Songdogs

MONDAY, leave a man in peace

When he woke me it was still dark outside. I was curled up at the bottom end of his bed. During the night he must have put a blanket over me. It was folded all the way in under my feet, and a hot-water bottle had grown cold by my toes. He had taken a pillow and propped it in under my head. The marmalade cat was curled in with me, the saucer-ashtray full on the bedside table. He told me that he’d make breakfast for me, that I’d need something for the trip to Dublin. Rubbed his chest and went out the door. I took the saucer full of cigarette butts and went to the bathroom, flushed the fag-ends down the bowl, had a shave — my first shave all week — washed out the sink, had a quick scrub, went downstairs.

I had to laugh when I saw the sunnyside eggs he had ready for me.

He sat opposite me at the table, wearing a white shirt dotted with bits of egg. He was still rubbing his fingers over his chestbone, deliberating the rising of the sun out the kitchen window. And then he opened a button on his shirt and his fingers moved in further around his body. For a moment he shoved them in under his armpit, closed his arm down on them, kept them there for a moment, took them out, almost Napoleonic in the gesture. He held the fingers up to his nose and sniffed them, scrunched up his nose and chuckled.

‘You really think I need a bath?’

‘Yeah, I suppose you do.’

‘I’m a bit on the smelly side, amn’t I?’

‘A bit.’

‘I noticed it last night,’ he said. He coughed deeply, went to the kitchen sink and reached across for the bottle of washing-up liquid.

‘What’s that for?’

‘No shampoo in the bathroom,’ he said.

‘Of course there is,’ I said. ‘I have some in there.’

‘You don’t need to pack it?’ he asked.

‘Not really, I can do without.’

‘Are ya all packed?’

‘Sort of.’

‘Didn’t have much time to talk, did we, really?’

‘I suppose not.’

‘Sometimes you have too much time. Then you figure that too much time isn’t any time at all. Know what I mean?’

‘Not really.’

‘Come on up, then. You can chat to me from outside the door.’

He walked out of the kitchen and I backpedalled in front of him, punching him lightly on the shoulder, until he told me that he’d deck me if I didn’t stop, that he still has it in him to throw a good punch.

* * *

Headlights swerving down the narrow road towards our house. New territory for the fire department — they had run this road many times before on fire drills for the meat factory, but never this far along the road, so that when one of the trucks tried to thread its way through the laneway a wheel got caught in a rutted ditch and it slid sideways and blocked the entrance. A chorus of obscenities rose up from the men.

Mam was rocking back and forth on the front porch, her head into the blue crucible of her dress. The old man was trying to connect the hose to the tap at the front of the house, shouting ‘Jesus fucken Christ!’, with the hair outshooting from his pate in brusque surprise, ‘Jesus Christ!’ The hose sprayed around the tap — a tiny hole had developed in it, which he told me to hold my finger over. A rainbow spectrum arising against the wisteria on the wall. The hose was hardly long enough to reach. My father thumped himself vigorously on the side of the head — ‘Ya fucken bitch, ya fucken bitch!’ Twelve firemen in yellow jackets were using a winch to take the truck out beyond, others running down the lane, bellies jogging, one of them still in his pyjamas so that his penis leaped out from the gap in his pants. As he ran he pulled on his yellow jacket top, stuffed his penis back in his pyjama bottoms, and moved along with one hand held over his groin, as if wounded. Well into middle age, they breathed like freight trains when they reached the end of the lane and were temporarily immobilised at the sight of the low squat darkroom aflame.

Smoke was coughing out from the bottom of the blue door, moths and midges careening in the sky above the smoke. The men quickly leaned towards my father, asking him something. He grabbed a bucket from the barn, a red bucket, swinging it around and shoving it into the fist of a fireman. ‘Where’s the fucken fire truck?’ he shouted, cursing out more against the lustrous night. He was frantic with movement, lifting his arms up imploringly, then grabbing at the bucket again. The firemen tried to calm him down, drag him back from the flames, hysteria in their voices: ‘Hey, this one’s rocking, boys, watch the bloody beams don’t crash.’ A couple of hand-held extinguishers sprayed out frugally against the power of flame. My father was screaming about chemicals that might ignite, but the fire truck was unstuck now, coming along the lane with lights flaring like the carnival whirlywheel, red against the walls. The old man was watching the truck, waving his arms and pointing, stamping his feet up and down on the ground. I looked around at Mam clutching her blue dress, wiping her hands back and forth on the cloth, drying something off her hands.

A sharp crack issued into the night with violent acceleration, a joist swinging down in a graceful arc, and then the whole roof came down with a huge splintering sound, sending sparks yawing out over the courtyard, ecstatically fizzling out towards the countryside, caught on the air in somersaults and plunges which extinguished them, upwards in petition to the sky, then down in greyness to enrich the soil. Other sparks lisped sideways to fade away towards the river. The boom sounded out. Maybe there was a communion of beetles and spiders in uproar in there, a chainwork of scuttle among ripples of negatives and prints and lenses and slides and paper and half-eaten sandwiches, a litany sounding with the boom, ‘Ya fucken bitch, ya fucken bitch!’ The fire truck was working now, four frenzied men at the giant hose, all of them shielding their eyes from the wild up-burn. Mam was curled like the limb of a heavy orchard tree, bent down, staring at the ground, finished with the rocking. ‘Are ya all right, Mam?’ She didn’t even look up and I noticed the fringe of her hair was singed and the wisps on her arms were fizzled down to stubs. I sat down beside her, insane with pride, but all she said was: ‘Bedtime, m’ijo.’

I found myself drifting off towards a small crowd that had gathered, waiting, watching. A slew of cars rolled their way down our laneway for a gawk that was a million times better than any television show — ‘Oh, come quick, look, Lyons’ darkroom is up in blazes.’

An irate fireman shooed the crowd backwards, out to the lane. Shouts rose up from the men, faces varnished at the sight. Women stood in dressing gowns and hair rollers, toothbrushes still wet in their fingers. An owl-faced man I had never seen before went down on his hunkers in front of me — ‘It’s all right son,’ he said, ‘everybody’s safe, there’s nothing to worry about.’ Suddenly a massive flab of arms came out of the crowd and negotiated its way past the stranger and gathered me in to Guinness stains and stale smoke — Mrs O’Leary, somehow aware that it was me, taking a hold of the front of my t-shirt, ‘Where’s your Mam?’ Another roar came across the courtyard — ‘Watch the sparks don’t make the house catch boys!’ Smoke was overcrowding the flames, bits of it shoaling around us so that Mrs O’Leary took out a handkerchief and told me to place it over my mouth, the waft of washing powder pouring into me.

Doctor Moloney, young and slim as a hurley stick, broke his way through the crowd behind us and sprinted over to the firemen who were moving around the darkroom wasplike in their jackets, muttering amongst themselves, some of them looking backwards over their shoulders at Mam, who hadn’t budged from the doorstep. The old man was being held back by firemen, two of them on either side, clamping his arms, his legs moving furiously beneath him, shouting something about a Leica lens and a certain roll of film. But he was held back from the smoke-throwing building as if pinned back against the world, an insect in a tray. Mrs O’Leary bent her chest over Mam and, with soothing words rushing forth, combed her hand over the tied-back hair.

‘There there, Juanita, there there.’

She told me to run to the kitchen and get some whiskey. ‘Quick, lad, before she goes into shock!’ But Doctor Moloney was suddenly hovering and holding me back with a hand on my shoulder — ‘It’s not whiskey she needs at all.’ Together they lifted Mam by either shoulder into the living room, which, after their decoration, was a commotion of colour — the vases, plants, amulets, tumultuous paintings, red coffee cans with flowers — and they sat her down in the giant armchair and lingered over her. It might as well have been a peaceful Sunday for the hush that had descended outside, except for the red light of the siren that seeped into the room in swirls from the eastern window. Mrs O’Leary had the kettle on in the kitchen, where the radio had been left on with a gospel song — Lead me on, precious Lord, through the ripening sun, lead me on, precious Lord, gonna get a glass of buttermilk before the day is done.

Mrs O’Leary snapped the radio off brusquely. Doctor Moloney had a white washcloth held across Mam’s brow while she sat placid in the chair, staring straight ahead without even the suggestion that she had ever learned to speak, fingering at the burnt fringe of her hair. ‘Don’t make the tea too hot!’ shouted the doctor. ‘And plenty of sugar in it!’ Mrs O’Leary came into the room, feeling her way delicately. She was blowing on the tea, dolloping some extra milk and sugar in it, when the door banged open behind her. My father stood there as huge as an ancient elk exhumed from the bog, shouting, ‘Let me smell her hands! Let me smell her hands!’ and two policemen came behind him, removing their hats as they crossed the threshold. ‘Let me smell her hands, I said!’ One of the policemen reached out and grabbed my father by the elbow. The old man looked around and stared at him, pivoted again. Then suddenly, gracefully, swanwise, sad, my father, seeing Mam’s face, turned his whole body around and ghosted his way through the policemen and back out into the night.

Outside in the courtyard the whole world had gathered to watch the darkroom stand in a shell of nothingness, hard and broken and brick-high without a ceiling and roamed around by figures quietly shaking their heads at the audacity of flame. Rumours were whispered into the palms of hands.

‘Isn’t it horribly sad, all the same?’

‘They say she burnt it.’

‘Torched it good-oh.’

‘Go on out of that.’

‘Well, that’s his comeuppance, I suppose.’

Boys my age were flinging stones at the gutted structure and edging their way closer, always closer, until they were swatted back by the adults, who themselves moved in for a better look. It was the most spectacular thing that had happened in years. I muttered to myself: I will never go to school again in my life, I will never go anywhere ever again. And, at the kitchen window, I watched the old man walk his way around the building, slowly following two firemen through the kicked-down door to emerge with his hands clasped to his head. Some firemen were dragging out the filing cabinets. In the living room Mrs O’Leary was saying, ‘It’s all right now, Juanita, I’ll stay with you the night,’ and she ran her fingers over Mam’s brow, all the time still incanting ‘there there there.’

Mrs O’Leary, withered down into herself, said to me: ‘You and your Mam are coming with me, she needs a little rest, she’s awful tired, you know. You’ll be staying with me for a few days until she’s better.’ And outside, my father, in a stained grey shirt, combing through the ashes of his darkroom.

* * *

From outside the door I could hear the bath running and the old man fumbling with his clothes. There was a loud bash against one of the cupboard doors and I pulled at the handle of the door to open it. It was locked tight. ‘It’s all right,’ he said from inside, ‘I’m only taking off me shoes.’

* * *

Mrs O’Leary felt her way to the end of the counter to pull pints for the firemen. She had set up an empty Guinness keg for me to sit on, gunmetal grey, old beer gone sticky around the rim. The men in the bar were arranged in a stonehenge of themselves, chatting darkly and seriously, one of them coming up from the ring to collect the row of pints. They wiped their hands across their brows, whispering: ‘Bychrist, I’m ready for a pint. That’d put a thirst on a Bedouin.’

I sat on the keg and made a wigwam out of toothpicks, gazed at the names of All-Star hurley players on wall posters.

Mam was upstairs in a dusty and crucifixed room, guided there by Mrs O’Leary, a look of curious defiance on her face as she went up the stairs. Every now and then Mrs O’Leary went up to check on her, whispering prayers as she went, following the chiselled-out track that she’d made in the wall. I sneaked in behind the counter and, with shaking hands, secretly poured myself some beer in a 7-Up bottle, watched the men in their circle. They glanced furtively over their shoulders at me, one of them saying: ‘It’s all right now, lad, it’ll all be grand in the morning.’ I held the bottle to my lips — I wanted to be a fireman, I wanted to be outside all of this, looking in at myself, conjuring up mutterings and sympathies and inanities.

‘Time for bed for you too, young man,’ said Mrs O’Leary, coming down and placing a hand on my shoulder. ‘But don’t be disturbing your Mam.’

‘I don’t want to go to bed.’

‘Come on, now, you’ll be okay.’

I looked around at the row of bottles along the counter, sitting there like capstans on a pier, and I reached for a bottle of whiskey, took it by the narrow neck, hid it quickly behind my back and stuffed it into my waistband, untucked my shirt over it. The bottle was cold against my skin. I took a couple of steps around Mrs O’Leary and she said: ‘Don’t do that.’

‘What?’

‘Leave the bottle there.’

‘What bottle?’

‘Come on, now, Conor.’

‘I don’t have any bottle!’

‘Ah, now.’

The firemen had turned around, cigar smoke above them.

‘I don’t have any fucken bottle!’

‘Give it to me.’

‘It’s only 7-Up.’

‘Sure, you’re just a bit upset. It was a bad accident.’

‘It wasn’t an accident.’

‘Ah, now, of course it was.’

I brushed past her and my shoulder hit against her and she stumbled back a little, reached out and steadied herself against the counter. A fireman moved towards me with his arms outstretched. He took the bottle from the back of my trousers, gently, and I was all of a sudden a whirlwind of arms, my fist thumped into his crotch, he doubled over, and I was running for the door when my arms were pinned back by another hefty fireman and tears leaped from me. Mrs O’Leary came across, the rattle of her rosary beads at her neck, saying, ‘It’s been a long night, we’ll tuck you in.’

She pursed her lips, raised her head, told the firemen that it was time to leave, kept her hand on my shoulder as she came behind me up the stairs. The door was slightly ajar, and I saw Mam sitting upright in bed, spectral, with extra jumpers over her nightdress and she was looking in a little mirror and putting make-up on her face. I couldn’t believe it. I had thought maybe she’d still be rocking, but there was a small brown circular pad in her hand and she dabbed it on her face precisely, as if with love for what she might have come to terms with in the mirror. ‘Say goodnight,’ said Mrs O’Leary, and I did, from the doorway. Mam looked up and smiled at me, said she was sorry for all the ruckus, she’d make it up to me the next day, maybe we’d take a trip together. Her voice was perfectly even.

‘Goodnight, m’ijo.’

I said nothing.

Mrs O’Leary leaned across me: ‘You can sleep in my bed.’

‘I don’t want to sleep in your bed.’

‘Go on, now, give your Mam some rest.’

Her room was curiously bright and colourful, some paintings on the wall, Saint Lucia glaring down from a wooden frame, beside it a wallhanging with peacocks in strut. Mrs O’Leary knelt down and said some prayers by my bed — ‘There are four corners to my bed, there are four angels there lie spread, one at my head, two at my feet, one at my heart my soul to keep’ — and all at once I felt vacuumed and angry and repeated them after her, a litany of uselessness — even then, at twelve years old, I thought how useless it was, that praying. The exposed hands of a clock moved and I pretended to be asleep as she pulled the sheets around me, folded them back. ‘Be a good lad, now.’ She leaned down and kissed the top of my head, tiptoed from the room. I didn’t want to be tucked in. I ripped the sheets out from under the mattress, made a puddle of them down at my feet. Later I could hear her downstairs in the pub saying: ‘Right now, gentlemen, I think it’s time, don’t you, I’ve said it’s time a million times, they need their rest, have yez no homes to go to at all?’

I got up and looked out the window — cars were leaving the pub, a horn going like the cry of a sick curlew, the fire-engine lights not twirling anymore — and suddenly voices came from down the landing, and I jumped back into bed.

‘Are you okay, Juanita?’

‘I am fine.’

‘Shall I stay here with you?’

‘I am okay, Alice, I am okay.’

‘I’ll stay with the boy.’

‘Thank you, Alice.’

‘Are ya sure?’

‘I am sure, gracias.’

And then the shuffle along the landing, and the knob turning and Mrs O’Leary coming to bend over me, moving to a chair that she had by the window, kicking off her shoes, breathing out a sigh in the cold, bringing a coat out of her wardrobe, slowly closing the buttons, a twist of a bottle and a small slurp, settling down into the flesh of herself, sighing deeply again before I fell asleep. When I woke up in the morning, Mam was gone and there was a make-up kit sitting on the bed where she had been, everything silent outside, a small mirror catching the light.

* * *

The bathroom lock clicked open and he stuck his head around the door, said: ‘Come on in, for fucksake, before I freeze me jewels off.’

He still had his shirt on, but his shoes and socks and trousers were off. He had put on his swimming togs, the old red ones that he used to swim and prance around in on the beach. Pulled the string tight until the material valley-rippled around his waist, but even then they were miles too big. I was almost afraid to think of him rubbing the sponge against himself. See him turn to dust. Maybe crumple in his own fingers. His hands were shaking when he fumbled with the bottom buttons on the shirt. Strange how embarrassed he was by the nakedness, even with the togs on, using the one good hand to cover himself.

I went to put my arm under his shoulder but he brushed me away, slowly steered himself towards the bath, tested the water with his toes. ‘The water’s too fucken hot,’ he said. ‘I can’t even remember how to make a bath!’ But I tested it with my fingers before he got in and it was simply lukewarm. I was sure he had lost some sense of feeling. The way his whole body gently shook. He went clawing for the soap after it fell in under his left leg. I was going to reach in and get it but he just shook his head. ‘Go on, now, I’m not a fucken invalid, I told ya a million times.’ Left the soap disintegrating away beneath his leg.

‘Right,’ he said, dangling his arm out the side of the tub, like it didn’t belong, a pantomime prop. ‘So tell me about all this travelling,’ he said. ‘Ya almost gave me a fucking heart attack yesterday.’

‘I just wanted to know some things.’

‘Like what things?’

‘About the past.’

‘Christ, couldn’t I have told ya that, Conor? Didn’t I tell ya everything? And you wouldn’t even look me in the eye. Isn’t that right? Didn’t I tell ya everything?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Well, I did.’

‘Maybe.’

‘No maybes about it.’

‘Let’s not fight.’

‘I’m not fighting. Am I fighting? Do I look like I’m fighting?’

He raised his hands from the bath and turned his palms in the air. I turned away and picked his trousers up from the floor, placed them on the radiator to get them nice and warm. She used to do that for me when I was very young, five or six, clacking her way through a hum or a rhyme, neatly folding them first in the crook of her brown arm, weaving out a hand underneath them, smoothing them out, placing them on the radiator, always very precise, afterwards reaching in the cupboard for special soaps, leaning over.

‘I mean,’ he said, ‘it’s all so long ago now.’

‘It’s not really.’

‘We make our mistakes.’

‘We all do,’ I said.

‘Then we move along.’

‘We do.’

‘You learn finally that some things aren’t meant to heal.’

He said it without sentimentality. His voice was as slow as syrup. He let his head loll against the back of the bath and clacked his teeth together, sighed. Outside, through the hazy bathroom window I thought I could see the movement of some birds. I turned back to the bath. I must have looked at him too long and hard, because he turned his head away and then looked back at me again.

‘Conor,’ he said after a moment, raising one hand to scratch at his forehead, ‘d’ya think there’s any way you could put some of that shampoo on me hair?’

‘What’s that?’

‘My arm is sore here. Can’t reach up properly. Gives me a bit of a stab here.’ He rubbed his shoulder. ‘Maybe just help me wash it, you know.’

I stood.

‘What’s wrong with ya?’ he asked.

‘Nothing, nothing.’

‘Ah, it doesn’t fucken matter,’ he said, putting his hands back down into the bathwater.

‘Sure,’ I said, ‘sure I will.’

‘Good man.’

I reached into the cupboard, fumbled around, and got out the shampoo, my hands shaking. He laid his head underneath the water, a boat of bones sinking, got his hair wet, resurfaced, reached his fingers up and ran them through it, still greasy and tangled. ‘Phhhhfffff,’ he said, shaking his head.

‘Are ya right?’

‘Right so. Go easy on it, there’s not much of it left, for fucksake.’

I put a small dollop of shampoo on my hand, told him to wet his hair again, rubbed my hands together. ‘Ya look like a bloody executioner there,’ he said as he rose slowly out of the water. I sat on the edge of the bath and leaned over. ‘Out with the electricity, son.’ He hunched himself up, held on to the handrail, the veins stark and blue. The hairs on his back ran all the way down to the red togs.

The soap piled up at the back of his neck and he gave out a little contented hum as I massaged my fingers into his scalp.

‘She wasn’t in Mexico.’

‘No,’ he said. It wasn’t a question, the way he said it.

‘I thought she’d be there.’

‘Well, now, you can never be sure of anything.’

‘And she wasn’t with Cici.’

‘Why would she be?’

‘Why not?’

I kept massaging the soap into his scalp, around the age spots.

‘I miss her,’ he said.

‘I know ya do.’

‘No, no, you don’t understand, I really miss her. I honestly miss her.’

‘I know, I can tell.’

‘Ya can’t change the past. You know, you try to change the past, but you can’t.’

He let out a long whistle and closed his eyes, and my fingers worked themselves into the soft spots on his head and he almost pushed his head back into my hands and I thought how easy it would be to hurt him, just by mashing my fingers into his head.

‘And Cici, what’s she doing with herself?’ he said after a while.

‘This and that. Nothing really.’

‘Like the rest of us. Still writing poems?’

‘Says it’s not worth a damn.’

‘She’s dead right.’

‘Why did ya give up the photos, Dad?’

‘Jaysus, now, that’s a stupid question. Don’t be rubbing my hair away, now! For fucksake!’

‘Take a dip.’

He took a long time to position himself so that he could go down into the water again.

‘Once more,’ I said. ‘One more shampoo.’

‘Christ, it isn’t that dirty!’

‘Hold still there, now.’

‘And yourself, I mean, are ya making a living?’

‘A few bob.’

He closed his eyes: ‘Ah, this’ll do me for years. I’ll have the cleanest hair west of Waterloo.’

I had put too much shampoo on, and some of the soap fell down from his hair and on to his neck. I reached to scoop it up, left my fingers there, began to wash his neck. His head went forward at first, a little shocked, then laid back into my hands. I felt curious knots in his neck. It was like rubbing cheese. It had that peculiar texture, not hard, not soft. He didn’t budge while I massaged, and maybe his body was relaxing, maybe he was calling things back, because I could feel some sort of melting-away, washing along his neck tanline. The soap bubbled over on to his shoulders and I rubbed it down and over the top of his back, along his shoulders, until I was using both my hands, my fingers converging on his spine — thinking that if I pushed too hard I could crack his whole nervous system — and time seemed to be effortlessly drifting from us, rolling along, until he pulled away and bobbed down into the bath.

‘Soap was getting in me eyes,’ he said.

But I knew what it was and he turned his face away from me, said: ‘I’m grand, so. Leave a man in peace so he can take off his fucken togs.’

I pursed my lips together and nodded: ‘I’ll be outside if ya need me.’

He pulled at the string of his togs as I closed the door and moved as if he was going to take them off.

‘Conor,’ he said.

I peeped back through the crack in the door. ‘What?’

He still had his hand on the string of his togs.

‘I really have no idea.’

‘What?’

‘About your Mam.’

‘That’s all right.’

‘For all I know she could be in Timbuktu.’

‘I don’t think I’ll be going there.’

He made an attempt at a little laugh.

‘Just walked out from there,’ he said. ‘Didn’t even know she’d left until Mrs O’Leary came around and told me. I was knocking the rest of the darkroom down with the big hammer. Turning it to mush. Played it over and over in my head ever since. Thought she’d be back. Swore it to myself. Didn’t give it much thought until a few hours later. Then a day. Then two days. Three. Sometimes I even think she could have walked her way down to the river beyond. She was awful depressed, you know.’

‘The river?’

‘I don’t know. Anything’s possible, isn’t it?’

‘You mean she walked her way into the river?’

‘Maybe.’

‘When?’

‘Maybe that night.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Ah, you can’t be sure of anything, can ya? You can be sure of nothing. That’s the only thing you can be sure of. Nothing. But I miss her. I miss her more than anyone thinks.’

He picked up the washcloth from the shelf and dunked it in the bath, lifted his armpit in the air and began to scrub as vigorously as he could. The water must have been getting a little cold because he shivered a little when he did it. Droplets were dripping from his hair on to his shoulder. The rims of his eyes were red.

‘I’ll get the hairdryer,’ I said.

‘You won’t catch me using that fucken thing,’ he muttered, ‘no bloody way.’

I closed the door to let him take off his togs and scrub himself down. I sat down on the top of the stairs. ‘The river, Dad?’ I said from outside, but he mustn’t have heard me, the bathwater gurgling down the drain.

* * *

Water is what we are made of. It has its own solitude. A storm blew in and the search was called off for a few hours. The rain filled the ditches with flow, hammered down on the roof, made small lakes in the roads, the lane impassable. The old man stayed outside and watched as it rifled down. Doubt sunk itself into the searchers, and the rumours were again rife. She had gone to Chile, where she had fallen in love with a military dictator. She had been seen in Dublin with nasturtiums behind her ears. She had taken a boat out into the storm. She was in the mental hospital in Castlebar, behind the big yawning gates. But for me she was home where she belonged — and a letter would come for me one morning.

One of the searchers, a young girl, handed me a gold earring, told me it was for luck and I believed her, went home with it shoved into a jacket pocket.

‘She’s just disappeared for a few days,’ my father said. He slept on the floor outside my room that night, and for the next eighteen months, stories coming from him each evening, like hallucinogenic prayers, magnificent dreamscapes, while I — brutally young — waited for a knock on the door, twirling a gold ring in my hand. It was a couple of years later that I came home from school wearing the earring. He had begun his fishing then, every day he would go down to the river. ‘Take that piece of shite from your ear,’ he said to me on the riverbank, ‘or I’ll give ya what-for and no doubt about it.’

‘Ask my bollocks,’ I said. From then on, that was one of the few things I ever said to him.

* * *

After he towel-dried his hair he pulled on two jumpers, the warmed trousers and the overcoat. Even got some clean wool socks. He stretched himself out and gave a sniff at the air. ‘Jaysus, haven’t smelled this good in years.’

He told me that the morning midges and other insects are attracted to sweet fragrances, that if he went outside he’d be besieged after the amount of shampoo I had put in his hair. But we went out anyway into the dawn and I didn’t notice any more insects than usual. They made their normal congregations around the bushes, and a few of them hovered around us, grey smudges. A drizzle broke, stopped, fell again.

‘See, I told ya,’ he said as he attempted to clap his hands on a few of the midges in the air.

We shifted our way around the farmyard and he made a crack about the wheelbarrow and pushing him around in it. Even gave a little kick at its wheel, a swipe that missed. I noticed the flap of one of his wellingtons was coming undone and told him about the old man in Mexico whom I had seen dance, in his collarless shirt and his holey shoes. ‘Nothing better than an old man for dancing,’ he said as he shuffled over the courtyard towards the pathway. We went out beyond the yard. Clouds were out, swifts following them. A breeze blew over our heads. It was too early for the factory smell. He negotiated his way over the stile and through the gap in the bushes down towards the water. The river was as dead as ever.

I tucked my jacket in under me and took a place at the edge of the riverbank. He took to a fit of coughing in the lawn chair, then stood up and started collecting a few cigarette butts that we had missed yesterday. I started helping him, put two butt ends in my jacket pocket. I was standing close to him when his arms flew out.

‘Look at that!’ he shouted, ‘Look!’

I looked around and there was nothing, absolutely nothing, not even a ripple.

But I know what he saw. Caught in mid-twist in the air, the flash of belly shining, contorted and unchoreographed in its spin, reaching out over the surface so the skips were alight in the air around it, fins tucked in, tail in a whisk throwing off droplets, making a massive zigzag of itself, three feet over the surface, mouth open to gulp air, eyes huge and bulbous, a fringe of water around it — place and motion caught together, as in one of the old photos — reaching up, the whole surface of the water in a frenzy beneath it, so that the flow jiggled and freed itself from its home within the reeds, went down towards the sea, the grass itself bending to the movement, until his salmon hit a zenith and it retreated headfirst into the water with a magical sound, a chorus of plops, erupting like weather, and the water knew something about itself and became all at once quiet and there was joy there, I felt it, marvellous, unyielding, and he leaned his shoulder against me and said: ‘Fucken hell, amazing, wasn’t it?’

He slapped me on the back and asked me to go to the house and get his fishing rod and the flies, which I did. I opened the wooden box and brought him the colourful one he had made the other day. As I came back down, he was nodding away on the riverbank, clapping his hands together and laughing and shouting at the magnificence of his fish. I walked up to him with the rod and said to myself, and to the swifts that flew around, and to the midges that they fed on, and to the clouds that were sauntering along, I said: Let this joy last itself into the night.

He tied the fly on. He was whispering, ‘Did ya see it, son?’

I looked over and said to him: ‘Yeah, I saw it.’

He gave a grin, fixed the fly, adjusted the reel, stood away from me, just a few feet, spun out some line, caressed the length of the rod, all the time whistling through his teeth as he whipped the rod back and forth above his head, fluidity to it, the swish and swerve, casting away as if there was no tomorrow, none at all, just casting away with all his might.