He dug his paw in for some more chips.
A pause.
‘The thing about telling lies to people,’ I said, slowly, ‘Is that one day they find out you’ve been lying. And when they do, they don’t like you as much as they did before.’
‘Mrs Hackett never liked me that much anyway,’ he said. ‘Think she knew about the Walnut Whips.’
There wasn’t really much I could say to that: it had the probable advantage of being true. I got down off the wall, and passed the rest of my chips over to him: ‘You finish them. I don’t want any more.’ He sat watching me as I walked back up the street. As I turned the corner I saw him squinting into the greasy paper, diligently hunting out the best bits, the crunchy pieces of fried potato that lurk around the sodden corners of the bag.
When Big Jacky died, Aunt Mary and Aunt Phyllis made a pilgrimage to Belfast to sort out the funeral. They took charge of all the phone calls to friends and family, such as there were. I could hear every word they said as I lay in my room, looking at the shadows the lamp cast on the ceiling. (Yes. An awful shock. Quite sudden. Just passed away right there on the street. Still, at least he didn’t suffer for too long. Thank you. You know how much we appreciate it. Him? Oh, taking it very hard, you know, can’t get too much out of him as usual.)
They put the death notice in the Belfast Telegraph. Aunt Mary wanted a poem, but Aunt Phyllis thought not. I thought not, too. God knows what doggerel the pair of them would have come up with.
They held lengthy, respectful consultations on coffins and services with Mr Gascoigne, the undertaker. They mulled over flowers. Fine choices were sifted and weighed. The Porchester (handsome oak, satin-lined) or the Wellington (slightly more accommodating, less costly wood)? They could have mummified him in newspaper, tied him up with brown string and lowered him into the Lagan, for all I cared. All I knew was that he was gone for good. I didn’t say that, of course. I dug up an empty opinion. On balance, the Porchester, I said.
The aunts annexed the kitchen with the speed of two peacetime generals suddenly placed in charge of a military campaign. Odd, I thought, that it took a death to bring them fully to life. They churned out doilied plates of tray-bakes and delicate, pan-loaf ham sandwiches carved into tiny triangles. They went shopping for teabags, milk, sherry, whiskey, beer: the full equipment for the perfect funeral. I should have been grateful. God knows I couldn’t have done it by myself. And yet I wasn’t, particularly. I thought I could smell a faint triumph buried somewhere in their help, the way a dog can sniff out a bone deep in a dustbin.
Sam dug himself out of his sofa, prised his hand off the remote, came up for the day to commiserate, and motored sedately back to Carrickfergus that night. The aunts stayed over. It was like a terrible dream played out in slow motion, and this time there was no waking up. I didn’t want to stand there after the burial in my Sunday suit as the kind, creased faces came up one by one and said: ‘I’m sorry for your trouble, Jacky. He was a great man.’ I wanted to haul myself off into waste ground and howl like a wolf, dash my head against the wall until my forehead poured with blood. Anything to distract me from the pain coming from the void deep in my chest, the small hollow the size of the universe where Big Jacky had been.
Titch and his mother came to the house: he was in his Sunday suit, too, but it fitted even worse than mine. The too-short sleeves exposed his bluey-white, plump wrists. His mum was running around helping, but Titch stood in the corner at a loss for what to do and ate nearly two plates of sandwiches. I saw jowly Aunt Mary shooting him a glance of distilled venom as he started in on the tray-bakes: it was the only thing that made me smile all day. Before he left, he came up and said to me in a rush, ‘I’m very sorry, Jacky. I liked Big Jacky an awful lot.’ I knew he meant ‘loved’. His anxious face was pale and clammy with sweat.
I told him: ‘He really liked you too.’
The ambush came the day after the funeral. I was sitting in the kitchen on a hard wooden chair, drinking lukewarm tea and watching a shaft of sunlight falling through the window. I was counting the minutes, waiting for the aunts to go home. They would say: ‘Will you be all right?’ and I’d say graciously, ‘Yes. I’ll be fine. Thanks for everything. I’ll give you a call tomorrow.’ And then I’d wave them off and go upstairs and lie on Big Jacky’s bed and stare at the ceiling and think about him quietly as the light faded and darkness slowly filled the room like black ink pouring into water.
I might go and get one of his shirts out of the cupboard, with the pipe-smoke smell of him still on it, and put it on the pillow beside my head and just lie there a while thinking about the things we did together over the years. I wanted to remember him taking me to the Botanic Gardens when I was younger, and both of us standing silently in the hothouse watching the big, leathery water lilies floating in the pond.
But it didn’t happen like that. Suddenly the two aunts padded into the kitchen with manifest intent, a pair of soft-soled missionaries circling a recalcitrant native. Aunt Mary had her coat on, I noted. Aunt Phyllis, ominously, didn’t.
Mary broached the subject first: ‘We were thinking it might be better if Phyllis stayed here for a little while, and helped you get back on your feet. She could help out at the newsagent’s too, until you sorted something else out.’
The newsagent’s: I hadn’t even thought of that. It had been closed since Big Jacky died.
Aunt Phyllis was looking at me, expectantly. I stared back at her, wild-eyed. I was appalled. Every fibre of me was screaming no, no, no, this mustn’t happen. I made a flailing effort to push their fait accompli away: ‘Oh you don’t need to do that, Aunt Phyllis. I’ll be fine here, sorting things out on my own. Please don’t put yourself to that trouble, honestly the two of you have done enough already. More than enough.’
Mary struck a firmer tone, her cheeks puffing out with confident authority: ‘No, really, Jacky. We are certain it would be best.’
You big bloodhound, I thought, fuck off and sniff round someone else. It was a dirty trick, to mob someone the day after their own father’s funeral. My heart was pounding with the injustice of it.
‘I’ll be fine, honestly,’ I said.
I looked again at Phyllis, at the worn, expectant face, the tightly permed hair, the fussy wee cardigan with the careful bow tied at the front. It was a miserable enough life she had up there in Carrickfergus with Mary and her husband, and Mary queening it over her. I was her bid for independence, the last raft drifting past on an isolated river. She was clambering aboard me with a horrible tenacity: didn’t she realise she would sink us both? No, no. I struggled to fight off the pity. Pity makes weaklings of us all.
Phyllis said: ‘It would only be till you got yourself set up again, Jacky.’ No, no. Mary chipped in quickly with: ‘You can’t be expected to manage here on your own like this. Phyllis can sort things out around the house.’
A brief stab of utter hatred, followed by a little flood of guilt. They had me now. I was sliding underwater.
I looked at Phyllis, and said: ‘Just till I get myself sorted then. That would be kind of you.’
Phyllis smiled. Mary remembered there were some more of Phyllis’s things in the car, and bustled out to fetch them.
Tick-tock. Tick-tock. That night Phyllis moved herself into Big Jacky’s room, so I couldn’t very well go in there and lie down, as I had planned, unless I wanted to give her a heart attack as well. I lay in my own bed, seething.
Tick-tock. Tick-tock. The bathroom had quickly filled up with Phyllis’s bits and pieces, her aspirin and cuticle scrapers. Towelettes and hairnets, Q-tips and denture grip. Like the Dana song: all kinds of everything remind me of you.
Tick-tock. How about if I plastered my face in Phyllis’s Pond’s cream, backcombed my hair to stand up like a fright wig, wrapped my sheet around me like a toga, and walked into Big Jacky’s room saying, ‘Phyllis, get up. It’s exactly this time every night that we slaughter the cat’? She’d leg it all the way