She came over to Sister Judith’s bed. ‘Don’t let them frighten you,’ she said. ‘There’s really nothing they can do. Besides,’ she said, ‘it’s all over now, anyway. Just tell Owen Roe that you said nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Nothing.’
‘About what?’
‘Anything.’ The girl laughed. ‘Sorry, I’m light-headed,’ she said. ‘I’m happy.’ She kissed Sister Judith quickly on the forehead. ‘But it’ll be all right,’ she said. ‘Really.’
The door-bell rang.
‘Oh dear,’ said the girl. ‘That’ll be Owen Roe. I’ll try and head him off.’
She left the room and Sister Judith got out of bed. Her limbs were stiff and pictures from her dream just now were dirty in her mind. Like a stain, they oozed into the forefront of her thoughts and she had to keep rubbing her eyes and beating them back. There was that other dream too: about the chap on a couch. Shaking herself, she tried rotating her shoulders and walked towards the window. The one thing she liked about living in this place was the view. Especially at this hour. It was just after sunset. The last gleams of it were colouring the roofs on the far side of the canal. They caught on slates and skylights and trickled down the attic windows like jam. The lower parts of the houses were pale by contrast. The canal waters were paler still and on street level the long Irish twilight had an opaque, ashen melancholy to it, only faintly enlivened by the radiance around the street lamps which did not reach far, being contained by condensations of mist which clung like moth-swarms to each globe. The outer glow from one of these drew Sister Judith’s attention to something happening on the opposite bank.
*
Patsy was approaching the Ford Cortina from the rear. The Yank – it was him all right – was sitting in the driver’s seat, staring at the O’Malley house through whose front door the Captain had just been admitted.
Patsy hadn’t managed to get through to him. He wondered whether he’d come back off his own bat or whether he’d been fetched by Cormac – unless, no – could Mrs Μ herself have rung him? Why would she? Whose side was that one on anyway? Like all women, she’d mix public and private. That Yank could be a blackmailer or a spy, a Special Branch or CIA man in love or pretending to be. They too must mate. What matter? The man was verminous. Hadn’t Patsy himself started softening towards him back there in the house? And now look at him: on the watch, like a cat in the dusk. Had he accomplices? Where? And would he see Patsy creeping up on him through his rear-view mirror? Patsy, dodging and bent double, felt his feet slide on soft mud, and steadied himself against the car. As he did this, it lurched forward down the slope. The Yank, to get opposite the house, had driven through a gap in the chains separating road and tow-path and parked where the bank fell sheer as a chute towards the scummy waters of the canal. Patsy, almost before he knew it, had braced himself against a bollard and pushed harder.
In a side street, children were playing hopscotch under a street lamp. Sounds but not sights carried through the dusk.
‘Out!’
‘Tis not out.’
‘Tis so.’
‘Oh ya lying scut!’
With scarcely more sound than a wad of papers slithering from a shelf, the car gathered speed. The man inside heaved at his hand-brake, then tried to open the door. There was a smacking plop as the car tipped over the slick edge.
‘Something’s fallen into the canal. Do yez hear?’
‘Stop trying to distract us. You moved her penny. Cissie seen you. It was in and you moved it. Cheat, cheat, cheat!’
*
Grainne was packing, throwing things into a suitcase, as she had seen people do in movies, then pulling them out again and folding them with care. What did she need? Nothing. She could just go. But Owen Roe was talking to Aunt Judith and she could not, somehow, bear to leave the house while that was going on. She had asked him to leave the old lady alone but he paid no attention to her. Just now the old thing had given one of her little screams and, when they rushed up to her room, was collapsed in her armchair, looking a bit like a beached fish. Her stomach was heaving and her face twitched on one side like a stroke victim’s. However, that had righted itself and she had started in on one of her incoherent accounts of something which she claimed to have seen happen. They couldn’t make out when.
‘He’s dead,’ she said. ‘Killed. I saw it.’
Owen Roe got very excited. ‘Sh!’ he told Grainne, his face flashing triumphant morse signs from behind Aunt Judith’s back. This was it, he signalled. At last she was going to tell.
Grainne, who had been talking to her aunt earlier about nightmares, was less impressed.
‘Don’t torment her. Don’t bully her,’ she said, and went into her own room to get on with her packing. Michael was probably out drinking and unlikely to come home before he was drunk. She wanted to be gone by then. She couldn’t bear to have him see her go. But neither did she want to walk out of the door with a suitcase now, under the nose of Owen Roe. She put her passport and some money and a cheque-book into her handbag and thought that maybe that was all she need take. She went back to Aunt Judith’s room. I can’t protect her, she thought. I’m kidding myself. Love is egotistic. If I’m going, I’d better just go.
‘He was trying to get out the window …’ her aunt was saying. ‘But it was sinking, you know, slowly, the way an empty bottle sinks, taking in water. And then this other fellow, on the bank, picked something up. A spade? Or an oar maybe?’
‘Who? Who?’ Owen Roe might have been an owl.
‘I’m going out,’ said Grainne. ‘To look for Michael,’ she lied.
But he was scarcely listening to her. ‘When was this?’ he kept asking Aunt Judith. ‘When? Where?’
‘I’ll try the usual pubs.’
‘He banged the hands of the chap who was trying to clamber out, you know? Banged them. Then the fellow tried to catch the oar or whatever it was but the fellow on the bank gave him a swipe on the head and that must have done for him because he sank like a stone. Car and all sank in the same minute. It was very quick at the end.’
‘When? Where was it?’
‘I said I’m going out,’ said Grainne. ‘Don’t keep bothering her. Mary will be bringing her up her supper shortly.’
‘It was just now,’ said the old lady. ‘Out by the canal.’
Owen Roe cranked his forehead. ‘Bonkers!’ he mouthed. ‘Harmless. If Duffy got no more than that we needn’t worry.’
Grainne wasn’t listening. She had left her family mentally an hour before. ‘Tell Cormac …’ she began, but couldn’t think what message to send. She caught a glimpse of her taut, feverish image glowing in a mirror. Her glance pierced back at her: the cruel face of love, she thought, and turned from it. The others had started talking again. She walked down the stairs, out of the front door and set off through the darkness, making for the nearest bridge.
*
Cormac had run all the way to his father’s office-building and up the three flights of stairs. His great-uncle’s house was too far and, besides, Uncle Owen Roe might not be there. Anyway – Cormac panted and felt his thoughts chopped at by the hatchet-catch in his breath – it was up to Daddy to see what he could do. He had to be given a chance.
‘You told me to come to you if there was trouble,’ Cormac had said, bursting into the Heraldry Commission office without knocking. ‘Well …’
As they drove home along the canal, he smelled peppermint on his father’s breath. Was this going to be any use, he wondered, and did it matter now anyway? His mother was behaving as people near his age were expected to behave: like young, excitable women played by actresses a couple of years older than himself. This discredited her as a mother but didn’t make her feel close to him. How could it? She was just wrong, he thought furiously, wrong.
‘Look!’ he shouted. She had come out of the garden gate, latched it behind her and crossed the road. She hadn’t got a suitcase, just her handbag. She was wearing boots and her
fur coat.
‘Maybe she’s not going anywhere?’
‘Ask her.’
Cormac was out of the car door before his father had turned off the engine. ‘Mummy!’
She turned around.
‘Daddy’s here. Listen. You’re not going away, are you?’
‘Yes, Cormac. I am.’
‘With him?’ Cormac would not use the American’s name.
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’ He dared her to use the ridiculous excuse: love. To him! To his father. She couldn’t, could she? No. It would be like trying to pay for goods at the corner shop with foreign coins. He knew she knew that and felt himself suddenly powerful. He mightn’t manage to stop her but he could make her see that she was wrong. Her excuse was no excuse – and what other had she? Staring at her in a triumph of rightness, Cormac half expected her to crumple or go up in smoke like an exorcized person he’d seen in a horror film. The childish thought embarrassed him but only for a moment. Nobody knew of it and anyway it was she who had brought to mind the trashy world of cinema and silliness.
‘Daddy!’ Cormac nudged. His father was standing like a zombie. Why didn’t he do something? Say something anyway? ‘Ask her if she’s just going to run out on us.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Cormac’s mother. ‘Truly. But it’ll be better if I go. I’ve messed things up here. Anyway, it is what I want.’
‘What about Daddy?’ Cormac’s voice was embarrassingly shrill and shaky. ‘What about me? And Aunt Judith? You can’t just leave us.’
‘You’ll manage,’ she said. ‘Nobody’s indispensable.’ She looked, Cormac thought, grim and not beautiful, not justified by her beauty, as film stars were. She wasn’t a star but the sort of woman who got supporting roles and should devote herself to playing them properly. Her hair was wispy.
‘Daddy!’
‘It’s no good, Cormac. She has to go.’
‘Goodbye, Michael – Cormac.’
She gave them a quiver of a smile, then turned and walked away up the tow-path towards the bridge.
They stood watching as she crossed this and started walking back towards them on the opposite side of the canal. She seemed to be looking for someone and her boots made a clumping movement through the mud.
‘Come on.’ Cormac’s father took his arm. ‘Let’s go inside.’
Copyright
This ebook edition first published in 2015
by Faber & Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
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London WC1B 3DA
All rights reserved
© Julia O’Faolain, 1980
The right of Julia O’Faolain to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–31044–9
No Country for Young Men Page 40