Chapter 13: Lugh and I

Next morning a major domestic storm blew up. It was the first for more than a year during which time we had accumulated a number of niggles that needed airing. Dragging down Humphrey, the subsequent trial and the birth of Con contributed to a huge shift in the relationship between Emer and me, but we hadn’t changed as individuals. I was still somewhat detached with a marked tendency to drop out of conversations while I rummaged around in my mind after philosophical impracticalities; Emer took refuge in being the imperious managing director, arrogantly disregarding the feelings of the rest of us while she sought to get her own way.

We were a little more forgiving of each other now we knew that there was real love and commitment behind those facades but the residue of irritation still remained. Perhaps the biggest difference was the rapid rise of a third participant in our domestic lives. Before we threw away the pills, Aine was a rather bewildered spectator to the squabbles between her mother and me; her contribution was to moderate the language we employed to express our dissatisfaction. Now she is more of a young woman than a girl, she has very definite views and no inhibitions about expressing them.

After his long car journey, Con had slept through the night, so I was able to sleep until the alarm roused me. Emer had been sound asleep when I eventually got to bed at almost three in the morning, barely stirring when I slid in beside her. She knew nothing of the phone call with Eric and Elaine and she was still angry with me when I brought her morning tea before I handed our son to her. I was only half-awake, and that half was concentrating on the day ahead rather than the night just past.

“Eric called after you went to bed,” I began, before she told me that she didn’t want to know. “What you did was cruel and stupid, and you deserve all that’s coming to you,” she added.

I might have rescued the situation by reporting the thanks I received from both her brother and his wife but Aine yelled from the kitchen, so I simply shrugged and went to see to my daughter. She was in a foul mood, sitting at the breakfast bar waiting for me to bring food to her, proving that she can still be a helpless child when it suits her.

“Mum still on your case about her little brother?” she remarked, with an unbecoming sneer as I loaded the toaster, poured cereal into a bowl and filled a glass with orange juice, while she sat and smirked.

In the past she would have given me a hug or told me she loved me but now she told me I had forgotten to get the milk from the fridge and that the toast was burnt. Breakfast finished, she went to her room without a word, appearing ten minutes later to tell me that we had to leave ‘Right now!’ She didn’t thank me for feeding her but then her mother hadn’t thanked me for taking tea to her in bed. She went to say goodbye to Emer and Con while I went and got the car warmed up.

“That was pretty stupid, what you said to Uncle Eric,” she commented as I pulled away on the school run.

“It was even more stupid to let my thirteen-year-old daughter complain at the breakfast service she received.”

In an instant she went from being merely petulant to angrily outraged.

“So, it’s too much trouble to make sure your only daughter has a good breakfast. You do little enough for me as it is but if you want me to get my own food in future that will be fine. Mum was doing great until you made her brother look silly in front of his wife. I don’t know why either of us put up with you.”

I had stopped in the line of cars waiting to reach the drop-off point but Aine didn’t delay. She was out the door, flinging it shut behind her, before I could respond. I drove on to the warehouse where Bert was waiting for me with a worried expression. I told him that I’d talk to him later and rushed into my office where the rest of the staff trapped me. It was clearly going to be a difficult day, and I had less than four hours’ sleep to prepare me for it.

By lunchtime all the problems had been resolved and I found a few moments to indulge in self-pity. Nothing of much importance had gone wrong but I was left with a feeling that the trivial affairs of others were filling my time beyond my capacity to cope. Emer had called before I arrived to say she wouldn’t be coming in, but she had added that I was in a bad mood and the staff should be wary of me. When I finally got back to Bert he was sulking and wouldn’t tell me what was troubling him.

There is always a little flurry of problems following a holiday weekend I reflected, as I sat in my office at about three o’clock with everything running smoothly. I am reasonably competent at running the business and I don’t mind that the people who work for us bring their problems to me; even minor problems can grow out of control if they are not dealt with promptly. It would be nice, though, if someone showed appreciation of my efforts once in a while.

Emer didn’t call and I was tempted to ring Eric to ask if he had explained things to his sister. I got a lot of friendly smiles from the office girls when they left and that cheered me, but I lingered at my desk in no particular rush to confront either my wife or daughter. I was indignant: I’ve spent my entire adult life letting people make up their own minds about their future and now I’m in trouble because I have been forced to become involved. The old me would have given Eric an anodyne reply and left him to his own thoughts.

What am I getting out of my new role? If Danu wants me to be her agent, she had better think of some way to repay me. According to Ruth, it might be Lugh, another antique god who is calling the shots, but I know less about him than I do about the old fertility goddess. I sat at my desk long after the girls had gone home feeling sorry for myself. A great deal has happened in the past twenty-four hours and too few of them have been spent sleeping.

I was hungry and it was becoming difficult to keep my eyes open in the silence around me, so I braved the wrath of my women-folk and reluctantly went through the warehouse to the car park at the back of the unit. Bert wasn’t in the storage area or his office but the wicket in the loading doors was unlocked. That enabled me to indulge in a total loss of temper: Bert had sulked when I didn’t talk on my way in but that was no excuse for leaving the premises open and unguarded.

Fortunately, I didn’t say out loud any of the things I was thinking. Bert was sitting on the edge of the loading ramp just outside the door looking disconsolate. It quickly became apparent that he was not sulking but had instead a problem that had nothing to do with his job. He badly wanted my advice but as a friend not an employer; he felt that he couldn’t intrude on me during working hours, so he had waited to catch me as I left the building.

“Technically, the car park is still part of the warehouse, I know, but I thought you might stretch a point for old-time’s sake,” he confided.

My anger was instantly redirected to myself. Bert has been my staunchest supporter since I joined the company as a driver, and he has become a loyal friend in the years since then. In all that time he has never intruded his personal life, nor has he presumed in any way on our friendship. I was thoroughly ashamed of myself for letting a bad day cloud my recognition of the duty I owed this unassuming man. He and I both forget that he is the grandfather of my daughter Aine.

I sat beside him on the loading ramp and listened while he told me of the recently divorced lady who had invited him to a charity coffee morning in her home. Bert fetches the milk every day and other domestic supplies for the office when required; in practice, he makes a trip to the local convenience store every day for filled rolls and doughnuts. The divorced lady does the same for another company and she regularly chats to Bert. He was sympathetic when she was going through the trauma of the divorce and now, she has invited him to her home; he wants me to tell him what to do.

It soon became clear that Bert was still living in the shadow of his former school friend Humphrey. He was the one who charmed the girls giving Bert a few crumbs from his laden plate. Bert is convinced that he is unattractive to women, and he is suspicious of the motives of the divorced lady. He freely admitted that he likes her, and he acknowledged that she liked him – ‘But not in that way’, he insisted.

“You enjoy chatting to her so go along, drink her coffee and expect nothing more. She’ll have other friends there and one of them might be a man, for all we know. At the very worst you will have a morning in company you enjoy and who knows what might happen as a result.”

He went off then, rehearsing opening and closing speeches. It was some time before I heard the details of the charity coffee morning, but we all noticed the improvement in Bert’s mood long before he admitted to seeing someone.

After he had gone, I sat on the ramp and reviewed my assessment of the day: I was wrong about Bert, and I began to think I could be wrong about Emer and Aine. It was clear that they wanted me to be involved in their lives as I had been since the denunciation of Humphrey. On the other hand, it was perfectly reasonable of them to demand that I play my new part to the very best of my ability. My early attempts at leadership had not worked out badly but there was much room for improvement and who better than my wife and daughter to steer me in the right direction?

I’m still clinging to the hope that my involvement is temporary and that I will be able to retire back into myself sometime soon. Even as I assimilated that thought, I could see the fundamental flaw in it: now everyone, including me, knows my capabilities. I must admit that I’m enjoying my new life much more than the way I lived before Humphrey targeted my little daughter. I like the open displays of affection that extend beyond my immediate family: even the smiles of the girls at work are new and surprisingly welcome. In the past they would probably have ignored me, and they certainly wouldn’t have dreamt of asking me for advice. It slowly dawned on me that friendly smiles are a very effective way of expressing thanks and appreciation for my efforts – snuggling with Emer is much more rewarding than a patronising ‘Well done’.

I called to warn home of my imminent arrival after Bert left me. Dinner was on the table, but I ate alone while Emer gave Con his bath and Aine completed her homework. I went upstairs to watch my baby son being settled for the night; his mother and I shared a chaste embrace as we watched him snuggle in. Her head resting on my shoulder spoke clearly of the pride we shared in this everyday miracle, even now carving out an independent life for himself.

It will be many years before he stands on his own without our support, but we were reminded of how quickly that can happen when our daughter joined us. It hardly seems thirteen days since Aine was a helpless infant rather than thirteen years. I remembered her outburst on the way to school and drew her into the embrace between her Mum and me. Con demands what he wants without hesitation or reservation, but Aine is consciously trying to be independent of her parents and is finding it difficult to acknowledge her continuing need for help.

Giving me a tongue-lashing on the way to school shows not only that she has a problem she can’t solve but also that she has a father who has failed to anticipate it. It was so much simpler when she could burst into tears and climb up on my knee where she could whisper all her troubles in my ear, confident in the knowledge that her Daddy could do anything. If I’m no longer infallible, I am still high on the list of people she will turn to in a crisis, and that is a great consolation.

When we left the bedroom, I tried to prepare for a chat with Aine although my head seemed to be full of wool as I fought the urge to sleep. She gave me the opening I wanted by hugging me and apologising for her behaviour. I was about to speak when she put her little hand over my mouth.

“Mummy and me talked it over before you got home and it’s all Ok now.”

“I’ll tell you later - if you’re still awake,” Emer added, hugging me on the other side. “What you must do now is get to bed and catch up on the sleep you missed. Elaine and Ruth both called.”

“Did Ruth tell you that Lugh is after me now?”

“Who’s Lugh?”

“I hoped that you could tell me. All I know is that he’s another Celtic god straight out of the twilight zone. I’ll check the internet tomorrow.”

I went back into our bedroom and straight to bed - I don’t even remember brushing my teeth. I didn’t stir when Emer came to bed, but I woke at my usual time feeling refreshed although still puzzled. Mother and daughter went out of their way to treat me well at breakfast and I arrived at work content with life. I walked to the store with Bert to buy the morning doughnuts and was introduced to the smiling divorcee.

“Don’t give her up without a fight,” I advised Bert.

Emer brought Con into the office in the afternoon and told me Aine’s woes while our son, in the charge of his grandfather, was being feted by our staff and the girls in the unit where Bert’s friend worked. She has grandchildren of her own, but they are all living overseas so I think Con added to her growing fondness for Bert. Fortunately, Bobby returned at lunchtime from a trip, so the work didn’t stop completely.

Aine has just had a painful lesson. There is a boy in the class above hers who has taken her fancy; there seemed to her to be a spark of interest on his side, and she began to dream of talking to him. At thirteen it is one thing to be willing to chat and something entirely more difficult to begin a conversation. Any attempt at open communication initiated by Aine in front of her friends would result in her being considered a slut and him being forced to snub her. In my day, we would have exchanged sneaky notes, but the modern equivalent is to get hold of the target’s phone number.

The next step is to find an intermediary and in this case, providence provided one in the shape of Aine’s best friend forever, Beth. She lives next door to Wayne, the objective of the plot, and has ready private access to him. They had played together since crèche and had even promised undying devotion to each other at about the age of six.

The problem was that Aine’s interest in her former playmate prompted Beth to look at him in a new light. She kept my poor daughter hanging on for a week until finally admitting that she not only had his phone number all along but also that she was dating him. Her message to Aine was: ‘Hands off!’ The loss of the boy was heart-breaking, but the infamous behaviour of her best friend devastated my daughter.

Emer seems to have adopted a harsh approach to the loss of the boy and a much softer response to the loss of her untrustworthy friend.