Joseph O'Neill - The Breezes

‘Of course, madam,’ the man says. ‘But this is the express, you know. We’re not stopping anywhere.’

‘Thank you,’ she says, and closes her visible eye.

The man shakes his head and picks up his newspaper, and finally I’m free to look out through the window at the slowly reversing green fields where, in the distance, a smooth cluster of racehorses hovers up a slope.

The countryside. I’m out. Rockport is behind me.

At long last. At long bloody last.

It has been some week.

When I came to on Monday morning, the curtains bright as a cinema screen, I pulled the bedspread over my head and shut my eyes. Lying there half asleep, I fantasized for a marvellous moment that if I lay there long enough and let events take their course without me, a time would finally come when my situation would be well and truly superseded and when I might step out freely into a new world apparelled in fresh circumstances, the discarded past lying crumpled in a corner like a worn shirt.

But then I woke up properly. There was no warm back against which to press myself, no soft-cheeked buttocks and smooth neck. Angela had still not returned.

I eased myself down the bed ladder and drew aside the curtains. I swung open the window, letting in the noise of the cars and the day. It was the rush hour.

I telephoned Angela’s office. ‘Extension 274, please.’

I was put through. A man’s voice said, ‘Yes?’

‘Could I speak to Angela Flanagan, please?’

‘Hold on,’ the man said. Half a minute later, he said, ‘She doesn’t seem to be around at the moment. Can I take a message?’

‘What, you mean she’s not at work today?’

‘Who is this?’

‘It’s a personal call,’ I said.

‘Look, I’m afraid I don’t know where she is.’

I hesitated. ‘This is her boyfriend, John Breeze,’ I said. ‘It’s just that I’m worried about her whereabouts.’

‘Her boyfriend? Angela’s boyfriend?’ the man said.

‘That’s right,’ I said. I felt like a fourteen-year-old.

He said, ‘I’ll make a note that you rang. I’ll tell her to call you, OK?’

‘OK,’ I said.

But where could she be?

I took a shower and got dressed in day-old clothes and went to catch a bus home. The woman sitting in front of me was reading a newspaper, ROCKPORT FANS RUN RIOT, the headline read.

I looked away. The morning, like a footballer running out for the kick-off, was freshly kitted out in a deep blue sky striped by pure trails of clouds. The chestnut trees rocked easily beneath their newly heavyweight greenery and as usual the Rockport traffic moved fluently through clean roads and neat bicycle lanes. It all looked so pleasant and harmonious and according-to-plan. Things will turn out fine, I said to myself. Things will fall into place.

Five minutes later, I opened the front door of the flat.

It had been smashed up. The remains of crockery and glass lay on the floor, stains of red liquid spattered the walls, books and magazines were scattered everywhere, my prints had been wrecked and, judging from the heap of forks and knives by the door to the kitchen, the whole cutlery drawer had been hurled to the ground.

There was no sign of Steve or Rosie.

I fell into a chair. Don’t tell me we’ve been broken into. Please don’t tell me that.

The doorbell rasped, then rasped once more.

I got to my feet and looked out to see who it was. Two big men with crew-cut hair and casual clothing stood outside, shielding their eyes from the sun as they looked up and down at the house.

Who were these people?

They rang again, insistently.

I spoke through the intercom. ‘Who is it?’ I said. I heard an exchange of words. ‘Who is it?’ I repeated.

‘Mr Breeze, is it?’ a man said.

After a moment, I said, ‘Yes. Who is this?’

‘We’ve come from Mr Devonshire,’ the man said. ‘We’ve come for the chairs.’

The chairs. Shit.

Instinctively I decided to bluff, lie and stall. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘look, this isn’t a good time. Could you come back later? It’s just that I’ve got my hands full at the moment.’

‘We’ll only be a second, Mr Breeze.’ The voice was determined. ‘We’ll just be in and out.’

I rested my head against the wall, trying to think. Then I buzzed open the door. To hell with it.

The men came in. ‘Well,’ one of them said cheerfully, ‘where do we go?’ He stopped to stare at the state of the living-room. ‘That must have been some party,’ he quipped.

‘They’re downstairs,’ I heard myself saying. ‘I’ll show you.’

It was out of my hands. The men loaded the stools into their van while I stood around watching them. They slammed shut the rear doors of the van, white swinging doors like the doors of an ambulance. ‘Don’t worry,’ the talkative one said as they climbed into the cab and his friend started up the engine. ‘They’re safe as houses with us.’

I gave him a thin smile. As it happened, my last remaining chance was that the chairs were not safe as houses, that by some miracle the van would crash on the way to the gallery and the stools would be destroyed in the process.

I went back inside. Fuck it. I was glad to see the back of those chairs. So what if the exhibition did not take place? It didn’t matter, not when you compared it to everything else that was going on. Pa would understand. And let Devonshire sue me if he wanted to. It would be a barren exercise. I was a man of straw, with no assets to speak of, nothing upon which a judgement could be enforced.

Then I remembered. There was one asset that I did have: the flat. Pa had signed it over to me to avoid death duties. Officially, this place was mine.

I crumpled into an armchair. Not the flat. Please, not the flat, too.

And Angela, what about her?

I sat there, my limbs lifelessly dangling. Then I registered a stinging in my fingers: a cigarette, burned down to the bottom.

It was ten minutes before I was able to face things. I made an inspection of the flat. The sitting-room was the only room that had been touched and nothing appeared to be missing. So if it wasn’t a break-in, what had happened? I noticed that Rosie’s travelling bag was not in its usual place in the bathroom — which meant that she had gone off to work.

This wasn’t the work of robbers. This was down to my demented sister. For some crazy reason she had destroyed the place she normally slaved to keep so clean.

And where was Steve? It was ten-thirty in the morning: why wasn’t he in bed?

I felt a flicker of concern for the deadbeat. If Rosie had done this to the flat, God knew what she might have done to him.

Picking up a knife from the floor, I made myself toast with the one slice of stale bread left in the kitchen. I looked for some jam. No jam. Correction: there was jam, but it was in the living-room, at the foot of the far wall, lying in a sticky mass where the pot had burst. That bitch. That fucking bitch. I’d had enough of her crap. She was going to pay for this. The next time I saw her I’d …

I breathed deeply. I ate the buttered toast.

I decided to telephone my father at work. I wanted to know how he was after his awful weekend and how Paddy Browne’s report had gone. Most of all, I wanted to hear his voice.

‘Gene Breeze, please,’ I said.

‘What’s it in connection with?’ the receptionist asked. ‘Is this a customer complaint?’

I said, ‘No, this is John, his son.’

‘Ah, right. One moment, please.’

I was put through. But the extension number rang and rang without answer.

I hung up, rang back and explained.

‘Let me make enquiries,’ the receptionist said. Moments later, she said, ‘He’s not in at the moment, John. He’s at home.’