The Christmas Bonus

IT WAS a terrible crossing. Even the most seasoned travellers had taken themselves off to the lounges, or to their cabins. When the gale reached force ten the main restaurant closed, and only a few hardy souls remained doggedly in the bar. Feeling no more than slightly queasy, Kevin moved nimbly through the decks, anxious for the moment when the ship would dock, and he could begin the next leg of his trip home.

Back in Birmingham, Roly had advised him to always be on the look-out for situations of compromise, as he had put it. Many a cloud has a silver lining – revealed only to those who lived by their wits: that had been a saying of his also. The journey so far had been a profitable one for Kevin, who had had what he considered to be an extraordinary piece of luck earlier in the evening.

On the passenger deck at dusk, he had encountered a middle-aged woman, doubled over the handrail in the throes of being violently and repeatedly sick.

On the deck at her feet, an expensive tote sagged open to reveal, among its contents, a bulging wallet, which Kevin had removed without the slightest difficulty. In a foul-smelling cubicle in the gent’s toilets he had stifled a gasp as he had withdrawn the bundle of neatly folded fifties, €500 in total, which he stashed about his person.

He had removed his worn, travel-stained jeans and hoodie, which he wedged into a bin, and taken from his battered rucksack, a set of marginally cleaner clothes. Back on deck, he had tossed the wallet with its assortment of plastic cards into the furling wake of the ship, and lit one of the twenty-pack of John Players he had lifted from a sleeping man in the bar.

For a while he had tailed a young woman, who was carrying a small baby and dragging a wailing toddler, but she had eventually turned and given him a dark accusing stare and he had instantly backed off – no point in arousing suspicion. Thereafter, he had kept to himself.

In a different toilet he had splashed his face with cold water, teased some of the tangles from the lank length of his hair, tried to look objectively at his own pale reflection in the spattered mirror. He considered that the beard suited him, filled out the gauntness of his features, made him look older.

Always be changing your look, Roly used to say – a beard, a moustache, a haircut, a piercing, a different way of dressing, so you don’t answer to a description of yourself.

At the cafe Kevin ordered a take-out coffee, clasped the warmth with icy fingers.

‘Be God, that’s a rough night all right now!’ Kevin turned sharply towards the elderly man, who had approached out of nowhere, beaming, it appeared to Kevin, with a certain relish.

‘It is,’ he replied tersely, taking a scalding gulp from the waxed cup.

‘Ah well sure, it was forecast! I’ve a small fishin’ boat myself. Out of Kilmore Quay – d’you know Kilmore at all?’

‘Naw,’ Kevin quickly shook his head. ‘I’m heading more – inland actually – Tipperary.’

He had said the first place that had come into his mind – his pal Decker was from Tipperary town; Kevin himself had never set foot in it, nor did he intend to.

‘Aye!’ The man appeared to carefully digest this information, scanning Kevin’s face thoughtfully. Kevin shifted uneasily,

‘A first cousin of mine is meeting me off the boat,’ he added, trying to sound chatty, offhand.

‘Aye! You’re not too bad then. Home for the Christmas, are you?’

‘ Yea.’

‘Well, good luck to you so!’ To Kevin’s relief, his companion ambled off, his gait wide-legged to counteract the listing of the ship.

Roly had been good to him – more than good, in fairness. Like a brother to him, you could say. Had taken him in when he was down on his luck and shown him a few tricks to get him started. Had defended him when some of the other lads in the squat – the two big lads from the West – had been less than friendly. Introduced him to people. The bit of trouble had happened a few months back, when Roly’s latest woman, Donna, had taken a shine to Kevin, who had been a willing recipient of her affections. Roly had been full of regret afterwards – had actually wept with remorse when Donna had had to take to Kevin to the A&E to get stitched.

FOLLOWING that incident, it was never the same – Kevin didn’t feel he could fully trust a man who, in a jealous rage, had made a drunken lunge at his neck with a Stanley knife. The scar, still fairly livid, was just below his collar bone, easy enough to conceal, but he’d have to be careful at home just the same.

Donna had turned out to be a pain in the end. Waiting for hours in the A&E, she had started nagging him. Kevin had noticed other men staring openly at her and he wanted them to think that they were together. Although she was years older than him, almost 28, she still looked hot, in a mini-skirt and a halter-top, her long black hair sweeping her bare, tanned shoulders She had laid her hand on his thighbut in the kindly way you might pat on old dog.

‘You should go home Kevin, you know,’ was what she’d said. ‘Get out of here, while you still can. You’re not like the rest of them – you’re different. Would you not go home to your family?’

He had been annoyed, agitated. He had wanted to talk, to try to explain. He had wanted to tell her to shut up, to leave him alone, but between the pain and the blood and the copious amount of vodka he had consumed earlier, he couldn’t form the words in his head, much less speak them aloud.

He had paid no heed to her advice. After he left Roly’s squat he had crashed with Sam and Decker for a few weeks, then tried a couple of hostels, slept rough while the weather was in it. He had even had a bit of work for a while – mind-numbing, backbreaking work, for which he had been paid a pittance, in the kitchen of an Indian restaurant. He had tried to hook up again with Leo Green, who had given him the start on the buildings when he had first come over, but Leo wasn’t so keen to take him on again; things had gone quiet, was the excuse given.

It was when the seasonal decorations had started to appear in the shop windows that Kevin had taken the notion of going home for Christmas.

In spite of himself he dozed off, was awoken suddenly by the captain’s voice giving an update on the shipping forecast and advising that they would shortly be docking in Rosslare. Kevin joined the throng of weary passengers at the designated assembly point. His heart thumping, head bent over a cheap paperback he had bought earlier in a railway kiosk at Swansea, he allowed the crowd to propel him towards dry land.

Then he was disembarking, being waved through customs, and making his way without delay uphill from the port towards the train station, the biting cold wind clearing the torpor from his head.

In the welcome heat of the waiting room he purchased a ticket and boarded the train, nodding off, then starting awake in confusion, unsure for a second of where he was.

Some 20 minutes later he was in town, facing the final part of his journey on foot. Passing the new business park, he was initially surprised to see the shops still brightly lit, cars coming and going from the car park, then he remembered the late night shopping – it was a Friday night, three days before Christmas. Despite his fatigue, an idea came suddenly to him and he headed into the cavernous Woodies, where super-sized posters announced that the decorations were now all half-price. Seizing a trolley, he went in search of the bargains – a collapsible Christmas tree, two sets of lights, three boxes of coloured baubles, a card of multi-coloured tinsel and a Santa Claus that sang and laughed when pressed. In the household section he found a Christmas table cloth, tea towels, assorted candles and a decorated cake tin. When the girl at the checkout deposited everything into an enormous black bag, he felt slightly foolish, yet oddly elated.

Hefting the sack – which, despite its considerable bulk was not unduly heavy - over his shoulder, he began the two mile walk home.

Where the street lights petered out he took a small torch from his pocket, but in fact he could have made his way blindfolded, off the main road, up the hill. It was almost half-past eleven when he reached the small bungalow at the crossroads, the dark, unlit bulk of the garage a faint silhouette behind it.

THE DOOR was on the latch; in the narrow hallway he deposited his rucksack, pushed open the door to the untidy sitting room.

In the sagging armchair, his stockinged feet stretched towards the embers of the fire, his head thrown back, his father slumbered. His work boots lay, upended on the floor next to a mug containing the scummy remains of milky tea, while the telly – some inane chat show - flickered silently in the corner. Kevin smiled to himself, quietly approached the sleeping figure.

‘Dad!’ he whispered, the raised his voice slightly, ‘Dad!’

‘Wha..?’

‘Dad – it’s Kevin. I’m home!’ Emerging slowly from sleep the older man appeared momentarily confused, then pulled himself upright, his eyes widening. ‘Kevin? Son? I don’t believe it. You’re home!’ ‘I am! And ye better get that oul fire going… ’cause I’m frozen solid!’

Kevin knelt and busied himself poking at the embers. Although he was laughing, a lump arrived out of nowhere, lodging itself in his throat, making further speech difficult. His father, however, was undeterred – like a man under a vow of silence, who had received a temporary dispensation, the words tumbled from him like water.

‘Well, I declare to God! I was only saying today – to Fr Sweeny, when he came in with that oul vintage Volvo – I was saying that you were on the buildings in Birmingham with young Leo Green, who done so well for himself. Fierce busy ye were, I said! I was telling him that if you could at all – if you could manage the few days off – that you’d come home and see us for the Christmas! Doesn’t that beat all, only this morning I said it – and here we are, now!’

His father, Kevin noted as he straightened from the hearth, had aged. Rumpled from sleep, his chin and cheeks mottled with coarse grey stubble, wearing his stained work clothes, he had the appearance of a man approaching 70, although he was only 59. Their mother’s untimely death six years previously had affected them all, Kevin reflected – hard to know which of them felt it most keenly.

‘Wait till I put on the kettle… are you hungry? What’s that you’ve got there, son?’ He indicated the black refuse sack which Kevin had deposited by the small table, beneath the window.

At that point, both men turned towards the slight sound from the open hall door and Kevin’s eyes met those of his younger brother, Colm.

The boy wore a stretched and faded hoodie over a shapeless pair of pyjama bottoms – his bare feet were pale as his face. He moved slowly into the room, a look of wonderment dawning on a face still puffy with sleep. Seeing his 15-year-old brother, the fair hair sticking up in tufts around his head, Kevin felt something come undone inside him. They were not a family given to effusive displays of affection: he punched Colm lightly on his frail shoulder. ‘Howaya, chap!’

‘You got your Christmas holidays then, Kevin? Colm exclaimed, his gaze moving from his older brother to where his father stood, beaming broadly.

‘I did indeed!’ Kevin seized the bottom of the black sack, upending its glittering contents onto the worn carpet, as Colm’s eyes bulged in amazement.

‘And...,’ he paused briefly for effect, like a conjurer, before drawing four neatly folded fifties from his pocket, and holding them out to his father.

‘...I got my Christmas bonus, too!’