Make Yourself at Home Read online

  Shirley had covered the kitchen presses with drawings. An alien slithering out of a spaceship. Three matchstick people holding hands and standing outside a matchstick house under a circle of yellow sun wearing shades. A dog jumping over a hurdle. The artist had drawn a love heart above the dog and inside the heart was the word ‘George’.

  A picture of the sea – green – the sky – blue – and the sand – yellow – beneath a tall, crooked cliff at the edge of which stood a matchstick house. At the water’s edge, jumping the waves, two matchstick boys.

  A certificate declaring Sheldon ‘Student of the Week’ last November. Harrison’s spelling test – seven out of ten – tacked to the fridge door. A photograph of Shirley in a photo booth, with the boys on either side of her, their faces pressed together so they could all get in the frame, their eyes squeezed shut and their mouths wide open with the laughing.

  ‘I’ll put a brew on,’ said Rita, picking up the kettle.

  ‘It’s broken,’ said Shirley.

  ‘Not to worry,’ said Rita, fishing around in her enormous bag. ‘I brought flasks.’

  Rita’s doorstep sandwiches turned out to be just the thing, Marianne had to admit. Once you got over the smell of so much hard-boiled egg in such a confined space. Once you squashed them into a more manageable height and took several of the cloves of garlic out, they were actually quite edible.

  She put it down to hunger being a good sauce.

  Unusually for the group, they ate without speaking for the most part. Marianne was glad of the break. She was drained after all the slogan-shouting and the singing. Which was not a sentence she ever expected to hear herself think.

  ‘What’s so funny? Rita asked, waving her hand in front of Marianne’s face.

  ‘Oh. Nothing,’ said Marianne, blinking and looking around. ‘I was just … thinking it odd. Me, being here. I’m not exactly protest material.’

  Rita smiled. ‘I really liked that slogan you came up with, the one about the vulture funds.’

  ‘Oh, the “We’ve a bone to pick with you” one?’

  ‘That was clever,’ Rita said.

  ‘I was just trying to mix it up a bit.’ Marianne gathered her cup and plate and stood up.

  ‘I’m going to have a cigarette and then we’ll resume, okay?’ said Rita, picking up her handbag.

  ‘I can’t believe lunch is already over and it’s not even one o’clock yet,’ said Bartholomew, looking worried.

  ‘Activism is hungry work, my dear,’ said Ethel, patting her concave stomach.

  ‘Don’t worry, everyone,’ said Freddy, ‘we’ve still got Patrick’s brownies to look forward to.’

  Bartholomew stood up and turned, sweeping chocolate crumbs from his face and waistcoat in a fluid, covert move.

  ‘What do you mean, resume?’ Marianne wanted to know.

  ‘Keep your hair on, Marnie,’ said Shirley through a mouthful of sandwich. ‘I’ve to go and collect the boys from school at two so I need yiz to be gone by the time I get back.’

  Marianne looked at her watch. Another hour to go. She thought she could manage that.

  Shirley took an enormous gulp of tea, wiped her mouth with her arm. ‘It’s just, I haven’t exactly told them. The boys. That we have to move.’

  ‘You mightn’t have to tell them at all,’ piped up Ethel, shaking an arthritic finger towards Shirley. ‘Where’s your fighting spirit, young lady?’

  Shirley shrugged. ‘I used it all up, getting sober and springing the kids out of care.’

  Ethel patted Shirley’s arm on her way to visit the ‘little old ladies’ room’. Patrick left to check the Jeep, which had emitted blacker fumes than usual from its exhaust pipe earlier. Freddy and Bartholomew followed, arguing over which social media platform was best suited to get some traction for the protest.

  ‘I’ll wash the dishes,’ said Marianne, walking to the sink.

  Shirley followed her, glared at her. ‘You probably think I’m a terrible mother,’ she said. ‘Having my kids taken into care.’

  Marianne hunted in the press under the sink and found a bottle of washing-up liquid. When she straightened, Shirley was still glaring at her. Marianne shook her head. ‘I don’t know anything about motherhood,’ she said, ‘but I’m pretty sure that you’re not a terrible mother.’

  Shirley opened a drawer, took out a tea towel. ‘Rita said you were more of a mother to Flo than she ever was.’

  Marianne turned on the tap. ‘Do you have a J-cloth?’

  ‘Is that a polite way of telling me to fuck off and mind my own business?’ said Shirley, handing Marianne a cloth.

  Marianne squirted washing-up liquid into the water in the sink. Swirled it around with her fingers. ‘I suppose so,’ she said.

  ‘It’s the bloody Get-Well-Sooners,’ said Shirley. ‘They’ve infected me with all their incessant talking. I’m becoming institutionalised.’

  ‘How did you find out about them?’ Marianne asked, turning off the tap.

  ‘I tried to get sober by myself,’ Shirley said. ‘I lasted two months before I bought a bottle of vodka. I put it on the floor and sat there, looking at it for about two hours. Then I remembered Rita. She was invited to our school once to talk about addiction and all that shite. So I rang her. She came straight away. Poured the vodka down the sink, put me in the Jeep and brought me to Ancaire.’

  George poked Marianne’s leg with his paw and she fed him a piece of cheese that had fallen out of one of Bartholomew’s sandwiches.

  ‘That was a good day,’ said Shirley, almost to herself.

  They did the dishes. Marianne washed and Shirley dried. The silence was sort of companionable, Marianne felt, until Shirley whacked her leg with the corner of the tea towel.

  ‘Spit it out,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve been washing the same plate for ages. What’s eating you?’

  Marianne shook her head. ‘I just wondered,’ she began, handing the immaculate plate to Shirley, ‘if there is a Plan B.’

  In her job, Marianne had been a stickler for Plan Bs. A ‘what if’ scenario.

  What if the protest had no impact?

  What if the landlord remained unmoved by Shirley’s plight?

  What if he went ahead with the eviction?

  Judging by the registered letters Shirley received in the post most days, it seemed clear that he fully intended to.

  ‘Well,’ said Shirley, opening a drawer and arranging the cutlery she had dried in neat rows inside, ‘Rita said me and the boys can move into Ancaire.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Marianne.

  ‘Your face,’ screamed Shirley, laughing.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’d look the same if someone threatened to land that pair on me,’ said Shirley. ‘I swear, their only saving grace some days is the fact that I pushed them out of my own vagina.’

  ‘I …’ Marianne was not sure how to proceed.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Shirley, grinning, ‘I’m on the housing list so it’s all G.’

  ‘Is G short for good?’

  ‘Something like that,’ said Shirley.

  Marianne brightened. A housing list. Of course. That sounded like a workable Plan B.

  ‘How long have you been on the list?’ she asked.

  Shirley creased her forehead in concentration, counted on her fingers, mouthing numbers. ‘Three years, five months, two weeks and four days,’ she said.

  ‘Oh,’ said Marianne.

  Shirley shrugged. ‘I applied the day after I left the kids’ da. He’d only ever started on me before then. But he gave Sheldon a shove that day. Sheldon was only four. His little face, when he looked at me. Like he couldn’t believe I’d allowed it to happen.’ Shirley’s voice was nearly a whisper by then but Marianne could hear every word, each one clear and stark, like Shirley’s memory of that day. She wanted to take one of her hands out of the sink, touch Shirley in some way, let her know that she was here, she was listening, whatever
good that would do. Shirley tossed her head, smacked her chewing gum between her teeth and grinned. ‘We left at the stroke of midnight,’ she said. ‘Like Cinderella, I was. Except with a pair of kids instead of glass slippers and the handsome prince off his bin in the flat and a dent in his face from the hurl.’

  ‘Jesus, Shirley.’

  ‘I didn’t kill him,’ Shirley said indignantly.

  ‘No, I didn’t think you had.’ Marianne was ninety-five per cent certain about that.

  ‘I hate that he’ll always be their dad,’ said Shirley, then. ‘I hate that I did that to the boys. Gave them a shit dad.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ said Marianne, pulling the plug and wrapping the chain around the tap.

  ‘Ah, you know how it is: us women always blame ourselves,’ said Shirley. She flicked Marianne’s leg with a corner of the tea towel again and picked up her placard. ‘Come on,’ she said.

  Back in the front garden, Marianne assumed her earlier position, at the end of the line, beside Bartholomew, who seemed to have taken it upon himself to teach her the ways of the protest. He even demonstrated a way of holding the placard that doubled as a workout for the biceps.

  ‘I used to date a gym manager, you know,’ he said. ‘He was pretty high profile so I won’t divulge his name. Suffice to say, I had a key to his penthouse apartment on Merrion Square, a VIP pass to any of his gyms and I could bench press 120 without even breaking a sweat.’ Bartholomew’s tone was wistful. ‘Then of course I slept with one of his exes and it ended fairly shortly after that. Another epic fail.’ He lowered the placard and Marianne was terrified he might cry. She scrounged around for one of Rita’s self-helpy mantras. Something about failure being good or … what was it? Oh, yes. ‘Eh, failure isn’t final, you know,’ said Marianne.

  Bartholomew looked at her, his pale blue eyes damp. ‘Do you think I’m a failure?’ he whispered.

  ‘No, no, not at all,’ said Marianne, wishing she had said nothing.

  ‘I suppose I am,’ said Bartholomew mournfully. ‘I’ve made my bed. And half the beds in the city, let’s face it.’

  ‘Yes, but …’ Marianne struggled to come up with something else. Anything to dissuade Bartholomew from crying. ‘You’ve changed the sheets,’ she said in a rush.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Bartholomew.

  ‘Well, you stopped drinking, for starters,’ said Marianne. ‘And you got called for that interview.’

  Bartholomew paused to consider that. When he smiled, he did so with the entirety of his round face. ‘I did, didn’t I?’ he said.

  Marianne felt a smile work the muscles of her cheeks. She supposed it was Bartholomew’s hopefulness, the infectious nature of it. ‘Oh,’ she said, fishing around in her handbag. ‘I’ve also written out the most awkward interview questions I could think of for you. So you can, you know, prepare yourself a bit. In case you’re asked any of them.’ She handed him a page she had torn out of Aunt Pearl’s notebook. Bartholomew unfolded the paper, studied it. ‘If I was a play, what play would I be?’ he read, shaking his head.

  ‘They probably won’t ask anything so obscure,’ said Marianne, ‘but I put it down just in case. It is a theatre position, after all.’

  ‘Something absurd and tragic,’ said Bartholomew, sighing. ‘Beckett would do the job, I’d say.’

  ‘Maybe pick something a bit more upbeat?’ suggested Marianne. ‘Also, I see you have put Rita down as one of your referees?’

  ‘All the local theatre people adore Rita,’ said Bartholomew. ‘She’s done a lot of Get Well Soon work with them – it’s dipso-central in lala land, as you can imagine – and she often helps out with set design and costumes. That’s how we met actually, Rita and I. I fell off the stage during a performance of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I played Eddie.’ Bartholomew struck a pose and sang, ‘Hot patootie bless my soul I really love that rock ’n’ roll’ in a loud, Texan accent.

  A pedestrian hurried past, looking worried.

  ‘Maybe just add another reference,’ suggested Marianne. ‘As well as Rita, I mean.’

  Bartholomew looked stricken.

  ‘Even just one,’ said Marianne. ‘Someone who will say you’re good in a crisis. Or …’

  ‘Oh,’ said Bartholomew suddenly. ‘I did deliver my boss’s baby in the back of a Mercedes van once.’

  ‘That’s an effective demonstration of crisis management,’ said Marianne.

  ‘She did all the work,’ admitted Bartholomew. ‘I just knelt beside her bed and did breathing exercises to keep myself calm.’

  Bartholomew returned to Marianne’s notes. ‘What’s my greatest achievement?’ He looked into the middle distance, stroked his chin. ‘Outrunning Panti Bliss is certainly up there. She took umbrage after I hated on the dress she wore when she did the Noble Call at the Abbey. I mean, who wears mauve?’

  ‘You outran Panti Bliss?’ Marianne couldn’t help saying.

  ‘She was wearing high heels at the time, in fairness.’

  ‘You could talk about your sobriety,’ suggested Marianne.

  ‘They’ll just think I’m an overweight loser who can’t control himself.’

  ‘It shows determination,’ said Marianne. ‘You identified a problem and dealt with it.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Bartholomew, smiling at her. ‘I sound great, coming from you.’

  ‘We should probably get on with the chanting now,’ said Marianne, although she couldn’t help feeling pleased. Bartholomew nodded and she picked up her placard and held it away from her body as Bartholomew had instructed. So, when she spotted him, she was chanting, ‘The Minister for Housing’s a holy show, The Minister for Housing’s got to go.’

  He wasn’t hard to spot, given the size of the buggy he was wheeling.

  A double buggy.

  The width of a modest bulldozer. Attached to the handle of the buggy were two dog leashes and at the end of the leashes were matching Bichon Frises, yapping as they pranced along, pulling at their leashes and getting under the feet of the pusher of the buggy who, as a consequence, had to walk in a mincing sort of way, with his head down for the most part.

  At first, it was the yapping of the dogs that drew Marianne’s attention.

  Then, the double buggy. The monstrous size of it. She idly wondered what the father would do if he met oncoming pedestrians. A fellow buggy-pusher, even? One of them would have to go out on the road. How to decide which one? Maybe there was buggy etiquette? A double buggy trumps a single one?

  Afterwards, Marianne would wonder at herself, at her train of thoughts as her brain caught up with her vision.

  Because the pusher of the buggy was Brian.

  Of course it was.

  It was too late to dart inside Shirley’s house. Or to hide behind the Jeep. As a last resort, Marianne considered ducking behind Bartholomew’s back. It was wide enough to shield her, although her height meant she would have to crouch.

  But the chanting had attracted Brian’s attention, as it was supposed to do, and now he was looking straight at her. Marianne lowered her placard, the muscles in her upper arms throbbing and the blood rushing up her neck, into her face.

  After a moment, the others lowered their placards too, the chants dribbling away until a hush fell upon them.

  ‘Marianne?’ Brian looked confused, like he used to look when a spreadsheet wasn’t adding up.

  ‘Hello, Brian,’ said Marianne, her voice high and bright. A nothing-to-see-here sort of voice. A little strangled at the edges. Brian seemed the same as he always did and yet there was something utterly changed about him. His clothes, for one thing. They matched. And they weren’t all black or navy. There were colours. Mustard trousers and a yellow and black check shirt with a thick black leather jacket and desert boots. The trousers weren’t quite tight-fitting but they were snug all the same.

  It was Brian all right. The same fine fair hair, the same narrow nose, the same light blue eyes, watering in the sunlight.

  It was jus
t … a different version of Brian.

  Like he’d had a system update.

  It was the strangest sensation.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked carefully, his eyes travelling down the line of them as if they might be henchmen, hired by Marianne to do him in.

  Marianne cleared her throat. ‘I would have thought that was perfectly obvious,’ she said, raising her placard and waving it at him.

  ‘Oh. Right. Yes, of course,’ said Brian. ‘I heard your vulture fund chant as I was coming down the road. Really … pithy.’

  Marianne nodded stiffly.

  ‘Oh, and there’s Rita. Hello, Rita,’ he said, his tone nervous. He had never been sure how to handle Rita, although he was not alone in that regard.

  Rita, looking unimpressed at best, raised her face in his direction. ‘Hello, Brian,’ she managed.

  ‘Is that your young man?’ piped up Ethel, peering at Brian over the top of her spectacles.

  ‘No,’ Marianne hissed, stepping in front of Ethel, who looked like she was about to take a run at him.

  ‘Are they the twins?’ Marianne felt duty-bound to ask. The double buggy was like this gigantic exclamation mark over their heads. Bright red and screeching for attention. As elephants in rooms go, this one was too big to ignore.

  ‘Eh, yes,’ said Brian, and his smile began, as it always did, at the corners of his mouth, which twitched with the effort of trying not to smile. He couldn’t help it in the end. By the time he had lowered the two hoods, he was beaming. ‘This is James,’ he said, pointing at the one on his left. ‘And this is David,’ he went on, now pointing at the other one, who looked exactly the same.

  ‘How do you tell them apart?’ Marianne asked.

  Brian laughed.

  Marianne didn’t.

  When he realised she wasn’t joking, he stopped. ‘Well, I … I just can,’ he said. ‘I’m used to them, I suppose.’