each of us in turn to different types of disbelief and frustration because
have you seen the head on him
the beard and the hair
that Methuselah look he’s cultivating
is it Methuselah or Mad Max
you can hardly see his face now when he comes on screen, just two eyes stuck in a bush
he reminds me of your father with that hair
Jesus, don’t go saying that
I don’t think he’s shaved since he crossed the equator
it’s more scarecrow than Old Testament prophet, if that’s what he’s going for
he say’s it’s hard work, that whole Waltzing Matilda thing, no time for personal grooming or
hard work my arse, the only photos he’s posted are of himself and the lads around a campfire in a woollen hat, skulling cans of Four X so
he had to go the other side of the world to do that and
but I think he’s moving on to some other job shortly, they’ve picked all the fruit in the greater Brisbane area and now they’re thinking of doing some time on a dairy farm and
what does he know about dairy farming when
as ever, when Darragh was the subject we fell easily to our separate roles – Agnes, the contentious older sister who looked on his antics with a mixture of admiration and jealousy, Mairead, the doting mother who saw something to be proud of in the blithe way he had set aside his studies to take to the road and myself, the father whose patience was sorely tested and who found himself in a constant state of grating irritation with him – a topic of conversation enlivening and productive of so many different themes and moods that to be reminded
later, as we drove home, by Mairead of how completely overthrown I had been earlier in the evening reduced me instantly to a shamed helplessness which she probed in that way of hers, warning me there may have been every chance I had reacted more aggressively than I thought so that it was now advisable that I should bethink myself and come to a clearer assessment of what had happened because
you were frightened
how do mean
you were, I was worried you might lash out at someone
when have I ever lashed out at anyone
I know, that’s what worried me
Mairead said, with the darkness passing in a wet glare on the windscreen as we made our way along the narrow secondary roads connecting the sleepy villages of our homeward journey, me in the passenger seat, unused to someone else behind the wheel of my own car, so finding it doubly hard to cope with Mairead’s questions but eventually admitting
yes I was
hoping that the subject would be buried quickly once and for all
I was frightened, both for me and for her, are you saying I overreacted
no, but I was surprised you reacted as you did – what was it exactly that got you so upset
there was blood
yes, it’s different to oils, a big swerve away from her previous work, but I still find it odd that you could be so shocked by it
I would have thought it would be shocking not to be shocked by it – when did we become so blasé about such things – and she was so poorly as a child
she wasn’t poorly, she was a bit anemic, low in iron so she had to take a supplement which stained her teeth – did you notice how she had them polished tonight, it gave her that shine –
I wasn’t looking at her teeth – all that blood – I had an image of her sitting on the side of a bed with a syringe in her arm, that’s the picture that came to me
for god’s sake Marcus, you’ve no worries about her
I’m her father, it’s my job to worry, do you know how she harvested it
harvested it – you’d swear we were talking about one of her organs
you have a better word
no, but if she said she was careful then I believe her – look, you need have no worries about a woman who wears a coat like that, they are not likely to put themselves in harm’s way
that’s nonsense
no it’s not, so now
I worried that some new sensitivity to shock and fear had opened up in me, some defect or weakness that might expose me to some unanticipated shame with which I would have no ability to cope, something that would have to be met with definite refutation if the grinding anguish which now churned inside me were to be prevented from growing into something more corrosive and
not to worry, Mairead continued, it was only blood, it could have been a lot worse
how could it have been worse
you could have walked into the gallery and found her standing naked
why would she be naked
oh you know, some of these performance artists are pretty out there, she could have been cuddling a pig
a pig
yes, or naked and peeing into a
ok Mairead, I get the picture
I groaned as she
drove on through the wet night, passing through those small towns and villages which slept with their empty streets under a sodium shroud, moving on into the narrow bog roads that were unlit but that had a precarious sense of being raised over the sea of heather and scutch grass stretching out on both sides, driving on through the ragged moonlight in which we seemed to be the only car on the road, Mairead taking it easy because
I’ve never driven these roads at night
she said, her gaze focused as she kept a steady speed into the bends and sudden turns which
you never realise how narrow they are till you have to drive them at night, so narrow and twisty
there’s no rush, just take your time
I thought you engineers would have straightened all these roads during the boom years
we were told we had better things for doing with our money – most of the boom money went into bypassing or linking major urban centres – there wasn’t a whole lot spent on bog roads, certainly not a few miles of blue road like this
blue road
yes
what does blue road mean
blue road means that it is not green road
blue
