Mr Lynch’s Holiday

31

After a thorough inventory Dermot was almost impressed to discover that not a single thing in the flat worked the way it should. Nothing. Not a tap, not a cupboard door, not even the toilet seat. It reminded him of his pal Jack Dempsey, who took up DIY in his retirement and just about destroyed his family home. Whenever Dermot saw Jack in the pub, he would ask him what he was up to and the answer was always the same: ‘Making improvements’ — followed by a short nod of the head and a sip of his pint. He managed to hang the front gate backwards on a slope, rendering it impossible to open. Dermot would see the post flung on the garden path whenever he passed by the house. According to Kathleen, Jack’s wife resorted to crushing up her Temazepam in his tea to keep him in his chair.

For all that Eamonn’s place had been badly put together, none of it, as far as Dermot could see, was really beyond hope. The walls were good enough for a dry climate, the ceiling and floor sound. It wasn’t going to fall down, which he knew was more than could be said for some of those other foreign developments. He’d seen the programmes on the telly: dream homes with cracks right through them; condominiums built on shallow foundations; stucco bungalows sliding down hillsides.

He’d gone around with a pad and pencil, making a note of everything that needed doing, and it was clear that every one of the problems should have been tackled a long time ago. The initial snags had been allowed to bloom into more serious issues. He found himself underlining words and adding exclamation marks as his incredulity at Eamonn’s inaction mounted. Screws that could have been tightened before cupboard doors started hanging off and hinges became misshapen. Sealant that could have been applied before water pooled on the bathroom floor and the skirting board rotted. Doorstops that could have been fixed before handles made holes in the plaster walls.

Eamonn had never been handy, Dermot knew that. Some of the pieces he had brought home from woodwork as a boy could almost make Dermot weep. The amount of effort and glue that went into them was heart-breaking. ‘My son’s no labourer,’ Kathleen used to say with pride. But he did not go on to be the doctor or solicitor that she had always assumed he would. Neither she nor Dermot had ever fully understood the different jobs he had done, in part because he never took the time to explain them. They were never anything simple or straightforward that Kathleen could tell the women at church. It was always: ‘Something with computers.’ Or ‘Something to do with books.’

After Eamonn graduated, Kathleen became increasingly indignant that many of his cousins who had left school with far fewer qualifications seemed to be better off than him. John drove around in a BMW while Eamonn went most places on his bike or in Laura’s old Renault. Brendan had moved into a brand-new, four-bed semi out in New Oscott, while Eamonn and Laura lived in a little Victorian terrace on a tatty road in Moseley. She blamed his employers. ‘Your bosses are taking you for a ride, son.’ ‘You’re too soft, that’s your problem.’ But he would roll his eyes and say that he didn’t want to drive a BMW and he didn’t want to live in New Oscott.

It was true that he and Laura went away on holiday a lot, but never anywhere that anyone else Kathleen and Dermot knew went. Rainforests and teeming cities, obscure islands and frozen peninsulas. Never once to Florida.

For Kathleen and Dermot, Eamonn’s adult life was like a film with a plot they couldn’t quite follow. They tried, but nothing made complete sense, as if they had missed a key scene, or the sound was turned down too low. Dermot was less concerned than Kathleen. There had always been an idea that she and Eamonn were on the same wavelength, that they understood each other in a way that Dermot did not, and yet the opacity of her son’s choices threatened this. Heartbroken though she was when he announced his emigration, Dermot knew that a part of Kathleen was glad that Eamonn was moving to Spain. A friend of a friend’s son had done the same thing. There were programmes about it on telly. It made for a story that was easy to tell and made their son seem like everyone else.

Dermot didn’t feel any disappointment in Eamonn. He was mildly baffled by his life, but felt, above all, that it was his to live. For Kathleen, the disappointment was not in Eamonn, but in herself. She reproached herself for always saying the wrong thing, for failing to understand him as she felt she should. He’d always been interested in books and films, but if ever she mentioned one she’d heard of, it was never one he was bothered about. He never wore the jumpers she bought him each Christmas. Dermot would hear her testing the water, sending out depth charges:

‘Peggy said that Brendan has all the Sky channels — the whole caboodle.’

A shrug.

‘I hear 3D is making a comeback in the cinemas. They’re all doing it now.’

A grunt.

‘I don’t care for that Home Secretary. I think he’s shifty.’

A roll of the eyes.

And yet their bond remained. It was to her, not Dermot, that Eamonn had spoken on the phone each week. He could be impatient with her, irritated by her, but there was a certain closeness there that Dermot knew he and his son did not share. In latter years Eamonn had refused to accept how ill his mother was and for her part Kathleen had not wanted him to know. Dermot had heard them discussing the idea of Kathleen visiting Eamonn out in Spain. He wasn’t sure who was kidding themselves more. When he tried to speak to Eamonn about it all he got back was:

‘Dad, you’ve been saying she’s at death’s door for years. She’ll outlive us all.’

He had put his arm around him at the graveside. The first time he had held him since he was a boy. He was all bones.

He was painting the wall behind the front door, where he had filled a hole, when Eamonn emerged from the lounge.

‘Is this ever going to end?’

‘Sorry?’

‘All this.’ He gestured vaguely in Dermot’s direction: ‘Is that going to make the flat smell?’

‘What?’

‘The paint. It gives me a headache. I don’t want the flat stinking of it.’

Dermot looked at him. ‘It’s matt, son, not gloss. It has no smell.’

‘Good.’ He walked off.

Dermot finished painting and then carefully laid the brush down and crossed into the lounge. Eamonn lay on the couch, staring at his laptop. Dermot picked up the machine and, without closing it, placed it gently on the other side of the room.

‘Dad! What are you doing?’

Dermot sat in the chair across from Eamonn.

‘Back on the buses, you’d get these characters. Young boys in particular. They liked to carve their names in the windows with their Stanley knives, or cut out pieces of the upholstery as if it were prized animal hide, or spray meaningless scribble all over the top deck. What would you call people like that?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Just answer me, if you can. What would you call people like that?’

Eamonn was exasperated. ‘I don’t know. Vandals.’

‘Yes. I’d say that was right. They were vandals. Destructive and shameless vandals. But the thing is, son, they weren’t idiots. They had no respect for property, but at least, you’d have to say, at least, it wasn’t their own property.’

‘Good, well that’s —’

Dermot spoke over him. ‘At least they hadn’t spent all their money on a brand-new flat and been too idle to lift a finger to stop it falling apart. They didn’t worry that a spot of paint might give them a headache and then stare at a computer screen all day and night. They didn’t sit in their pyjamas in the middle of the afternoon feeling sorry for themselves.’ He stood up and retrieved the laptop, placing it back in front of Eamonn. ‘No. Someone like that, son, would be a vandal and an idiot.’ He turned and left the room.