“It’s too late, Far. They’ve thrown me out. Today.”
“But why, Eddie, why? You’ve only been there for just over six months.…”
“It was a mistake, Far. To do with drugs.”
“But you didn’t have anything to do with drugs, Eddie? I mean, you’re only fifteen.”
“Of course I didn’t. Can I come to live with you?”
“We’ll have to ask your mother.”
“She’ll say yes, Far.”
And Helena did say yes. Very quickly. Bucket told everyone in Chestnut Street. Circumstances had changed; his son had come to live with him full-time.
“He’d better watch that cat of his,” old Mr. O’Brien from Number 28 said.
“We’d all better watch everything,” said Kevin Walsh from Number 2, who knew a lot about life, what with driving a taxi.
School was over. Finished. Eddie explained. It was the “give a dog a bad name” thing being played everywhere, all over again.
“But there are so many careers you could have, Eddie, so many opportunities.”
“They’re not going to take me at any school, Far. Hasn’t that gone into your skull?”
“But how will you earn your living?”
“You left school at fifteen and you earned your living,” Eddie said.
Bucket looked at him. “Yes, but it was never what you’d describe as a high calling,” he began. “I mean, that’s why your mother took you away to him, to an accountant, someone who would have respect.”
“He hasn’t any respect for me now, Far.”
“It’s all down to that fellow Nest—you’re not a friend of his still, are you, Eddie?”
“No, I am not, not Nest, nor Foxy nor Harry.”
“So you can have a clean start.”
“That’s what I need, Far, a clean start, a few quid, a respectable job, a base here with you.”
Bucket had dreamed for years of hearing these words. He could hardly believe it was happening. “You’re sure, Eddie?”
“Oh, I am. I didn’t realize all these years this is what I wanted to do, to be.”
“I’ll get a new bicycle tomorrow,” Bucket said, his eyes shining. “And we’ll get the names painted, MAGUIRE AND SON QUALITY WINDOW CLEANING. We’ll make a killing, my boy—that’s what we’ll do!”
Eddie looked at him, amazed. “No, I mean I’m not going into window cleaning,” he said. “I just asked if I could live here and you said yes, that’s all.”
Bucket knew that this somehow was another moment, something that could change everything.
“That’s fine, lad. I thought you wanted a hand up, that’s all.”
“It wouldn’t be a hand up, Far, honestly,” Eddie said.
“Okay, Eddie.”
“We’ll get on fine, Far, if you don’t fuss,” Eddie said.
“I’m sure we will,” said Bucket.
Bucket Maguire was aware that his neighbors were not overjoyed to see Eddie back in the area, but he never knew how much the residents of Chestnut Street pitied him and hated his son. There was no point in their trying to tell him anything. He always had an excuse for Eddie: the boy was unfortunate, people had a down on him, they gave him a bad name just because he once had bad friends.
Bucket went to great trouble to point out that Eddie had risen above these people. But nobody seemed to believe him entirely. They asked vague questions like what did Eddie do all day? And how exactly did he get his wages? And what time did he get home at night? And suppose he didn’t come home? Where did a boy of fifteen and a half, sixteen, spend the night?
But Bucket knew you didn’t ask those questions if you wanted to have your son around. Things were a lot different now from when he was a boy.
Bucket worked on and on. He longed for an assistant, a young man who wasn’t afraid of heights. But there was no way he could bring anyone else into the business. The day would come when Eddie would want to work with him. Bucket could see him on a new bicycle, cycling beside him. It was just a matter of waiting until the time was right.
Then suddenly Eddie left Number 11.
No explanation, just a note: “Gone on my travels, and if anyone’s looking for me, you’ve no idea where I am. It’s for the best, Eddie.”
Weeks went by and Bucket worried. He couldn’t bear to tell anyone that he had no idea where his eighteen-year-old son was.
One evening, out of the blue, Nest arrived at the door. Two young men were standing behind him.
Bucket did not invite him in. Ruby snaked out to see who it was, and as if she could remember only too well, she went back again very quickly.
“God Almighty, is that the same cat there was all the fuss about? She must be a monstrous age,” Nest said.
“Ruby is six. Can I help you?” Bucket was brief.
“Well, yes, you can. It’s about your son or grandson—I never worked out which it was.” Nest smiled an innocent and crooked smile.
“Son. But he’s not here and I’m afraid I don’t know where he is.” Even to this lout Bucket was courteous.
“Oh, I know he’s not here—he won’t dare show his face in Dublin for a while, a long while.”
Nest looked knowing and menacing. Bucket felt uneasy. Best to try and patch things up, he thought. “I know you and he had your falling-out back at school, but isn’t it best that you put all this behind you?”
Nest smiled again. “No, Mr. Bucket, nothing is being put behind us. There’s still a lot of ongoing business and so if I could ask you to give him an important message …”
“I tell you truthfully, I don’t know where he is, nor indeed when he’s coming back.”
“I’m sure that’s true, Mr. Bucket, but one day he will get in touch, and if you could tell him that he knows where to find us. Just that. We’re in the same place; he’s the one who has gone walkabout.”
He looked very threatening indeed, as if he were going to do Eddie an injury.
Bucket spoke quickly and nervously. “If he gets in touch with me I’ll tell him, Nest. Certainly I’ll tell him. But I didn’t want you to think that he was in and out of here regularly or anything …”
“It’s Mr. Nest to you. I have always had the courtesy to call you Mr. Bucket. I’d like the same courtesy in return.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Nest,” said Bucket, with his head down.
The other boys tittered. They walked away like cowboys across the grass in the middle of Chestnut Street.
It felt very cold suddenly.
Bucket didn’t sleep well after that. When he did sleep he woke with the smiling face of Nest only inches from his own and it took him ages to realize that it was a dream or Ruby lying on his bed at night purring heavily and guarding him. He began to make his own plans at that time.
One night Helena called very late.
“Is something wrong?” Bucket asked in a panic.
“Wrong? Why on earth would anything be wrong?” She sounded slurred.
“It’s just that it’s midnight, Helena.”
“Is it? And does it matter?”
“No, not if you’re all right.”
“I’m fine.”
“And your husband … Hugh, the accountant?”
“He’s fine too, wherever he is.”
“He’s not at home tonight?” Bucket asked.
“Hardly any night. Bucket, have the papers been on to you?”
“About what?”
“About Eddie, you fool, what else?”
“The papers, the newspapers want to know about Eddie?”
“The whole country is looking for him—they don’t know where he’s hiding. Bucket, don’t let him in if he comes.”
“But I have to let him in—he’s my son. And why are they looking for him?”
“Oh, Jesus, Bucket, you’re a worse clown than I thought—it’s all there every day in black and white.”
“But he didn’t do anything. Did he?”
“Don’t open the door to him, Bucket. Phon
e the Guards; otherwise they’ll kill you too. And for what, tell me, for what?”
“Who would kill Eddie and me, Helena? Be reasonable.”
“The people he stole from. Nest, Harry and Foxy and all their pals. Our eejit of a son had to make friends with the greatest drug dealers in Dublin and then tried to double-cross them. They can’t let him live. They’re looking for him to kill him and the Guards are trying to get to him first. The best we can do for him is to turn him in.”
“It would be a long time in gaol. Ah, we can do better than that for him surely, Helena?”
“We could arm-wrestle with these guys, who have guns, Bucket, sawn-off shotguns. Yeah, we could get ourselves killed. Terrific.”
“We could help him get away,” Bucket said.
“Goodnight, Bucket,” Helena said and hung up the phone.
Ruby stiffened in the chair beside him, her hair up in great spikes. There was someone in the house. Bucket’s hand flew to his throat. Was Mr. Nest back with a gang to wait for Eddie’s return? Then a figure stepped out of the shadows. It was Eddie.
“Did you mean it, Far? That you’d help to get me away?”
“Of course I meant it. Sit down. I’ll make us a cup of tea in case they’re watching the house. We don’t want them to see any unexpected activity at this time of night.”
“It’s too late for tea, Father. They are watching the house.”
Bucket noticed with pleasure that this was the first time his son had called him “Father” rather than the silly send-up name of Far.
“Did they see you, Eddie?”
“No. I got over the back, up beyond Kevin Walsh’s at the top and through the gardens … they’re watching from the other side. From the garden of Twenty-two.”
“Yes, Mitzi and Philip are on holidays. That would be why the house is empty.” Bucket knew all about his neighbors, their plans and hopes and dreams.
“It’s over, you know. You do know that?” Eddie seemed to be trying to beat the last bit of hope out of Bucket.
“Drink your tea, Eddie. Take plenty of sugar—it will give you energy.”
“Energy for what? To be shot in the head once I walk out that door?”
“Why will they wait until you walk out—if they know you’re here, they could come in for you.”
“No, apparently not. Nest said he has respect for you. He talks all this kind of Godfather shit about respect; he said you never behaved badly to him in his years of coming here, and he’ll not shoot anyone in your house.”
“And is Nest the head of it all?”
“He is, yes.”
“Imagine,” Bucket said.
“I know,” Eddie said.
It was like a real father-son conversation. At last. At the end.
They talked about a lot of things, about Hugh, the accountant; about Helena, who would never be happy anywhere. About how Eddie had no money because he gambled it all and what he had stolen from Nest had all gone to pay off debts in a casino and how it would all be very different if he had it all over again.
“But you will,” Bucket said.
In the light that came in from the street lamp he saw the flicker of irritation cross his son’s face, as so often before.
“Have a sleep, Eddie,” Bucket begged. “We don’t start until seven-thirty in the morning.” He went to go upstairs.
“Don’t leave me, Father,” Eddie said.
“I’m only going up to get us pillows and a rug. Of course I won’t leave you,” said Bucket Maguire.
And he sat all night and watched his son sleeping on the sofa of Number 11, tossing and whimpering as he slept.
It was a gray, overcast dawn and Chestnut Street was waking up, as usual. Lilian would be leaving Number 5 to open the hairdressing salon up in the main street, Kevin Walsh might have an early-morning taxi booking to the airport, the Kennys in Number 4 would be going to Mass somewhere, Dolly from Number 18 would be coming back from her newspaper round.
It was time for Bucket Maguire to get on his bicycle, attach his folding ladder, his basket of chamois rags and soapy liquid, and head off with his teetering wobble towards the main road. Except this morning it would not be Bucket who rode the bike, it would be Eddie.
With a long raincoat and Bucket’s old hat shielding his face, nobody would know the difference.
Once he got to the main road he was to chain the bike to a railing, roll up the hat and coat in the basket with the rags and catch a bus to the city center.
Bucket had been withdrawing money every week from the savings account. That had been part of his plan. So he had plenty to give to his son.
He thought he saw tears in the boy’s eyes, but he wasn’t sure.
“You mustn’t look round to say goodbye—that would blow it,” he told Eddie. “Don’t wave at me but nod and wave at everyone else you pass. I know them all, you see, after living here all these years.”
And he stood behind the curtain of his house and watched proudly as his son cycled the company transport past the people who were waiting to kill him and past the neighbors who all saluted him, thinking that it was the window cleaner going about his lawful business.
Berna hated the sound of him; she feared and distrusted every single thing about this man … this Chester, who was going to marry her only daughter. But she would have to be nice—she had never known Helen so adamant about anything in her life.
“If you start wrinkling up your nose at him, Mother, if you start being hoity-toity, I just won’t stand for it,” Helen had cried, flushed and excited, looking younger than her twenty-three years.
“I have no idea what you mean. What can there be to be hoity-toity about?” she had said.
But Helen was having none of it.
“He’s been married already and he’s nearly forty.… Don’t you think I know what you’re thinking.”
“Have I said anything, Helen? Answer me that.”
“You don’t need to, Mother, you have what Father used to call your snibby face on.”
“Your father often saw snibby looks where none were intended.” Berna smiled but her heart was heavy.
She knew that Jack too would have hated the thought of this Chester, with his overconfident, brash American accent, flying in tomorrow, to discuss the wedding plans.
Jack would have given him short shrift. What would Jack have done? He would have taken Helen for a long walk, he might have taken her out to a meal in a fancy restaurant, he would have laughed and teased her out of it.
Jack had died when Helen was fifteen. Eight years ago. Everyone said it was the worst time for a girl to lose a father. Not many people had said that for Berna, at thirty-five, it wasn’t such a great age to lose a husband. But then Berna had always been very good at looking as if she could manage.
Everyone saw how quickly she had learned to drive, got a job, kept the show on the road. If she shed long tears of loneliness and self-pity, nobody saw. Berna knew that people’s problems were not very interesting to others, so she kept hers to herself. Even this heartbreak over the older man that her only child was going to marry. She hadn’t told her sisters, friends or colleagues how she felt that life had dealt her another cruel blow.
All she knew was that she must keep up the appearances of friendship, since this marriage was most definitely going to happen. She owed it to Helen and to Jack not to break up the family because Helen was going ahead with the most unsuitable marriage in the world.
He had never been to Ireland before, Chester, who had been everywhere. Helen had met him in New York, and flown home after six months to tell her mother the exciting news. Now Chester was arriving in person. He was going to fly to Shannon and hire a car. He wanted to drive through the country, he said, get the feel of it. He’d be at their home on Chestnut Street in the afternoon.
He had sounded plausible on the phone, pleasant, polite, no fake Oirish accents, but that was probably part of his style. He was in advertising; obviously he knew how to manipulate people.
Still, this was no time for negative thoughts. Not now, when he was expected any moment.
She heard Helen cut short one of her many excited telephone conversations, and run to the door. His car, parked outside, was a modest one, somewhat like the one that Berna drove herself, but then she remembered he had rented it here in Ireland. Back in the States he probably had a big flashy car.
She came to the top of the stairs and had to turn her head away when she saw the passion in the way they kissed, held each other and then stretched apart to look at each other with delight. How had Helen known about such desire? She hadn’t learned it in this house.
He had dark curly hair and dark, dark eyes. His smile was broad and went all over his face. He came towards her with both hands out.
“I’m far too old to call you anything but Berna,” he said.
How clever—he was admitting he was old. Knowing Helen was watching her, Berna forced her smile to be as broad as his.
“You are very welcome to our home,” she said.
They went into the sitting room, a small room, full of memories, pictures of Jack and Helen all over the place.
It must look very poor and shabby compared to his duplex … wasn’t that what Helen said he had? A flat with an upstairs in it in Manhattan.
But he seemed to like it. He praised all the right things, the lovely old mirror that had come from her own grandmother’s home; the first painting Helen had done, which was framed and hanging in a place of honor; the view of the little garden lovingly cared for. He liked it all, without gush, with apparent sincerity. Apparent. She must remember that word. He hadn’t got where he was without being able to act the part.
He was easy to talk to; there was no denying that. He didn’t keep fondling Helen, he asked questions and he volunteered information about himself. He said he wanted Helen and Berna to decide what style the wedding would be. It was to be their day, their choice.
At times it seemed unreal. Berna felt she was part of a film or a play, that she was talking to a stranger about some distant, strange event instead of her own daughter’s marriage. Once or twice she felt herself moving her hand across her forehead, as if she felt faint. He seemed to realize.