Donal Ryan - The Thing About December

When Mother died, the Unthanks and his aunties and a small army of biddies had done everything. They had sorted out the business with the coroner and roared down the phone at people to know what was the delay in releasing the body and explained gently to him how things take longer when a person dies at home with no doctor present. They had cleaned the house from top to bottom and baked and made sandwiches and bought liquor and instructed the undertakers and sorted out Johnsey’s suit and tie and even polished his shoes for him. They had somehow managed to work out how everything would be paid for; there was a folder of pages and bank books and what have you in a box in the small room upstairs where Daddy used to curse over his accounts with his glasses sliding down his nose and they had tightened up that mess of documents and explained things to Johnsey and their explanations entered one ear and spilled out of the other, their passage unimpeded by any form of understanding.

He’d had to sign a few bits and pieces relating to God only knows what and he did so in his best handwriting, all joined up and slanted forward. They had said sure nobody could organize all these things on their own, a person needed time to come to terms with the shock, it was an awful burden of grief, losing both parents like that in such a short space of time. What they really meant was: Look, you’re a bit of a gom, so go on now and leave us to get on with the important business of burying your mother properly and sorting out her affairs for you. Okay? Good lad. Go off upstairs now and say a few prayers or pull yourself or do whatever the hell it is imbeciles do in the confines of their own bedrooms.

It wasn’t a terrible thing that people who were being kind sometimes couldn’t do it without making you feel like it was because you were a bit of a God-help-us. They wouldn’t mean it, but it would be obvious from their manner; the way they’d smile sadly and nod at you and then look away and smile sadly at someone else as much as to say Ah sure, the poor crathur , he hasn’t a clue or a hand to wipe his arse nor a dust of sense. Not the Unthanks, though. Definitely not. They made you feel like you were doing them a favour by letting them help you. Or Father Cotter, but then that was part of his covenant with God, to be kind to all without prejudice. Most people wanted something in return for their kind help, if only the sense of having given of themselves selflessly, that might make their bed feel softer or their sleep come easier, or the gates of heaven swing open faster when their time came. Johnsey could see it in the secret glances of the ICA biddies and the aunties and the few bigshot women who flocked and squawked and pecked about him at the time of his parents’ deaths. He’d have preferred them to stay away than to enter his house and act like they were abroad in Africa saving little black babies from starvation.

NOW THAT MOTHER wasn’t here to be hurt by him, wasn’t it just common sense that he should carry out his plans for the rope and the crossbeam in the slatted house? What in the name of God was the purpose of a great clumsy yoke who had relinquished his father’s land to the sneaky neighbours without argument and couldn’t really hold a conversation without feeling like he was going to burst into flames and who had nothing of any interest to say, anyway, because he had never been anywhere without his parents to mind him, who had never kissed a girl nor stood his ground to bullies nor drove a car past the gate?

He had gone as far as taking Daddy’s old rope from the back kitchen. He had thrown it over the crossbeam and climbed to the top bar of one of the pens and knotted it to the stout wood. He had made what looked like a noose, going by the Westerns. He had tested to see that it would tighten by grabbing the rope circle through which his head would go and yanking down hard. He thought it was the right length so if he dropped from the rail of the pen his neck would break from the drop and his feet wouldn’t touch the ground.

But someone would have to find him. And probably that would be the Unthanks. Johnsey couldn’t bear the thought of upsetting them like that. Himself was surely sixty-seven or eight and Herself was about the same. Would they be alive ten more years, or twenty? Wasn’t he just a hardship to those lovely people, treading his big dirty boots in through their bakery each day, looking for his lunch, and plonking his fat arse down in their kitchen and slobbering all over their table? And to make their penance harder, he was now helping himself to further charities in the dinner and Sunday-lunch department. Everyone in the village knew he was a fat eejit, he had never really hurled properly, girls looked like they pitied him or they joined in when lads laughed at him. There must have been a great mix-up somewhere along the line with these big plans that Father Cotter does be on about. Surely with the universe as big as it was, God could allow himself a slip-up here or there. There was hardly a deputation of angels banging on His door shouting Hey, God, you forgot to give a justification for Johnsey Cunliffe’s existence, he’s below scratching his hole like a fool, waiting for a reason not to do away with himself!

IT WOULD BE summer soon enough. The Unthanks always went somewhere thousands of miles away like Sligo or one of those quare counties for weeks on end to a niece who was married to a right bigshot by all accounts and they had a rake of kids and a huge big house. They would leave Kitty Whelan or Bridie Mac running the bakery. That would put paid to Johnsey’s lunchtimes of ease and luxury for a while. His loneliness then would be absolute . That meant complete, total.

Something had to give before summer. How would he manage being so lonesome and dealing with the types of situation that would require more spoken words and more complicated ways of stringing them together than he was capable of? Maybe he would take his holidays from the co-op at the same time as the Unthanks and close up the gate and the house and pull the blinds and the curtains and let on to be gone away himself? Sure, for all Packie Collins or any of his sneery relations knew, he was doing a strong line with a girl from the city and they were gone away sunning themselves out foreign. Or they were going to a ski resort ! Imagine, there were fellas his age less than two miles away that had actually done that kind of thing! Headed off in a jet to a ski resort in some faraway country full of glamour with a girl and flew down snowy mountains and drank liquor with foreign names and rode the girl all night and come home engaged to be married and the whole place would talk about how brilliant it was and tell them they were great. Lads who had been in his class in school led that kind of a life. Imagine.

JOHNSEY WONDERED was there a way to get away from this earth cleanly, to just disappear one day and have no fuss about it nor hassle for anyone. A lad from above around Gurtabogle fecked off to Australia a few years ago and went missing out there and sure that was that, really. What was anyone going to do, go and turn every stone in Australia looking for him? Australia was so big it was a continent .

The same lad had been in Johnsey’s class in primary school. They went on a school tour once, as far as Lahinch. That time, they were all still pally enough. Eugene Penrose hadn’t yet decided to lash out against the world in general and Johnsey in particular. The Gurtabogle lad, Mikey Kennedy was his name, went out swimming with the rest. While they were all fooling near the water’s edge, splashing each other and throwing mud and running away screaming at the sight of a jellyfish, Kennedy started swimming, straight out from the shore. Sir and Miss had given strict instructions on the way down to the beach that everyone was to stay near them, and to only swim parallel to the shore. PARALLEL TO THE SHORE! Ye blackguards .