Rust had made a hole in his father’s shovel. There were blisters of rust on the spade. Rust and dried mulch had ruined the garden shears and you could barely open the blades.
In a plastic bag in the cupboard he found rinsed-out soup cans that his mother was keeping for what? Made him think of coffee-jar bombs hurled at Land Rovers in Rathcoole. He’d seen his older cousins spring-load and throw them in fits of youthful excitement, an excitement he’d been desperate to take as his own. At some point the civil rights marches became minor riots. He went on a march with his dad, Connor, Tom, a family. The rainy weather had no effect on their mood. Adrenalin, sense of purpose. People broke rank and punches were thrown. Sound crowding in on you, people grabbing at your clothes. A brick struck his father on the head, side of the head, temple. Didn’t see the moment of impact. Saw the deepening bruise. It was more than sad. His father on the ground, one eye half closed, rain falling on his pale face, washing it. He might have survived if the police had listened. They said he was faking. They said it was a trap. One kicked his father hard in the stomach — a way to prove he was alive. His father didn’t move. The policeman shuddered. What do you do when the people making the rules aren’t interested in fairness? When they choose who to protect based on religion, race, history? The police are scum. People who join the police are scum. Dan hurried through the thought and went out to buy new tools.
Brand-new serrated grass whip in his hand, eleven-inch blade and a hardwood handle. The patio was a thin little runway of paving stones, modest but clean. Flower beds bordered it on three sides: tangled briars, creeping thistle, the hollow stems of other plant life he couldn’t fairly name. He’d let domestic duties slide. It felt good to tick off some jobs. His great discovery, coming out of adolescence, was that being busy gave you energy.
Three hours he worked at trying to clear the weeds. The grass whip, while effective for ripping into stubborn stuff, was curiously unsatisfying to wield. To get any rhythm going you needed to angle your body in an unnatural way. As time passed pain collected along the right flank of his back. Twice he managed to embed the tip of the blade in a fence post. The effort to extricate himself from these errors was tremendous. After a third comic wrestle, jerking and pulling and cursing as the blade refused to budge, he left it jutting out. He began using a severed stem from the most mysterious weed group in the garden, the stuff that looked a little like bamboo, to thwack and flatten nearby brambles. The simplicity of this new method pleased him: Nature against Nature. Before long, though, the stem broke and he admitted to himself, with a reluctance that tugged hard at his biceps and thighs, that it was time for the shears and the rake.
He clenched his jaw against the sound of metal combing stone and then there was another noise: small metallic rattling. The back gate began to grumble, the hinges started to rasp. He took the trowel in his hand as if that would help and watched as a shoe came into view.
Dawson McCartland. The perennial interrupter of progress. ‘Danny,’ he said. ‘Nice day for it, eh?’
‘Average.’
‘Average is nice,’ Dawson said. ‘Don’t underestimate the pleasures of average.’
‘Try knocking next time, please.’
Dawson’s eyes did a second sweep of the garden. ‘You always were very polite.’
He wished he’d never given Dawson a key, but what were the options? All of the excuses had seemed to write their own solutions. ‘My mother is always looking out the window.’ Tell her to draw the curtains. ‘The neighbourhood kids kick footballs over the fence.’ Tell the kids to kick their footballs elsewhere. In the end he’d given Dawson what he prized above all else: access. If you lived in a Catholic area, as Dawson did, you were always looking for places to hide gear. You were safe from burnouts but vulnerable to searches. The advantage of being here, an odd one out on a Protestant street, was that everyone assumed you’d never be so stupid as to risk keeping weapons in your home.
With great delicacy Dawson picked a piece of lint from his shirtsleeve. He seemed to be waiting for a conversation to occur to him. These days he was less of an accountant in appearance. More a flamboyant lawyer. He wore suits with silk linings. Starched white shirts with double cuffs. Every day seemed to bring a new set of cufflinks. Some thought he was aping his daddy, a partner in Madden & Finuncane, and the other thing in development was his impatience with direct questions. Statements he’d answer. Mumbled asides he’d deal with straight away. But in the years they’d known each other Dan had noticed, more and more, that if you decorated your thought with a question mark you rarely got him interested. He’d wait in silence for another sentence, working towards a topic in his own time, on his own terms, sideways, a guy working a piece of furniture through a door.
‘You should get yourself some gloves,’ Dawson said. ‘Those hands’ll blister up.’
‘Nice of you to worry.’
‘Protecting my investment.’
‘You need to feel the stuff.’
‘Come again, sweetheart?’
‘With your hands, to feel them, the weeds.’
Dawson began excavating something from the corner of one eye: a loose eyelash or a thin moon of sleep. He put his glasses back on and raised his heavy eyebrow. ‘What’s that stuff, then?’ His nod was directed at the bamboo-like weeds marshalled skinny against the fence, impossible to uproot.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Spring-cleaning. Nice idea. Out with the old and in with the new, get your cassie looking nice.’
Dan watched Dawson’s gaze fall on a particular paving stone. The slabs around it were chalky with scratches. If you lifted the unmarked stone, as Dan did most mornings in a fit of something that could look to the untrained eye like paranoia, you saw a wooden hatch. The hatch opened onto a disused well shaft. You darted your hand down, keen to get the daily check over with, searching out a piece of thin rope wound around a nail. To tug on that rope and feel the necessary weight was a relief that bordered on bliss.
Dawson said, ‘Not having a general clear-out, are we?’
‘Fuck off.’
‘Ah.’
‘Ah what?’
‘Ah you’re pretty when you’re angry.’
‘It’s risky, Dawson. It’s bad enough that the garage is a lab.’
Detonators, chemicals. A hundred empty bottles under ancient cotton sheets. Dan could picture it all as he spoke. Overhead the sun was getting lost behind a film of cloud but there was still a spring warmth in the air, apricot scent of cowslip.
‘You’ll be rewarded, Daniel.’
‘What for?’
‘Aye. You’re on an upward curve.’
A number of expressions chased one another across Dawson’s face: vulnerability, viciousness, an extraordinary half-comatose brand of introspection.
‘What is it I can help you with, Dawson? You still haven’t said.’
‘Bad mood you’re in for sure.’