Chapter 6 Bardy
BARDY
I never knew so young a body with so old a head.
Bardy sits on his IKEA sofa staring at the plain walls of his rectangular sitting room and reruns his morning in Luigi’s.
He creates different scenarios. Her settling at a table next to him and ordering a cappuccino.
Then it’s an Americano. His imagination doesn’t get beyond that.
Instead, he finds himself staring at the sitting room walls, wondering why he bought this apartment when he and Hana sold the family home.
It was about the time Ned was heading off to visit Tom in New Zealand, so it was logical to buy something small.
But why a box? Easy to keep? Ground floor, so if he ever needed to, he could get a wheelchair in? Or a coffin?
The doorbell rings. He immediately thinks it’s a delivery rather than a visitor.
But he’s not expecting anything. The only person it might be is Lou.
But he always texts first. Bardy does have other friends, mainly ex-teachers, but they tend to meet in the pub.
As he heads for the door, he glances at his phone.
He has some unread emails and realizes his phone is set to silent. He has also missed some calls.
Tay stands there.
“Well!” she demands.
“What?” He is bemused on so many fronts. “Toni?” he demands, suddenly worried.
“Nah. Pissed, but not using. Off with some dickhead.” She dismisses her mother with apparent brutal unconcern. A shard of bright rust. “Why aren’t you answering your fucking phone?”
Bardy had thought that Tay was swearing less since she started working in customer service. Maybe not.
Then he gets it. She was worried when she couldn’t get hold of him.
“On silent.”
He is about to apologize, but remembers that, for some reason, this really pisses Tay off, and she’s angry enough.
“Do that with your large arse?” she demands, pushing past him into the apartment.
This fails to hit the mark. Bardy knows in all things he is middling. Neither fat nor thin. In fact, thinner since Hana left. It was weird when she was so into healthy eating. “Ah, mate,” he can almost hear Lou say, “but you do actually have to remember to eat.”
He decides, like the middling man he is, to go for a middle ground. “No. Just a mistake. But, yeah, stupid thing to do.”
Tay grunts. Which he thinks may be an acceptance of his apology that isn’t quite an apology.
She throws herself onto his sofa. All baggy clothes, big boots, but delicately boned hands, the sight of which snags him somehow.
He checks her. Still red ocher. He sits at the other end of the sofa from her. “Get you anything?”
“Yeah. Vodka shot.”
She doesn’t drink. Won’t take any drugs. Just vapes sometimes.
“What are you doing sitting there?” She draws a line with her nail-bitten forefinger across the sofa cushion, chipped varnish, bright blue. “There.”
Suppressing a smile, he budges up to the right space on the sofa. The required distance apart. “You heard from Hana?” he asks.
She nods but doesn’t say anything. And Bardy wishes he hadn’t asked.
Wants to know. Doesn’t want to know. Wants to be sure she is keeping an eye on Tay, too, that it isn’t all up to him.
That feels too heavy a load. The last few texts from Hana have thrown him.
They’ve made him feel even more isolated from her.
And telling himself, It’s been five years, mate, of course she’s moving on .
. . well, it didn’t help. He knows now he’s well and truly on his own.
Is that why he wanted Tay working at Lou’s?
Someone else to have her back? He sees that Tay is watching him. God, she is so young and yet so tough.
“You know you’re a mess,” she comments, conversationally.
He glances down at his clothes. Not too bad today. Quite trendy for him. Wilfully misunderstanding her, “It is what it is,” he responds, parroting one of her favorite sayings.
“Bardy, get a grip!” She’s cross. Knows he’s being intentionally obtuse.
She changes direction. “Have you checked your emails?” She bounces up from the sofa and wanders into the kitchen, where he can hear her rummaging in his fridge.
He half glances toward the open kitchen door.
This foraging is normal. The eat-when-you-can habit of a feral childhood.
He looks at his phone. There are four emails from people inquiring about the MACKL competition and the group he runs.
Except he doesn’t run it anymore. Last time he did, not a single person turned up.
He remembers the relief. Sinking into the inertia of bingeable Netflix, able to say: Well, I did try.
Light dawns, and he’s up and at the kitchen door. “Is that what that orange card’s about?”
Tay, mouth full of ham, hand grasping a slice of last night’s pizza: “You’ve got an Instagram account too.”
He thinks she’s grinning, but it’s hard to tell.
“What?!”
“Well, you weren’t doing anything,” she says, sitting back on the sofa. Boots on, cross-legged. Munching.
“I did,” he says, defensively, staring down at her.
“You’re joking me,” she flashes back. She points to his spot on the sofa with the bitten end of the pizza, and he collapses into it.
“Last year I set it all up and no one came,” he says, lamely.
“Yeah. Just like basketball club.”
He stares at her. She stares back. She twists her head with a funny sort of nod. He knows it well. Point made. Point won. He has to give her that one.
He skims the emails. One name he knows, one name he hopes he might get to know. If it is her, it sounds Scandinavian. He brightens. But will there be enough of them? That never worried him in the past.
Flippin’ hell! Tay has even set up a new timetable of meetings on his website.
How did she do that? How does she know his password?
Ah, of course! He may be divorced, but he types Hana’s name several times a week.
Won’t use autofill. He knew it was a useless password, the same one he’s used for years.
And one that’s easily guessed. Obviously.
Boy, he’s a sad sack.
“So?” she says, watching him, wiping her hands on her jeans.
He senses now that she is nervous. Anxious about his reaction.
Her knee is bouncing. He looks at her, considering for a moment, then says, “Thank you, Tay.” She doesn’t smile, but he can feel some of the tension leave the small body beside him.
The knee stills. Something threatens to tear inside of him.
He focuses and adds, “I never knew so young a body with so old a head.”
She snorts and gets up from the sofa. She never sits still for long.
She heads for the door. He expects her to say nothing more, or maybe to cheerfully tell him to piss off.
Neither would surprise him. It is only when she opens the front door that she says something.
“The Merchant of Venice.” That does surprise him.
How the hell did Tay remember that the quote he used was from The Merchant of Venice? But then, Tay was a remarkable girl.
Red ocher.
He can tell by the way she jubilantly slams the front door that she knows she has scored yet another point.
Basketball club. He had started it at school during lunch break.
In the first session, only two people came.
Tay and a guy . . . what was his name? Bardy sits on the sofa, his mind reaching into the past. Chad!
So it was just Tay and Chad, who had a basketball player’s build and stood looming over her.
“So, that’s it, sir? No point in being here is there.” Chad was already looking toward where his friends hung out, regretting having come in the first place.
Tay had just watched Bardy. She had recently arrived at secondary school, but Bardy knew her from long ago—ever since Toni brought her to the house as a three-year-old.
Then there was the Christmas placement, and afterward, visits with or without her mom, Toni.
Also, picking Tay up from school. Once from the police station.
“Ah, you don’t get off that easy, Chad,” he had told him, thinking of coffee and the grading he could get done in the staff room.
“We can do some practice passes and shots. Then, when others turn up next week, you’ll have them beat.
” So that is what they had done. Tay was quick and crafty on the court despite her lack of inches.
And others had come, and eventually they really did have a basketball club.
In the following weeks, Bardy had seen Tay watching him.
An odd look on her face. Perplexed and considering.
Eventually, she had been in the car with him.
He can’t remember why he was giving her a lift.
Staring straight ahead, not looking at him, she suddenly asked, “Why didn’t you cancel that first basketball club session? Why not wait until more people came?”
He had been taken off guard, but he knew what to say. And what not to say. He kept staring straight ahead, like Tay, and said, with no great emphasis, but so she had no chance of misunderstanding him, “If I say I’m going to do something, Tay, I do it.”
She hadn’t said anything else, but that evening—they must have been going home to their house, looking after her for the night—she got him to sit on the sofa with her. Close, but not too close. Just where she wanted him.
What he had not said to Tay in the car was that he kept going for the full forty minutes with her and Chad because they had expected him to bail.
Say it didn’t matter. Let’s do it another time.
And he knew from teaching and fostering that some kids have had a lifetime of that until they don’t expect anything else.
Adults not turning up. Not bothering to explain.
Full of hot air and promises. Full of shit.
Bardy gets up from the sofa and heads to the kitchen. So now he is going to be running his creative group again. Thanks for that, Tay. He finds he means it both genuinely and sarcastically.
And she obviously won’t take any excuses for him not keeping at it.
He finds he is grinning as he heads back to the sofa—beer in hand, ready to respond to some emails.
The Merchant of Venice. Who’d have thought?