Chestnut Street (35 page)

Well, it was a triumph for Philip. Not for the ladies who had done the Christmas flowers for years.

At the big New Year’s Winter Flower Competition, Philip carried all before him with his vaguely Oriental arrangement based entirely on the Alder pink-tinged catkins. He was interviewed for specialist journals as well as the national papers about the prize-winning display and spoke long and fluently about how a well-shaped branch could last for weeks, how it was important to choose one with small clusters of black cones and how the best should be kept and dried for winter use. He told a local television news reporter that he had hammered the ends of the stems well and soaked them in warm water overnight. At
no
time did he mention the club to which he belonged; he thanked neither Maud nor Ethel for their training, there were no flattering acknowledgments to the efforts of the runners-up.

Philip had always understood at business that the way to get on was to accept the praise gratefully and give what might be considered interesting insights into how the success had been achieved. It was never considered wise to make one of those Oscar-night speeches thanking everyone in sight. It deflected attention from the success in question, it hinted at a lack of confidence, it took away the limelight. Nobody wanted to hear of the people who had not won the trophies.

He smiled as he placed the silver cup on a table in the small and elegant house on Chestnut Street where he now lived. He
might arrange a low white creation beside it later on in the year. When there were sweet pea and little white bud roses, carnations and a background of very pale fern. But no, that was not realistic. By spring he would be back at work. Only a week to go and he could start to think about it again.

He would spend that week arranging his study and getting ready the tools of his trade. Reluctantly he knew that he would have to get rid of the tools of the other trade, and say goodbye to the oasis, the chicken wire, the pin holders and the collections of useful standbys, the ferns, the trailing ivies and the catkins.

Still, that doctor had been right. It
had
been useful—the term of flower arranging. And now he didn’t need it anymore. The rather sour Ethel and Maud, who had not congratulated him sufficiently, the colorless ladies who attended the same class every week, who had been so open and friendly at the start.

Philip was pleased that he had gone along with the doctor’s instructions even though he had thought them rather foolish at the start. Now that he had learned all about flowers and proved that he could come out on top … that must prove conclusively that he was master of everything again and ready for anything that the business world could throw at him next week.

It all started ages ago. Just before my birthday. I was nine on May the seventh and there was a terrible atmosphere. I couldn’t think what I had done wrong but it must have been something very bad—Dad was banging doors, all kinds of doors, bathroom doors, car doors, the door of the garden shed.

He nearly took the shed door off its hinges. I went out there to see was he all right and he shouted to me.

“For Christ’s sake, leave me alone in the shed, can’t you. You’ve already made the house a no-go area—leave me the shed, at any rate.”

And then he saw me.

“Sorry, Dekko,” he said. “I thought it was your mother.” But that couldn’t have been right. He wouldn’t have shouted at Mum like that. He absolutely loved Mum, she was
his
sunshine, he said.

He had always said this. She was the only girl for him from the first time he saw her in the National Concert Hall.

Every time we passed the concert hall he used to say that there should be a special flag on the place or a notice to say that was where he and Mum had met.

And Mum used to laugh and say that the only thing in the
world that could have distracted her from Liam O’Flionn’s wonderful piping was the smile of the man who turned out to be Dad. And that he was
her
sunshine also.

Those were the nice, safe days.

And then there was my birthday itself, and we had nine boys from school and we went to the cinema and McDonald’s.

And it was an awful day, really, because Harry, my friend, kept talking about babes at the cinema and making remarks about girls as they passed by, and Mum got cross, and Dad said it was only natural for young lads to look at girls, and Mum said it wasn’t natural for nine-year-olds to shout out in public about babes with boobs.

And Dad said she was always a killjoy and she was just trying to destroy Dekko’s last birthday.

I got very frightened then, because I thought maybe I had a disease and was dying. Or they were going to send me away.

“Well, it will be the last one
you’ll
be at, anyway,” Mum said.

“I’ll have reasonable access. And by God I’ll get reasonable access,” Dad said.

And then they saw me looking at them and put awful, tiny, insincere smiles on their faces.

Two days after the birthday, Dad and Mum both came home from work early.

This was unusual for a Monday; usually Mum went to the gym and Dad had a meeting after work.

They told me that they had arranged for me to go to Harry’s house for supper because they had a lot to do.

“Couldn’t I do it with you?” I asked, and they both got sort of upset.

I always say the wrong thing.

So I tried to explain.

“You see, we don’t do a lot of things together anymore, like a family,” I said. “It’s ages since we all went out to the Wicklow Gap with sandwiches and found a place to sit where you couldn’t see
any houses at all, only hills and sheep. And we don’t do a jigsaw anymore, or cook a foreign dish. Remember when we made the Indonesian thing, and we ate all the peanut butter when we were making it, so there was none left to add to the sauce.”

This seemed to upset them more.

So I stayed quiet.

“Tell him now,” Mum said.

“I’d have nothing to tell him if you hadn’t been so bloody-minded,” Dad said.

“Like turn a blind eye for the next twenty years.” Mum was cold.

“Like listen to an explanation.” Dad was colder still.

I looked from one to the other.

“Tell me what?” I asked.

There was a long silence.

“What were you going to tell me?” I asked again.

“Your dad and I love you very much, Dekko,” Mum said, and my heart sank. There was a “but” coming up somewhere soon.

I couldn’t see from where.

Was it Harry and all the talk about babes and boobs?

Was it about the time I unplugged the freezer to play one of my games in the kitchen and everything had to be thrown out?

Was it that I hadn’t told them about the extra maths classes at school in case I would have to do them? I just didn’t know.

“You are the most important thing in our lives,” Dad said, and he began to choke.

So I thought, God, I
must
have some awful disease—what else could be upsetting them so much? Maybe it was nothing I had done.

“Am I going to die?” I asked. And then they both started to cry.

I’d never seen this before. It was awful. Awful. I didn’t know what to say.

“I don’t mind, really,” I said. “Will it hurt much, do you think?”

And then there was all this business of telling me that I wasn’t dying, and that I was the best boy in the world and I was their Dekko and none of this was my fault.

“None of what?” I asked. I was going to have to get to the bottom of whatever it was.

They were getting divorced, Mum and Dad. I couldn’t believe it.

Selling our home and going to live somewhere else.

Well, two somewhere elses, actually. Mum was going to live on Chestnut Street, in a much smaller place but there would be a room for me—it was already called Dekko’s room, and I could help to furnish it.

And Dad would live in a flat somewhere—it had yet to be organized.

“And would there be a room called Dekko in that flat?” I asked.

I shouldn’t have asked. It was greedy. I know that now. I was just trying to understand what was happening.

“There might well be one,” Dad said.

“Not that he will be sleeping in it,” Mum added.

“Except at agreed weekends,” Dad said, through his teeth.

“Which will never be agreed, not overnights, never,” Mum said.

“We’ll see about that when the time comes,” Dad answered.

I was very relieved they weren’t crying anymore, and I was pleased that I wasn’t dying of something awful, but I was very alarmed at the way they spoke to each other, as if they were full of hate.

And to be honest, I was very confused about why they were suddenly going to sell this house. I mean they loved our home. They were always talking about how much the neighborhood had gone up and how they were sitting on a gold mine.

“Couldn’t you divide the house in half and I could go from one part of it to the other?” I suggested.

But apparently it wouldn’t work.

I wondered why but they both got testy and short-tempered and said it just wouldn’t, and that was it.

And would I go off to Harry’s now like a good boy and let them “get on with it.”

“Get on with what?” I asked.

It turned out that Dad was getting a mover to come in a week’s time and put his things into storage, and they had to agree on what he should take and what he should leave.

“I could help you divide things up,” I offered. Which I could have. I didn’t really want to go to Harry’s after all this news.

And I would have known which things they each should have taken.

They got upset about this too, but amazingly they let me stay. They began with the tapes and CDs.

We made three piles, Mum’s, Dad’s and a joint pile.

There was a doubt about
The Brendan Voyage
. Dad thought it was his, Mum thought it was hers.

So I said I’d go upstairs and make a tape of it so they could have one each.

“I think that’s against the law,” Dad said. “You know, the musicians might not want us to do that.”

“They’d want you both to be happy,” I said and then they started blowing their noses heavily again.

They moved on to furniture and books and I sat through it all, offering advice.

And I think I was a help, really, because they told me I was. And they wrote everything down and it was all
so
unreal.

Then we all had supper in the kitchen.

It was very nice.

A big steak-and-kidney pie from the freezer that Mum had been saving for a rainy day.

“And, boy, is this the rainy day?” she said and we all smiled at her.

Dad said he’d open a bottle of wine.

Mum said there wasn’t really anything to celebrate.

Dad said there was civilized behavior, so we had the wine—they even gave me a proper glass of it—and we talked about ordinary things.

And from time to time, they both reached out and touched me. Just to tap me on the arm or to stroke my face. It was very odd. But not frightening.

And that night, when they thought I was asleep, Dad came downstairs and slept on the sofa.

I said nothing. I had obviously done enough to annoy them, and I didn’t want to do any more. And then it all happened very quickly. I came home from school one day and Dad was gone.

He had left a note with his mobile phone number and his address. It was in a big new block of flats not too far from Chestnut Street.

And he said he loved me, and I could ring him night or day, so I did, just to test it, and the phone was on the answering machine.

So I said, “It’s Dekko, Dad, and whatever it was I did, I’m sorry. But I’m fine and if I get a mobile phone for Christmas then
you
can ring me anytime, night or day, on it.”

And then I wondered was that like I was asking him for a mobile. But it was too late now.

And Mum was very tired. She had to work very hard in her office and she told me they didn’t like people’s personal lives being brought into things so she hadn’t told them about Dad being gone and all the problems.

She said we would be moving in two weeks’ time so as to be settled in by Christmas.