Joseph O'Neill - The Breezes

‘I’ll run you a bath,’ Rosie said gently. ‘Don’t worry about breakfast, I’ll clear it all up.’

‘Thank you, my love,’ he said. He gulped up mucus. ‘I’m sorry for snapping at you like that. I don’t know what’s come over me.’ He shuffled his feet into his slippers and got up. ‘Thank you for mowing the lawn,’ he said to Steve. ‘You’ve done a great job.’

When he came down from his bath, shaven and dressed in his old track suit, he said, ‘I’m taking the dog for a walk on the beach.’ He picked up the leash and clipped it to the dog’s collar. ‘I’ll see you all later. Thanks for the breakfast.’

The front door made a slam.

Rosie said, ‘Poor Pa.’

I threw her a cigarette and lit one myself. We smoked together for a while without speaking. Then I came out with the news about Angela’s role in Pa’s sacking. I did not have the strength to withhold the information any longer.

She breathed in her cigarette in silence, regarding the elegant plumes of fumes that flowed from her mouth. Her short hair had been lightened by the sunshine of the last week. She said, ‘You didn’t know she was doing this? You really didn’t know?’

I shook my head.

Instead of flying into a rage, she looked at me with curiosity and said, ‘It’s over between the two of you, isn’t it?’

I shrugged weakly. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going to happen.’

‘Well, think about it. How is she going to be able to deal with us? I mean, what does she expect us to do? Carry on being nice to her as though nothing had happened?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. I looked down at my shoes. The soles were splitting away from the leather.

She said softly, ‘I can tell you one thing. I’m not speaking to that woman again.’

There was a thick gasp of blades snagging in grass: Steve had resumed his mowing.

Rosie stubbed out her cigarette. ‘Cheer up, John. The two of you weren’t going anywhere, anyway, if you want to know the truth. Water finds its own level.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘You’re a miserable overgrown teenager, she’s a successful businesswoman. That’s what that means.’ She began scraping the food left on the plates on to a serving dish.

I controlled my temper. ‘You and Steve are hardly the ideal couple either,’ I said.

She laughed and turned to look into the garden, where her boyfriend was disentangling grass from the machine. ‘Look at him, the poor darling. Look at that frown on his face. He’s not used to concentrating that hard.’

‘He’s a total idiot, that’s why,’ I said.

Rosie, who was holding a pile of plates, stiffened.

‘Look, I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘But if you’re going to start talking about my life like that, I can do the same about yours. Tit for tat, Rosie. I can’t see why you should be the only one to speak your mind. Besides, it’s the truth. It’s not my fault that Steve’s a waste of space.’

She turned to me with glistening red eyes, hugging the dishes to her chest, and said hoarsely, ‘You think I don’t know that? You think you need to remind me of that?’

I blushed. ‘I— ’

‘What do you think, that I wouldn’t get someone else if I could? That I’m turning down offers to stay with Steve? You think that I’m happy with the way things are?’

I kept blushing. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

She wiped her mouth with her sleeve and went into the kitchen before joining Steve in the garden. She held open a plastic bin-liner while he, wearing my father’s old gardening gloves, filled it with handfuls of grass. When the bag was filled they set about weeding together, pulling nettles and other long-rooted intruders from the soil of the flowerbeds, clearing the garden of all blemishes.

I left them to wait for my father. He would be on the beach now, throwing sticks into the grey surf for Trusty to chase, or examining the stranded blue gunk of the jellyfish, or stepping along the black-rocked breakwaters that ran out into the water flanked by red triangular signs warning swimmers of dangerous currents. He would reach the tip of the breakwater and count the ships queuing on the horizon for entry to the port, marvelling, as usual, at the relentless forces of international trade, the thousands of smooth-running charter parties that gave birth to this traffic jam on the sea, and then he would turn around and look at the beach, where ramshackle bars on short stilts had sprung up for the summer. He would tramp the long way home, a mile over the cardboard-coloured edge of the land, then back through the wooded dunes, keeping an eye out for wildlife behind the barbed-wire fences — pheasants, rabbits, magpies, foxes. The dunes. I used to dig huts and erect tree-houses in those hills with my friends, secret camouflaged retreats where we kept comics and soccer magazines and, in case of emergencies, flashlights and bars of chocolate. They were our hideaways: a cool bolt-hole scooped out in the sand, or a construction up on a bough twenty feet in the air where you would sit with a branch in each hand for balance. Below, the Bird’s District, with its neat red roofs and fat perfect trees, would be reduced to a toytown and Rockport itself to a tranquil gathering of towers and spires; above, as you lay horizontal and looked up, the blue, giddying sky. You’d feel like a stone at the bottom of the sea.

And here I am today, on this train now steadily hauling me, through flat, dark, green fields, to Angela.

When I think of her, I daren’t think.

It was the same when I arrived home from the brunch. I fell on my bed, thought about Angela and felt nothing but fear.

I fell asleep and awoke at six. I took a shower, shaved and went into town, to the Devonshire Gallery.

I found Simon Devonshire sitting at his desk, drinking from a bottle of red wine. Behind him, in the unlit rear of the gallery, were the scattered shapes of my chairs on the floor.

‘Well, well, well,’ Devonshire said slowly. ‘If it isn’t John Breeze himself. Come in and have a drink.’

I was too embarrassed to do anything but accept the glass of wine he held up. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been able to get back to you earlier,’ I said.

He shrugged.

‘And I’m sorry about the chairs,’ I said.

‘Sorry? Why?’ He was examining his glass.

‘Well, because …'

‘Because what?’ He raised himself vigorously. ‘John, you have made a bold and pertinent statement with your chairs. You’ve broken new ground.’

‘But— ’

‘No buts, John.’ He touched a wall-switch, and the back of the gallery lit up like a stadium. ‘Come over here, take a look at what we’ve done.’

I followed him to where the stools, as though skittled by some passing missile, lay randomly on the ground. He motioned with his arm. ‘Here they are, my boy. The Fallen .’

I looked, even though there was nothing to see, nothing but objects that served no purpose other than to take up space. These were not even seats. These were useless, meaningless bits of matter.

‘It’s never going to work,’ I said. ‘You’ll never pull it off.’

Devonshire laughed. ‘Have faith, Johnny. If you tell people that these things are significant, bingo, they’ll believe it. It’s exactly what they want to hear, it’s what they need to hear. Why else do you think they come?’ He laughed again. ‘No, they’ll buy this all right. They’ll be queuing up to buy these Breezes.’

I had not heard my pieces described in that way before — as Breezes.

Devonshire said, ‘I want your cooperation on this, Johnny. I want your full cooperation. Do you follow me?’

‘Yes, I do,’ I said. I had no option.

‘Excellent,’ Devonshire said. He put his arm around my shoulder as he showed me to the door. ‘You want to start believing in yourself,’ he said. ‘I promise you, these chairs of yours are wonderful. You’ve got talent, John, real talent.’