Adult speculation had Brian wondering if his father had called her that in bed: ‘Suck on this, Mrs …’ No. Mrs, what he remembered of her, was born into the missionary position, horizontally inclined (in every respect), nothing doggy or foreign in the bedroom, certainly no saliva – ever. Now, Darling stood at the door of the bathroom, folding Sam’s pyjamas against her chest. She looked pissed off. Ten years of looking pissed off – the wind must have changed on their wedding day. Brian winked at her – to piss her off some more.
‘I’ve been calling you,’ she said. ‘Didn’t you hear?’
‘Have you?’ He sat upright and reached for the soap. ‘Sorry.’
‘How much longer are you going to stay in there?’
‘I’m nearly done. Did you want something?’
‘Christmas Day – which suit do you want me to pack?’
‘You’re not packing for me, are you? Just do yourself and Sam. I’ll do my own … in a minute.’
‘I’m finished with us. Hours ago. Which suit?’
‘The navy, I think. I don’t know. What about last year’s jacket with the grey trousers? Oh, I don’t care. Anything. Pack anything. It’s all the same.’
She pursed her mouth and tapped her foot. He hummed. ‘The navy,’ he said.
Sam called to her from his bedroom. She rolled her eyes and pretended to hesitate. Then she went to him.
Brian sank back into the bubbles once more. He raised his leg and studied it. Flexed the foot back and forth. In the steamy mirror ahead, he could just make out his features. He lowered the leg and turned his head from side to side. Good, blackish and moreover, loyal hair. He stuck his jaw out – not bad in a jowly, just-going-to-seed Irish politician way. He pulled his lips back and gritted his teeth – still there anyway. He lifted his arm and flexed the muscles; they rose from their torpor obligingly enough. All in all, not bad for forty-three. Little satisfied tremor. In a couple of nights, he would be sitting on a stool under the corrugated iron roof of his favourite local, listening to the buckshot rain above, his tongue gliding greedily over a Guinness moustache.
The thought occurred to him that the thing about being Irish was the measuring out your life in Christmases, Easters and slivers of August. It was the same for the immigrant and for those who waited at home. Around the end of November every year, the pull was at its strongest. By December, he would be filled with a quiet anticipation, coupled with an underlayer of dread – on parole and elated for Christmas, an alien again throughout January and February.
The phone rang. He lifted his other leg to study it. Julia was remonstrating with Sam as she ran from his room to answer the phone. Brian listened. It was Julia’s mother, Jennifer, another Darling. Calling to say goodbye and bon voyage and happy Christmas for the third time that day. He heard Julia impatiently say that she did not want to hear the weather forecast. Whatever horrors awaited them on the ferry would just have to be faced. Brian thought of cauliflowers.
Whenever he thought of Julia’s mother he thought of cauliflowers. It was her hair. White and permed into fat florets which framed her plump cushion of a face. Her eyes were blue and discontented, like her daughter’s. Richard, Julia’s father, was a tortoise – slow, unenthusiastic gait and elongated neck – ready for the guillotine from the birth. The skin on his face seemed to droop too under bristled black eyebrows. Most of the time, Brian could not make out his eyes, just two gleams of light beaming out hesitantly beneath their canopies. It was a habit of Brian’s, to make vegetables or animals of people. He had done so since childhood. Julia had begun as a cat and metamorphosed over the years into a pineapple, although she had had her moments of bovine splendour too. He stretched and listened to her trying to get Jennifer off the phone, knowing from the sound of her voice that she was still folding clothes against her chest with the receiver cradled between her head and shoulder. ‘We’ve managed to get to a phone on Christmas Day in the past, I don’t see why it should be a problem this year,’ Julia was saying. She stopped for a while and listened. ‘Jennifer, please stop fussing,’ she continued, addressing her mother by her Christian name, which meant that she was getting cross. Brian shifted up uneasily in the bath and watched the rivulets stream down the black dense hairs on his legs and forearms.
When he heard the click of the replaced receiver he placed both hands on either side of the bath as though he were just about to rise. But Julia was checking window locks downstairs, bolting the french doors to the garden, checking the various alarms while she cleared away any remaining debris from their dinner earlier. He could hear the musical clickety clack of her heels beating out across the tiled and wooden floors below. A swish of drapes closed, another, then another. Click clack back to the kitchen again.
He was in the main bathroom – he had thought she might need to use the en suite. But she would probably keep going for hours yet and shower just before bed, something he could never understand. More doors opened downstairs. The final final check. Julia, he thought, did not open doors so much as assault them. She wrenched handles and entered rooms with the door swinging on its hinges behind her, as if she expected resistance at every turn. She ran up and down stairs, one hand outstretched in vague deference to a banister rail she never touched. She reversed her car with a savagery that made him wince. And she pounced on ringing phones like a cheetah.
Sam wandered into the bathroom, scratching his head. He lifted the toilet seat and peed.
‘Sam,’ Brian said.
‘Dad,’ Sam said over his shoulder. He yawned.
‘It’s late. You should be asleep. We’ve a long day ahead of us tomorrow.’
‘I know. I had to make a pee.’
‘You packed all the toys you want to bring, then?’
‘Mum did it.’
‘So what did you choose in the end?’
‘Just the usual stuff.’
‘Books too?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Did Mum find room for the spaceship in the end?’
‘No.’
‘I’m sure I could squeeze it into the boot somewhere.’
‘She says there’re too many bits. They’ll only get lost.’
‘She might be right.’
Sam yawned again. He was standing motionless, still holding his penis over the toilet bowl.
‘Sam? I think you’re finished …’
‘I know.’
‘Well, what’s keeping you then? Away with you to bed.’
‘I’m thinking of a poo.’
‘Have you got one?’
‘I’m thinking of it.’
‘Go and sit on our toilet.’
Sam shook a few last drops and flushed the toilet. ‘It’s gone back up,’ he said.
‘Hands,’ Brian said.
Sam gingerly dipped his hands into the bath-water suds. His father leaned across to kiss his cheek. Sam wiped the wet cheek with his pyjama sleeve. ‘Fly is a word without a vowel in it,’ he said.
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘I’m only saying.’
‘Bed. Now.’
‘Your willy looks all squishy.’ A final yawn and he was gone.
Brian looked down. He had not realized he had been in the bath that long. He sighed and lay back. Contemplated the knots and gnarls on his raised feet for a moment. Strange thing, the body. Lived in for a lifetime yet there were parts of it, the back of his head for instance, the middle of his back, his scalp, that he