Donal Ryan - A Slanting of the Sun

I rose from the floor a short while ago and saw my church was empty of living people, abandoned belongings scattered and streeled. I walked slowly across the courtyard to the gate and looked through my half-open eyes along the street. The Orthodox priest who kissed me and embraced me one time not so long ago and called me Brother and umpired a long puck competition or two is sprawled on the path before his church, a billow of black smoke behind him, a halo of blood around his head, dancing flames reflected in his open unseeing eyes. Icons have been arranged around him in a circle and set alight, accidentally almost heart-shaped. Accidentally I think, anyway. It’s hard to know now. Probably it always was. I just never knew before how hard it is to really and truly know anything.

I’m settled now in the nave, in the seat left empty by my curate who lies still where he fell, and I see through the porch and the open door that they’re back, and all I have as weapon against them is this hurley, with the words Halim Assam, All-Syria Long Puck Champion 2012 inscribed along the perfect shaft of it in beautiful calligraphy.

THE WORLD IS FILLED with unwelcome words. Insolvent. Bankrupt. Unfriended. Someone did that to my daughter yesterday, and she’s been pale and silent ever since. All I could do was say Don’t worry, love, my love, don’t cry. He couldn’t have been your real friend to start with. And she sobbed and nodded and tried to hide her pain behind her laptop screen.

There’s a shadow moving slowly outside in the orange arc-sodium light. Up and down the cul-de-sac. A neighbour who’s lost her engagement ring. It’s worth seven grand. I know because she told me in a desperate whisper as I helped her search for it earlier. Oh, God, I know, it’s only a ring, she kept saying, it’s only a ring . Her husband’s working in Canada.

Unfriended. It’s not even a proper verb, only an ugly confection of a word to describe the deletion of a thing that never really existed. Amber looked at me as she told me about it through eyes ringed with livid red and she was a child again. I wanted to run to the place where the unfriender lived and kick down his door and choke the life from his miserable teenaged body. But all I could do was say Don’t worry, love, please don’t cry.

My neighbour couldn’t say the words for a while. She was careful with them. She didn’t want to cry in front of me, this stranger she’d been living not thirty yards from for at least four years. My … engagement … ring. I’d been meaning to get it reduced. I was walking, just up and down the cul-de-sac, with the buggy. Trying to get my little man off to sleep. He’s a pure little crank, so he is. It must have just … slipped off. I’d never have left the house without it. And she placed a long and delicate-looking hand across her mouth and squeezed her eyes closed for a second or two, a flimsy barricade hastily thrown up against a procession of tears. How can I not find it? How can it not be here? How did I not feel it slipping off? And she looked accusingly at another unaware neighbour, driving slowly towards home. I never saw so many fucking cars around here, she said, and looked suddenly shocked at herself. Oh, no, I just meant … you know. I know, I said, and smiled at her and looked quickly back at the ground.

The day I opened my shop nine years ago I overheard my mother talking to my aunt. How is it at all none of mine could be any way cute? They haven’t a dust between them, God help us. A camera shop, I ask you. The barest breeze of hardship will blow it away. And Aunty Susan sighed and shook her head and dragged deeply on her fag in sympathy and sorrow.

We trawled the footpaths and the tarmacadam with our eyes. We sifted through patches of gravel and pebbles with our fingers. We braved the sting of kerbside thistles. We were forensic about it. We’re like the crowd in CSI Miami , someone joked, an older man whose face we all knew well but whose name was known to none. Paddy. He was surprised we didn’t know his name. Sure we’re here years and years, Mary and me. Oh God, ya. There was only our house here starting off. Sure this was the countryside not so long ago. All ye crowd are only Johnny-come-latelies. And he beamed around at everyone, happy to be the one doing all the talking, and we smiled embarrassedly back. We should all have known him well.

Mother drained her champagne flute on my opening day and held it before her, squinting at it with a grimace. Lord Almighty that’s as sour as gall. Oul cheap stuff, that is. Susan rounded a bit then, as Mother’s eyeballs swivelled heavenward in disgust. They say the best stuff is always the bitterest, Elsie. Mother’s eyes narrowed again, her nostrils flared. Well, go get two more then if you’re such an expert till I anaesthetize myself. And I stepped unseen backwards, away from her, and sat for a while in the cool silence of my shining new staff bathroom with that old familiar stinging at the backs of my eyes.

By three o’clock there were nine searchers. A sudden solidarity blossomed in the neighbourhood. Friendly enquiries as to what’s been lost led to sympathetic small-talk, offers of assistance and tea, anecdotes of ancient losses and miraculous finds: watches, wallets, lockets, twenty-pound notes; lifetimes of misplaced things that all made their ways back. No one dwelt too much on the things they never saw again or the dark, iron-grilled storm-drains that line our road or the magpies that patrol the hedges and the carpets of grass.

Lord, wasn’t it a great idea? My father kind of claimed it as his own. We couldn’t keep the shop stocked. He’d call in at least once most weeks and smile at my customers. He searched, often vainly, for common ground. The rugby, the horses, the football. He’d wink over at me. Sure I’d sell snow to Eskimos, son. He’d stand in behind the counter and offer advice. Oh, that’s a right yoke. That’s a great choice. I have one of them at home myself. What about a case for it? Here, I’ll throw it in. And he’d summon Mikhail to ring up the sale, tersely instructing him to apply arbitrary discounts. Mikhail would complain to me. He makes these things up half of the time, you know. He does not know the things about photography he say he knows. He gives away the profit margin with the free stuff. Free! Ah Dad, I’d say jokily, come out from behind the counter. You’re upsetting Mikhail. Dad would harrumph and regard Mikhail darkly. Watch that fella, son, I’m telling you. Them lads are only ever out for themselves as a rule. Don’t worry, Dad, I’d say. Come on and we have a small one in the snug. And Mikhail would come and they’d make it up and Dad would call him Mickey and tell him he was a grand lad and punch him lightly on the arm.

Amber joined the search. The unfriending was pushed away for a while. Who’s this lovely-looking girl, now, Paddy wanted to know. I didn’t know we had a … whatdoyoucallum … supermodel in the neighbourhood! And Amber smiled and Paddy laughed loudly and repeated his joke a few times. God aye, ya. A supermodel, begor. Paddy is kind and avuncular, the type of man who can say these things about a sixteen-year-old without sounding inappropriate. The neighbours laughed as they searched and Amber blushed and smiled and fixed her eyes to the ground.

I thought I was tough. I thought I was knock-hardened, world-wise, astute. I supplied a hotel with thirty-three grand’s worth of video and hi-fi equipment. I smiled to myself as I tucked a jocular note into the envelope with the invoice. To Steve, their financial controller. Sound man, Steve. This order would be the saving of us. I went through seven or eight compliment slips in an effort to look casual. It had to be clear but slightly scrawled; professional but a bit throwaway, like I posted invoices this size every day. I was so proud of that invoice. I thought about leaving a copy of it magnetized to my fridge for the next time my parents called. I wrote something about golf and drinks and God knows what. I spent long pleasant minutes thinking how best to sign it off. Yours. Regards. Best. I settled on Thanks. Again. I considered for a minute slipping a sweetener in with it. A crisp folded fifty, for good luck. Then decided it would be crass. Best to treat him to lunch, or dinner and drinks. I thought about how I’d fill a wicker hamper as a Christmas box for my new best customers. My new friends. I thought about the power of networking.