“You wanted to know how he’s getting on?” Shay asked me. His eyes, meeting mine across the back of Da’s neck, looked like the flames on Bunsen burners. “Here’s your chance to find out. Enjoy.” He hooked the back door deftly open with one foot, dumped Da on the step, and headed back upstairs.
Da stayed where we had dropped him, sobbing luxuriously and throwing out the odd comment about the cruelty of life and enjoying himself no end. I leaned against the wall and lit a smoke. The dim orange glow coming from nowhere in particular gave the garden a spiky Tim Burton look. The shed where the toilet used to be was still there, missing a few boards now and leaning at an impossible angle. Behind me, the hall door slammed: the Dalys going home.
After a while Da’s attention span ran out, or his arse got cold. He dialed down the opera, wiped his nose on his sleeve and rearranged himself more comfortably on the step, wincing. “Give us a smoke.”
“Say please.”
“I’m your father and I said to give us a smoke.”
“What the hell,” I said, holding one out. “I’ll always give to a good cause. You getting lung cancer definitely qualifies.”
“You always were an arrogant little prick,” Da said, taking the smoke. “I should’ve kicked your ma down the stairs when she told me she was on the bubble.”
“And you probably did.”
“Bollix. I never laid a hand on any of yous unless you deserved it.”
He was too shaky to light up. I sat down next to him on the steps, took the lighter and did it for him. He stank of stale nicotine and stale Guinness, with a saucy little top-note of gin. All the nerves in my spine were still stone-cold petrified of him. The flow of conversation coming out the window above us was starting to pick up again, awkwardly, in patches.
I asked, “What’s wrong with your back?”
Da let out a huge lungful of smoke. “None of your business.”
“Just making small talk.”
“You were never into the small talk. I’m not thick. Don’t treat me like it.”
“I never thought you were,” I said, and meant it. If he had spent a little more time getting an education and a little less getting an alcohol habit, my da could have been a contender. When I was twelve or so, we did World War II in school. The teacher was a bitchy, closeted little bogger who felt that these inner-city kids were too stupid to understand anything that complex, so he didn’t bother trying. My da, who happened to be sober that week, was the one who sat down with me and drew pencil diagrams on the kitchen tablecloth and got out Kevin’s lead soldiers for armies and talked me through the whole thing, so clearly and so vividly that I still remember every detail like I saw the movie. One of my da’s tragedies was always the fact that he was bright enough to understand just how comprehensively he had shat all over his life. He would have been a lot better off thick as a plank.
“What do you care about my back?”
“Curiosity. And if someone’s going to come after me for part of the cost of a nursing home, it’d be fun to know in advance.”
“I’ve asked you for nothing. And I’m not going into any nursing home. Shoot myself in the head first.”
“Good for you. Don’t leave it too late.”
“I wouldn’t give yous the satisfaction.”
He took another massive drag on the cigarette and watched the smoke ribbons curl out of his mouth. I asked, “What was that all about, upstairs?”
“This and that. Man’s business.”
“Which means what? Matt Daly rustled your cattle?”
“He shouldn’t have come in my house. Tonight of all nights.”
Wind nosed through the gardens, shouldered at the walls of the shed. For a split second I saw Kevin, just the night before, lying purple and white and battered in the dark, four gardens away. Instead of making me angry, it just made me feel like I weighed twenty stone; like I was going to have to sit there all night long, because my chances of ever being able to get up from that step by myself were nil.
After a while Da said, “D’you remember that thunderstorm? You’d’ve been, I don’t know, five, six. I brought you and your brother outside. Your ma had a fit.”
