Getting it in the Head. Mike McCormack

wait and see,’ I said. ‘Maybe when he wakes it will be all over.’ These words were solely for her benefit. I did not believe for an instant that something which had come upon us with such resoluteness and completion would not end in some disaster.

      He woke from his nap a few hours later and entered the kitchen, his eyes glued over with sleep. He asked for tea and when it was brought to him he supped fervently at the table. Previous to this Francis never drank anything but milk.

      ‘Is the news over?’ he asked presently.

      ‘Yes, it’s over,’ I replied. ‘There wasn’t much on it.’

      ‘What did it say on the weather?’ He was seated by the window, looking out at the sheets of rain that hopped in the tarmacked yard.

      ‘It said there would be no change. It would be like this till the end of the week.’

      ‘I suppose there’s no use going for a walk then. I was going to go to town for fags.’

      This was incredible. Could he really be so oblivious to the change that had taken place or to the silent turmoil which roiled about him? I could see my wife at the sink and the almost superhuman effort it was taking her to keep from breaking down was visibly marked on her face. Francis sat at the table, fair-haired and smooth-skinned, but with all the mannerisms and fatigue of an old man. He seemed to be the still centre of a small cyclone which was rampaging silently through the room. Now I was sure that he saw nothing different in himself. To him there had been no change: he was as he had always been. But to me he was my son turned in an instant into an old man. And there was the problem. I was already willing to admit that he was now an old man but who exactly was this old man? I decided to wheedle his identity from him gently, to proceed with caution. I feared that waking him suddenly to the change would plunge him also into a crisis. At that moment two crises in the one room was more than enough.

      ‘When did you take up smoking?’ I spoke very gently.

      ‘What do you mean, when did I take up smoking?’ he repeated testily. ‘You know very well that I’ve smoked since I was twelve, smoked all my life except for twice at Lent when I couldn’t go the distance and was back on them inside two weeks. Thirty Woodbine a day and nothing less.’ Looking out the window he changed tack slightly. ‘I can’t go anywhere in this rain.’

      As I listened to these words a dim germ of horror and recognition began to flower within me. ‘Here,’ I said. ‘Have one of mine.’ I proffered a red box with one fag extended towards him.

      ‘John,’ my wife hissed, ‘you can’t go giving the child cigarettes.’

      ‘It’s OK,’ I said, ‘I know what I’m doing.’

      This was brave talk indeed for in truth I hardly dared recognize what I was seeing come ever clearer into focus before me. Francis took the fag with gentle ease and raised it to his mouth. With one movement he bit off the filter and spat it into the fire. He took a light from me and angled his face backwards for the first drag, tipping the lighted end into the air. With his eyes closed he drew fearlessly on it as if he’d been doing it all his life.

      ‘That’ll do,’ he said, picking a scrap of tobacco from the tip of his tongue. ‘A bit weak but it’ll do.’ He sat and smoked the rest of the cigarette, sunk in such silent contentment that my wife rushed from the room choking back sobs.

      ‘So the weather’s going to stay like this. It’s just as well then we decided against planting spuds. They’d be washed out of the ground with this rain.’

      He talked on like this into the evening, taking an avid interest in the news and most particularly a current affairs programme which dealt with the BSE scare which had affected so many cattle in the west.