Vacancies

By David Gardiner

This story may be reproduced in whole or in part for any non-commercial purpose provided that authorship is acknowledged and credited. The copyright remains the property of the author

Her conscience eased by the self-imposed daily ritual of cleaning and dusting the empty rooms, Millie positioned herself in her favourite armchair in the lounge to watch an early evening soap opera. Although she watched several TV soaps on a fairly regular basis she never remembered the details of the plots or the characters' names, and could barely tell oneseries fro m another. It was for her a meditative exercise. Millie's thoughts drifted as she watched, her pleasure derived simply from immersion in a fantasy world where people had friends and visited one another and fell in and out of romantic entanglements and occasionally went down to the pub or had a screaming row in the middle of the road. The simple everyday things that she had wrongly assumed would always be there. One by one she had allowed them all to slip out of her life. Often she felt like a ghost, observing and feeding off the activities of the living.

The sharp chime of the front door bell invaded Millie's drowsy reverie andsent a l ittle ripple of excitement through her body. Alex! Alex is here! Standing up too abruptly and feeling a momentary dizziness she hurried to the hall. The sight of the tall straight figure through the frosted security glass produced the usual flicker of disappointment that it was not the return of her youngest son. She opened the door.

"Good evening, Sir."

He was gaunt, grey haired, sharp featured and quite formally dressed, somewhat past retirement age like herself, but elegant and well-groomed and he carried a small black briefcase. He made her think of doctors and professors and senior lawyers. His expression, although polite, was rather cold. She felt a very faint flicker of recognition, as though she might have seen him somewhere before, or someone rather like him. Probably her imagination, she decided. Beyond him she noticed that it had started to rain and that he had arrived in a large black car with British number plates, parked at the end of the driveway.

"Good evening," he began, enunciating his words very precisely in a faintly central European accent, "I saw the sign. I understand that you have rooms to rent, Mrs. ...?"

"Sullivan. Millie Sullivan. Indeed I have. It's not often I get people this late in the year. Won't you come in out of the rain, Sir, and I'll show you the rooms I've got."

Still clutching his briefcase he followed at a respectful distance as she made her way to what she still thought of as Kieran's room at the very top of the house. As she climbed the stairs she recited a familiar script. "The top room is small but it's very warm and there's a great view from the dormer window. You can see all the way to Bantry Bay when the weather's a bit better. It used to belong to my eldest son Kieran..." She explained how Kieran had married a girl from Wicklow and was a sergeant now in the Garda in Dublin. It didn't do any harm, she always felt, if you were going to be alone in the house with a strange man, no matter how old he was or how respectable he looked, to let him know that your eldest son was in the police force.

Working down from the top landing, she let him peek into the main bedroomwhere she and Liam had slept during their married years (before he had gone crazy with the drink and sloped off with that bitch from Mullingar, but she didn't tell him that bit) and finally her middle son Connor's room, which was just next to the toilet and quite spacious. She mentioned her youngest son Alexander but didn't show him Alex's room because that was no longer vacant. Alex, she explained, would be coming back any day now. "In fact I thought it might have been Alex at the door when you rang the bell, Mr. ...?"

"I have a foreign name that is difficult to pronounce. Please call me Nicholas, as my friends in England do."

It was the first thing he had said that might be interpreted as moderately friendly. "Very well. You must call me Millie." She motioned him into the lounge where she got him to sit down and explained to him about the nightly rates for the different rooms. Nursing the briefcase on his knee, Nicholas seemed vague about how long he wanted to stay but opted for Connor's room on the middle landing and paid for two nights in advance without prompting. She longed to cross-question her new guest, an urge she could seldom resist, but there was something reserved and distant about him that she knew she would need to overcome first. She invited him to take his luggage upstairs and settle in and come down for some tea when he was ready.

It was about an hour later that Millie at last got the chance to attempt the interrogation of her new guest while he sipped tea from a diminutive pink china cup and nibbled on a chocolate biscuit, the little briefcase still protectively perched on his knees.

"Are you visiting Cork on business, then?"

"On a family matter, Mrs... er, Millie."

"I didn't think it would be the fishing or the golf, wrong time of year. Have you got family in the county then?"

"A certain... connection, yes. Not a blood relative."

"I didn't think your family was from these parts. Somewhere in Europe,would it be?"

"My family originated in Russia, Mrs. ..., but we have lived in England for many years."

She could see that he was downright uncomfortable about calling her Millie and decided not to insist upon it. "Russia. Goodness now. We don't get many Russians in these parts. I can remember a Russian sailor once, but that was when I was a little girl, not long after the end of the War."

"Millie," he suddenly put down his cup and looked her straight in the eye, "you mentioned earlier that you were expecting the return of your youngest son. Might I be so impertinent as to ask where he has been?"

Her muscles stiffened slightly. Only a friendly question. What else could it be? Nothing to be nervous about. She put down her own cup which had begun to rattle a little on its saucer and forced a smile. "Alex? Oh, Alex has been away for many years, but he's kept in touch and now he tells me he's on the way home. He wasn't the... easiest of children when he was little. Not his fault of course... just, circumstances."

"Circumstances?"

Suddenly she seemed to have lost the initiative in the interrogation. "Yes. Circumstances. There was a big age gap between him and the other two. His father Liam used to have a very good job as an engineer with the telephone company and he lost it shortly after Alex was born. Then he started todrink t oo much... oh, I'm sorry, you aren't interested in all this."

"But I am. Very interested indeed, Millie. If you have no objection to telling it to me."

She shrugged. "Well, what is there to tell really? He got a bit depressed. Found somebody else's shoulder to cry on. Left me when Alex was eighteen months. I've never seen him or heard a word from him since. He let me have the house before he went though. Signed it over to my sole ownership. That was the only thing he had that was worth anything, so I suppose I didn't do any worse than lots of other women. And the two older boys were nearly grown up by then. They helped me to bring up Alex. They were fathers to him as well as brothers. I couldn't have done it without them. But... I don't know. Maybe a boy needs a proper father. Alex didn't... make good the way the other two did. He was always a bit of a tearaway. Nobody else in the family ever got into trouble with the law, only Alex."

"I see. And then he left home, I take it?"

"Well, they all did. Kieran went into the Guards and married Shona - they live in Dublin, Connor went to work as a draughtsman in an architect's office in Sligo, and married Ellen up there. Then Alex just... left..." She found herself at a loss for words.

"I'm sorry Millie. I should not be asking you about these things."

"Oh, not at all, Nicholas. Sure I love to have somebody to talk to. It gets deadly quiet here in the winter. Not even much good in the summer any more. You see this house used to be on the main road to Cork city... then they built the new straight one with all that European money. I've lost all my passing trade now. I'm on a road... that doesn't go anywhere any more..." She frowned at the image and took another sip of tea. "The boys are always telling me I should sell up and move nearer to one of them. Dublin or Sligo. Wasting my time here, they say. But I don't want to be a burden to them. They have their own families now. I can still make a little bit of money in the summer. I'm in all the brochures... And it's a base for Alex... When he comes home."

"Ah yes. When Alex comes home."

Millie found herself staring into Nicholas' grey unblinking eyes. There was something about him, something serious, intense. He knew more about her than he was saying, she was sure of it. "Did you find me in one of the tourist brochures?" she asked quietly.

"No Millie. I found you in a different way."

The atmosphere had changed. This was no longer a light friendly conversation. Millie felt uncomfortable. She found that she couldn't break eye-contact, like a rabbit caught in the headlight beam of a car. She waited for him to say something, but he didn't. "Are you... a reporter?" she asked at last.

"No, Millie. But I know about the trial."

Millie's eyes widened. "That was where I saw you, wasn't it? I knew I'd seen you somewhere. You were at Alex's trial."

He nodded. "A long time ago, wasn't it, Millie?"

"What do you want?" she whispered hoarsely. "Who are you?"

He paused for quite a long time and broke eye contact before he answered. "You were kind enough to tell me quite a lot about your life and background. Let me tell you a little bit about mine.

"My father fled the pogroms in central Russia shortly before the First World War. He should have waited. After the Bolshevik Revolution it would have been safe for him but he didn't know that. He started a business in the East End of London which became very successful. He employed a great many people. He paid them fair wages. He kept his business running through the Depression, he did not dismiss a single worker. During the Second WorldWar his company manufactured special clothing for the allied forces. He had a personal letter from Winston Churchill thanking him for his contribution to the war effort. My father's life was one unending struggle against bullies and Fascists. He was a great man and a genuine humanitarian. There is much more that I could tell you about him but that will suffice. Eighteen years ago, when he was more than ninety years old, he interrupted someone who was attempting to burgle his house. I think you know the rest, Millie."

She brushed a tear from her eye. "Dear God."

"Please Millie, don't be frightened. I have come here to learn and to understand, as my father would have done. Nothing more. I want to know what led your son to murder my father with a glass ornament. I want to see and to understand every step along that path. It is not the act of a single moment, it is the terrible final destination of a young man's journey through life. If you will not let me know these things then I can only hate, as I have hated for eighteen years. Sad and destructive years. I am not as good or as strong as my father, I can not stop myself from hating my tormentors. Only you, and perhaps your son, can release me from this hating."

She looked at him with wide moist eyes. "What is it you want to know?"

He thought for a moment. "More or less what you've already told me. But all of it this time. Tell me about Liam again. Why did he leave you?"

Her voice was softer now and she spoke slowly. "Liam got it into his head that Alex wasn't his own child. We almost never... slept together because we weren't getting on, and Liam thought it couldn't have been his. But he had... assaulted me when he was drunk and he couldn't even remember it. That was how Alex was conceived." Nicholas nodded. "Liam hated Alex. He wouldn't even use the child's name, he called the baby 'it'. He wanted me to get rid of Alex, to have him adopted or send him away to one of his aunties or... or..."

"Yes?"

"Once or twice he said he would kill Alex if I wouldn't get rid of him. I think he was serious. Liam was a sick man, he was drunk nearly all the time and he was losing his grip on reality. I was pleased when he took up with the Mullingar woman. It got him out of my life and I was able to keep the house. I had my three sons and I thought it was going to be all right."

"You say you thought it was going to be all right. Wasn't it?"

"No. Kieran and Connor turned on the baby as well. They blamed Alex for Liam's going away. They didn't say it, maybe they didn't even know, but I saw it. They were rough with him, unloving, full of bottled-up aggression. Not even bottled-up sometimes. They blamed him and they punished him for things that all children do... crying, wetting the bed, being sick... Alex wasn't a very strong child. He was sick a lot. They were almost grown men and he was only a baby. It was terrible to watch, and it was subtle, so that you couldn't even make them see the way they were treating him..."

She went to the dresser at the far side of the lounge and came back with a tissue for her face. "I tried everything I could think of to get them out of the house. Sent them away to college, looked for brides for them. I almost ended up hating them like they hated Alex, because I had to protect my baby. I got them out of the house in the end, both of them, but I think it wasn't soon enough. Alex was a very disturbed boy when he went to school. The teachers couldn't control him. All kinds of educational psychologists, it didn't make any difference. He was only happy when he was bullying somebody or breaking something or stealing or running away. I lost count of the number of times he ran away from home. When he was sixteen he ran one more time and I didn't follow him." Her voice faded to a whisper. "The next thing I heard about him, he was up on a murder charge in England. That's the whole story, so help me God."

Nicholas reached out and took her two hands. She looked up at him. "Thank you for telling me those things," he said. "But I still have this feeling, Millie, that there is more that you have not yet told me. If I am wrong I apologise. I believe that it would be the best thing for both of us if you were to tell me everything. For you just as much as for me, I think."

Her eyes widened in fear. "There are things so terrible that... maybe nobody should say them..."

"I have heard that said before, Millie. Don't talk about it. It is wrong to keep speaking of those things or to let them affect your life. Let us all be quiet and pretend that the past did not happen. As a european Jew I am very familiar with that argument. I do not agree with it."

She looked him straight in the eye. "You're right of course. I lied to Liam and I lied to the boys and just now I lied to you. But the truth is so dreadful I don't know if I can even bring myself to say the words."

"You are trying to admit to some great sin, some pitiful human weakness. I know that it is not easy to do that. Perhaps, if I admit to something first. I have also lied to you, Millie." He placed his little black briefcase on the table beside the cups and the teapot and withdrew from it an antique service revolver. "I told you that I had come here only to learn and to understand. The truth was that at that moment I had not made up my mind why I had come here. I would like you to take this from me. It is old and rather ridiculous like myself but it is also loaded and can be fired. Please put it somewhere safe for me until I leave."

Wide eyed and shaking she picked up the gun with two fingers, stared at it for a moment and put it down again. She had become deathly pale.

"I think it's your turn now, Millie," he said quietly.

She spoke in a monotone now, like someone in a trance. "I want to tell you about Kieran, my eldest son. I was very young when I had Kieran, barely eighteen. I was pregnant before I got married, and I don't think I have to tell you what that was like, in Ireland, back then... Liam did the proper thing, he married me as soon as he knew. But I don't know whether we were really in love or not. He was the only boy I'd ever kissed, pretty near. We weren't really very suitable for one another. But I was so excited about having Kieran, so bowled-over with this tiny beautiful perfect baby... it was Kieran I was in love with really, not Liam. And of course Connor came along not long afterwards and I loved him too... but I don't think it was ever really as special with Connor as it was with Kieran. It's hard for a mother to say that but it's the truth. Kieran grew up so quickly, and was so handsome... and he had such a lovely personality... we were more like brother and sister. I used to think he was older than me sometimes, wiser, more sensible... everything was a joke with Kieran. We used to muck about together, tickle one another, play silly games... We weren't like mother and son at all. Liam never said anything, but he didn't approve..." She bit her lip and was silent. She had said almost as much as she was able. Perhaps as much as was necessary. She knew that Nicholas was a very perceptive man.

"And one night, when you were both very drunk perhaps... it went too far."

She nodded. With the simple gesture a great weight seemed to be lifted from her body. "Nothing was ever said of course, by anybody," she whispered. "I don't even know if Kieran remembered it happening. But Liam wasn't a fool. He knew that... something had happened. Probably because after that, I stopped all the silly... messing around with Kieran. Liam started drinking then. I think he came close to losing his mind."

Nicholas took her hands gently once again. "Thank you Millie. You are a very brave woman. The truth is more frightening than any loaded gun, is it not? After this night, we shall both breathe more easily."

They sat at opposite ends of the little table and looked at one another. Nicholas' expression softened almost to a smile.

The quiet moment was suddenly shattered by the peal of the doorbell. In unison they turned to look.

"Your son, Millie," Nicholas exclaimed enthusiastically, "your poor confused, hurt youngest son. Let us welcome him together!" He stood and turned to open the door.

But before he could reach it he was startled by the deafening blast of a gunshot behind him.

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