Hypothetical Racehorses
It’s quite surreal.
Here we are: four women travelling together in one car, and not one of us with
a single word to say. It’s not as if we’re not all acquainted. His sister is
driving, my sister is the front-seat passenger, and the driver’s teenage daughter
– who is forever on her iPhone – is sitting in the back beside me. My sister is
also busily scrolling through her phone, but I think I know what she is doing. I’m
not complaining, mind you: talking is the last thing I want to do right now –
with anybody. What I’d really like to do is scream… or swear… or shout… or… No!
I couldn’t, not now, not here, not even hysterically: his sister is a nervous
driver at the best of times. Biting my lower lip, I gaze out through the rain-streaked
side window of her silver Focus, mildly surprised that the town seems perfectly
normal for a Friday afternoon in late September.
It’s that little
period of readjustment: after the summer visitors have gone back to their real
worlds and the returned natives have tired of retelling, or listening to, exaggerated
highlights of recent trips abroad. Although the suntans have paled and the
outrageous summer garments have been consigned to their mothball-infested crypts,
one can still spot an occasional pair of sunglasses incongruously perched on a rain-dampened
crown. Very soon, unprinted digital photos and persistent credit card bills
will be their only reminders of those manic days of upheaval at the mercy of
unaccustomed heat and unpronounceable menus. Thankfully, he has never
complained about my apathy towards his frequent trips abroad, nor has he bored
me with details of his weeks of golf in Spain or Portugal, or horseracing at
Epsom or Cheltenham – nor have I asked. No, I’ve been quite content for him to
do his thing while enjoying the autonomy his absences have afforded me.
Personally, I’ve
never seen the point of skimping and saving for months on end just to be jolted
out of my comfort zone by hours of air travel, haphazard accommodation, and
new-found friends – many of whom are even more boring than the ones I try to
avoid at home. Home? Will it always be his home: where he was born and reared, where
his parents have lived and died, where his three emigrant brothers continue to holiday
each summer as if nothing has changed since his bachelor days? They never stay
with their sister – the driver – whose much larger house is situated almost
within spitting distance of their cousin’s pub. Their visits with her are brief
in the extreme, usually just a quick hello on their way over to us. Us? Oh, and
just as soon as a brother – with or without a partner or brood – has unloaded his
car, she’ll flounce in through the kitchen door for a marathon catch-up with
everybody.
“You f… f…
flippin’ idiot,” shattering the silence, she brakes hard. The car slews slightly
towards the footpath; “why don’t people look where they’re going? Bloody morons;
they’re everywhere!” Nobody comments, but both her daughter and my sister are
briefly distracted from their screens; I feel two pairs of eyes momentarily
flash in my direction. Determined not to react, I continue to gaze through the car
window and realise that I’ve been staring right through everything – and at
nothing.
“Everywhere,”
I hear myself echo, as we resume at a crawl. Resisting the temptation to risk a
peep at her rearview mirror, I’m suddenly aware that I may the subject of a
discussion taking place beneath the awning of a nearby betting office. There
are three of them: thirty-something mummies, each with a toddler by the hand
while a little melee of four-to-six-year-old boys jiggles and jostles around
their feet. The women’s eyes remain on me as we inch forward. At least, I
assume they are ogling me: nobody else in the car has as much as glanced in
their direction. Self-consciously, I avert my focus to the motley collection of
smoking males loitering between the entrance to the bookies and the pub
next-door. A thin little elderly man in a soiled white tee-shirt is in a half-crouch,
his reedy arms pumping back and forth in the manner of a jockey riding a driving
finish. As the car swings around a corner, I can almost hear the laughter of his
companions when he springs upright and triumphantly thrusts his clenched right fist
in the air. I grit my teeth and grip my seat belt buckle even more tightly than
before.
The rain has
stopped; the footpath is a roiling sea of teal and sky blues. Trying to isolate
individual features from the blur of faces above the school uniforms, I find
myself empathising with the travails of hungry lionesses attempting to identify
a vulnerable individual amid a herd of wary Serengeti zebra. What am I hoping
to see, anyway: a flash of blue eyes; a bounce of blondie curls; or a turned-up
elfin nose leaning towards a handheld screen? What year would she be in now? I mentally
count fingers. No, she would have finished secondary school – unless she might have
chosen to do transition year, or perhaps repeat her Leaving Cert. Can it really
be that long since I’ve thought of her – or him? No, I’d have known if I’d been
carrying his son for those eleven weeks. Should I have told him? Should I have
told his sister? Was I wrong to swear my own sister to secrecy? Would he have
been empathetic, devastated, or relieved? I shudder at the thought.
The car comes
to an abrupt, bouncing stop. I’m vaguely aware of the driver’s window whirring
shut against the grating staccatos of pneumatic drills, the beep-beeping of
reversing plant machine engines, the fumes of diesel, hydraulic fluid and
boiling tar, and the acrid tang of consaw dust. My sister-in-law is muttering something
about the lack of joined-up thinking where roadworks are concerned. While I
find myself nodding in agreement, I wonder what her hurry is. Every minute we
waste here is one I won’t have to spend fielding the questions of gossip-starved
neighbours on my return to the house.
A lone school girl brushes past my window. I
can’t see her eyes, but her coils of blondie curls rise and fall with each
jaunty stride. As she approaches the works’ safety barrier, she waves
animatedly towards the hi-vis vested road crew. A middle-aged man nudges a
younger colleague and inclines his head towards the girl. The youth leans his
shovel against a hoarding and then, exaggeratedly rotating his right arm, turns
to face the girl. A pearly grin brightening his stubbled visage; he removes his
yellow hardhat to release a thick shock of dark shoulder-length hair. After a
quick snog across the barrier, he ducks beneath it and produces a pack of
cigarettes from inside his vest. He hands her a cigarette and then lights them
both up. Under swirling wisps of smoke, they huddle shoulder to shoulder to
watch something on her phone. His niece is also glued to her screen. I can imagine
the tinkle of the blonde girl’s laughter as she waves animatedly towards our
car. Suppressing a giggle, his niece waves back as we begin to move forward again.
I swivel my
neck in an effort to continue watching the dynamic between the young couple. I
get a momentary glimpse of her eyes: they are just as blue as the shirt collar that
protrudes above the neck of her navy jacket. I feel a dull ache in the pit of
my stomach. I want to be her, right now, if only for a moment. I want to feel
the sting of her cigarette smoke deep inside my lungs. I want to smell his
musky sweat and feel the strength of his grimy fingers on my arm. My sister
asks if I’m okay. Momentarily thrown, I mutter something about the magic of
young love. Apparently reassured, she nods and then averts her face. As the car
rounds a corner, I feel his niece’s fingers briefly squeeze my elbow. Too late,
I take a final furtive backward glance.
I find
myself wondering how old the girl might be; fourteen, perhaps fifteen? She certainly
is no more than sixteen. It’s so difficult to tell, these days. Give a
twelve-year-old a handful of cosmetics and a mirror, and in ten minutes she can
look twenty-one. Boys are so much easier to gauge. Her lad is older: probably late
teens, perhaps even twenty: a throwback to the days when being part of the
workforce was the norm for his age group. To her, he is a man of the world, assertive,
self-reliant, not dependant on the whim of a parent for pocket money. She could
have been me, twenty-five years ago, when the future shone bright with boundless
possibility, and nothing had yet been lost.
I toy with
the idea of asking my sister-in-law to stop the car, to let me get off right
here. I am overcome with the desire to dwell a little longer in the girl’s
moment – her Friday feeling. Are they making plans for the weekend; arranging a
trip to the movies, or to a disco? Will they hang out with other teens,
drinking cans in an alleyway, or by the river, or in the Millennium Garden –
where his niece sometimes goes when she is supposed to be visiting me? No, I
don’t think so, he will be beyond all of that; he will already have waded his
way from the shallows into the mainstream; very few bartenders or bouncers
would ask him for ID. Perhaps the young lovers have a system: they might meet
at some teenage hangout in town, or in a lane near her house, or behind the
playground in the park – just the two of them – until her curfew time. Do teens
still have curfews? He certainly won’t have one; his Friday night won’t climax
until several hours after hers has ended. She needs to be warned; made to
understand that they are not playing on a level field.
My urge to
return is stronger now, but as a mentor rather than a voyeur. Would she listen? I
doubt it; I hadn’t. I suppose we must all make our own mistakes. Most will recover
and move on, all the stronger for their experiences, but it is the way of the
world, the law of the human jungle, that while some scars heal more quickly than
others, there will always be one or two that must be carried all the way to the
grave. I steal a glance at his niece. She is grinning broadly at some video on
her phone, listening through her earphones. I take no pleasure in knowing more
about her than does her mother. I suppose that due to the many layers of complexity
in human relationships, no two of us can ever know any other person in exactly
the same way.
The car
stops. I’m mildly surprised to see his Audi parked in the garage. Then I
remember: my car is still at the hospital – where I drove him, less than four
hours ago. It was what our GP had suggested over the phone: to get him to
A&E as soon as possible, rather than wait for an ambulance. When I think
back on it now, he must have been feeling seriously unwell to agree to travel
in my little Starlet. Or maybe he simply didn’t trust me to drive his precious
nine-month-old Audi. Nine months doesn’t sound like a long time, yet it is the
incubation period of all human life. I wonder if the term nine months had ever resonated with him; if he’d ever regretted not
being a parent. If he had, he certainly hadn’t shared his feelings with me. He
had always given me the impression that his life was complete just as it was: he
had his work, his colleagues, his sister, his brothers, his golf, his
horseracing… I find myself wondering if I now own a leg of a racehorse. No, he
wouldn’t be happy with just a leg, or even two legs: he would have to own all
of it… Is there a racehorse stabled somewhere waiting to be claimed by me, or
maybe more than one? It wouldn’t surprise me: the more I think about it, the
more I realise how little I know about the man with whom I’ve shared all of my
adult life. I am, however, pretty certain that he wouldn’t volunteer to change
nappies or do 4 am feeds. I could never imagine him finding the time to check
out crèches, drive to music, ballet or drama classes, or even Saturday football
training, not to mention attending school concerts, parent/teacher meetings or
school fundraising events.
I’m the last
to leave the car. It simply hadn’t occurred to me to drive myself back from the
hospital, not after his sister had taken charge of everything else. As I
disembark, I wonder why she is unlocking my hall door. Has she taken possession
of his keys, or has she always had her own key to my home? Why not? His
brothers have continually come and gone as they’ve pleased; I suppose the house
will be full of them by this time tomorrow. No, that hall door is only two
years old; why would he have given her a new key? Perhaps he also gave her the
second key to his Audi; will she commandeer it tonight, or tomorrow, and drive
it to her house? Will she organise a round-up of his racehorses for some time
next week – after the funeral, whenever she decides to hold it? Will there be a
post mortem? I have no idea, but I’m sure she knows. How long will it take for
the brothers to arrange flights? Through an undulating haze, I watch my sister
heft and shake my electric kettle. I don’t say anything, even though I know the
kettle is full. It had just come to the boil when...
His second
heart attack must have occurred when I’d run to the Spar ATM to get cash for
the hospital car park. I’ve still got the unredeemed ticket in my purse. I
dread to think how much the fee will now be; I’ll have to ask my sister to
drive me back to reclaim my car as soon as his sister has dropped her home. I can’t
ask his sister, I wouldn’t want her to spot the Seattle coffee cup still sitting in its holder beside the driver’s
seat: she couldn’t possibly understand how badly I’d needed that caffeine boost
during my drive to the hospital.
My sister is
pouring mugs of tea; his niece is shaking chocolate fingers on to one of my wedding
present china plates. Idly, I wonder to whom his sister is speaking on my
landline. I’m sure she phoned all three brothers while at the hospital. I’d kept
my distance then; I’d thought it best to leave her to it, as I’d done when
she’d spoken with the cardiology team. I’d felt like an intruder, as though the
moment had been hers, and hers alone. Had the medics simply assumed her to be his
next of kin… or had she…? Christ, perhaps she actually is his designated next
of kin. She has just dialled another number. Maybe she is making arrangements
with the undertaker, or updating one of her committees or other covens, or her
hairstylist; or perhaps she is quizzing his solicitor about hypothetical
racehorses. It’s not even as if I actually care, just as long as she is not
speaking to me.
Neil Brosnan
From Listowel, Ireland, Neil
Brosnan’s short stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies, both in
print and electronic format, in Ireland, UK, Europe and the US. He is the
author of two collections: ‘Fresh Water & other stories’, 2010, and ‘Neap
Tide & other stories’, 2013. He is a former winner of the Bryan MacMahon award,
and a twice winner of both the Maurice Walsh and Ireland’s Own short story
awards.
https://sites.google.com/site/neilbrosnanwrites/
https://www.facebook.com/neil.brosnan1
New Binary Press, Listowel Writers’
Week winners’ anthology, Ireland’s Own Winners’ Anthology, Brilliant Flash
Fiction (USA), Darkhouse Books(USA), North West Words, Read Wave (USA), The
Golden Pen, The Galway Review, Under the Fable, Arachne Press (UK), 5 Stop
Stories (UK), Splinters Anthology UK (Bill Naughton), RTE Penguin, Balbriggan Short
Story, The First Cut, Kerry Co Council Anthology of new writing(’09),
Familienanthologie (Germany),
Kerryman/Corkman and Independent newspapers, in addition to numerous periodicals
and journals.