Catherine O'Flynn - News Where You Are

‘I’m not sure that in the wake of losing his next big thing it might have occurred to my father that he had anything left to live for.’

Andrea reached out and squeezed Frank’s hand.

‘I’ve been wondering recently why I wanted to try and save this building. What would it matter if all his buildings disappeared? I mean lots of people die and seem to leave no trace — like Michael Church. But when you go back and scratch at the surface you find the people who knew him and who he’d meant something to or who he impacted in some way. He left traces. Then at the other extreme there are people like my father who leave behind this very tangible, physical legacy. Concrete proof that he existed, but if all his buildings went, what traces of him would remain?’

Andrea frowned. ‘Well, you remain.’

‘Yes I do, but he looked straight past me … and Mom. He’d grown bored of us long before. He was focused on the future; he was never really there with us in the house, in our lives. When you take away his works and all his talk about his works, he just slips through the fingers.’

Mo was walking back towards them, her face still glowing with some misplaced sense of ownership of the building.

Frank smiled at her but directed his words at Andrea. ‘I’ve no idea who he was, and this,’ he said, indicating the building, ‘never brought me any closer to knowing.’

He does his second lap of the park. Sweat drips down his back. Adrenalin pumps through him. His eyes flick from side to side; he twitches at every movement in the bushes. His mind is a ticker-tape machine: Now. Or now. Or now … It runs on and on.

He tries not to think of Michelle. He tries not to think of the warmth of her body in bed last night, of her smile this morning as he left the house, but he thinks about them anyway. He’d got it wrong recently — revealed his desperation, gripping her too tightly, scaring her with his intensity. Last night he had the excuse of their anniversary. He kept it simple and honest. He told her she was everything to him and she smiled and relaxed for the first time in weeks. Later at home, she looked at him in a way that made him believe that he was still the man he had been — for a while at least.

He looks at his watch for the hundredth time. Now. Or now … Or when exactly? Where is Mikey? A dog emerges from the bushes and Phil yelps in surprise. He tries to breathe. He’s in control. Everything is under control.

He didn’t linger this morning when he kissed her goodbye, allowing only a brief glance at her eyes. He just smiled, stroked her hair and shouted a breezy, ‘Take care.’

Mikey’s solid, Phil knows that, even after all these years. Something about him has never changed — some quality of self-containment that Phil has always envied. Mikey knew Phil. He knew his weaknesses and still he’d do anything for him. Any minute now. Mikey wouldn’t let him down.

Frank had a biscuit with his cup of tea. It was just a plain digestive: there was nothing more interesting on offer.

His mother watched him closely from her high-backed chair. ‘Is that nice?’ She was looking at the biscuit.

‘Yes. It’s quite nice.’

‘Oh, I wish I could eat biscuits.’

‘What’s stopping you?’

‘They’re far too sweet for me.’

‘So you don’t like them.’

‘No,’ she said sadly, ‘never have.’

Frank sipped his tea and decided that the triggers for his mother’s melancholia were infinite. The mere act of watching someone else eat a biscuit was capable of sinking her further into the gloom.

He noticed for the first time that the room had been re-ordered. A pile of books that had sat on the shelf for as long as he could remember had moved. The collection of coats that hung on the back of the door had shrunk down.

She noticed him looking around. ‘Oh, I’ve been having a bit of a sort through. Weeding out the rubbish, you know.’

Frank frowned. ‘You’ve hardly got anything in here anyway — I can’t imagine you had much rubbish.’

‘The clutter mounts up and then sits there collecting dust, adding to the general sense of disrepair and decay.’

Frank looked around at the sunny, pastel-shaded room. His mother could never just say she wanted to tidy up. It was always the ‘d’ words with her: doom and death and decay, like an adolescent locked forever in a gothic phase.

‘Andrea can’t stand clutter. The house move has given her the perfect excuse to purge. I’m scared when I get home each night to see what else will have gone. I think I’ll be next.’

His mother peered at him. ‘You were always a hoarder, Frank. Never threw anything away.’

‘I threw rubbish away, just not things I wanted to keep. Not mementos.’

‘Yes, and everything was a memento for you. Everything reminded you of something. Nothing was allowed to be forgotten. I can’t imagine anything worse.’

Frank shrugged. No matter what her motivation, he was actually pleasantly surprised by his mother’s activity. It was the first time she had shown any interest at all in her surroundings for years. He noticed some fresh flowers in a vase on the window sill.

‘Those are nice,’ he said.

‘Oh those. Yes.’ She showed no sign of volunteering where they’d come from. ‘So, how are the preparations for moving going?’

‘Oh — okay, you know. Mo’s very excited. She’s developed some complicated colour-coded method of packing, but she won’t let us interfere — says she has it all under control.’

Maureen smiled. ‘She’ll be happier in the city I think. She’s too lively to be stuck out in the middle of nowhere.’

‘I think we’ll all be happier. We weren’t really cut out for country life. Well, I wasn’t anyway.’

‘No, not enough clutter in the countryside for you. Not enough mementos of your past.’ She hesitated and then added. ‘I’ve been thinking about your move.’

Frank was surprised to hear this. He had the idea that he and his family didn’t figure much in his mother’s thoughts. She always seemed very vague on the details of their lives. She never knew how old Mo was and still thought Andrea had the job she’d briefly held fifteen years ago. He waited for her to continue, but she said nothing.

‘What were you thinking?’

‘Well, it’s just that it makes this place even more inconvenient for you, doesn’t it?’

It had never occurred to Frank that his mother might worry about such a thing. She spent so much of her time telling him to forget all about her that it was odd to think she might ever fear he actually would.

‘Oh no, honestly, it’s nothing — an extra thirty miles or so. We’ll still come and see you just as much as we do now.’

She looked at her hands. ‘No, I mean I wasn’t worried about that, you know I’d never worry about that. Quite the opposite really. I just think it’s too far, especially for Mo. I really don’t think you should come so often. I mean you’re here once or twice every week, and it just worries me that you’re here that often. You must have better things to do with your time.’

Frank couldn’t quite work out his mother’s tone. She seemed to be taking the usual martyr tack, but there was something different there.

She spoke more quietly now. ‘I mean with you moving away it doesn’t really matter where I am, does it? I’ve no reason to be in this particular location. If I didn’t have to worry about you visiting so often, I could live anywhere I wanted.’

Frank was confused, and didn’t know what his mother wanted him to say. ‘Worry about us visiting? I didn’t realize we caused you worry. That was never the intention.’