Catherine O’Flynn - Mr Lynch’s Holiday

He had been willing himself for the past hour to get up and attend to any one of the things that needed attending to. The folder of unmarked work, the lack of food, the piles of laundry, his father. He turned in bed and tried to imagine once more that it was Laura, not his father, on the other side of the bedroom door. He pictured her clutter on the side table. The oversize and now filthy teddy-bear key ring, bought to help locate keys in her cavernous bag, staring up at him with an unjustified expression of self-satisfaction.

He had told his father a partial truth. Laura had gone away for a few days to research the novel. What he’d omitted to say was that she had returned from the trip five days before Dermot arrived. He’d omitted to say this because it was as yet unsayable. It was as yet unthinkable. It had happened, that was undeniable, but it had not yet resolved itself into any kind of comprehensible action. He had found her in the bedroom, moving from rucksack to wardrobe. She was wearing a top he hadn’t recognized. There was a time when they’d known all of each other’s clothes, had shopped together, had sought each other’s advice and approval. He wasn’t sure when that had stopped. As he watched her, he had tried to imagine what he would think if he was seeing her for the first time, walking towards him along the street. What would he make of her hair? Those sandals? That vest? And what might she make of him? He imagined them passing each other by. The thought of it made him want to touch her gently, to lay a hand on her arm. It was only then he noticed that she was putting clothes in — not taking them out of — the rucksack.

He had not seen it coming. He found himself repeating that phrase. Laura had disputed it. She said he was deceiving himself. If that was true, he’d told her, he was doing a good job of it. He felt that if he had seen it coming he might have said the right things. But he had not.

She needed time to think, she had said. She needed to get away from him. She was going back to her parents in England. She would be in touch. But she didn’t answer her phone. She didn’t reply to his emails or his texts. After eight years she had left him alone in a terrible, featureless limbo.

He wasn’t sure if it was the lack of sleep, the lack of food or simply the lack of Laura that was causing the hallucinations. Several times since she had gone, lying in his bed, apparently awake, he had heard strange sounds at night. A heavy vehicle — a lorry or truck — chugging past on the road outside in the early hours. Such a vehicle would have a purpose and therefore no place on such a purposeless road. He wondered at the symbolism of it. What clumsy metaphor was his subconscious trying to deliver? One night he thought he heard footsteps and voices beneath his window, but when he looked there was nobody there. In the days since Laura’s departure he’d been keenly aware of his isolation, the only occupant in an otherwise empty block, in an otherwise empty street.

A knock at the door made him jump.

‘Eamonn?’

He closed his eyes tight.

‘Eamonn. Are you awake yet?’

He said nothing.

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

A long pause. ‘Yes. Please.’

‘Right. There’s no milk I’m afraid … or tea bags. Except some that smell like toothpaste.’

He lay still.

‘I thought I’d walk down to the town and get a few things. You don’t seem to have much in the way of food. I’m not sure what you normally have for your breakfast but all you have in is a jar of gherkins and a tin of grapes.’ There was a pause. ‘I didn’t even know you could get grapes in a tin.’

Eamonn ran his hand over his face. ‘You can’t walk to the town, it’s over four miles away. I need to get the car battery recharged.’

‘I can walk that right enough.’

‘Are you sure?’ He sensed a reprieve. His father had always been a great walker. He’d enjoy it.

‘I am, yes.’

‘OK,’ he called from beneath the cover, ‘well, maybe I’ll stay here. I can get on with some stuff while you’re out.’ He closed his eyes, but waiting for him behind his eyelids was an unwelcome vision of an elderly man in inappropriate clothing, struggling with bags of shopping in the blistering heat.

‘Right-o. I’ll be off, so.’

He saw him losing his footing on the hillside, collapsed by the roadside, snapping a bone.

‘Bye.’

He listened to his father’s footsteps move away from the bedroom and heard the jangle of keys in the front door, then silence. He threw the sheet off and ran.

‘Dad!’ He saw the front door close. There was a pause, then the sound of the key turning again, before his father’s head poked back in.

‘What is it, son?’

‘Wait. I’ll come with you.’

Dermot nodded. ‘Good man. The air’ll do you good.’

‘It looks as if they’re out.’

‘I’d say so.’

They remained where they were, staring at the front door. Walnut veneer, matt finish, discreet brushed-steel escutcheon. Eamonn simmered on a low boil: irritated with Jean and David for their absence; irritated with himself for ever thinking they might be home. They would be out, of course. Walking purposelessly. Rambling. He saw them most days, David with his rucksack, his Berghaus map case; Jean in her dove greys, her outdoors sandals and floppy sunhat. He’d look up from his laptop and watch them through the window as they passed by, their faces betraying no particular joy at the prospect. Keeping busy, keeping active. Ever onwards.

He wondered what now to do with his father. He considered the eight-mile trek to and from the shop, the preparation of lunch, the eating of lunch and the protracted clearing up after lunch was more than enough activity for one day. But still the afternoon had stretched ahead of them. And still Dermot had sat on the futon, with apparently nothing to do. Every image he had of his father was of him busying himself at some task. If not actually out at work, he would be gardening, or washing the Astra, or rearranging tools in the garage, or doing something impenetrable with the gutters. Even his occasional moments of relaxation had an intent quality to them. A concerted decision to sit down and watch a television programme between certain times. A silent hour in the front room reading one of his library books. In retirement, with Kathleen virtually housebound, his industry had only increased, with shopping, cooking and cleaning added to the rest of his domestic duties. This sitting about, doing nothing, was unsettling. It made Eamonn think he should be providing activities.

Jean and David had been his best idea. It wasn’t a match made in heaven. He didn’t see that much common ground between his father and a couple of retired bookkeepers from Hampshire, but all three of them were polite and friendly and, more importantly, all were over sixty-five and thus possessors of the mysterious art of making lengthy conversation about absolutely nothing at all. Perhaps they’d offer to take Dermot on one of their rambles.

‘Shall we call on someone else?’ Dermot ventured and Eamonn wondered if he too was finding their time together passing slowly. With Jean and David away there were few obvious second choices. He considered Rosemary and Gill, also in their sixties, also very pleasant, but gay and therefore problematic. He wasn’t sure what his father might make of them being a couple, or if he would even realize that they were and, if not, then Eamonn might have to explain that fact and perhaps even the whole concept of lesbianism to him. Eamonn’s anxiety was even greater at the prospect of Dermot sitting in Raimund and Simon’s lounge, staring at the various monochrome male nudes that covered their walls. There was Inga the Swedish woman, who lived on her own, but Eamonn knew little about her beyond her nationality and her fondness for painting. About Henri and Danielle he knew only that they came from Toulouse. That left Roger and Cheryl, who he was actively avoiding, and Ian and Becca, who he actively disliked.