The Walk Home (22 page)

“Papa Robert’s mother. She came fae further south, an she knew folk had been burned out.”

The grand house just by Drogheda where she’d worked before she was married. The grand family hounded for assisting the Crown, servants and tenants scattered to the mercy of the four winds. She had a sister who’d fled north.
What if that happens to us?

“Papa Robert never saw it, but,” Eric insisted. “No in their corner ae Louth. He said it never touched them, an he never thought it would do.”

“More fool him then.”

Lindsey gave a hard smile, and then she shoved his picture away from herself.

It took Eric aback.

For a moment there he could only sit.

He considered the girl before him, and how she hadn’t shown him this hard edge before now. But then Eric nodded, slow, retrieving his drawing, pulling it close again.

“Aye, hen,” he told her. “I took my Da for a fool as well. When I was your age.”

Eric thought he’d shown that same hardness to his father, right enough, when he was courting Franny.

“I reckoned I could hold my ain wae Papa Robert by that time,” Eric said. And then he sat forward, fixing his eyes on Lindsey:

“See that Greenock room I tellt you about?”

She nodded, hesitant. Aware maybe she’d irked him.

“I took it because I wanted tae get married,” Eric went on, thinking if he talked about that time, instead of Ireland, maybe she would listen to him.

“I never tellt my Da how far advanced my plans were,” he
said. “Papa Robert was nae innocent, but. He saw what was transpirin. An how I never brought Franny home tae visit.”

Eric had always gone alone, and the way he remembered it now, he’d only ever gone home to argue. It had him squinting, that thought, as he told the girl:

“I went dressed in my work suit, an my good shoes.” It was uncomfortable to admit this. “I was already earnin mair than my faither did.”

Eric had felt that he knew more too; it made him sigh:

“I was sure ae that, aye.” So bloody sure of himself. “I had an answer for every objection my Da raised.”

Lindsey stayed quiet, watching him talk. Still a little wary, but he could see she wanted him to go on now.

Brenda had told Eric later how she’d learned to dread those Saturday afternoons. He thought Papa Robert must have too. Eric said:

“I mind how my faither would be sittin in his chair when I came in the door, newspaper open on his lap, only not like he’d been reading it, but. Just waitin.”

Braced, Eric thought. Papa Robert had sat in that same chair while he did his schoolwork, just a few years before, and he must have been bewildered at the change in his son.

“Papa Robert tried so many arguments against. He tellt me Frances was too much older, she’d been poorly, we’d mebbe never have children, an children were life’s purpose.”

Eric looked at the girl:

“Except I’d learned tae see where my faither stood in life by that time. You get me?”

Few boys at the High School had come from housing schemes, so Eric had come to keep quiet about his origins.

“Naebody had a faither in the Orange.”

Not one of the friends he’d made since leaving.

“It felt like comin up for air. Like lifting my heid and seein a whole world where none ae that mattered.”

Lindsey nodded, grim, like she could well imagine it: how Papa Robert would have come to seem wanting, narrow by comparison. But still, it pained Eric to think of this.

Convinced of his own rightness, he’d told his father to look on the bright side.

You’ll have nae grandkids raised in the Romish church
.

And that was when all hell broke loose.

“What did Papa Robert say then?” Lindsey’s eyes were on him, searching.

“He raged at me,” Eric told her, blunt.

Papa Robert had raged at his lack of respect.
You think that’s what this is, son? You never listened tae me? You never heard what I tellt you aw these years?

“He brought it back tae Louth, aye. How it ended there, for our faimly.”

Lindsey let out her breath, as though she might have known it, but Eric went on:

“My Da, see. He tied hissel in knots over me gettin wed.”

Papa Robert had let Eric truss him up, that’s what it felt like: he got himself backed into a corner, inarticulate in fury.
You think it’ll work, son. It’ll come apart. I’ve seen what happens when it does
.

Lindsey was right, of course: Ireland was always his father’s argument of last resort. But Eric still didn’t like to think how he’d responded.

“I knew the Bible backwards. So I knew how tae hurt him.”

Eric had chosen his Dad’s favourite passages to fling at him in return.

“
Oh ye blind guides
, I tellt him.
Ye fools an blind. Hear the
instruction ae thy faither. For that shall be an ornament ae grace unto thy head
. Aye, right, I seid. Mair like chains about my neck.”

Lindsey nodded, like that must have been satisfying to say.

But Eric could only think how hard it must have been to take. So dismissive. Such an onslaught. How could Papa Robert back down? What room was he left for coming round?

“I felt I was strong then,” he told the girl. “Stronger than my faither. That was before I understood, but. What Papa Robert learned in boyhood. Back in the Free State, aye?”

Lindsey looked at him, confused now.

So Eric told her, simple:

“Life can send you reelin, hen. It can deal you blows you never recover from.”

And then he waited, to see how she would respond.

Pushed into speaking, she shifted a bit against the cushions. Then she said:

“You mean like when Franny fell ill again?”

Eric nodded.

Lindsey did too, like she understood.

Only then she told him:

“You can’t blame yourself, though. You weren’t to know.” The girl said: “You had to make that stand.”

Like she still thought it was a good one, that he’d only done the right thing. The break was all Papa Robert’s fault, she could see no cause for regret, but Eric shook his head:

“I walked away. I turned my back, aye? Permanent.”

He looked at Lindsey, deliberate, holding her eye, because he didn’t want her doing the same.

“I had my feet planted firm, on the moral high ground. An then when Franny died, I was stuck up there, alane.”

Eric spoke with force now, pronouncing the words, and the girl’s eyes flicked away from his, uncomfortable, but he knew she was listening, so he kept going:

“Best tae leave bridges unburned,” Eric told her. “That’s what I’ve learned, hen.”

He’d taken a lonely path, and it had undone him. He’d left the scheme behind, his old life, his father; Eric had discarded it all, part and parcel.

“Who doesnae have need tae turn home, but? You’ve no way ae knowin what life’s gonnae hurl in your track.”

He’d left it too late with Papa Robert. That’s what he’d come to realise, in his worst days, clear and stark.

“After I lost Franny, I saw how I had nothin. Naebody tae hold tae, and nae home tae return tae, just as I’d lost my way aheid.”

Eric told the girl:

“Terrible tae be on your ain. Terrible tae feel that way.”

And though she only nodded, terse, eyes still averted, he could see he’d touched a nerve.

Eric thought he was getting through to her, and if he could just get Lindsey to hear him out, he might still be able to talk her round; he couldn’t bear to think of her lonely, and he wanted to let her know, how she could still avoid it. But all this was so hard to speak of, Eric had to look away himself just then.

His chest was tight with all he’d just told her, his wrists weak, fingers too. The girl was still quiet in his armchair, and Eric could feel her waiting, but he had to give himself time, something to do with his hands. He needed to gather himself, so he started to pull his sketches into some kind of order, the ones still on the floor between them.

Papa Robert in boyhood, in his mother’s garden, among dog rose and willowherb. And then carrying water to his father at
the plough: a lone figure in a wide field, his labour no longer wanted or returned by any of the families nearby. Eric thought how he’d been remembering while he was drawing: all Papa Robert’s stories, the soft and also the sore ones. Eric had told and retold them, over and over as he sketched, and he’d remembered them all so clearly. But his father thought he’d never paid heed to him.

“I made my Da feel terrible an aw.”

Eric said it out loud, not so much to the girl, more in self-reproach.

“He felt I’d ignored him. I’d cast him aside.”

It didn’t make Papa Robert right, Eric didn’t want Lindsey thinking that: his father had hurt him, and for all the wrong reasons. But Eric thought that drawing his Dad had brought him something like understanding just the same, allowed him to feel something like tenderness again, in among the fury. For his Drumchapel roses first, and now the ones of his childhood memories. Eric had drawn them both, and the way the pictures opened him up was painful, but they’d allowed in new thoughts as well, they’d renewed sympathies. He told Lindsey:

“Hard tae feel left behind.”

His fingers on his father’s picture, he lifted it to show her again:

“He was still so small, my Da. Just a wee boy, aye, when that blow fell; when the faimly were cast out ae Ireland. Papa Robert thought I’d forgotten. Mebbe I had done.”

Eric was sorry for it.

Only then it occurred to him that he could draw it, what his father went through in Louth; Eric thought he might be able.
Now he was no longer so angry, perhaps he could feel it as his father had.

He told the girl:

“That could be a drawing.”

And then Eric fell to remembering. How Papa Robert said it was night when all the men came to their house; dark when the family were roused from their beds. He’d told how the door was kicked open, and the lane beyond it was full of dogs, all their wild barking. Men were out there in numbers, and at first he saw only strangers. But then also neighbours: folk his family had long known and worked with. Their faces turned hard, voices as well, they were calling out, telling of another burning. And they’d said it was a warning, only it sounded more like a threat, shouted well back from the house. They were backing away, none coming to help.

“That could be a picture, aye,” Eric repeated, before he lapsed back into silence, seeing it all laid out before him. Papa Robert’s father, brought low by the door, head cradled in his rough paws. And Papa Robert, of course: a small boy, clutched to his mother’s skirts, hearing her worst fears confirmed.

Only then Lindsey cut across his thoughts:

“You can stop there,” she told him. Before he’d even started.

“You can just stop now.” She said it so firm, Eric felt himself sit back in shock, his train of thought broken.

It was a good few seconds before either of them spoke again.

“What has any of that to do with me?”

Lindsey said it quietly, dropping her voice. So Eric didn’t think she was angry; he didn’t think so, but he couldn’t be certain.

He shouldn’t have brought it back to Ireland: hadn’t Lindsey told him nothing changes? Eric thought he should have stuck with where he’d gone wrong, with his Dad and with his life; that
was what he’d planned to talk to her about. Only Eric couldn’t remember just then how far he’d got, and he still felt so jolted by the curt way the girl had just interrupted, his thoughts went tumbling over themselves.

His father had been a boy once, who’d loved his home and lost it, and drawing what he missed so much had taken kindness.

“I’d never thought I could feel kind towards my Da, hen,” Eric told her, hoping that might explain it. “I reckon he’d ae never thought it either.”

Eric didn’t know if he and Papa Robert could have saved themselves all those sore years; he still reckoned that was too much to ask.

But surely Lindsey still had a chance.

“Mebbe you should think about your Da, hen?”

Eric blurted it, the point he’d been leading up to, all this while. He’d been thinking ten years was a long time, but Lindsey’s father wouldn’t be old yet. “You could still go an see him. You’ve plenty ae life left tae put things right between yous.”

Only Lindsey looked up at him, sharp. What was he asking?

“I dinnae even know what yous fell out over,” Eric apologised.

All these years and he’d never asked her; they’d always talked so much about his drawings, it felt like she knew so much about him.

“Was it the wean?” Eric thought it must have been. “Your boy, I mean?”

But Lindsey shook her head, still mute, incredulous. It fell to Eric to break the silence:

“Could you take Stevie then? Tae meet his Granda.”

A grandson might be just what was needed: someone for them to talk about while they were still unused to speaking.

Only then Eric saw the flush spread across Lindsey’s neck,
shocking red, and how her fingers came up to cover it. Should have left the boy out of this: Eric cursed himself. The girl’s hands were shaking now—was that rage?—as she lifted them to cover her face, and then she sat there for what seemed like an age. It left Eric wordless.

He knew he’d been pushing her, but he hadn’t meant it to go this far. This wasn’t what he’d intended at all; this morning and all he’d just told her, it was all for her benefit.

He still loved his Dad, that was all he’d wanted her to know. And how it had surprised him too, to find he was still capable. Maybe it was a sore kind of love that Eric felt, but surely any kind was welcome. He’d been glad of this new softness, even if it was bruised and overdue, and then he’d thought of Lindsey, and of her father: perhaps they had need of that too?

But the girl stayed silent. And it was so quiet in the room just then, Eric couldn’t be sure if he’d said all that, or just thought it. Would it harm to repeat it? Eric went to make a start, but it was Lindsey who spoke first:

“I didn’t come here for this.” She dropped her hands. “And not from you either.”

She said it like he should have understood; he, of all people. The girl had come to him for comfort, for support, and what had she got?