Field of Blood

IV

Paddy had been lying in bed for three hours, listening as each member of the family came home, found she was in bed, and relaxed. She heard the television go on, listened to the formless sound of chat in the kitchen, heard them moving into the living room when they realized she wasn’t coming down. Marty spoke especially loudly, laughing heartily a couple of times, and she couldn’t but feel he was getting his own back. Her dad, she noticed, said hardly a word. He would be terribly hurt. She wondered if Trisha would whisper to him when they went to bed, as they heard her do sometimes, and tell him that Paddy had said it wasn’t her. Con had never been the same with Marty after his shu

Someone shut the living room door and the noises downstairs became muted and indistinguishable. They were having a conference about her behavior and the article. She could only imagine how bad it sounded.

She comforted herself by following Sean around his bedtime routine: setting out his clothes for the morning on a chair, brushing his teeth, getting into bed, pushing the pillows onto the floor so that he could lie flat on his stomach. She smelled his hair and touched the mole on his high cheekbone. He wrapped his arms around her and told her it would be okay and not to worry. A week on Saturday was Valentine’s Day. They always went to the pictures together on Valentine’s and shared a chicken supper on the way home. She ran through their past three Valentine’s dates: the rainy one; the one when she was on an herb diet and could only smell the deep-fried meat and lick a chip; and the last one, when he proposed for the first time and she said no.

Her dark room was cold, and the wind outside shook the lone tree far away at the bottom of the garden. She heard the radiator tick, tick as the heating was turned off and the metal contracted.

She waited until she was bursting for a pee so that she wouldn’t have to go twice before she fell asleep. At the head of the stairs she turned on the light, pausing outside the bathroom door, giving the silverfish a head start. Downstairs, the lonely voice of a news reader murmured. The family was listening to her move.

Paddy used the loo and washed her hands and face. She was drying them on the hand towel when she heard the living room door open and a soft footfall on the stairs. She froze, watching him through the mottled glass. Marty stopped outside, ru

She watched him from the dark, his splintered shape dropping down the stairs and disappearing, leaving her with imaginary silverfish swarming over her feet.

One by one her family came up to bed, taking turns in the bathroom, whispering good nights on the landing as they passed each other, pretending that they thought she was asleep, when they all knew she was hiding.

Mary A

Paddy had been brave and angry all night, but she couldn’t keep it up anymore. She tried to disguise her breathing by biting the blankets. She knew Marty deserved his shu

Mary A

“I didn’t do it,” said Paddy, her voice less than a murmur.

Mary A

FIFTEEN . URBAN HEROES OUT OF PUB BORES

I

Sneaking down an hour earlier than usual for breakfast, hoping to miss everyone, Paddy paused on the stairs, listening for noises, for the high tink of spoons hitting crockery or a thunk of teacups meeting the table. The house was silent. She crept down and was in the kitchen doorway before she realized that the entire family had also risen early, hoping to miss her, and were sitting in an awkward silence around the table.

She couldn’t back out. They tensed collectively as she approached, looking for a chair. The only free place was next to her father. He stared manically at the back of the Sugarpuffs packet while Paddy pulled over the foldaway step stool and sat down. She poured herself a cup of tea from the pot.

Con cleared his throat several times. Gerald glanced around the table from place to place, silently urging someone to do something, while Trisha banged plates around in the sink. Marty was the only one who seemed half content. He looked around happily, humming the chorus of “Vie

Trisha began the exodus. She abruptly abandoned her cleaning and left the room. Gerald finished up quickly and ran upstairs. Con left without finishing his porridge. Marty took his time, helping himself to a luxurious extra half slice of toast while Paddy and Mary A

Paddy looked across the wreckage of the table to her sister. Mary A

II

It was a disgusting cover page. The main story was a picture of Baby Brian under the mawkish headline AGONY OF OUR BRIAN, four words that managed to imply not only that the child had suffered terribly but that he had, shortly beforehand, become the property of the Scottish Daily News. It had been written during a late editorial meeting as a compromise, a blind guess at what the public wanted to hear by senior editors so jaded they couldn’t recall the taste or flavor of genuine sentiment. A pall of sticky shame hung over the newsroom, implicating everyone, pricking journalists’ tempers so that they picked on the juniors, shouted at copyboys, and complained about everything. Two hours into the shift, half the staff was pissed and the other half was downstairs in the Press Bar working at it.

Heather appeared at the newsroom door. Paddy could tell that she had dressed carefully to give herself confidence: her hair was very big, extra back-combed, and she was wearing a red double-breasted blazer, like a junior executive.

Keck, to the left of Paddy on the bench, nudged her. “Check out that tart,” he said. “She’s gagging for it.”

Dub sighed heavily on Paddy’s other side, muttered that Keck was a crippled-dick wanker, and went back to his reading.

A light hush fell over the newsroom. Paddy looked up and realized that half of the news desk and all of the sports desk were watching her, amused and waiting for a reaction.