Donal Ryan - The Spinning Heart

Daddy cuts the grass outside every house on this block. I watch him, sweating and steadfast, burning in the sun. He stops every now and again and stands behind his lawnmower with his head bowed. I wonder is he praying, or thinking about Mammy. Maybe he’s crying. God, I hope he isn’t. He says he does it to be doing something; he hates retirement. I know well he’d way prefer to be off playing golf. Or playing bridge with Bridget. He does it to make my life seem more normal, to see can he make the place look like a proper estate. He mows and strims and trims and puts all the cuttings into a trailer. Then he drives over to Cairnsfort Lodge, where the builder’s parents live, and dumps the grass and stuff at the side of their garden. The builder’s father says nothing. He wouldn’t want to, Daddy says.

A camera crew came here a few weeks ago. They were making a documentary about ghost estates. They set up all their gear and knocked on my door and Daddy answered and he got really cross. There’s no Dublin Four arsehole going using ye to make a name for himself, he said, when I went mad at him for not letting them interview me. I just wanted Dylan to be on telly, really, so everyone could see how gorgeous he is. Daddy wants us to go home and live with him and Bridget. I can’t, though. Seanie would love that, for one thing; I can just imagine him in the pub with his stinky friends, saying she’s gone back to her daddy, fwaah ha, with his big stupid donkey laugh. And I can’t stand the way Bridget moves apologetically around the house, letting on she’s not trying to replace Mammy. She’s probably a nice person, but she can fuck off, to be perfectly honest. She wears that horrible, watery, flowery old-lady perfume. It smells like somebody took a bottle of okay perfume and poured out half the bottle and filled it up again with pee and then sprayed it all over her. She tries to talk to me about Daddy. I feel like screaming like a child at her to mind her own business, to leave me alone, to leave Daddy alone. When I don’t engage she starts on about cards. Bridge. Forty-five. Whist. Jesus.

SEANIE CALLED UP last week. Hello Tom, he said to Daddy. Daddy only nodded at him, but he stopped mowing and followed him with his eyes up to the door. He came in with a bag of crappy plastic shit for Dylan. I let him stay for five minutes. Dylan smiled at him, the little turncoat. Daddy thinks Seanie is great, underneath it all. Would ye not try to make it up, love, he says. It kills Daddy not to be able to talk to him about hurling and cars and machinery and whatever men do be fascinated by when they’re not ruining women’s lives. Make it up? Make it up? We didn’t have a row; I scream at poor Daddy, he’s just useless, useless, useless . All he’s good for is drinking and shagging floozies . Daddy starts looking at the ceiling and humming and scratching his chin. He tries to block my shrill, crazy voice from his poor old ears. He tries to keep my horrible words out. They settle around his heart and weigh it down. His blood quickens. His cheeks turn a livid purple.

Little star, my name means. Some star I am. I’m not sure if Seanie is even Dylan’s father. Imagine if Daddy knew that! I had sex with my boss, George, just once. The horny old bastard brought us all out to celebrate his firm’s thirtieth year. He said he was having a special do, just for us. Really, he was having a special do for himself, hoping and praying that if one of us girls got pissed enough, we’d start to think he was more debonair than wrinkled, more witty than embarrassing. I shouldn’t ever drink. The old biddies all went home early; the apprentices took it easy of course, the cute arses — and I drank sticky-sweet fake champagne and laughed at every inane thing the creepy old pervert said. Two days later when I finally got over the nausea Hillary said that it was so obvious we were going to shag when he offered to share a taxi home with me. He got all business like afterwards, and wouldn’t meet my eye. His willy was tiny, his balls were wrinkled and uneven. When I told Hillary that, she nearly choked on her rice cake. Dylan looks like nobody except my father. Thank God, thank God; he’s the absolute image of Daddy.

George charged a flat rate of four grand for conveyancing all through the maddest part of the property boom. If you added up the hours of work for the average house purchase, and multiplied by our hourly rate, he could have made a good profit if he charged seven hundred. He never looked at those files, we did everything. George wasn’t even the most expensive. A guy rang one day in a panic; the builders of some crappy estate had put his house back on the market. For some reason, George had his file in his office. The contracts hadn’t been sent back in time, the builders were backing out of the original deal and wanted another ten thousand to go ahead. He sounded young. His voice was cracking and shaking. George was in court. The guy had to get the promise of ten grand off the Credit Union in the end. Those builders were chancing their arm, but I couldn’t say that. I know now what I should have told him: tell the builders to piss off, stay in your flat with your girlfriend, wait two or three years and buy the same house for half the price. Hopefully he at least has other humans in his estate.

MY HEAD was all over the place. That’s one phrase that I detest. It’s a miserable excuse for doing miserable things. What does it even mean? I hear the scumbags saying it all the time in work, through George’s door: Aw, my head was all over the place, I didn’t mean to hit him with the iron bar, I would of never done it, only my brother was after been stabbed the night before and I knew in my heart and soul your man was fuckin goin round skittin over it …

The awful thing is, whenever I think of the way I was the time I was meeting Seanie and accidentally had sex with George, that’s the phrase that comes to my mind. My head really was all over the place. Mammy wasn’t long dead, and I’d never really grieved properly. I was so worried about Daddy, I just decided to block it out and focus on him. Then I realized I wasn’t the only one focusing on Daddy; Bridget the bloodsucker was mooning about the edges of our lives, with her big sorry-for-you eyes and her weirdly perky old boobs. If I’m to be objective, I can’t blame Daddy, though. Mammy was gone for years before she went. Next thing now my special paid career break will be over and I’ll be back in work, listening to scumbags again and looking at George trying to not look at me, wishing I’d just go away again. What will I do with Dylan then? My mortgage is half my wages.

FOUR FELLAS came here in a van this morning. I thought they were Travellers first, coming looking for stuff to steal. They looked around for a while, hands in pockets, kicking stones like four lads trying to look innocent. They made me nervous; Daddy wasn’t due for another hour or so. One of them was really good-looking, tall and fair-haired and weather-beaten in a lovely way. He caught me staring out at him; I made it worse by jumping back from the window. He came over to my door. The sensible-bitch side of me whispered the words rape and murder in my head, but I had to open the door before he rang the bell — Dylan was only halfway through his nap. Howaya, he said, ammmm … I shushed him; he looked embarrassed. I came out and closed the door behind me, as if to hide my lonely life. I was trying not to smile at him. Why am I such a fool for manly men? I pointed back with my thumb. Nap time, I told him. Oh, Jaysus sorry. No problem, I said, and let the smile have its way. He brightened a bit then. He said he used to work for the builder who built the estate. They were up checking if the C2 boys had been back to finish off. What the fuck is a C2 boy? He looked a bit shocked at my language. God, he must be a right delicate petal. Self-employed workers, he explained, sub-contractors, foreign workers who were only taken on by builders if they registered as self-employed. That way the builder hadn’t to pay the proper rates; stamps, tax, pensions or what have you.