The Worry

I was in Boyd’s Stores watching someone receive good news on their phone when Leventhal parked up beside me with news of Gerry Purcell’s death.  I could only say I did not know the man.  Neither did Leventhal as it turned out.

I encountered him only twice before he passed and only in passing, he said.  But you couldn’t miss him.

How did it happen?

The worry got him in the end. 

Here I knew Leventhal to be relaying truth – for I had also seen Gerry Purcell bumbling through the town.  Manys a time.  You couldn’t miss him.  Always a bale of nerves.

Enid, the sister, is in the house now with her son, continued Leventhal.  She means to redo the insides of that old place and she knows of your considerable skill with the brush, your work on the benches at St Helena’s Park, and of course that lick you gave the portable potties out Blackrock way.  She wants a taste of those vibrant colours.

Like the loos?

No, just the colours you’re known for.

Known for?  Sure I’ve no claim to them.  Aren’t they in the public domain?

Anyway, you should give her a bell.  Should be a bob or two in it.  Be warned though.  She’s a worrier too.

Sure aren’t we all these days!

Worry plagued the whole town generally but some families suffered worse.  Some went to levels of paralysis with it.  Fortunately for me, I came from a family of only moderate worriers so I was able to go about my business freely without others fretting about me.  I could cope.  Others couldn’t.  And those were the ones you had to worry about.

 

                                                                                *

 

The street was lined with giant skips.  Four of them by my count.  And all of them empty.  The people living there were wealthy enough to keep them, eccentric enough to flaunt them so, and lazy enough not to fill them.  The houses the skips lay next to were far from rundown.  These semi-detached homes were known to be the handsomest, and the cleanest, with cream brick at the front and their pebbly top halves done a strong yellow.  I wasn’t alone in fancying one.  As I’d surmised, there was a skip outside the Purcell house, number 48.  When she answered the door, Enid Purcell scuttled past me and checked the skip.  Seeing it was empty, she expressed some relief, and I figured she had been regularly keeping an eye out in case anyone was slyly employing it as their secret disposal unit.  Enid Purcell was in her late sixties.  She was so tiny you could have folded her up and put her in a matchbox and left that matchbox on a bar and not even the most craving and unscrupulous smoker in the world would have been able to see it in order to swipe it.

It was just the living room she wanted done and happily she had the place emptied for me and ready to go when I entered.  In the room, newspapers were spread about the floor and an old duvet covered the settee.  Tall shelves and a table and the TV and a stack of picture frames occupied the hallway.   

Did you lift these all by yourself? I asked her.

Yes, she said, mournfully. 

Rarely was a client so prepared for my arrival.  I appreciated the gesture.  She gave me a cup of tea almost as soon as I was in the door.  Even though she appeared indifferent, beset with worry about something, I appreciated that gesture too.  When it was time for business, she held up a Lenor bottle in the living room and said, Could you paint it the colour of this?  The bottle was light blue with clouds.

                Coral?

                Yes.

                Do you want some clouds too?

                Ah now, I don’t want it looking like the whole bottle.  Just the blue will do.

                Well, you’re in luck.  I have just the tin.

                Great.  I heard you were a man of many.

I started the painting about eleven.  About twelve, the stairs rumbled and into the room crashed the son, Austin, puzzlement on his face as if he hadn’t been told I’d be round.  Enid came from the kitchen to calm him down thanks be to God as I was in no fit state for dialogue being near-vertical at the top of the stepladder like it was the Sistine I was working on.  But I was able to make him out from my awkward perch: a strange young man, foppish, and sort of corrupted-looking.  I imagined one of those sobby guitar bands had recently fired him and he’d been hanging out of his poor mother’s hair ever since.  Regardless, there was no demand for dialogue.  For he issued just a cough.  And some grunts, turned up and overegged as if meant to unnerve, specifically, me. 

Go out to the kitchen and let the man do his job, said Enid.  There’s sausages in the oven, tea in the pot.

                Later, when Austin left, Enid invited me to the kitchen for a tea break.  It was a really good cup of tea.  She told me a number of things about her life.  That she missed her older brother.  That she loved Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies.  That she had been out of the country more than once in her life, living not holidaying.  She also told me Austin’s father was a famous Spanish author but when I pushed for the name of the author she refused to hand it over citing poor pronunciation of foreign words as an excuse.  And then the worrying started.

                I’m concerned about the boy, she said.  He’s in his thirties and still here.  I don’t know where he will go.

                He’ll have this place, won’t he?

                Perhaps.  He may accrue it by dint of legacy, as I have, but it’s no life for a young man of his age.  No wife.  Not a bit to be seen on any side.

                Where does he go each day?  Does he work?

                I don’t know.  He doesn’t seem to do anything.  He does nothing here.  He goes out.  But I don’t know where he goes.  Oh, I worry so.    

                To be fair, it’s kind of odd, I said.

                And if the world wasn’t damned enough, I have to deal with this, growled Enid.  I just buried my older brother.  God is dead.  And he’ll die again.  Laughing next time.  Sorry for bringing you into this.

                It’s okay.  No worries.

                You seem like a well-adjusted person, especially for this town.

                Yap.  Life isn’t so bad for me to be honest.

                It’s well for you, she said.  Having no worries.

                Now . . . I wouldn’t say no worries entirely.  I’d say I’m just . . . chill.

                You don’t worry about the world?

                What can I do about it?

                You sound like my son.

                I’m not a bit like him, I replied.

                You just sound like him, that’s all.

                Okay.  I’ll say it.  I fret about the paint.  The fumes.  Those toxins.  What it might be doing to me in the way of health.  I spend most of my days soaked in it.  You know.  It’s a fear.

                That’s an understandable one.

                On top of that, and what is worst of all, I worry about the bills.  This is not a stable living I have.  I know that.  And I fear . . .

                Spill it, she said.

                That I will never own a house like this.

                That’s all?

                You don’t understand.

                I apologise.  Are you homeless?

                I am not. 

                Then what’s there to worry about?

                Everything!

Then I went quiet.  I realised I had gone too far.  As soon as she said spill it, I went ahead and did so, foolishly.  I’ve never been able to control myself when someone calls for me to spill it. 

We finished our tea.  And I returned to painting the living room.  I was less focused than normal so the job eventually took me an additional hour. 

                Grassy ass, said Enid, when I was done.

After returning my gear to the van, I took the newspapers off the floor and the now-spattered duvet and other detritus and threw it all into the skip outside the house.  Enid asked me to throw the TV in there too because she couldn’t be dealing with the thing anymore.  She handed me a 50 euro note and I thanked her and we both said Good-bye. 

Seconds later, there was a great flash in the sky.  You’d think it was fireworks.  But it wasn’t.  For all around there was silence.  Even though it felt like the sun was exploding.  Then there was noise.  Alarms.  Going off everywhere.    

The phone in my pocket started ringing.  I refused to answer it.   I assumed it was not good news. 

I got into the van and drove off.  I had other things to be worrying about.   

 

 

 

 

Image: Wikimedia Commons