Torn Water

‘Did you tell her?’ his mum asks him.

‘No.’

‘I may be old but I'm not stupid, Ann,’ Teezy shouts after her.

He can remember the way her skin had slipped on to his like moss along a stone. He can remember her breath on his neck, the way she told him to put his sockless feet on her shoes. He remembers climbing on to them, and feeling his soles lie across the bridge of her feet. He remembers them moving together.

‘My strong man … my fierce, strong little man,’ she had said.

The song had finished and his mother asked quietly how his hives were; all right, he had said. They were still close together, his mother leaning down to meet the smile in his eyes.

‘If Conn was only here to see you …’ his auntie had suddenly said, her head nodding, the fire beating a crimson glow on the side of her face.

Suddenly his mother's eyes had clouded. She turned and ripped the LP from the turntable. A silence sat, fat and solid, in the air. He remembers inching his way back to his seat, its springs squealing as he sat.

James remembers turning the name quietly on his tongue, like a small fiery sweet, Conn … his father's name. A four-lettered bomb exploding in his heart. Conn … Conn … like a fist in his mind, Conn … Conn … Conn.

‘Don't ever mention his name again,’ his mother had said.

And with that she had retaken her seat, and filled her near-empty glass, the liquid spilling across its lip. The two women had sat in angry silence until his mother lifted the glass to her mouth.

He can remember sitting there, his small fists clenched, dried peels of calamine lotion falling on to the crotch of his pyjama bottoms, watching the two women glare at one another. He began to itch and scratch at his hives.

‘Don't,’ his mother had said.

He had stopped and held out his hands towards her, palm upwards, in protest, in defiance, sitting there, knowing that if a secret wore skin it would look something like his.

‘Do you not eat, son?’

‘Yeah … No … I'm fine, Teezy.’

‘You look like a pale streak of nothing. No harm to you …’

He sits alone with Teezy in her scullery. He can imagine his mother scurrying down the town, bustling past shoppers, on her way to meet the heathen Sully.

Teezy stands and gives him a twinkly smile. He turns her head away from her. He knows that look: he knows what's coming.

‘What about you, my boy?’

‘What about me?’

‘Are there any little ladies in your life that I should know about?’

‘No.’

‘That sounds a bit final, son.’

‘Teezy, please.’

‘Come on, son.’

‘What?’

‘You're so serious, son. Have a bit of fun. Find a nice young strip of a thing and have a bit of a time with her.’

‘Yuk.’

‘Yuk? What sort of a word is that? Your schooling needs to be shaped up, my boy. Yuk … Come on, son, lighten up those chops of yours.’ She leans down to him, her eyes full of mischief.

‘Teezy …’

‘You've a face on you would freeze milk and hell besides. Come on, let me fix you something and we'll have a chuckle together.’

‘I'm fine, Teezy.’

‘You're going to waste away, son, with that serious mug of yours, disappear before our very eyes.’

‘I think he's back to stay for good this time, Teezy.’

‘I know, son, I know … How about a nice boiled egg?’

Death from an Acute and Unrelenting Hunger

The fields are blackened from the blight. I can see some of my neighbours crawling across the soil scrabbling for one healthy potato. I feel sorry for them. I cannot remember the last time I ate, for in my dreams I have always been hungry. My mother died a few days ago, followed quickly by my aunt Teezy. They died in each other's arms. I didn't have the strength to bury them, and had to leave them where they fell.

Once I believed that God had given me the power to save everyone by teaching them how to eat stones and the fine dust that fell from the cracks of buildings, but no one would listen. Another time I believed that the clouds were edible and spent days building a flying machine from twigs and the trunk of a fallen tree, but I must have misheard God's instructions for it refused to fly.

Most of the time, though, I just sit on the headland that fronts my small village, watching the sea. Sometimes I think I can see my mother dancing in the waves.

It is late now and God is talking to me again. I like it when God speaks to me, I like the way it soothes my heart, and the way the world expands like a mouth being kissed.

I stand. My slender body sways like a leaf on a branch. I smile to myself as I realise suddenly that God has given me wings and that I am climbing to the roof of the world to join my mother, and that my hands are full of clouds and the icy sparks of stars. My flight doesn't last and before long the cold night sea is travelling towards me at speed. By then, though, it is too late to change my mind.

4. Outer Space (#u5466422a-c85d-5157-850c-78efe48e5a9d)

When he was younger he was obsessed with the pictures of the Apollo astronauts. He remembers the lonely slope of their shadows on the moon's lifeless surface and the blackness surrounding them, as if on every hand there was mystery. He remembers wondering if that was where his father had gone when he died – is that where everyone went? Did they melt into the darkness that held the earth and the other planets captive?

Sometimes he thought he could hear his father's cries for help, and he pictured him spiralling like a satellite in the outreaches of space, his body slowly blackening. He would wake and rush to his bedroom window, his eyes scouring the night sky, his heart yearning to join his father in the depths of the universe.

He had tried to tell his mother that he believed his father was lost far, far out in the cosmos. He had tried to tell her one morning, years before, as she had faced him across the breakfast table. He remembers the frustration of not being able to say the words, to push them from his lips. He remembers his mother scowling with impatience, sharply telling him to eat his breakfast and to stop the nonsense. Eventually he had stood, limbs quivering with frustration. Then he had yelled it, as if his life depended on it: ‘Daddy is with the astronauts! I heard him! I heard him crying …’

His mother had slowly placed her fork on the plate and stood, carefully pulling the creases free in her skirt. Then she had walked to where he was standing. She had clamped her hands beneath his armpits and lifted him up, then slammed him back into his seat. He had landed with a jolting shudder that banged his jaw shut. She had leaned very close into his face, and had wordlessly cautioned him, her eyes unblinkingly facing his.

It is the end of the second week of Sully's return. They are on Sully time: everything his mother says and does revolves around him. She is standing by the kitchen door. Her hair is mussed; a piece of toast hangs from her lips. Sully has just left, having stayed the night. He's only back and already they're playing Happy Families.

‘Sully wants to take you see Northern Ireland play.’

‘I don't like Northern Ireland,’ James says.