Free Hidden Symptoms by Deirdre Madden Page A

thought that Francis had been beaten; he was an absolute victim. She resented even the longevity of little old ladies with velveteen hats and bile-green knitting, who clung to the railings for support as they toddled up the road to mass and who, merely by staying alive, had in some way bested Francis. Francis was a failure; he had failed even to continue existing. Now they would have to live out the rest of their lives without him.

“Uncle Bobby?”
    â€œUncle Bobby?”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œWhat do you call a dwarf covered in cement?”
    â€œGive up.”
    â€œA wee hard man.” Tommy crowed with laughter and leapt across the sofa.
    â€œUncle Bobby?”
    â€œWhat, Tommy?”
    â€œWhat’s big an’ warm an’ furry an’ would look good on a Protestan’?”
    â€œA fur coat?”
    â€œNo, an Alsatian dog.”
    â€œTommy, you stop that,” scolded Rosie. “That’s not a nice joke, who told you that?”
    â€œDaddy.”
    â€œWell, it’s not nice. C’m on, feet off the sofa and out with ye; away out to the back scullery an’ play with yer worms.” Tommy stumped reluctantly out of the room and Rosie wearily drew her hand across her forehead. “God, yer up agin a brick wall tryin’ to bring them up right in this day an’ age, aren’t ye?”
    â€œYes, indeed,” said Robert with sincerity, although he thought that she could have simplified her task considerably by marrying someone other than Tom, Provo or Provo sympathizer or whatever the hell he was, the miserable get. Robert had once seen the butt of a gun sticking out from under a bed in the house, and every time there was an army raid Rosie smashed a few plates or cups and got edgy. Wouldn’t it be like the thing for them to lift Tom just when the baby was due? Wouldn’t that be a nice picnic? As he thought this, he heard the sinister whine of an army Saracen passing, and against this convenient noise he deliberately asked Rosie, “Do you ever — ah — worry about Tom?” She, with equal deliberation, chose to be evasive, by not associating the sound and the question.
    â€œWorry? Aye, he wants to be there when the baby comes and that worries me alright. He goes to these classes in the Royal and sees films about it and things, but he has no more notion than the cat, Robert.” The very thought of seeing a baby being born made Robert feel queasy. How could Tom countenance such a thing? God, but he hated him! He hated him for being so consistently cheerful and irresponsible and happy. He hated him for the way he was always trying to inveigle him, Robert, into talking politics, with his “British war machine” and his “revolutionary struggle” and his “imperialist oppression” and all his other clichés, and his unfailing way of concluding, “Amn’t I right, Bobby?” His arguing unnerved Robert as much as it annoyed him, for Tom was persuasive and articulate: in spite of his jargon, heknew what he was talking about. It did not matter whether Tom was right or wrong: what mattered was his blithe and total conviction that he was right, which Robert could counter only with ill-informed and badly thought-out arguments, made mainly for the sake of argument. The whole Northern Irish political issue wearied and bored him.
    He had met Tom by chance in the city the previous week and had been obliged, with great reluctance, to go for a drink with him, over which Tom had told him a story about an old woman named Eileen who lived in the same street as Rosie and himself.
    â€œLast week,” he said, “Eileen, she slipped an’ fell at her own front door. There was a foot patrol of Brits goin’ past and they stopped to give her a han’ an’ Eileen of course was effin’ an’ blindin’ an’ tryin’ to beat them off, the more they were tryin’ to help her,