend that things just aren't happening, ‘The Breezes’ is wonderfully clever and comic novel about desperately trying to cope with the worst of bad luck.
The Breezes
Joseph O’Neill
Table of Contents
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1 (#ulink_6b681f78-b5fb-5012-9ceb-5d1778a52a79)
Fourteen years ago my mother, whose name was Mary Elizabeth Breeze, was killed by lightning, and you may think that my father’s quota of misfortune would have been used up once and for all on that violent afternoon. If so you are mistaken, because these last days’ events have slapped and hammered and clobbered him around in the way that certain absurd cartoon characters are by their creators. I have particularly in mind the tragedy of the coyote – Wile E. Coyote, he is called – who is doomed perpetually to hunt down a maddening desert bird, a roadrunner, and perpetually to fail in the most painful and disastrous fashion. Every one of Wile E. Coyote’s stunts rebounds on him, and every episode sees him reduced from a healthy animal to a steaming pile of charred, exploded fur at the bottom of a cliff. The terrible thing is that there is nothing the coyote can do to avoid this fate; no matter how faultless his stratagems, he will always be undone by a circumstance beyond his control – the animators’ desire to inflict upon him the maximum of defeat and humiliation. This is how it has felt these last days: my father’s misfortune has been so extreme, so capricious, that he could be the victim of some invisible, all-powerful tormentor. I should say that by misfortune I do not just mean setbacks pure and simple, those ordinary hardships that attach to us all as inevitably as shadows. I mean freakish reverses. I mean those blows that are, above all, bad luck – that are, as the dictionary puts it, evil accidents.
Take, for example, what happened this morning.
It was raining and I was tramping across the graceless heath that unfolds between the western outskirts of this city – the city of Rockport – and the bare hills that loom over it to the west. Crooked white lines on the heath painted out twenty-two bumpy and undersized football pitches, all of which were overcrowded with the slow throngs of footballers. A gale was blowing in fierce gusts, spraying the downpour over the sportsfields in erratic blasts. Goalkeepers froze in the mouths of the orange-netted goals; strikers lingered numbly around the penalty boxes, unresponsive to the shouts of the onlookers. I walked in the direction of the farthest field of all, the one boundaried by the road into the city, and minutes later, burying my chin in my coat and stamping my feet, I joined the spectators on the touchline – nine people and one dog – and began watching the game.
It was not a great match. Two unskilful teams – one in green, one in blue – were chasing after a white football with little success. The big problem was the wind: every time a pass was struck, a swerving gust would swing its phantom boot and propel the ball out on to the road, bringing the traffic screeching to a standstill and forcing yet another delay in play as a sodden figure slowly went to retrieve it.
Then I noticed something else. In their frustration, the players had started to foul each other, exchanging bodychecks and clattering, metallic late tackles; and as the fouls went unpunished, so the violence escalated: now a defender kneed a jumping attacker in the back, now someone retaliated by shoulder-barging the defender to the ground and now, right before my eyes, someone else threw a punch at the barger. This was mayhem. This game was completely out of control.
‘Ref!’ the man next to me shouted. ‘Ref! Get a grip of it, you blind bastard!’
‘Send him off!’ a woman screamed. ‘For Christ’s sake, send him off!’
I looked out for the referee. His face grey with exertion, his tongue a dab of yellow in his open mouth, he was jogging desperately up and down the field, trying to keep up with play – a Sisyphean struggle; each time he caught up with the ball someone would kick it right back to where he had come from.
Just then came a crack and one of the greens was rolling on the turf, hacked down by one of the blues. Puffing thin peeps on his whistle, the referee arrived, panting and struggling for something in his pocket.
‘Look here,’ the referee said, breathing heavily, ‘I – I saw that.’ He took another deep breath and pointed into the distance, at a dressing-room of his imagination. ‘Do that one more time and …’
At that moment the dog ran on to the field. It made straight for the referee and – there is, unfortunately, no more accurate description – began to fuck his left leg. Yes, that is what actually happened: a skinny mongrel sprinted up to the ref, grabbed his thigh tightly between its paws, and started thrusting at his knee with its slippery pink dick out there for all to see. The referee tried to shoo the dog away, but the dog – a terrier of some kind, with tenacity in its pedigree – would not back down. Hopping relentlessly along on its hind legs, it just kept right at it. Trying to shake his leg free, the referee suddenly slipped, landing badly on his behind. Everybody burst out laughing. Spread-eagled in the mud with the dog still writhing on his leg, the derision of the crowd and the players roaring in his ears, anguish and dirt all over his face, the ref blew for time.
That was Pa. The referee was Pa.
I have to say, before I dwell further on this outrage, that there exists a perfectly rational explanation for it. The reason that mutt went for Pa is that he has a dog of his own, a basset hound called Trusty, who is in heat, and clearly some of her love scent had perfumed him. That dog is a minx. After two years of cohabitation, my father is still trying to house-train her. For one thing, she still shits around the home. Although Pa has followed the training manual (The Wolf in Your Home) and chastised her while simultaneously pushing her snout into the dung, Trusty has never quite put two and two together and made the connection between the offence and the punishment; or, if she has, she has not let it bother her, a profound canine instinct informing her, correctly, that my father’s threats are as insubstantial as the breath that transports them. Either way, he still spends a lot of time on his hands and knees, scraping up. The only effect of his remonstrations, as far as I am able to tell, has been to make Trusty more wily in her choice of location. Whereas in the past she used to squat down on the deep-pile carpet in the living-room, now, like a grande dame caught short in the palace of Versailles, she tends to climb up the stairs and do it in rarely visited corners and recesses. If you go round to Pa’s house you have to watch your step. Trusty has toilets everywhere.
But let me return to what happened to Pa at the football. My father’s tumble would under normal circumstances have had some slapstick joke value, because, and let me say this at once, I find downfalls as funny as the next man. If some clown vanishes down a manhole or lands face-first in a cream cake, I’ll slap my thigh along with everybody else. But for once I am not laughing.
Again, I have to think of Wile E. Coyote – more precisely, of his adventure with the tunnel. The coyote, tired of outlandish artifice, comes up with a scheme which is cunning simplicity itself. Using paint, he depicts a road tunnel on the face of a mountain and then hides behind a boulder, lurking. The plan is obvious: the roadrunner will mistake the fake, super-realistic tunnel for an actual one and will crash into the mountain at great speed. As usual, the plan is about 75 per cent successful. Sure enough, along comes the roadrunner in a fast cloud of dirt and, yes, up it storms, straight towards the picture of the cavern; but then, instead of rebounding off the rock, the roadrunner goes through it – through the nonexistent tunnel! For a second or two the prairie wolf gapes at us, crushed and flabbergasted; but then a what-the-hell, ask-questions-later expression animates his crumpled features and, yellow-eyed and ardent, off he races, arms outstretched and hands grabbing, hot on the heels of the bird – and thuds face-first into the mountainside.
It is then, at the moment when he is slumped in a dazed heap at the bottom of the mountain, that the true dismality of his predicament dawns on Wile E. Coyote: that, even where the laws of nature are concerned, there is one rule for him and another for the roadrunner. It is the ultimate unfairness.
I am not suggesting that what is happening to Pa breaks the laws of material physics. But it does break what I always vaguely understood to be another law of nature: the law of averages. I was always under the impression that the law of averages meant this: in the long run, probability will operate so as to effect a roughly equitable distribution of chance – you lose some, but you also win some. But what if you lose some and then, against all the odds, lose some more – and then more still? Where does that leave the law of averages? Where does that leave Pa?
This is what I was puzzling over on the bus here. My head was poised heavily on the rain-steamed window as I sat there, slowly grappling with this enormous problem. And then the penny dropped: there is no such thing as the long run. My father’s life is too short to allow probability to take effect.
The vibrations of the bus banged my head against the pane.
Now, I can see a response to this: people make their luck.
To a certain extent, this is right. You make your own bed and you lie in it. But sometimes you are forced to lie in a bed which you did not make at all. No, it is worse than that: sometimes a bed you have never seen before in your life will crash through the ceiling and flatten you before you even know what’s hit you. How much of his lot has Pa brought on himself? Merv – did Pa bring Merv on himself?
I received the telephone call at home on Friday morning. Pa asked me how I was and, before I could answer, I heard a swallowing noise – a literal, phonic gulp.
I said, ‘Pa?’
There was a pause, and then Pa said quickly in a thick voice, ‘Listen, son, do you remember Merv, Merv Rasmussen?’
Of course I remembered Merv. He was one of Pa’s best friends, his work buddy and tennis partner. I had met Merv plenty of times.
Pa said, ‘He was driving along last night, just driving along on his side of the road, minding his own business, when this car just ploughs straight into him. Head-on. Just like that.’ Pa took a swallow of wonder. ‘This guy just swings across into his lane, then …’ Here his voice crumpled. I heard it again – gulp.
I said, ‘Is he going to be all right?’
‘I don’t know,’ Pa said. ‘The hospital told me he was critical.’
Critical was the last word I would have associated with Merv. Merv was friendly, tolerant and condoning. As far as I knew, Merv had never passed an adverse judgement on anyone in his life.
Pa said softly, ‘Johnny, I want you to do me a favour. I want you to pray for him.’ He was serious. ‘Just a quick prayer, that’s all. I’m telling you, son, right now he needs all the help he can get.’
I did not want to upset my father. I said, ‘OK, Pa. I will.’
He took a long and violent drag of air, as though surfacing from a long spell under water. His anxiety made his voice clean and eager. On the telephone, Pa can sound like a young man.
He changed the subject. ‘Have you switched the locks yet? Have you spoken to Whelan?’
‘Don’t worry, Pa,’ I said. ‘It’s under control.’
‘I want double locks on that front door,’ my father stipulated. ‘And tell Whelan to fit one of those big bolts, the ones you can’t just kick down.’
‘I will, Pa,’ I said.
‘Ask him about installing an alarm,’ Pa said, his sentences beginning to accelerate. ‘I want one of those alarm systems that are hooked up to the police station. I want an entry system, too, with a special code, and a spyhole in the door so you’ll see who’s coming.’
‘OK, Pa.’
‘I want you and your sister to be safe in that flat,’ Pa said. ‘And don’t worry about the money. I’ll take care of that.’
‘OK, Pa,’ I said – this despite the fact that there is plainly no need for this kind of security at the flat I share with my sister Rosie, which has double-glazed windows which explode when punctured, an impenetrable front door and a film of burglar-proof plastic on every pane of glass. Besides, even if some crook did break in, his pickings would not be rich. Whatever else our flat might be, it is no Aladdin’s cave. But I went along with Pa because I had learned that once he is gripped by a sense of imperilment in respect of his family – which is often – he will not be deflected. This is why we Breezes are insured against every imaginable risk. Pa has taken out a comprehensive family protection package that defends the three of us against the consequences of fire, theft, death, sickness and personal injury, of litigation, lock-outs, flooding, explosions, automobile collisions and war, of aviation mishaps, professional negligence, spatial fall-out, forgery, business interruptions and acts of God. You name it, we’re indemnified against it.
My father’s precautions do not end there. In order to guard against the tax detriments of his own death, he has ploughed as much cash as he can into an accumulation and maintenance fund in his children’s names and he has transferred to me, as a nominal gift, the ownership of the flat we live in. ‘In case I die within the next seven years,’ he said. I told him he was crazy. ‘What are you talking about? Seven years? You’re never going to die in the next seven years,’ I said. I put my hand on the curve of his shoulder, rounded like a rock worn smooth by years of water. ‘A fit man like yourself? Why should you?’
‘I could go any minute,’ he said, clicking his fingers. ‘Just like that.’ He gave me a look. ‘What are you looking so shocked about? That’s how it is, son, here today and gone tomorrow, and there’s no point in fighting it.’
One reason that Pa so often feels us to be threatened is that he believes that any adversity which befalls someone else is the prognostic of a Breeze adversity. This explained his present concern: having read about an unpleasant burglary in the neighbourhood (a case where the intruders had thrown acid in the face of the elderly woman who opened the door, blinding her), he was determined to take extra measures to ensure our safety.
‘Light, Johnny, light!’ he exclaimed suddenly. ‘Johnny, here’s what you do: you get Whelan to install floodlights around the house so that you don’t get any shadows out there. You know what they say, a shadow is a burglar’s best friend. Yes,’ Pa said, ‘floodlights. With electronic triggers. My God, when I think of your sister alone at home, and those men lurking about outside her window …’ He lost his voice.
‘Take it easy, Pa,’ I said.
Pa resumed, his voice straining, ‘Remember, Whelan’s the man you want. Ring Whelan. You can count on Whelan.’
‘Leave it with me, Pa,’ I said. I did not tell him that twice already I had rung Whelan, twice Whelan had promised to come and twice Whelan had let me down. Pa had enough to worry about without worrying about Whelan. Thinking about it, there was not a significant aspect of his life that did not have him on tenterhooks. Everything gave him cause for keen suspense: work, where his job was under review; Rosie and her boyfriend, Steve; Merv Rasmussen; and me. Yes, Pa was losing sleep over me, too, the poor bastard. For three years now I have been one of the reasons why he gets out of bed in the mornings with black rings under his eyes.
Pa’s eyes. Among the traits which I am anxious not to inherit from my father, the eyes feature prominently. I roll off the sofa, walk over to the mirror resting on the fireplace and regard myself. What I am looking for is any sign that my eyeballs are losing their alignment. Pa has a wall-eye – a lazy eye. The left eye points in the correct direction but the other eye, the lazy one, looks about a foot to the right. In this respect, Pa has been unlucky. The divergence of his gaze is sufficient to confuse the onlooker, but not quite marked enough to reveal quickly to him which eye is the focused one. To obscure this defect, Pa has taken to wearing tinted glasses, phototonic shades which darken or lighten in accordance with the air’s luminousness. The ploy has not come off for him. I am afraid that the main effect of Pa’s shades and the just-visible wall-eye beneath them is to give him an insecure, shifty air.
I light a cigarette and for a moment watch myself smoking. Then I look closely at the eyes: still, I am glad to say, perfectly parallel.
However, I have seen photographs of the young Pa. At my age, his eyes were straight as arrows. The famous honeymoon portrait of him and Ma in Donegal shows it clearly: cheek to cheek with his brand-new, bursting, laughing wife, his shirt white and pressed and his tie knotted cleanly, Pa flies the camera a dead-on, bull’s-eye of a look, a look that has not the merest trace of a swerve. I know what this means: any day, without warning, some sleeping Breeze gene could wake up and order one of my eyes to make a sideways move.
I turn away from my reflection. There is no point in worrying about it, because there’s another paternal characteristic I can do without: the tendency to live in dread. I do not want to end up with a pockmarked, crack-lined face and a head of blitzed white hair. Come to think of it, I do not want to end up like Pa at all. Like father, like son is the last thing I want to hear in connection with me and my father.
2 (#ulink_687adc94-9f6a-5739-8ed8-9968e0cc6e3e)
Angela promised to meet me here, at her flat, at nine o’clock. It is now ten past nine. Ten minutes’ delay may not sound like very much, but Angela is as punctual as they come. By her standards, she’s late.
I go over to the windows, which stretch extravagantly from the floor to the high ceiling. It’s a foul night, the rain violently connecting with the tarmac and spinning like tinsel in the beam of the lampposts. Not to worry. Any minute now I’ll hear that struggle with the door, that clatter of things falling to the ground and that dramatic sigh of relief – and then in she’ll come, wet and breathless and ready to be held.
I return to lie down on the sofa; and I cannot help but think of Steve, the master of recumbency. Steve lives with me and Rosie in the flat that Pa bought for us. In the days before the flat, Steve and Rosie were sharing cramped rooms at the top of a high tower block and it was generally agreed that, spiritually, financially and geographically, Rosie was going nowhere. Steve was identified as a factor in her malaise and one of the ideas behind buying the new place was that she would be able to come down from that tower block and start afresh.
‘You wait and see,’ Pa promised. ‘It’ll be a new leaf for her, just mark my words. There’ll be no stopping that girl now,’ he said, raising his arm in an upward motion to suggest a rising aeroplane. That was the plan: he would buy the flat and Rosie would leave stranded Steve and all he stood for and remove like a jet into the blue atmosphere.
The change of address almost did the trick. Rosie did get a job – and as an air stewardess, it so happened – but when she and I moved into the new flat, somehow Steve tagged along. No one is sure how it happened, no one can pinpoint the day when he finally settled in. All we know is that now, two years later, he is implanted in the premises like one of those long-rooted desert trees that sucks up the water for miles around. Simply to say that Steve lives with us is misleading, because that word does not convey the fantastic degree of occupation which he exercises. Stephen Manus, to give him his full name, is no mere inhabitant or tenant of the flat. He is a fixture of it, a presence so constant and unbudging that were the property to be sold he would have to be included in the conveyance, along with the light switches and the radiators. For, like a millionaire recluse or an exquisite endangered salamander, it is only on the rarest occasions that Steve is sighted outside his – correction, outside Pa’s – front door. His occupation? Layabout. What he does is nothing, and he goes about it full-time, twenty-four hours a day: Steve rests around the clock. Night or day you’ll find him in bed or on the sofa or in an armchair, taking it easy with style and technique. He can stay put for as long as he likes, in any position he chooses. Whereas normal people might grow restless or develop cramp or pins and needles if they didn’t move for hours, not so Steve. He’s an athlete of immobility.
The funny thing is, you would not guess it to look at him. Like Pa, my first impression of Steve was of an up-and-at-’em type. ‘I like the look of the boy,’ Pa had said. ‘I like the way he presents himself. He’ll go far,’ he predicted.
Even to this day, Steve looks like a man with a destination. He stills wears sporty sweaters and ironed cotton shirts with button-down collars, he still has that purposeful, closely shaven jawline. There is no trace of idleness in his appearance; with his healthy red cheeks and his wiry frame, Steve looks like an outdoors man. Only the shoes on his feet – loafers – give any clue to his true nature. But it is only a small clue. After two years’ living with him, Steve is still a mystery to me. Every time I think I am making progress, advancing into the district of dreams and fears that make him tick, I hit a brick wall. That’s Steve for you: a dead end.
Of course, given the work that I do, there is a hideous irony in my mockery of his sedentary habits.
What an empty phrase: the work that I do …
It was three years ago that I broke the news of my chosen profession to Pa. I was twenty-three years old.
Pa was stunned. ‘What? You’re going to what?’
I made no reply.
Pa rubbed his face like a man trying to wake up. ‘I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Johnny, what about your career? Are you just going to let that drop? Stick at it for two more years and you’ll be qualified. Just think about it!’ Pa urged. ‘Two more years and you’ll be a chartered accountant!’
I explained to Pa that I had thought about that. ‘I’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘It’s what I want to do. Don’t worry. I’ll be all right, you’ll see.’
‘But how are you going to manage? How are you going to support yourself?’ Pa started walking around the room, the way he always did when he became agitated. ‘I never heard of anyone making a living in that line of work.’ And round he went again, not even looking where he was going – it is a route he has come to know off by heart, that circumnavigation of the two armchairs and the glass coffee-table. ‘Where will it take you, this work? What will it lead to?’ This was a typical Pa enquiry – Pa, who has always embraced this teleology in respect of employment: that jobs are the cars on the highway of life. ‘And, son, I don’t want to seem discouraging, but you don’t have any training, you don’t have any background. Besides,’ he said, ‘you’re all thumbs. Haven’t I always told you you’ve two left hands?’ I kept quiet while he shook his head and circled the furniture. ‘This is a real shocker for me, Johnny, a real shocker. Frankly, I don’t know what to say to you.’
I could not blame him for reacting in this way. Not only had he sunk thousands into my education and training, he had sunk a pile of hope down there, too. My father had been banking on my accountancy career in every way. Thus, for a couple of months, he sought to induce and cajole and beg me to change my mind. One day I had just got out of the bath and was running shivering to my bedroom with a towel around my waist when he approached me in the corridor and said, ‘Son, I think it’s time we talked about where you are going with your life.’
I kept on running. ‘Pa, I’ve just got out of the bath, OK?’
But Pa was not to be put off and he followed me into my bedroom and addressed me while I towelled my hair and dried my toes and looked for socks. ‘Johnny,’ he said, ‘what do you want from your life? What are your goals?’
I turned from the cupboard to answer but I did not get any further than opening my mouth, because right in front of me my father was holding up a large home-made cardboard lollipop, and on it was written, in arresting black letters, GOALS.
I started laughing.
‘Son,’ Pa said, ‘think about it. You’re a man now. What are you aiming for?’ He put down the lollipop and brandished another: MONEY. ‘Is this what you want? Do you want money?’ He pulled out another: FAMILY WITH HOUSE, SECURITY. ‘A family, a house?’ JOB SATISFACTION, the next placard said. ‘How about job satisfaction?’ Pa said. ‘How important is that to you?’ He pointed at my feet. ‘Are you really going to wear those socks together? Look, they don’t even match.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said, forcing my damp thighs into some jeans, ‘I’m not going out today.’
Pa was about to reply when he remembered the original point of the conversation. With an effort, he raised the three lollipops in his right fist, displaying them in a crooked fan, and then with his left hand he pulled a final lollipop from behind his back: in red letters, EVALUATION AND CHOICE. He stood there for a moment, arms aloft, like a man trying to wave in a wayward aeroplane. ‘You’ve got to work out which of these—’ he shook his right hand – ‘you want, and why, because I’m telling you now – and believe me, Johnny, I know what I’m talking about, I’ve been in this world a little longer than you have, listen to what I’m saying to you – I’m telling you that in this line of work you’ve taken up, you can forget about this—’ He dropped the MONEY lollipop on the floor. ‘And without money, it becomes very hard to have this—’ JOB SATISFACTION fell to the ground. ‘And this—’ Down with a clatter went the surviving sign, FAMILY WITH HOUSE, SECURITY. ‘Take it from me, Johnny, you’re running a big, big risk with this – this project of yours.’ He wiped sweat from his mouth and waited for me to respond. He had planned this presentation down to the last detail, that was obvious. I envisaged him with his glue and scissors and felt-tips, anxiously cutting circles in the cardboard, rehearsing his speech. Now the decisive moment had arrived: was I going to buy?
To stop Pa from seeing the laugh on my face, I pulled a jumper over my head and pretended to get caught up in the neckhole. ‘OK, Pa,’ I said, muffling my voice. ‘I’ll think about it. Thanks very much. I’ll get back to you,’ I said, still faking a struggle with my jumper.
‘I’m glad,’ Pa said, his voice trembling a little. ‘You think about it. Remember, don’t hesitate to come to me with any problems or ideas, or feedback generally. My door is always open,’ Pa said.
I am not sure which door my father was referring to when he said that, but of course I never took up his invitation. My mind was made up, and soon after what Pa liked to call our ‘meeting’ (‘Son, have you thought about our meeting? Have you got anything you want to tell me?’), I threw the lollipops into the bin in my bedroom, where they protruded from the yoghurt cartons and the tangerine peel and the other trash. Pa got the message.
Shortly after that, he approached me with his hands in his pockets. I knew what that meant; it meant that he was about to apologize. Whenever Pa is about to say he is sorry, his hands disappear into his trousers.
‘Listen, Johnny, I hope I haven’t upset you with what I said about your new line of work. I’m sorry if I have.’
‘No, Pa, of course you haven’t, I said.
He said, ‘I just want you to know that I’m on your side, son. I’m right behind you. You do what you want to do. What’s important is that you’re happy. As long as you’re happy, that’s all that counts.’ In his emotion he left the room and went to the kitchen and put his head into the fridge, pretending to look for something to eat.
What was it, then, that had blown Pa off course like this?
Chairs. That was all. I had decided to make a living making chairs.
‘You know, I’ve been thinking about it,’ he said when he returned from the kitchen. ‘Maybe it’s not such a bad idea.’ He started trying to light his pipe, the bowl of which was carved into the wise and unblinking visage of an ancient philosopher. At that time, Pa was going through a phase of pipe-smoking. ‘There’s a good market for chairs. People are always going to need to sit down. Let’s work it out.’ He took a company biro from the row of pens snagged on his breast pocket and flipped open a company scratch pad. ‘I’d say that people sit down now more than they ever did. I read about it somewhere – nowadays people are sitting down a whole lot more than they used to.’ Pa winked at me with his good eye. ‘Which means they’re going to need more chairs than ever before.’ He breathed on the nib of his biro, then slowly wrote down in capitals – Pa always writes in capitals – MORE CHAIRS THAN EVER BEFORE. ‘Yes,’ he said, growing excited, ‘and when you consider that more people are getting older now and that old people are always sitting down …’ INCREASED DEMAND, Pa wrote.
That clinched it for him. He threw down the biro with a bold finality. ‘Increased demand, Johnny. That’s what it’s all about. They demand, you supply. That’s the golden rule.’ He stood up, waving his pipe. ‘You know, I think you may be on to something. I think you may be on to something big.’
I said carefully, ‘I’m not sure how commercial I’m going to be, Pa.’
Pa was sucking away at his pipe, having another attempt at lighting it. ‘You may not be sure, son, but I am,’ he said, inhaling noisily. The philosopher’s cranium released a small cloud. ‘I see great possibilities in what you’re doing. Which is why I’ve come to a decision. I’m going to invest in you.’
‘Invest?’
‘That’s right. I’m going to set you up. I’m going to get you a proper workplace with proper equipment. No more scratching around in your bedroom upstairs.’
I stood up in protest. ‘There’s no need,’ I said. ‘I’m managing fine as it is. Pa, don’t even think about it,’ I said.
‘This isn’t a hand-out, this is business. You’ll pay me back with interest once you get going.’ He turned towards me with his skewy eyes wide open. ‘Johnny, we’re going to be partners!’
Looking back at that episode, at my unqualmish acceptance of finance, I cannot avoid a feeling of shame. In those days I found my father’s donations a marvellously uncomplicated business. I needed the money, and not just for tools, materials and workspace – the fact was, I needed the money generally. I was twenty-three – I needed to live, didn’t I? And as I saw it, money was simply part of the deal with Pa: subsidies, allowances and disbursements came with the terrain of his acquaintance. Besides, in the final analysis I was doing him a favour by taking his money – what else was he going to spend it on? Why shouldn’t he buy a flat for his kids if that was what made him happy?
Maybe buy, with its connotation of outright purchase, is not quite the right word, because that makes it sound as though Pa just reached into his pocket and handed over the cash. It did not happen that way. To finance the transaction, Pa had to remortgage his house, the family home at 75 Turtledove Lane. The agreement was that Rosie and I would pay what rent we could afford. Property was buoyant, Pa said. You’ll see, he told us happily as he showed us his name on the deeds, we’re going to come out of this smelling of roses.
Soon after Pa bought the flat the property market plunged. For two years now we have kept watch on the house prices, waiting for an end to their descent like spectators waiting for the jerking bloom of a skydiver’s parachute as he plummets towards the earth. But two years on, the prices are still falling and interest rates are still rising and Pa has to make whacking monthly payments which he cannot afford to make. Even so, he has never asked Rosie or me for a cent, with the result that no real rent has ever been paid. Now, there are reasons for this inexcusable situation. In my case, the answer is poverty: I’m broke. Unlike two years ago, though, at least now I experience genuine guilt about it. But by the operation of a circuitous, morally paralysing causality, somehow this guilt expiates its cause: the worse I feel about not paying Pa, the more penalized and thus virtuous and thus better I feel. As for Rosie – well, Rosie has other things to do with her money and no one, least of all Pa, is going to give her a hard time about that. Allowances have to be made as far as Rosie is concerned because allowances have always been made as far as Rosie is concerned. Besides, there is Steve. There is no point in being unrealistic about it – Steve is not the type to pay for anything. Steve lives for free.
And yet, despite all of this, Rosie sticks with him. It is hard to understand, to identify the perverse adherent at work between them. Rosie has wit, intelligence and beauty, and all of the Breezes have had a special soft spot for her for as long as anybody can remember. She has dark eyes set widely apart and a mane of auburn hair which ran until recently down her back like a fire. She is twenty-eight, two years older than me, and by any reasonable standard Steve Manus, agreeable though he is in his own way, is not fit to lick her boots. Rosie herself recognizes this, and although Steve shares her bed and her earnings, for some months now she has denied that he is her boyfriend.
‘It’s finished,’ she says. ‘You don’t think I’d stay with a creep like that, do you?’
But – but what about their cohabitation?
Rosie reads the question on my face. ‘He’s out of here,’ she says, ‘as soon as he finds somewhere to live. I’m not having that parasite in this house for one minute longer than I have to.’ We are in the kitchen. She raises her voice so that Steve, who is in the sitting-room, can hear her. ‘If the Slug doesn’t find a place by this time next month, that’s it, I’m kicking it out,’ she shouts. ‘Let it slime around on someone else’s floor for a change!’
Then the same thing always happens. Rosie goes away for two or three weeks to the other side of the world – Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo, Chicago – and by the time she descends from the skies we are back to square one. Square one is not a pleasant place to be. It is bad enough having Steve in the house, but when both he and my sister are here together for any length of time – usually when she has a spell of short-haul work – things become sticky.
It starts when Rosie comes home exhausted in the evening, still wearing her green and blue stewardess’s uniform. Instead of putting her feet up, she immediately spends an hour cleaning. ‘Look at this mess, just look at this pigsty,’ she says, furiously gathering things up – Steve’s things, invariably, because although fastidious about his personal appearance, he is just about the messiest and most disorderly person I know. On Rosie goes, rearranging cushions and snatching at newspapers. ‘Whose shoes are these? What about this plate – whose is that?’ Steve and I keep quiet, even if she is binning perfectly usable objects, because the big danger when Rosie comes home and starts picking things up is that she will hurl something at you. (Oh, yes, make no mistake, Rosie can be violent. In those split seconds of temper she will pick up the nearest object to hand and aim that missile between your eyes with a deadly seriousness. If she’s not careful, some day she will do somebody a real injury.) Rosie does not rest until she has filled and knotted a bin-liner and until she has hoovered the floors and scrubbed the sinks. She sticks to this routine even if the flat is already clean on her return. She puffs up the sofa, complains bitterly that the sink is filthy and redoes the washing up, which she claims has been badly done. (‘The glasses!’ she cries, holding aloft an example. ‘How many times do I have to tell you to dry the glasses by hand!’) Only once all of the objects in the sitting-room – many of which have remained untouched since they were moved by her the day before – have been fractionally repositioned does she finally relent. But what then? This is what concerns me, the horrified question I see expressed on my sister’s face once she has finished. What happens once everything is in its place?
Usually what happens next is that Steve gets it in the neck.
‘What have you done today?’ she demands.
‘Well,’ Steve says, ‘I’ve …’
‘You haven’t done anything, have you?’
The poor fellow opens his mouth to speak, then closes it again.
‘You’re pathetic,’ Rosie says quietly. ‘Don’t talk to me. Your voice revolts me.’ Then she lights a cigarette and momentarily faces the television, her legs crossed. She is still wearing her uniform. She inhales; the tip of her cigarette glitters. She turns around and looks Steve in the eye. ‘Well?’ Steve does not know what to say. Rosie turns away in disgust. ‘As I thought. Slug is too spineless to speak. Pathetic.’
‘I … No,’ Steve says bravely, ‘I’m not.’
Suddenly Rosie bursts into laughter. ‘No?’ She looks at him with amusement. ‘You’re not pathetic?’
‘No,’ Steve says with a small, uncertain smile.
‘Oh, you sweetie,’ Rosie says, sliding along the sofa towards him. Holding him and speaking in a baby voice, she says, ‘You don’t do anything, do you, honey bear? You just sit around all day and make a mess like a baby animal, don’t you, my sweet?’
Steve nods, happy with the swing of her mood, and nestles like a child in her arms. With luck, Rosie, who can be such good value when she is happy, has found respite from the awful, intransigent spooks that have somehow fastened on her, and we can all relax and get on with our evening.
How, then, do I put up with such horrible scenes? The answer is, by treating them as such: as scenes. It’s the only way. If I took their dramas to heart – if I let them come anywhere near my heart – I’d finish up like my father.
3 (#ulink_0e27f3d7-b9a5-5ae2-a2f6-874df8250be2)
I have poured myself a glass of water. This waiting around is thirsty work, especially if, like me, you’re already dehydrated by a couple of lunchtime drinks. These came immediately after the refereeing débâcle, when Pa and I walked over to the nearest bar for a beer. Afterwards, the plan was, we were off back to Pa’s place to watch a proper game of football on the television: the relegation decider between Rockport United and Ballybrew. We Breezes, of course, follow United.
It was only when Pa returned with the drinks and took off his glasses to wipe the mud from them that I was able to observe his face closely. I thought, Jesus Christ.
It was his eyes. Looked at closely in the midday light, they were appalling. The eyeballs – I gasped when I saw the eyeballs: tiny red beads buried deep in violet pouches that sagged like emptied, distended old purses. Pa had always had troublesome old eyes, but now, I suddenly saw, things had gone a stage further. These were black eyes, the kind you got from punches; these were bona fide shiners.
How was this possible? How could this assault have happened?
I am afraid that the answer was painfully obvious. It was plain as pie that Pa has walked into every punch that life had swung in his direction. With his whole, undefensive heart, Pa has no guard. Every time a calamity has rolled along, there he has been to collect it right between his poor, crooked peepers. And in the last three days, of course, two real haymakers had made contact: first, the news that his job was in jeopardy; and second, Merv. It was doubtful that Pa had slept at all since Thursday night, the night of the crash.
I remembered the time I became acquainted with Merv: about four years ago, when I was looking for my first job and needed a suit for interviews. Pa said he had the answer to my problem. 'There’s this fellow in my office with a terrible curvature of the spine,’ he said, ‘but you’d hardly know it to look at him. He strolls around like a guardsman. It’s his suits that make all the difference,’ Pa said. 'The jackets fit him like gloves. There’s the man you want – the man who makes his suits.’
That was Merv – not the tailor, but the dapper hunchback. Every time I’ve met him I have been unable, hard as I might try, to keep my eyes off his back, off the hump, under his shirt.
Pa took a slug of his beer and threw me a packet of salt and vinegar crisps. Then he opened a packet of his own.
We sat there in silence for a few moments, crunching the potatoes. I said, ‘Are you sure you’re OK? You’re not looking well.’ He did not reply. I drank some beer and regarded him again. Then I said, ‘Listen, Pa. I know you don’t agree with me on this, but I really think you ought to consider packing in the reffing.’ Pa tilted his face towards the ceiling and tipped the last crumbs from the crisp packet into his mouth. ‘I’m not saying you should just sit at home doing nothing,’ I said. ‘Do something else. I don’t know, take up squash or something.’ No, that was too dangerous: I could just see him stretched out on the floor of the court, soaked in sweat and clutching his heart. ‘Or golf,’ I said. ‘Golf is a great game. Just give up the reffing. It isn’t worth it, Pa. You don’t get any thanks for what you do.’
Pa took a mouthful of beer and shook his head. ‘Johnny, I can’t. If I wasn’t there, who else would do it? Those kids rely on me. They’re counting on me to be there. Besides,’ he said, ‘I want to put something back into the game. Pay my dues.’
This last reason, especially, I did not and do not understand. The fact of the matter is that Pa, never having played the game, has not received anything from it which he could possibly pay back. Pa owes soccer nothing.
It was only thanks to me that he came into contact with football in the first place. I was eight years old and had begun to take part in Saturday morning friendlies in the park, and, along with the other parents, Pa took to patrolling the touch-line in his dark sheepskin coat. ‘Go on, Johnny!’ he used to shout as he ran up and down. ‘Go on, son!’ At first, my father was just like the other fathers, an ordinary spectator. But there came a day when he showed up in a track suit, the blue track suit he wears to this day with the old-fashioned stripes running down the legs. When, at half-time, he called the team together and the boys found themselves listening to his exhortations and advice, it dawned on them that Mr Breeze – a man who had never scored a goal in his life – had appointed himself coach. While Pa’s pep talks lacked tactical shrewdness, they were full of encouragement. ‘Never say die, men,’ he urged as we chewed the bitter chunks of lemon he handed out. ‘We’re playing well. We can pull back the four goals we need. Billy,’ he said, taking aside our tiny, untalented goalkeeper, ‘you’re having a blinder. Don’t worry about those two mistakes. It happens to the best of us. Keep it up, Sean,’ Pa said to our least able outfield player. ‘Don’t forget, you’re our midfield general.’
Pa’s involvement did not end there. No, pretty soon he had come up with a car pool, a team strip (green and white) and, without originality, a name: the Rovers. He organized a mini-league, golden-boot competitions, man-of-the-match awards, knock-out tournaments and, finally, he began refereeing games. He was terrible at it right from the start. Never having been a player himself, he had no idea what was going on. Offside, obstruction, handball, foul throw – Pa knew the theory of these offences but had no ability to detect them in practice. This incompetence showed, and mattered, even at the junior level of the Rovers’ matches between nine- and ten-year-olds. Needless to say, it was not much fun being the ref’s son. It made me an outsider in my own side.
I looked at my father, Eugene Breeze, sitting in front of me with his pint, resting. The creased, criss-crossed face, the leaking blue venation under the skin, the thin white hair pasted by sweat against the forehead. The red eyes blinking like hazard lights.
‘Pa,’ I said as gently as I could. ‘Face it. It’s time to quit. It’s time to move on to something else.’
He shrugged obstinately. ‘I’m not a quitter,’ he said.
That was true – he’s not a man to throw in the towel. When I stopped playing for the team – I must have been about eleven years old – Pa kept going. He kept right on refereeing the Rovers, running around the park every Saturday morning waist-deep in a swarm of youngsters. Even when the Rovers eventually disbanded, he did not give up. On the contrary, he decided to enter the refereeing profession properly. He bought himself a black outfit, boots with a bolt of lightning flashing from the ankle to the toe, red and yellow cards, a waterproof notebook and the Association Football rule book. Then one day he came home with a flushed face and a paper furled up in a pink ribbon. Wordlessly he handed me the scroll. I opened it and there it was in bold, splendid ink, Eugene Breeze, spectacularly printed in a large Gothic script.
This is to certify that Eugene Breeze is a Class E referee, the document announced. It was signed by Matthew P. Brett, Secretary of the Football Association.
‘Congratulations,’ I said. I was sixteen and laconic.
‘I took the exams and passed them straight off,’ Pa said. He retrieved the certificate from me and slapped it against his palm. ‘Do you realize, Johnny,’ he said, ‘do you realize that now I’m qualified?’
‘Great,’ I said. ‘You’re in the way,’ I said, leaning sideways to see the television.
‘This could lead anywhere.’ He shook the certificate as though it were a magical document of discovery and empowerment, a passport, blank cheque and round-the-world ticket rolled into one. ‘Who knows, with a bit of luck I could be refereeing professionally in a couple of years’ time, couldn’t I, Johnny? I mean, I know it sounds crazy, but it’s possible, isn’t it?’
That’s right, I said. It’s possible.
Possibilities! Pa, the numbskull, is a great one for possibilities. Stars in his eyes, he signed up officially with the Football Association and put his name down on the match list. He developed a scrupulous pre-match routine, ticking off checklists, boning up on the laws of the game and the weather reports, checking his studs and, late on the night before, ironing his kit and laying it out on the floor like a flat black ghost. But his dream of ascending the refereeing ladder did not materialize. For a while he took charge of good fixtures, games between ambitious young teenagers playing for serious clubs. But then, after his lack of ability became known and complaints had been made, the invitations dried up. ‘Never mind,’ he said to me eventually. ‘I’ll find my own level.’ That was when he took to wandering around football fields in his kit, haunting the touchlines, his silver whistle suspended unquietly from his neck. He would approach teams that were warming up and say, ‘Need a ref? Look, I’m qualified …’ and he would unfurl his certificate. Usually that was enough to do the trick, and that is how Pa has ended up where he is, officiating bad-tempered confrontations between pub teams and office XIs, ridiculed and bad-mouthed by players and onlookers alike. Even when he does well the abuse keeps coming, because the referee – that instrument of injustice – is never right. And still he persists and still, rain or shine, every weekend finds him out on the heath, looking for a game.
This state of affairs is unlikely to last for long, because Pa has become truly notorious for his incapability, even amongst occasional teams. One time he so mishandled a game that the players, unanimous in their infuriation, ordered him to leave the field; and so Pa is famous, in the small world of Rockport amateur football, for being the only referee ever to have been sent off. As a result, he is finding it harder and harder to get a game. Increasingly his polite offers of his services draw a blank and he has to content himself with running the line, waving the offsides with his red handkerchief. The day cannot be far away when my father finds that, like it or not, his officiating days are behind him.
‘And how about you?’ Pa asked, dropping two fresh beers on the table. ‘How’s it going? How’s the exhibition coming along?’
‘Just fine,’ I said, raising my glass to my mouth. ‘It’s all under control.’
The exhibition. Two weeks tomorrow, on 16 May, my chairs are scheduled to go on show at the Simon Devonshire Gallery. It took months of pleading, telephoning, writing, lying, boasting and begging to get that show. The good news finally came one day last October, when Simon Devonshire rang me in person. ‘Well, John,’ he said, ‘you can’t keep a good man down. A week starting from 16 May, next year, how does that sound to you?’
I could not believe it. Simon Devonshire himself, patron, connoisseur and big shot, was giving me the nod. This was it, this was the big break. ‘Are you serious?’ I said with a laugh.
‘Certainly I’m serious,’ Devonshire said. ‘Now, you’re not going to let me down, are you, John? I’m putting my neck on the line for you. You appreciate that, don’t you?’
‘Of course,’ I said breathlessly, ‘of course. Don’t worry, Mr Devonshire,’ I said. ‘You won’t regret this.’
I was overjoyed. I rang Angela straight away. She was overjoyed, too. ‘Johnny, that’s marvellous!’ She burst out laughing. Her laugh: a wonder, a full, chuckling letting go, a pure unzipping of joy … What a find Angela was. To this day I cannot believe my luck. You hear stories of those poor boys who, steering their goats from thistle to thistle upon some African tableland, happen upon a priceless stone in the dust. Well, that was how it was with me and Angela. It was during my time as a trainee accountant, when I was doing an audit in the offices of a transportation company out in some small wet town in the middle of nowhere. It was my job to make sure that the books balanced, that the debits and credits added up, a lonely, discouraging job, the nights spent on my own in a two-star hotel, the days working away in the small isolated room to which I had been consigned, a hole darkened from wall to wall with piles of thick, inscrutable ledgers – auditors always get the lousiest workspace going. After about a week, the task arrived of checking up on three trucks that the company had listed amongst its assets. It was time to pay a visit to the warehouse.
It was raining. I walked quickly across the muddy car-park to the Portakabin that served as the warehouse office and introduced myself to the girl who was writing there, her head lowered over her paper. Hello, I said, I’m with the auditors. If it’s possible, I’d like to do a stock-check and … I did not say another word, because suddenly I found myself looking into these two blue rocks.
‘Of course,’ the girl said, brushing her hair from her face, smiling. ‘Just go straight in.’ Then she looked at me and laughed, and even now it thrills me to recall that sound and the sight of her head thrown back dramatically, the paper-white teeth shining in her open mouth, the red tongue clean as a cat’s.
Pa pushed his beer aside, licked the froth from his upper lip and said, ‘Johnny, I’ve been thinking. There’s a lot of people with back trouble in this world. A lot of people need chairs they can sit on without hurting the base of the spine. I’m telling you, you should hear the complaints I get from the people at work. It’s a complicated thing, the spine. A mystery. Even doctors don’t know how it works. Anyway, I was thinking that there must be a market for specially designed chairs for people with back problems. Do you follow me?’ Pa spread his pale, veiny hands on the table. ‘I reckon that if you could come up with something along those lines you’d be made. I read something about it the other day,’ he said. ‘In the paper. They’ve now got chairs with no backs. You just have a seat which is tilted forwards and these pads to rest your knees on. Did you know that?’
‘It’s not a bad idea, Pa,’ I said, but I left it at that. In the furniture circles that I move in, it is artistic and not ergonomic considerations that prevail. The people who go to Simon Devonshire’s are not interested in lumbar comfort. They want pieces that make a statement, that provoke discussion. They want chairs with suggestive titles. Take last year’s two successes. The first was a chair called ouch. On its back were carved figures engaged in all kinds of monsterish copulations: goats doing it with men, women doing it with horses, dogs doing it with cats and so forth. But they were not the main feature; that was the wooden phallus which rose from the middle of the seat, so located that you could not sit on the chair without being penetrated by it. But that, of course, was not a problem, since the chair was not designed to be sat on. The same thing applied to the second success of the season. Entitled Caramba, Yes, it was just an ordinary wooden chair with four legs and a back, a chair of the cheap, plain, functional kind that you saw in garden sheds all over the country. Because of its strong ironical content, it is cheaper to buy certain new cars than Caramba, Yes.
Devonshire signed me for an exhibition on the strength of one piece which he displayed and immediately sold: the love chair, which consisted of two ash seats with splayed legs connected by a mutual arm. Calling the piece the love chair was Devonshire’s idea, not mine, but I was happy to go along with his suggestion – what could be wrong with love? Pa’s favourite work of mine, though, is the pew, a kneeling-stool attached to a small desk where the supplicant might rest the elbows: a prie-dieu. I finished it about eight months ago and to my surprise he expressed a liking for it.
‘I like it,’ he said. ‘I really do. I think it’s the best thing you’ve done.’ He circled it slowly, examining it. ‘I could use a chair like this,’ he said. ‘I could use it when I say my prayers.’
I smiled. I was pleased that someone like Pa, who actually prayed to God, saw practical value in the chair. I was surprised, too. I had not foreseen that someone might appreciate the object so literally.
‘I could put it in the spare bedroom upstairs,’ Pa said. ‘I could go up there when I needed some peace and quiet, some time for myself.’
Pa could not have the pew, though, because I had promised it to Angela as a gift. There it is over there, next to the fireplace. She uses it as a platform for her plants. It does not look particularly good that way, obscured by the fern, but it’s hers now, and if that’s what she wants to do with it, that’s fine by me. That’s the great thing about Angela: everything she does is fine by me.
‘Well, anyway,’ Pa said, lifting his glass, ‘here’s to the exhibition. You’ve earned it, son. You’ve worked hard and you’ve gotten what you’ve deserved.’
I returned the gesture with a hollow smile. I did not say anything to Pa about the exhibition because I did not want to upset him, not now. I’d wait a while. I’d wait till things started looking up for him.
Things looking up: how was I supposed to know what was going to happen?
4 (#ulink_c58fe0cf-10cb-5c9b-b567-3c95d92a7dc3)
Let me say this: Angela’s place is not an easy place to cool your heels. This is a studio apartment. Aside from a small bathroom and a kitchen, there is only one room – the living/bedroom, which as a place of entertainment is a dead loss. The television is broken, I have read the books and heard all the records. The kitchen is no better: the bread is stale, the cupboards are empty and there’s nothing in the fridge. Usually you can count on finding some ruby orange juice or a tub of pasta salad from the delicatessen, but not tonight. There isn’t even any milk. You’d think that Steve had dropped in.
Angela must be pretty busy at work to allow things to get this way. They really drive her hard at Bear Elias, and if she does not go into the office at the weekend it is only because she has brought work home. When she gets back in the evenings, the first thing she does is head straight for the sofa and bed down for an hour. Only then, when I have brought her a cup of tea and rubbed her feet and warmed her toes, does she have the energy to talk. And, as if her job were not demanding enough, she has taken to going to the gym. At least three evenings a week she works out at the local fitness club, courtesy of her corporate membership. I’m not complaining, she has never looked better. But just lately arranging to see her has almost become a question of booking an appointment.
She is now forty-five minutes late.
There will be a perfectly reasonable explanation for her absence. As occurs in a million appointments every day, an innocent delay has arisen. She is late, and that is all there is to it.
For the sake of variety, I climb up to the bed – climb, because the bed is a king-sized bunk which hangs from the high ceiling on big white-painted chains. When Angela first moved here, three years ago, she and I had a private sentimental nickname for this loft: the love-nest, we used to call it.
I lie down on my back with closed eyes. I breathe deeply.
There is so much room up here that three people could stretch out in comfort. In fact, it took Angela and me a little time to become accustomed to the space. In the year before she moved in here – our first year together – when I was living at home with Pa, we did our sleeping together at her old place, a cheap flat by the docks. Angela had a single bed, one as narrow as a train berth, and when the underground passed below and sent vibrations through the house, the two of us lay there rocking like journeyers on an overnight express. Who is to say that the sensation of travel was not an appropriate one? After all, we were going places. I was about to embark on my chair-making venture and Angela had just started her MBA, and like motorists entranced and quickened by new cities tantalizingly pledged on highway signboards, during those shaking nights our quickly looming futures kept us awake for hours, talking, talking. Fired up, emboldened by the rich proximity of our goals, we travelled easily through the hours of darkness, all the while wrapped up together like a package, our legs intertwined, our arms locked into bear hugs. We hung on like this all night. We had to – the bed was so small that we couldn’t roll over without falling out.
I open my eyes. Jesus, I hope she’s all right. I hope nothing’s happened to her.
I rise with a start and climb down the ladder. I’m damned if I am going to worry. The chances of Angela not safely returning home must be at least a million to one. Only a professional nail-biter like Pa would get worked up by those kinds of odds.
But if I were him, I would be fearful of long shots, too.
The incident in the pub this morning. Now that’s what I call a dark horse.
Pa and I had just sucked down the remains of our beers and were about to make a move when, pushing through the crush, a man suddenly came forward and pointed at Pa. ‘I know you,’ he said. He kept pointing. ‘It’s Breeze, isn’t it? You’re him. You’re Gene Breeze, aren’t you?’
Pa glanced at me nervously and said, ‘Yes, as a matter of fact I am.’ He turned to the man. ‘How – how can I help you?’
‘I thought I recognized you,' the man said. ‘I said to myself, I know that face from somewhere.’
It is important, here, to point something out: the most remarkable thing about the newcomer was his size. He was a midget. He could not have been more than four feet tall.
I picked up my coat and said, ‘Let’s go, Pa.’
The man said, ‘You want to know if I’ve got any problems, Breeze? You want to know if I’ve got any complaints? Well, pal, I do. I’ve got a whole pile of fucking complaints.’
He put his beer down and stood at the end of the table. Pa was cornered.
Pa said, ‘How can I help you, Mr …'
‘Don’t worry about my name, Breeze, you’re the one with questions to answer.’ Again he jabbed his index finger in Pa’s direction. ‘You got that, Breeze? You’re the one doing the answering around here.’
I could not believe it. This runt, this titch, was threatening two fully grown men.
‘How is it,’ the man demanded, ‘that I’m late for work almost every day of the week? Eh, Breeze? How is it that I spend two grand a year on fucking travel and still I get to stand in a crowded, dirty train every morning – if I’m lucky?’ He wiped the small wet hole of his mouth and started moving towards Pa. ‘Well? I only live fifteen miles from Rockport: so why does it take me, on average, one hour to get into town?’
Pa, his face yellow-grey again, was completely lost. He started shrinking into his anorak as the stranger slowly advanced like a miniature gunman, punctuating his sentences with absurd stomps of his cowboy boots. The stranger said, ‘You haven’t got much to say for yourself, have you, Breeze? Eh? Why do I spend half my life freezing on a fucking train platform? Well, Breeze? Sorry – well, Gene?’
‘I …’ Pa said. ‘I …’
I decided to intervene. ‘That’s enough,’ I said. ‘Listen, I don’t know who you are, but…’
‘Enjoying yourself, Breeze?’ the man sneered. ‘Having fun, are you? I am. I should do this more often. I should liaise with you more often.’ Now the midget’s red face, bright as a stop light, was directly below Pa’s. ‘I tell you what,’ he said. ‘You want to know how I feel, Gene, old boy? You really want to know how I feel?’
The man spat straight into Pa’s face, the saliva spurting up and sticking with a tacky splash on his eyebrow and on the frame of his glasses.
The man drew back. ‘There you go, Gene. Stick that in your report.’ Then, before I could react, before I could snap his fucking dwarf’s neck, he walked off.
‘Pa,’ I said. ‘Pa, Jesus, I…’
Pa had not moved. He was still frozen in the corner with shock, the spittle now slowly dripping down on to his lips.
I took out his red linesman’s handkerchief and wiped his face and glasses. ‘Come on,’ I said, stuffing the handkerchief back into his pocket. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
That fleck of shit spat at Pa because Pa is the manager of the Rockport Railway Network, Northern Section. He is the man responsible for the smooth running of two hundred and sixty trains a day. It’s a large responsibility which has not been lessened, it has to be said, by the poster campaign which the Network has recently embarked on. Plastered over every train and every train station in north Rockport is a photograph of my father holding a telephone. It is not a very good photograph: his hair is uncombed, his cream tie clashes with his brown shirt and grey jacket and, worst of all, his face bears an apprehensive and culpable expression. The caption reads:
GENE BREEZE – AT YOUR SERVICE
Hello, I’m Gene Breeze, your Network Manager. If you have any comments – good or bad – about the service we provide, let me know. I want to know how you feel to help me meet your requirements. So don’t hold back. Liaise with me or my staff on Rockport 232597.
THE ROCKPORT NETWORK – WE’RE GETTING THERE
The network motto, ‘We’re getting there’, has, of course, become something of a joke, because everybody knows that the Network is getting nowhere. It has personnel problems, rolling-stock problems, signalling problems and investment problems. Above all, it has delay problems – delays that have been attributed to such malign agents of nature as swans (flying into the overhead lines), leaves (falling on the tracks) and rodents (gnawing into cables). Staff morale is low and passenger dissatisfaction is high, and for an hour at the end of every day Pa has to listen to the abuse and anger of the Network users. That is on top of the nine hours he puts in trying to run the railroad itself.
It angers me to think of what he goes through. Not long ago, I tried to talk him out of fielding the complaints personally.
‘I have to, son,’ he said. ‘I have to. I owe it to the customers. It’s not right that I invite them to ring me without me being there at least some of the time. They are my clients. They have a right to talk to me.’
‘But, Pa, you have a public relations team to look after that. Let them answer the calls.’
‘As the manager,’ Pa said, ‘I am responsible for the complaints. The buck stops with me,’ he said. ‘The way I see it, being answerable to the public means just that: answering the public.’
‘But the other network managers don’t do that,’ I said. ‘Pa, you’re the only one who actually does what those posters say.’
‘You’re right,’ Pa admitted. ‘But then, it wasn’t their idea to start this campaign.’
I said, ‘It was your idea?’
‘Yes,’ he said proudly. ‘I was the one who suggested it to the directors. No matter what Paddy Browne says, I’m not devoid of ideas.’
Paddy Browne is the Network Secretary and, according to Pa, the man behind the moves to depose him. It was Paddy Browne who recently suggested to Pa that he should think of early retirement. That day, Pa came round to the flat and stood fuming in my basement workshop as I tinkered, for the sake of appearances, with a piece of wood.
‘Early retirement? Early retirement? You know what that means, don’t you? It means the sack, that’s what it means.’ He started wandering around the room, weaving his way between the various obstacles. He uttered the loathsome name once more: ‘Paddy Browne.’ He pointed at the door. ‘He wants me out, that’s what he wants. No, no, I can see it with my own eyes,’ Pa said, waving me down as though I had voiced a protest. ‘He undermines everything I do. Every time I say anything at a meeting, Paddy’s there with a ‘Yes, but”, and ‘Surely what you’re trying to say is this …” It’s eating away at me, Johnny, it’s tearing me apart. Johnny,’ Pa said wildly, ‘Johnny, he’s after my blood. He won’t rest until he sees me out.’
‘Are you sure you’re not reading too much into it?’ I said.
‘Listen, the man has commissioned a study of the management structure, he’s bringing in people from the outside. The management structure! That’s a good one! The management structure is me: I’m the management structure!’
I said nothing.
Pa said, ‘And I know what they’re going to recommend. They’re going to recommend my dismissal.’
‘You don’t know that, Pa,’ I said.
‘Just you wait and see,’ he said. ‘I know how Browne operates. He’s going to produce these bar charts and efficiency graphs which will show that I’ve got to go. Johnny, you should see the stuff he comes up with. It’s all green arrows and red arrows and flow charts and diagrams. He goes around with this portable computer, this lap-top, as he calls it, and everything he writes comes out looking like – like the Ten Commandments.’ Pa suddenly raised his voice. ‘You don’t believe me? Here,’ he said, stormily snatching a folder from his briefcase and flying sheets of paper into the air, ‘here, read this. Just read it.’
I took the folder and flicked through its contents, a twenty-page company report of some kind. The document, headlines printed in bold, key points emphasized in italics and statistics illustrated by multicoloured pie charts, was immaculate. The sentences were short and unambiguous and the concluding opinion was headed ‘Findings’, as though unimpeachable discoveries of fact had been made. I handed the papers back to Pa. ‘I see what you mean,’ I said.
‘What did I tell you? I’m right, aren’t I?’ Pa closed his briefcase. ‘I haven’t got a hope against that kind of presentation,’ he said. ‘Not a hope. Hell’s bells, Johnny, all I know about is trains.’
I said cautiously, ‘Maybe retirement wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Think of all the free time you’d have. Think of all the things you could do.’
Pa swung around. ‘Free time? Are you crazy? I don’t want free time! I want to work! Besides,’ he said in a different voice, ‘I’ll be honest with you, we need the money. If I retired, who would make the mortgage payments on this flat?’
‘Pa, sell the flat. Rosie and me’ll be fine. Don’t let us stop you.’
Pa said, ‘We were unlucky with this place. As soon as we bought it the market fell. They say prices never dropped so quickly in twenty years.’ He shook his head. ‘We can’t afford to sell now. We’d lose too much.’
Although Pa was telling the truth about the property market, I knew that he was just using it as an excuse. The fact of the matter is, Pa will never sell the flat so long as Rosie and I are still in need of it.
So there is something else for me not to worry about – the calamitous possibility of Pa being laid off tomorrow, the day that the management report comes out. Calamitous is not an exaggeration. My father without employment is simply unimaginable. His veneration of work is such that, whenever he picks up a newspaper, the first place he turns to, before even the sports pages, are the appointments pages.
‘Listen to this, son,’ he says, reading out an advertisement in a low, reverential voice. ‘And this,’ he says turning to another one, ‘just listen to this one.’ He holds up the sheets to the light in wonderment. ‘Would you believe it?’ he says. ‘Would you believe it?’
There he sits, his mouth open. And we are not concerned with especially desirable posts here, with company directorships or academic sinecures. No, we are concerned with ordinary vacancies, openings for sales engineers and area housing managers, for biomedical technicians and senior improvements officers. These are the jobs that enthral Pa.
It is almost inevitable, when he peruses the jobs pages, that he suddenly drops the paper, produces a pair of scissors and starts cutting away at the broadsheet. ‘Johnny,’ he says as he snips away, ‘Johnny, this is it. This is the one.’ He thrusts his handiwork at me and sits back to study my reaction.
SALES PEOPLE – Young progressive advertising company requires Sales People in all areas to carry out major expansion programme. Training and support will be provided, car with a telephone a prerequisite. Generous expense allowance plus commission.
‘Well? What do you think?’
‘Pa, Steve doesn’t have a car.’
He is thrown for a moment, but then he bounces right back. ‘That’s just a detail,’ he says boldly. ‘What’s a car? We can find Steve a car no problem. No,’ he says, waving the cutting like a winning lottery ticket, ‘this is just the job for Stephen. Look – it says he’ll get training and support. I’m telling you, that boy has it in him to do great things. It’s not too late. He’s just a young man, he has his whole life ahead of him. With a bit of help, who knows how far he’ll go?’ Pa tucks the cutting into his wallet. ‘I’ll send it to him straight away.’
I have been through this with my father many times before, so I do not say anything. The short point is that Steve is not a worker. He has not lifted a finger in the five years that I have known him and he is not about to change now. While his inner being may be a mystery, I do know Steve this well: if you offered him a salary of twenty thousand a month to do exactly what he liked, he would turn you down – it would sound too much like work. I have not reached this conclusion lightly. Like Pa, I used to pass on to Steve ads which I had seen in the newspapers. That’s right. I used to get the scissors out, too. Whenever I got wind of a cushy number, old Steve was the first to hear about it. But that strategy was like Steve himself: it didn’t work; and after what happened last time, I have sworn that I will never try it again.
Wanted, the advertisement said. Trustworthy house-sitter for period residence while owners go abroad for a month. Generous pay.
‘Steve,’ I said, ‘take a look at that. Now that’s what I call a job.’
Steve reached out from the sofa and looked at the newspaper for a whole minute. ‘Thanks, Johnny,’ he said. Then he carefully placed the paper on the floor.
I made a decision. I fetched a sheet of paper and typed out the application myself. ‘Sign here,’ I said to Steve.
‘God, thanks, John,’ Steve said as he wrote his name.
Then I posted the letter. I went to the post office, bought a stamp and personally mailed the fucker.
The reply came quickly. It was good news: Steve had been granted an interview on Thursday, at nine in the morning. Great, Steve said. Great stuff.
That Thursday morning I arose early – those were the days when I was still productive, back in September of last year. By eight-fifteen, though, Steve had not stirred from his bed: Rosie’s bed: the bed which Pa had shelled out for. When I opened the bedroom door, there he was, a mound under the duvet.
‘Wake up, Steve,’ I said, shaking him by the shoulder. ‘Wake up. You’ve got to go to your interview.’
He rolled over and stared at me with uncomprehending, unconscious eyes. Then he rolled over again and went back to sleep. There was nothing I could do to rouse him. I said to Rosie, Rosie, for God’s sake, tell him to get up. Tell him to go.
Rosie, who was busy getting ready for work, said, ‘Oh, forget it. He won’t do it, he’s useless.’ She put her head through the door and shouted, ‘You’re useless, aren’t you, Slug?’ Then suddenly she snatched up a handful of objects – lipsticks, hairbrushes, books – and started hurling them at him. ‘You just lie there and rot and vegetate and do nothing, you bastard! Get up!’ she screamed, tugging at the duvet. ‘Get up, you shit!’
‘Take it easy, Rosie,’ I said. ‘It’s all right, don’t worry about it.’
Rosie started weeping with anger and humiliation, the tears leaving tracks through her deep stewardess’s make-up. ‘He’s so …He’s just so …’
I said, ‘It’s OK, Rosie … Rosie, it’s all right.’ I led her out of the bedroom and up to the front door. ‘We’ll sort it out. Now you just go to work, all right?’
‘He’s such a bastard, Johnny,’ Rosie said, swallowing back mucus and cleaning her face. ‘He’s such a bastard.’ Then she put on her green hat and headed out into the street to the job she hates.
What a dope I was to allow myself to get into that situation – to allow myself to get involved with Steve like that.
Never again.
Pa, though, does not see it that way. Again and again is his motto. As far as he is concerned, where there is life there is hope, and in spite of everything he still believes that inside Steve there lie secret deposits of energy waiting to be tapped, gushers. Pa has got it wrong. Steve is not the North Sea or the Arabian peninsula. There are no oilfields in Steve.
5 (#ulink_3b736d25-6746-578f-85bc-98922945ba4a)
I have to be careful – careful of letting myself be sucked in by Rosie and Steve and their wretched problems which I can do nothing about. But I can’t stop it because I have to live with them; and I have to live with them because there’s nowhere else for me to go.
This may sound strange, but not long ago I believed that I had gone, that I had swum free from the dismal whirlpool of their lives and had hauled up here, with Angela. My clothes were in that cupboard, my toothbrush and razor were in that bathroom cabinet and my books and records were stacked on those shelves over there, indistinguishable from Angela’s. I spent nine nights out of ten here and the only reason I ever went back to the Breeze flat was because that’s where my studio was, in the basement. As far as I was concerned, I had flown the cage.
Then one day – this was about four months ago, in January –an electoral registration form arrived in the mail. I got out a biro and filled in the form. I wrote our names, Angela Flanagan and John Breeze, in the Names of Occupants box.
Angela laughed when she picked up the form that evening. ‘What’s this?’ She pointed at my name, then started laughing again.
I didn’t see what was so funny.
She came over and sat down next to me. She put an arm around my shoulders and gave me a soft, sympathetic kiss on the cheek, and then another. There was a silence as she continued to hold me close to her, her face brushing against mine, her light breath exhaled in sweet gusts. ‘Oh, Johnny,’ she said. I kept still, waiting for the retraction of that laughter, confirmation that this place was officially my home. It never came. She released me, kissed me one more time and went over to the table. She picked up a yellow highlighter, opened a fat ring binder and started reading, brightening the text with crisp stripes.
Ring binders. I’m sick of the sight of them. Towards the end of January, a messenger arrived with ten cardboard boxloads of the things – heavy, glossy purple files stamped with the Bear Elias logo.
‘It’s the Telecom privatization,’ Angela said excitedly as she tore the tape from the boxes. ‘There are over ten thousand documents. I’ve got to store them here because there simply isn’t the space in the office.’
‘Where are you going to put them? There’s no storage space here either.’
She ripped open a box, the sellotape tearing crudely away from the cardboard. ‘I thought that I might be able to use the cupboard.’
I said, ‘But that’s got my things in it.’
She said nothing.
‘But where will my stuff go?’ I said. ‘There’s nowhere else for me to put it.’
Angela said, ‘Well, I don’t know, my darling. I haven’t really thought about it. Maybe we could fix up a clothes rail or something. We’ll find the space somehow.’
But there was no space to be found, and we both knew it. There was nothing for it but to move my things out. ‘It’s only for the time being, my love,’ Angela said, hugging me as I packed up. ‘I’m not going to have these things here for ever.’
I didn’t make a scene. I packed my clothes and, in order to create more shelf-space, took away my books and music in the cardboard boxes in which the ring binders had arrived. The binders moved in, I moved out. It bothered me, but I knew that I’d be back before long. There was no way I was going to be displaced by chunks of paper.
They’re still here. In fact, there are more binders stored here than ever before.
The telephone rings.
It’s her. At long last.
‘Hello?’
‘John,’ Rosie says to me. ‘Listen, John – do you know where Steve is?’
A numb moment passes and I sigh, ‘Rosie.’
She sounds troubled. ‘He left the house this afternoon and, well, he hasn’t come back.’
I say, ‘Right, I see.’ I feel a dull surprise, because it is not like Steve to be away from home for any length of time; but that is all I feel.
‘I just don’t know where he could be,’ Rosie says. I can hear her expelling a cloud of smoking breath and then immediately taking another deep drag. ‘I’ve tried ringing his friends, but none of them knows where he is.’ Rosie says, ‘I don’t know what to do, John. This isn’t like him. Something’s happened to him,’ she says.
There is a silence, and I know that Rosie is expecting some comforting words from me. ‘Well,’ I say, ‘how about, how about trying …’ Then I stop. I do not have a clue where Steve might be and when it comes down to it, well, when it comes down to it I do not care. ‘Look,’ I say finally, ‘don’t worry, Rosie, he’ll be back. He’ll show up sooner or later.’
She is weeping now, but she still manages to say, ‘You’re heartless, John. I’ve always said that about you. You just don’t give a damn about anybody.’
‘Rosie,’ I say, ‘Rosie, listen, Steve will be– ’
But then she hangs up.
Heartless? What does she expect me to do, go out into the rain and find her boyfriend for her? Set up a search party? Spend an hour on the phone commiserating? Bang my head against the wall just because I’m her brother?
I light a cigarette. Maybe I am heartless; but what choice have I got?
Look at what happened on Friday, for God’s sake. She came home at about midday and bolted straight past me and Steve to her room, slamming the door behind her and falling on her bed with a dead thud. Two things were shocking. First of all, she seemed to be liquefying: teardrops were travelling over her cheeks down to her chin, her lips shone with run from her nose, and even her fingers were dripping. Then I registered the second thing about her: her hair.
Ah, Rosie’s hair … Rosie’s hair is a family legend. It is packed securely in that suitcase of Breeze myths that is clicked open from time to time at family gatherings, its hand-me-down contents familiar and sentimental and orienting. Rosie’s hair is in there with the story of Grandma Breeze’s radical feminism as a young woman and the time when she granted asylum in her bedroom cupboard to a suffragette wanted for vandalism; of the number of languages (six: English, Irish, French, German, Italian and Spanish) which my mother’s mother, Georgina O’Malley, spoke fluently; of the invention by great-grandfather Breeze of an egg incubator, and of how he failed to patent the invention and missed out on millions.
Rosie’s long Irish locks, which when gathered and braided dropped from her head in a thick, fiery rope, have made her stand out like a beacon at baptisms, Christmases and weddings, and be recognized and kissed and admired by distant Breezes who have never met her but who have received word of her flaming head. If I should have children, no doubt they too will learn of the two-foot mane that Aunt Rosie once sported and how one day, the day before yesterday to be precise, Friday, she came home with it cropped down to her skull, dashing past me like a carrot-topped soldier late for parade.
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