When Sam and Mary went on holiday, Phyllis came along with them. ‘Three’s company, four’s a crowd,’ Aunt Mary would carol gamely, although sometimes – when Phyllis was off peeling potatoes, drooping over the sink in her long brown cardigan – Mary would whisper: ‘Of course, sometimes Sam and I would like a wee fortnight on our own. But it wouldn’t really be fair on Phyllis, to leave her behind in charge of the house, away from all the fun.’
Mary’s whispers had a tendency to carry. Now and again I wondered if Phyllis could hear.
Sam enjoyed his bowls and his television. He was retired from his job as a bank clerk. We saw him about once a year, when we visited them in Carrickfergus, and then he would say: ‘Long time no see, Jackies Senior and Junior,’ and excavate himself from his armchair to fetch Big Jacky a whiskey.
He was a tame man, really. Any rebellious sinews in him had long ago been replaced with a convenient machine-washable stuffing. Mary had him kitted out in pale lambswool pullovers, like Rupert Bear. His clothing was organised to match the house, an overheated cave of squashy velveteen sofas, pastel Chinese rugs, and polished tabletops sprinkled with lace doilies. You could sink back into those soft furnishings and not be seen again for a week. It was a miracle Sam was still alive. One day scientists would discover him dead there, the suburban equivalent of the leathery men they found preserved for centuries in those Danish peat bogs. He would have his eyes still wide open and his hand stiffened around the remote control. They’d dub him the Bungalow Man, and scientists would marvel at the contents of his stomach (a diet of oven chips and chicken nuggets, specifically designed by Mary to generate no kitchen mess).
China figurines of dancers sprang from the sideboards, suspended in eternal pirouettes. Brass lamps gleamed from shining coffee tables. The furnishings of the house demanded a vigorous cleaning regime. They got it with blasts of spray and polish, worked in deep with triple applications of elbow grease.
Our front room in Belfast clamoured for no such attention. It had a brown 1950s sofa with wooden legs, and a fraying green armchair. A low, rectangular coffee table provided a stationing point for mugs of tea. Big Jacky accommodated himself in the armchair while I extended myself on the sofa, where years of pressure had made convenient buttock-shaped dents. When the aunts came to our house, I could see that the sparseness of Big Jacky’s taste dismayed and unsettled them. They fluttered around, hunting for a corner on which to perch. They besieged my father with pointless knick-knacks: fringed, furiously patterned cushions, knowing china squirrels with nut-packed cheeks, Belleek pottery sweet-dishes and embroidered tablecloths, to take the edge (although they never actually said this) off his spartan, miserable life with his peaky, odd son. He thanked them politely and pressed them to take some more tea. When they had gone, he put the things away carefully in a cupboard, and brought a small selection back out only before their next visit.
One day when we had waved off Aunt Mary, amidst a rapid hail of queries and promises, Big Jacky sat down in his armchair and took out his pipe. Pressing the springy tobacco into the bowl, he sighed and said: ‘Normal service resumes.’ He lit up, and took a puff. Then he said: ‘They drove your mother mad too.’ That was it. The pipe smoke drifted my way. I drank it down with the brandy-glow of conspiracy.
After Big Jacky died, normal service never resumed again.
A few days after I heard what Titch had done in McGee’s shop, I was walking past his house down to the chippy. I looked in the window: Titch was beached on the floor of the front room with a pint glass of orange squash beside him, and his mum was lying on the sofa with her shoes off. They didn’t see me, because both of them were in hysterics at some crappy film on the television.
Why didn’t I go in? Normally I would have. But it’s a bore, when you’re in the middle of watching something, to have to start explaining the whole plot to the enquiring, only half interested visitor (He’s the blonde one’s husband, but he’s doing a line with the brunette who’s married to the police inspector. No, not him, the other one, with the moustache). And I suppose I didn’t want to take my claw-hammer to the fragile shell of happiness that surrounded them. I carried Titch’s trouble around with me now. The pair of them had unburdened themselves of it, and burdened me. I’d walk in there as gloomy, responsible Jacky, with a miserable long face on him like a Lurgan spade, and the talk would suddenly be all about McGee, and Titch going to Newry, and Titch refusing to go to Newry, and his mother trembling again on the edge of weeping. The funny film would be forgotten and the laughter stowed away, and who knew if anything would ever happen to the big eejit anyway?
I walked on. The midget James Dean with the skinhead was hanging around outside the chippy, with a can of Sprite in one hand and a burning cigarette in the other. He acknowledged my proximity with a curt wee hardman nod.
‘Hello,’ I said.
He proffered his crumpled packet of Embassy, eyes narrowed: ‘Smoke?’
‘No thanks,’ I said, ‘I’m frightened it might stunt my growth.’
‘Very fucking funny,’ he said, mortally offended. The swear word was thrown in as proof of his maturity. He hauled all four foot seven of his dignity up on the wall and sat there, puffing away and ploughing all his energies into ignoring me.
I bought my chips, soaked them in vinegar and salt, and came back out. I had poked a hole in the warm paper to eat them while I was walking and keep them hot. He was still there, working hard not to look at me.
‘Chip?’ I asked him.
I was sorry I had made that crack earlier, after he had offered his ciggies with such ill-concealed pride. He turned his head slowly, still offended, but he couldn’t be bothered to keep it up. The hand came down and rummaged around for a chip: it salvaged two. I sat up on the wall beside him.
‘What’s your name?’ he said.
‘Jacky. What’s yours?’
‘Marty.’
A pause, bulging with contemplation.
‘I seen you walking around with that big fat fella from up the road,’ he said eventually.
‘Is that so.’
‘He’s not right in the head, that fella.’
‘Maybe not. His name’s Titch,’ I said. ‘Are you right in the head?’
He laughed, showing his pointed, irregular teeth: ‘My ma says I’m a headcase.’
‘Good, then you and Titch would get on fine. Two prime headcases together. Joint gold medallists at the Headcase Olympics.’
‘My ma says he takes things from shops.’
‘Your ma keeps her eyes peeled. Do you ever take anything from shops?’
‘Took a couple of Crunchie bars once from Hackett’s, when Mrs Hackett was away in the back getting newspapers. And a Walnut Whip, a few times.’
I thought of poor old Mrs Hackett, carefully exploring the familiar confines of her shop like some ponderous old turtle in a crumbling tank. It was almost impossible to imagine her young. She looked as if she had been born with a granny perm. I pictured the doctor saying to Mrs Hackett’s mother, ‘Congratulations. You have a lovely baby girl,’ and both of them looking down fondly at Mrs Hackett’s tiny wizened face, framed with the hollow sausages of grey-beige hair.
God help her, anyway, when even eleven-year-olds saw her for a soft touch. And God help Titch, when even an eleven-year-old knew to take things from Hackett’s, and not McGee’s.
‘You shouldn’t steal from Mrs Hackett,’ I said. ‘She has trouble with her arthritis, and she’s always nice to the customers, even wee headcases like you.’
‘Aye she is,’ he conceded. ‘She gave me an ice lolly once when I told her it was my birthday.’