Robert Wilson - Eureka Street - A Novel of Ireland Like No Other

'Well?' he enquired.

'God, you've changed,' the doctor wondered hesitantly. His tone was awestruck and Chuckie paused, his anger gone.

`What do you mean by that?' he asked narrowly.

The doctor swallowed nervously. `Well, I haven't seen you since… since…

`Since what?'

`Since you were… ah… different'

Chuckie chose the calm route. `I've made a little money. Big deal. I'm not a freak.'

The doctor nodded doubtfully. Chuckie inspected his reflection in the tiny square mirror above the kitchen sink. Bar the swanky suit, he didn't think he'd changed so very much.

He took his Havana from his mouth; the cigar caught slightly on his big gold ring. He tried to bring the doctor back to the subject. `My mum?'

`Look, Chuckie — sorry, Charles. Your mother has had a terrible shock. She wouldn't be normal if it didn't have a pretty devastating impact on her. She'll recover when she feels capable of it. If you don't want me to prescribe tranqs then there's nothing I can do. I've seen several people in her position. It always gets better with time. Quicker than you'd expect. People are resilient.'

Chuckie looked discontented.

`I don't think she wet the bed. She probably just sweated a lot. What sleep she'll get will be very disturbed.You know she's stopped taking her sleeping pills.'

Chuckie nodded unhappily.

'Peggy's been taking those things for fifteen years. She'll be feeling like a dried-out heroin addict. That plus her recent shock is a heavy burden.You have to be patient.'

The doctor smiled at him. `And get some sleep yourself. You look rough.'

Chuckie shook the doctor's hand and showed him out.There was a slight controversy on the doorstep when Chuckie tried to tip the man a hundred pounds, but that was soon smoothed over and the doctor was more discomfited than outraged.

Chuckie went back inside. He moved to the foot of the stairs and called up to his mother's his own room — that he would make her some tea. He took the subsequent silence as assent.

He busied himself in the kitchen. He was growing accustomed to the domestic tasks that had once defeated him, but he still frowned in puffy concentration. He was thinking hard.

Chuckle had been thinking hard for a week now. He had been thinking hard since the night his mother had been brought home bleeding tears, mute but hysterical.

Peggy Lurgan had been walking past the corner of Fountain Street just as the bomb exploded. The freak of the blast wind had knocked her off her feet and, despite her surprise, she had been almost amused. It was an undignified pratfall, a middleaged woman like her sent sprawling arse over tip. For a few seconds, she had suspected an unusual gust of wind or a collision with an unseen person. For those first few seconds she was fine.

Unfortunately Peggy had sat there, uninjured but motionless, for nearly fifteen minutes. Unfortunately, in the confusion and mayhem, no one had thought to move her before then. Unfortunately, though protected from the blast by the corner of a stationer's shop, she had been blown into a position with an unrestricted view of the sandwich-bar debris. Unfortunately she had been only thirty yards away. Unfortunately her eyes remained open. Unfortunately she didn't look away.

After those nearly fifteen minutes, Peggy was taken to hospital. She waited there for minutes she could not count. She knew she was cold and that was as much as she could easily comprehend. Someone told her she was suffering from severe shock but she didn't really hear and couldn't really care. She was just cold. She was just frightened.

Caroline Causton had called Chuckie at the office. The police had come to Eureka Street on the off-chance of finding a relative and Caroline had quizzed them. For a blank black moment, Chuckie had thought that Caroline was telling him that his mother had been injured or killed. When he heard about the shock, he was upset but unmistakably relieved.

He picked Caroline up on the way to the idea of `shock' had reduced his urgency. The Accident and Emergency Department at the City Hospital was in uproar. Chuckie and his neighbour fought through the crowd as quickly as possible. A nurse told them that Peggy would be under observation for a few hours and that then they might take her home. She wasn't hurt but her shock was unusually severe and they had to be careful.

Chuckie and Caroline waited for three hours. Chuckie had not thought about what had happened until then. He could avoid thinking about it no longer. The evidence, the result was before him. The hospital was thronged with the injured and their relatives. He didn't see anything too dreadful. He had arrived much too late for that. He did, however, see scores of people weep. He had never seen scores of people weep before. Some wept quietly, some hysterically. Some bawled openly. One woman, whose husband had just died, squealed dreadfully, as though she were dying herself. The screams continued. The other weeping stopped as people turned to look at her. Her knees had given way and she had fallen to the floor where she scrabbled and beat her hands. Chuckie felt a bad taste in his throat. Another woman tried to raise the crazed widow. Calm down, she kept saying, calm down. Jesus, thought Chuckie. Tall order. Let her scream, help her scream.

Before they took his mother home, a medic gave them careful instructions about looking after her. It was vital that she was kept warm and quiet. Caroline and Chuckie decided that they would watch over her that night, sharing the duty. When they got back to Eureka Street, they steered Peggy into Chuckie's bedroom. The larger room was more appropriate, they felt. It was an easy task: she was malleable as a child. Chuckie went downstairs while Caroline undressed his mother and put her into bed.

Caroline went across the street to get some things and tell her husband. The man was mutinous, apparently, but his wife was adamant. When Caroline told him about this, Chuckie was filled by an abrupt and uncharacteristic desire to go across the road and beat Mr Causton's head in with a brick.

Caroline took the first watch. She told Chuckie to get something to eat and then to try to sleep until she called him. Chuckie guessed that if he slept Caroline would watch over her friend all night. He said nothing.

When she went upstairs, he enjoyed four grins, silent hours downstairs in the tiny house. He tried to eat a sandwich but it tasted like rubber. The smell in his throat from the hospital had lingered. He tried watching television but could not concentrate on the flicker of those coloured lights. He saw some news footage of the Fountain Street scene. His mother had been there. It was an impossible thought. An impossible event.

The little house made the event seem even more improbable. The interior of was the only scene in which he could think properly of his mother. It was where she belonged. She was so of the place that sometimes the distraction between the woman and her house grew blurred, and sometimes it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. The tiny house was like the tiny woman. Plain, smallscale, indoors.

Chuckle was appalled to find tears in his eyes. His already overblown self felt bloated with emotion. His nose tingled and twitched and he felt wetness on his cheeks.The idea of his useless, small-time mother enduring all that was unbearable. He closed his eyes and tried not to look at her furniture or her pathetically ornamented mantelpiece.

At three o'clock in the morning, he went upstairs and relieved Caroline. She refused to go home. She said she would sleep on the sofa downstairs.

It was worse to watch. His mother slept soundly enough, twitching occasionally, and, at one heart-breaking point, whimpering like a little girl. Chuckle's heart filled. He touched her face and found her cheek wet with drool. He had never watched her sleep before. He felt like a lover. He felt like a father. Silently, guiltily, he wept at the thought that she might have been hurt, at the thought that she might ever be hurt.