‘That was first of all.’
‘Yes. You think she’s loony?’
‘I think she’s loaded.’
‘Loaded?’
‘Her life’s a dander in the park.’
‘But do you believe it, Dan? That there’s good news ahead?’
‘I do,’ he said. ‘But I wonder how much of that news it’s in her gift to predict.’
‘She’s gifted.’
‘I don’t deny it.’
‘Well then.’
‘I’ve seen her car.’
‘She said we were our own worst enemies, Dan.’
‘That’s a stretch,’ he said.
‘It’s what she claimed.’
‘She exaggerates.’
‘No no.’
‘She’s a storyteller. Accept her for what she is.’
‘No, Dan, no. A cleverer woman there isn’t around.’
It was frightening and frustrating how easily she was deceived — by fortune-tellers, by door-to-door hacks, by her own son. The first big lies he’d told her came when he was an adolescent. Hidden magazines and skipped classes, little untruths that left him guilty and weary. But at some point the effort of remembering and repeating each fiction had taken on the shape of a game. Fatigue gave way to a determination to succeed. He began to realise he was good at lying and with each operation now he became more and more set on protecting her from the truth. That’s how he thought of it: protecting her from the truth. It was as if within the walls of his own life there was another person being born, an alternate Dan growing strong in secret. You had to work for what you believed in. It was the only thing a decent person could do. His father had said it was one of life’s few lessons. That and don’t mix your drinks.
‘You’ll be on the right side of history.’ These words had seemed absurd when Dawson had first said them. But these days Dan felt, with increasing confidence, the rightness of what he was doing. Volunteering offered him a purpose. He nurtured it. He was reluctant to see the bulk and heft of his own opinions whittled down into something more subtle. He’d seen, among many other volunteers, that subtlety tended to sit side by side with doubt.
‘We need types like you,’ Dawson had said. ‘Idealists with a brain.’ But being an idealist, if that’s what he was, didn’t obligate him to tell the truth, did it? It meant adhering to the truth, probably. A bigger truth, a conviction and a faith, which was something different. And why would he tell his mother that they had received another threatening call? Why would he let her lie awake at night thinking Prods wanted them dead? Why would he make clear to her that specific people, actual individuals who had their actual phone number, wanted to see the end of him and the end of her because — despite believing in a similar God — their ancestors disagreed over the sufficiency of Scripture, the completeness of certain words in a book, the authority and office of the Pope? He was determined to keep her in the dark. She knew there were risks in living round here. (There were risks living anywhere, she said; there are risks in every town around the world, and why should I be forced out of my home?) A man breathing hard down the line would add nothing to her armory.
The tinkle and squeak of cutlery now. ‘Shall I wet the tea?’ she said.
‘No thanks, Ma.’
‘Go on.’
‘I’m fine with the drink I have.’
Another sip of vodka. She shook her head.
These days his doubts tended to surface in very specific situations: after a glance from a neighbour; sometimes after sex. A girl on the mattress in the garage. Sad Samantha from the Falls. Samantha who was always calling him cold even though, in the private spaces of his head and heart, nothing would stay still. After making love, questions filled the space vacated by desire. Were the other three Catholic families on this road receiving the same anonymous calls? What did it mean if they weren’t? He’d watch Samantha fall asleep, her face alive with light from his father’s hurricane lamp, the glass chipped in two places and going slowly grey. He slept in the garage when violence was high. Lately that meant almost always. Best place to protect their home if anyone broke in. His mother thought he liked to sleep there to stay cool.
Lately he’d had to introduce, much to his mother’s consternation, a household rule that only he could answer the phone. He told her it was important that their telephone number be perceived as his business line. She’d frowned at that and then offered, with no diagnosable irony, to be his secretary. Keep a diary, she said. I could keep a diary of your plumbing jobs, electric jobs, your wire-work and the like. To hear her offer this made him want to cry.
People said they couldn’t find work in Belfast, but as far as he was concerned there was plenty to go round. You couldn’t rely on an employer because most of them were Prods who — fair enough — wanted Prods. So then: work for yourself. Between 6 a.m. and 11 a.m. each day he did lighting for businesses and homes. Between 3 p.m. and 9 p.m. he mainly focused on plumbing. In the interim there was the army, and that took up more and more energy. The peelers seemed to think he was gainfully employed (which he was) and honest (which he mainly was). In a neighbourhood where half the people were on the dole, he wasn’t a priority problem. One or two liked to rough him up a bit, call him a Fenian cunt, but they had never once handed him over to Special Branch. No one, probably, had connected him to the Provos.
His mother cleared her throat. ‘So that Dawson man came round.’
He looked up from pictures of cherries reclining on icing. ‘And you were going to tell me when?’
‘Would it be important?’
‘What did he say?’
‘That man.’
‘What did he want?’
‘Well, I asked him if it was an electrics query, didn’t I, and he said yes. He said it very probably was.’
‘Very probably was.’
‘You know how he’ll talk.’
‘You answered the phone.’
‘You’ll listen. He came round in person. A mouth for mystery that man. Said, “That’s right, it’s an illumination issue.” Illumination issue! To describe the lights!’
She returned to her work. The kitchen’s one light — a long fluorescent tube, 60 watts, drywall patching involved — made a ghost of her. He felt sure the loose skin falling from her throat was a new thing, like the thinning of her hair this last year and the swelling of her ankles before that. The ageing process, with its small adjustments, seemed to pick on one or two small items at a time.
When he was growing up in this house there had been a picture of a long-haired Jesus in here, above the fridge. The dull buzz from the fridge had seemed to creep so coolly from Our Saviour’s eyes and his half-smile seemed to speak of a love for acid rock. In the background of the picture was a woman in a blue veil standing in a burning bush. As a child he’d always looked at it and thought, If the bush is burning she should go stand on the grass. The parables he liked best as a kid were the ones based in common sense. It took him years to start despising their simplicity.
His father had loved that picture of Jesus. Stared at it in the early days, when they still said grace before meals. Why did they stop? It was hard to recall. Buried the picture with him. A new suit, a new tie. He had looked much smarter in death than he had in life. Hair combed and skin smelling of cologne.
His father’s necktie had been secured with what the undertaker called a half-Windsor. To Dan’s eyes the knot looked lopsided. He was fourteen. He wanted to improve it. To improve it he had to remove it, put the tie around his own neck, remind himself of the rules. He felt he was dressing for school but after the funeral he didn’t go to school for weeks. He walked the streets instead, met people who told him they’d look out for him, pay him for little jobs. Once the knot was nice he slipped the tie back over his father’s head, unsettling only a little of the make-up on the ears.