The Boy in the Moon

TWO Pendulum Swings

Alarm bells were ringing. Julia swallowed a mouthful of bile and toothpaste and shouted downstairs: ‘Brian? Are you deaf? Sam’s got the alarm going again … Turn it off and give him his breakfast.’

In the hall, Sam added to the cacophony. Arsenal vs. Manchester United: ‘Goooal! Yes! Bergkamp has done it again. Yes! Yes!’

He was prostrate, punching the air with his fist when she flicked the alarm off and signalled him to the kitchen with a pointed finger, which he ignored. Brian was already there, crunching on toast while he read his horoscope in yesterday evening’s paper. He remained standing, however, just in case she thought he was doing nothing to help. Julia shovelled Coco Pops into a bowl for Sam, thinking that they might at least lend a uniformity of colour when regurgitated later on the ferry.

‘I don’t know why we have an alarm anyway.’ Brian flicked to the sports results. ‘I mean, nothing ever happens when it goes off, and besides, there’s nothing much to rob here, is there?’

Julia downed a glass of orange juice. ‘I guess the alarm is to ensure that no one discovers that fact, don’t you think?’ she said in a levelled tone. Her thin smile said: Failing accidents and breast cancer, thirty maybe forty years to go.

In the hall the ball thumped against the front door. ‘That’s it! Arsenal have clinched it with a mag-nificent goal. Arsenal two hundred and twenty-three to Manchester’s lousy two. And the crowd are going crazy …’

‘Alarms, shutters, infra-red lights and the like, all to advertise what you don’t have. It’s a bit nuts, you have to admit,’ Brian offered. He looked up. ‘I’ll bring the bags down, will I?’

Julia studied her fingernails. ‘You do that,’ she said. ‘And Brian?’

‘Yeah?’

‘I have never wished you a slow, agonizing, horrible death. I just want you to know that.’

As the car pulled away from the house, Julia took one last lingering look back. Her gaze took in the bleached winter bones of the magnolia tree in the front garden and the mellow red bricks of the double-fronted Edwardian house with its large white-framed, multipaned windows. The middle-class dilemma, she thought: more work, bigger house, more work, bigger house, more work, biggest house – death. Big house sold by son to pay for drug habit.

It really does sink, she realized, the heart; it was nearly in her stomach, on its way to her ankles. But there was no way out of it this Christmas – Brian’s sisters would be home from Australia, the first visit in fifteen years. Besides, for some reason entirely unfathomable to her, Sam loved the place. She had refused to accompany them last summer. Off they went – Sam waving goodbye at Heathrow from his perch on Brian’s shoulders – to the rain and wind and the absurdly contrasting stoical countenance of Brian’s father and his equally stoical dog. As it happened, they returned wearing two well-entrenched tans while she was wan and pale from a fortnight’s rain in London.

Sam was in a daze in the back. She craned her neck to check on him. He was staring out the window through bleary eyes. It was still a watery dawnlight. The streetlamps glowed orange against the pallid sky. Julia reached her hand back; Sam grazed it with his own, then contemplated the window again.

‘How long more?’ he asked.

‘We’ve only just left,’ Julia said. ‘Hours to go yet. Play a game of football in your head.’

She watched him in the rearview mirror while he mouthed a running commentary, legs twitching, head jerking from side to side, as he headed the ball into the net. She wondered if any passing drivers would have sympathy for them and the mentally retarded paraplegic in the back.

They drove on through dark, sleepy suburbs. A preponderance of Indian restaurants in one area, followed by DIYs and bleak boarded-up shopfronts in another. Truck-drivers congregated in a caff on a corner, sipping from steamy mugs, staring out morosely at the infrequent passing cars. Julia wondered where they had come from, where they were going. What did they do when they got there? Turn around and do it all again? Not surprising then that they looked so baleful, slumped over their coffee cups. Brian fiddled with the radio dials. Sam fell asleep.

A light rain slanted against the windscreen. The M4 snaked ahead, its grey lanes empty and forlorn-looking. It suited her mood. She looked at Brian from the corner of her eye. He had that fixed quality to his stare which she sometimes found a bit discomforting. He appeared to blank out for whole chunks of time. Since she had known him, there had been times when she’d felt that there was a vacuum deep within Brian, but the impenetrable glaze of nothingness in his eyes masked it entirely. A pie-chart with a slice taken, five minutes missing from a clockface. She attributed it to the fact that he was a surviving twin. Perhaps it was inevitable that there should be an enduring lacuna in the survivor. She couldn’t say; certainly Brian said nothing. He had had a twin; he died; end of story. Fell over a cliff. Matter-of-fact, just like that. Julia had laughed. It wasn’t intentional, but the way he’d said it was so perfectly in tune with her first introduction to Brian’s spartan homeplace – here is the house, here is the field, here is the cliff at the end of the field, here is the cliff at the end of the field which Noel fell over – that she had almost expected him to mime ‘here is Noel, falling over the cliff.’ She simply could not help herself: ‘Was he pushed or did he jump?’ Brian had glowered at her all day after that.

‘I’ll have to stop at the next service station for petrol.’ He cut across her thoughts.

‘Why didn’t you fill up last night?’

‘Didn’t think of it.’

‘If we stop it will wake Sam up.’

‘So he wakes up.’

She glared at him from the corner of her eye and silently mimicked his last statement with an exaggerated shrug. The shrug which had first attracted her to him. He was so casual. Nothing fazed him. Went into computers because he had had to put something down on the form to apply for the government student grant. Straight from the farm to bollocksing up other people’s computers for them. Milking cows or suckers, what odds? Same shit in the end anyway. Easygoing, hard-working, dumb guy. She had liked that. Thought it was honest. Only he’d turned out to be neither dumb nor particularly hard-working – easygoing, certainly. So easygoing, she thought, that when he walked, one buttock had to wait a second or two for the other to align itself. Easy like treacle pudding, horrendously sweet at first but then you became immune to the taste. Even grew to like it – but only to a degree, of course. She figured now that the very reasons you chose a partner were the same reasons you divorced them. Brian chuckled. He had caught her mimicked shrug.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘You.’

‘What about me?’

‘You’re so sharp sometimes I wonder that you don’t cut yourself.’

‘Sometimes I do.’ She smiled in response and settled back with her eyes closed.

She would make an effort, a real effort, she decided. She would just let them all get on with it. Even if the sisters from Australia proved as ghastly as she expected. They regularly sent Brian photographs of themselves and their families framed in cardboard hearts, with little printed notes: G’day from Aussieland. ‘Oh God,’ she sighed aloud.

It was while she was Speech Therapist attached to the North Middlesex, eleven years ago, that she had first met Brian. He was installing the brand-new top-of-the-range computer system into the hospital. The same computer that caused her colleagues’ faces to redden and their fists to clench involuntarily over the next few years, every time it was mentioned. Brian swore that it had nothing to do with his inputting skills that the damn thing chose to offload its data in such an arbitrary fashion from time to time.

She had liked his smile, the way he chatted as amiably to the dinner women as he did to clerical staff. Liked the look of him too, the soft burr of his accent, the constant self-deprecation which usually conceals a healthy arrogance, but which in his case turned out to be warranted well enough. She had liked the fact that he had made a hundred assumptions about her too, felt inclined to prove to him that she was not the archetypical middle-class Hampshire lass he took her to be – even if she was. Moreover, she was a middle-class Hampshire lass (with thighs) fast approaching thirty, desperately busy, happy, ambitious, hectic, social – single. And single every Friday night with a skip of chips and a vat of Chianti.

Even back then, his lack of urgency, which she equated with lack of ambition, irritated her. There had been moments during the past ten years of marriage when the air around him irritated her simply because he was breathing it. Still, they had sort of stumbled into wedlock, though she had never quite figured out Brian’s motivation. He said he loved her. There was no reason to suspect otherwise. She said it too, on occasion. I love you. I wuv you. I weally wuv you. What was that supposed to mean? Until she woke up one morning to find that after ten years of acute, possibly terminal irritation, she had fallen in wuv with her own husband. Now that was scary.

Brian chuckled to himself. He could see Cotter’s spittle glistening quite clearly on the dangling rasher rind, while Cotter cast a slit-eyed glance around the schoolroom. Everyone kept their eyes and heads well down, except for Padraig in the back, of course. Brian was selected again.

‘Oy, you, Donovan. Put that in the bin there for me.’ Cotter sucked the rind into his mouth one more time, then wriggled it again. Brian opened one eye, holding on to the fleeting hope that maybe Cotter meant Edward this time. But the schoolteacher’s whiskey eyes were fixed on him. Edward snickered behind him – Cathal too – as Brian stood up with an inward sigh. He promised himself that he would puck shit out of them later in the yard.

Cotter did his usual trick, holding on to the rind for a second so that Brian’s fingers slid along the spittle before it was in his grip. Then Brian made a mistake: he turned his mouth down at the corners. He tried quickly to upturn it again, but he’d been caught.

‘Oh, now,’ Cotter said expansively, ‘oh, now, what have we here at all?’

Brian threw the rind into the bin and returned to his desk, but Cotter was in no mind to continue with the morning’s lessons anyhow, not with the hangover he had on him and now that he had some serious tormenting to do. Brian winced when he heard his name again.

‘Oy, Donovan. Up here, boy. That’s right … Stand here beside me and explain that little girly face you just did.’ Cotter did an exaggerated moue of disgust for the class, and they sniggered obligingly.

Brian picked them out one by one in his head as he gazed up at his teacher, rounding his eyes innocently. ‘I – I don’t know what you mean, sir.’ Just a little stutter for effect. Cotter liked stutters; mostly he laid off Edward for that reason. Stutters and stammers were suitably deferential, they showed a respectful hesitancy. All of Cotter’s children were hesitant, respectful and speech-impaired.

Brian weighed up the odds: on the one hand, slow crucifixion by whiskey withdrawal throughout the long day ahead of sums, catechism and English; on the other, instant gratification by means of extradition of torture into waiting repository of stupid boy who asked for it. Brian knew which one he would choose. He lowered his eyes humbly and awaited his fate. Cotter farted. That meant he was excited. Brian feared the worst. He looked up and followed Cotter’s sadistic gaze to the back of the classroom where it fell on the grinning, rocking figure of Padraig, the class half-wit. Brian groaned.

‘Oh, now,’ Cotter began, farting again. ‘Master Donovan, sir, you’re telling me that your lips did not … What way will I put it at all?’ He craned forward. ‘Ahh, twitch? Did they or did they not twwwitch when your, ahh, fingers encountered my, ahh, saliva?’

‘They never twitched, sir. I swear it – on my brother’s life, sir. I swear it.’ Brian had time for a thundery glance in Edward’s direction.

‘So you’re not a gedleen then?’

‘Oh, no, sir.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. I am. Because I won’t have gedleens in this classroom and so I won’t – except for the girls themselves, of course.’

The girls, including Brian’s twin sisters, twittered appreciatively. The veins stood out on Cotter’s nose; his eyes, of now indeterminate colour, filled with patriotic tears.

‘Because’ – he had to stop for a plaintive snort – ‘because, one of these weekends, any day now, I’ll be expecting you lads there to march by my side, to march like MEN, and what’ll we do, lads?’

‘We’ll take back the North, sir,’ resounded the chorus.

‘Aris!’ Cotter shrieked.

‘We’ll take back the North, sir.’

‘Spoken like men.’ Cotter dabbed his eyes. He reached under his desk flap and pulled out a Woodbine, fingers trembling poignantly as he struck the match. ‘A bit of spit won’t put us off now, will it, young Donovan?’

Brian shook his head. ‘No sir.’

‘You’ve a mind to share Padraig there’s victuals with him so, I’m taking it?’

‘’T’ wouldn’t be fair to him, sir, but I’ve a mind to do it if it – if it would help the North, sir.’ Brian’s mind cast desperately around for a way out. He couldn’t think fast enough. Maybe he should try a bit of cheek to incense Cotter into a strapping, but then he might end up taking the strap and the worst of all punishments anyway; there was no time, damn it, Cotter was farting with every draw on his cigarette which meant it was all over bar the shouting.

Brian turned his head. He gazed over the bowl-and-scissors haircuts, delighted to a lad that it was not them facing the worst of all possible fates: Victuals with Padraig. The same Padraig who came to school every morning resplendent in his one grey suit and navy blue tie, all of twenty-five if he was a day. But there was no place else to send him. So he came to school and rocked and beamed his way through every lesson, until Cotter rang the bell for break or victuals and then Padraig came into his own, unwrapping slices of lard, two Ginger Nut biscuits and a heel of white bread. This was washed down with a screwtop sauce bottle of milk, and that was the problem. Padraig never quite got the hang of his eating co-ordination. He licked his lard, stuffed the bread into his mouth, then shoved the bottle neck into the mixture – and chomped. While he chomped and sucked, he also beamed. Padraig was good-natured. He was compelled to smile or laugh through every meal, which meant that his food was compelled down his chin. When that happened, his tongue was compelled after the food which had escaped it, so he ate and drank and beamed and retrieved, all simultaneously. Brian’s heart sank. He knew what was expected of him. To the right, by the window beaded with slanting rain, Edward’s eyes shone with belief. Brian had no great desire to disappoint his younger brother, but he felt aggrieved. He had done nothing so heinous as to merit this, the worst of all possibles. Cotter’s eyes gleamed. He reached for and tolled the bell. Brian slouched to the back of the class and nudged Padraig sideways.

Padraig was already rifling through his small cardboard case for his lunch. He licked the slab of lard and offered it to Brian. Brian licked, then turned away. All heads craned back towards them. Padraig bit into his slice of bread. He chortled to himself happily. Nobody blinked as the bottle neck intruded into the hedonistic mess. Glug glug. A merry Padraig extruded the bottle, leaving a glutinous residue of lard and dough and milk encasing the top. Not a breath as Padraig extended the bottle toward Brian. Cotter released a resonant volley for Ireland from the forefront of the room. Brian held the bottle; he blinked rapidly; his hands trembled. He pursed his lips. He clamped them to the glass, shuddered for an instant, then drank with such fervour that the classroom erupted into cheers and roars of such approbation as to make Cotter keel sideways headlong into the bin harbouring his own beloved bacon rinds. He was so overcome by fervent love of his country that he called a halt to the rest of the day’s lessons, and pronounced that from that day forward, 19 April 1966 would be remembered as the beginning of the South’s incursion into the North’s silent but awaiting bay. Brian stood for his bows. He was twelve. And triumphant.

‘What are you laughing at, Dad?’

‘Oh nothing. Nothing.’

‘You must have been laughing at something,’ Sam persisted.

‘I’ve forgotten already.’

Sam grumbled to himself as Brian pulled into the service station. Julia was pretending to be asleep. He filled the tank and joined the motorway again.

‘Are we there?’ Sam asked.

‘Not yet.’

‘Mu-um …?’

‘Shh, she’s sleeping.’

‘How long more?’

‘Couple of hours. Go back to sleep.’

‘I wasn’t really asleep. I just had my eyes closed.’

‘Well, just close your eyes some more then.’

‘Let’s play something.’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know. I Spy maybe?’

‘All right. I spy with my little eye something beginning with M.’

‘Em … Mum?’

‘No. Motorway. Your turn.’

‘You didn’t give me a fair chance …’ Sam was about to protest.

‘Do you want me to take over?’ Julia interrupted, shifting up on her seat.

‘OK,’ Brian said.

‘Pull in.’

‘I thought you meant with I Spy.’

‘Pull in, pull in. I’ll drive now.’

‘You’re not supposed to stop on the motorway.’

‘Pull in.’

Brian sighed and stopped on the hard shoulder. They swapped seats. The rain was pelting down in fat crackling drops. Julia swerved out on to the motorway. She was nervous, he understood, about the journey, about the destination. He experienced a spasm of pity for her. And then he felt a spasm of pity for himself, because he would pay the price for her nervousness.

Halfway across the Severn Bridge, Brian turned to Sam. ‘We’re in Wales now, Sam.’

‘How long more?’

‘Oh, we’re a few hours off Pembroke yet.’

Julia stopped at the next service station and they all got out. She stalked ahead to the Ladies with Brian and Sam following behind her. When she came out again, Brian was standing by the large rain-streaked windows, sipping coffee from a cardboard cup.

‘Where’s Sam?’ Julia asked.

‘Isn’t he with you?’

‘What do you mean?’

Brian held the cup in mid-air. ‘He followed you.’

‘No he didn’t – I thought you were taking him to the Gents.’

‘He ran off – after you.’ Brian held his gaze steady and sipped from the cup. ‘Check the Ladies, will you?’