Cover

About the Author

Catherine Talbot lives in Dublin with Dara and their two young children. She is a recent graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, where she completed an MPhil in Creative Writing. Catherine has had several short stories published, in Banshee Literary Journal and the anthology Still Worlds Turning. A Good Father is her first novel.

Dedication

To my parents, Anne and Peter, and my husband, Dara

Epigraph

It is possible to have an overwhelming love.

1. Can Anybody Hear Me?

December 2016

By the end of next summer, before the kids go back to school, I will kill my family.

After I kill them, I will cry bitterly and make some freshly squeezed orange juice using the electric fruit juicer that I bought in Lidl with my daughter, Maeve. It cost €13.99. We made juice as a family every morning for two weeks, but after the initial healthy buzz, we kept forgetting to buy oranges. After I make the juice, I will put on my Lycra training gear and run up and down the Cat’s Ladder (my favourite set of steps) for a while. I often meet other like-minded people there, covered in Lycra. When I finish on the steps, I’ll make my way up to the Obelisk at the top of Killiney Hill.

Once there, I’ll see Dalkey Island set majestically, frozen to my left, and the long sweep of Killiney beach on my right. I’ll squint and make out the shaft of light that marks the beginning of the tunnel through Bray Head to Greystones. I’ll allow myself a moment to consider the similarity between the beaches in Killiney and Greystones. And wonder, as I always do, why I have never set foot on Dalkey Island, despite its proximity. I’ll start on my set of stretches taught to me by my friend Maurice, who helps me out with the under-elevens football team that I coach, mainly because my twin sons, Mikey and Joey, are on the team. These stretches encourage my muscles to retract to the place where they are more comfortable. I’ll be aware of my breathing, and if it’s sunny, I’ll be able to feel a warmth on my back while pondering why I couldn’t get rid of myself. This will provide me with the complete understanding that I am a coward. In the rural parts of this country, men who perform such acts on their families generally finish themselves off. But the truth is that they often have far better access to more suitable tools – a shotgun for starters. I might well consider how many times I have studied Jenny’s woodcutting implements and wondered if they would be suitable for inflicting sufficient self-damage. But I know that long ago, I came to the conclusion I wouldn’t be able to go through with it.

I am not insane. I am afraid. I don’t want to live and have to keep worrying about all the shit about children being bullied online and I’m holding off on getting mine mobile phones. I fear that Mikey and Joey may not make good men, and I worry that Maeve will fall for a weak man. I could leave them, I could move to another part of the country, I’ve always had a yen to set up in Connemara, but they would still be here, in this house.

I am an educated man. I do not take drugs, prescribed or otherwise, nothing to combat loneliness or a general reluctance for life itself. It’s just that I am living in fear. The fear is like a crazy person running after you as you sleep. Tearing away, you are in grave danger of being attacked, and you try to run from him but your legs won’t work. And in the dream you cannot fathom why your legs have become paralysed. They worked before, why not now, when you so desperately need them to? And when you toss and turn and try to breathe new life into your immobile legs, you wriggle in your bed, and as a child, you eventually fall out, but as an adult you simply wake up. And you start another day and the semblance of terror that you felt in the dream isn’t tangible any more but it leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

I look around my house and I see a place of comfort, not excessive abundance, but a pleasant place to be. There are books lining the walls. Our children sometimes colour and read in their spare time and play rounders on the green. Jenny is in her forties now. She is a little too thin but very attractive. I love the way her hair falls about her face as she works on her carving and her sketches. To me, she is still beautiful. She will not have much sex with me though, and that doesn’t cause me any great degree of anger per se, but sometimes I become tired of pleading with her to feel me. When she agrees to my request, it isn’t very pleasurable because her hands are not as smooth as I would like. They are calloused right at the bases of her fingers, just where they ought to be soft.

Jenny is an artist of wood but she sketches too. I adore her sketches, pencil scratchings, etchings almost, of things that she finds when she beachcombs: Budweiser cans and Pražský cans and Fanta orange, stones and feathers and bladder wrack. I never forget that the Latin name for bladder wrack is Fucus vesiculosus. I often compliment her on her work. She brushes my praise away as though it doesn’t mean a thing.

I brush my teeth assiduously every morning and every night. Jenny is more lax and, as a result, the kids are also negligent. Jenny’s teeth are often stained from coffee.

Play with me, Daddy, tickle me.

My eleven-year-old daughter, Maeve, tickles me and runs away from me shrieking, urging me to chase her. I take after her, giant steps at a time. This is our snatch and grab and tickle game.

Jenny can never let anything go. There was the time Maeve was almost knocked down by a car driven by another child’s mother. This mother in question is always talking about how desperate the weather is. My kids call her ‘desperate weather’. It has a kind of depressing comedy. Inches away from an impact with Maeve, she tried to blame the ice and the desperate weather. I hadn’t dwelt on it, but I was really angry at the time. Jenny ranted to high heaven about the school, and the parents, and how they didn’t give a flying fuck about other people’s children. I endured as much of it as I was capable of, and then I stopped listening.

Sometimes things become too much for me, and I break out of the circle temporarily, and when this happens I could be justified for taking the opportunity to hurt her pretty face, although this is never my actual intention.

When I hit her, which isn’t often, I am careful not to go too deep around her cheekbones because her cheekbones are a great feature of hers. Delicacy abounds.

I often watch her in the kitchen as she plays cards or Scrabble with Maeve. Her hands rest on her cheekbones, slightly curled. Such long fingers. They talk while they play.

2. The Under-elevens

January 2017

I like to lead out the football team on a Sunday morning in the coldness of the winter months.

This particular Sunday, we are well braced, ready for the onslaught of a team from a place that no one has heard of. Lots of shouting and screaming and my team of psyched-up kids in a heap of frustration and bruises. I keep their spirits up by dishing out mini Mars Bars at half-time.

There is only so much chocolate can do.

Mikey and Joey try to score an extra Mars Bar each because I’m their dad. I stop them in their tracks.

I don’t mind the banter with Maurice, it is well-intentioned. That ad, he says to me, with your man sending a text when he’s on the road and the old crash bang wallop routine and it wouldn’t kill you to put it away – it hits home, don’t you think, Des? Its impact has to be rewarded. Not many ads these days do that to you.

I have a dream, Maurice.

What’s that, Des?

A dream of the day that we’ll beat this shower of fuckers and they’ll go back to where they belong, with nothing only the memory of how our boys have thrashed them.

Maurice nods. I reach into my large kit bag. Lads, here’s your bars. I’ll be back in a jiffy. Hold the fort, Maurice.

In the clubhouse I stick my fingers down my throat and with a heave comes the bile. I flush the toilet. I feel a sense of regret. The first time I allowed myself to vomit up my lunch, I got away with it, despite the cuff ends of my hoodie being streaked with flecks of smoked fish from the chowder I’d downed in Vaughan’s. Jenny knew no different. On holiday, free from the confines of the office, locked into the wilderness of Connemara and its restful arms, I felt a sway like no other sway before. My body had over-indulged and the purging was strange, and yet I was somehow indifferent to it. I risked it twice or maybe three times during our week’s stay. I dry my hands on the crusty towel scrunched in a ball on the sink. Its hardened edges chafe my skin.

Back out on the pitch of woe, the pull of the West is still in me.

Here, lads, have you finished your bars? You lot are as lucky as hell, do you know that? In my day we got oranges cut into quarters and we had to suck on them so hard that the bits of flesh would get rammed in between our teeth. Don’t get me started on energy drinks.

The kids wait.

They didn’t exist, energy drinks.

The lads snort and there is a kind of a release in the air.

Good now, lads, I say. Things are coming on very nicely indeed.

They’re hammering us, Dad, Mikey says.

A hammering is not what we’ll call it, got that. I say, there’s no such thing as a hammering. It’s a day out, a morning away from television. Consider this: you’re lucky to be out here in the air. Now brace yourselves, lads, for the onslaught. We’ll get a few back.

It’s four nil, says Joey.

It’ll be five nil in about two seconds, says Mikey.

It’s a fucking disaster, says Dano, the fat kid.

Any more of that language, Dano, and you’re off, do you hear me?

I tell Joey to blow his nose because he’s always got snot oozing from it and it drives me mad.

The football is fierce and it is windy and the air is brisk with it. None of the boys shiver though, they are red in the face. The determination not to let myself and Maurice down. We scream our instructions at them from the sidelines and our voices begin to falter, and soon I feel that they are nothing more than rasps in the wind.

Fuck this wind, Maurice, I say.

It’s going to flatten them, it’s against them. Fuck, Des, that’s another one in.

I shout for the goalkeeper to be changed. I wave my arms. The boys do their best. They lean in hard and for under-elevens they show a tenaciousness. They play entrenched in the mud. Mud leaves the pitch and lands on legs, arms and shorts. The opposition up their attack, their coach curses blue murder and he paces the ground as though he is dealing with the national squad.

The full-time whistle comes, and everyone tries their best to act like it doesn’t matter.

Look, lads, seven one. That’s not a bad place to be, not a bad score, hang in there, lads, you showed true spirit. Right then, that’s it, let’s wrap this up.

On the way home in the car, Mikey and Joey joke about in the back seat, doing bottle flips. I tell them to stop doing bottle flips in the car because it’s distracting me. Joey says he’s hungry and Mikey talks about rashers and sausages. I hope Jenny is preparing our breakfast. I look at my sons through the rear view mirror and stroke my beard. There’s a bit of spittle at its end on account of all my shouting. I rub it out and the radio is on in the background.

What is this shite? Don’t worry about being broken into. Everyone has that fear, let them be, I say to myself.

Dad, you’re talking to the radio, says Mikey.

No, son, the radio is talking to me and it’s talking a whole load of shite, like I said.

I am a damn good father and a damn good husband, and a damn good cook.

I pull up at the house and kill the engine, but I leave the key in the ignition so I can still hear the radio. I tell Mikey and Joey that I have a bit of work to do this afternoon for the office, and that they had better be quiet and just play about without annoying me. I suggest that Mikey makes a start on the new Diary of a Wimpy Kid and that Joey might consider reading anything other than football magazines. I tell them that we lost the game because we were sloppy but to tell their mother that it was a draw. She doesn’t like tales of failure that much. I don’t know why, exactly, but I go along with it. It’s easier that way.

I have difficulty opening the front door with my key. The loss of dexterity in my fingertips from standing about is a killer. I call out, telling Jenny that we’re home, but she doesn’t respond. I tell Mikey and Joey to leave their muddy boots on the front step, because I am sick of mud being walked all over the house. The boys pull at their boots and leave them in an untidy pile outside and we go into the kitchen. Who is in the kitchen drinking coffee like a lord? None other than Jerome Fagan.

How are you, Jerome? I say.

I don’t give a fuck how he is, but I want to know what he’s doing here in my kitchen and how long he’s been in my kitchen while I freeze my balls off and lose my voice at the football. I remove my winter coat and leave it hanging on the kitchen door. I know this annoys Jenny. That’s why I do it.

Jerome Fagan is Jenny’s ex and he’s a persistent cunt. He has an air of self-confidence that goes brilliantly with his white-starched shirt. Jenny maintains that I should be kinder to him because his wife is dead, and he’s rearing a boy on his own. I find it hard to believe that a man who has the audacity to sit comfortably at my kitchen table while flicking his fair hair back from his tanned face and charming my wife is in any kind of serious mourning.

I’m making eggs, I say to Jenny, assuming that Jerome will take the hint and be on his way, but Jenny only goes and offers him more coffee. I am sick. I tell them that it was Baltic at the pitch, and that I don’t know what they were thinking of picking Maxwell’s Park as a suitable venue for a club. I describe how I cannot possibly think of a worse place and then I go on a bit about the wind and how it cuts you in two. I mention how hard it was for my fingers to work. I crack half a dozen eggs into the clear bowl and begin to beat them. I add spinach leaves and cheese. Maeve has a face on her because she doesn’t like eggs. I make tea because coffee causes me to heave. Jerome asks me about work and I answer with a curtness that he picks up on and finally he leaves.

Jenny wants to know why I was rude to her friend.

An ex-boyfriend does not a friend make.

I try to make it sound poetical so she won’t know that I am envious of Jerome. His easy elegance and confidence that it’s okay to remain friends with someone with whom you once lived, shared a life. Jenny sits with her knees under her beige jumper dress. She pulls the ends of her sleeves over her hands. I call the kids to eat. Maeve still has a face on her and Mikey and Joey want meat.

The day moves on and I watch Jenny with her tools, her face clammy with effort. I light the fire, even though it is early. There is an aroma of eggs in the room. Mikey and Joey and Maeve play rounders on the green. I do a bit of work and watch them through the window. I sit beside Jenny as she carves images of seaweed on to a piece of wood. This piece will be the big-deal part in a collection of carvings and drawings. She is inspired by the seaside. Running my palm over the carvings, I close my eyes and can feel bumps and scratches on the wood. Later on, the children come in from the green and they watch The Simpsons. We are all happy in this moment. I decide to run a bath for myself.

Setting myself up nicely, a towel within easy reach, I fill the bath and add a piece of seaweed, from the bucket beside the sink. Jenny’s beach collections invade all our space. I test the water with my feet one at a time and am left as though wearing a pair of red socks, with the markings from the hot water. Omelette vomit floats in the toilet. I flush it away.

At night things move on as they always do, an extension of another day. Homework is not looked at on Sunday, but newspapers are read. Happy families. A vegetable soup is made, ready on the stove, and a selection of vegetables, peppers and carrots bide their time until they can be added to the roast once it has been given a blast at a high temperature. We talk about wintertime at dinner. I delight in the cold, just not when I’m out with the lads and the wind is fervent.

3. Jenny

March 1995

It was 1995, when I fell fast for Jenny. I first noticed her at the gallery on Lennox Street. My friend Austin had invited me; he had a couple of pieces in a group show. The room was full of the eagerness of young artists and their awkward confidence. The ceiling was high, but conversations made the room seem compressed, too many people trying to be the big shot. I was no different. I was trying to get noticed myself.

I wasn’t an artist. I’d tried to be for a while, but I recognized early on that I simply didn’t have enough natural talent, no matter how hard I worked. If I couldn’t be a real artist, I figured that I could set my sights on something in the cultural domain. I had a few ideas but the problem was, I didn’t know if any of them were feasible, and if I was to do anything I needed to make the appropriate connections. I couldn’t work out how to crack into this world. Everyone else seemed to have a plan, or the semblance of a plan. I had nothing, only my wits.

She stood alone. She had a way of holding herself and you couldn’t tell if she was nervous or not. Her hands clasped a tulip-shaped glass of red wine. I noticed her fingers. There was a certain grace in them. She wore a dress of crushed velvet. It was tight and I could see her thin frame through it. It delighted me. But I was frozen. Austin caught me staring at her.

She’s pretty fine, he said.

Yeah, I said.

I remember how I tried to keep my voice level. I hoped that Austin knew this woman so he could introduce me, but at the same time I hoped he didn’t know her. I wanted this discovery to be mine alone.

That’s Jenny Mitchell; she’s one of the artists. That’s her work over there, Austin said.

He pointed to some canvases on the wall. Etchings and charcoal rubbings of what looked like the sea. Vibrant – I was drawn to them because that’s what the sea always did to me.

Jenny Mitchell. Jesus, she’s good.

Come on, he said.

And that’s how I met her.

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