in your veins, Sean had said, pinching his sons’ small arms) went by on its solemn journey homeward, after a lifetime of exile. A lifetime of work.
Irish grief. Like their father before them, they have inherited the pain body of Ireland. Maybe he should lay off working with the Lament. Is ar mo chroí atá do chumha – on my heart is such sorrow. Maybe he shouldn’t be reading those drafts of Xavier’s work-in-progress, A Right Glorious Name - his historical novel on the Irish Land War, with all the derring–do of the land league, especially the ladies. Maybe that was reactivating the schtuff, as Siena calls it. The family schtuff.
Siena says it’s the childhood that has screwed them all up. Vianney, though, feels it’s older than that. Less personal. Genetic. Irish grief embedded now in their diasporic DNA, in the five damaged Ryan children. Aquinas, unsupervised, drowned. Xavier, in and out of sobriety and clean time. Siena, chaotic, no savings, no real career, hanging on to her PhD for the last seven years as an excuse. Only Loyola the human rights lawyer won’t admit to anything, any suffering, any pain, in personal or cultural pasts. But why then is his hair falling out, and why is he living with that terrible woman Claudia who refuses him any rights or freedoms? All of which must have been why Vianney had been so attracted to shining robust golden haired netball-thighed Hilary from the Shire. Where nothing from the past is ever recalled, except sporting finals.
Hilary pulls at his right foot hanging out over the bed. She has crept up on him. 'Come on, get up, Vi.'
'Vianney' he says, automatically, and kicks at her with the foot. He hates any corruption of his name. If he could have connected, it would have been a good strike.
'Come on!' she says, darting back in to slap his lower leg, and there’s a meanness too in her slap. ‘You know it’s no good to just lie there.’
Hilary’s version of shock treatment. Quick, beat it out of him. Maybe she thinks that resentment at her insensitivity will get him up. As if I do it to her, deliberately. It is not something I do to you, Hilary. It’s not all about you, my love.
Hilary doesn't understand the river; how wide and deep and dark and cold it is. She has no idea. She says, ‘You go on for weeks like a normal person and you say nothing about it, and then for no apparent reason you go down and away, and you are so bloody ill mannered with it.’
‘Depression is an illness, not bad manners on my part.’
‘If it’s an illness, then go and see a doctor.’
Maybe he will. He used to ring LifeLine on occasion as a teenager when the Lithgow wallpaper threatened to do him in. The uni has an employee assistance program with free counselling. It’s supposed to be about workplace issues, but that would be a start. And there is plenty of them, workplace issues. The whole workplace is an issue.
Or perhaps he will ask Xavier for the name of his guy, the one who helped get him off the turps. If he still is off it.
Oh god. Just thinking about asking for help was exhausting. It’s too hard. And it – the schtuff- it’s too big. They’ll just do cognitive behaviour bullshit. They won’t know about Eckhart Tolle and his pain body.
If Hilary ever leaves him, goes off to have test tube babies with a man who really wants them, at least there'll be no one to hide from any more. He will be free to stare at the walls for days and weeks, till they notice his absence at the office and come round to find the rotten smelling body. The drowned body. The pain body.
Chapter 4 - We are a dark people
‘Get in the car.’ Their father’s voice was urgent, a low growl, in the tone that meant he would brook no opposition. ‘Get in the car – damn you.’
A hot dark evening, shrill with the sounds of the bush. Cicadas ticking like clocks, the deep drumbeat of frogs hunkered down in the last damp patch in the rocky bed of the creek.
All around them the synaesthesia of the bush, the sound of heat. A land singing and humming with heat. Everything tinder dry. Breezes like a hot breath, wafting through the white barked gums. The world around them waiting, even calling for fire. Moths and other, darker winged insects flying around the car’s inside light. Their father’s strangely lit face – yellow down one side, one dark eye looming at them as he pushed them down the back seat, into hiding. ‘Get down you bastards’ he swore. “Don’t let yourselves be seen.’
The boys were a tangle of limbs in the car’s awkward back. Vianney had his right cheek and ear stuck painfully under Lolly’s arm, with Xavier behind, stuck somehow between his legs. Xavier was giggling from the tension. There was a cracking sound from their father’s hand, and Xavier went limp. Taking it very seriously now.
They heard their father get in the front seat. The car slumped underneath his weight, the door shut quietly at the same time as the yellow light went out. Silence, deadly, just the hard breathing of their father, and his muttering. ‘That woman.’ It was his name for their mother.
In time to come, pondering his father’s lost voice, Vianney wondered if any of it had ever been said with humour. A humour inaudible to young straining ears. ‘You are too hard on them,’ their mother sometimes protested. But Sean Ryan’s toughness was what they believed in. They had worshipped their father.
In later years Xavier and Vianney had often used the phrase amongst themselves when speaking of Kate. That woman. A guilty pleasure, a secret outburst of the sons, against her formidable powers. But Lolly, now under the thumb of Claudia, felt uncomfortable about it, and Hilary laughed and said the phrase made her think of Monica Lewinsky.
But the way his father had used the phrase that night, it was no joke. It was rage. Implacable.
With the brakes released, the old car started rolling quietly down the stony drive, away from the farmhouse. Then their father turned the ignition key and for once, as if it too was frightened of him, the car started up without protest. It rattled over the cattle grid and soon they were out on the metal road, bumping along. The boys’ curled bodies shook up and down in the back, seemingly half a beat behind the car’s own rhythms, like mis-matched dance partners. The tension in the car, the father’s fierce mood, his low angry muttering in Irish, kept even Xavier silent.
Finally they hit the tarsealed road, and the bone shattering rocking ceased. Now the car sped up, and bands of yellow light streaked through the car. They were on the old highway. To where?
They were travelling a long time, it seemed, before Vianney risked a look. He elbowed Lolly as he lifted himself up to peer out of the car’s left side window. Lolly gave him a fierce protesting look but kept his silence. The car was pouring through the night, the world outside all a blur. Roadside earthen banks flashed unrecognisably past. He didn’t know where they were.
The car lurched suddenly to the right, as Sean made a swift turn across the main road. Vianney crashed back down painfully and Xavier let out a yelp.
‘Shut up you cunt.’ Sean’s voice was vicious.
Vianney saw Lolly’s eyes widen at the evil word. Clearly it was not time yet to joke with their father.
Vianney let Lolly put his arms around him; it was some form of buffering against the wildly rocking car. Their father seemed to have driven onto another bone-shattering dirt road without once slowing down. Xavier was beginning to whimper now; Vianney tried to reach him to bring him into their crooked embrace.
It was all a blur
