Our Little Cruelties Read online

  She was increasingly tearful and seemed afraid. Luke went to the hospice every day after school and spent the last weekends there. Brian went once, reluctantly. ‘I hate sick people,’ he said.

  When Dad’s death was imminent – ‘hours’ the nurse said – Mum and I were with him. ‘Should I ring Brian and Luke?’ I asked as his breaths became more and more infrequent. ‘No, they’d only get in the way,’ she said. When his ragged breathing eventually stopped, I held Mum awkwardly as she wept.

  We got home from the hospice late that night. Luke was waiting up. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’

  Mum started to cry and I confirmed it for Luke. Brian was already in bed. Luke went to get Mum a drink and I climbed the stairs to wake Brian and give him the bad news.

  I pushed open his bedroom door. He was reading some action thriller with a lurid cover.

  ‘Brian? Look, I’m sorry, but Dad has died.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I know. It’s awful, isn’t it?’ He picked up his book and started to read again. ‘Do you want to come downstairs?’

  ‘No thanks, I have rugby training in the morning.’

  ‘What? Brian, did you not hear what I said? Dad is … dead.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So what do you want me to do about it?’

  The long days in the hospital had taken their toll. I’d barely seen my girlfriend in weeks. Maybe Brian was too young to handle such news. He was odd in a different way to Luke, but his belligerence was hard to take. Luke was younger and was already downstairs pouring gin into Mum.

  ‘You could start by not acting like a prick.’

  ‘Piss off.’

  I picked up a gym shoe, threw it at his head and left, slamming the door.

  Later, I rationalized that this was Brian’s way of dealing with grief, by ignoring it, because Brian had never, to my knowledge, fallen out with Dad. None of us had.

  Over the next few days as funeral arrangements were made and the house filled up with relatives, visitors and sandwich trays, Brian stayed in his room. Luke was upset, though afraid, I think, to be tearful in front of me. His eyes were red-rimmed and he started wearing one of Dad’s old jumpers. Mum’s family came, her sister Peggy and the others we barely ever saw. Mum put them all together in the kitchen. Her own northside family embarrassed her and she wanted to keep them separate from Dad’s friends and relations. Apart from Peggy, we didn’t know any of them. They always called Mum Moll even though her name was Melissa. She hated that. Moll was a working-class Dublin abbreviation of Margaret. When Dad was alive, he could rile her by calling her Moll. I had always thought that Mum was ashamed of her family because of Dad, because he was from this middle-class southside suburb, but he was now dead and she was still hiding them in the kitchen.

  The day before the funeral, Luke came to me and asked if I believed that God really existed. It’s the kind of question he would have asked Dad. I tried to think what Dad would have said. I gave the standard answer expected of an older brother. ‘Luke, don’t be daft. Of course he exists. How did we all get here otherwise?’ Luke looked doubtful.

  I played the dutiful son and was part of the decision-making when it came to choosing a coffin. ‘The second cheapest, Mum – it’s not like anyone is going to judge us and who will know the difference?’

  All three of us were tall, and it was expected that we would be pall-bearers. I went up to Brian and Luke’s room to tell them. Luke nodded. ‘It’s the least we can do.’

  Brian looked up from his wretched book. ‘I’m not doing it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t want to. The undertakers will do it, won’t they? It’s their job.’

  ‘Mum wants us to do it.’

  ‘No.’

  Luke said quietly, ‘Dad would want us to do it, together.’

  ‘He’s dead, so what he wants doesn’t matter,’ said Brian.

  ‘Brian! Why are you being like this?’

  ‘People die all the time. I don’t see why there has to be such a fuss. Do you know how many children are dying of starvation right now in Ethiopia?’

  I jumped on him and yelled at Luke to help me. Luke reluctantly got Brian on to the floor and I roughly pulled his hands behind his back.

  ‘Get off me! You animals! Get off!’

  ‘You’re carrying Dad’s coffin, and that’s final.’

  Still he struggled and argued. ‘I am not, I’m not doing it. You can’t make me.’

  Mum chose that moment to walk into the room. ‘What in the name of God is going on, have you no respect?’ she hissed. There were relatives downstairs, who had no doubt heard the commotion.

  Luke was the tell-tale, as usual. ‘Brian doesn’t want to carry Dad’s coffin tomorrow.’

  ‘He doesn’t have to if he doesn’t want to, now get off him!’ She was cried out and weary.

  At the funeral Mass the next day, Luke and I stood at the front end of the coffin, two uncles and two undertakers behind us. As we passed Brian at the front pew standing beside my mother, he flipped his middle finger upwards at me, a look of triumph on his face. Tears of anger came to my eyes.

  In the melee outside the church, I stood by Mum’s side, fielding the mourners. As Jack Gogan, one of Dad’s friends, approached, I saw Luke physically push him aside, quite roughly. The man looked startled. It sounded like Luke was berating him. Afterwards, I asked Luke what that was about. He tapped his nose. ‘None of your business,’ he said. I assumed he must have been one of Mum’s lovers.

  In the weeks and months afterwards, Luke and I helped Mum and each other to come to terms with the loss of our father. I don’t remember Brian ever mentioning him again. We were all conscious of the fact that Brian refused to discuss his death. This refusal was somehow contagious. One year later, we rarely mentioned him, not even to mark his anniversary. At that stage, we could all fend for ourselves, and I admit that, after a few weeks, I did not miss him. I’m not sure Mum did either.

  3

  1992

  Even though we had all moved out, Sunday lunch at Mum’s had become a tradition. She took some cookery course with Peggy and was surprised to find that she enjoyed it. She proved to be better at it than Dad, though I suppose when Dad had cooked for us, it was always after a full day’s work.

  If Mum was in a theatre show, Sundays were her only day off, and she liked to push the boat out. She always cooked for at least ten people because you’d never know who might turn up. It wasn’t unusual for any of us to bring along three hungry flatmates. And Mum loved to perform for them. She kept herself up to date with who was who in popular culture and could discuss the merits of that book, or this film, or that TV series. She was the ‘cool’ mum. My friends said I was lucky. She didn’t mind them smoking, or cursing, or drinking. And, thankfully, she did not flirt with any of them.

  We were all in our early twenties and Luke and I had brought several girls home at this stage but Brian never had. We teased him about being gay, though he showed no sign of it. But he was probably still a virgin at twenty-two.

  Mum noted his lack of girlfriends but approached it in her usual unsubtle manner. ‘Is it because of your nose?’ she’d say. Brian had a deviated septum, meaning one of his nostrils was wider than the other and his nose was slightly crooked. You would never notice it unless it was pointed out. ‘He gets that from your side,’ Mum used to say back in the day, and Dad would nod and agree that his father ‘had an enormous conk’. We never noticed it because it was part of Brian, but Mum would refer to it under her breath as his ‘disfigurement’. At one point in his teens, he had asked if there was an operation that might correct his nose, but Mum laughed at him. While it might have been acceptable for a girl to get her teeth straightened, the appearance of boys and men was far less important. Brian later said that it didn’t bother him, but in new company I noticed he always faced them full on until he felt confident enough with people to let them see him in profile.

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bsp; By 1992, Brian had completed his arts degree and teaching qualification year, and was part-time teaching and working odd days in a bookshop in the city centre. Luke had finally recorded his second album. I was doing a film production training course at Filmbase.

  On this particular Sunday, Brian had arrived with a girl. Mum nudged and winked at me. The girl was beautiful in a punky kind of way. Dad would definitely not have approved. Spiked bleached hair, scarlet lipstick, lots of eye make-up, and, most exotically, this girl had an American accent. We only heard American accents on the TV so, to me, she already had a certain sheen to her. Luke had brought along his pothead drummer and the two of them were so obviously stoned that after a few minutes of listening to their incoherent giggling at every enquiry, we ignored them. Mum was ratty with Luke and told him to behave himself or leave the table. My girlfriend, Irene, sat beside me. We had been going out with each other for a few months, not serious at all on my part, but Irene had a different impression of our relationship. In fact, I hadn’t even invited her to this lunch, but she knew our family Sunday routine and had just brazenly shown up.

  Mum could not help herself. ‘Well, now,’ she said to Brian’s guest, ‘has our Brian finally got himself a girlfriend?’ She handed the girl a bowl of salad to take to the table while I carved the shoulder of lamb.

  ‘Mum!’ said Brian, annoyed.

  The girl smiled easily. ‘No, we’re just friends. We work together in the bookshop.’ But she smiled at Brian in a way that seemed flirtatious to me.

  ‘And where are you from, dear?’

  ‘Detroit,’ said Susan. ‘Michigan.’

  ‘Really? Home of Henry Ford, right?’

  ‘Well, yep, home of the motor industry. My pop worked on the production line at Ford until the day he died.’

  ‘Oh, really? I’m so sorry. But he worked in a factory?’

  Mum didn’t exactly boast of her working-class roots but was proud that she had worked hard to escape them. She made sure she had elocution lessons in the College of Music where she won a scholarship. And she must have adapted quickly and easily into our leafy Glenageary avenue. She liked people to believe she wasn’t a snob, but the only member of her family she stayed in touch with was Peggy, who, against the odds, had made a name for herself as a fashion designer, having started out as a seamstress in a shirt factory. Mum had relayed her elocution lessons to her older sister.

  ‘Yes, he was in charge of the electrocoat paint process,’ said Susan with pride, as if her father had been the ambassador to Paris. I liked her confidence.

  Mum laughed. ‘My late husband’s family would say that I’d married out of my class. His mother once referred to me as a northside showgirl. Me! I was a trained singer and a medal winner at the College of Music. I’m a showband star.’

  Susan was confused by this apparent non sequitur.

  Brian was embarrassed. ‘You were. Past tense. Mum, you don’t have to –’

  Susan interrupted. ‘Are you really?’

  Mum was shocked. ‘Brian, didn’t you tell Susan who I am?’

  Brian sat down calmly. ‘Not everyone cares who you are, Mum. Most of my friends couldn’t name the Three Tenors, they’re hardly going to have heard of a semi-retired panto dame.’

  Mum’s jaw tightened. I was furious with Brian for being so dismissive. I kicked him under the table. Mum still saw herself as a celebrity. She measured her success by the size and placing of her photograph in the Sunday Independent. It had been a year since she was in any paper at this stage and her concerts and appearances were fewer and further between, but she expected people to recognize her. Still, she couldn’t blame Susan for her fame not reaching the suburbs of Detroit.

  Luke and the drummer choked, laughing on their beer. And then Irene, defending Mum and trying to curry favour, piped up, pointing at her. ‘This is the Melissa Craig! She had her own TV show when I was a kid.’ I could see by Mum’s face that although she was grateful to Irene, this description of her put her success firmly in the past.

  Susan, without guile, said, ‘Oh, my mom didn’t have much faith in television. We didn’t have one. She thought we should all read books, so I guess that’s what we did when everyone else was watching Starsky and Hutch. So should I call you Mrs Drumm or Ms Craig?’

  ‘Melissa, call me Melissa.’

  Melissa was a name Mum had adopted even before she met Dad. I think she must have been the only Melissa of her generation. I didn’t call any of my friends’ parents by their first names. Mum thought it made her modern and ‘with it’.

  ‘Okay, Melissa, will I open the wine?’

  ‘Oh no, leave that to one of the boys. They’ll be strong enough.’ Mum was never as modern as she thought.

  Brian manfully opened the wine as if he were taming a lion. He didn’t say much during lunch, but Susan was funny and interesting.

  A few weeks later, when I called into the bookshop, I asked Brian where Susan was. ‘Why do you ask?’ he said, immediately suspicious.

  ‘You said she wasn’t your girlfriend,’ I countered.

  ‘She’s not. We’re just …’

  ‘Do you fancy her?’

  ‘No!’

  I knew he’d say that. He was never going to try and compete with me.

  Within a week, Susan and I were dating. She had no plans to stay long term in Ireland, it was just the starting point for her round-the-world trip. She intended to stay a while in each place and move on to Paris and Madrid before Turkey and then India. She had some qualification in American literature from a Detroit community college, but not one that would be recognized by any Irish university. She had signed up for several night classes in sociology and languages in Dublin. She was always busy. I liked that about her. She was never going to be clingy.

  A year and a half later, we had to get married. Well, we didn’t have to, but her visa was due to expire and she was pregnant. She didn’t find out until it was too late to get an abortion. I stepped up and did the decent thing: I offered to marry her. Fortunately, it turned out that she wanted to marry me too. I was really happy. The circumstances weren’t ideal, but Susan was a prize. It was a lot to take on at such a young age. I was twenty-five when our child was born and, despite Mum helping out financially, times were tough.

  Luke missed his flight home from Amsterdam the night before our small wedding. He arrived eventually in the church with some almost-dressed groupie just before we exchanged rings, looking exhausted, hung-over, and upstaging our precious moment.

  Unsurprisingly, Brian couldn’t find a date to bring to the wedding. I could tell that he wasn’t entirely happy about our relationship. Not long after we got back from our midwinter honeymoon in Kerry, he went to live in France.

  Susan and I were going to live happily ever after.

  4

  1978

  Luke was preparing to make his first holy communion. We weren’t a particularly religious household though Dad dragged most of us reluctantly to nine a.m. Mass most Sundays. Mum often made the excuse of having performed a concert the night before. Brian and I would fidget through the readings, the offerings and the prayers, though I liked it when the holy smoke was wafted around the church as if a genie might appear out of a bottle, or a parrot might swoop down on to the altar, but nothing ever happened. The tinkling of the bell would signal the end of Mass, but it was church etiquette to wait until all of the priests had left the altar. The priests in our parish were particularly old and it seemed like it took them years to shuffle away into the sacristy. At that point, we would race out of the church like our arses were on fire, dying for the fresh air and to escape from the atmosphere of sacrifice and suffering that haunted small boys like us.

  Except for Luke. Luke was deeply interested in the concept of hell, and staying out of it. Every week, he put his entire pocket money into the Mass collection box. He couldn’t wait for his first confession. I heard Mum and Dad laughing about it. ‘What could a seven-year-old possibly have to confess?’ But
Luke refused to discuss his sins with us. He said it was between him and God.

  Of course, Brian and I slagged him mercilessly, accusing him of breaking all ten commandments, even the ones we didn’t understand. We didn’t know what coveting your neighbour’s wife was, but we guessed it was rude and dirty, so we made up a filthy song about Luke and Mrs Turner next door and tormented him with it until he cried. Brian stole a pair of Mrs Turner’s tights off her washing line and put them under Luke’s pillow.

  Luke never retaliated. We started to call him Saint Luke but that backfired because he seemed to like it.

  On the morning of the communion ceremony, Luke said he was sick and he couldn’t go, but Mum had bought herself a new outfit for the occasion and Dad had gone to the trouble of polishing all of our shoes the night before. A cake had been ordered. When the thermometer proved that Luke had a normal temperature, Mum wasn’t taking no for an answer. She stood over him while he cried and wailed and she forced him into the white shorts and white V-neck sweater over a shirt and tie. Even when she pinned the rosette to his chest, he did not stop resisting. We all piled into Dad’s car and Luke grew more hysterical as we approached the church. Eventually, Dad, in a rare fit of temper, pulled over to the side of the road and yanked Luke out of the car. Brian and I pressed our faces up against the back window to see what would happen next. Mum applied another layer of lipstick in the rear-view mirror.

  Dad had Luke up against a wall and was gesticulating furiously, while Luke cowered, covering his head with his hands as if Dad was about to strike him, even though Dad never hit any of us. Five minutes later, they returned to the car. Luke was ashen-faced. Mum told Dad to speed up as we were now running late.