It had been some time since he had seen Brid crying. He could not remember her crying from pain, ever, even when Aisling was born. He watched her head moving slowly from side to side, her fingers spread through her hair while she rested her elbows on her knees.
“Brid,” he tried again. Her arm shot out, the hand upraised, and then slowly returned to the side of her head. A coldness was coming through him.
“I’ll fix it,” he said. “I will.”
This time she said nothing. The wheezes he had heard from her drawing her breath began to grow softer.
“It’s finished,” he said. “That’s a promise. It’s just…”
“Just what,” she said, but did not raise her head. “It’s always ‘just this’ and ‘just that.’”
“You’ll see it happen. You will.”
She sniffed and rubbed at her nose, and threw her head back, pushing her hair out of her face. Her face was so different, he thought.
“It’s too much,” she whispered. “I can’t do it. I can’t.”
“You know I wouldn’t do anything to let you down, or Aisling down.”
“Dermot,” she said, gathering herself, and dabbing at her nostrils while she looked at the floor. “Dermot. It’s three o’clock in the morning. It can’t possibly make sense, this thing.”
“You head back to bed,” he said. “I’ll kip here. That way I won’t disturb you.”
He shivered, and then grabbed his knee tight to guard against his hand trembling. Brid seemed to be hypnotized by whatever she was staring at.
“A bit of daylight isn’t going to fix this,” she murmured.
“Everything looks weird at night,” he said. “Come on, I’ll get you to bed.”
She shook her head.
“I can feel it, you know,” she said. “What you don’t tell me. It’s like a big thing here now. Like a big shadow.”
“Brid. I have no secrets from you.”
She nodded now, as though she agreed. In the seconds that passed, he began to sense she did not.
“You might believe that yourself,” she said, quietly. “That’s what I have to think.”
She glanced up at him.
“Otherwise, where are we?”
He grasped his knee tighter.
“I have enough,” he said. “Enough research, I mean. It’s finished. No more. Tonight was the last of it.”
She was very still, but he could hear her raspy breathing. She began to get up. The ringing shattered the quiet. He put his hand over the mobile.
Brid frowned and sat back on her heels. He pushed at the power and held, but one more ring escaped.
“You’re shaking,” he heard her say.
“I didn’t know I left it on. Sorry.”
“Look at you, Dermot. What’s going on?”
“It woke me up, gave me a fright, love. That’s all, I wasn’t expecting it.”
She stepped back, and stared at him. A teacher move, he knew, and anger joined his panic.
“What,” he said. “Will you stop with the, the nanny treatment here? Jesus, this isn’t Abu Ghraib or somewhere, is it?”
“Something’s wrong, I know it.”
“I’m half-asleep, for Christ’s sake, Brid. Give me a bit of space here, will you?”
“This weekend, Dermot. This weekend, we have to talk.”
“What does that mean? We talk every day. We’re talking now.”
“Tell me what’s gone wrong.”
“Nothing! Nothing has gone wrong. Okay?”
She waited. He took in the silent reproach.
“Let’s go somewhere,” she said, “just the pair of us. I’ll get Ma to take Aisling for the day.”
From tears to cool practicality, Fanning thought, all in a matter of a minute.
“We’ll go down to Dwyer’s Cottage,” she added. “The long way, over Sally Gap. Rain or shine.”
She was waiting for him to answer.
“No talk about school,” she said. “I promise. Unless it’s slagging the system. How about that?”
He was holding his breath, and he wasn’t even aware of it until the floaties showed up in his field of vision.
“Earth to Dermot? Are you receiving me?”
He nodded, and concentrated on his breathing.
“I promise not to nag too,” she said. He tried to smile, but couldn’t. Her eyes were big and clear now, he saw, and full of that teasing tenderness.
“Great,” he said. “That’d be great.”
Her eyes flickered with concern.
“We’ll make it, Dermot. We always have.”
The turmoil was actually hurting his chest.
“I know it’s tough,” she whispered. “Working away, trying to get things done. Reinventing yourself, and having to depend on yourself so much.”
He had to do something tonight: that was all there was to it. Waiting wouldn’t help.
“You’re a good father,” she said. “And you’re a good husband. You keep it all together. There’s not many can do that. Very few, in actual fact.”
An image flashed into Fanning’s mind of reaching out and slapping Brid across the face. The shock of it stole his thoughts of Cully, and the puddled footpath where the Polish man lay. He rubbed hard at his eyes. Brid’s face was inches from his when he stopped.
“Give it to me here,” she whispered, and he felt her hands on his thighs, reaching.
“Jesus, Brid,” he muttered, and saw her face take on its usual set. She sat back on her heels, and looked sideways at the table. Then she sighed, and got slowly up.
“Sorry,” he said. “That didn’t come out right, I know.”
“It’s okay,” she said. She was in teacher mode, he could tell.
She was hesitating.
“You know Liam and Susan, how they were, back last year,” she said.
Liam was his friend, he thought of reminding her. Had she forgotten?
“Good ideas, we should go out with them some night. Yes.”
“I meant Liam, what he did. The time he, you know?”
Fanning knew immediately. When he was ten, he had seen an accident between a car and a cyclist, on the Clontarf Road. He remembered knowing it was going to happen a few seconds before it did. There was something about the way things were going that made it inevitable, he believed.
“Brid, don’t start that again. For Christ’s sake.”
She was not going to let it go.
“I’m just saying think about it. Please. I mean, you yourself saw what it’s done for Liam, for the whole family. You said so yourself.”
“I was joking-”
She stood very still, and he could see the anger turn her face impassive.
“It saved their marriage,” she said. “That’s nothing to laugh at, in my opinion.”
Fanning was up out of the chair in one move. She frowned at him. It surprised him that he did not feel rage, so much as an unbearable impatience.
“You think a frigging counselling session is going to help the situation, do you? Like sharing feelings, and a good cry or two? Screw that. Not going to happen.”
“Then I’ll go myself,” she snapped. “I’m the one needs it, and that’s plain to see, isn’t it?”
“Whatever that means.”
“I’m the one who’s the shock absorber in this family, Dermot Fanning. Or haven’t you noticed? The one who has to bite their tongue. Hold back. Be a saint pretty well, when I feel far from it.”
“You’re not biting any tongue now, are you!”
“Oh freedom of speech is only for the creative types, is it? ’Cause they’re the ones make the rules? Oh now I get it — but it has taken me a while, hasn’t it. I’m a slow learner, I suppose. I don’t have that, what’ll we say, flair.”
“You switch over from being me mother to a… well I’m not going to say it, but all I’ll say is it was faster than I ever saw-”
“Well I have to be your mother half the time!”
The words seemed to bounce off the walls for several moments, reverberating in Fanning’s mind. The room seemed very quiet now. He took in the folded arms, the hurt look, and anger.
“You’re shouting,” he said. “Did you know that, Brid?”
“Screw you, and this ‘you’re shouting’ crap!” “You want to wake up Aisling. You want her to hear you ranting.”
“I don’t care if she hears it or not! Why would I worry? She already knows. Children know, you know. They’re not like adults that way.”
“Adults,” he said.
“That’s right: adults. Adults hide things, or try to. Or they hide, themselves. They avoid. They run away from things. From people.”
He glanced at her, and then looked down the short hall, half-expecting to see Aisling there. He wondered if the people next door were listening. Of course they were.
The furniture looked dull and even ugly now. Even Aisling’s art on the walls looked faded. The whole place looked pathetic, comforting, futile.
“People do that, Dermot. They let things go on too long.”
“You mean us, do you?”
“Of course not. I mean taking care of things, of themselves.”
“Who needs a shrink when we’ve got one in the house right here.”
“Stop that!”
It was a shriek. Fanning counted to three before he heard a tapping on the walls.
“Because change is too scary,” said Brid, her voice ragged now.
It had never been this bad, ever, Fanning thought.
He looked around the room, and then picked up the can of beer and his mobile. He took his time walking to the sink, and he poured the can down the drain. The smell coming up from the sink reminded him of when he was ten again, going down to the pub to buy stout for his grandfather in the village near Bansha.
“Go ahead to your counsellor dude,” he murmured. “And do what he tells you, like a good little girl, and behave yourself.”
The words hung in the air. He wondered where they had come from, and how they had tumbled out of his mouth with so little effort. He heard the bubbles from the spilled lager still breaking on the stainless steel below. He didn’t turn around.
“You fucking asshole, Dermot Fanning,” he heard her say in a quiet voice. Then the footsteps, and the pyjama bottoms rubbing together as she made her way back to the bedroom.
He knew he had to do something now. He switched his mobile back on and waited for the Unlock prompt. He couldn’t go back into the bedroom for a change of clothes. His shoulder bag was by the door, though. He opened the washer/dryer, and pulled the clothes out onto the floor. It didn’t matter now. There was a T-shirt, and the white dress shirt, and knickers. It took him a few turnovers of the clotheslines to find a second sock.
His fingers didn’t seem to be working so well. He thumbed his way slowly to the Recent Calls. There it was, Murph’s number. Though he had expected it, the shock surged through his chest and down his limbs. He switched off the mobile again.
He looked in his wallet, and checked that he had the two tenners and the twenty that he had yesterday. Movement in the window brought his eye over. It was himself, his face shadowed by the flaring light coming up from the table lamp. The row had actually happened. Aisling might be awake right now, about to cry out.
He had no plan. It was a few hours yet before the city would come to life proper, and he could figure out what to do. He would wait until he had a spot somewhere in the city centre, and then phone Cully. So things had gotten out of hand, and someone had been hurt.
Cully’s two arms up in the air, like a dancer, stomping.
He clenched his eyes as tight as he could. Colours came and went quickly. He opened his eyes, and tiptoed to the door. There were gloves and a folded-up umbrella in the shoulder bag. Fanning paused, and considered the laptop again. It would be an impediment. He folded the shirt as best he could, and slid it into the bag, along with the phone.
The door squeaked, he remembered, but only after it was about halfway opened. He squeezed the handle hard and opened the door, working his way around it before it had swung too wide. He turned the key before he pulled the door behind him.