The Floor Beneath Us…

Séimí Mac Aindreasa is from the Shaws Road Gaeltacht in Belfast. His stories have been published in three anthologies and online.

Consider the floor. The floor is an amazing thing. Unassuming and flat, it nevertheless commands enough respect that walls and roof are required to cover and protect it. We decorate it with fancy tiles; we smother it in shiny linoleum; we bedeck it with expensive rugs. We brush and wash it as if it were a prize stallion. We worry about it being kept clean – so clean in fact, that we would, in certain circumstances, eat our meals off it.

And then we walk all over it. We inflict a lot of punishment on our floors. When we are amazed, our jaws hit it; when we speed up, we hit it; when we beat someone in a fight, we wipe it with them.

The floor in our home was amazing. When I was a mere child, graduating from babe-in-arms to toddler-into-everything, I remember – and I really do remember – lying on the floor, fat cheek resting against fairly hideous lino, enjoying the heat. The floor was heated from below, a relative rarity in those days and a feature no longer active in the house.

But back then, I would just lie there, with my face pressed to it, my little hands stretched palms down, feeling the warmth soak up through my body. Tiny flecks of dust would rise and fall with my breathing, spiralling away with each relaxed exhale on their journey across the vast room. Vast from my perspective, anyway. The slightly musty, dusty smell would tickle my nose and I would sneeze, adding miniscule droplets to the swirling motes. I would lie there, in a stupor, until my Da would lift me and gently place me on the sofa.

It was the very early 1970s in west Belfast and the Troubles were in full flow. I lay again on the floor, this time with company. On one side lay my aunt, in her little tweed coat and hat, handbag gripped tightly in one hand, the other holding on to me. My Da lay on my other side, my baby brother under one arm, the other one stretched out towards me. He was speaking calmly to me, telling me to just stay where I was, and it would all be over soon. Above our heads, the crack of bullets sounded, breaking windows and gouging tracks in the walls, some of which remain to this day. The floor kept us safe that day.

The floor was raised bilingually, its host family speaking both English and Irish, and it played host to a fleet of feet: neighbours, teachers, journalists, officials, politicians, and well-wishers, all eager to meet this unusual floor, or at least the people who walked upon it. Meetings or classes took place most nights of the week and, in the quieter moments, Ma and Da worked on translating English textbooks into Irish, sticking labels over sentences. The floor wore a coat of paper and glue for the next couple of years, as it played its part in the founding of the first Irish medium school in the North of Ireland.

T was during this period that occurred the Great Lino Removal. A small crack had appeared- for no apparent reason- in the epidermis in the living room. At first, it was barely a minor inconvenience, but without fully realising we were doing so, the entire family watched as the crack grew and developed into a fledgling hole, around the size of a ten pence piece. Not huge, but big enough for my parents to begin to start to consider thinking about perhaps, possibly debating whether or not they should do something about it. Big enough, as it turned out, to also prove itself quite irresistible to the poking and prying of my little brother’s inquisitive fingers. Soon, just like interest rates, the ten pence hole had increased in size, simultaneously reducing the overall value of the lino surrounding it. Curious as to why this hole fascinated my kid brother so much, my two older siblings and I began prospecting as well, turning the hole into something more akin to a chasm, and causing my parents to shift into serious, “perhaps we should investigate investing in some form of new flooring,” mode. The dog sealed the deal. Deciding that, whatever was hidden underneath the jagged crater beneath its feet was important to its fellow minions, the mutt decided that it would lend its paw and, more significantly, its teeth, to the enterprise. The lino was stripped back, like a sunburned man peeling a layer of dead skin from a blistered arm. The parents immediately leapt into action and, barely six weeks later, the floor flounced around the room, wearing its brand new wooden-effect overcoat. The dog was still in the – well, in the doghouse. The new floor was smooth and clean and cool – the new covering would have warped with a heating system beneath it – and made the whole room appear new and refreshed.

By the time we reached the mid to late 1980s, my friends and I were all growing our hair and listening to Heavy Metal. My parents, accommodating as always, had built a dividing wall across the living room, creating a place for us and our friends to gather and a quieter, more peaceful room for them to read, watch TV and tut at the sound of Mötley Crue blaring from next door. The floor became a repository for beer cans and ashtrays, albums and tapes. Every night, a small crowd of friends would gather there, talk nonsense and fall in and out of love. Different people would come and go from this group, but the core that remained still call each other good friends and meet on a regular basis forty years later. Some even married each other and had children together, and they told those kids stories of how the floor sometimes acted as a seat, sometimes as a table and oftentimes as a bed, on those particularly late nights. The floor, now sporting a thin, brownish carpet, silently counted the tread of growing teenagers and young adults, in a world where unemployment was high and community morale low. The Troubles had reached a particularly bloody point, with unforgivable acts carried out by all sides. But in this room, on this floor, the Troubles didn’t exist. This floor had welcomed the feet of Catholic and Protestant alike, all in between and neither. Sectarian banter existed, of course, but the humour was the dark humour of Belfast during this period. Underneath it all was a good-natured desire to just get on with life, get on with each other and get on with being young.

Because of the music we listened to, social venues were limited, but a few havens for Rock music did exist. The biker bar at the back of one of the most fashionable establishments in town, was packed to capacity every weekend and most weekdays. A vain attempt to convert it to a Country & Western style bar had failed miserably, and we were close friends with the President and leading officers of the Chosen Few, soon to become an official chapter of the Hell’s Angels. The President and two of his lieutenants had sat on our floor and shared a friendly beer with my Da, who found them to be perfect gentlemen. The addition of motorbike oil to the chemical make-up of the carpet was not mentioned, by Da or the floor.

As well as listening to the music, a few of us took the next logical step and formed a Rock band. We were good: not Thin Lizzy good, but good enough to play regular gigs around the area and unique enough to warrant a two-page spread in the local newspaper and an article in one of the daily nationals. The main reason for this though, was not because we were musically talented. We were – kind of – but more importantly, we could play all our songs in the Irish language. This made us quite the attraction and we found ourselves playing gigs everywhere from street parties to social clubs to community festivals. The floor now became one of our practice spaces, with my drum kit taking pride of place, flanked by amps. The noise we made! Many years later, after Ma had passed, I found a letter, from her aunt in Australia, with whom she had kept touch over the years. In the letter, my aunt wrote, “It’s great to hear he is playing in the band. You must be very proud.” I had never imagined that my Ma would bother to write to a relative thousands of miles away and tell her that her son was playing in a Rock band, never mind that she might actually be proud of him!

Ma passed away in this house, the day before my daughter’s eighth birthday. She was waked from here too, her body lying in its coffin in the front room, where we used to gather. The floor covering had reverted to a cheaper linoleum by then, but it was scrubbed spotless, and the room cleared of all unnecessary clutter for her. My daughter cried by her Nana’s coffin, then went into the room next door to open the birthday present she had bought her.

Da was alone then. We had all moved out, and he had the house to himself. Never the tidiest of people, he allowed the dust flecks to gather together and form motes. The motes held a meeting and decided to expand, incorporating small hairs and other detritus, until the point where, when a door was open, the floor would perform its own version of the dance of the seven veils, balls of fluffy nothingness dancing and floating across it with velvety lightness. We would clean and sweep when we visited, and he would promise to do it himself, but he never did. Never was a man more comfortable in his own skin, whether he was wearing it or if it was floating through the air around him.

Eight years passed. Da was home, having been diagnosed with incurable cancer. A few months was unlikely. A few weeks might be all we would get. A few weeks? How could I express, in such a short period of time, all that he had meant to me over the previous forty-eight years? How could I tell him what an honour it had been, to have been his son? How could I explain the hole his leaving would create in my heart?

Arrangements had been for him to go to a nursing home, where he would receive the care he needed until he passed. I struggled with this and, after a restless night and a conversation with my partner, I spoke to my siblings and told them I wanted him to stay at home, the walls he had built surrounding him, the roof he had erected over his head, the floor he had badly covered over the years, under his feet. I would take care of his needs, with help from a visiting district nurse and a palliative care team. I told them I wanted to do this and that I felt it was what he might want. I told them I would happily do it all myself, but I wanted their support and blessing. I needn’t have worried. Unanimously they agreed that this was the right thing to do and so we went in and told him he was staying at home. We could tell that he was relieved by this decision. He asked us if we were sure, asked us if we knew what we were doing. No, we said. We didn’t know what we were doing, but we knew that it was the right thing to do. You looked after us all those years, now it’s our turn. He agreed.

We installed a hospital bed downstairs in the back room, where he had watched endless re-runs of his favourite crime dramas and entertained, endured and enjoyed his beloved grandchildren. We bathed him, made his meals, administered his medication. We liaised with the nurses and his GP. We informed some of his closest friends as to the current state of affairs and asked them if they would like to come and visit him. They all did and we gave them all privacy so they could say their goodbyes. We kept it from the neighbours, as we didn’t want him to be bothered by well-wishers. This was a time for family and the closest and dearest of friends. On the day he was to be given the syringe driver which would induce unconsciousness, I arranged for a local priest to come and sit by his bedside and hear his final confession. Afterwards, he asked all four of us to join him and we sat around his bed. He told us how proud he was of every one of us; how fortunate he was to have had four children who were also his friends; how lucky he had felt that we had always remained a close family. He told us he loved us.

That evening, the nurse administered the medication and my Da fell asleep, with his four children on the floor around his bed. He slept for three days and for three nights and he was never alone. Other family members arrived and we all sang to him; we told him stories; we laughed and included him in the jokes. My son, his youngest grandson, polished his shoes for his final journey and left them on the floor at the foot of his bed.

In a quieter moment, I kneeled at the side of his bed and held his hand. I spoke to him, apologising for every time I had screwed up and let him down. I asked for his forgiveness, although I knew it had never been in question. I reminded him of a time, long ago, when I came in from school to find he had made me a dinosaur, from toilet roll tubes and tinfoil. I looked at the floor I was kneeling on, and remembered lying there, smelling the dust and feeling the warmth seep through. I spoke to him about it. I talked about how calm he had seemed, the day the bullets dug scars into our walls. I told him that I had been so frightened, but looking at him had made me feel safe. I told him that his children and grandchildren would always love him and keep him in our hearts and in our memories. He didn’t reply. He didn’t need to.

On the third evening, Da’s breathing changed and his children, their partners and grandchildren, helped him take the last steps towards his final journey. Gathered around his bed, we told him that we were all fine and it was okay for him to move on. He let go and found eternal peace. We were left with an empty home and hearts broken forever, but with an overwhelming feeling of love. The eight days we had with him at home were part of the most beautiful and deserving death any good man could hope for.

I stayed in the house for a while after that. I felt that I should – I had been living with him in the time just before he fell ill – but it wasn’t the same. Without the creaking of his computer chair or the shuffling of his feet, the floor just wasn’t the same. The kitchen, with its terracotta tile, was fine. It had been where we had done most of our socialising. But the back room, where he had spent his last days, was just bare linoleum, a sad reminder of the events which had taken place there. In the end, I moved back home, and the house was finally empty.

Today, the house is once more alive. The terracotta floor remains, but the living room has had its own Berlin Wall facelift, the dividing wall removed and the floor returned to its full, former glory. Not that you can see much of the floor, as it has taken to covering itself in soft rugs and toys, as if living out a second childhood. In a way, it has. My cousin’s daughter rents the place from us now and she and her partner, along with their four young children have breathed new life into the place. Toys and clothes lie all around, the joyous debris of children growing up. A few of the bullet scars still faintly remain, but scars are a reminder that all wounds heal, aren’t they?

This is a guest slot to give a platform for new writers either as a one off, or a prelude to becoming part of the regular Slugger team.