Her shoe had come off. She used the sole to beat me across my bare legs. I thought of Lisa Hanlon and her doll-like body. I thought of Cormac, sitting on the stairs, listening. My foot made contact with her knee as I thrashed out. Phyllis screamed and raised her shoe again, its heel striking my forehead above the eye. I bit her hand and she fell back, knocking over the cup and saucer. From under the bed where I had crawled, I watched a lake of urine slowly spread across the lino to soak into her dress. Even in my terror, something about how she lay with her dress up above her thighs and her breasts heaving excited me. Suddenly I wanted to be held by her, I wanted to be safe. Phyllis slowly drew herself up so I could only see her hands and knees. Cormac’s feet appeared, his thick shoes stopping just short of the puddle.
‘I’ll not mind you!’ she screamed down. ‘You’re worse than an animal. I was free once. I won’t stay in this stinking, stuck-up, dead-end, boghole of a town, not for him or any of yous!’
She was crying. I felt ashamed for her, knowing that the children on the street could hear. Cormac stood uselessly beside her. ‘Can I get my teddy now, Mammy?’
I closed my eyes, dreading my father’s return home. The lake of urine had almost reached me. I could smell it, as I pressed myself tight against the wall, but soon it began to seep into my jumper. My temple ached from the impact of her shoe. My legs stung where she had beaten them. When I opened my eyes Phyllis and Cormac were gone.
Dublin – the most ungainly of capital cities, forever spreading like chicken pox. A rash of slate roofs protruded from unlikely gaps along the motorway. Cul-de-sacs crammed into every niche, with curved roads and Mind Our Children signs. Watching from the bus it was hard to know where Meath ended and the Dublin county border began. Or at least it would have been for somebody whose father hadn’t virtually ruled a small but influential sub-section of the planning department within Meath County Council.
Dunshaughlin, Black Bush, Dunboyne, Clonee. Every field and ditch in every townland seemed to be memorized in my father’s head. Each illegally sited septic tank, every dirt road on which some tiny estate appeared as if dropped from the sky, with startled city children peering into fields that bordered their rubble-strewn back gardens. He knew every stream piped underground and the ditches where they resurfaced as if by magic. Within a couple of years he had become Mr Mastermind, able to track in his head the labyrinth of shell companies that builders operated behind, and willing, if necessary, to pass on their home phone numbers to residents’ groups wondering whatever happened to the landscaping that had looked so inviting in the artist’s impression in their advance brochures.
Fifteen years ago these townlands had seemed like a half-finished quilt that only he understood the pattern for. But by the time he retired surely not even my father could have kept track of the chaotic development that made these satellite towns resemble a box of Lego carelessly spilled by a child. Builders from Dublin, Meath, Kildare, Northern Ireland and the West vying with each other for the smallest plot of land. Men who once spat into palms in my father’s outhouse to seal deals to build lean-tos and cowsheds, were now rich beyond their imagination. The sands of their retirements would be golden were it not for the tribunals into corruption currently sitting in Dublin Castle to investigate hundreds of frenzied re-zoning motions by councillors against County Development Plans around Leinster.
The new motorway petered out at the Half Way House pub, beside the old Phoenix Park racecourse which had mysteriously burnt down. I was back among familiar Dublin streets, with chock-a-block traffic being funnelled down past my old flat in Phibsborough. The bus crawled past an ugly triumphalist church, then onto the North Circular Road, before turning down Eccles Street. The driver stopped to drop off a girl with two bags and I slipped away too.
It was 7 p.m. Visiting time at the Mater Private Hospital across the road. A discreet trickle passed through the smoked-glass doors into a lobby that looked like a hotel, with plush sofas and soft piped music. I could never pass such buildings without remembering how we tried to nurse Miriam’s dying mother in her rented house at the Broadstone.
An elderly man in a black leather jacket leaned on a crutch beside the railings, so circumspect that from a distance you wouldn’t know he was begging. He had my father’s eyes. The older I got the more I found that old beggars always had, staring up slyly as if only they could recognize me. I slipped a coin into his hand and walked past, up the street to where people streamed towards the huge public hospital, with cars and taxis competing for space outside. The open glass doors drew me towards them. I scanned the lists of wards with saints’ names and quickly wagered on Saint Brigid’s, then leaned over the porter’s desk before I lost my nerve.
‘Brogan?’ I asked. ‘Have you a Mrs Phyllis Brogan here?’
He checked his list, then scrutinized me. ‘You’re not a journalist?’
‘No.’
‘Family?’
‘An old acquaintance.’
‘Second floor, Saint Martha’s ward.’
I cursed myself, having wanted to change my bet to Saint Martha’s, but the first rule in any gambling system was never to switch once a choice was made. A familiar stab of self-disgust swamped me, though it was only a wager in my mind. For two years I had managed to avoid placing a bet, except for the dozens of imaginary ones that I tortured myself with daily.
‘Do you get many journalists?’ I enquired.
‘Just one from a tabloid and some bogman who became aggressive. Her daughter-in-law asked us to keep a check. It’s distressing, in the woman’s condition.’
I noted how Miriam had made the arrangements and not Sarah-Jane. The porter was directing me towards the lift.
‘I’m just waiting for my brother,’ I lied. ‘He’s getting flowers. We said we’d go up together.’
It was the first excuse to enter my head. He nodded towards the sofas. It felt strange to be under the same roof as Phyllis, but I needed to ensure that she was out of the way and hadn’t moved back home. I picked up an Evening Herald somebody had left on the sofa. Romanian Choir Hoax, the headline read. Organizers of a choral festival in Westport were left red-faced today after the thirty-five-strong Romanian choir they invited into Ireland turned out to be bogus. While a two-hundred-strong audience waited in Westport church, the alleged singers took taxis from the airport to join the queue of illegal immigrants seeking asylum outside the Department of Foreign Affairs. I pretended to read on, awaiting a chance to slip away when the porter left his desk.
It was a more comfortable wait than others I had known involving Phyllis. The eternity of that evening I spent as a child soaked in urine beneath my bed came back to me. Afraid to venture out, even after Phyllis went sobbing downstairs, with Cormac like a dog behind her. Teatime came and the playing children were called in, their skipping ropes stilled and the silence unbroken by the thud of a ball. Afterwards nobody ran back out as usual, still clutching their bread and jam. It felt like the whole street was awaiting the judgement of my father’s car.
Finally he arrived home. The car engine was turned off and the front door opened. I expected screaming from Phyllis, but it was so quiet that I prayed she had left. Then my father ascended the stairs, his polished shoes stopping short of the pool of urine. He sat on the camp-bed so that all I could see were his suit trousers.
‘Come out.’
‘I’m scared.’
‘I’m not going to hit you.’
I clambered stiffly out, my clothes and hair stinking of piss. ‘I want my wallpaper back,’ I said. ‘I’ve always had it.’
‘You’ll speak when I tell you to. Your mother says you threw wee over her.’
‘She’s not my mother.’