PAY ME (part two)

THE NIGHT my father died in England, me and my brothers were ripped from sleep in that same room at a disorienting, early hour. I still remember the lightbulb’s harsh flare.

My brothers were summoned to the kitchen. I was left wee and cold among the thrown-back blankets, straining to catch snatches of the low agonised talk that had invaded the house. I heard “massive heart attack”, “bringing him home”, “coffin closed”.

They said I was too small to be at the funeral.

The house soured after that. My mother fell into a dark eclipse that let out neither brightness nor warmth. Thick shadows seemed to gradually fill the rooms, forcing expulsions. Seeing too much, saying too little, I endured a long, growing up wait until escape.

I administer two legacies now. A house that sits boarded up, awaiting sale, empty save for one back room, filled to bursting with oddments. I can never get around to its clearing.

And I have memories that have blended with imagination to take on, in their frequent revisiting, the surreal quality of recurrent dream.

In one such journey, I see myself creeping with coin in hand, moving clumsily in the dark around shrouded furniture to disinter my moneybox once more.

But when I press my penny down, up out of the black cloak comes a man’s face unsettlingly familiar and not unlike my own, and a grip I cannot resist seizes the hand that holds my offering and pulls me downwards into a deep and whispering dark.

My granny was right: “Sure, that oul’ thing’ll only scar’ the child.”