Evening after interminable evening. Julia had collapsed into bed each night, exhausted from entertaining. Brian had almost felt sorry for her, but he felt sorry for Richard and Jennifer too when he saw them put aside their newspapers with weary sighs and teeth-gritted smiles when Julia’s exhortations for them to join in grew steadily sharper and more demanding. There was something so desperate about the way Julia entertained, as if, in a way, she were following a manual, some guide to happy families, only she had missed out on a whole slew of the rules and could not allow for a moment’s silence.
It would not be such a bad thing, Brian always thought, to end up like Julia’s parents. They were mild, easygoing people, comfortable in company, comfortable with one another. While they took on. the forms of a cauliflower and a tortoise separately, together he saw them as a gentle sudsy lather, the kind his hands made when he rubbed them with those half-cleanser, half-moisturizer bars of soap. A dissonant note had struck him one evening when he tasted those suds in the bath. They looked so creamy, so enticing, but the reality was just like soap, bitter and harsh as any disinfectant.
Sometimes, he saw their eyes narrow in wonderment as they gazed at their eldest daughter, as if they could not quite figure out where she had come from. She was impatient with them. When her mother clapped her knees and said: ‘Shall we have some tea?’ Julia invariably snapped: ‘You want tea? Then make it – Just make it. It’s your decision.’ And Jennifer would flush most miserably, move to rise but Julia would be in the kitchen already, flicking the kettle on and crashing cups on to saucers, in an access of guilt, Brian understood. Once, Jennifer had whispered to Brian: ‘We should have called her Matilda,’ but that was the closest she ever came to a direct criticism.
‘Sometimes I think you do these things just to hurt me,’ Julia was saying.
‘Mum, leave Dad alone now, he’s said he’s sorry,’ Sam said.
The gurgle was out. Brian bit his lower lip. But it was too late. She had caught it.
‘What?’ she spat. ‘What did you say?’
‘I didn’t say a thing.’
‘Yes, you did. You went “hmmph” – I heard you.’
‘I feel sick,’ Sam said.
Julia craned around. ‘Sam, stop whingeing.’
‘I’m not whingeing. I really do feel sick.’
‘Do you want me to stop?’ Brian asked.
‘Roll your window down a bit and take deep breaths, Sam,’ Julia ordered.
Sam fumbled with the window. He breathed in and out in an exaggerated fashion.
‘Better now?’ Julia asked. Her voice had softened.
Sam nodded his head. Brian looked in the rearview mirror. He met Sam’s eyes and crinkled a smile with the corner of his own eyes. Sam beamed.
They drove on in silence for the rest of the journey, Julia pressing an imaginary accelerator to overtake other cars on the single-laned, winding road which took them the rest of the way to Pembroke. Theirs was the second last car on to the ferry. The roll of the vessel was almost immediate. Julia craned back to check on the sprawled, white-faced figures on the Pullman seats behind. Sam was moaning softly.
‘The rest of my natural,’ she cackled, just loud enough for Brian to hear.
They were going to break the journey in County Waterford to spend the night with Brian’s brother, Edward: a two-and-a-half hour drive still ahead of them once the ferry docked.
It seemed to Brian that a million years had passed since they had left London by the time Julia indicated into the close of houses on the outskirts of the town where Edward lived. He had to admire the unerring way she had arrived there having only ever visited once before. She drew the car up to the correct house. Edward opened the front door. He had a brush and pan in his hands. Julia got out and hauled Sam from the back seat. Edward made for Brian’s side of the car. Brian rolled the window down and they slapped one another on their forearms. Edward leaned against the car murmuring his greeting. His clothes were soaked in an instant. Julia lunged at the front door, prodding Sam in front of her. She called over her shoulder: ‘It’s raining, for Christ’s sake …’
Brian and Edward followed her in. She was already by the fire in the living-room, stripping off Sam’s vomit- and cola-stained clothes from the ferry trip. Sam hugged his body, his knees trembled, his teeth chattered.
‘Hi, Edward,’ Julia continued to address him over her shoulder, ‘listen, run a hot bath for Sam, will you please? He’s frozen … And Brian? Check the fridge – Sam needs something hot to eat, it doesn’t matter what. Are there eggs? Fine. Scrambled eggs and toast. If there’s any bacon there, bacon too –’ She suddenly checked herself and cast Edward a cheek-splitting smile. ‘Sorry, Edward, we’ve just had the most horrendous journey.’
Edward, who was looking slightly dazed, shrugged and moved a step closer to his older brother. ‘No p-p-problem,’ he said.
Julia’s shoulders lifted. She’d forgotten his stutter. Brian thought that it should be inscribed on her tombstone the day she first met Edward and he asked her what she d-d-did and with a perfectly straight face, without so much as a blink, she had responded that she was a speech therapist.
Edward shot upstairs to run the bath. Brian headed for the kitchen. Sam began to slowly defrost by the fire. The welcome smell of frying bacon made him lick his lips in anticipation. Julia smiled and moved to help him to the bathroom.
‘I can walk,’ Sam said haughtily.
She squidged his naked bottom as he passed and he squealed. Brian smiled and began to hum in the kitchen. Edward rejoined him and opened a couple of beers. They talked about the rain, the journey, Edward’s house, his new job as an accountant for the local sugar factory. Although his clothes still stank and his hair still plastered itself across his scalp, Brian felt a warmth, an ease permeate through his sodden body. This was a nothing conversation in which he could participate. It carried no hidden messages, meandered toward no hidden agenda. It was complete in itself. A circle of nothingness yet within that circumference, somewhere in the vacuum, lay mutual childhoods, shared remembrances, secrets told in trust – lifetimes. For a moment, he felt happy and secure. He always felt like this around his siblings: Edward, younger by two years; the twins in Australia, who called every month and, despite a gap of fifteen years since he had seen them, Brian still felt that familiar sense of ease when one or other of the slightly Australianized accents greeted him on the phone. Then there was another brother, Cormac, the second youngest, in Edinburgh: Brian rarely met him these days but they stayed in touch; and finally the baby of the family, Teresa, married in Dublin with six children of her own. She had visited him in London a couple of times but did not care much for Julia, although she had never said as much. Two children had died apart from his twin Noel: a stillborn girl before Brian and an older boy, of meningitis, when Brian was three. A couple of miscarriages as well. Their mother had lasted long enough to bear the others and succumbed to breast cancer not long after Teresa was born. Now, Brian was the eldest. He saw the gleam of admiration in Edward’s eyes as he watched his brother deftly flick the bacon over. Brian pointed at the fridge and Edward intuitively understood that butter was required.
Sam and Julia came downstairs. Julia still looked exhausted but Sam’s cheeks glowed, his dark hair was slaked to the side and he looked renewed and cosy in his Batman pyjamas. He sat by the table and held his fork and knife up. Brian dished out the food and rumpled Sam’s hair. Julia was feeling guilty so she rattled on at length about the new kitchen decor, to make up for her earlier surliness. Edward stood with his hands by his sides, unsure where to place himself amidst this admiration. He showed her the new washing machine. She oohed appreciatively.
During the meal, Brian noticed that Edward never stuttered when he was addressing Sam. He inscribed the notation on a part of his brain, certain that Julia would comment on the same thing tomorrow. Sam was kind to Edward, Brian further noticed, in a way that children could be kind to elders who were somehow different. He