Patrick Holloway
The Changing Light
You are at the kitchen window, peeling spuds. It is hard to curve the knife around the odd angles; the pits of dirt you hack away at. How quickly your mother’s hands worked. Her head stretched, shouting something, to be quiet, or to turn down the hob, while her hands moved swiftly, as accomplished as a pianist, with each spud thudding into a bucket.
You hear the floorboards creak and heavy steps on the stairs. You do not turn as the kitchen door opens.
‘What are you at?’ David asks, his voice still scratchy with sleep.
‘Potatoes.’
‘Jesus, don’t tell me you’re cooking.’
‘I thought I’d make a Sunday roast.’
‘Have you ever in your life made a Sunday roast?’
‘You know well I haven’t.’
‘Well, this should be a laugh.’
You turn round, your hands stop moving. David is going through your mother’s post. He has changed since you saw him last— a full, dark beard, buzzed haircut, and he fills his t-shirts now, his biceps bulge against the fabric. You turn back round and attack the spuds. He gets up and you move around each other in silence. He boils the kettle, makes two cups of Barry’s tea. You plop the potatoes into the boiling water, add salt, go to the cupboard and take the chocolate Digestives and sit down with him at the table.
You hold the biscuit in the tea just long enough for it to gain weight and pull it up quickly to your mouth. David does the same but waits too long and just as he opens his mouth the biscuit crumbles and falls, leaving specks of chocolate; flecks of tea on the table. You laugh a little and he rolls his eyes. You remember how he used to do that when your mum made exaggerated statements, how you’d smirk at each other, trying not to laugh. Looking at him now, it is strange to think of the love between you all these years, so sharp and steadfast for so long, and then, like the light now in winter, fading and harder to find. You realise that today is solstice.
‘Shortest day of the year today,’ you say.
‘Fucking feels like it, too.’
‘I don’t know, these days have felt like they have no end.’
The boiling water gushes over and hisses against the heat of the hob. You push your chair back quickly, go over and pull the pot to the side. You turn down the heat and put the pot back on the hob. You take a tray from the preheated oven and add vegetable oil and put it back in.
‘Going well so far,’ David says from the table and looks up at you.
‘I thought it’d be nice is all.’
He smiles, shyly. You sit back down, eat another biscuit and drink what’s left of the tea.
‘Remember mum started buying those Lidl tea bags for a while?’ You ask.
‘Horrible fucking things.’
You remember sitting at the very same table with your mother, dejected. You must have been fourteen, still awkward, still waiting to become, unsure of the words that filled your mouth. Sitting there with her, drinking tea and eating the Rocky Roads she’d make. She knew how to listen, when to talk. How beautiful the words were when they left her mouth, a new rhythm to them, and how she could make her voice go so thin, so soft, so that it was like she was whistling. When you were much younger you’d look up to the ceiling as if the words were all dancing up there, dancing to the sound of the other words. You don’t have to know who you are, she said, you don’t have to have the answers, and when you do, you don’t have to be afraid. Her hand on your hand, her finger tracing your fingers.
‘So,’ David says, ‘you must be feeling the cold.’
‘It’s baltic.’
‘Was it hot when you left?’
‘Thirty something.’
‘Fuck that, give me the cold any day.’
‘You should visit, might change your mind.’
He scoffs.
‘How’s college?’ You ask.
‘Boring as fuck.’
‘The course or…?’
‘Everything really, I wish I’d gone to Dublin.’
‘Cork isn’t so bad.’
‘Really? Why were you so quick to leave then?’
You get back up and take the pot from the hob and drain the potatoes. The steam fogs up the window and the outside world becomes a blur. You take the tray from the oven, and spoon the potatoes into the sizzling oil. You take the chicken from the fridge— its deadness makes you feel nauseous. It’s funny how different something looks when it’s dead, absurd even. You leave it on the island. You get the onions and peel away the scales. You cut it in half and slice. Your eyes start to water. David gets up and starts rooting through drawers until he finds some matches. He lights one and waves it in front of you. Both of you start laughing and for a second it’s as if nothing has changed.
‘Every time she’d do it,’ David says as he stands next to you with a knife, taking it to an onion, ‘waving matches round like a mad woman.’
‘To be honest, I think it works.’
You look at him and your eyes have stopped watering, from the smoke of the match or because of the memory of your mother, you don’t know. Together you finish cutting the onions.
‘Looks like you know what you’re doing.’
‘I was reading online all morning,’ you laugh.
You slice a lemon in half and force both halves into the chicken’s cavity.
‘Go easy on her!’ David says but when you look at him he is not laughing.
‘Crazy how dead she looked,’ David says, walking away from you and sitting at the table.
‘I know,’ you say, ‘I thought it might be because I hadn’t seen her in so long, that she’d changed or something while I was away.’
‘No, that wasn’t her you saw at all.’
You take two sprigs of thyme and push them in. The last time you spoke to her she was in a hurry to get to into town.
‘I don’t want to be getting the mad rush,’ she said, ‘and besides, I have your present to buy still.’
‘Don’t be worrying about me.’
‘I’m not worrying! But I’ve already picked it out, I think you’ll love it. I still can’t believe you’re coming home, last year didn’t feel like Christmas at all without you.’
‘I can’t wait.’
‘I’m up to ninety! The whole village knows of course. They keep asking me if you’ve a girlfriend. Would you ever tell people the truth for Christ’s sake, what about it! Have you told David yet?’
‘No, no, it’s not that easy mum.’
‘Well, you told me, didn’t you, and what did it change? Divil a bit!’
‘You’re different mum, I don’t know. But leave it with me, I will ok? And you can tell everyone else it’s none of their business.’
‘Ah, sure they mean no harm, come on now. Right, I better be off, see you in a week! Love you.’
‘You too!’
You put the chicken in the oven.
‘Do you fancy a drink?’ David asks.
You look at the large circular clock hanging above the door but it has told the wrong time since you arrived home.
‘Go on so,’ you say.
He comes back into the room with two tumblers and a bottle of Jameson.
‘Whiskey?’ You ask, again looking at the broken clock.
‘Yep.’
He walks over to the freezer and takes out ice, banging it hard on the counter. You hear the cubes rattle into the glasses. You take the potatoes out and shake them around.
‘Surely the spuds shouldn’t go in yet.’
‘I’m pre-cooking them.’
‘Very fancy,’ he says, as you put them back in and go to sit at the table with him.
‘Remind me to take them out at five past and don’t trust that clock!’
‘Five past, ok.’
You clink glasses and the whiskey is sharp.
‘Aunty Marie wants to come round later,’ you say.
‘Does she have to?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘Bitter old bitch isn’t she?’
‘She wouldn’t be my favourite.’
‘Always such a mean bitch to mum.’
You remember your mum crying after not being invited to her niece’s wedding, even though both you and David were. You can’t even remember the reason why. The silence from her, days afterwards. The times you’d walk into her bedroom and she’d turn her face, dabbing at her eyes with the end of her sleeve.
‘Yeah, she was. I’ll tell her we’re busy.’
‘Good.’
The smell of whiskey reminds you of ice cream. You close your eyes and wonder why and then it comes to you, not the visual, just a feeling, a hazy remembering of you and David eating chocolate ice cream, him from a cone and you from the tub, with your mother in the arm chair having a whisky with lots of ice.
‘Remember you told me ice cream cones were poisonous?’
‘Only so you’d give them to me.’
‘Yeah.’
‘But then you started getting tubs. Backfired.’
You laugh and think of all the things you should both be talking about. All the things that make you need your mother’s help. It has been like that the last week, every time you’ve had to make a decision you think, I’ll check with mum, but then you remembered it was her coffin you had to choose, the psalms were to be read for her, the organising of the afters, what was to be put in the local newspaper, the payment for the plot in the graveyard, it was all for her.
The smell of the chicken makes it hard to believe she is dead. For it was hers, that was the smell of Sundays, that was the smell of the Golden Oldies being played on 96FM, the smell of her hair tied up tight in a bun, her humming, the sounds of pots plinking and cupboards closing, and her forearm wiping at her face, and her voice, Open the door will you, it’s roasting in here. You turn around and the very absence of her is enough to floor you.
‘You alright?’ David asks.
‘I wish I’d come back more.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘Afraid, I suppose?’
‘Afraid? Of what, flying?’
You turn to him. He is smiling but it looks more like a cry. You pour more Jameson and drink it down in one.
‘Steady on,’ he says but takes the bottle and pours himself another.
‘I guess, I was just… I don’t know.’
He doesn’t say anything. You think of all the times you fought with him, the objects thrown, nasty words spat. The silences you let grow because you were afraid to talk, to betray yourself in some acute intonation. He looks lost, now, at the table. You feel selfish and wonder what shadows stretch inside of him. He checks his phone.
‘You better check the spuds. And what about gravy, you’re not doing that instant shite are you, mum would turn…’
You take the spuds out and shake them around and leave them on top of the island.
‘When are you going back to Dublin?’ You ask, sitting back down.
‘Well, I’ve until the 4th off anyway, but I might stay here a while longer. Do you’ve return flights booked?’
‘I do, yeah, but not until the end of January.’
‘Ah, grand so. I suppose we’ll have loads to do.’
‘Yeah, I suppose we will.’
‘Have you spoken to John? He was on to me about the will and all that.’
‘Yeah, I have. I told him we’d be in touch early in the new year.’
‘Some fucking Christmas.’
David gets up and slams more ice into a bowl and brings it back to the table.
‘What happened with Claire then?’ You ask, ‘I noticed she hasn’t been down.’
‘Yeah, we’ve been on a break for a month or so anyway. She said she wanted to come but I told her not to bother.’
‘What happened?’
‘I don’t know and even if I did, I don’t know if I’d want to fix it.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘How about you? Any Aussie for us to meet?’
‘Nope.’
You feel the familiar thickness swirling inside of you; you are all throat. You get back up to check on the chicken. You wish there were signs of it growing up. That you stuck out. That you weren’t one of the lads on the basketball team. You wish someone thought you were so you could just admit it once and for all. All those parties in school, all those girls you kissed, then turned down. The fear, the panic the next day as your friends asked you for the dirty details you didn’t have. Of course girls talked, so it wasn’t long until the lads started making jokes until it came to the point that you could delay it no further. You remember feeling bad for her, as you thought of the lads in your class fucking girls, while you did your best to fuck her.
You are about to speak when he looks right at you and you think he knows, you think he is about to say something, to free you from the burden of saying the words.
‘Are you not making any fucking Yorkshire puddings?’
You laugh. Against yourself. But it clears your throat and when you have stopped you sit back next to him.
‘I’m gay, you know that?’
He looks down at his drink.
‘Thought that alright.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Well, come on, mum wasn’t the subtlest like. I mean she didn’t tell me but she may as well have.’
‘Right, right. Fuck, it would have been so much easier if you’d let me know.’
‘Well, I didn’t want to be saying it like. I checked on Google and all that, and it says it’s important like, you know, for you to say it.’
‘You checked on Google?’
‘Yeah,’ he says, looking up at you and kind of laughing.
You smile.
‘Well,’ you say.
‘Well,’ he says, ‘here’s to mum.’
You raise your glasses again. You get up and go to the window and outside winter is wild and unforgiving. You forgot the length of December’s fingers; the rings she wears. The shortness of days, the light imperceptible among the grey hues of your past. The days will get longer now, though. The light will stretch out, being pulled further and further, thinner and thinner. You feel like there is more space inside of you, that more air can now enter. The smell of the chicken thickens in the room. You close your eyes and for a second you even fool yourself she’s still there and you exhale slowly.
Patrick Holloway is a writer of stories and poems. He is the 2021 winner of the Molly Keane Creative Writing Competition, The Allingham Flash Fiction Competition, and the Flash 500 competition. His work has been published by The Stinging Fly, Carve, Overland, The Irish Times, The Illanot Review, Scoundrel Time, Poetry Ireland Review, The Lonely Crowd, Write Bloody Publishing, New Voices Scotland, Papercuts, The Moth, Southword, among many others. His story, ‘Laughing and Turning Away’ won second place in the Raymond Carver Short Story Contest. ‘The Lift, the Fox, and the Lilies’ won the Overland Literary Journal contest and was also published by The Irish Times. His story ‘Counting Stairs’ was highly commended for the Manchester Fiction Prize. He has been shortlisted for numerous other prizes including: Bath Short Story Prize, Moth Poetry Prize, Moth Short Story Prize, Bath Flash Fiction Prize, Dermot Healy Poetry Prize, Over The Edge New Writer of the Year Award (for both fiction and poetry) and the prestigious Alpine Fellowship for Fiction.
To discover more content exclusive to our print and digital editions, subscribe here to receive a copy of The London Magazine to your door every two months, while also enjoying full access to our extensive digital archive of essays, literary journalism, fiction and poetry.