Belinda McKeon - Solace

As Mark got her into her swimsuit, Aoife shouted and pointed to the old man, to the water leaping off his skin. While Mark undressed, she wandered closer to the showers and stood watching, her hands loosely clasped behind her back. When beads of water hit her skin, she flinched, but she did not come back to Mark.

Mark inflated the plastic armbands he had bought at the entrance desk. ‘Come over here,’ he called to Aoife. She shook her head vigorously and pointed again at the old man.

‘Aoife,’ he called again, and in the same instant, the man turned. He was cupping his dick and balls — washing them, Mark thought, he hoped. He dropped both hands by his side now, and he gazed at the child. His beard was full, though narrowed and pointed now by water, and his heavy eyebrows, too, were slicked down. He was almost bald. As he stood watching Aoife, the flow from the showerhead stopped.

‘Hello there,’ he said. Aoife continued to stare. Mark stood and brought her back to the bench where he had laid her clothes. She let him carry her, but when he tried to get her into the first armband, she snatched it from him and threw it to the floor.

The old man stepped forward and picked it up. ‘You need to let some of the air out,’ he said to Mark.

‘Thanks,’ said Mark, taking it from him.

‘Once you get it up to the elbow, you need to open the little valve there, and let some of the air out so that it’ll go over,’ the man said, squeezing water out of his trunks. ‘Then you blow it back up the whole way.’ He shook the trunks briskly and walked to the other end of the bench. ‘You’ll pull the arms off her otherwise,’ he said, and wrapped a striped towel around his waist.

‘Thanks,’ Mark said again. He opened the white rubber valve on the side of the armband and let out some of the air. Aoife complained as he pushed it up her arm, and when he put his lips to the valve and blew until he could feel the plastic hardening, she tried to shake him off. When he reached for the second armband, she turned her back on him, and when he pulled her to him, she began to scream. He put both arms tightly around her, turned her away from him, and held her still. She screamed more loudly and kicked her legs. Her fingernails dug into his forearms.

From the old man came a high-pitched laugh like a woman’s. ‘She’s a devil,’ he said. He was dressed. It hadn’t taken long. He wore brown linen trousers and a short-sleeved shirt. He stepped into leather sandals.

Aoife let her whole body go limp. Mark kept his hands on her as she slid to the floor and lay there, sobbing furiously. He shrugged and looked to his neighbour, who gave him a grin. The man slung a string bag over his shoulder and pulled at his beard. ‘Her first time at the pool?’

Mark nodded.

‘She’ll love it,’ the old man said. ‘Once you take her in.’

‘I don’t know,’ Mark said, and when he reached down to Aoife she lashed at his face with her hands. The sharp edge of her armband caught him on the cheek.

‘Ouch,’ the old man said, wincing.

Mark had done it before he thought about it. He found himself with a hand tight on each of her arms. He pulled her to her feet. He whipped the armband off her arm, not stopping to let any of the air out, and Aoife screamed. ‘Stop it,’ he said to her, and she widened her eyes at him, and raised her cries to a higher pitch. She slumped to the floor. Sweating, his face feeling flushed, Mark looked to the man.

The man looked at Aoife. His face was cautious. He stepped forward a fraction, then stepped back. He cleared his throat. ‘I expect it’s all just a bit too much for her,’ he said, over the noise of her cries. ‘She is very young.’

Mark could not speak. The man checked the bench behind him and pulled the strap of his bag more firmly on to his shoulder. ‘Have a good swim,’ he said, touching his temple in a light salute, and he was gone.

Mark realized that he was cold, and that Aoife, kicking and thrashing on the tiles, would be even colder. He picked her up; she resisted him. He bundled her into a towel and sat her on the bench. He crouched in front of her, rubbing her shoulders through the towel, trying to soothe her where the plastic of the armband must have pinched and dragged.

‘I’m sorry, baby,’ he said, and she howled at him.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, and she shook her head, her face glooped with snot and tears. He sat on the bench beside her, and leaned in close to her, and she grabbed him by the cheeks with both hands and dug in her nails. It hurt. He didn’t stop her. He didn’t pull away. She continued to cry, and to scream, and to the sound of it he felt his chest cleave; he felt himself cling to her cries as they climbed against the distant echoes of the pool. His teeth were clenched. His eyes were locked on hers. It was not cold enough for him to shake as much as he did. When she finally quietened, he lifted her, and dressed her, and dressed himself, and he wheeled her out into the street. By the time they were back on the quays, she had fallen asleep, her thumb in her mouth, her hand clamped to her hair.

Tom tried Mark’s number again. This time there was no ringing sound at all, just Mark’s voice, sounding lazy, saying to leave a message, and then there was a beep, which was Tom’s signal to hang up. He would not talk to something that was not listening.

At first, Mark had answered the phone every time Tom called. They had talked several times a day, something Tom considered essential. There were things he needed to check with Mark, things he needed to tell him. But over the last couple of weeks, Mark had started to pick up only now and again. Some days they did not talk on the phone at all; some days Tom could not get him. He had been busy, he always said, when they finally spoke: something had happened with Aoife, or there had been some issue to do with his studies. Was there anything urgent, he always asked Tom, and Tom never knew where to begin. Everything on the farm was urgent; nothing could wait a couple of days.

It was over two months now since Mark had gone back to the city. He had been back for a weekend only once, the first one after he had left, and since then there had been no visits. He had too much on his hands, he said. He could not get away. There was too much to be sorted out in Dublin, and he was still trying to get Aoife settled. He would be down, he always said, the next weekend. But then the next weekend came, and he was not there. Tom was not going to call him and beg him to come. That had never been Tom’s style.

He needed to talk to him, but he could wait no longer. He would have to go ahead on his own. That afternoon he drove over to Brady’s place, the new showroom he had built the year before. Brady himself greeted Tom when he walked through the glass doors. When Tom told him why he had come, Brady murmured approvingly.

‘You know, you’re dead right,’ he said. ‘Sure, the farming is hardship enough. We’ll get you well kitted out.’ He reached up to a shelf over the till. He lifted down three or four thick books and put them on the counter. On the cover of one, a huge John Deere pulled a round baler.

‘The new catalogues,’ Brady said, patting them. ‘All the specs, as they’d say.’

Tom felt suddenly nervous. He looked at his phone. He had tried Mark again before getting out of the car. There had been no reply.

‘The old mobiles are handy, aren’t they?’ Brady said, and he began to talk of the tractors he had, of engines and air compressors, drills and suspensions.

Tom nodded like a man who had long been hungry for the day when these things would come. ‘You’ve some place here,’ he said to Brady, looking to the high roof, the skylights streaming sun, the huge machines arranged like mannequins around the floor. Outside, the cheaper equipment was marked in neat rows.