Joseph O'Neill - The Breezes

It could only be that this ability to recuperate and rally was a product of Pa’s faithfulness. Pa is the most faithful person I know. There is no thing or person which he does not believe in. God and the life hereafter, the future well-being of his children, the success of his football team, the loyalty of his dog, the reliability of Whelan, the potential of Steve, the value of employment, the upturn in the housing market: come what may, Pa has been absolutely trusting and hopeful in respect of all of these glassy entities. No matter how often and violently they shatter on the floor and how irreparable their fragmentation, by a mystery of fidelity the smithereens are always reconstituted in Pa’s mind. But where does this credulous optimism come from? Is it a necessary biological witlessness, a natural reality-blocker secreted by some gland in the brain? Or does it arrive from some occult, immaterial source?

I enjoyed my father’s crazy hopefulness while it lasted, because it would, of course, be followed by a crazy nervous fearfulness that his hopes would be dashed, and I knew that before long the confidence would drain from him and he would be transformed into a wreck barely able to remain in the same room as the televised football match, that he would stand rooted at the doorway to the kitchen, a man appalled and mesmerized by a scene of horror, half watching the action through the fingers clasping his white face as the opposition advanced on the United goal like zombies from a nightmare …

I pulled up in front of the house. Although we were in a hurry, Pa remained seated for a moment and breathed, as he often does when he arrives at his front door, Home sweet home. I think that he can be forgiven this sentimentalism. That building — a detached three-storeyed suburban house with a garden, green-railed balconies at the front and back, a pear tree, two lilac trees, double garage, clambering roses and four bedrooms — has been the asylum of the Breezes for almost twenty years.

We walked up the path to the front door, which I unlocked and pushed open. Then we saw it: a pile of shit on the floor at the bottom of the staircase. We looked at each other: Trusty.

I said heavily, ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll fix it. You go on upstairs and have your bath.’

Before I went to fetch the tissues, scrubber and carpet shampoo, I went to the sitting-room to switch on the television. I did not want to risk missing a minute of the game. I picked up the remote control, aimed it at the corner of the room, and punched the button.

Nothing happened. The television was not there. I realized instantly, even before I noticed that the curtains were billowing in the broken-open french windows, that there had been a burglary. I wiped my face with my hand. Then I called upstairs. ‘Pa, can you come down?’

‘What?’ he asked nervously as he descended the stairs in his socks and track suit. ‘What’s the matter?’

I said nothing. I just led him into the living-room.

‘What’s happened?’ Pa said. ‘Where’s the TV? Where’s the CD?’ He turned around on the spot. ‘But that’s impossible,’ he said. ‘There’s a safety catch on those windows. Whelan put it there himself. And there’s an alarm — why isn’t the alarm ringing?’

He walked over to the french windows and tried to drag them shut, but the hinges had been broken. The draught kept pouring through and the living-room fluttered like a field. ‘I just don’t understand this,’ Pa said. ‘What about Trusty? How could she let this happen? Where is she, anyway?’

There was a silence as we stood there trying to take things in.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I guess we can forget about watching the game.’

Pa was not listening. He was moving his palm over the vacant mantelpiece in a slow caress. He raised his hand to his face and blankly regarded his powdery fingertips. The photographs. The one-and-only, silver-framed family photographs had been removed. The famous honeymoon picture; the last remaining picture of my father’s mother, a young woman in the 1920s leaning confidently against a car upon which the photographer, his head under the hood of his camera, has cast his shadow; long-haired Rosie at her first communion; me, a ten-year-old in my Rovers kit, drinking juice during the half-time break with my team-mates; and several others that I can’t bring back. Holiday snapshots, most of them, nothing special when they were up there. The usual lucky moments captured in the usual way.

Pa sat down wordlessly. Upstairs, the falling bathwater thundered against enamel.

I went up and turned off the taps. When I returned downstairs, he was still sitting, looking dumbly ahead of him. ‘Pa,’ I said. I touched him on the shoulder. ‘Your bath’s ready.’

He got to his feet. He slowly walked up the stairs. He went into his bedroom and closed the door behind him.

I got on to the telephone and rang the police.

‘I suppose we’d better send somebody over,’ the switchboard operator said. ‘We’ll have someone there within half an hour.’

‘Should I touch anything?’ I said.

The officer sighed. ‘Look, if you want us to carry out a forensic examination and the rest of it, then I suppose you should leave things as they are. But frankly, Mr Breeze …’

‘I understand,’ I said.

‘I mean, there are so many break-ins these days,’ he said apologetically. ‘Besides, you don’t really want us camped in your house for hours, do you?’

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘Thanks,’ I said.

The first thing to do was clear up Trusty’s mess. But where was Trusty? Outside, most probably, looking for some action. Trusty was on heat, and although she is only two years old, when she is on heat, she’s hot. If you even half open a window or a door she will be through it like a shot, frenzied by her lust. There are many evenings which Pa and I have spent combing the neighbourhood gardens where that dog engages in her trysts, whistling and calling her name in the moonlight: Trusty! Trusty! And when we do finally spy her, she snarls furiously and makes another dash for it through the hedges. The scenario of Trusty’s disappearance was therefore obvious: instead of recognizing the intruder for the enemy he was, she had welcomed him as a rescuer and had bolted through the french windows he had cracked open. So much for the BEWARE OF THE DOG sign which Pa had posted at the front and back of the house.

I have my theory as to why Trusty has turned out this way. At the time of her very first period in heat, Pa and I took her for a walk in the field near the house. Trusty was still young and innocent and had barely learned to walk without treading on her long ears. So there she was, hopping over the grassy earth with her nose to the ground, eagerly inhaling the novel smells, when a large muscular animal, an Alsatian, ran up to her and fucked her without hesitation. Then it ran off.

We had all been helpless — Pa, Trusty and I. Pa had a go at pulling off the Alsatian by the collar, I shouted and waved and threw sticks, Trusty wriggled and fought. But the police dog stuck to its guns and we were forced to watch as Trusty, a dazed look in her beseeching, unconsenting brown eyes, was raped by a beast twice her size. I think that this shocking experience, which should have turned Trusty off sex altogether, probably had the opposite effect. I think that it turned her into the libidinist that she is.

Once I had tidied the living-room there was nothing for it but to clean up in the hallway. I retrieved the necessary equipment from the broom cupboard and approached the pile of excrement, which for some reason looked odd. I scraped it up quickly, leaving only a faint stain on the floor. Just as I was getting out the carpet shampoo, the door rang: the cops.