Catherine O’Flynn - Mr Lynch’s Holiday

‘I think sometimes you lose people and you barely know it at the time. It starts as a small crack. That’s all it is. It takes years, a lifetime, before you notice what went out through the crack. How much you lost.

‘He sounded happy in the letters. He never mentioned ghosts. He was grown up, I suppose. He was in love. I’m sure she loved him too. He was going to be a father.’ He paused. ‘I can’t imagine that at all, but then … it never happened anyway.’ He coughed. ‘I don’t suppose he was ever scared any more, not as an adult. I hope not. Probably it was Della Schwarz he called for. Terrified for her and the baby, not himself. He was a grown man. Three lives about to end. I hope she held his hand. I hope they both held hands.’

They sat in the dark for a long time until a noise from outside broke the silence. Dermot stood up; Inga looked at him and put a finger to her lips. She indicated that he should follow her to the window. They stood in the shadows looking out at the street. The bag of rice was gone and the food bowl empty. Dermot craned his neck expecting to see the unlikely sight of a cat dragging the heavy bag. He saw nothing, but heard the distinct sound of light footsteps running away.

The electricity had been off for five hours. Each time there was a power cut Eamonn wondered if the lights would ever come on again. He thought that one day the electricity company would give up on them. Just a handful of people. More trouble than they were worth. He often imagined himself close to a survival situation. In the last power cut he’d asked Laura if she thought they should start burning the furniture or barricading the doors, but she hadn’t seemed to share his sense of emergency.

It was late now and he wondered where his father was. He emerged from his room and found some of Laura’s scented candles. He put them on the table and lit them. They gave off a peppery smell reminiscent of church incense.

He sat still but his body buzzed. A vibrating pulse, small but insistent. It felt very much as if a tiny creature were trapped inside him.

‘There was an old woman who swallowed a fly.’

A song from infancy. He shut his eyes tight, trying to drive it away. It seemed designed, like so many childhood entertainments, only to perplex or infuriate. The thought of them now still maddening. London Bridge is falling down. There’s a hole in my bucket. Ten green bottles. Small tortures, ceaseless, repetitive, neither funny nor clever, just stupid people saying stupid things.

‘There was an old woman who swallowed a fly.’

She swallowed a cow to catch the dog. He remembered the version they used to play on the radio: a creepy-voiced man, giggling as he sang, as if there were anything remotely funny about the whole grotesque chain of events.

‘There was an old woman who swallowed a fly.’

The song trapped like the fabled insect inside him. He resisted the temptation to smack himself hard in the face.

‘I don’t know why she swallowed a fly. Perhaps she’ll die.’

He had made a list in his room. He smiled to think of it: his great novel had in the end amounted to little more than hundreds of lists. It was appropriate that he should be methodical even in this. A neat array of bullet points — for once the implicit violence seeming appropriate. He looked at it.

Laura gone

Sexually assaulted neighbour

No money

No job

No prospect of job

Unable to write

Unable to escape Lomaverde

Unable to remain in Lomaverde

Source of worry to Dad

It was like striking a match. Each time he looked at it, the self-loathing flaring brightly once more.

As a teenager, unhappy at school, he had once or twice entertained the usual fantasies. Seduced by the grand operatic vision, drunk with self-pity, passing exquisitely miserable hours planning the staging, the note, the playlist, the eulogy. They had never been anything more than desperate bids for autonomy. Comforting fantasies of death, to make life temporarily more bearable. This was not like those at all. He had no vision of after. No note. No self-pity. No self-aggrandizing. No self. That was the point. He just wanted to end. To draw a line under it all.

But despite the list, despite the Internet research, despite even choosing the spot, he knew with a heavy, stone-like certainty that he would not do it. Suicide involved blinding himself to the pain he would cause his father and Laura. Covering his eyes and trying to believe it wouldn’t happen because he wouldn’t be around to see it. Even he was not capable of such self-deceit.

He heard a key in the door and his father came in carrying a torch.

‘You’re up, then?’

‘Yes.’

‘Migraine better?’

‘A little.’

Dermot went into the kitchen and returned with some beers. He sat down on the futon beside him and said nothing for so long that Eamonn thought he had fallen asleep. Then he spoke:

‘Losing someone is hard.’

Eamonn said nothing.

‘I understand that.’

Eamonn nodded. ‘I know.’

‘Your mother too. She would have understood.’

‘Yes.’

‘She lost someone once, you know, someone close to her. She found it difficult.’

‘Who was that?’

‘Walsh. The priest you were asking about.’

‘He died?’

‘No, no. He just got moved on, you know the way they do. Your mother took it hard.’

‘I never heard her mention him.’

Dermot was quiet again for a while. ‘He was a breath of fresh air after Phelan. An educated fella, very energetic, full of the books he’d read and the ideas he had. He and she became pals. I suppose she’d have stood out from the other women that hung around the presbytery. I’d say he’d have been delighted to find someone he could have a conversation with.’ He paused. ‘And I suppose the same was true for your mother.’

‘But Mom had you.’

Dermot rubbed his face. ‘She did. But I’d never really shared her interest in religion. It wasn’t such a big deal back when we married. But all those years we were waiting for you, the Church edged its way in. That’s what it does, doesn’t it? Find the chink. She was looking for something. I couldn’t talk to her about those things.

‘Anyway, Walsh came along. Stepped into the breach, you could say. He got her interested in all kinds of things. She started doing night courses — theology, that kind of thing — you know all those books she had. The truth was I wouldn’t have minded doing a few classes myself, wouldn’t have minded going along. I don’t know why I didn’t tell her that.’ He reflected for a moment. ‘I suppose I got the idea it wasn’t really me she wanted to be discussing these things with.

‘He came round the house one time for his tea. She was in a mania for days beforehand. All of a sudden we needed a bookcase in the lounge. I had to build one double quick to show off all our books — only it wasn’t our books that went on it, just hers.’

He was quiet again for some time.

‘She told me once that I had nothing to worry about with Walsh.’

‘What did that mean?’

‘Oh, you know, there’d been talk. Gossip in the parish. I think it was just that the other hangers-on were put out about the time he and your mother spent together. I never thought there was anything like that between them.’

‘Did you not ask her?’

Dermot ignored him. ‘She said: “You’ve got nothing to worry about with Walsh, he and I are just kindred spirits.” She said it to me as if that was OK’ — he paused to take a drink — ‘as if I’d never thought she and I might be kindred spirits.’

They sat in silence for a while before Dermot spoke again.

‘I’ve known plenty of clever people — you get them on the buses — maybe that surprises you, but you do. Philosophers and thinkers of all types — some educated in universities, some educated by themselves. But the thing about clever people is they don’t shout about it. Your mother, for example, she was one. She was brighter than he was, though she couldn’t see it. A few more of those night classes and she’d have outgrown him. Realized how much of his talk was just noise. She and he weren’t kindred spirits. I never believed that.’