Joseph O'Neill - The Breezes

I saw him waiting for a reaction. ‘This is great,’ I said. ‘But do you really want to be reinstated? Don’t you just want to take the money and run?’

‘No,’ Pa said emphatically. ‘I’m not interested in the money; I’m interested in my job.’

Hiding my doubt, I said nothing to this.

‘You wait and see,’ he said. ‘I’m going to make them take me back.’

I changed the subject. ‘No sign of the dog, I suppose?’ I said.

‘Nope,’ Pa said, checking the sliding door he had fixed. ‘But she’ll be back. She knows her way home. You can drop a dog a hundred miles away and still it’ll make it back.’ He pushed at the sliding door and bent at the knees. ‘Don’t you worry about Trusty, she’ll be fine.’ He caught my eye and slowly straightened, groaning cheerfully. ‘I tell you what. If you’re concerned about it, why don’t the two of us go down to the dogs’ home tomorrow, to see if she’s turned up there? OK? Meet me here at ten.’

‘OK,’ I said.

‘You’re looking a bit down in the mouth,’ Pa said. ‘Is everything all right?’

‘Everything’s fine,’ I said. ‘I’m just a little …’ I shrugged.

‘What’s the matter? Is it Rosie? Is something wrong at home?’

I shook my head. ‘Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s fine.’

‘Are you sure? Johnny?’

‘Sure I’m sure,’ I said, laughing. ‘I’m just tired, that’s all.’

‘Just as long as you’re not worrying about me,’ Pa said, as he resumed his work on the door. ‘You just think about yourself. At your stage of life you’ve got to look out for number one. Concentrate on your chairs. You finished them yet?’ I nodded without enthusiasm. ‘That’s great,’ my father said. ‘Did you know that I’ve got about twenty of the guys coming to the exhibition? Now that half of them have been laid off, they won’t have any excuse not to come. And with their golden handshakes, they may even be able to buy something. No cloud without a silver lining, eh, Johnny?’

I could just see it: twenty awkward, brown-suited ex-middle-managers turning up at Devonshire’s with my father at their head, all searching for a nonexistent exhibition. ‘I’ve got to go,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘Why don’t you come around tonight for a bite to eat?’ Pa said. ‘Bring Rosie, too. She can bring Steve if she wants. I’ll cook some steaks.’

‘I don’t think I can, Pa,’ I said untruthfully. ‘I’m seeing Angela.’

‘Well, tell her to come, too. She’s always welcome, you know that. Besides, I haven’t seen her for ages. How is she?’

I said, Good. Pa said, ‘I’ll leave it up to you. If you two want to come by, come by. If not, that’s fine too.’

I did not go straight back to the flat. It was a hot day and I had nothing to do, so I decided instead to stroll around the neighbourhood in case there was any sign of Trusty. I did not share Pa’s faith in her homing instinct. I knew that dog. She didn’t know her ass from her elbow.

So I walked around the blocks that embodied the Rockportian dream of order, an undilapidated world of immaculate gardens, freshly painted frontages, upkeep and more upkeep, and kept a look-out. It was clear, from posters newly displayed on the windows of houses, that I was not the only one being vigilant. The posters, depicting a large eye peeled open against an orange backdrop, were the sign of the neighbourhood watch scheme and, judging by the number of eyes that stared unblinkingly down on the street, the whole community was on red alert, as though wild beasts and not harmless pets roamed abroad and these flawless, peaceful streets were sinister as jungles.

There was no sign of Trusty anywhere, of those black and brown ears dangling in front of the sturdy, stumpy little body with the raised white-tipped tail, whippy as a car aerial, the sad, red-rimmed, sagging eyes, the neatly tailored rows of nipples. I tried the gardens, I tried the streets, I tried the field where she had been jumped on that first time by that police dog and where I had played my first games of football. There were still youngsters out on that grass today, still using jerseys as goalposts and still arguing furiously, as I had at their age, about the height of the nonexistent crossbar which connected the nonexistent uprights.

For no apparent reason, the train has stopped in some cutting in the middle of nowhere. All that is visible is a steep, grassy upslope topped by the blue slat of the sky.

The old lady says, ‘We’re not there already, are we?’

‘No, madam, we’re not,’ the man says. ‘The non-stop express,’ he says, ‘has stopped.’ He stands up, opens the window and fruitlessly cranes his head outside. ‘The very least they could do is tell us what the problem is. But of course they don’t. They just leave us here to rot in ignorance in their stinking carriages. I mean, just look at the state of this seat, look at all this dirt. When was the last time they washed these things?’

The carriage door opens. It’s the conductor.

My fellow traveller does not miss his chance. ‘Excuse me,’ he says loudly, ‘what’s the reason for this delay? How long are we going to be sitting here for?’

The conductor shrugs. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘We’ve got a red light, that’s all I can tell you. It could be anything.’ He takes my ticket, a weekend return to Waterville, and stamps it.

‘Well, why don’t you find out? Or is that asking too much?’

The conductor looks the man in the eye. ‘Listen, pal, I’ve told you what I know, all right? There’s going to be an announcement soon, OK?’ He turns and walks away.

I get up before the man can speak to me again and leave for the smoking compartment. I light a cigarette, blowing the smoke through a window.

When I got back to the trashed flat from Pa’s on Monday afternoon, the answering machine was waiting for me with five red winks, one wink for every message. The first message was from Steve. ‘Uh, hello, it’s me. I’m down at the police station. I’ll be here for a bit yet. I …’ Steve stopped talking evidently because he was being spoken to. ‘OK,’ I heard him say. Then he said, ‘Hello? I—’ and was cut off. He had run out of coins. Typical. He couldn’t even make a telephone call without screwing up.

Then I thought, Police station? Steve had been arrested ?

I became aware that Simon Devonshire’s voice was speaking. ‘John, I’m ringing about the chairs, which I received this afternoon. I think we’ve got a problem. Could you get back to me straight away?’ The next message was his, too, as was the next. ‘John, get back to me on this, urgently,’ Devonshire repeated abruptly. ‘I mean it.’

The last message was from Angela. ‘John, this is me. Sorry about last night, I couldn’t … I’ll explain later.’ She paused, allowing in background noise; she was ringing from a callbox. ‘We need to talk.’ Again there was a commotion. ‘I’ll ring you. Bye.’

For a second I felt a strong relief: she was fine, thank God. Then there was anxiety. Why had she sounded so shifty? Since when did we need to talk?

I called her at work. This time I got through.

‘Where the hell have you been?’

‘I’ve been working, Johnny. It’s been awful.’

‘Well, why didn’t you call me? I waited for you all of last night.’

‘I couldn’t,’ Angela said. ‘I was in a meeting the whole time. I’m sorry, Johnny’

I said flatly, ‘I don’t understand it, Angela. I don’t understand why you couldn’t make one simple call. It just doesn’t make sense.’ I waited for her to respond. She didn’t. I said, ‘What the hell is this job, anyway, that you’re working on it for the whole of a Sunday night?’