I asked. ‘Have you a Mrs Phyllis Brogan here?’
He checked his list, then scrutinized me. ‘You’re not a journalist?’
‘No.’
‘Family?’
‘An old acquaintance.’
‘Second floor, Saint Martha’s ward.’
I cursed myself, having wanted to change my bet to Saint Martha’s, but the first rule in any gambling system was never to switch once a choice was made. A familiar stab of self-disgust swamped me, though it was only a wager in my mind. For two years I had managed to avoid placing a bet, except for the dozens of imaginary ones that I tortured myself with daily.
‘Do you get many journalists?’ I enquired.
‘Just one from a tabloid and some bogman who became aggressive. Her daughter-in-law asked us to keep a check. It’s distressing, in the woman’s condition.’
I noted how Miriam had made the arrangements and not Sarah-Jane. The porter was directing me towards the lift.
‘I’m just waiting for my brother,’ I lied. ‘He’s getting flowers. We said we’d go up together.’
It was the first excuse to enter my head. He nodded towards the sofas. It felt strange to be under the same roof as Phyllis, but I needed to ensure that she was out of the way and hadn’t moved back home. I picked up an Evening Herald somebody had left on the sofa. Romanian Choir Hoax, the headline read. Organizers of a choral festival in Westport were left red-faced today after the thirty-five-strong Romanian choir they invited into Ireland turned out to be bogus. While a two-hundred-strong audience waited in Westport church, the alleged singers took taxis from the airport to join the queue of illegal immigrants seeking asylum outside the Department of Foreign Affairs. I pretended to read on, awaiting a chance to slip away when the porter left his desk.
It was a more comfortable wait than others I had known involving Phyllis. The eternity of that evening I spent as a child soaked in urine beneath my bed came back to me. Afraid to venture out, even after Phyllis went sobbing downstairs, with Cormac like a dog behind her. Teatime came and the playing children were called in, their skipping ropes stilled and the silence unbroken by the thud of a ball. Afterwards nobody ran back out as usual, still clutching their bread and jam. It felt like the whole street was awaiting the judgement of my father’s car.
Finally he arrived home. The car engine was turned off and the front door opened. I expected screaming from Phyllis, but it was so quiet that I prayed she had left. Then my father ascended the stairs, his polished shoes stopping short of the pool of urine. He sat on the camp-bed so that all I could see were his suit trousers.
‘Come out.’
‘I’m scared.’
‘I’m not going to hit you.’
I clambered stiffly out, my clothes and hair stinking of piss. ‘I want my wallpaper back,’ I said. ‘I’ve always had it.’
‘You’ll speak when I tell you to. Your mother says you threw wee over her.’
‘She’s not my mother.’
The slap came from nowhere. I didn’t cry out or even lift a hand to my cheek.
‘If she doesn’t become your mother then it will be your choice. This isn’t easy for any of us. Since she arrived you’ve done nothing but cause trouble. I’ll not come home to shouting matches. This is my wife you’re insulting. She doesn’t have to keep you. Did you think of that? When I was growing up I never saw my older half-sister. She was farmed out back to her mother’s people up the Ox Mountains when Daddy’s first wife died. That was the way back then. My own mother had enough to be doing looking after her own children without raising somebody else’s leavings. Few women would take on the task of raising a brat like you. Because that’s what you’ve become. You understand? If you don’t want a mother then try a few nights without one. Go on, take those fecking blankets off the precious bed that you’re so fond of. This is a family house again and you can roost in the outhouse until you decide to become one of us.’
Even when he repeated the instructions they still didn’t register. My father had to bundle the blankets up into my arms before I started moving. I could hardly see where I was going. The stairs seemed endlessly steep in my terror of tripping. The hallway was empty. In the kitchen Cormac sat quietly. There was no sign of Phyllis. Eighteen steps brought me to the door of the outhouse. My father walked behind me, then suddenly his footsteps weren’t there. I undid the bolt, then looked back. He had retreated to watch from the kitchen doorway, framed by the light. I couldn’t comprehend his expression. A blur ofblue cloth appeared behind him. Phyllis hung back, observing us. He closed the door, leaving me in the gloom.
I turned the light on in the outhouse and looked around. Anything of value had been removed to the box-room after the break-in some months before. The place had become a repository for obsolete items like the two rusty filing cabinets – one still locked and the other containing scraps of old building plans, a buckled ruler and a compass. Among the old copies of the Meath Chronicle in the bottom drawer I found a memorial card for my mother, her face cut from a photo on Laytown beach. One pane of glass in the wall was cracked. The other had been broken in the break-in and was replaced by chicken wire to keep cats out. The darkness frightened me, yet I turned the light out again, wanting nobody on the street to know I was there.
Casey’s kitchen window looked bright and inviting. The back of our own house was in darkness, but I knew The Fugitive was on television in the front-room, with Richard Kimble chasing the one-armed man. Cormac would be lying there on the hearthrug, savouring every moment of my favourite programme.
I listened to the beat of a tack hammer from the lean-to with a corrugated roof, built against the back wall of Casey’s house. It was answered by other tappings from other back gardens, like a secret code. The official knock-off time marked the start of real work for most of our neighbours who worked in the town’s furniture factories. They rushed their dinners so they could spend each evening working on nixers, producing chairs and coffee tables, bookcases or hybrid furniture invented by themselves. Sawdust forever blew across the gardens, with their tapping eventually dying out until only one distant hammer would be left like a ghost in the dark.
Hanlon’s cat arched her back as she jumped onto our wall, then sprang down. I miaowed softly but she stalked past. A late bird called somewhere and another answered. The back door opened. My father appeared with a tray. I hunched against the wall. He entered and stood in the dark, not wanting to put the light on either.
‘Bread and cheese,’ he said. ‘And you’re lucky to get it.’
‘When can I come in?’
‘Not tonight.’
‘Has he got my bed?’
‘He has a name. My wife decides who sleeps where from now on.’ He put down the tray and stood over me. ‘Don’t make me have to choose, Brendan. If you do you’ll lose.’
‘I hate her. I want them to go.’
‘She’s going nowhere, Brendan. I’ll make this family work if it kills me. A man needs a wife. I can’t mind you alone. You understand?’
I didn’t reply and he didn’t
