Short Stories


		SHORT STORIES: Heredity Greater Love than this The Singer Maggots

	Heredity It had been the usual racket again all night long: Paul's father bickering, sniping, jibing from the moment he came in from the pub. It started out as always it seemed to - a dig about one thing or another to throw Paul's mother off her guard. One could deal with that, if that was the extent of it. But it was the absolute change in the father's personality that really got to them. As soon as he had a few drinks on him he became a totally different man. When on the dry he was pleasant, cheerful, funny even - life-and-soul-of-the-party type. But let a drop pass his lips and he became a changed person. Chalk and cheese. Surly. Quarrelsome. Bitter. Paul had stayed up sitting and talking with his mother before his father arrived home. That too was pretty much as usual - each keeping the other company. Over the years, on nights like this, they had never actually got around to discussing his father's problem in any open sense; no overt mention of the trouble generated between Paul's father and mother because of the drink. Nonetheless, there was scarcely a time when Paul's mother didn't make some indirect reference to it. "Whatever you do in late life, Paul, love, for God's sake stay clear of that bloody bottle," she'd say. "It does nothing but create trouble and heartbreak all round." Fia Rua Writers: Mary Sheehan, Sarah O'Brien Trouble and heartbreak, for sure. The poor with Patrick Galvin at Bricín Arts Festival in woman could write a book on either of them. She Killarney had endured seventeen long years of it at this stage - each year worse than the one that went before it. "When you marry, Paul, always treat your wife as a wife deserves to be treated. Be gentle towards her, and understanding," she'd advise. "Ah sure, what am I saying at all," she'd say then, as though rebuking herself, "sure, God knows, you, of all people, wouldn't hurt a fly. You're not like..." and then she'd stop and say no more. Later, when his father eventually arrived, Paul would head off to bed and leave his parents to their conversation. Conversation! - Huh! Bombersation was more like it. Paul's bedroom was directly above the sitting-room and try as he might, it was virtually impossible for him to miss a single syllable of the jibing that was going on below. For years it had been a game of psychological bullying and he, in his silence, had found it every bit as disturbing as had his mother. Despite turning up the volume on the clock-radio by his bedside, the taunting still got through. Jibing, jibing - and then the orders. "I'll have my dinner when I'm finished the last can". Yes, that was one of his father's more usual orders. Christ! Dinner at midnight, after his mother had gone to so much trouble to prepare it hours earlier, never knowing whether or not this could be a night that he might come home early. And God help her if, for any reason, the dinner was a little cold: all hell would break loose. And even worse again if it was dried up by the heat. A bully. Nothing but an out-and-out bully. A boor. But last night's performance had been worse than any Paul could remember. For some reason or other, it had really got to him more deeply than ever before. It may have been a combination of factors: the impending Leaving Cert - now just three weeks away - was very much on his mind, and, at this stage, he found it hard to suppress his anger at the many study sessions that had been disrupted by his father's drinking. And then, always niggling at the back of his mind, there was the knowledge of how badly his mother was being treated. It was some time in the middle of the night that he woke. He could hear them bickering in the bedroom next to his. The usual litany of abuse from his father and then the odd, short retort from his mother when she could hold her patience no longer. That went on for a while before he hit her. One solitary thump and she was silenced. And the father's thwarted need fully satiated. And then the silence. A deafening silence. The only thing in flux now was Paul's own mind - racing, turning, replaying the turmoil over and over again; seething with anger towards this man who called himself a father. He was incensed at the hardship that had been inflicted on his mother; incensed at himself that it wasn't in his make-up to stand up to his father's violence. "You're only a softie, a wimp - a bloody wimp, that's all you are. Christ, you'll wise up in time, me bucko. You'll never get through life being a bloody softie." He remembered the day his father had said that to him. It certainly wasn't that he had any regard for what his father did or didn't think of him and yet, as he lay there in the darkness, he could not be aware that it was that very softness in his nature that prevented him from doing what he might like to do. Another sleepless night. He twisted this way and that in the bed, then turned on to his side and felt the wetness of the pillow press his tears back against his cheek. When Paul wakes up next morning there isn't a stir in the house. He may feel he's had a sleepless night but, at some point in the brightening morning hours, exhaustion must have caught up with him, then eased him into sleep. The clock-radio reads 11.09 am. Christ, school! Half the morning is gone already. It wouldn't be worth his while going in at this point. And anyway, all he has after lunch is the one session of French. He won't bother - French is one of his stronger subjects. Out of bed. Memories of last night are filing through his mind. The anger. The frustration. His mother. His gentle mother. Today is Friday: she'll be home early from work. He'll tidy up the place a bit before she gets in. God, isn't it bad enough that she has to go to other people's houses to clean up their dirt for them without having to face back into her own place when she gets home. He'll have the place sparkling when she gets in. Then they can both sit and enjoy a cup of coffee together and natter a little for a while before he gets into doing a bit of study. Of course, last night's events won't even get a mention, he thinks, but that, unfortunately, is the way things are between them. True to form, nothing is said. As they drink their coffee, his mother doesn't even mention the bruising around her eye. In fact, it is all the more obvious to Paul because she has tried to cover it up with powder. But he makes no reference to it either - that is as is best. And so, both just sit there civilly, sipping coffee and busily pretending that neither of them notices anything. But Paul finds it difficult to keep his peace. It is this very pretence over the years that has led to her being marked like this - beaten, bruised: his mother. It kills him to see her like this. Worse still is the fact he doesn't have what it takes to rectify the situation. And he knows deep down just what it would take.

	"Come on, love - off you go upstairs and get a few hours study in before dinner-time," she says. "Dad should be home by six, I'd say." And, just for a second, when she refers to Dad, Paul is tempted to bring up the matter of the night before and force his mother to confront the issue of what is happening to her. But the moment's hesitation steals the opportunity away from him again. "Yes, I'd better, I suppose," he says. "A few hours study can't do much harm at this stage..." But very little in the line of study happens upstairs. Paul knows his own form by now. He puts in the time right enough, a book of one sort or another open there before him, but study isn't number one on his agenda. It's the same old story once again; this battering of his mother tormenting him, distracting him, playing itself over and over again in his mind. He'd gladly accept failure in the Leaving if only some solution to the problem could be found. Time passes but, where study is concerned, nothing has changed except that one book has been substituted for another. Paul is seething within, allowing the venom that he feels towards his father to fester on itself. A quick glance at the clock: 6.53pm. His mother is downstairs, still waiting for his father to arrive. Already the dinner has been put back an hour so that all three of them can dine together. To hell with him, thinks Paul. Some father! Some husband. 7.00pm. Down the stairs comes Paul and into the kitchen. His mother is there, her back to him as she busies herself in an effort to keep her mind off other things. She turns around now and Paul can see the tears welling in her eyes. Years of tears. Tears of loneliness. Tears of fear. Paul comes to her and hugs her tightly, trying, if he can, to fill her heart with courage, to restore some little bit of that self-confidence that the troubled years have stolen from her. "Come on, Mam, lets go ahead and eat. Dad can have his when he arrives." A half-smile creeps across his mother's face and she nods her head in agreement with Paul's suggestion. And then the tears fall. Years of tears. Though little is said as they eat, the silence itself speaks far more than words can do. The tears tell their own tale. A tear for every time she has been so cruelly abused over the past seventeen long years. Paul lets his mother cry. It is a release that has been a long time coming and, now that it has finally happened, it is as well to allow it run its course. Paul clears off the table, takes the dishes out to the kitchen and, some minutes later, returns with a cup of coffee for his mother. She has moved away from the table and has fallen asleep in the only easy chair in the room - "Father's chair", as it is most often called. Her head is lying to one side, but even in her sleep, the stress is very visible on her face. Paul leaves down the coffee, removes the light crocheted blanket from the back of one of the ordinary chairs and gently spreads it across his mother, tucking it in between the arm-rests and the cushion of the chair. He stands back then and looks at her; a gentle woman, a kindly woman. And then he feels the tears well up in his own eyes. "You're only a softie, a wimp - a bloody wimp," he again remembers his father saying. A softie! If so, then it is his mother's softness he has inherited. His mother's gentleness. He looks at her again. he'll leave her sleeping for now and head back to the books again. Upstairs, he looks at the book open on the desk before him: A History of Europe: The Russian Campaign of Napoleon Bonaparte. If he manages to absorb a single detail, that's about the height of it. His mind is every bit as addled as earlier - perhaps even more so. And full of venom. Venom mounting, seething in his mind again. Venom towards his father. All his thoughts now are born of anger and he is more incapable than ever of doing his study. His mind focuses on his father's cruelty; his bullishness. Nastiness, violences, abuse - each and every trait that smacks of negativity and churlishness he attributes to the father. Venom and anger feed off each other, and now Paul's own thinking is negative and filled with enmity towards his father. He feels disgust at the tyrannical mistreatment that his mother has been made to endure. The bastard. It is the noise of the key in the hall-door lock below that distracts Paul from his negative musings. Immediately he looks over towards the clock: my God! 11.48 pm. Where has the night gone? Another night of so-called study down the drain. Already, down below, his father has started to stir up trouble. More of the usual taunting. Paul can feel himself tense up. The jibing continues a little while, then his mother answers back for the first time. And then the jibing intensifies all the more. Then the second answer. Paul's own uneasiness intensifies. And the usual empty pontification from his father goes on down below. The image of his mother's bitter tears of earlier that afternoon comes to Paul's mind. The redness of her eyes - his mother's eyes. Father's eyes. Paul's own eyes. He goes over to the mirror to see the anger in his own eyes. His face is red and, as he looks into the mirror, he winces, distorting his appearance. But the eyes. There is something in his eyes that he cannot identify; something that he has never noticed there before. The noise below is louder than ever and foremost in his mind now is the turmoil of the previous night. The memory of the thump into his mother's face in the secrecy of the night; the memory of the years of cruelty. He looks into the mirror once again. Each trait that earlier he had seen in his own face seems even sharper now - more honed, more troubled. Again the jibing down below invades his mind. It is as though his head is in a vice - tightening, tightening, tightening. Then, suddenly he explodes. Paul bursts out from his room and bounds flat-footed down the stairway, taking several steps at a time. He'll put an end to this stupid carry-on; he'll finally face down all this cruelty and taunting. He rounds the banister at the bottom of the stairs and makes headlong for the sitting-room door. Something strange has taken him over. He pushes in the door with all his might and abruptly brings his father's rantings to a halt. And there he stands between the jambs - Paul, the boy, the softie of the house, staring, challenging, waiting. "But Paul love..."

"Out, Mam....now"
"What the hell do you think you're at?" asks his father.
"Get out of the room, Mam," says Paul.
His mother looks over at her husband, but his eyes and Paul's are fixed firmly on one another.
"Now, Mam - out." This time she goes.
As soon as his mother passes by him, Paul pulls the sitting-room door shut and looks at his father once again. Their eyes lock. Paul allows the memories to fill his mind again, inviting them to feed the venom he has been feeling. Venom. Anger. Hatred. And now he realises that his father can see in his own son's eyes that element which Paul himself could not identify when, upstairs, he had seen it in the mirror. For the first time ever in his life the father sees something of his own nature in Paul's eyes. His immediate inclination is to get out of the room, but Paul is at the doorway. The father backs away a little and, as he does so, Paul surges forward violently...

Ré Ó Laighléis

Greater Love Than This

When they told Pat's wife that he was dead she cried until she could cry no more. She dressed herself in black clothes and she tore her hair from its roots. She cried again even though her eyes were dry and could give no more water.
   Those dry white tears fell on her scoured cheeks. She spoke dark and heartbroken words to all who came near her. She could not open her ears to words of charity or consolation.
They laid her husband's body out in the bed and she spoke sweet and sorrowful words to him between bouts of wailing and screaming. She did not sleep that first night, nor the second.
Every waking minute they had spent together rushed through her mind, all the joy and the happiness and the love they had shared ended in this cold shroud.
   She threw herself on his body while he lay on the bed. She kissed him passionately on his cold, cold lips while he lay in his coffin. She would not let them put the lid on it until they had no choice, and even then they couldn't secure it. She was dragged screaming into the funeral car on the day of the burial. She nearly died of grief every inch of the way to the graveyard. Greater love than this no woman ever had for a man, nor any wife for a husband.
   When they lowered the coffin into the grave she let out a piercing cry which reached up to Heaven and tore down deep into the earth and while she did not succeed in throwing herself into that black hole after her husband's coffin she ensured that it was filled with beautiful flowers rather than with clay. Thousands and thousands and thousands of flowers and wreaths and bouquets of every colour and smell were piled into that grave wherein her husband was laid.
   But when Pat woke up in his coffin some short time later he realised he wasn't in his own bed. He raised the lid of the coffin just a fraction and his nose was filled with the sweet and fragrant smell of flowers. But he could not lift it any further because of the heavy weight of love pressing him down.

Alan Titley

The Singer And The Song

The chief wizard of the one and only true faith was much loved and highly regarded. He travelled the world in his golden plane and kissed the ground in humility and thanksgiving when he landed safely. He shook hands with the great and mighty with their baby-seal-lined gloves and waved at the poor and lonely who gawped on the balconies.
   High or mighty, poor or lowly, they all loved his words of wisdom. Money flowed in - even when he didn't ask for it - after a particularly good television appearance. Cheque-books and purses and wallets and bank accounts were opened as quickly as any poor person might say "God help me" or "Why doesn't God help me?" Rich and good people loved him, and kings and emperors adored him, and presidents of rich countries whose people were fat and forgetful slobbered over his sweet and beautiful words.
   "Love the poor," he would say with a kind of sincerity that could not be denied, "But remember the poor you will have with you always."
   "Love justice and righteousness," he would say solemnly through his loudspeaker to the crowd, "but remember to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and anything else after that isn't God's."
   "Don't love worldly things," he might say " but remember that the labourer is worthy of his hire and never refuse what is rightly yours and earned by the sweat of your brow or any other kind of sweat."
   These were the kind of words that showed that God was in his Heaven and all was well with the world - at least in the northern hemisphere or where geographers called "The First World."
   One day, however, he changed his tune. He did this suddenly without any warning. There was no easy explanation for this and even psychobiographers were baffled. It might have been sunstroke the more literal tried to explain, or a kick from a horse, or a nightmare or even just one of those things. It was as if the conditional clause was excised from his brain by a form of grammatical circumcision.
   "Sell all you have and give it to the poor," he would say without pause or hesitation.
"Justice and whatever is right even if the sky falls," he would say and stop with a full stop as big as a library.
"Don't kill. Don't steal. Don't fornicate. Don't curse." He would say this as if it was the most natural thing in the world and if he had been saying it for years.
"Pay no heed for tomorrow. Do not save or store. Look at the swallows. They neither reap nor sow and yet God minds them. Live for today. Love everybody even if they fuck you up. "You know the kind of stuff.
   So it wasn't any surprise when they started to abandon him. Some threatened the law. Others hanging or thumbscrews. Others said it was blasphemy. Others said he should be stoned if he wasn't already. He had to escape in the middle of the night and retreat to the desert where truth was either wet or dry.
"Now I know," he said while he spoke to the stones in his cave, "I always thought that they loved me. But it appears that they only loved the nice things that I said."

Alan Titley

Maggots

"They can't survive between the tightly balled-up leaves of lettuce." She remembers Peter's words as she watches them wriggling worm-like from the leaves she has cut, to use in the salad she is making for his tea. For 25 years she has listened to Peter; now, as she watches the tiny, crawling creatures nodding their shiny heads, she plots their fate as victims of a secret life uncovered. Even maggots can be cunning. And as for every one that furtively escapes detection, there is one that leaves some slimy clue. The careless maggot inevitably gets caught.

Radio voices are her company. They help her cope with the long day. Louise, their only daughter, lives an hour's drive away at the other side of the city. She thinks of Louise and hopes it will never happen to her. How would she handle it? Life to Louise is one laugh after another. Beautiful, intelligent, full of craic and sparkle, she reminds her of the care-free days of her own youth. Peter and herself the perfect couple. She had everything going for her. A good job, personality, a face and figure that the fellas fought over. She was the envy of her friends. They saw her as a sort of role model. Someone who had made it, to where they wanted to be.

She takes coleslaw from the fridge, forks some onto his plate. Bought this morning in the local supermarket. How she put on a brave face for the friendly girl at the salad counter, just back at work after her honeymoon, sunshine still in her smile. And for a neighbour from her estate who told her about some special offer on Swiss rolls. The cold-meat counter, a jar of mustard, the shelves with fruit and veg, she moved mechanically, denial, like some emotional immune response telling her it hadn't happened. Waiting for someone to shake her, wake her, that it hadn't happened to her. The check-out girl. Automatic doors. People passing her on the pavement. The sun. Clouds growing from nowhere. Cold as she walked home. Colour fading from her day.

She expects Peter soon. She'll greet him. Watch his gestures, read his mood. He works away from home a lot. Selling valves to industry. He has been selling something or other from the first time they met. He used to phone her from his hotel room, from towns as far away as Kilrush, Tralee and Carlow. She waited for those phonecalls. Every evening after work she'd wait at home and meet him dressed in her mind's eye, tall in his navy suit his crisp white shirt, silk tie, his polished shoes. She'd imagine him in his hotel bedroom hanging up his jacket, loosening his tie, slipping off his shoes. And lying on a bed, lamplight on his handsome face, she'd watch him pick-up the phone. Her heart fluttered when she'd hear it ring. She'd cuddle-up to those telephone conversations before she went to sleep. The tender timbre of his voice, his words playing over and over like some tape-recorded message in her brain. Through restless summer nights she'd lie awake and looking out of her open window, follow shadows made by the moon. She'd fantasise about the two of them making love on a bed dressed with lavender silk. And waking in the half light of the morning, her head resting on his gently heaving chest, she'd hear his heart beat in harmony with her own and she'd listen, as he held her in his arms, to the only words she ever wanted to hear, that he loved her, and without her he would die.

A hard-boiled egg, she cracks the shell. She knows he'll eat the white and leave the yolk behind. He'll complain about the cholesterol, he worries about his heart. She'll listen like she always does and watch the way he's sparing the salt. He'll babble on about high blood pressure, how his father got a heart-attack at fifty so that puts him in the high-risk category of the 'genetically predisposed'. He'll hang on her the troubles of his day, he knows she'll wear them as if they were her own. She'll sit at the table with him, drink tea, eat buttered wholemeal bread and he'll ask her how she spent her day. But won't notice how the air has changed by what she feels.

They kissed goodbye before he left for work this morning. She watched him through the kitchen window as he slowly drove the narrow road towards the exit from the estate. She remembered the first time they travelled that road, the month before they married. They had spent the afternoon touring other estates looking at houses but nothing caught their eye until they found the house they wanted, located at the quiet end of a well-planned estate of fourteen semis with a distant view of the sea. They fell in love with it, got married, and made it their home. Now, every room resonates with remembered moments of their shared life. The back bedroom where she saw the mouse as big as a rat, how she screamed and scrambled downstairs scarlet with fear, and even after Peter caught it she wouldn't go upstairs again for days. The time Louise got up at dawn to bath her 'Barbie' doll in the kitchen sink. They came downstairs that morning and were met by a flotilla of half-sunk shoes and sailing saucepans as they waded rising water in the hall. The laughter in the living room, where one evening Peter tried to stepdance on bare floorboards before the carpet fitters came. He spent a lot of time away. She missed him. On his return they'd made love like two ravenous animals anywhere the mood would take them, in the shower, on the rug in the living-room, behind drawn curtains in the bedroom, and once beside the washing basket in the utility room after she'd pulled the blinds down and bolted the backdoor.

She plucks the stem from a tomato. Washes it, dries it, slits its skin. He'll tell her there is no flavour from the imported Dutch tomatoes she buys in the supermarket. That his father grows the best tomatoes and only they taste the way tomatoes should.

Every summer when Peter's father visits he brings a gift of his own homegrown tomatoes. He tells about the care he takes in tending them and how the time he spends in the garden absorbs him from the house that holds too many memories. She remembers meeting Peter's father in Cork City the previous week. They talked a lot before he told her, that if his wife was still alive they'd have been married forty years that day. She remembered the funeral, the graveyard and when the ceremony finished how they all filed back to their cars. She'd lost sight of Peter and when she turned to look for him she saw his father crying over the fresh earth of his wife's wreath-covered grave. How he felt she could only barely fathom. Trees bowed with the breeze, rain fell from sad clouds. It seemed nature understood his grief.

She hears the presenter on the radio discuss women in the workplace. Listeners ring in with views and comment, ready to debate. She remembers the summer Louise went working in America. Suddenly her life felt empty. She found the days difficult to fill. She got a job. Four mornings a week in a local toy factory, packing model vintage cars for export to collectors all over the world. Boring after a bit but she stuck to it. The girls she worked with were good company, the craic was great. Her afternoons were always the same. Housework, reading, gardening if the weather allowed. Every evening she'd wait for Peter. Even when he stayed away in those hotels whose names she knew by heart, she'd wait and imagine the sounds and sights of his arrival, his car coming up the short driveway, his footsteps crunching gravel outside the front door, she'd hear his voice fill the space of silence and see her own face light-up touched by his smile. He'd phone her, and she'd tell him all the treasures of her day kept hidden from the world to share only with him. And when they'd finished talking she'd wrap the words he'd spoken round her and fall asleep in their reflection, until they'd meet again, smiling in some dream.

Spring-onions. She bought them from the veg-man, who calls to her each Tuesday. Peter loves spring-onions, was her first thought. In his salad, he'd enjoy them even more. She cuts away each onions knot of roots, its shoot of stem. The acrid vapours swell her eyes, wetting them with tears. The discomfort never mattered. What always mattered more was, what was best for him. What went wrong?

He supported and stood beside her at all those events that mark the milestones of people's lives. Funerals, weddings, birthdays, anniversary celebrations. Photographs bear testimony. A photograph taken in the front garden on the morning of Louise's wedding sits pride-of-place on top of the piano. In royal-blue suit and matching shoes she wears a pink carnation and a wide brimmed hat. She's standing slim and confident, she's holding Peter's hand. He's tall in his white shirt, grey tie and dress suit, his face is tanned, his hair is hinting grey, he looks distinguished, has handsome smiling eyes. Another photograph shows them both in a maternity ward next to Louise with their first grandchild. She is sitting on the edge of the bed holding Mark, just a few hours old, Peter has his hand on her shoulder, they look so happy. There is a video she plays, when the mood prevails, of their 25th wedding anniversary party. Organised by Louise and planned as a surprise. And surprised they certainly were, as we watch their faces when they find out.

She is walking from the car with Peter, the house is in darkness, they open the front door, lights switch-on. The hall is full of family and friends, they both look lost, words won't come, everybody hugs them, Cliff Richard is singing 'Congratulations' from the stereo, everybody is singing, smiling, Louise spreads her arms around them, Peter jibes "the first twenty-five years are the hardest" everybody laughs, she cries, he gives her his handkerchief, he comforts her, kisses her on the cheek. The camera zooms in on them cutting a cake in the living room, like a wedding video except she isn't in white. Glasses clink a toast with champagne. The video frizzles for a few seconds, then suddenly we're back again in the living room, somebody is playing the piano and singing "Will you still need me....," she is sitting on the settee, her cheeks pink from chat and champagne, Louise is sitting beside her scoffing a sandwich and signalling to someone that her glass is empty. Peter is standing almost out of frame, he's talking to a trim-figured woman; she's attractive with shoulder-length hair.

A jar of mustard, salad cream, cutlery, two side plates, saucers and two cups, the table is set. She trims off fat and folds the ham onto his plate. His salad is ready. She opens the kitchen window. Cold air whitens her breath. Outside the last edge of evening gapes darkness like a black wound. She sees the distant headlights of a car sweeping off the main road and turning brightness on the far-end of the estate. In her mind she pictures Peter, his hands gripping the steering wheel, he is listening to the car radio, a phone-in programme, the presenter has a caller on the line. She is that caller. Peter trembles when he hears her name. She tells the presenter how she loved her husband, trusted him. And in a voice loaded with emotion she reveals his secret life. How she discovered his deceit in the pocket of his jacket left for cleaning, a six-pack of condoms, two already used but never used with her. She watches Peter squirm as if some nerve inside him has been triggered by her words. She sees his face transfigure into something fat and featureless with tiny point-black eyes, from a thickening neck his head grows conical, moults hair, it nods as if obeying some new instinctive rhythm, his body spasms, swells, then elongates, with a slimy squelch he wriggles belt and buttons free and crawls out of his clothes, the car spins out of control and crashes. She imagines herself standing by the wreckage, watching him writhe inside it trapped by glass and jutting steel. And from the car radio she can hear her own voice cut its story. Her words, bleeding from the scene.
Richard Cotter


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