The Mantle
written by: Alison Fagan
“I might leave it for now.”
The words pelted hard on her tongue like she was chewing a piece of mashed gum. Niamh was only a few yards from the house where she thought even decomposed bodies would look good hanging out of the windows. It all looked so painfully pretty; the snow-white fences, the manicured lawns, the red and grey brick, the pots with large plants and elongated stalks with petals reaching out into the open air’s sunlight. Niamh took a mental picture that she’d rather forget and turned her head around to see Eamon with his mouth now agape.
“Though I thought that’s what you wanted” he spoke whilst also extruding the vowels.
Niamh sighed; her heart skipped a beat inside her chest.
“No…that’s what you wanted…I don’t want this!”
“Where would you rather live then?”
“I don’t know.”
A wind whipped up then and dragged her frizzy hair in several directions at once. Eamon stood opposite her, his thick black hair hardly now moved an inch, though that was a different story.
“That’s your trouble,” Eamon said stamping his foot like a tired toddler.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that. I’m leaving.”
At that sentence, Niamh energized herself into a fast stampede to her car. As she bolted, every house appeared in a straight line to her left, as though they were part of a horror film reel. If she’d had blinkers, she’d pull them over her hazel eyes. It wasn’t that again they were particularly scary to look at, they looked somehow particularly scary to live in. The whole setup of life in suburbia sent shivers down her spine. As she neared her red Nissan Micra, her hand shook as she attempted to put the key in the lock.
“Ahhh now, be sensible,” she thought she heard Eamon say from a distance.
The words were strangled by the blowing wind, and he could have said anything at all.
“Do you want a lift or not?” Niamh said then in a catty way she habitually sniffed at.
The tears formed readily in her blue eyes but would not come…the story of her life.
Though it was not the story of her life really. Niamh woke the next morning to the birds tuning in their musical note to the sounds of car horns beeping. This was on the outskirts of Dublin city centre. She had lived as close to town for as long as she knew, hardly stepping more than a mile or two from the family home. Her world was one of traffic lights beeping, car alarms going off, the heavy footfall of pedestrians on their way to work, all coming in a sundry, which stirred her from sleep. She rolled over in the bed and pressed a pillow hard against her dark hair-lined head. It did not drown out the noise and created a sound inside her head she did not like.
She jumped out of her bed as if an extra leaping into a movie scene, her feet making careful footprints on wooden floors. Gypsy strolled up to her knees. The landlord said no pets, but Gypsy wasn’t a pet he was a part of the family, hiding her whiskers and paws behind the sofa or wardrobe whenever there was any kind of inspection. Niamh lowered herself down to her level and looked into her slanted eyes, then petted Gypsy on the head feeling the thick fur soft against her skin.
As she walked to the kitchen, she heard an unusual silence brew from inside it. No fridge making its humming noise, no washing machine on full blast. Though it could have been the effect of the pillow making her partially deaf. Then she looked down at her watch and she sighed.
Eamon was coming around that day, her brother, though he might aswell have been her father. He wanted this and he wanted that, none of which Niamh herself had wanted. It was like he had a set agenda, and Niamh was to follow it, no matter what. He had been like that ever since the teak coffin lay to rest in the ground, and the clay was poured on top of it. He’d been like that ever since the arched headstone rested now where the dusty bones lay flat and undisturbed. He had assumed the mantle back then and that was that.
Niamh set about then to prepare the house for his arrival as if she were pressing one of his pairs of jeans (which she had done habitually for her older brother as a teenager). First, she gathered the “jeans” (in this case empty bottles of wine and crisp packets) then she assembled the “ironing board” (a table with knives and forks), then she turned on the “Iron” and pressed all of the creases out of his jeans (in this case she hoovered the carpets, polished and mopped floors), anything to please him so she wouldn’t have to listen to his moaning. It wasn’t like their younger brother, Seamus. He never came around anymore. Last time she heard from him he was taking pictures of some camels in Lanzarote. Ever since the “death” he’d abandoned the now sold nest with their mother, or at least fled from Eamon and in these circumstances, you could not blame him.
Then she sat down on the pink sofa in the living room, exhausted and suddenly the words started whirring noisily inside her head, the last words of her father to Eamon she had heard through the hinges of the wooded bedroom door. That day a year ago she’d been at home. The fierce cold of a wintry November almost breezed through her as she knelt halfway on the stairs near the aluminium front door. They all knew it was the last day or days they would hear their father’s booming, urgent voice. As she lifted her eyes up, she saw Seamus at the top of the stairs looking at her oddly.
“What are you doing?” he said a few levels above a whisper.
“Shhh I’m listening,” Niamh whispered to her younger brother.
The bespoke blue and red patterned carpet beneath her started to sway like the sea as she stared down at it. She lifted her head half listening to Seamus’s dwindling footsteps. That was when she heard the words. They came like a sudden onslaught to her ears, and it was as though a tornado whizzed by her.
“You look after them now, it’s your job now Eamon. I’m trusting you with it. You must do it.”
Niamh did not hear Eamon’s reply, but half imagined the nodding of his head solemnly.
After that sentence, Eamon emerged as a shapeless shadow from the bedroom, and Niamh gently lifted herself up to her feet, scurried away, tiptoed down the stairs.
It was after that, everything changed.
In the living room of her apartment, she rested her head back against a velvety blue cushion that Eamon did not like. He did not like anything in her apartment or even in fact her apartment at all. She looked down at her watch. 1pm. Soon she would hear his forceful knock, she always meant to get the bell fixed.
Then she heard it. Rat-tat-tat. There was no need for any peephole with Eamon.
Niamh unfurled herself from her kneeling position to stand up erect and walk towards the white wooded door. As she opened it, she felt a gnawing feeling in her stomach. She wasn’t in the humour for another argument.
“Niamh… you took your time” Eamon said in an indifferent tone.
Niamh rolled her eyes to heaven unconsciously.
“And don’t do that.”
“What do you want Eamon?” she picked up Gypsy who was up on the wicker chair beside the door.
“Nice way to talk to your brother.”
“Nice way to talk to your sister” Niamh replied as a lump now formed in her throat.
Then she saw them both now in her mind as she tiptoed subconsciously to the kitchen area. Together they sat and posed on the plastic park bench, six years between them. They were always posing this way for this or for that. On this occasion, the tree beside the bench carried with it autumn leaves that flowed over them like confetti. Eamon had one arm around her, and one tucked inside the pocket of his grey waistcoat. Niamh rested her head on his shoulder, her green dress tight against her skin. The circular lake swam out in front of them. She almost saw their solid reflection in its grimy waters.
Suddenly Niamh was knocked back to her present by a thud. Then another. She turned her body around to see Eamon stretched out on the floor. Images of her father laying still in the coffin beside the church flooded into her mind.
“Eamon!” she called out.
As Niamh stood over him, he lay still, and his eyelids now flickered. She grasped her phone from her back pocket and fumbled with her fingers to dial 999.
The ambulance came quicker than she anticipated and it stretchered her brother out of the apartment. Niamh stood at the door motionless waiting for her mother to arrive. Unbeknownst to her as she hung on to the iron railings of the garden tears came out of their ducts, first coming in soft sobs then gushing down. She did not want her mother to see her like this and quickly wiped them away with her cotton sleeve. The air was cooler now and she pulled in her sweater like a corset.
“Do you want to come miss” the ambulance man spoke to her as if he came out of some kind of mist.
“No…I’m waiting for my mother” Niamh said shakily, “I’ll follow on.”
As she waited, Niamh saw Eamon in her mind’s eye standing at the shiny new housing estate they were at yesterday as he beamed out with a smile. He did only want the best for her; she had been too hard on him. The thoughts of it stopped her tears from flowing then momentarily.
- The Mantle - May 27, 2023
- A Flight - January 30, 2023
