Torn Water

‘I love this woman …’ Clive said suddenly, his body trembling with the force of his declaration. He leant into the middle of the table. He was now inches from the young man's face. ‘I fucking love this woman.’

This time it had the force of a confessional whisper, an offered secret, and James watched as, beneath the table, his mother allowed the young red-head's hand to advance slowly along the creamy run of her thigh.

James remembers feeling sorry for Clive. He felt anger towards his mother, a hard violent anger that wanted to stamp on the woman that had risen from the froth of beer and the snatched swallows of gin.

So, later that night, as he slowly opened an eye and peered at Clive sitting at the end of his bed, he felt fear give way to pity. He remembers seeing his bare torso glistening like lard in the moonlight, one hand laid across his belly. He was crying. He seemed to be saying something half to himself, half to the sleeping world. How long he sat there James cannot remember, but eventually his eyes closed, the big man's mutterings lowering him into sleep. He never saw Clive again, and knew better than to enquire as to his whereabouts. Sometimes he thought of him, and saw him lumbering across the landscape of his life, half of it hidden, the other half too painful to behold.

‘Glad I'm back, kid. I tell you what, I aim to be here a while this time.’

He is in the kitchen, filling the kettle. Sully has followed him into the house, leaving his stash of freshly thieved logs.

‘Listen, kid …’

James notices that Sully always addresses him as if they were characters in a Western, opening his shoulders and squinting into the middle distance, especially when he feels unsure. It irritates James: it makes him feel as if Sully isn't really seeing him, that he is just something in the way.

‘Those logs will come in handy on the long nights.’

James doesn't reply, pretending not to hear.

Sully sticks his oil-stained hands under the running tap. ‘I said – ’

‘I'm not interested.’ James looks deep into his eyes.

Sully just looks back and for a moment they stay that way as if they are lovers about to kiss. Then Sully says, ‘Holy cow! If looks could kill, kid, I'd be a dead man.’

Death for the Burning Power of His Mother's Love

They thought I didn't know. They thought I didn't see, They had plans and they didn't include me. After all I had done for her. Everything is clear to me now. She never loved me. She thinks only of herself, like he did, You see, they were one of a kind. As I stand here on the scaffold I think of all the times I have cared for her, looked out for her, I was her guardian, I know it sounds silly, a young son being his parent's guardian, but that's the way it was. That's the way it has always been.

I thought he had gone for good. I thought that we had seen the last of the smug, slap-happy Sully, I was wrong. I knew then something had to be done, that drastic measures were required to stop this man in his tracks. A small crowd has gathered. Some of the men in the crowd shout insults at me. All night long I have waited for this moment, listening from my cell as the workmen put the final touches to the wooden scaffold outside.

I think of the knife I stuck into Sully's heart, the knife that now lies at the bottom of the lake. I think of it buried in the silt. I think of the look of dismay that creased his face as the blade dug deep into his chest. I think of how I had used it to skin him, to gut him, and the hook to hang his carcass from the beam in our outhouse, just like the pig he brought home for her once.

I hear the trapdoor snap open and feel my feet plummet from me and a hard crack travel from the base of my spine as my neck breaks. Through the last thrashing spasms of my body I hear her call my name and see her face lift towards mine, but by then I am far beyond her, swimming in the depths of the lake, pushing down towards my gashed love for her, which lies buried hilt deep in the soft heart of the lake's bed.

3. Teezy

‘Don't say anything.’

‘I won't.’

‘Come on, Jimmy, don't be like that.’

‘Like what?’

‘You know full well like what. Just don't say anything to her about Sully.’

‘All right.’

‘I just don't want to get into it with her. Sticking her nose in.’

‘All right, Mum. All right.’

They are driving to his aunt Teezy's. A week has passed since Sully's return and his mother has been lost to him. She has run to the sanctuary of Sully's arms and hidden from him there. The pile of logs has stayed where it was dumped, bringing impatient looks from some of the neighbours, and one or two loud grunts of disapproval from Mrs McCracken across the way.

He is fond of Teezy. She is his ally. She is his great-aunt, his grandfather's sister, his father's aunt. His grandfather died before he was born. He had been a brickie, segmenting the world into brick-size pieces, adding mortar and building walls to seal the perimeters of his life. Beyond that James knows nothing, except that Teezy had loved his father dearly, but what is gone is gone.

She is a heavy woman, with soft, large shoulders. Sometimes when she is cooking she rolls up the sleeves of her cardigan, revealing Popeye-like arms and the little gathered parcels of flesh that hang about her elbows.

He feels safe with her, with the bulky force of her ways. She always keeps a bottle of Bols Advocaat on a high shelf in her living room, and at the end of the day she ceremoniously pours a capful into a waiting thimble glass. Then she sits by her small television set, prises her shoes from her feet and gently caresses the small bones of her ankle with one of her toes.

James had noticed from a very early age that there are two Teezys. First there is the serene Teezy, the ‘end-of-day woman’, with her glass, holding the world outside at arm's length. On the other hand there is the ‘street’ Teezy, who barges her way across town. A woman who is larger and angrier, who forces her way through checkpoints and grumpily ignores bomb scares, shouting at the top of her voice that it is her country and that no one is going to stop her buying her eggs.

‘My goodness, you are shooting up. You're still a bit mealy-looking, mind. A good feed would do you the world of good – do you hear me, Ann?’

‘You saying I don't feed my son, Teezy?’

They have arrived. Teezy is ushering them through the narrow corridor of her small townhouse, clucking and fussing like a mothering hen.

‘No, not at all, but sometimes, you know as well as I do, you have to stand over them.’

‘Well, I've better things to do, Teezy, no harm to you.’

‘Yes, and it begins with an S.’

She says it quietly, out of his mother's earshot; it brings a smirk to James's lips.

‘What did he bring this time?’ she whispers to him.

‘A pile of logs.’

‘The romantic’

One year he got hives. He remembers clawing at them with his fingernails, trying to avoid the heads, drawing red tracks either side of them, itching so much and so often that he numbed his arm. He remembers Teezy slopping palmfuls of calamine lotion all over his body, rebuking his cries by declaring firmly,

‘Too many scallions.

‘Not enough sleep.

Too many tomatoes.

‘Not enough greens.’

Almost immediately the calamine lotion would dry into a crust, the heads of the hives peeping through in weeping clusters.

Teezy and his mother had got together for the evening about a year after his father had died and they were preparing James for bed, fussing around him. His mother was drawing a large hairbrush across his head in hard arcs, bringing tears to his eyes. ‘You've hair like strips of wire,’ she had said, grunting as she pulled the brush across his skull. ‘Stubborn, stubborn hair.’

‘I wonder where he got that from,’ Teezy had said.

As the evening had worn on the two women had filled the house with their laughter. Every now and again James's mother would turn to him, eyes misty with booze, and ask him thickly if he was all right, if his hives itched, and if they did not to touch them. He remembers feeling like a prisoner held captive in his own body, encased in the chalky suit of dried lotion.

At one point Teezy had insisted that she was not able for more drink, raising her hand like a policeman stopping traffic.

‘What sort of a woman are you?’ his mother had said.

‘Oh, all right then, a wee one.’

James can remember seeing Teezy's glass welcome the sherry. It was the first and only time that he had seen his auntie drunk, the only time he had seen her take on his mother at her own game. Slowly the two Teezys blurred into one, and the angrier, the ‘street’ one, began to hold sway. Once she looked over at James in a way that prompted the hairs on the back of his neck to stand up, and caused his skin to itch once more.

His mother, he remembers, never took her eyes off Teezy. At the moment Teezy had looked at James, his mother had placed a record on the old deck she kept beneath some magazines by the television set. Then she began to yelp and dance at the edge of Teezy's vision, thumping her feet down heavily on the linoleum, and slowly began to advance on her.

It took a moment for Teezy to release James from her gaze and turn to look at Ann, a smile breaking across her face. She then had leapt to her feet, clapping her hands.

The two women began to dance. He watched as they made little jinking runs around one another, their arms held out from their bodies. When a slower ballad came on they looked at each other and laughed, and Teezy eased her body back into the fireside chair. His mother had then turned to James and offered him her outstretched arms, her eyes gaily dancing like the flames in the dark mouth of the grate. ‘Come on, dance with me,’ she had said. ‘Dance with your queen.’

⋆ ⋆ ⋆

‘Right, I'm off,’ His mother says.

They stand in Teezy's small scullery as if at a wake, unsure what to say or do.

‘You've things to do yourself, haven't you, Jimmy?’

‘Yeah.’

‘See you in a bit, then.’

‘Send my regards to the reprobate,’ Teezy says.

‘Did you tell her?’ his mum asks him.

‘No.’

‘I may be old but I'm not stupid, Ann,’ Teezy shouts after her.

He can remember the way her skin had slipped on to his like moss along a stone. He can remember her breath on his neck, the way she told him to put his sockless feet on her shoes. He remembers climbing on to them, and feeling his soles lie across the bridge of her feet. He remembers them moving together.

‘My strong man … my fierce, strong little man,’ she had said.

The song had finished and his mother asked quietly how his hives were; all right, he had said. They were still close together, his mother leaning down to meet the smile in his eyes.

‘If Conn was only here to see you …’ his auntie had suddenly said, her head nodding, the fire beating a crimson glow on the side of her face.

Suddenly his mother's eyes had clouded. She turned and ripped the LP from the turntable. A silence sat, fat and solid, in the air. He remembers inching his way back to his seat, its springs squealing as he sat.

James remembers turning the name quietly on his tongue, like a small fiery sweet, Conn … his father's name. A four-lettered bomb exploding in his heart. Conn … Conn … like a fist in his mind, Conn … Conn … Conn.

‘Don't ever mention his name again,’ his mother had said.

And with that she had retaken her seat, and filled her near-empty glass, the liquid spilling across its lip. The two women had sat in angry silence until his mother lifted the glass to her mouth.

He can remember sitting there, his small fists clenched, dried peels of calamine lotion falling on to the crotch of his pyjama bottoms, watching the two women glare at one another. He began to itch and scratch at his hives.

‘Don't,’ his mother had said.

He had stopped and held out his hands towards her, palm upwards, in protest, in defiance, sitting there, knowing that if a secret wore skin it would look something like his.

‘Do you not eat, son?’

‘Yeah … No … I'm fine, Teezy.’

‘You look like a pale streak of nothing. No harm to you …’

He sits alone with Teezy in her scullery. He can imagine his mother scurrying down the town, bustling past shoppers, on her way to meet the heathen Sully.

Teezy stands and gives him a twinkly smile. He turns her head away from her. He knows that look: he knows what's coming.

‘What about you, my boy?’

‘What about me?’

‘Are there any little ladies in your life that I should know about?’

‘No.’

‘That sounds a bit final, son.’

‘Teezy, please.’

‘Come on, son.’

‘What?’

‘You're so serious, son. Have a bit of fun. Find a nice young strip of a thing and have a bit of a time with her.’

‘Yuk.’

‘Yuk? What sort of a word is that? Your schooling needs to be shaped up, my boy. Yuk … Come on, son, lighten up those chops of yours.’ She leans down to him, her eyes full of mischief.

‘Teezy …’

‘You've a face on you would freeze milk and hell besides. Come on, let me fix you something and we'll have a chuckle together.’

‘I'm fine, Teezy.’

‘You're going to waste away, son, with that serious mug of yours, disappear before our very eyes.’

‘I think he's back to stay for good this time, Teezy.’

‘I know, son, I know … How about a nice boiled egg?’

Death from an Acute and Unrelenting Hunger

The fields are blackened from the blight. I can see some of my neighbours crawling across the soil scrabbling for one healthy potato. I feel sorry for them. I cannot remember the last time I ate, for in my dreams I have always been hungry. My mother died a few days ago, followed quickly by my aunt Teezy. They died in each other's arms. I didn't have the strength to bury them, and had to leave them where they fell.

Once I believed that God had given me the power to save everyone by teaching them how to eat stones and the fine dust that fell from the cracks of buildings, but no one would listen. Another time I believed that the clouds were edible and spent days building a flying machine from twigs and the trunk of a fallen tree, but I must have misheard God's instructions for it refused to fly.

Most of the time, though, I just sit on the headland that fronts my small village, watching the sea. Sometimes I think I can see my mother dancing in the waves.

It is late now and God is talking to me again. I like it when God speaks to me, I like the way it soothes my heart, and the way the world expands like a mouth being kissed.

I stand. My slender body sways like a leaf on a branch. I smile to myself as I realise suddenly that God has given me wings and that I am climbing to the roof of the world to join my mother, and that my hands are full of clouds and the icy sparks of stars. My flight doesn't last and before long the cold night sea is travelling towards me at speed. By then, though, it is too late to change my mind.

4. Outer Space

When he was younger he was obsessed with the pictures of the Apollo astronauts. He remembers the lonely slope of their shadows on the moon's lifeless surface and the blackness surrounding them, as if on every hand there was mystery. He remembers wondering if that was where his father had gone when he died – is that where everyone went? Did they melt into the darkness that held the earth and the other planets captive?

Sometimes he thought he could hear his father's cries for help, and he pictured him spiralling like a satellite in the outreaches of space, his body slowly blackening. He would wake and rush to his bedroom window, his eyes scouring the night sky, his heart yearning to join his father in the depths of the universe.

He had tried to tell his mother that he believed his father was lost far, far out in the cosmos. He had tried to tell her one morning, years before, as she had faced him across the breakfast table. He remembers the frustration of not being able to say the words, to push them from his lips. He remembers his mother scowling with impatience, sharply telling him to eat his breakfast and to stop the nonsense. Eventually he had stood, limbs quivering with frustration. Then he had yelled it, as if his life depended on it: ‘Daddy is with the astronauts! I heard him! I heard him crying …’

His mother had slowly placed her fork on the plate and stood, carefully pulling the creases free in her skirt. Then she had walked to where he was standing. She had clamped her hands beneath his armpits and lifted him up, then slammed him back into his seat. He had landed with a jolting shudder that banged his jaw shut. She had leaned very close into his face, and had wordlessly cautioned him, her eyes unblinkingly facing his.

It is the end of the second week of Sully's return. They are on Sully time: everything his mother says and does revolves around him. She is standing by the kitchen door. Her hair is mussed; a piece of toast hangs from her lips. Sully has just left, having stayed the night. He's only back and already they're playing Happy Families.

‘Sully wants to take you see Northern Ireland play.’

‘I don't like Northern Ireland,’ James says.

‘What's that supposed to mean? You're Irish, aren't you?’

‘That's what I mean.’

‘Oh, don't start that. Football's just football.’

‘No, it's not.’

‘he's making a real effort this time, Jimmy. Come on, meet him half-way.’

‘Why are you back with him?’

‘That's between him and me.’

‘No, it's not. I live here too … or had you forgotten?’

‘Don't be cheeky or – ’

‘Or what, Mum? Or what? You'll get Sully for me?’

‘Jesus.’

He slams the door on his way out and glares at Mrs McCracken as she stands in her doorway opposite theirs, her eyes lifting disapprovingly from the untouched pile of logs to meet his. ‘Is someone going to do something about those logs?’

But he ignores her and begins to walk towards the town.

‘Here, son, this is for you …’

He can remember looking up into Teezy's eyes as he took the photograph from her. He can remember the look on her face as if it was about to break.

‘That's your daddy.’

It was a small, dog-eared photograph of a man standing against a hill, squinting into the sunlight, right hand raised playfully to his face.

‘He died for Ireland … Sssh,’ she had said, as if the world was listening.

‘Sssh,’ he had replied, cooing it up into her face. ‘Sssh.’

‘Now, no more astronauts, no more stories. They only upset your mammy.’

‘Sssh.’

For days afterwards he had wandered around, whispering it within earshot of the grown-ups. ‘Sssh,’ he remembers saying, putting his small face close to his mother's. ‘Sssh.’

‘It's our secret. It's our private story,’ Teezy had said, as she had given him the photo. ‘Wasn't he a fine-looking man? As fine as Ireland herself.’

‘Sssh,’ he had said.

‘This is your father … He died for Ireland.’

He remembers how he had looked at the worn photograph, at the slender figure that grinned at him through the fallen years. Sometimes now he would bring it out from its hiding-place and quietly gaze at it, his eyes hunting its held landscape. He would hold the photo delicately as if it was made of silk. At other times he would quietly curse the man, damn him for leaving, hate him for his absence, his fingernails digging into the photo's edge so that they left crescent-shaped marks.

⋆ ⋆ ⋆

‘Watch where you're going, sunshine.’

‘Sorry.’ He looks up into the fuck-you face of Malachy O'Hare, the estate hard man.

‘IRA or Prod?’

‘What?’

‘IRA or Prod?’

James looks across at Malachy's troops, small, hard-faced boys. ‘For fuck's sake, IRA.’

‘Don't curse when you say it. Don't disrespect the flag.’

‘Sorry … IRA.’ He goes to slide past them, careful not to look any of them directly in the eye.

‘Hold on a minute, sunshine. Do us one of your deaths.’

‘What?’

‘Jimmy Lavery, the Death Machine. Do us one of your deaths.’

‘Give us a break.’

‘Do one … or else.’ He raises a large fist to the tip of James's nose.

‘OK.’

‘Good man yourself.’ Malachy's face breaks into a big, muggy smile. ‘What have you got for us today?’

James looks skywards, and after a moment he says, ‘Well, there's this astronaut … and he's lost his mother ship …’

‘An Irish astronaut?’ Malachy asks.

‘Yeah, an Irish astronaut.’

An Astronaut's Final Message

Time: 0900 hours

Location: Support Capsule

The Erin Galaxy

Date: 12 Dec 2157

Message Received From: Captain Conn Lavery.

Dear Ann and Little Jimmy,

By the time you receive this transmission I will be dead. As I write this I am slowly suffocating. For the last hour I have been using my spacesuits reserve tank of oxygen, but even that now has begun to fail. The mother ship is ablaze, I can see it beyond, through my small porthole window, and it looks like a devil's eye, hot and fiery. All my comrades are aboard her, good strong men, with only one love in their lives: Ireland. It is strange to think that I will never see either of you again, that I will never hold you close and feel the full warmth of your bodies.

I hope you both remember me fondly, as a true Irish spaceman. We fought hard, my son, harder than you can ever know. We repelled the alien hordes three times before their greater military strength began to tell. We all die, son, we all die, and we must be grateful for the time we have had together. It is strange to think that space will be my grave; the huge black belly of space will be a mausoleum for my bones. Look after your mammy, my son. Let no one come between her and my memory. I love you both dearly, more than you can know. I have decided to leave my capsule, the oxygen has gone, and the little I have left in my spacesuit I'm hoping will sustain me on my walk to meet the face of God. I'm stepping clear of the capsule now … Air is going quicker than I thought. I love you both. Look for a new star tonight in the sky.

Love for as long as there is any, Captain Conn Lavery.

End Of Transmission.

5. The Rehearsal

He is following Mr Shannon, scrambling behind him, trying to keep up with his long strides, down High Street and across the Mall. The streets are full of schoolchildren scurrying for buses and with shoppers flitting in and out of stores.

‘Keep up, Lavery, keep up. You're letting the side down, old boy.’

Shannon seems to glide along on his own current of air, swaying to avoid a pack of schoolgirls, tipping his head in greeting to people he knows. James collides with a small dog, its body contracting into yelps as his foot finds its paw. Shannon comes to a halt and looks back at the dog, hopping around on three legs, and at James scurrying after it.

‘Hit it a boot in the hoop, Lavery, and look lively. Tempus fugit. Good day, Mrs O'Rourke.’

Mrs O'Rourke stares at James and pushes him away as he tries to make amends with her dog. ‘Clear off, you hooligan.’

‘I'm sorry,’ he whimpers.

‘Piss off before I take a lump out of you. Good afternoon, Mr Shannon, you're looking well this fine day.’

‘One can but try, Mrs O'Rourke, one can but try.’

He watches as Shannon struts away from him, delicately sidestepping a pushchair, full of fruit and groceries.