Joseph O'Neill - The Breezes

‘There are plenty of jobs here which you could do in your sleep,’ I said. ‘With your experience— ’

‘Stop fooling around, John,’ Pa said, his voice half muffled. ‘I’m not a baby. I don’t need mollycoddling.’

‘I’m not mollycoddling anybody,’ I said. ‘I’m serious. This is a big opportunity for you to do all those things which you’ve always been interested in.’

‘I’m fifty-six years old. It’s finished. It’s the end of the road.’ He pulled the bedspread over his cheek.

‘What are you talking about?’ I said. ‘You’ve got a lot to offer. Why don’t you join one of those executive job clubs? Or sign up with a head-hunter?’

Pa suddenly twisted around and looked directly at me. ‘Head-hunter? Where do you think we are, Borneo?’ He laughed sourly. ‘You look for a job, if you want to,’ he said, falling back on to the mattress. ‘As a matter of fact, it’s about time you did. I’ve given it some thought. The days of subsidizing your activities are over. The money simply isn’t there any more.’ He rolled further over, showing more of his back to me. ‘You’re on your own now, Johnny. I’m through with working my guts out just so that you and your sister can live for free. You’re going to have to stop feeling sorry for yourself and go to work like everybody else.’

‘I know that,’ I said.

He continued as though he hadn’t heard me. ‘You sit there moping around all day waiting for I don’t know what, inspiration, as though some angel is going to come down and make those chairs for you. Doing nothing, that’s what it comes down to. Meanwhile, I’m bankrolling you.’

‘I told you,’ I said. ‘I know, and I’m going to look for work. I’m going to pack in the chairs. There’s no need for you to pay anything.’

‘Oh, no? What about the flat? Who’s going to pay for that? You think I’ve forgotten that you’re supposed to be paying rent for that?’

I said nothing.

‘Johnny, all I’m saying is, time’s up. Welcome to the real world.’

‘OK, OK,’ I said irritably, rising from the bed. ‘And what about you? What are you going to do?’

‘I’ve finished with the whole racket. The whole thing can go on without me.’

‘For God’s sake, Pa,’ I said.

‘For God’s sake?’ He hurled back the bedcover and sprang out of bed in his underwear, the straps of his vest loose on his shoulders. ‘What do you mean, for God’s sake?’ He pointed furiously at the ceiling. ‘You think He’s interested in any of this? You think He gives one single damn?’

Suddenly self-conscious, he flattened his hair with his hand and pulled up a vest strap.

‘I’ve got to go,’ I said, as he started to speak.

I went on my own to a bar by the quays and drank beer and angrily and fearfully thought about Angela, trying, as one drink followed another, to think of a way through all that had happened, to conceive of a turn of events by which the present mess would be left behind and she and I would emerge together, in a different and hopeful place, united. I couldn’t.

I also thought about my father. His problem was simple. He was suffering from overexposure to truth.

I thought, Join the club, Pa.

I was drunk by the time I got home. Rosie and Steve were in bed. I walked through the wreckage of the sitting-room to switch on the television; on top of it was a large manila envelope franked by the Devonshire Gallery. I ripped it open. A glossy brochure fell out.

It was entitled ‘THE FALLEN — Five chairs by John Breeze’. On the left page were two brightly lit photographs of my chairs lying on their sides and casting a dramatic amalgam of shadows. On the right page was a text.

Common, in these oblique — some would say bleak — times, are creations the chief, indeed sole, purpose of which is purportedly to illustrate or exemplify an ideology or thought, no trace of which, alas, is discoverable in the work itself. Thus the vehicle of art, hitherto harnessed to truth and beauty, is hijacked by charlatans, attention-seekers and fraudsters of numberless variety and steered to destruction. This banditry is most harmful in its obscuration of that handful of artists who, unlike the aforesaid impostors, infuse their work with a genuine intellectual and moral content. From time to time, however, there arrives a talent so distinctive and so self-evident that no bogus overshadowing is possible. Such is John Breeze.

These five fallen stools are, first and foremost, beautiful. The graceful steel legs, evocative, perhaps, of the animal world, and the perfect maple seats, individual yet familial, are harmonious and apt. But it is the dimension of veracity which makes these objects other, and more, than furniture. For, while exhibiting every appearance of balance — the tripod is the most ancient and trusty of stands — the chairs cannot remain upright. Raise them up and time and again they tumble to the ground. The result is both true art and art that is true. The fallen, futile stools, pathetic and dysfunctional, at once flawed and possessed of perfection, are the interrogative, unmistakable icons of our very selves.

S.D.

I pocketed the brochure in my jacket. In the middle of the night I awoke on the sofa, drank cold water from the kitchen tap for thirty seconds, and hauled myself to bed.

I was awoken on Thursday morning by Rosie’s loud voice. ‘Come on,’ she was saying. ‘Get dressed, we’re going.’

‘What? What time is it?’

She pulled open the curtain. ‘Time to get up.’

‘What do you think you’re doing?’

Rosie pulled a face. ‘God, it smells in here.’ She opened the window. ‘We’re going to cheer up Pa,’ she said, ‘by treating him to brunch. I’ve done all the shopping.’

I said, ‘Close the window, will you, you’ll let in the flies.’

I pulled on some clothes, lit a cigarette and went barefooted into the living-room.

There had been a transformation. The carpet was clean, the sofa cushions had been plumped, a fresh bunch of daffodils stood pertly in a transparent vase. Even the jam-stains on the wall had been washed down to a pale raspberry shadow.

‘Bloody hell,’ I said.

‘Steve did it,’ Rosie said. ‘He got up early and did it all by himself.’

Steve was standing at the door of the kitchen, bashfully scratching his neck. ‘Well, this is great,’ I said. ‘I’d forgotten how nice this place can look.’

‘Get some shoes on,’ Rosie said, picking up a full carrier bag and handing it to Steve. ‘The cab’s here.’

Rosie paid the fare. ‘Pa, it’s us,’ she shouted as she opened the front door. She went into the kitchen. ‘This place is disgusting. Look at the cooker, look how greasy it is.’ She removed the gas rings and began to wipe the surface. ‘Now leave, all of you. Steve, go mow the lawn. John, you go get Pa. Tell him brunch will be served in ten minutes. And set the table. Use the silver.’

I found my father by the window in his towelling dressing-gown, looking down at the garden. I went to stand next to him, and shoulder to shoulder we watched Steve bringing the old mower on to the lawn, the blue-painted blades splashed with rust. Even though the grass was long, in Steve’s hands the mower travelled fluently over the ground, each noisy forward drive rhythmically giving forth a full spurt of cuttings, each drawing-back making the same high wheeze. He turned around at the holly tree and, accompanied by the machine’s rich summery rattle, in one continuous movement swooped towards the house over the path he had just cut.

Pa sighed. ‘I’ll be there in a minute,’ he said, still looking out.