Father’s Music. Dermot Bolger

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СКАЧАТЬ time. Twice I nearly went into a bar and then stopped myself. It wasn’t like me to lack the confidence to venture somewhere alone, but tonight I felt unable to adopt a mask. A taxi passed, braking hard to take the corner. There were shops covered by steel shutters except for an Indian restaurant with no customers. I sensed the waiter eyeing me from the lit doorway. I walked quicker to escape his gaze and turned left, intending to circle back towards my flat. But when I got down the street I found it was a cul-de-sac. The last streetlight was a flickering blue as the bulb spluttered out. There was a walled laneway, dividing the street from the high rise flats beyond it.

      I knew I should turn back, but I didn’t want to admit that I was scared. I was half way down the lane when a youth jumped from the wall. He crouched as he landed, twenty feet from me, then leaned against the wall. That old fear came back from when I was eleven, almost paralysing me, but I managed to walk on. I had never found this area violent, but that was because I knew, with almost a local’s instinct, where not to walk. The lane was so narrow I’d have to brush against the youth to get past. He watched me approach, his face betraying nothing. In a few seconds I could be fighting for my life, yet I felt nothing for my would-be attacker. He was as much an anonymous piece of flesh to me as I was to him. At that moment all I felt was anger against myself for being stupid enough to be here. The youth’s fingers were clenched, but I couldn’t decide if they held anything. I could see his teeth as I drew close. It was like encountering a loose dog, not knowing how he would react. I fought against myself so he wouldn’t smell my fear.

      I was face to face with him now, not knowing if it was more dangerous to ignore his gaze or stare back. I’d worked the key-ring in my pocket around my knuckle so that when I hit him the keys might rip his cheek. I passed, our jackets briefly touching. I smelt his sour breath and had a sense that I could almost hear his heart. He didn’t move a muscle. Then I was beyond him, one yard, two yards, three, still waiting for his arm to grip my neck, trying to prevent myself shaking and restrain my legs from running. I reached the laneway’s end. The street ahead was empty. At the top I saw people on the main road as the pubs closed. Still I was afraid to look back. I got half way up the street before allowing myself to run. I couldn’t stop the images rushing in on me about what might have happened; the waste ground beyond the wall, a boiler house with its smashed door, the starless triangle of sky I might have glimpsed as my dying vision.

      When I reached the main road I kept running, controlling an urge to scream. The youth hadn’t raised a finger. He had passively savoured his power to cause terror. I wasn’t furious with myself now but with him, the sick prick getting his kicks from fear. For eleven years I had run from such memories. Now I almost wanted him to have given me an excuse to rip his flesh with my key-ring. Yet I couldn’t remember his face, though it was only moments since our encounter. It was Luke’s face I kept seeing, Luke whom I resented for distracting my judgement until I was like a tourist, floundering about with every scrap of street sense gone.

      There were pages of tile shops in the Yellow Pages. I convinced myself that curiosity made me scan them the following Monday, searching for Irish sounding names. The Irish ghettos around Kilburn seemed an obvious place to start. I made a dozen calls, listening to each voice say ‘Hello?’ before asking if Luke was there. Each one said that no Luke worked there and I hung up disappointed, although if they’d asked me to hold for Luke I would have only waited to hear his voice before putting the phone down. I had nothing to say to him. I just felt that planting a surname and banal workplace on Luke would help diminish him in my mind.

      On Tuesday morning I dumped the Yellow Pages in a street bin. I had stood Luke up, yet for the previous two days I’d thought of nothing except him. These were danger signs. If I wasn’t careful this obsession could grow. I phoned an employment agency where I sometimes got office work. They had a temporary position, covering for somebody who was sick in Wilkinson’s pharmaceutical importers near Elephant and Castle.

      I’d worked there before and had even turned down a permanent job with them. It was a legacy of childhood afternoons in Grandad Pete’s chemist shop, watching him twist his tongue around complex generic names while filling prescriptions, before retreating to his alcove to read the Daily Star which he binned before going home. By the age of ten I had decided to become a chemist. Grandad even persuaded Gran to cut up one of his white coats for me. In between teaching me intricate names of drugs, he’d staple cardboard boxes together for me to climb into and provide running commentaries of me paddling single-handedly down the Amazon or planting the flag of Harrow and Wealdstone on Jupiter. At home he retreated behind the Evening Standard, an inoffensive man who ventured to the club for two pints every evening and whose occasionally animated voice might wake me on his return before Gran’s tongue dispatched him to bed.

      When I started work on the Wednesday, the girls in Wilkinson’s were friendly and we even had a drink after work. But at lunch time and interrupting my journey home on Thursday and Friday, I found myself visiting tile shops and leading the staff on about an order I was hoping to place for the clubs I ran. By Saturday I was an expert on wall tiles. I’d also discovered that tile shop owners were among the drabbest males ever to have been hatched out in the sun.

      Saturday night came. I heard Roxy and Honor ring my bell, then wait outside, puzzled by my absence. After they were gone I regretting hiding with the light out. I wasn’t in clubbing mood, but I couldn’t sit brooding by myself. I called at Honor’s flat, though I knew they were gone. Garth was dressing to go out.

      ‘You’ve missed the girls,’ he said.

      ‘They called. I pretended I was out. Was that awful?’

      Garth grinned. I’d always liked him more than Honor.

      ‘They’re noisy dames,’ he said. ‘I love Honor as my baby sister but sometimes you need to be in the prime of your health to take her. You want to come for coffee?’

      ‘But you’ve a date, haven’t you?’

      He beckoned towards the door. ‘It’s a late date if he shows at all. These shy young owls are frightened to venture out until the whole wood’s asleep.’

      ‘Does this owl hoot like a choir boy?’ I teased.

      ‘If he does it’s his own business.’ Garth was circumspect and I knew I’d intruded into a world he kept private. But I wasn’t being nosy, I had just wanted an affirmation that Luke had told the truth in something.

      ‘Listen,’ he said, more relaxed as we went down the steps. ‘Everyone comes out some time, but occasionally someone does it ten years too late. Do you know who Colonel Parker managed before he got his hands on Elvis? Dancing chickens. He would place chickens on what was actually a hot stove, switch on the music and those chickens danced all night. I never believed in reincarnation, but our friend Liam is so jumpy that in his last life he had to be a dancing chicken way down South.’

      The wine bar Garth picked hadn’t filled up yet. There would be a jazz session later on with serious buffs clicking their dentures to some piano improv. Garth pressed me about when I’d last eaten, then ordered food. When I took my first sip of wine I knew I had to be careful. Once I started drinking I wouldn’t stop.

      ‘Who is he?’ Garth asked.

      ‘Who mentioned a man?’

      ‘Come on, Tracey.’ Garth grinned. ‘I should know the signs.’

      ‘I’ve only met him once,’ I said, with the wine making me realise how hungry I was. ‘It was exciting, but we were crazy with the risks we took.’

      ‘Do I know him?’

      ‘We got our roles wrong in the Irish Centre,’ I said. ‘You should have СКАЧАТЬ