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  In the village where they now lived, Lilly would take him around to the butcher’s and the baker’s to show him off: her daddy from Iran. Persia, he tells her again and again. They talk on the phone once a week.

  He spends ten days doing up Mrs Bahreini’s place. The crystal chandeliers sparkle. When she comes home from her expeditions he lights a fire. They read, talk or sit in silence staring at the abundance of fruit on the platters until the memories of their homeland come to them. They sometimes sing a song and cry.

  No money changes hands between them. She insists on presenting him with a few good bottles. He accepts and that’s that, nothing else. He enjoys being there. Thank you, Rashid. Thank you, Mrs Bahreini.

  A long week later, he finds it is Sunday again. He takes his walk along Sandymount Strand, breathes the sea air, marvels at the variety of light, the lack of blue. He comes from a blue country himself. He has lunch at an Iranian restaurant, chats with random diners and waiters.

  Late in the afternoon he goes home. In the entrance hall of his apartment he automatically checks his letterbox. The caretaker has left a package on top of it. A heavy envelope. On Sunday. He doesn’t even take off his coat, as soon as he is in his flat he rips the envelope open. A letter from Mrs Bahreini. A present from her. She writes to him about the bird. She is getting tired of looking for it, nothing compares to the susah. There is a bird here in Ireland called the goldcrest, alright, it is small and could probably squeeze itself through the key hole of, say, an old convent door, God forbid. Yet it is lumpy in comparison to her favoured one. The Iris is probably lost to Celtic civilization. It was the name that made her think of it: Gold Crest. She still had some old gold coins from the King’s era. Remember them? With His Majesty’s head on them. She’s decided to give him a couple, as a thank you for all the work he has done for her.

  They spill out on the floor, large yellow coins, five of them. They look like remnants from Ali Baba’s treasure. Lilly. She would love to have them.

  He takes three of them, wraps them individually, carefully, and then puts them together in a little box with her name and address on it. The next morning he rushes to the post office, registered and express, please. The woman behind the counter stares at him with contempt. Who could get this worked up on a Monday morning? Silly man. Where is he from at all? Persia. She nods in broad understanding. That explains it.

  He rings Mrs Bahreini to thank her for the coins. No answer. Somehow it hurts him a little to imagine the phone ringing in that lonely space.

  He teaches them about his country. Pale students, already tired of a life that hasn’t yet started. Exhausted by the idea of having to record all that information in their hung-over brains. He looks discreetly at bulging belly buttons, the white, tender flesh spilling over tight trousers. Citrus trees, mimosa, clean tiled walls, splendid colours are what he wants now.

  Back home the phone rings. Lilly. She sounds so happy. She just got the coins. Did he get them off the pirates? Is he a pirate himself now? He answers yes to every question. Now that I have the coins can I stop being a little girl, Daddy, can I be a pirate too, Daddy? Can I?

  Yes. Yes, you can.

  CHRISTINE DWYER HICKEY

  Esther’s House

  Since turning onto the quays I had been growing more and more anxious as the buildings and bridges continued to become more familiar. By the time we reached Ormond Quay Lower I was whining. Why could we not at least visit Mother, I demanded to know. Why? Why? Why?

  My aunt offered me the usual excuse of Louisa’s mumps.

  I knew nothing about mumps except that boys my age were advised to steer well clear of them and that they were responsible for this compulsory six weeks’ stay of absence, which I was now only half-way through. In any case I thought it a bit much that I should be punished for my sister’s carelessness and all because I happened to be a boy.

  ‘Poor Louisa,’ my aunt said, ‘hardly able to budge off the sofa, face up like a big balloon, God help her.’

  But I saw nothing unusual in this, Louisa spent most of her time lolling on the sofa and she was a hefty lump besides, taking after my father for her jowly jaw. As far as I was concerned she had always had the mumps and so any sympathy I had I was keeping for myself.

  The tram paused mid-quays taunting me with a view of Capel Street and I rushed across the aisle, kneeling up on a seat there and pressing my hands to the window. I could see the breast of my father’s pub and that the cellar grid was up. I imagined Farley down in the dark there, like the mole in the hole that he was, muttering away to himself as he went about his work, only lifting his face to the light whenever a swish of dress hem passed overhead.

  I looked up to the sign above the front door – Select Accommodation for Artistic Performers. Music Rooms Available. Best Weekly Rates – so clear I could trace the letters with my finger through the glass of the tram. Soft blisters of white lace from the open windows on the floors above the pub and in the next-door building – my mother’s guesthouse taking its morning airing. Even my own bedroom window in the attic was up, and I felt the intrusion. Nobody ever bothered with my room, except for myself, and I wasn’t there. I was here with Aunt Esther.

  I tried to guess which window Mother was behind and what she might be doing there. Or Carolina – where would she be? Down in the back kitchen riddling the cinders. Out in the yard squeezing the guts out of newly washed linen. Up in one of the music rooms maybe, frantically hawing a shine out of a piano?

  But before I could settle on a definite picture of Carolina, the tram gong sounded and the view rattled out of my sight.

  My aunt’s voice came out behind me, in that slightly bewildered tone she kept for onlookers and impending scenes. ‘Your mother is up to her eyes. Now be a big boy for goodness sake. Nursing Louisa, poor, poor Louisa. Between that and the Italians! I don’t know how she … well. Surely you must understand?’

  ‘What Italians?’ I asked spinning around.

  ‘The opera company dear – you know?’

  ‘Nobody said anything to me about any opera company.’

  ‘They’re staying with your mother for the season. I told you that already.’

  ‘No you didn’t tell me,’

  ‘Excuse me, I did so.’

  ‘No you did NOT.’

  My aunt leaned her face into mine, our two mouths so close then that I had to clamp my lips together to stop from swallowing her words; there would be tea later if I behaved myself, a trinket from Pimms, lemon sherbet from Nobbits then – what do you say?

  But these promises, issued as they were, through clenched teeth, sounded more like threats than treats. I shrugged my arm free from her kid-gloved grip.

  ‘Oh suit yourself then,’ she snapped.

  ‘I wish I could get away from you,’ I snarled up at her.

  ‘And I away from you.’

  After three weeks together we had long outpassed our initial phase of politeness, being far too intimate for that.

  Every evening after supper my uncle would start the interrogation. I came to know his form; tongue dragging a last lick along the flat of his knife, hand pushing the plate away then returning to the back of the chair where it jangled the buttons on his park ranger’s jacket until his tobacco pouch had been located.

  ‘Well then,’ he would begin, swiping his supper-greased fingers through coarse ginger hair, ‘so tell us now what did you get up to today?’

  I never minded his questions, even the ones that he produced second time round, slyly reshaped to trip me up. Indeed had it not been for my Aunt’s jittering over the crockery and cutlery I might have looked on this time of the day as a welcome opportunity to engage in conversation. There was little else in the way of company for me here; my aunt or the cats were the size of it. And I hated the cats, their foolish names and pissy smell, the way they were always on the make for a scrap of food or the warmth of a recently vacated bed, an armchair, or a coat left on the sofa. Their mechanical purring and deranged night
time crying, the presumptuous way they rubbed themselves off your leg – I hated their very nature.

  Whatever it was that my uncle was after with his questions was still, at this stage, unclear to me, although it was obvious that Chapelizod bridge or rather something on the far side of it, had some significance, for all questions seemed to come to the bridge: had I seen it, had we crossed over it, did I notice the shop on the other side, what about that skinny oul one in the bockity house on the way up to the next village hanging over the half-door like a horse all day?

  I had often heard it said by Carolina that my aunt’s ‘little peculiarities’ were down to the bad match she had made.

  ‘She could have had anyone,’ according to Carolina, ‘Anyone! with her face and figure and that voice like an angel. Pity she didn’t take a leaf out of your mother’s much more sensible book.’

  But I saw little difference between the two husbands. Except for my uncle’s colouring and bramble of a beard they were even similar in appearance. Both were quiet men, not easily lured into conversation – although my father could manage pub banter well enough, or at least roll out the same few sentences all day long for the benefit of each new customer. Both men ate with their faces close to the plate and thought nothing of belching or scratching in public.

  If anything, I found my uncle to be the gentler of the two; his presence much less demanding.

  And at least he would talk to me, but only when my aunt wasn’t pinned to my side. This would have to be first thing in the morning while it was still nearly dark and he was fumbling around making his lunch or eating his breakfast. I might come across him out in the garden, sitting on a log in fine weather, the outhouse when it was raining, eating his sandwiches as if he was miles away from his own kitchen table. A few times he took me with him on his rounds. Then he would nearly always ask me about my father’s business:

  ‘So how is your oul fella doing these days? – raking it in I don’t doubt.

  How many has he working for him now? – a right houseful I suppose.

  Does the pub be busy? Packed to the gills, I suppose.

  Would you say he did well for himself? He certainly did, all considered.’

  As he tended to ask questions he answered himself, there wasn’t too much for me to do on these chats, but for all that I wasn’t ungrateful.

  * * *

  Every time I left my aunt’s house the light always came as a shock; the amount of sky. I was used to a dark house, for we lived on one of the darkest streets in the city. But the darkness in my aunt’s house was different. On the hump of a hill at the side of the Fifteen Acres in the Phoenix Park, surrounded by an inner circle of dark green railings and an outer circle of trees, the house itself was angular enough in shape – except for the ill-named sun room which bellied out onto the garden – yet it gave the impression of being completely round. No shortage of windows either but somehow the light always skulked outside.

  That day my Aunt was even more agitated than usual. She even forgot to feed the cats, and I didn’t remind her. Keeping a hard hold of my hand all the way down the hill from the house, never letting go, even as she shoved us clumsily through the turnstile gate into Park Lane. Her step didn’t slow up until we came to the village, and I could feel the effort this cost her.

  ‘We’re just going as far as the bridge to give this little chap a look at the swans, as far as the bridge I told to him, but no further, for he’ll give me no peace till he sees the swans.’

  This was the announcement she made to anyone we happened to pass: the greengrocer up on a footstool struggling with his awning; the group of women waiting on the midday tram into town; the nurse pushing a baby carriage from one of the grander houses that led up to Knockmaroon Hill and the Strawberry Beds; all had to hear about the swans – not that anyone appeared too interested. It was almost as if she was asking their permission.

  I had never really noticed anything odd in my aunt’s behaviour, until I came to stay with her, apart from the fact that when she came on a visit to our house she couldn’t seem to stop talking. My mother said this was because she was lonely and that it wouldn’t kill us to indulge her a little with the occasional nod or smile. Which we did, often for what seemed like hours on end, my aunt chattering away about little or nothing, while the tea grew cold in the pot and skin grew over the jam. In her own house she rarely spoke. She spent a lot of time looking in the mirror too, not the way my mother would do with some sense of purpose, to fix her hair or rouge up her cheeks and sigh discontentedly at some aspect of her appearance. Aunt Esther just stared blankly in. And she was always so gentle, in movements as well as in voice. Yet she played the piano with something like violence. If a knock came to the door she wouldn’t answer it, but came looking for me to do so, even if I was out in the garden or already asleep in bed. And now there was this business of lying to strangers about my wanting to see the swans.

  We got to the bridge and my aunt tugged me over it, so sharply that I saw nothing of the swans and little of the river other than a vague shimmer of glittering worms to the corner of my eye.

  ‘But what about the swans?’

  ‘On the way back.’

  It was a long trek, all uphill after that, and far too warm for October. Pinned by the sun to a high stone wall that seemed to have no intention of ending, I struggled behind my aunt, heels dragging behind me, sweaty body wriggling against my wool suit, head boiling under my cap. I sent up the occasional sigh of distress, each one of which was duly ignored.

  At last a stretch of railing broke into the wall, then a gate flanked by two tall round pillars. Here we stopped. And still she said nothing.

  I looked up at the sign arched over the gate: Stewarts Hospital for Imbecile Children.

  I recognised the word ‘Imbecile’, having heard my father use it often enough to his unfortunate counterhands and was curious to see how this might apply to children. My aunt pushed me towards the gate.

  She tucked herself in behind a pillar, her back to the railings, a handkerchief muffling her mouth as if she’d been appalled by a sudden smell. I could barely hear her instructions.

  ‘What do you see?’

  ‘Nothing really, just trees, a bench, a big building, a veranda.’

  ‘Step closer. Now. Can you see any people?’

  ‘A sick-nurse. No two. Two nurses.’

  ‘Nobody else?’

  ‘Well … yes.’

  ‘Who? Who?’

  ‘Sick people … I suppose.’

  ‘Is he there?’

  ‘Is who there?’

  ‘Red hair. He’ll have red hair. Well? Answer me – won’t you answer me? Is he? Is he there?’

  ‘I don’t know. How old is he?’

  ‘Fifteen. Can you see him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  We caught the tram home and she never opened her mouth, passing me the fare to pass on to the conductor. As the tram crossed back over the Chapelizod bridge I looked out the window, but saw no swans on the river.

  As soon as we pushed through the turnstile gate back into the Park she started to sob. When we got into the house she was still at it, standing in the centre of the sun room.

  ‘Oh my dear,’ she said, ‘we are in a stew. If your uncle ever finds out – such a stew.’

  I looked about me at her roundy house, and the lumpy dark furniture, and the queer brown light that filled up the sun room and the two of us standing there like big chunks of meat, and I had to turn away from her then to bite the grin from my lips.

  A few minutes later she called out from her bedroom for a glass of water and a green tincture bottle that I would find under the spools in her sewing casket.

  I held the glass while she sipped. She was still crying although the sobs were somewhat smoother now. After a while they stopped altogether. Then she pulled back the eiderdown and asked me to get in beside her. I started to fidget, mumbling away about lessons, the amount of school I was missing, the promises I had made to Mother to k
eep up my singing exercises. But my aunt was having none of it. ‘I’m so cold,’ she said, ‘so very cold.’

  Then I came up with the excuse of feeding the cats.

  ‘Just a few little minutes,’ she pleaded, her voice slow and sleepy, ‘that’s all I ask.’

  I took my time in unlacing my boots, and longer still to take off my stockings. But when I had finished her eyes were still open.

  I lay with my back to her, trapped by her arms and her smells – which up to now had only come in loose passing hints – were wrapped like swaddling around me: rosewater and dress-sweat, an alkaline odour which I took to be from her medicine, a sour dry aroma that reminded me of a bonfire after all the heat had gone out of it.

  My body stiff as a plank, hers soft and full as pillows behind me. Whispers tipped off the back of my neck and nestled like nits in my hair; senseless whispers about secrets, and stews, and not ever telling. Toby she said the boy’s name was, fifteen last May, same age as Louisa, give or take a day.

  I closed my eyes and thought of the ginger boy, the lies I had told her about him. He’s reading a book, I had said, now smiling at the nurse, now talking to a boy at his side.

  When I woke up there was only the sound of her sleeping breath, the faint creaking of loosened corsetry behind me.

  I slid out of bed, then took my boots out to the sun room. But the sun room was still too close to her room and no corner of the house seemed to offer me sufficient distance. I put on my boots, walked through the garden and stood at the side of the Acres.

  There was a whiff of distant music from the viceregal lodge and scribbles of light through the trees. And such an amount of sky!

  A big black back made of sky, and the stars standing out against it were like a rash of silver scabs.

  * * *

  I have painted a picture for Mother. Have taken my time with it, stroke by soft stroke, patiently waiting for each colour to dry before carefully adding the next. My uncle set up the easel and brought me the paints. Sometimes he stood next to me, telling me what to do. His hand might make to take the brush off me, but in the end he always let me do it myself. He showed me how to apply colour. How to blot it off again when I made a mistake.