The Valparaiso Voyage. Dermot Bolger

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       II SUNDAY

      Asofa with scratched wooden arms that probably even looked cheap when purchased in the 1970s; a purple flower-patterned carpet; one battered armchair; a Formica table that belonged in some 1960s fish and chip shop; an ancient windowpane with its paint and putty almost fully peeled away. I woke up on Sunday morning in Ebun’s flat and felt more at home than I had done for years.

      A solitary shaft of dusty light squeezed between a gap in the two blankets tacked across the window as makeshift curtains. It fell on Niyi’s bare feet as he sat on the floor against the far wall watching me. He nodded, his gaze not unfriendly but territorial in the way of a male wary of predators in the presence of his woman.

      I looked around. One sleeping-bag was already rolled up against the wall. Ebun occupied the double bed, her hair spilling out from the blankets as she slept on, curled in a ball. Niyi followed my gaze. Maybe he had just left the double bed or perhaps the empty sleeping-bag was his. I’d no idea of where anyone had slept. All three Nigerians had still been talking softly when I fell asleep last night.

      ‘Lekan?’ I enquired in a whisper.

      ‘Gone. To help man prepare for his appeal interview, then to queue.’

      ‘What queue?’

      ‘Refugee Application Centre. He needs our rent form signed.’

      ‘But it’s Sunday?’

      ‘On Friday staff refuse to open doors. They say they frightened by too many of us outside. Scared of diseases I never hear of. By Monday morning queue will be too long. Best to start queue on Sunday afternoon, and hope that when your night-clubs finish there is less trouble with drunks. Lekan does not like trouble.’

      ‘How will he eat?’

      Niyi shrugged. ‘We bring him food. Lekan is good queuer. I only get angry. Too cold. Already I am sick of your country.’

      He pulled a blanket tighter around him. We had been whispering so as not to wake the girl. It was seven-twenty on my watch. There would be nowhere open at this time in Dublin, not even a café for breakfast. I turned over. My pillow was comfortable, the rough blanket warm. My limbs were only slightly stiff from the thin mattress. I could go back asleep if I wished to. From an early age I had trained myself to fall asleep anywhere.

      Not that this ability was easily learned. I spent five years sleeping in the outhouse as a child, yet the first few nights, when I barely slept at all, remain most vivid in my mind. My terror at being alone and the growing sensation of how worthless and dirty I was. Throughout the first night I was too afraid to sleep. I knelt up on the desk to watch lights go out in every back bedroom along the street. My father’s light was among the first. Yet several times during the night I thought I glimpsed a blurred outline against the hammered glass of the bathroom window. I didn’t know whether it was my father or a ghost. But someone seemed to flit about, watching over me or watching that I didn’t escape.

      I’d never known how loud the darkness could be. Apple trees creaking in Hanlon’s garden, a rustling among Casey’s gooseberry bushes. Paws suddenly landing on the outhouse roof. Footsteps – real or imagined – stopping halfway down the lane. Every ghost story I had ever heard became real in that darkness. Dawn eventually lit the sky like a fantastically slow firework, and, secure in its light, I must have blacked into sleep because I woke suddenly, huddled on the floor with my neck stiff. My father filled the doorway.

      ‘School starts soon. You’d better come in and wash.’

      He didn’t have to tell me not to mention my night in the СКАЧАТЬ