Selected Stories

When he returned to the drawing-room, having poked about in the cistern with the knife, the room was empty. Rain was beating against the windows. The fire had burnt low. He poured another dollop of gin into his glass, not bothering with the tonic since that would have meant opening the second bottle. Then the old fellow appeared out of nowhere with a basket of logs, causing Eddie to jump.

‘I done it best I could,’ Eddie said, wondering if he’d been seen with the bottle actually in his hand and thinking he probably had. ‘It’s better than it was anyway.’

‘Yes,’ Timothy’s father said, putting a couple of the logs on to the fire and a piece of turf at the back. ‘Thanks very much.’

‘Shocking rain,’ Eddie said.

Yes, it was heavy now, the answer came, and nothing more was said until they moved into the dining-room. ‘You sit there, Eddie,’ Timothy’s mother directed, and he sat as she indicated, between the two of them. A plate was passed to him with slices of meat on it, then vegetable dishes with potatoes and broccoli in them.

‘It was a Thursday, too, the day Timothy was born,’ Timothy’s mother said. ‘In the newspaper they brought me it said something about a royal audience with the Pope.’

1959, Eddie calculated, fourteen years before he saw the light of day himself. He thought of mentioning that, but decided they wouldn’t want to know. The drop of Cork had settled in nicely, the only pity was they hadn’t brought the bottle in to the table.

‘Nice bit of meat,’ he said instead, and she said it was Timothy’s favourite, always had been. The old fellow was silent again. The old fellow hadn’t believed him when he’d said Timothy was off colour. The old fellow knew exactly what was going on, you could tell that straight away.

‘Pardon me a sec.’ Eddie rose, prompted by the fact that he knew where both of them were. In the drawing-room he poured himself more gin, and grimaced as he swallowed it. He poured a smaller measure and didn’t, this time, gulp it. In the hall he picked up a little ornament that might be silver: two entwined fish he had noticed earlier. In the lavatory he didn’t close the door in the hope that they would hear the flush and assume he’d been there all the time.

‘Great,’ he said in the dining-room as he sat down again.

The mother asked about his family. He mentioned Tallaght, no reason not to since it was what she was after. He referred to the tinker encampment, and said it was a bloody disgrace, tinkers allowed like that. ‘Pardon my French,’ he apologized when the swearword slipped out.

‘More, Eddie?’ she was saying, glancing at the old fellow since it was he who was in charge of cutting the meat.

‘Yeah, great.’ He took his knife and fork off his plate, and after it was handed back to him there was a bit of a silence so he added:

‘A new valve would be your only answer in the toilet department. No problem with your pressure.’

‘We must get it done,’ she said.

It was then – when another silence gathered and continued for a couple of minutes – that Eddie knew the mother had guessed also: suddenly it came into her face that Timothy was as fit as a fiddle. Eddie saw her glance once across the table, but the old fellow was intent on his food. On other birthday occasions Timothy would have talked about Mr Kinnally, about his ‘circle’, which was how the friends who came to the flat were always described. Blearily, through a fog of Cork gin, Eddie knew all that, even heard the echo of Timothy’s rather high-pitched voice at this same table. But talk about Mr Kinnally had never been enough.

‘’Course it could go on the way it is for years,’ Eddie said, the silence having now become dense. ‘As long as there’s a drop coming through at all you’re in business with a toilet cistern.’

He continued about the faulty valve, stumbling over some of the words, his speech thickened by the gin. From time to time the old man nodded, but no sign came from the mother. Her features were bleak now, quite unlike they’d been a moment ago, when she’d kept the conversation going. The two had met when she walked up the avenue of Coolattin one day, looking for petrol for her car: Timothy had reported that too. The car was broken down a mile away; she came to the first house there was, which happened to be Coolattin. They walked back to the car together and they fell in love. A Morris 8, Timothy said; 1950 it was. ‘A lifetime’s celebration of love,’ he’d said that morning, in the toneless voice he sometimes adopted. ‘That’s what you’ll find down there.’

It wouldn’t have been enough, either, to have had Kinnally here in person. Kinnally they could have taken; Kinnally would have oozed about the place, remarking on the furniture and the pictures on the walls. Judicious, as he would have said himself, a favourite word. Kinnally could be judicious. Rough trade was different.

‘There’s trifle,’ Eddie heard the old woman say before she rose to get it.