Hello! Hope you enjoying your day so far, in Chapter Forty One, shock horror, Fionn gets a date and leaves home, all on the same day! Fionn left soon after breakfast. He wanted to sort out the empty flat in his building while his tenants were still asleep; he knew most of them weren’t exactly early risers, having no real point to their day. Inside he crept up the stairs, even though he could tell that no-one was up as all the doors were firmly shut. Maybe this time he could get into the vacant flat without interruption. The idea to take it on while his family were staying had occurred to him just after the persistent nightmare of running through the streets had pervaded his dreams again. Fionn opened the door to the flat, a touch of excitement in his stomach, and quickly shut it behind him. He looked around; there was a faint smell of urine coming from a small, stained rug on the floor, which had tenuous, intersecting patches of linoleum spreading over the floorboards. Fionn made a mental note to throw all the flooring out as soon as he could. His turnover of tenants in the building was pretty brisk, and it was a long time since he had seen a flat empty of his hapless clients’ belongings: it looked dismal. The only thing holding up the flaking wallpaper appeared to be green mould. Underneath, years and years of other wallpapers were visible, like the layers in a puff pastry. The window sills were black and rotten. A flimsy lace curtain with connecting jagged holes gamely clung to a piece of wire bolted onto the window frame with unnecessarily large nails. He looked inwards; a small table and two vinyl chairs with slits in the plastic seats crouched irritably in a corner and that was it. Fionn went through to the bedroom. A stained, lumpy, exhausted looking mattress leant against the wall in one corner as if catching its breath, a single mattress lay horizontally at the foot of it, and a small, broken cot had been dismantled and lay in a pile, like firewood waiting to be lit, right in the middle of the floor as if the room was a tepee. Fionn thought of the family who had lived here last. The Walsh’s, that was it and their six children, a nice couple, he worked in Guinness’s if he remembered rightly. Fionn’s imagination allowed him to see all of them sleeping in this bedroom; it must have been suffocating, he knew all about that himself with his own family. His face reddened; mad really, hadn’t they got a corporation house out of it? Fionn examined an unusual sensation he was experiencing, it felt like embarrassment; no, that wasn’t it, what would Maeve have called it? It came to him, it was guilt again, the likes of which he’d felt much too often lately. Fionn closed down that sensation immediately, shaking himself of it, as if it was clinging to him like a wet cobweb. Fionn came back out and went to the window, pulled back the lace curtain and looked at an identical building with similar haphazard window coverings, opposite. If he was going to stay here for the next week or so, hed have to make it more homely; as right now it was little better than the shed he had slept in the night before. Fionn let himself out, intent on getting a few things to brighten up the place. On the ground floor, he bumped into Bridget coming in. She smiled instantly when she saw Fionn. ‘You’re up and about early!’ she commented. ‘You’re up early yourself!’ Fionn said, seeing she was carrying a bag of shopping. He thought it might be a useful thing to do if he took it off of her and carried it for her. Like a replay of a movie, he saw Jim Mullan, Geraldine’s fancy man, from years back, when he’d met Fionn and his mother in Grafton Street once; Jim had taken the shopping from her because he said it was too heavy, and his mother had been delighted with him and he’d given them a ride home in his big motor car. He and his Ma had felt great, riding in the back, they’d laughed and waved at strangers all the way; it was odd now to look back and see his mother laugh so freely, it was one of only a handful of times it had occurred. ‘I’ll help you with that, Bridget!’ Fionn walked ahead of her and climbed the stairs again, briefly looking back to see if she was as pleased as his mother had been. It appeared that she was, from her smiling face. ‘Thanks Fionn. I’m always up at this time; I have a little cleaning job along the road. I thought I might as well pick up a few bits from the market on me way home.’ ‘Who looks after the children?’ Fionn was strangely afraid, he didn’t have much experience of children, but somehow he knew that very young ones shouldn’t be left to fend for themselves, anything could happen to them. ‘Oh they’re fine; Kevin, me eldest, is nearly nine, he’s well able to look after the others.’ They had reached her flat, and Bridget had put the key in the door. ‘Eight! That’s too young! An eight year old can’t fend for himself, let alone anyone else!’ Fionn heard the fear in his too loud voice, and this fear was familiar to him; it had happened before, he had experience of this fear. The landing started to float away from him, and the last thing he recollected were the faces of an array of small frightened children looking at him through the open door. Then he was gone, consumed by his panic. Fionn saw his long fingers acting as a pillow for his head; he saw the scuffed dirty cream skirting boards with traces of scarlet underneath. He speculated on what eejit had painted it that colour, the place must have looked like a bloody circus. He let two gentle hands move him into a sitting position. ‘Has this happened before, Fionn?’ Bridget asked. She was sitting beside him and holding his hand; Fionn was too hot. He looked down to see a blanket over him; he pulled it down and gasped for air. ‘Sorry, I thought you’d be cold when you woke up.’ Bridget let go of his hand and gathered up the blanket. ‘Thanks, that was good of you.’ ‘Has it? Happened before I mean?’ ‘Yes, a few times, only lately though,’ Fionn said, struggling to get up. ‘Could I have a drink of water, do you think?’ ‘Of course you can.’ Bridget went into the flat and filled a cup with water. All the children were sitting on the floor watching him as if he was top billing in a show as he followed her in and flopped down on the chair at the small table. ‘Me family have come back you see, well not all of them, just the ones that are still alive. They’re all at my house, it’s very crowded,’ Fionn said, looking at her with desperation. Bridget smiled and scanned the room and he followed her gaze, one wooden chair, a single bed, a cot, several boxes with clothes, pots, pans and other assorted items needed for living. In among these, in what little floor space was left huddled her children. Fionn’s face flushed crimson. ‘What you really need is a cup of tea with plenty of sugar in it,’ Bridget said, more kindly than perhaps he deserved, but he had that way about him, like a sick child looking out of a window at a parade going by that he couldn’t join in. ‘The thing is, Bridget …’ He started to waver again as if his mind were seasick. He fought to control it, swallowing hard and concentrating on the door that was facing him. It was closed, why was it closed? He got up and hastily opened it. ‘I can’t remember what I was going to say!’ Fionn smiled weakly. How could she understand with her in here with all these children? He felt so muddled up, he’d had to talk so often lately, and he was no good at it, he said things that were inappropriate, although he couldn’t see that at the time. What was he supposed to say? He saw a succession of faces in front of him, some quizzical, some angry, others disappointed. ‘I’ve never lived alone,’ Bridget reflected. ‘Before I had to come here, I lived with me husband, but he got sick.’ She looked quickly down at the children, hoping they hadn’t heard her first comment. ‘He was a good man, never laid a finger on me or the children.’ Bridget sighed and looked dreamily out of the window as if her husband might be out there. ‘And before that I lived with me mammy and daddy.’ ‘I have to go.’ Fionn was still weak, but he got up and was taken aback to see that Bridget looked quite upset. He looked at her forlorn face, white against her long dark hair. What should he say? Fionn, in his mind, he carefully filtered out anything that could be deemed offensive, but it was difficult to work out from scratch. ‘Thanks, for taking me in and getting me a drink of water.’ Fionn said the words again in his head, trying to assess if they were the type of things you said to people. He looked at Bridget and was comforted to see that she was smiling, as if what he had just said had made her happy. It was baffling. Fionn tried desperately to think of something similar to say; if this type of talk cheered her up, he could probably say something else along those lines. He glanced about him, stalling, hoping for inspiration and then he saw her children watching him curiously. ‘You have nice children,’ Fionn informed her. Again she was lifted by his remarks, and he was lifted too, but he had no idea why, it was all a mystery. He went to the door, and she followed. ‘Take care of yourself Fionn, things will work out, you’ll see.’ Bridget squeezed his hand and looked at him at him as if he was special, like Maeve used to look at Jesus on the cross, and he used to look at his grandfather. Why was Bridget looking at him like that? How could she think so well of him just because he had said a few words that had pleased her? Was he worth looking at like that? Fionn hadn’t ever asked to be liked, or known what it felt to be liked, not since he was a boy, not since he had a grandfather. ‘Would to like to go to the pictures with me? We could see Lawrence of Arabia, Peter O’Toole’s in it.’ Fionn waited expectantly: would she laugh at him, like Teagan had? Bridget frowned and looked back at the children. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It’s the children ya see.’ ‘I could ask Mrs Hanrahan to mind them for you.’ ‘Ah no, she has enough to be getting on with, I’ll ask me sister and let you know.’ ‘Will you come if she can have them?’ ‘I will!’ Bridget said, grinning. Fionn fought back tears as he ran down the stairs and out into the sunlight.
Posted on: Wed, 21 May 2014 13:28:23 +0000
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