Remembrance Sunday by Darragh McKeon

Author:Darragh McKeon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2023-04-24T00:00:00+00:00

12

When I picture him again, the boy is no longer a boy. He lies in his bed, looking out of a window into a narrow garden. His hair is long and splays over his pillow; he has thick woolly sideburns.

The window he looks at is coated with a film of condensation, through which he can see the outlines of trees.

He lives in a small town, not unlike Enniskillen, but far enough away for him to be able to live his own life, be his own man – Newry maybe.

It’s winter, thick bare lines break the soft blue of the mottled sky.

There are brown water stains that run from the ceiling to the floor. The ceiling leaks so much that there are nights when he has to move his bed away from the wall. The paper above the window has peeled off, but not all the way. When he first arrived, the wall was dry and flat and newly papered. A few weeks ago a large bubble, like a bladder, appeared after a storm. It took a couple of days to burst and when it did it happened in the middle of the night, while he was sleeping. He was already standing by the side of his bed by the time he woke up. He thought someone had thrown a bucket of water over his head. It brought back other memories. He was relieved when he realized it was just the fucking wallpaper.

He looks about twenty-one. The year, I think, is 1980.

His room is on the second floor of a terraced house on the Camlough Road, two miles out from the centre of Newry.

He’s been there for the guts of a year.

He has a good job, as a cutter in a meat factory.

He tried university but it wasn’t for him. He studied engineering but country schooling didn’t prepare him for the rigours of calculus, physics. The equations melted in his head: he couldn’t transfer them from the textbook to the page, and the problems were beyond him. He didn’t tell anyone that he’d left, but simply found work on a building site. Eventually the university accommodation kicked him out and phoned his ma into the bargain.

His landlady is called Mrs Donnelly. She has a soft Dublin accent, and he doesn’t know how she ended up where she did.

He hasn’t told her about the leak. He tells himself he doesn’t want to bother her, but really he doesn’t want to give her the excuse to come into his room. And, besides, then there’d be the bother of builders and plastering. What harm is a leak, really? He avoids Mrs Donnelly as much as he can. She’s a decent-enough skin, in dire need of conversation. Her flat is in the basement. Whenever he goes to give her his rent, she insists on bringing him a cup of tea, then sits by her three-bar electric fire with nothing to say to him. They end up watching the BBC together. She likes Steptoe and Son. The wizened old Steptoe da is always bathing himself in the kitchen sink.

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