Five(52)

“You should’ve been there,” he’d say, before turning over in the single bed next to Danny’s in the room they still shared, the alcohol drowning out the throbbing guilt in Liam’s chest.

On one of Liam’s Saturdays out, when he said that the pavements were too icy for Danny’s crutches and even too slippery for the chair, or the place would be too crowded, or he was taking the Tube and there were no lifts, Doreen looked at her son, so handsome, that gap between his teeth a charming imperfection in his perfect face, and she said, “Don’t do anything stupid,” by which she meant, “Come back to us, we need you,” as she closed the door to the flat behind him.

Then she turned and looked at her Danny, and she saw the hurt in his eyes. Doreen made tea and pulled out the Trivial Pursuit board she’d found down at the Oxfam shop for two quid. All the little pie pieces were missing, but the question cards were all there, which was the most important part. Rather than take turns with Danny, Doreen just asked him the questions and put a matchstick in a pie slice for each correct answer until every little pie was full. He rarely missed one. Then she’d take out the stack of unsold Telegraphs the newsagent down the road had saved for her all week and they’d start on the crosswords, the only words exchanged being the clues Doreen read out and Danny’s answers: peripatetic, banal, impresario.

Doreen was confident that the agility of Danny’s mind would carve a path for him to security in his life. She knew that he would not be destitute or dependent, that his talents would take care of him. Her deepest worry for him instead was his isolation and the growing distance between her boys. Up until this point in their adolescence she’d thought their bond was unbreakable, but now she was not so sure. It was natural for Liam to break away, but she hadn’t thought that it would happen so soon or that he would leave Danny behind so easily. But more than that, she felt an urgency. She had the sense of an ending coming nearer, a whisper in her ear that she was running out of time, and she worried that her mother’s love would not be enough to fix things. It was her deepest fear, which, of course, she never shared with anyone.

When the crosswords were done and it was time for bed, Liam was still not home. Doreen saw Danny’s eyes resting on the clock, his loneliness marked by each tick of the second hand. She held her boy’s head in her hands, and she said, “I know you need him, lad. So, make him need you more.”

Danny put her words away, in the same place he put the memory of the drink of kings, and kept them there.



* * *





At this point in the story the boys are eighteen. There has been a tacit understanding in the family that Danny will go to university, that a degree is his best chance for employment and independence, and that Liam will go out to work. At first, each brother is excited by their prospects. But only one of them stays that way.

Liam has been looking forward to what a job would bring. Money to take girls out. He would help Doreen; she could finally do fewer shifts and she could spend more time helping Danny type up his coursework and get on with his studies. He might even buy an old car and rebuild it.

Work is not easy to find without qualifications and experience, but Liam is young and strong, and so, undeterred, he takes what he can get. He tars roofs, cleans chimneys, digs landscapes, clears rubble, does hard, physical jobs that require his strength. He rises at dawn and comes home in the dark, his fingernails permanently blackened, his muscles hardened, his back aching. He works six days a week, sometimes seven.

He works this way for a year, then two years. He takes a couple of girls to the cinema but he scoffs when they also expect dinner. He doesn’t buy a car to fix up. Doreen does only one less shift a week.

When he comes home, bone-tired, he finds Doreen and Danny hunched over textbooks, laughing at some inside joke. Liam then gives Doreen half his pay, and the laughter, though it has nothing to do with him, sounds like reality smirking at the little bit that’s left in his wallet. He doesn’t come home for dinner for several weeks, preferring instead the company of other working men in the pub. He leaves before Doreen and Danny wake, half his pay always left by the kettle.

When he finally does make an appearance one night, Doreen says, “Working yourself into the ground, lad,” by which he knows she means she doesn’t approve, and he should come home after work and spend time with his brother, and he should stop drinking his pay, though she still gives him a plate of sausages with extra mash.

“The life of a king, Mum, don’t you remember?” Liam says, an edge to his voice as he gulps a beer.

Doreen busies herself in the kitchen while he eats, slightly shudders at the sound of her son’s voice, his tone, his East End accent so much like the father he doesn’t remember. Then finally she says, “There’s more out there for you. Danny is—”

Liam cuts her off. “Oh you mean the boy wonder? Reaching for the stars, is he, Mum? Well, someone’s got to pay for those dreams. Looks like the only one ’ere who can do that is me.” And Liam picks up a sausage with his fingers, eating it almost whole.

“Don’t eat like a caveman,” Doreen says, which he knows means that this is Danny’s best chance. They all know that. He knows she means she expects him to put his brother first, always, because that is what it is to be a man.

“And don’t forget who was buying the sausages before you ever brought home a tuppence,” she says, with irritation, clearing the plates from the table, chastening her son.