Deadly Confederacies Read online

  He said, ‘She just got carried away.’

  ‘Oh it was awful. I was so glad that Michael

  Caine wasn’t killed … she would have gone crazy altogether.’

  It’s a film about Welsh soldiers in Victorian times in Africa. Mrs Hickory said that one of her ancestors had fought at the battle. That’s probably the real reason why she cheered so loudly. Nana just tried to act as though Mrs Hickory were 1,000 miles away.

  ‘I was ever so embarrassed,’ Mrs Dickory went

  on, ‘really … you should have been there. And

  she got ever so cross with me when I told her to shush.’

  Aunt Paula smiled. She had been meant to go, but my aunt has a problem with leaving the house. She doesn’t go walking or shopping. It takes a lot for her to bring herself outside. ‘Collapsed nerves’ is what Grandad calls her condition.

  The phone rings in the dead of night. Its tone is loud and constant, boring deep into the silence of the black hours, drawing me from deep to light to half-sleepiness. A door opens, then another. Feet on the landing on the stairs. Aunt Paula says, ‘Hurry …’.

  ‘It’s Pat,’ my uncle says in a loud whisper.

  Nana says in a loud whisper, ‘What is it, John?’

  He says ‘Shush’ to her.

  I climb out of the bed, thinking that Glen had lost his leg or had gotten one of his mad ideas and run away. Opening the door a little, I see Aunt Paula looking over the banisters, one hand in the pocket of her white robe, the other clutching a tissue.

  ‘John, what is it?’ she says in a shrill voice.

  ‘Pat’s young fella is after being killed.’

  ‘Oh,’ she says.

  ‘Bill,’ he says, ‘a hit and run … this bleddy phone brings nothing only bad news … first about young Glen and now …’.

  Nana says softly, ‘Bill. William.’

  After the call, they move into the kitchen to make tea. I go back to bed and think about Bill. I’d only met him a couple of times. He didn’t really get talking until Glen mentioned toys and showed him an Action Man he had in his bag. Then his eyes lit up, and he started on about a war film he had seen, and how he had no money to buy soldiers but used beer-caps instead.

  ‘Beer-caps?’ Glen said.

  He nodded, and brought us outside to the shed and showed us his collection.

  ‘I don’t play with them all that much, not any more,’ he had said. ‘I want to get a job and buy a camera and start making my own movies.’

  ‘What sort of job?’ I’d said.

  ‘Dunno. I used to work with Uncle Kev and me cousin Michael on their fruit farm, but there’s only work during the summer, and this summer he had no work for me he said. Dad had a few words with him about it.’ He dropped his voice low. ‘Cos there was work … we found out.’ Dead.

  Grandad has been away for a week. He went to Bill’s funeral; he’d been home when the accident happened. ‘Convenient’, Uncle John had said. ‘I think Bill’s death is a sign for Grandad to think on things.’ I’m not sure what those things might be. The bounce in his step has gone. His mind is always distant. He brings me on excursions. We walk into town; even with his bad foot he can walk fairly quickly. It’s about a mile farther on from St Mary’s church. Along the way we pass the red toy shop with the glass cabinets of model soldiers. I collect lead cowboys and Indians. I have wigwams, a cavalry fort and 7th Cavalry soldiers. I’m always adding to the collection. You can’t buy these at home, at least not in my town. Maybe in Dublin, but I’ve never been to Dublin, except to spend some time in a hospital there after I woke up at home with one of my eyes closed. Grandad thinks toys are a waste of money. He doesn’t say so outright, but I know by the look of him that he disapproves: his face sort of draws back into itself. I think that’s because he never had a childhood. How could he have? Even Mam and Dad hadn’t. They’re always talking about food being rationed during the war, and getting an orange as a Christmas present. Grandad and Nana are war parents and Mam and Dad are war babies. They say this is why they don’t like to see waste. Waste didn’t exist during the war. If it did, they would have eaten it.

  We go right on by St Mary’s Church, and pass the blind shop and its display of wickerwork crafts. Today we’re doing a double tour. He’s taking me to the museum, and then to Cardiff Castle. I like to look at the models of the Bronze Age villages and the Roman helmets and armour. I always think of the head covered by the helmet – what sort of person was he? Friendly? Kind? Cruel? The heart that had beat behind the armour ….

  On the lawns in front of the castle is a bed of red and yellow flowers arranged in the word ‘CYMRU’, Wales, and next to it a flower bed in the shape of a red dragon. We cross the wooden drawbridge, its black chains slack as unburdened clothes lines. Grandad buys the tickets from a kiosk, and ice-creams from a van, because we have to wait for a tour guide to become available. A peacock flies from the branches of a tree and struts across the shaven grass. The keep is built on a high hill. I don’t see how Grandad is going to be able to climb all those steps. The tour guide is a chirpy little man who leads us round the castle, shows the garden in the clock tower, the maze on the floor that the royal children used to play on, the gold mosaic pattern in a wall, the first bedroom with an en-suite bathroom in the United Kingdom, the banquet hall with its wall paintings, the Roman part of the curtain wall, the battlement walks, the archers’ lancet slits, a door that King Richard III would have passed through, a spiral staircase – I don’t like the atmosphere. It’s as though we’re haunting the dead, a reversal of how things should be.

  Outside, the sun washes away that feeling. A peacock spreads it wings, a feather falls away. People are leaving the dungeon restaurant, a line of heads partially obscured by a grass embankment. A young woman is fixing a straw hat on her head. I think Grandad is looking at her, but I realise he isn’t when she moves on – he is focused on the keep, probably wondering about the climb, or the points at which he could stop for a breather or a cigarette. Or both. The Welsh flag on the keep mast gives feeble flutters. He removes his trilby, mops his brow with a handkerchief, and looks at the patch of dampness there as though he can’t believe it’s his. I think to say he can stay here while I go ahead, but before I get to speak, he says, ‘Are you ready?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You don’t like heights,’ he says.

  I walk alongside him, and I bet to myself that we’ll be taking the bus home. If we do, I’ll know he’s in trouble, because he is the sort of man who prefers his legs to bring him places. We cross the small bridge over the moat. It is swampy, and flies hover above the scummy water. He looks up, and though I want to reach the top and go inside and see the interior of the keep, I know I don’t have to really do that as there are photographs in the brochure of its grey walls, of the misty views.

  ‘I think I could get a little dizzy going up there,’ I say.

  He looks at me like a man who has been thrown a lifebuoy.

  ‘And it’s very humid,’ he says.

  Then a young bearded man in motorcycle clothes and wearing two prosthetic legs passes us by, aided by two crutches, and takes to the first steps grunting and groaning. We have to climb … it’s a pride thing now.

  About two hours later, we are sitting on the bus. Grandad’s face is crimson, tie knot no longer perfect, top shirt button undone; even his jacket has come off, and sits like a greyish dog across his lap. Rolled-up shirt sleeves. He wears braces, and a white vest with oval holes. I can see this because of the way he is sitting, slightly slouched, as though he has not a breath of wind to call his own between shirt buttons. He smiles when he notices me looking at him. It is his let’s-make-the-best-of-things smile. Off the bus at the church on the bend of footpath he fixes himself, and we take it slowly on the short walk home. The sun has gone in.

  In the hall, I notice the sitting
room door is slightly open. Whispers. Paula emerges, and says stiffly, ‘We have a visitor.’

  Grandad hangs his hat on the wooden wall rack above the umbrella stand that holds more walking canes than umbrellas – canes that Nana buys for him to use, but he never does. All second-hand ones, well-worn. She should buy him a new one, something he can mark with his own wear.

  Paula says to me, gently, ‘We won’t be long.’

  I stroll on down the hall, passing the door to the study and the other to the basement, and turn on the TV before moving into the kitchen. Thirsty, I go to the fridge to see if it holds some of Mrs Dickory’s lemonade. It does, so I pour a glass. Not until I have done this do I notice him sitting at the table with its new plain blue oilcloth.

  ‘Hi,’ he says, ‘I’m Michael.’

  ‘Hi,’ I say, ‘I didn’t see you there …’.

  ‘I know.’

  He has long, fine red hair. Pale and freckly. Long fingers play with a red Zippo lighter that has a motif of a swastika. Half a cigarette is parked behind his ear. He has round brown eyes. The bottom half of one is shiny, which I think is a flashing beacon.

  ‘They’re having a pow-wow about me,’ he says.

  ‘Do you want lemonade?’

  ‘Anything else going?’

  ‘Coke. But I think it’s flat. Glen always leaves the cap loose.’

  ‘Glen?’

  ‘My brother … he’s gone home.’

  ‘Oh, he’s the lad with the cancer.’

  ‘We’re not sure about that.’

  ‘How old are you?’ he says.

  ‘Almost fourteen,’ I say, and then ask, ‘You?’

  ‘Nineteen … You’re the clever one, who reads a lot, writes poetry and stuff? Listens to jammy old records?’

  ‘Who said I was clever?’

  ‘Me dad. He said his brother, what’s his name, your grandad, is always blowing your trumpet.’

  I begin to hope we don’t have to share a bedroom.

  He says, ‘It’s in the tap water.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘The cancer.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘It makes sense. They pour all this shit into it … chemicals and that.’

  ‘I mean I don’t know if Glen has cancer.’

  ‘He has a lump,’ he says, ‘a tumour then … same difference. Where did they get the clever bit about you? And what’s with the girl’s name? Ruby is it?’

  ‘It’s Reuben, Ruby, but people call me Moss after Nana’s brother who’s living in the madhouse.’

  ‘Moss?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Moss. That’s almost as bad as Ruby.’

  When they come in from the good sitting room, Grandad says a scarcely audible hello to his nephew. John asks if he had a good journey. Grandad has not shaken his nephew’s hand. He is a man who shakes everyone’s hand, and for him not to offer a hand to his brother’s son tells me a lot.

  Paula says, ‘You don’t mind sharing your room, Moss?’

  Nana says, ‘Oh no … we’ll put Michael on the fold-up in the study.’

  ‘That’s fine by me,’ Michael says.

  Paula, glad of an excuse to leave, says ‘I’ll go get the linen.’

  It is late at night after Michael has gone to his room that I learn he has done something awful back home, in Ireland. I should have been in bed. I normally would be at that time, but I’d decided to remain in the sitting room and be still. I caught most of the kitchen conversation, but not all. Uncle John had said, ‘He can’t stay here. I …’.

  ‘He has to.’

  ‘If the guards find out that we …’.

  ‘We just say we knew nothing about it.’

  ‘Paula …’.

  ‘Will you just shut it?’

  She’d said this so viciously that I hurried on to bed, climbing the stairs on the balls of my toes, skipping the creaking step ….

  The things I notice. Grandad will not stay in the same room as Michael. He has taken to eating his dinner a little while after us. He looks at Michael at times when Michael isn’t aware of this looking, and it’s a look that I never thought Grandad capable of giving. He gives me pocket money, but says I’m not to mention this to Michael. Grandad has lost weight; his energy isn’t as it used to be. He won’t go into the study to listen to his music, and Aunt Paula turned a deaf ear when he said he was wondering if he could move his player and records into the good sitting room.

  Michael stays in the study for long periods, emerging for meals and to watch the sports on TV. He gets no calls from home, and doesn’t make any to his parents. The cacti in the conservatory have died.

  He says, ‘What?’ to Nana’s question.

  We are in the kitchen.

  ‘Would you like to come to confession with us?’

  ‘Are you mad?’ his eyebrows rise in surprise at her invitation.

  ‘I think you should.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It might do you some good.’

  ‘I don’t believe in God, or in any of that stuff.’

  ‘Well, can’t you come along? It’s a nice evening for a walk. There are a few garages along the way, you might find those interesting … compare prices to those at home.’

  ‘You won’t keep on at me to go to confession?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or to go to Mass tomorrow?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And will you give me money to bring home a couple of bottles?’ Michael says.

  ‘I’ll see how you behave.’

  ‘I’m old enough.’

  ‘You’re not twenty-one, and that’s the age limit for enjoying a drink … you were less trouble when you were a child.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘You know very well.’

  ‘Me Ma was right about you.’

  ‘Is that a fact?’

  ‘She said you were a cranky and a nosey oul’ bitch.’

  ‘With a son in the guards … did she not tell you?’

  ‘That’s nothing to boast about.’

  ‘You may say. Well, Alan is stationed in Dingle … and it’s something for you to think on … the fact that he is a guard.’

  ‘Is that a threat?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He shakes his head. Sunlight shines up the copper in his hair. Nana says, ‘You’d have met him at the funeral if you’d have gone to it.’

  ‘You weren’t there either.’

  ‘I had Moss to mind.’

  ‘He could have gone with you … Oh, I see, I forgot, things are tight moneywise. Ma said ye were poorer than church mice, I forgot.’

  ‘Get yourself ready; we’re leaving in five minutes.’

  ‘And you couldn’t chance leaving him with himself.’

  At this, the air fries. Nana seems to balance her thoughts on the balls of her feet, rocking herself, but she won’t fuel this matter further.

  ‘Be ready. Because if you’re not … I’m ringing Alan. And let me tell you something for nothing, young man: you’ll regret it if I do.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll tell your Alan about your man too … that’s why you and my uncle stay with them, isn’t it, to keep an eye on him?’

  ‘If you’re not in the hall in five minutes I’m making that call. And about an hour later there’ll be a knock on your father’s front door.’

  ‘You don’t like me very much, do you?’

  ‘I see nothing in front of me except a young man who thinks about no one but himself.’

  ‘Give it a rest, will you?’

  ‘I …’.

  ‘Jesus, will you ever just stop talking? Your voice goes through my head.’

&nbs
p; The sun is shining as we step out onto the pavement. Nana wears a light raincoat, and carries her bag strapped over her arm, always held at her midriff. The corner of a pixie sticks out from her coat pocket: she is always afraid of being caught out in the rain and getting her hair wet. She had considered getting a blue rinse like Mrs Dickory, but decided it wouldn’t suit her. Michael says, just to nail her down, ‘Now don’t be bothering me to go to confession.’

  ‘You can wait till we’re finished, or light a candle and say a few prayers,’ Nana says. Passing the red toy shop I mention what Bill used to use for toy soldiers, and how different brands represented different branches of the army.

  ‘He brought us into his shed and showed them to us,’ I say. ‘He had almost a box full, and hey, did you ever play with him, Michael?’

  His lips tighten, and something appears to give in his eyes. He turns pale, even his freckles seem to lose colour. By now we are on City Road, and walking by a string of used-car forecourts. The traffic is light, and the skies are half dark and half blue, and the dark half is coming our way.

  The church is empty. A scent of incense and another of candles burned to their ends reaches my nostrils. Nana always times it so we can get in near the end of the queue. Michael hasn’t said a word since I’d brought up the subject of Bill’s beer-cap army. He doesn’t stay with us in the confessional pew, instead moving up a few rows from the altar. I am thinking of his ashen colour, of how his lips seem to have clamped a tight cordon on his words, and the nervous fidgeting of his hands.

  Nana steps into the cubicle, the door held open for her by an old man bent over in two. I am struggling to come up with something to confess, and can’t get beyond a few swear words, but these seem to do for the priest. His name is Father Owen Jones, or so it says on the sign outside his door. In fact, he even helps me to remember a few of my sins, and gives me an example of another type.