A short story- For Sale

The Silence is broken.

It is not often that a car is up on this road. Seldom does one stop here. I hear a door close, then a second. Muffled voices. A woman, then a man. Northern voices. Maybe Belfast. Like Father McNally’s accent. Not as polished. What are they saying? They are in the front street, near the porch. Steps. Chatter. Mainly him, some her. Aye Belfast, I would say.

They are in the side garden. Beyond the thick gable. Silence now. Maybe just ten feet away. Eyeing up our garden. Potential. West Facing. Mind the dead. Teddy and Skye, the graves marked only by flowers. Watch where you are standing.

‘Decent sized. I’d say that the septic tank is up in the corner there. That’s why the plot’s well proportioned,’ he barks.

They could hardly be side by side. Where was she? Judging by her voice, she was at the next window, here at the back.

‘Jesus, John this place is a right kip,’ she yelps. ‘Christ, you’d get scabies just looking at it.’

Her muzzled voice seems to bounce off your bedroom window. She will see your bed. The yellow candlewick spread; its tassels unmoved since then; other than by breeze. The fireplace opposite, cold now. The vase on top. Empty now. Although, I can still smell the lilies that you put in it.

‘I can’t really see in proper,’ she says as both seem to step my way. Leaving you in peace.

‘Some work needs done here. What a shithole,’ she says.

‘Aye, the wreck of the Hesperus as my Ma would’ve said,’ his voice trailing as he gets closer to her. At my bedroom window now, both eclipsing my peace, the net curtain saving me from their ugliness. They turn. Their feet trail. Quiet now, but for the wisp of the gentle southerly breeze tilting my daffodils away from them.

Trampling back to the front they will see Paddy Doc’s place across the street. Ruins in peace. Roots in the floor and branches poking over the sills, beyond that the budding Sycamore slow dancing in the breeze. All grown up now. Ivy clad gable with leaves fluttering. Remember many a good night’s ceilidh in Paddy’s?

They are in the byre now. Cattle long gone. No goose to chase them. I hear his voice, hushed by the other gable, rising as he emerges onto the street. He likes the sound of it. His voice. City boy. New money. Townie.

‘Park the jet ski in that lean-to,’ I hear as he opens our front door. She follows.

‘Christ John we could’ve done with Jolanta scrubbing this place. Did you leave her that £20 on the hall table? I hope that she does a good job on the skirting boards.’

In the hall now. I can hear her lip curl. His jacket rises to create a shield.

‘What’s that fucking stench?’ he gags.

‘It’s outside. It’s the farmer spreading slurry. You imbecile.’ I had to speak up.

He turns left. She follows. They are in the front room. Our good room. The light of the spring sun is diagonal on the carpeted floor, from both windows. Two columns of shimmering light stopping at the foot of the dresser that Daddy made.

‘How did people live like this? The deprivation. This place is fucking filthy John. I think I’m gonna boke.’

She moves across the room to where your bedroom door is. It is ajar. I hear the comforting creak of the opening. The sound of a childhood Christmas morning. She pauses. The steadiness leaves her voice. It lowers.

‘John, this place is rotten. That is the creepiest bed. It’s filthy. Is that rat droppings? Fucking Pigsty.’

She does not enter your room. Nor does he. I hear him at the fireplace in the good room. Probably looking over her shoulder. He turns. He coughs. Through his jacket. They tramp back to the hall. He whistles, then he tap taps the wall on his way, a wrecking ball in his head.

To the kitchen.

‘I’d imagine that this kitchen is an extension to the original building,’ he ventures.

‘No way! Christ the place is small enough as it is.’ She eyes the rack above our stove. ‘Is that where they hung the fish to dry?’

‘Eh?’

He is likely pricing the works in his head.

‘Could you imagine the smell of the stinking fish in here John?’

No response. She doesn’t get the scent of mammy’s scones, the turf in the range or the rasher on the pan. The starch on daddy’s shirt collar. She doesn’t hear the stoking of the grate, mammy’s shuffling slippers on the floor as she teaches you that old time waltz or the commentary from gaelic fields on Radio Eireann on a Sunday afternoon.

I hear him at the front window.

‘Here, look at this.’ She crosses the room.

‘What is it, John?’

‘Just a jug, I think’.

‘It’s hardly worth much, in here, like.’ She recoils.

‘Maybe not. We’ll see.’

Silence. No sound of the base of our jug being set on the sill.

‘Oh Christ, you are not bringing that into my house,’ she spits.

Then movement. Traipsing to the door and back into the hall, towards my room. They pass. Into the scullery at the back. And the toilet.

‘I am not even going near that. God knows what is in there,’ she says.

‘Why not? Because it’s filthy?’ I have to say. ‘Because you are turned, at how we live? With our hanging fish? Look at the scullery window. It’s immaculate. Look at the scullery window!’

She doesn’t. He doesn’t. They shuffle. He snorts, she sniffs.

‘Christ, this place needed a good cleaner’. She mocks. ‘Savages.’

I sigh. ‘Look at the scullery window’.

They don’t.

They are back in the hall. Outside my bedroom.

I hear him at his jacket pocket, the sound of his phone clinking against our jug. Remember mammy bought the jug in Derry? Sweeney’s store on the Strand Road. Remember Father Farren used it to wash his hands for Communion, the first time we had the stations. Mammy had us all scrubbing the place for weeks. Every wall whitewashed. Not a thing out of place. The pride of the parish. Every family turned up. The best of food from Mullin’s shop and Boggs’ butchers. How many times have the stations been here since? Must have been a half dozen. Immaculate. Every time.

She prods my bedroom door. Slowly it opens. It creaks less than yours. She sees the window first, the statue of the Virgin Mary on the sill, behind it the net curtain ripples in the breeze. He is behind her. Shielding himself, peering over her shoulder. He sees the picture on the wall. That one of the pier at Bunagee. Didn’t Daddy come home with it under his arm after a card game at Paddy’s? I am sitting on the bed, staring at them both. He reaches into his pocket and fishes his keys. She stands there. Both look at the bed.

‘Christ John, it’s worse than the other room. What-a-fucking-dump. What the fuck is that pile of rubbish on the bed? I’m just surprised that there’s not maggots and flies everywhere. Christ.’

That’s it.

‘Would you please stop taking our Lord’s name in vain in this house’. I shake. ‘What are you calling a pile of rubbish? Who do you think you are coming here into our home like this? What gives you the right to judge?’

She doesn’t flinch. Nor does he, hiding behind her, him gawping at me.

‘Who gives a fuck, Thérèse? Who gives a fuck how they lived? We’ll be gutting this place. There’ll be no evidence of any of this shit when we’re finished. It’s no more than a building site.’

Thérèse. Did you hear that name? Thérèse? You remember the little flower?

‘St. Thérèse,

The little flower,

Please pick me a Rose from the Heavenly Garden,

And send it to me

With a message of love,

Ask God to grant me

The favour I Thee implore,

And tell Him

I will love Him each day

More and more.’

They both squint at me. Repulsed, yet unmoved by my prayer. Thérèse and John.

‘I’m just saying John, whoever lived here were dirty bastards. A life of deprivation. Look at that bed. Jesus, I dread to think what’s under that pile of crap. Savages!’

I am on my feet now. Standing, facing them. My throat is dry, my ears are pounding ‘Look at the scullery window! It is immaculate!’ I ball at them, teeth gritted.

She shifts back into him.

‘Did you feel something there, John?’ A slight tremor in the voice.

‘Eh?’

‘I thought that I felt a breeze or something. Did you feel it?’ Her breath, shallowing.

‘It’ll be a draught. Sure, the place is full of holes.’

‘Look at the scullery window! It is immaculate! It is as clean as the tabernacle in St Patrick’s church up the road. A church that my mother cleaned for years as did I! We walked that road daily and scrubbed that church, as we did this house. What gives you the right to judge us in our own dear precious home? What business have you here?’

We are in the hall now; they are gently retreating towards the scullery. Staring at nothing. I pursue them. John and the little flower.

‘You want to know what is on the bed? Or on the floor of the front room? Or scattered around the kitchen?’

They step back further.

‘My life. Our lives. Every single christmas. Every Birthday. Birthday cards and mass cards. First communion photos. My own communion dress. Letters from America. Press clippings from the Derry Feis. My mother’s wedding dress. The very christening robe we were baptized in. The lock of my sister’s hair cut from her coffin aged sixteen. A coffin that was removed from that very front room.’

I am trembling.

Their retreat continues.

‘She’s at peace in there. In that bedroom that you call a pigsty. Things tossed onto a bed or a floor by you and your like, poking your noses in and rummaging around the lives of us good people.’

I move closer, jabbing my finger at her chest.

‘Something’s giving me the fucking creeps, John!’

‘And so it should. There’s wiser eating grass, my little flower! Now look at the scullery window! Please for the love of God, I need you to look at that window.’

Thérèse stumbles back onto John, her heel catching his shin. John gasps and pivots away, briefly catching sight of the scullery window as he cracks his head on the sill on the way down.

I am standing over him. Roaring in his right ear. ‘Did you see it? Did you see what you had to see, John?’ He looks at me. His eyes speak. John knows. I rise and turn.

She is looking at the scullery window.

With rasping breaths, she shakes her head. She turns. Her hands are over her ears now, tears on her cheeks. She speaks, incoherently. He is on his feet, bundling her from scullery to hall. I shift to make way as they stagger to the front door.

They leave.

A gorgeous scream fills the beautiful spring morning, as I see her legs give way at the door. I hear the door of the car open then close. Then footsteps to the door as John returns, his body trembling, with our jug in his right hand. He stumbles by me in the hall and places the jug back on its sill at the kitchen window.

‘Goodbye John.’

I return to my room. I hear the door of the car close. The engine starts and the car is gone. It leaves the road.

The Silence returns.