STORY COMP
opportunities, getting clean. The mechanics of what Liam really
did with his time were a mystery to him.
‘I’ve touched down, Dad.’ Liam picked up his mug and took a
sip. He always sipped, he never gulped or swigged. Sipping suited
his delicate features, and was totally at odds with his consumption.
‘Touched down for good.’ He took another sip and, glancing up at
him, suddenly said, ‘Tell me about the helter-skelter.’
It was an odd thing to say and Liam laughed at his confusion.
‘The helter-skelter on the pier, Dad. You were always telling
people about it.’
‘Filey-on-Sea?’
It was still confusing. The helter-skelter story was about Liam.
About the pair of them. Telling it would be no diferent to talking
to himself. Eamon hesitated and, in doing so, broke some kind of
spell.
Liam shook his head and said it didn’t matter, he was being
weird. Eamon didn’t like the word weird and wished Liam had
said something else. Silly, perhaps, or soppy. Something he’d have
said when he was little. When the helter-skelter had been the only
freefall he’d needed.
There had been a road sign two miles outside of Filey-on-Sea.
A rectangle pinned to steel supports. A painting of a picturesque
seaside town. What would they call it now? Retro, vintage? When
Liam was a child it was just called a lie.
The sign was styled like something produced between the wars.
Blocks of colour, barely the right side of gaudy. The perspective
suggested a view from a clif that didn’t exist. Bluegreen sea easing
its way into a sky containing a single luf of white cloud – there to
highlight the blue rather than suggest rain. The only other interrup-
tion to the sky was the legend: FILEY-ON-SEA, THE SOUTH-EAST
R ES ORT.
The sign could be seen for miles, one of the few respites from the
lat landscape. Every year as they drove past it, he and Jeanie would
share the same joke. He’d read it aloud, pause a beat before adding,
‘More like the last resort.’
That wasn’t true. The joke wasn’t shared. Every year, he’d say
the same thing and Jeanie would laugh. Relex, manners or duty.
Possibly another of those creeping habits that would one day deine
their family. Whatever her reasons, he doubted they were genuine
humour.
Even if the joke had been funny – maybe it was once, he didn’t
know – she wouldn’t have been with him by the time they saw the
sign. She would have been in holiday mode, school holiday mode.
In the back seat of the car, giggling together, Jeanie and Liam had
already become an independent state.
The only resemblance Filey-on-Sea bore to its sign was the way it
faded a little each year. Even then, the sign faded in the sun while
the town was scorched by indiference.
The pier was the only feature of the town with any charm. Typical
of its age, it served no purpose other than to house a funfair at its
end. The fair was close to the end in every way. Another not-really-
joke they didn’t really share.
The irst year they’d ridden all the rides, working methodically
around the limited attractions in order to not miss anything. That
had been Eamon’s idea, and he’d refused to backtrack on it even
when he’d seen it was a mistake. Tackling the amusements one
after another revealed how few there were. Even to Liam’s young
eyes it had been obvious how small everything was, how meagre.
Cranes that took money and held on to prizes long enough to
make losing seem important, peep shows with nothing worth
peeping at. They had sat in rust-stained carriages winding past
painted ghosts, Jeanie dutifully pretending to shriek; a bid to
justify the price of the ride.
The ticket booths were stafed by bored teenagers or old hands
who bled quiet anger. Fixtures in a landscape that happier people
passed through. Back then he could only imagine that life.
The helter-skelter was last. It was placed dead centre of the fair
and their careful route led them to it via the orbit of lesser acts.
Liam hadn’t recognised the helter-skelter as a ride because he
was so small. Once, that was an important part of the story. Eamon
used it to showcase his parenting; the ability to look at the wooden
tower though the eyes of his young son.Liam took another sip of his cofee and gave a tiny smile.
‘Decaf?’
Shrugging, Eamon tried to return the smile but found he couldn’t.
‘Habit. I could go back to the real stuf now.’ He shrugged again.
‘Before, there was no point arguing about it. Now...’ He shrugged
a third time.
‘Now there’s just no point?’ Liam ofered by way of closure.
‘I suppose you could put it that way.’
‘It’s funny, but...’ Liam faltered and hid the silence with another
sip. ‘People talk about life being complicated, but...’
Eamon nodded because he’d shrugged enough.
‘Life can get too simple,’ he said.
For a while, neither of them spoke. What went through Liam’s
mind was, as ever, a mystery. Eamon wished that they could sit in a
companionable silence, but knew they’d passed that point long ago.
Silence didn’t signal that they had nothing say, it just meant they’d
given up trying to get through.
‘You were right about the helter-skelter not being that big,’ Liam
said, out of nowhere. It jolted him, coming close on his own memo-
ries of the funfair.
‘Really?’
It was a stupid answer. No better than a shrug. Liam didn’t seem
to be listening.
‘I went back. Filey-on-Sea,’ he said.
‘The last –’
‘The last resort, yeah.’
There was another uncomfortable silence.
‘When was this?’ Eamon asked.
‘A few weeks ago. I was thinking of taking Neive there, one day.’
He hadn’t thought to ask about Neive and was surprised to hear
she was still a part of Liam’s life. They’d been together the year
before Liam missed Jeanie’s funeral. Three years, then.
That was how he measured time. Before the funeral and then
after. The funeral was the marker stone, not Jeanie’s death; that had
taken place over a timescale too long to make it practical. Sickness,
remission, sickness, remission. The word palliative had almost
been a relief. It gave him a sharp deinition during a time when life
and death had become blurred.
‘Is the pier still there?’
He had memories of news reports; ire or storm. Diferent piers
maybe, more worthy ones that had more newsworthy ends. Not
just a living death by rust and demolition order.
‘It’s still there,’ Liam conirmed. ‘It’s all closed of but it’s there.
You can still see the helter-skelter.’ He made a noise counterpointed
with a quick smile, so Eamon assumed it was laugh. ‘It does look
tiny. Go on, Dad, tell me the story.’
He almost told him not to be silly. Then he wanted to think
Liam’s expression stopped him being so heartless, or that some-
thing about his eagerness touched him. In truth he couldn’t endure
another silence.Jeanie hadn’t wanted to go on the helter-skelter. He couldn’tThe Complexity of Simple continued