The Breezes by Joseph O'Neill Page B

nightmare …
    I pulled up in front of the house. Although we were in a hurry, Pa remained seated for a moment and breathed, as he often does when he arrives at his front door, Home sweet home. I think that he can be forgiven this sentimentalism. That building – a detached three-storeyed suburban house with a garden, green-railed balconies at the front and back, a pear tree, two lilac trees, double garage, clambering roses and four bedrooms – has been the asylum of the Breezes for almost twenty years.
    We walked up the path to the front door, which I unlocked and pushed open. Then we saw it: a pile of shit on the floor at the bottom of the staircase. We looked at each other: Trusty.
    I said heavily, ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll fix it. You go on upstairs and have your bath.’
    Before I went to fetch the tissues, scrubber and carpet shampoo, I went to the sitting-room to switch on the television. I did not want to risk missing a minute of the game. I picked up the remote control, aimed it at the corner of the room, and punched the button.
    Nothing happened. The television was not there. I realized instantly, even before I noticed that the curtains were billowing in the broken-open french windows, that there had been a burglary. I wiped my face with my hand. Then I called upstairs. ‘Pa, can you come down?’
    â€˜What?’ he asked nervously as he descended the stairs in his socks and track suit. ‘What’s the matter?’
    I said nothing. I just led him into the living-room.
    â€˜What’s happened?’ Pa said. ‘Where’s the TV? Where’s the CD?’ He turned around on the spot. ‘But that’s impossible,’ he said. ‘There’s a safety catch on those windows. Whelan put itthere himself. And there’s an alarm – why isn’t the alarm ringing?’
    He walked over to the french windows and tried to drag them shut, but the hinges had been broken. The draught kept pouring through and the living-room fluttered like a field. ‘I just don’t understand this,’ Pa said. ‘What about Trusty? How could she let this happen? Where is she, anyway?’
    There was a silence as we stood there trying to take things in.
    â€˜Well,’ I said, ‘I guess we can forget about watching the game.’
    Pa was not listening. He was moving his palm over the vacant mantelpiece in a slow caress. He raised his hand to his face and blankly regarded his powdery fingertips. The photographs. The one-and-only, silver-framed family photographs had been removed. The famous honeymoon picture; the last remaining picture of my father’s mother, a young woman in the 1920s leaning confidently against a car upon which the photographer, his head under the hood of his camera, has cast his shadow; long-haired Rosie at her first communion; me, a ten-year-old in my Rovers kit, drinking juice during the half-time break with my team-mates; and several others that I can’t bring back. Holiday snapshots, most of them, nothing special when they were up there. The usual lucky moments captured in the usual way.
    Pa sat down wordlessly. Upstairs, the falling bathwater thundered against enamel.
    I went up and turned off the taps. When I returned downstairs, he was still sitting, looking dumbly ahead of him. ‘Pa,’ I said. I touched him on the shoulder. ‘Your bath’s ready.’
    He got to his feet. He slowly walked up the stairs. He went into his bedroom and closed the door behind him.
    I got on to the telephone and rang the police.
    â€˜I suppose we’d better send somebody over,’ the switchboard operator said. ‘We’ll have someone there within half an hour.’
    â€˜Should I touch anything?’ I said.
    The officer sighed. ‘Look, if you want us to carry out aforensic examination and the rest of it, then I suppose you should leave things as they are. But frankly, Mr