Where new writing finds its voice
Short Story

However, We Regret …

Colm Quinn

Extract from a novella

ONE

i

My mother’s house felt overcrowded. To escape Belfast was urgent for my brother Paul and I. Teenagers, not really fitting in with our fellow school-leavers, we busied our afternoons painting pictures in the upper room of my Granny’s. The sense of alienation was accelerated by the exit of Our Seamus, who had made it over the wall to Derry; who was living the secret, art-student life of parties and girls. Meanwhile Paul and I lazed daily, painted watercolour cottages, imaginary landscapes clumsy with shrubbery. Red patches appeared on our faces as neighbours admired the long lanes etched into our pictures, smeared in Gaelic colours as we sketched the Ireland in our head.

Outside, the outback of the estate was just too bleak to paint. So this was a time fraught with the anxiety of long-shot hope as we sweated acceptances from colleges in the remotest parts of England. And mornings, as always, started with a descent down the cold-footed stairs. A breathless approach to the fresh envelopes, just delivered to the slab of our short hall. Mine first:

Dear Mr …
Thank you for letting us see your work.
However, we regret to inform you ...

My world wobbled as I watched Paul open his.

 

ii

The betrayal we felt was immense. Our brushes had proved unfaithful to our hope. One night, when desperate, we planned a new direction. Sculpture. However, not having the tools, money or marble, we seconded for a Kid’s Home Sculpture Set – ages 7–12. One each.

So, nightly we moulded this child’s clay into the shapes of our ambition. But the wet figures of family and fruit – out of which we sucked hope for likeness – dried to imperfection. After weeks of this, we managed from the melt a red rose and sharp red pepper.

All eager at the final achievement of likeness, we mounted the rose and pepper on proud black boards. Later, with my rose at its centre, I added the shape of Ireland, drizzling it on with sawdust and glue, endowing my piece with political fervour. But bitterness crept in between us at another rejection delivered that morning.

‘They don’t want to split us up. That’s the only reason they said no. Two brothers an’ all ... Can’t take one without the other.’

‘Balls,’ Paul replied. ‘They said no ‘cause we’re shite. They said no because we have the artistic vision of a gardener and greengrocer.’

‘Maybe my rose had somethin’ t’do with it?’

‘What about yer rose?’ he asked,
genuinely puzzled.

‘Y’know ... a rose ... stuck in the middle of Ireland ... England.’

‘Nah,’ Paul replied, folding his rejection. ‘That was rejected ‘cause it looks like a dog’s turd on a butcher’s floor.’

 

TWO

i

Paul had heard the single shot of the letter box at the first post, but he didn’t move. He’d been lying awake half an hour beforehand, his pillowed head staring up, listening.

Outside it mizzled an early morning on flat shiny slates while I lay asleep beside him, bare-legged and undisturbed, as downstairs my Granny moaned towards the toilet. Soon the kettle switch would flick on and its slow boil would bring another day in her house slowly into shape.

All that week we were waiting on word back from Hastings Art College, and, each day I phoned, the secretary refused to be drawn on our acceptance or rejection. She couldn’t say, but every day her near-familiar English voice promised something first thing in the post. Hastings was the last college on our form. Our art teacher told us to be hopeful: we spoke of nothing else.

 

* * *

 

These nights in my Granny’s were spent in fits of inflamed, manic hope; a weighing up of ifs and buts and yesses and nos. When I even went as far as
mentioning women, my brother’s angry pessimism acted as antidote. Late that night he sat, armchaired across from me, his face motionless. I’d annoyed him by asking again.

‘D’ya think we’ll get in?’ He was as sick of answering this question as I was as sick of asking it. ‘Paul?’ He didn’t answer. My Granny’s fire was overheating, making the room even smaller. ‘Paul?’

‘Har do I know!’ His eyes bulleted mine. I shrugged my shoulders and tried to sniff off the shame gathering about my face, but he sprang forward on his chair.

‘Luk! If they wer acceptin’ us, we’d’ve got word by nigh. We’re nat gettin’ in!  Stop goin’ on about it.’

‘But ... but yer woman said that–’

‘She tells ye that everyday t’get rid of ye! For Jeziz sakes yiv bin phonin’ her ivry day, twice!’

‘Okay.’

‘An’ anywey, if they thought me an’ you were any good, they’d’ve snapped us up like that.’ Paul clicked his fingers to a full stop. I slumped down in the chair, visibly going red.

‘Oh Jezizz …’

‘If any thing comes for us the marra, it’ill be a rejection.’

And then, in all finality, he felt obliged to nail the point even further, ‘We-are-nat-goin’-to-Hastings.’

‘But everybody thinks we’re goin’!’ As I said this I realised it. ‘Wada wa gonna do!’

Paul blurted out his reply in an angry, cartoon voice. ‘Well, y’shudn’t’ve toul everybody y’were goin’ t’Hasteengs.’

I watched him in silence, his face sweating bitterness. I hated his uninvolvement in the urgency of this. Hastings was our last chance. He drank the last of his tea and gathered his things for bed.

‘Face it, we’re goin’ nowhere.’ And with this he left me sitting there alone, brooding on the sound of my pulse. When I heard his feet making a statement of each stair, I yelled, ‘WHY?’ My eyes bullfrogging at the closed door.

Later in bed we played a tape and changed the subject. Cold from the truce I said goodnight and turned away from him, his back millimetres from mine. Eyes closed, breathing measured, I imagined the acceptance; delight at its casually being tossed in. Falling in slow motion, slight as a hair’s breadth but hitting the mat, heavy as a last reprieve. And it would wait there till morning, undiscovered, folded in three, its black ink and perfect corners proving Paul wrong. Our lives would change.

 

* * *

 

Once again we got up to no news: there was nothing there. We’d slept late. The second post had come and the home help had mopped the hall clean. The day would be ordinary and endless now. Knowing this, Paul stood at the front door and wrestled into his coat. Fixing his collar, he thumbed in at my Granny’s sleeping form.

‘Ask her if anythin’s came for iz.’

I hesitated then quietly approached. She was toothless. Her fuzzy head was propped high to one side of the chair – her whole face was hanging. Crude noise came and went in chorus from her lips, blowing in and out with every breath. Outside a teenage ball thudded our gate as a goalpost.

‘Granny ... Granny?’ I shook her to answer

‘Who ar yu!’ She yelled, with all of the familiar distaste she would use to someone she did know and despised.

‘It’s OK. It’s me. Did any letters cum for us?’

‘I can’t hear ye!’

‘Did-any-letters-cum-for-us?’

‘Eh!’

‘Did any letterz cum for iz!’

‘Eh!’ She was pretending.

‘Did any let–’

‘DID ANY BLUDY LETTERZ CUM!’ Paul’s head shot in through the door; the volume, the anger shocked her.

‘AYE! AYE! Big mouth!’ My Granny roared even louder, then settled into a quiver. ‘Y’headcase! Over ther! Over ther!’ She jabbed at the pile of envelopes on the window sill, her lip curling to a snarl. She turned to me, ‘Don’t bring him back!’ Paul handed me the pile – all were addressed to her. They both locked stares until he took the letters over to confront her.

‘Luk! These are all fir you.’ His voice was tight with rage. He held them under her nose as evidence. ‘There nat fir us! Ther fir you!’ He poked his finger at her face. ‘Nat us! You!’

‘Aye, em letterz fir me ... aye.’ She was nodding defiance now in a quietened assured tone.

‘But he didn’t ask ye about yoor letterz, he ask’d ye about ar letterz. If he want’d t’know about yoor letterz–’

‘D’HELL D’I NO ABOUT YER BLUDY LETTERZ!’ He jumped back as her face flashed
forward, agitated and animated. ‘GIT YER LETTERZ ‘ROUN IN YIR MA’S! NAT MINE!’ Her voice broke in spite. It was too early for a scene, but when she saw him leave, she turned to me for the last word. ‘He’s a cheeky Basterd that!’

He was halfway down the street when I caught up with him, leaning against a wall and grinning as if he wasn’t involved at all in what had just happened. When I came closer he declared, ‘That woman’s an oul wanker!’ I laughed it off and agreed; walked fast and felt sure that the neighbours, once again, had heard every word. Before we turned the corner a gate slammed and an unmistakable shrill din arose from the other end of the street.

‘Hey youse! Boyz! Hey! Cum back!’ It was her. ‘Hey! Stop!’ We thought she had come out for more. She was out in the middle of the road waving something in the air, side to side, ‘Cum back!’ Paul rushed to the immediacy of the matter and snatched from her hand an envelope addressed to us. I watched him in miniature not say thanks, his walk back quickening as he read. By the time he came into focus, something had changed – he was all excited despite her insults ringing behind him.

‘Well?’ I held out my hand.

‘Well … wa?’ He pretended and walked on, then passed it to me behind. It was still warm, opened and wrinkled by mistake, but was Sussex postmarked and dated today. The whole street fizzled to a haze around the edges of the letter; dog shit and fag butts seemed achingly familiar – my eye hurdling up and down the black and white lines in search of an answer, until everything disappeared at the phrase, ‘We are pleased ...’