Freckles(27)

You’ll get used to it, he says, noticing my reaction. First batch exploded all over my clothes and bedsheets.

I feel a wash of relief. So that explains the smell from him. Maybe he’s okay after all. My worries get lost in a beer fog.

Good to have you home, love.

Good to be home, Pops.

We sit together, occasionally a gentle chat, but mostly in peaceful and comfortable silence, watching the sunset, and much later into the night watching the stars, until the two buckets are gone and I haven’t a worry in the world.

I wake during the night to banging. Pops is in the music room, in his baggy boxer shorts and a white vest. He’s leaning over the opened piano, as if studying the engine of a car.

Pops, what are you doing.

They’re in here.

What are.

The mice. He presses down on a key over and over again, the same one.

He’s not joking. I feel like I’m at a tea party with the Mad Hatter, only it’s nothing I wished it would be. It’s real for a start. And it’s Pops. Nonsensical mutterings. I wonder if he’s even awake, or if he’s sleepwalking. He has a dazed, sleepy look about him as though he’s not really here.

Pops, just go back to bed. It’s late. We can look into it in the morning. Call pest control.

I can hear them scrambling, he mutters, then wanders back to his room.

As soon as I wake, which is 10 a.m., I rise and leave the house in search of food. Despite my light shop yesterday the fridge is empty of a suitable breakfast and I’m hungry. My head is pounding, not from the hunger, but from the bad home-brewed lager and lack of sleep. I was awake for hours after Pops’ night-time escapade and somehow succeeded in eventually falling asleep to birdsong. Usually I’d take Pops’ car, but I can’t on account of the ratinfestation story. I’m tempted to try to start the car anyway, to see if it’s true, but I don’t want to risk it. My second mission is to visit Gerry and question him about the car and the rats. Detective Freckles. If Pops has concocted that, I really do have a problem on my hands.

Pops has always been exciting and dramatic. Eccentric is perhaps the word. He doesn’t measure himself against anybody else’s behaviour or expectation, and that’s good, he has always been free to think independently, uniquely, I think interestingly, and share it without embarrassment. But this behaviour is different. Rats in the engine, mice in the piano is not a new interesting theory, it’s muddled nonsense.

Our house is a ten-minute walk from Main Street and the morning is bright but foggy, the mist hanging over the island. It will lift, like a magician’s silk hanky, the beauty of the island will be revealed in one great ta-da. The air is light and it makes me wetter than I thought. Soft rain, we call it. I don’t mind, I like walking in the rain, this kind of invisible rain, it’s always made me feel free. It cools my pounding head, sizzles the frying brain, even though it frizzes my hair.

There’s already a line of cars at the port awaiting the ferry which is returning to shore, probably the first outing of the day, and it’s already filled with cars. Tourist season. Every business person’s favourite time of year. The island is busy for the Easter weekend and outside the Royal Valentia Hotel preparations are underway for a Hardman half-marathon and 10k run.

I purchase enough food at the foodstore for today and tomorrow’s Easter Sunday dinner. We’re not religious but we like to eat and support any occasion that is marked with food. Pops has purchased the lamb directly from Nessie, the farmer who lives behind us, and I wonder if that’s where his dear little lamb friend disappeared to. If there was a lamb at all. Shopping totes in hand, I continue the short walk to Gerry’s garage. Problem is, his business is at his home, where his daughter Marion lives. Marion who has recently opened a hair salon and gotten pregnant by my ex-boyfriend and first love. I’d rather stay away from her, but I need to see about Pops and, with a bit of luck, I won’t encounter her.

I walk up the driveway. House to the right, business to the left. Cars in various states of life parked up, some rusted and without wheels that look like they’re there for the long haul. You wouldn’t know Gerry has money; he acts and talks like he couldn’t pay attention, but Pops always says he’s so tight he’d peel an orange in his pocket. Everything looks the same; it’s the same house I played at most days growing up. Where I had sleepovers. Marion and I loved having adventures around the cars. Ducking low, weaving in and out with walkie-talkies on a new adventure, sitting behind the steering wheels in imaginary high-speed car chases, tumbling across the bonnets as we’re struck. There’s probably even a few of the same cars we played in, still not crushed. All’s the same apart from the sign out front – Marion’s hair salon. She did it. Her dream.

I avoid the house and make my way to the barn that’s the garage. Two little Westies come down to meet me. Ham and Cheese or Peanut-Butter and Jelly or something like that. They don’t remember me either and yap at my heels, whacking their heads against my swinging bags as they try to jump up on me. The garage shutters are down, which is disappointing. I should have known he wouldn’t work over an Easter break.

I see a figure at the downstairs window of Marion’s house. Shite I’ve been spotted. I turn around and meander through the rusted cars towards the exit, dogs yapping giving me away.

Allegra Bird, is that you, I hear Marion’s voice and I want to settle in the soil and die like the rust-bucket cars. Lay down my roots, give up, and not have to face her. In truth I stopped loving Jamie long before I left to go to the other island, if it was really love at all, but I still hate her and him right now for even daring.