Freckles(7)

He worked in Limerick Monday to Friday while I was at boarding school and I would catch a train to Limerick on a Friday evening. He’d collect me from the station and drive us home to Knightstown, Valentia Island together. It should have taken three hours to get home but took dangerously less with him behind the wheel, a speed limit being just another way for the government to control us. As soon as I saw home on Friday night, that moment when the bridge from Portmagee brought us from the mainland to the island, that’s when I felt peace envelop me. I was as excited, if not more, to be home than to see Pops. It’s home, isn’t it. The seemingly invisible things that go right to your soul. The feel of my bed, the pillow just right, the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall, the way a patch on the wall looks at a certain time of day when the light catches it. When you’re happy, even the things you hate can become the things you love. Pops playing Classic FM too loud. The smell of burned toast, until you have to eat the burned toast. The way the boiler roared every time the tap was running. The sliding of the shower curtain rings against the rail. The sheep in the field behind us on Nessie’s farm. The crackle of the coal in the fire. The sound of his shovel scraping the concrete in the coal shed out the back. The tap tap tap, three times, always three, against his boiled egg. Sometimes I ache for home. Not here by the sea when I’m reminded of it, mostly I ache when I see nothing around me that reminds me of it at all.

Apart from the yellows of the sand and island I see another familiar yellow. The canary yellow Ferrari is parked outside number eight James’s Terrace. I’m guessing in advance that there’s no paid parking disc in the windscreen, as there hasn’t been for two weeks running. I check all the cars leading up to it but I can’t really concentrate. I need to get to the yellow car before someone gets in it and drives away, before I get to issue the ticket. I’d feel cheated. I give up on the other cars and go straight for the yellow sports car.

No disc in the windscreen. No ticket either. I scan the registration. No online parking paid. It’s the second week the car has been parked here, in the same place, more or less, and I’ve given it a ticket every single day. Each fine has cost the owner forty euro, which increases by fifty per cent after twenty-eight days and if it’s not paid a further twenty-eight days later then court proceedings are initiated. Forty euro every day for two weeks isn’t cheap. It’s practically my month’s rent. I don’t feel bad for the owner. I feel angry. Agitated. Like I’m being deliberately mocked.

Whoever drives this car must be a wanker anyway. He’d have to be. A yellow Ferrari. Or it could be a woman. One who leaned in a little too fucking much, fell over and banged her head. I issue the ticket, bag it, and tuck it beneath the windscreen wiper.

For lunch I sit on the bench down the lane behind the tennis club and scout club overlooking the sea. The tide is out and the muddy stones are revealed, a few plastic bottles, a trainer, a baby-soother peer up unnaturally from the slippery seaweed bed. But even in the ugly there’s pretty. I take out my lunch box from my backpack. Cheese sandwich on granary bread, a Granny Smith apple, a handful of walnuts and a flask of hot tea. More or less the same thing every day and always in the same place, if the weather is relatively good. During bad weather I stand under the protection of the public toilets’ roof. Rainy days are usually busier days, nobody wants to run to a pay-and-display machine and back to their car in the rain. Cars will pull into loading bays and double park, hazards on, to get in and out of the weather quicker. But my rule book is the same in all weathers.

Sometimes Paddy joins me for lunch. Paddy’s a parking warden too and we split the zones in this area between us. Paddy’s overweight, with psoriasis and flakes of dandruff all over his shoulders, and he doesn’t always hit the zones by the right times. I’m happy most days when he doesn’t arrive. He spends the entire time talking about food, how he prepared it, and cooked it, in painstaking detail. Maybe a true foodie would appreciate his conversation but it feels odd to hear about twenty-four-hour simmering and marinades when he’s scoffing an egg mayonnaise sandwich and cheese and onion Tayto crisps from the petrol station.

I hear someone curse loudly, and a car door slam. I look back and see yellow Ferrari fella reading his parking ticket. So that’s what he looks like. Surprisingly young. My cheese sandwich covers my mouth, hiding my smirk. I don’t usually enjoy this kind of thing, ticketing cars isn’t personal, it’s a duty, but the car being what it is and all that. He’s tall, skinny, man-child, in his twenties. Wearing a red cap. It looks like a MAGA cap but when I get a better look I see it has a Ferrari symbol. Even more of a wanker. He shoves the ticket in his pocket, his movements all huffy puffy, irritated and angry, and opens the car door.

I chuckle.

There’s no possible way he could have heard me, I was quiet, the cheese sandwich was my soundproofing, and we’re too far apart, separated by a road, but as though he senses he’s been watched, he looks around and sees me.

The sandwich feels like a brick in my mouth. I try to swallow it but remember too late that I haven’t chewed it yet. I choke, cough and look away from him to dislodge the food from my throat. Finally it loosens and I spit into a tissue but some crumbs are still left there, tickling. I wash it down with tea and when I look back at him, he’s still staring. He doesn’t look concerned, more like he was hoping he’d witness me choke to death. He glares at me, sits into the car, bangs the door and speeds off. The noise of the engine turns a few heads.