Colum McCann - Songdogs

* * *

From outside the door I could hear the bath running and the old man fumbling with his clothes. There was a loud bash against one of the cupboard doors and I pulled at the handle of the door to open it. It was locked tight. ‘It’s all right,’ he said from inside, ‘I’m only taking off me shoes.’

* * *

Mrs O’Leary felt her way to the end of the counter to pull pints for the firemen. She had set up an empty Guinness keg for me to sit on, gunmetal grey, old beer gone sticky around the rim. The men in the bar were arranged in a stonehenge of themselves, chatting darkly and seriously, one of them coming up from the ring to collect the row of pints. They wiped their hands across their brows, whispering: ‘Bychrist, I’m ready for a pint. That’d put a thirst on a Bedouin.’

I sat on the keg and made a wigwam out of toothpicks, gazed at the names of All-Star hurley players on wall posters.

Mam was upstairs in a dusty and crucifixed room, guided there by Mrs O’Leary, a look of curious defiance on her face as she went up the stairs. Every now and then Mrs O’Leary went up to check on her, whispering prayers as she went, following the chiselled-out track that she’d made in the wall. I sneaked in behind the counter and, with shaking hands, secretly poured myself some beer in a 7-Up bottle, watched the men in their circle. They glanced furtively over their shoulders at me, one of them saying: ‘It’s all right now, lad, it’ll all be grand in the morning.’ I held the bottle to my lips — I wanted to be a fireman, I wanted to be outside all of this, looking in at myself, conjuring up mutterings and sympathies and inanities.

‘Time for bed for you too, young man,’ said Mrs O’Leary, coming down and placing a hand on my shoulder. ‘But don’t be disturbing your Mam.’

‘I don’t want to go to bed.’

‘Come on, now, you’ll be okay.’

I looked around at the row of bottles along the counter, sitting there like capstans on a pier, and I reached for a bottle of whiskey, took it by the narrow neck, hid it quickly behind my back and stuffed it into my waistband, untucked my shirt over it. The bottle was cold against my skin. I took a couple of steps around Mrs O’Leary and she said: ‘Don’t do that.’

‘What?’

‘Leave the bottle there.’

‘What bottle?’

‘Come on, now, Conor.’

‘I don’t have any bottle!’

‘Ah, now.’

The firemen had turned around, cigar smoke above them.

‘I don’t have any fucken bottle!’

‘Give it to me.’

‘It’s only 7-Up.’

‘Sure, you’re just a bit upset. It was a bad accident.’

‘It wasn’t an accident.’

‘Ah, now, of course it was.’

I brushed past her and my shoulder hit against her and she stumbled back a little, reached out and steadied herself against the counter. A fireman moved towards me with his arms outstretched. He took the bottle from the back of my trousers, gently, and I was all of a sudden a whirlwind of arms, my fist thumped into his crotch, he doubled over, and I was running for the door when my arms were pinned back by another hefty fireman and tears leaped from me. Mrs O’Leary came across, the rattle of her rosary beads at her neck, saying, ‘It’s been a long night, we’ll tuck you in.’

She pursed her lips, raised her head, told the firemen that it was time to leave, kept her hand on my shoulder as she came behind me up the stairs. The door was slightly ajar, and I saw Mam sitting upright in bed, spectral, with extra jumpers over her nightdress and she was looking in a little mirror and putting make-up on her face. I couldn’t believe it. I had thought maybe she’d still be rocking, but there was a small brown circular pad in her hand and she dabbed it on her face precisely, as if with love for what she might have come to terms with in the mirror. ‘Say goodnight,’ said Mrs O’Leary, and I did, from the doorway. Mam looked up and smiled at me, said she was sorry for all the ruckus, she’d make it up to me the next day, maybe we’d take a trip together. Her voice was perfectly even.

‘Goodnight, m’ijo. ’

I said nothing.

Mrs O’Leary leaned across me: ‘You can sleep in my bed.’

‘I don’t want to sleep in your bed.’

‘Go on, now, give your Mam some rest.’

Her room was curiously bright and colourful, some paintings on the wall, Saint Lucia glaring down from a wooden frame, beside it a wallhanging with peacocks in strut. Mrs O’Leary knelt down and said some prayers by my bed — ‘There are four corners to my bed, there are four angels there lie spread, one at my head, two at my feet, one at my heart my soul to keep’ — and all at once I felt vacuumed and angry and repeated them after her, a litany of uselessness — even then, at twelve years old, I thought how useless it was, that praying. The exposed hands of a clock moved and I pretended to be asleep as she pulled the sheets around me, folded them back. ‘Be a good lad, now.’ She leaned down and kissed the top of my head, tiptoed from the room. I didn’t want to be tucked in. I ripped the sheets out from under the mattress, made a puddle of them down at my feet. Later I could hear her downstairs in the pub saying: ‘Right now, gentlemen, I think it’s time, don’t you, I’ve said it’s time a million times, they need their rest, have yez no homes to go to at all?’

I got up and looked out the window — cars were leaving the pub, a horn going like the cry of a sick curlew, the fire-engine lights not twirling anymore — and suddenly voices came from down the landing, and I jumped back into bed.

‘Are you okay, Juanita?’

‘I am fine.’

‘Shall I stay here with you?’

‘I am okay, Alice, I am okay.’

‘I’ll stay with the boy.’

‘Thank you, Alice.’

‘Are ya sure?’

‘I am sure, gracias. ’

And then the shuffle along the landing, and the knob turning and Mrs O’Leary coming to bend over me, moving to a chair that she had by the window, kicking off her shoes, breathing out a sigh in the cold, bringing a coat out of her wardrobe, slowly closing the buttons, a twist of a bottle and a small slurp, settling down into the flesh of herself, sighing deeply again before I fell asleep. When I woke up in the morning, Mam was gone and there was a make-up kit sitting on the bed where she had been, everything silent outside, a small mirror catching the light.

* * *

The bathroom lock clicked open and he stuck his head around the door, said: ‘Come on in, for fucksake, before I freeze me jewels off.’

He still had his shirt on, but his shoes and socks and trousers were off. He had put on his swimming togs, the old red ones that he used to swim and prance around in on the beach. Pulled the string tight until the material valley-rippled around his waist, but even then they were miles too big. I was almost afraid to think of him rubbing the sponge against himself. See him turn to dust. Maybe crumple in his own fingers. His hands were shaking when he fumbled with the bottom buttons on the shirt. Strange how embarrassed he was by the nakedness, even with the togs on, using the one good hand to cover himself.

I went to put my arm under his shoulder but he brushed me away, slowly steered himself towards the bath, tested the water with his toes. ‘The water’s too fucken hot,’ he said. ‘I can’t even remember how to make a bath!’ But I tested it with my fingers before he got in and it was simply lukewarm. I was sure he had lost some sense of feeling. The way his whole body gently shook. He went clawing for the soap after it fell in under his left leg. I was going to reach in and get it but he just shook his head. ‘Go on, now, I’m not a fucken invalid, I told ya a million times.’ Left the soap disintegrating away beneath his leg.