The Trib (35 page)

Shorts column

John Boyne is the author of seven novels, including
The Absolutist
and
The House of Special Purpose
, and two for children, including
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
. A collection of fifty short short stories appeared in The
Sunday Tribune
during 2006/07.

7 January 2007

I
t was almost ten years since Maggie had last sat by the bay windows, overlooking the garden, and her eyes moved slowly as she surveyed the damage that her husband's whore had done to it since replacing her in a bloodless coup, shortly after her fiftieth birthday. The laburnum had been trimmed back to almost nothing, while the pale blue gillyflower had withered and died. Worst of all, however, was the disappearance of the aspidistra that she had nurtured from a cutting gathered in the Himalayas during her honeymoon.

‘Tea,' said Susan, appearing beside her suddenly with a cup and saucer and placing it by her left hand, her good hand, the hand that still worked. ‘I thought it might cheer you up.' Maggie stared at it with contempt before looking away; it would spill down her blouse and scald her if she tried to drink it; a simultaneously thoughtful and thoughtless gesture.

Being here was an unwelcome stopgap but she had been offered no choice. The hospital had kept her for eight weeks after the stroke but they needed the bed. And so, until her daughter had time to prepare her flat, she was back in her husband's house for the first time since she had been forced out of it. The irony of it was that it had been Susan's idea. He had insisted she was nothing to do with him anymore but the whore had said that they owed her this at least.

‘Aspidistra,' said Maggie, raising a cautious finger and pointing out the window. ‘Where?' These days, her words came out like a series of grunts and spits and shattered sibilants and she tried to limit herself to the bare essentials. A noun, a verb when necessary, an adjective if she had the energy. She who had once recited the whole of
Paradise Lost
, word perfect and without the text, on the stage of the Abbey Theatre. She who had called her husband every name she could think of when he told her what had been going on.

‘Kids,' replied Susan, shaking her head. ‘One night when we were asleep. They ripped it out by the roots and threw it on the roof of the gazebo, the little vandals.' Maggie watched her face, wondering how she had the temerity not to blush when she said the word ‘we'. ‘You brought that back from Singapore, didn't you?' she asked, leaning over her now as if she was a child.

‘Himalayas,' said Maggie, grunting out the word; it didn't even sound like English to her.

‘What was that?' asked Susan.

‘Himalayas,' she repeated, and this time the four syllables ran into each other like a crash on a motorway. She stared at the younger woman, knowing that she still hadn't understood, but chose not to repeat herself again; instead, cold and resentful, she turned back to the peace of the garden.

Gazebo. She couldn't even imagine what would happen if she tried to pronounce that.

21 October 2007

T
he car won't start and you walk around to the front, lift the bonnet and peer inside. You might as well be looking at a schematic for a rocket-ship for all the sense it makes to you, but still you touch things and hope that inspiration will strike. Your neighbour comes out and sees you standing there but you pretend you don't see him. He kissed your wife once at a party. You saw him do it. You lost your way trying to find a bathroom and there they were, kissing in a bedroom, her hand pushing his away from her breast. You did nothing about it because you didn't know what to do. It wasn't a movie, after all; it was a party.

‘Problem?' he asks and you look across at him. He's not as tall as you. And he's not as good-looking either. He wears a cheap suit. Still, she kissed him. You tell him that the car won't start and he offers to take a look for you.

‘Aren't you a botanist?' you ask, refusing to move.

‘I understand cars,' he says, pushing you away and looking down at the oily black engine and all those things, those things you don't know the name of, that surround it. He strokes his chin for a moment and mutters something to himself before tightening a few caps and squeezing a couple of wires. ‘Try her now,' he tells you.

You sit in the car and put the key in the engine. You have an important meeting in an hour. A lot of things could come from that meeting. A lot of very good things. But still, you hope that the car won't start.

‘No luck,' you say, stepping back to the front.

‘I thought I had her,' he tells you before looking down again and shaking his head.

‘I can handle it from here,' you tell him.

‘It's no problem,' he says. ‘I understand cars.'

You watched them for longer than you should have and when she stopped pushing his hand away and let him touch her, you got hard and wanted to see what would happen next. It wasn't like being at a party after all; it was like watching a movie.

‘Battery's dead,' he says finally. ‘You leave your lights on all night? That'll do it every time.'

‘Thanks for your help,' you say, slapping him once on the back of his white shirt as he turns away, a gesture of friendship, two buddies talking engines. He walks over to his own car, which is smaller than yours, the dark imprint of your hand, black and greasy, perfectly centred on the back of his white shirt, the fingers stretched wide, the middle finger pointing north.

11 February 2007

T
he day I met Neil Armstrong I was already teetering on the edge of sanity from a life gone wrong. A week before, fearing that I might take a scissors to my throat, I confessed my secrets to a doctor, who went pale and said ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph' before writing a prescription. I didn't cut down on the gargle though and the two mixed badly. In fact, when I showed up in Tralee that morning I was more than a little unsteady on my feet and was starting to see triple.

A large crowd had gathered and when I asked a young girl what they were there for, she grew very abusive and accused me of molesting her. The situation was turning violent so I turned on my heels and before I knew it I was standing in front of a man who shook my hand and thanked me for coming out to see him. I hadn't a clue who he was but later that evening in the pub, I picked up the local paper only to see the two of us standing together, and a headline announcing that my new friend was none other than Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon.

‘Can you believe it?' I asked the barman, who had once been a friend of mine but who had fallen out with me over a nag. ‘I'm a celebrity.'

‘You're an oul' bollix,' he suggested. ‘You always were and you always will be.'

I retaliated and he hit me a slap.

The next morning I woke up in a hospital bed and a nurse, one of them foreign bits, told me I'd overdosed on my medication and collapsed on the street. She said she needed the name of my next of kin.

‘I'm an unmarried man,' I explained. ‘There was a woman, once, but she left me because of my ways.'

‘Family then?' asked the nurse.

‘No one. Not any more.'

‘Well, we need a name,' she said with a shrug.

‘I don't know what to tell you,' I said.

‘Sir, I'm sorry, but we have to put someone down on the form. In case you die.'

That gave me a fright, but still nothing came to mind. I looked away from her and saw the local paper folded up on a chair.

‘Neil Armstrong,' I told her then. ‘We're not close, but –'

‘He'll do,' she said, signing the form. All she wanted was to get away from me on account of my stink. I could smell it myself. I was rank.

‘And I have photographic evidence of our relationship, should it be required.'

‘It won't be,' she said. And for a moment or two, I felt happy. On account of my having a friend. Someone who would look out for me. Someone who would see that I was taken care of.

In case I died.

17 December 2006

I
t was three months after William's death before Caroline could even think about clearing out his closets. His demise had been sudden and unexpected and she found herself fighting the urge towards depression on a daily basis. Their daughters, both grown-up and married now, had taken good care of her in the intervening time and one grandson in particular had outdone himself with his many kindnesses.

However it was another teenager, a boy called Joe who lived on the second floor of their building, who she asked to help her carry the bags of clothes downstairs for the Goodwill on the morning she decided that it was time and he had said he would be glad to help. She spent the first hour of the morning dividing William's clothes into two bundles – those to give away and those to keep, just in case. At some point during the second hour she realised that there was no ‘just in case' left in her life and she swapped the idea of two bundles for more black bags.

When Joe arrived she hoped that he wouldn't notice her tear-stained cheeks or, if he did, he would have the sense to ignore them. To his credit, he simply glanced at the bags that surrounded them both and asked, ‘These are all to go, right?'

‘Yes,' she replied, hesitating, unsure whether she was actually ready to give them away yet after all. ‘These are all to go. Just give me a moment, will you?' she added, disappearing into the kitchen to compose her thoughts.

When she stepped back into the bedroom a few minutes later, Joe had picked up her husband's old army jacket from the sofa and tried it on. William had worn it on almost every date they ever went on before they were married and had held on to it for nostalgic reasons; it was the kind of jacket that now, forty years later, kids were wearing again.

‘I'm sorry,' said Joe, startled and embarrassed. ‘I shouldn't have –'

‘Please,' she said quietly, stepping towards him and staring at him for a moment. She put her hands out and felt his slender arms in the sleeves that had encircled her body so many times when she was a young woman. The jacket smelled of William still and she breathed him in. Unable to stop herself, she closed her eyes and leaned forward, her mouth finding Joe's quickly, her lips softening against his as they kissed, this old woman who'd been young once, this young boy who'd grow old sooner than he knew.

A moment later she stepped away from him and looked at the floor for a moment, resisting an urge to laugh. Instead, she turned her attention to the bags again. ‘It will take at least three trips, I think,' she said, nodding her head. ‘What do you think, Joe, will three do it? Can we do it in three?'