Читать книгу Montpelier Parade - Karl Geary - Страница 10

4

You could hear the car engine making that tick-tick-tick cooling-down sound.

“That’s one fifty, one seventy. One seventy-five.” In the front seat beside your father, your hand held out as he counted coins into it. Cars passed, and a scatter of children could be heard somewhere, laughing.

“That’s three fifty, four.” He dug around in his front pocket, searching for more coins, staying away from his back pocket, where he kept his roll of notes. You lowered your hand to seem as if you didn’t expect any more; you had learned to be grateful for any amount, you always got more that way.

He found another fistful, more than he wanted to give over, you knew, but he could never put them back now that he’d shown them.

“Here,” he says, and put the whole pile of coins in your palm. “Here, now listen,” he says. “Hide that from your mother.” It was more than six pounds, maybe seven, guessing by the weight. You wouldn’t count it until you were up the road and out of his sight.

“Thanks, Da, thanks.” It was wrong to put the money straight into your pocket. You weren’t sure why, it just was.

You were done with each other then, itching to take leave of each other’s company. The car was parked beside the bookies, and there were the notes in your father’s back pocket. For a moment you thought about your mother at home and that awful look when she worried. You thought about her chapped and hardened hands. She did so much.

“You were a help today,” he says. You almost said thanks, but didn’t. “Jesus, but she was a posh one, huh? I’d say a silver spoon there all right.”

The sun had dipped below the slate rooftops so slowly that it seemed to be clawing to hold on. A bus went past, and the car rocked a little. You wanted to have that easy way with him, that easy way men have. “Oh, silver spoon is right.” That’s all you would have had to say, then laughed. You thought about her, her name—what was her name? You couldn’t ask him. She’d never once looked at the hole in your sock, and she must have seen it. You remembered then that she wore a gold chain around her neck, and wondered if it had a crucifix at the end of it. She’d fingered the chain absentmindedly when she looked at you.

“She was nice,” you say. But not like you were committed to it, not like you’d fight for it.

“Nice me arse,” he says quickly. He looked out the car window, his eyes rolling over the Paddy Power sign as if for the first time. “Nice? A few biscuits . . . She got you cheap enough? Huh?”

“Suppose,” you say.

“Suppose is right,” he says, and looked at you once before his hand reached for the door handle. “Not a word now,” he says, and the car trembled when he got out. You did the same, the coins still in your hand, looking back just once and catching his eye by mistake.