Weekend Reading

In this chapter from Family Lines, Lucy tells Deb how their lives changed in the aftermath of the fire and her future plans are put on hold.

Me and Elsa went to the factory next day with Dad. Only one wall was left standing but the windows were blown out. The vats of colour were crumpled like big crushed drink cans. All around them the ground bubbled, the bright colours seeping up through the blackened skin of the paint, a revolting porridge. Kids ducked under the yellow Garda tape wanting to fill buckets and plastic tubs with lumps of the paint. Elsa kept well back, a low growl rumbling in her throat.

We paced the perimeter of the site, Dad shaking his head and muttering, Fifteen years, fifteen years. But he’s only been there full-time for about five years, since you left in fact. He had landed a big contract with a shop in town, and its branches in Cork and Galway. Back then he said we deserved a bit of good luck. It became like a religion with him, believing that if he made it big you’d come home. There was no reasoning with him. Mam tried, I know that. I could hear the arguments through the kitchen floor. She wanted him to succeed but she thought it was too soon to be throwing all his eggs in that particular basket as she said. To be fair to Mam she was always better at handling money. Even Dad said it himself but right go wrong, up down or sideways, he was going to quit the day job in Customs and Excise and plunge headlong into the odourless paints. Odourless but not colourless as he liked to say.

  Well the place was pretty fecking bleak the day after the fire. And it smelt worse. You’d have pitied Dad if you’d of seen him then. He looked like a man dropped in the middle of a jungle without a compass or a machete.

  Some of the lads were standing around looking at their jobs melting away.

  A right bleedin’ mess, said one of them.

  Insurance job, said another out of the side of his mouth.

  Was it insured? The union rep asked Dad.

  Yes, said Dad quickly. Don’t worry, we’ll start again.

  We’re going to need money in the meantime.

  I know, I’ll sort it out. Don’t worry.

  Famous. Last. Fecking. Words.

  Turned out Dad had let the insurance lapse – against Mam’s advice – until he got the first payment from the new contract, which – you guessed it – he never got. He was all gung-ho about suing the other crowd for breach of contract but Mam told him not to be mad throwing good money that we didn’t have after bad money that we had lost. Weren’t you lucky to miss all that big fuck up? In the end he sold the site to the yanks. A crowd who make circuit boards. That way he was able to give the lads a bit of dosh which didn’t leave much over for us.

Mam managed to go full-time in the school admin and I went back to the supermarket after school and at weekends. The good thing was that the new manager there, Mr. Twomey, although we call him Toomean, decided to train me on the cash register. Better pay and takes the weight off my feet. Halleluiah!

We used to have a good laugh at work. The crowd was a bit of crack. A bunch of us used to meet up on a Saturday night along with some of the gang from school. I’m not saying I didn’t miss Daire. I did, a lot at first, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me going with other lads. He wrote a few times and he seemed to be liking it over there.

I sent him a couple of letters – in those years when I’d stopped writing to you – but it wasn’t that easy to say what I wanted to say to him. I told him about Elsa and how she’d grown very big and gentle and beautiful. And I told him about the fire. He replied all right but him saying in a letter that he was sorry and all didn’t make things any better. In a way it made me feel worse. He was off there having a good time and couldn’t really know how horrible it all was. I haven’t heard from him in ages. Which is probably better because maybe getting letters from him was giving me a little bit of hope that he might come back for my sake. But then, I’m still waiting for you to come home too.  

The downside of the job was I was supposed to be studying for the Leaving. I brought some of the books to work and looked at them in between customers. I was getting good at maths anyway. The thing of it was I was pretty sure I’d have to go to work full-time when I finished school so it didn’t really matter how many points I got. You see, Dad went back to his old boss, cap in hand but came away empty-handed. They said he’d have to wait till they’re recruiting again. By then, he said, there’d be a new generation of whipper snappers ready to take the jobs.

As if that wasn’t all bad enough Mam got sick about nine months after the fire. Looking back now I’m wondering was it the worry gave her the cancer. At first she didn’t know what was wrong. The doc said it was the change of life and gave her some pills. But she knew that wasn’t it and after a couple of weeks flushed the pills down the loo. Then she went back to the doc and told him she wouldn’t leave his office until he booked her in for tests on her ‘female organs’. He had to agree. By the time she got the tests done things were pretty bad. So they took her in for a hysterectomy.

Life at home came to a standstill then. Partly because she was in hospital and partly because of the weather that January. You couldn’t believe the amount of snow and ice there was or how fecking cold it got. There was ice on the insides of the windows!! We were going to bed with our socks and sweaters on. At least I had Elsa to keep me warm too. Some days the snow was falling so heavily we couldn’t get out to visit Mam. There were no buses and no cars on the roads. Everything was dead quiet. Muffled.

 One Sunday I said I’d try walking into the hospital. Dad said he’d come too. We brought Elsa. She loved the snow! She just loped along ahead of us, looking back every now and then, her tongue dangling out the side of her mouth, her eyes laughing. I swear to God she looked like she was having the best laugh ever. She gave us a laugh too. I made snowballs and threw them for her. She went darting off like a mad thing, digging for them in the snowbanks at the side of the road.

That was the weirdest time. Pink and grey clouds sat very low over our heads. It was like being inside of a snow globe. Only we didn’t know who was shaking it to make the snow fall. After a while our minds froze and we plodded on in silence – I never knew it was such a long walk into town! – as if nothing and nobody existed except the three of us on that eerie silent road with Mam at the end of it.

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An unseasonable chapter to be sure but I hope you liked it nevertheless. As ever I’d be glad to read your thoughts on it here: