Hello. My name is Martin O'Donnell, though when my family tree last put out shoots in Ireland is anyone's guess. I'm eighty-six years old, and I live in a small village called Bexhill, on the south coast near Hastings. I have no idea who you are, of course, but I suppose I'm pleased to meet you all the same. We'll be spending a little time together, I suspect, so it's best to be polite.
As I write this we are reaching the end of a spell of seasonably good weather. Rain is forecast for the weekend onwards but today is fine and sunny, which I imagine he thinks will appeal to people's sense of irony. That, and the date - ha! Yes, he'll like that. But no, I'm getting ahead of myself. I have to keep this straight, for my sake as much as yours.
Where to start: that's the tricky question. I suppose the day my daughter Mary came home is as good as any. That's when it began for me, at least, and it's as far back as I can speak with any authority.
That was a nice day too, I think. Six years ago, or maybe seven. Anyway, I was sitting out by the pool, much as I am now, trailing one foot in the water - but thinking about my wife, rather than contemplating murder. I thought about her a lot back then; she was so damn not there it seemed everywhere I looked there was something missing. I heard the kitchen door squeak, and when I looked around, there she was standing in the shade of the awning. Dear Lord, she looked like Helen. Then she spoke:
"Dad?"
"Mary? My dear girl, what on earth are you doing here?" I can't remember if I sounded pleased.
"I've, um, brought someone to see you." She turned and looked behind her, stepping aside and motioning with her head. "Come on Robert, let Granddad have a look at you."
Now, the English language is a wonderful thing, but I'll be buggered if there's a word that adequately describes my feelings at that moment. Granddad? I can only imagine what my face must have been like. Maybe that's what set this whole thing off, who knows?
So into the doorway, moving in that exaggerated, over-cautious gait peculiar to the very young or very drunk, stepped a little boy, perhaps two years old. My grandson. Robert. He took one look at me, of course, and dived straight behind Mary. By the time I'd fumbled my distance-glasses into place, all that was visible was a lock of dark hair and one eye peeking distrustfully around her well-padded knees.
"Well..." I said, or something equally profound. It was a pretty awkward moment. I think I went inside and made a pot of tea while we talked, though I can't remember exactly what was said. I wish I could, but at my age you don't get to pick and choose what sticks and what slips. Having just gone from 'dad' to 'granddad of two years' I expect I had some Goddamn penetrating questions lined up, don't you? Whatever: I got no answers, not then, not ever.
What I do remember is her telling me she had moved out. That image, that line, is crystal clear.
I mentioned before that I have a pool - a swimming pool, no less, even if it is a bit short for doing proper lengths. Don't let that fool you into thinking I inhabit some kind of sprawling country estate. That pool is my one extravagance: a thirty-thousand-pound boondoggle in the back garden of a forty-thousand-pound bungalow. A one-bedroom bungalow. Even with my wife not there everywhere I looked, I didn't exactly rattle around.
I think about the ensuing argument quite a lot; you know, wondering what it must have been like. No matter how I imagine it, though, I can't reconcile it with its evident conclusion: Mary moved back in, and brought Robert with her.
We chafed against one another initially. I wasn't particularly gracious about moving everything around to accommodate them. There were toys and clothes everywhere, all the time. Plus the untold story behind her reappearance hung over us, making every conversation a minefield. But after a while we just got used to it, as everyone does when there's no alternative. We settled down and things were, if not fine, then acceptable - so it seemed to me.
There was just one oddity in those first couple of years. Well, it didn't seem odd at the time, but in hindsight it was... a foretaste.
Robert loved those big Lego bricks - no; Duplo, that's the stuff. Mary bought him tons of it. Sometimes he would put all the bricks together to make the tallest tower he could - and he was smart, too: when he couldn't reach any higher he would build another, shorter tower and lift the first one onto the top of
that, and so on. Incidentally, I'm no expert in child development, but I thought that was bloody incredible. Then he would turn into an ordinary kid again: he would build this tower, this marvel of toddler engineering - and push it over, watching our faces with his big dark eyes to see if we approved. Mary would clap her hands and tell him what a clever boy he was, even if his tower fell against the television or knocked an ornament from the fireplace. I applauded when he had built the tower, but he always pushed it over anyway.
That much was intriguing, curious even, but now comes the odd part: Robert would play with his bricks happily enough with Mary, or with me if she was in the room. But if she left for any reason, Robert would sit quite still for a minute or two, as if waiting to see if she was coming back, and then start screaming the place down. Mary would come dashing in and gather him up, but he would be inconsolable for a good five minutes afterwards. I put it down to him being over-attached to his mother, which I supposed was understandable when you've already lost one parent.
It wasn't until much, much later that I realised he never cried if she left him alone.
I paused just now to light a cigarette. Did you notice? Mentioning it is significant for a couple of reasons. One will soon become apparent; the other is that it's the first I've smoked in seven years. Maybe eight. If you're struggling to kick the cancer-stick too, I suggest you watch the woman you love slowly suffocate under the weight of inoperable lung-cancer. It beats the hell out of those little patches, believe me. Ever since, I've kept an unopened pack in the house - I change them once every few months when they go out of date – to make sure temptation is always there. I've known people who quit by avoiding temptation, and it never lasts. They get out of practise saying no, and before they know what's happening the next time someone offers they're saying yes.
And yet here I am, lighting up and coughing like a schoolboy. Crazy? I prefer to think of it as not sweating the small stuff anymore.
I honestly can't remember when I had the first dream. Let's say it was two years after Mary first appeared in my kitchen doorway, which would make Robert four, maybe five. He wasn't at school yet though. By then she had got herself a job in London; an administrative assistant, whatever the hell that is. She was out of the house every day, and sometimes overnight too, if she had an especially early meeting to prepare for. There was no discussion about who would look after Robert.
It was one of Mary's overnighters; of that much I'm sure. Robert was asleep; I'd managed to go to the toilet; it was a straight choice between inexplicable late-night television programmes or bed. I chose bed.
I dropped off almost straight away - and, like taking a really good dump, that'll be a red-letter day in your diary too, if you live long enough. I slept, and I dreamed.
I dreamed of dust.
Dust underfoot: a lurid red-orange that made me think of photographs of Mars. Dust in the air, swirling and billowing on a hot, dry wind. It was on my skin, on my clothes, in my hair, in my eyes. On the horizon a bloated, feverish, dusty sun spewed baleful light towards me across a featureless desert.
A soft clack; a tiny squeak of plastic on plastic. I looked around.
Robert sat with his back to me a few feet away, surrounded by brightly coloured bricks. As I watched he lifted a completed tower section and placed it atop a smaller one. Clack, squeak. It wobbled, but didn't fall.
"Robert? Where are we?" Strange, but I just assumed he would know.
"Anywhere," he replied in his singsong little-boy voice. He had already started on another tower section. Clack, squeak.
"I don't understand."
He didn't answer, just kept putting one brick on another. The wind gusted and died, gusted and died, and arced wings of red dust ghosted silently between us. Clack, squeak.
"Daddy's coming," he said, and I woke up.
The day after that first dream, Robert was in the foulest mood I'd ever seen. He wouldn't eat, wouldn't sleep, wouldn't play properly; he was a horror. My dream was forgotten in the sheer effort of not throttling him. By the time Mary's car pulled into the driveway at seven that evening, I was at the end of my tether. And the fun wasn't over yet - oh no, it was just getting started.
"Here's your mum," I said to Robert. Thank God.
He looked at the front door, and back at me. Then he smiled, and I knew - just knew, that something terrible was about to happen. Think I'm joking? Exaggerating? Well sod you; you weren't there and you didn't see.
Imagine the worst moment of your life: your lowest, darkest ebb. Now rewind about two minutes, and imagine your worst enemy from childhood being there, knowing what's about to happen, glad that you're about to get hurt. Glad in that thoughtlessly malicious way only kids can manage, and smiling. Got that? Good, because you still have no idea how my heart chilled at the sight. Pray you never see such an abomination on your child's face.
He smiled, and I stared, and then he ran, straight and true and deliberately, into the corner of the dining-room table next to where I was standing. His head struck it with a sound like willow on leather, and he collapsed. For a moment his eyes glazed, then they focused on me again and that awful smile returned. I couldn't move. Mary's key scratched in the lock.
"Daddy's coming," said Robert. Then his face crumpled and he began to bawl his heart out.
Mary came in. I knew, distantly, what it must have looked like: me standing over Robert, him writhing on the floor with a tremendous egg already forming on his temple, the room strewn with toys and clutter and all the things I detest. But I still couldn't move, or even react as she flew to his side. You can imagine the rest: Mary demanding an explanation, me stammering unconvincingly, and Robert fighting to hide behind her, wailing.
In the end, I don't think Mary could quite believe I'd do such a thing - no, that's wrong. She couldn't admit to herself that she did believe. She put Robert to bed. I could hear her soothing murmurs as I sat, shell-shocked, in the tatty old armchair where Helen liked to knit. All I could do was stare at the corner of the dining-room table, remembering the times Robert had cried for no reason when Mary left him alone with me, and hearing those two words over and over: Daddy's coming.
I don't think I slept at all that night.
Excuse me while I light another cigarette. Isn't it amazing how easily we settle into old habits? It's like I never even quit.
Incidentally, have you ever read 'Huckleberry Finn'? You should do, if you haven't already. It was the schoolboy reference earlier that made me think of it. I can't remember much of the story any more, and my eyes aren't strong enough for reading it again, but I can remember the jacket illustration vividly. It showed a young boy sprawled on a jetty, a straw hat on his head and another straw in his mouth, fishing with string and stick whilst dangling one foot in the water. That image embodied everything life ought to be about to me, back then, and it was still in the back of my mind when I signed away the bulk of my life savings to have this pool installed.
Where was I? Oh yes. Well, after that night, things changed. Not for the better, either. I hadn't even realised there was a balance of power until it shifted. Up to that point, there was always an unconscious understanding that this was my house, and they lived in it at my sufferance. Little things, like Mary making sure Robert kept quiet if I wanted a nap, or if there was a programme I wanted to watch. Making sure the kitchen was kept tidy and things were put back in their proper place. Not any more. It was their house now, and I skulked around it like a toothless old ape trying not to be noticed by the new silverback.
It had been a warning shot across my bows, a demonstration. I saw it in Robert's eyes whenever I could bring myself to look at him. I know how to hurt you, they said. I can do it again. I became conscious of how precarious my position was. I was old. My judgment was not to be trusted. I was unpredictable, possibly dangerous, and the fact I had never been either meant nothing, because now I was old, and old people go funny sometimes, don't they? In short, I was scared.
Then, after a while, I wasn't. It's something you can only keep up for so long; I learned that sixty years ago during a little disagreement you might remember, concerning Western Europe. After a while you just acclimatise.
It took about six months to stop being scared this time, and by then Robert was attending school in the mornings. Those hours by myself are what helped me turn the corner. Time to think, to put things in perspective. And, naturally, to bullshit myself. Pardon my French.
The key to it all was deciding that Robert hadn't really said what I thought he had. I was in a state of some shock at the time, remember, and could have misheard him. Or Robert could have been confused himself, lying there half-concussed. The rest was easy. I'd simply handled the situation badly, and my daughter's thoughtful, accusing glances since then were either my own guilty imagination, or misinterpreted concern that I might be losing my marbles.
Before you condemn me too harshly, think on this: a necessary skill you acquire on the way to old age is the ability to convince yourself that all the dreadful things that happen along the way aren't really so bad. Flunk self-delusion one-oh-one and you'll be in an institution before you're fifty.
And so a new equilibrium was achieved. I was perhaps a little more deferential, a little more ready to praise Robert, even when he seemed to deliberately aim his toppling towers to cause damage. Once again, things were - if not fine – then acceptable.
Two years later the dream came back.
The same desert with its restless dust. The same ancient, ailing sun.
Clack, squeak.
"Robert? Where are we?" I spoke turning around. When I did, the words withered in my mouth. It wasn't Robert.
"Well now, what do we have here?" A man's voice, strong and deep, almost jovial. Almost. Its owner stood tall and broad-shouldered in the fever-light, eyes shaded by a wide-brimmed black hat, dust eddies chasing the tails of his overcoat. Outlaw was the word that came to mind, though devoid of the romanticism traditionally ascribed to the pursuit. An outlaw; one who serves no higher purpose, and holds himself accountable to no one. One who would not be moved by pity, or swayed by pleas for mercy.
"Who are you?" I managed. "Where am I?"
"Me?" He smiled, and something that wasn't teeth glinted beneath his moustache. "I can lay claim to many names." He took a step towards me. Clack, squeak. Not plastic: spurs, and old leather. "As can you, Mr. O'Donnell. Or do you prefer Martin?"
Another step. Clack, squeak.
"What about 'Donnie'" Wasn't that what your soldier friend whispered in your ear, those cold nights out in the trenches?"
Clack, squeak.
"Hell, why stand on ceremony - can't I just call you Dad?" He grinned more widely, almost on top of me now, and I saw umber dust puff out from his parched, crumbling cheeks, drifting down to mingle with the rest. The grin vanished.
"This is my territory, old man. Me and my boy's." His breath was fetid, and blisteringly hot on my face. I could feel the skin there tighten as it cooked. How I held my ground I don't know to this day. "I'd be obliged if you'd keep the fuck out."
"I don't... I don't even know how I got here." Even to my ears I sounded weak and pathetic.
"Well, that would be your problem, now wouldn't it?" He leaned closer, and the heat baking off him made me want to retch. "You don't step through that door again, y'hear" Take warning old man." The wind gusted hard, flinging dust in my eyes, and when I had cleared them he was gone.
The next day, while Mary was out buying groceries, Robert found my temptation-stash of cigarettes. He lit three, and stubbed them out on his shoulder, back, and left thigh.