Hugo Hamilton - The Sailor in the Wardrobe

My father believes that too much freedom is bad for you, so he’s imposed a new curfew and tells me to be back home by eleven. I argue with him and say that freedom is something absolute, like human rights, something you can never have enough of. He disagrees and says it’s something precious, something you have to be a bit careful with. He has a duty to protect me from the perils of freedom, even though I don’t want to be protected and only feel like escaping. He says I’m living in a fantasy if I think the world will ever be free of rules. I tell him that people are fed up being obedient and he says it’s the opposite, people are more obedient now than they ever were before, and it’s harder to break the rules of freedom than it ever was to break all the rules of totalitarianism and imperialism put together.

‘The tyranny of freedom,’ he calls it.

He’s become the family prophet now, warning us about the good times coming. He tells me about his first taste of freedom after Irish independence when he became a schoolteacher and cycled through West Cork, how that freedom was linked with the idea of working and rebuilding your country. My mother says she still remembers the first day of freedom from the Nazis at the end of the war when she cycled home through the mountains. It’s like a special smell in the air, she says, like when you lean your head down into a pram and inhale the scent of a newborn baby’s head.

My mother tries to talk to my father, but he says he stands by the rules. If I’m not back in the house by eleven, I can stay out on the street and become homeless, because he will not allow me back in. As long as I live under his roof, I have to be subject to his law. So she comes and begs me to play the rules a little longer, just to keep the peace.

‘I’m not going to live under a curfew,’ I tell her.

‘Please,’ she says, when I’m going out the door. ‘Do it for me.’

So that makes it worse, because it means that if I come in late, I won’t be breaking his law as much as breaking her heart.

Most of the time at the harbour, there is nothing happening and we’re only waiting for the day to end. Even in the summer, after the sun goes down, it stays bright for a long time and people hang around smoking and talking. The motorbikes come and go, bringing the harbour back to life one last time. You wait for the last boats to come in and when they are all tied up, we still wait until the harbour is deserted. In the nursing home, you can see the patients being put to bed and the lights going out. Lights going on and off again when one of the old people calls for something or can’t get to sleep. Sometimes you can watch the same nurses making their way from room to room, until only the lights in the corridors are left on, nurses moving along each floor with the late-night medical trolley. Cars keep coming around the bend and shining their headlights across the boats, lighting up the whole harbour just for a moment before racing away up the road. The ferry from the main harbour goes out and you can see it getting smaller and smaller on its way over to England, like a lantern fading away on the water. Sometimes you feel you can even see the curvature of the Earth, because the ferry is high on the horizon and then slips down behind it. The last of the motorbikes is gone and you can still hear it going through the gears, all the way through the streets, until I can only imagine the hum of it.

Everybody is gone now. I am the last person left along with Dan Turley, and I still don’t want to go home until he locks up and walks away up the pier to his house. All the signs have been taken down and stored inside. The fish boxes have been cleaned and put away. There is nothing left to do and Dan is about to close the door when we hear the sound of another boat coming in. It’s hard to see who it is, but then against the light of the sky it’s clear by the silhouette that this must be Tyrone, a man standing up at the back of the boat, gliding into the harbour and flicking the butt of his cigarette into the water.

I should leave now but I stay for a few minutes longer, as if I have some kind of premonition that something is about to happen. As Dan switches off the light inside the shed and gets ready to lock the door, Tyrone comes walking up from the quay carrying a fish box in front of him. I get on my bike, ready to cycle away, but then Dan begins to mutter and curse again. If I wasn’t there, if there was no audience, he would say nothing and just close the door, forget that Tyrone even existed and just walk away home. But I’m the witness, the supporter who brings out the worst in him, and I can hear him goading Tyrone under his breath until he finally drops the fish box in his hands and steps right up towards the shed.

‘What did you say?’ Tyrone shouts.

The mackerel come back to life in the box and slap around furiously for a moment. Before I know it, the two men move up to each other, cursing and growling, face to face. Then they begin to go at each other with fists. Suddenly there are no more words and it’s just straight violence now. It’s a real fight. Two old men trying to kill each other on the pier and nobody around to stop it.

‘Go on you fuckin’ buffalo,’ Tyrone shouts.

There’s blood on his mouth. He must have got a punch, because his face has lit up with a red colour that almost looks black under the harbour lights. Now I know why blood is red, because it’s the most alarming colour you can imagine, the colour that makes your heart race. Tyrone is trying to get back at Dan, trying to connect a decent punch, but they have locked on to each other in a wrestling match, huffing with the exertion. It’s a breathing war as they shift around the pier, each trying to drag the other down.

I want to leave, but I’m paralysed by what I see. I can see Dan’s white cap lying on the ground, so I pick it up. I place it on the trellis outside the shed, afraid of going any closer. It seems like a nightmare that has been coming for a long time, but I can’t wake up or walk away. Dan Turley and Tyrone gripping at each other, pushing back and forth, just breathing and groaning as if they will never let go. I can see spittle on Dan’s mouth, foam around his lips. I can see the whiteness of his head and the mark left behind by the rim of his cap.

Against the remaining light in the sky, I see them embracing each other in a vicious dance, as if they are suddenly doing a waltz, moving from one side of the pier to the other, all the way towards the edge until they nearly go over the side into the harbour, then all the way back towards the shed, swinging back so fast that it looks like Tyrone is forcing Dan to sit down on the trellis. They seem to be completely unaware of where they are. Nobody sees any of this happening and the nursing home seems a million miles away, with everyone fast asleep. Every now and again a car lights up the fight for an instant, as they sway back to the edge of the pier and stop at the crane, then all the way back until they crash right into the side of the shed. Twice more, Dan’s broad back slams into the shed before they fall to the ground just inside the door.

I don’t know what to do to stop this. I’m afraid to intervene. And then I wonder if they’re only fighting because I’m watching, if I go away they might stop and come back to their senses. They pick themselves up like small boys off the ground and instantly lock on to each other again, waltzing around towards me so that I have to jump away and pull the bike out of their path at the last minute. My mouth is so dry that I can’t even say a word. Then I get on my bike and start cycling away to get help.

And then the fight comes to an end. I stop to look back and maybe I was right, that I’m only keeping the fight alive by being present. They let go of each other and I watch them standing there, leaning forward a little, with their hands on their hips, just breathing heavily.