There was a round-shouldered boy pulling a reluctant horse into the frame and onwards. His coat was streaked with grime, oddly blackened on one side. Eddie moved closer to the canvas. Beneath the gape of the coat he could see it: the boy was in uniform.
A dial, for Chrissake. Eddie’s forefinger moved clockwise until he found the right number. He listened to the ratchet purr as the wheel returned. He had his mother’s old address book balanced on his lap. He peered at her jagged writing on the ivory-coloured paper.
The phone rang on in Ohio. Eddie was about to put down the receiver.
‘How yer doing?’ The voice was happy. Expectant.
Eddie knew it was Mikey but he didn’t speak.
‘Hello? Who is this?’ Mikey said into the silence, his voice steeling just a fraction. There was the sound of machinery in the background. A tractor, perhaps.
‘It’s me, Mikey. It’s Eddie.’
‘Eddie?’ There was a long pause. ‘Jesus. Cousin Eddie?’ Mikey knew who it was; the only people who ever called him Mikey were his relatives. ‘God, Eddie. I thought it was town, about the thresher, I’ve been waiting for ages, all morning …’ He rallied himself. ‘So, hey, Eddie, good to hear from you. How are you?’ Dread thickened his voice. ‘Are you around here, or something?’
‘I’m in Brooklyn,’ Eddie said.
Mikey blew out a long, relieved breath. ‘Right, right,’ he said.
‘You know Mum is dead,’ Eddie said.
‘Yeah, yeah, I heard. I was real sorry. Poor Aunt Anne. Hard for you.’
Not really, thought Eddie, remembering the near-empty chapel at the funeral parlour. A feeling close to hate pressed in at his temples. ‘Listen, Mikey, I need to talk to you about something.’
‘Right, okay,’ Mikey said. He sounded punch-drunk.
‘Listen, I …’ The receiver felt heavy at Eddie’s ear. ‘Mikey, I need to talk to you about Rory.’
Mikey’s reaction was instant, electric. ‘Aw, shit. For God’s sake, Eddie. I’m trying to run a farm here. I’m trying to get on with things. That whole business was … that was a long time ago. What happened that day, what happened to Rory, it was just terrible. I felt so bad, but you know … you could never get over it. Not any of us. But we were just …’ Mikey’s words cornered and turned back, defiant. ‘No, I can’t talk about it. Listen, I gotta go, Eddie. The thresher. I can’t. You know, we were just, we were just …’
The line went dead. We were just kids, Eddie thought.
Eddie was trying to remember the last time he’d driven a car. Must be five years, at least. Miami? That stupid green Chrysler. That poor lost girl from Nebraska, the way the heat seemed to consume her whole, like a python. He was relieved those times were gone.
He pressed the accelerator of the rental car. The old road hadn’t changed much. Maybe a bit smoother, in parts. Farmland stretched away in all directions. He felt his mood lift. It would do him good to be out of Brooklyn for a while.
He’d felt a pang that had scared him, leaving the painting. He’d thought about bringing it, but decided that was just too weird, even for a man who was waking three times a night like a father checking on his infant. Checking on Rory.
He’d worried about thieves. Nearly every apartment in his building had been turned over at least once although, strangely enough, never his place. There’s nothing to steal anyway, he decided. Never was. And who’d want a dark old painting full of dead faces? Not me, thought Eddie, and the notion startled him. For the first time, he thought about his mother’s last words. Rory deserved it. What the hell had Rory deserved?
Eddie found he remembered these last straight roads very well, even some of the houses. Soon, after the dog-leg corner, he would crest a long, smooth hill, and the farmhouse would be there, red-roofed against its picked-clean, yellow slopes. And the ghost of a barn, and the memory of the way its two huge doors had hung slightly aslant, its cavernous spaces darkly glimpsed, the hay stacked high. And the spirits of lost children, waiting.
Mikey had been a big teenager. ‘You’ll be the image of your father,’ the aunts had clucked every Christmas. No one seemed to notice that Mikey’s father was a thick-necked behemoth with hands like dirt-encrusted spades, and a forehead as broad as the unused table in the good dining room. But as Eddie pressed his eye to a crack in the wall, watching his cousin walking towards him, he was surprised to see that most of Mikey’s growing had been over by the time he was killing Rory.
Eddie guessed that Mikey would not usually come out to the barn this late. But he would have seen the pale glow of the lantern in the pig-eyed windows, high up near the roof. Light, where there are no fixed electrics, could mean thieves, maybe even a fire. Mikey would come.
In the last strands of the evening sun, he could see Mikey getting closer, his face creased in agitation. He looks a whole lot better than me, Eddie thought. Across the crook of Mikey’s arm lay a shotgun, its split barrel carefully pointing down at the foot-stamped earth. Eddie took a seat on a hay bale. He watched the lantern in its round pool of light, and waited.
Mikey pulled on one of the doors and it opened without a sound. Eddie felt the breeze almost at once. He knew that Mikey could not see him from the doorway. He heard him crack the shotgun home. A pair of pigeons cooed a warning to each other. A strange buzz played in Eddie’s head.
‘Who’s there?’ Mikey sounded afraid. Eddie wondered how often, here alone, Mikey had jumped at shadows. The air was pollen-thick. With his back spiked into the makeshift wall of hay, Eddie felt his city nose begin to run. He heard the scratch and crackle of tiny stones under Mikey’s boots as he moved inside. He stood up.
‘Who’s there?’ Mikey said, his voice rising. ‘Come out. I’ve got a gun.’
‘You don’t need a gun, Mikey. It’s me.’ Eddie stood on the yellow edge of light, scraps of hay falling from his shoulders, the lantern blasting them white as they fell. He wondered whether he was about to go the way of Rory, right here, on the cold floor.
Mikey’s head jerked up as if he’d taken an uppercut straight on the chin. His mouth opened, wide as a scream, a thin whale-song howl shooting into the eaves. He threw the gun high and left. They watched it together, the arc of it, heard the thudding sound as it landed on a great roll of tarpaulin. For a moment they both stared at the butt of the shotgun, its barrel pointing back towards the house. Mikey was swaying on his feet. Eddie thought he was going to collapse but with a roar he ran straight at him. They fell together, Mikey rolling him hard across the floor, strong as a bear.
‘What the fuck, Eddie! Goddamn it. What the fuck are you doing here?’
Eddie was no match for a man who’d been farming since he was twelve. And he’d been wrong about Mikey. What he lacked in height he made up for in breadth. He smelled of diesel and coffee and, surprisingly, good soap. Eddie waited for the fist. Knew it would be bad.
But in the heaving roll, Mikey’s curses hot on his face, the starburst of pain did not come. Prising away a shoulder, heavy as a stone, Eddie got to his feet and shook himself down. Mikey drew huge breaths from the green-tanged floor.
‘You have no right,’ Mikey said, breathing hard. ‘You have no right to come here.’ His voice was choking.
Eddie knew he was crying. He walked to the tarpaulin, stared down at the gun as if he’d never seen one before. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But I had to come.’
Mikey wiped his shirt-sleeve roughly across his face, looked up at Eddie with a disbelieving stare. ‘In the barn, Eddie.’ He shook his head. ‘What sort of sick joke is this?’
Eddie looked into the corner where everything had ended. ‘You didn’t burn it down, Mikey.’ He couldn’t help himself. ‘Your dad said he’d burn it down. After Rory.’
Eddie had slept in cars before, when there was nowhere else to go. The nights here came down so black and quiet, colder than he’d expected. This was the seco
nd night, up by the front gate, the farmhouse shuttered against him, the rise of the land tipping him towards the road at a slight angle.
Mikey would not speak to him tonight either, Eddie had decided. Not this late. His shoulder still ached, and there was a long bruise forming on his shin. He was pulling up the old travel rug, still amazed that he’d thought to bring it. When he looked again at the house, Mikey was standing beneath the light over the front door, a corona of small insects playing around his head.
Eddie got out of the car slowly, his leg complaining, and walked the few steps to the fence. He was relieved to see there was no sign of the shotgun. Mikey would not, Eddie knew, be a knife man.
‘Listen, Mikey …’ Eddie called across to him. He heard the trembling whinny of a screech owl. ‘I know this is going to seem really strange, but I need to talk to you about a painting.’ Something slithered close to Eddie’s foot and shot away. He had a sudden longing for asphalt.
Mikey didn’t speak. He just stared back down the steps, out into the darkness.
‘Mikey, I need to come in. Please. I need to tell you about …’ Eddie cast his head left and right, wondering where to begin.
‘I know about the painting,’ Mikey said.
It had been over thirty years, but his aunt and uncle’s old place looked much the same. The long narrow hall. The lurid wallpaper with the fat stripes that Mikey’s father, whisky-crazy one Christmas, had tried to rip from the walls. The house felt brighter, somehow. Cleaner. The kitchen had been redone. But there were no small touches. It was a big square room looking out across the farm. The barn loomed in the moonlight, its edges white as bones.
There were no curtains. The benchtops were bare. Eddie suspected that the cupboards were, too. Hunkered in one corner, a green enamel stove looked shiny and barely used. There’s no woman, Eddie thought. He savoured the idea of Mikey alone like a lozenge in his mouth.
Mikey motioned to him to sit at the kitchen table. Eddie sat with his back to the barn, feeling its presence push against his shoulders. He saw that the old coffee pot was still in use. Mikey put a plate of cold food on the table in front of him. Sliced meats, some fine-looking cheese. He cut a thick hunk of bread with his mother’s bone-handled knife and put it on Eddie’s plate. The coffee smelled good.
‘Mikey, I’m sorry about the way I turned up.’ Eddie felt light-headed. Days and nights in the car. He thought of the painting and nothing seemed real. He wondered about Rory. Was he really dead? He picked at a corner of the bread crust. ‘It was just that when I got here and saw the place and …’
Eddie wanted to say that when that last hill dropped away he’d thought maybe there’d be a rough scar where the old barn had been, maybe even a new barn straddling all that pain, but when he saw the red roof of it, the white walls newly painted, and a tree, a fucking dogwood on one corner, everything neat and solid and alive, he could have put a hole in Mikey that moment, as easy as look at him. And feeling that hate surge through him, he almost turned back for Brooklyn to be scared of a dead boy staring out of an ancient picture, because that was better than this.
But he didn’t say any of these things. He took a slice of meat, made a roll of it with his fingers and said, ‘I didn’t mean to be in the barn. I really didn’t.’
Mikey pushed a coffee cup towards Eddie. He seemed in no mood to sit down. ‘Judy’s away. She’s at her mother’s while I paint the inside here.’ Then he gestured to the food in front of Eddie. ‘That’s the best I can do for you tonight.’
Eddie felt the meat lump in his mouth. He took a sip of hot coffee. He wasn’t sure how much time Mikey was going to give him. ‘You said you know about the painting.’
Mikey hesitated, then reached across the kitchen bench behind him and picked up a large envelope. From it, he pulled out a smaller envelope and handed it to Eddie without a word.
In one of its linen-textured corners, Eddie could trace the embossed outline of a cone-shaped tree. It was addressed to his mother. Feeling suddenly cold, he put it down on the table between them.
‘Open it,’ Mikey said.
The envelope was lined. White on brilliant white. Inside was a plain, folded card, handwritten, the inked curves shaky in parts.
Dear Mrs Reynolds,
I did not wish to appear rude yesterday and if that is how it seemed, then I apologise. I am sorry to hear of your health issues. The trials of an illness can make one impatient and ill-suited to even the most prosaic of matters. Please believe me when I say that I understand this better than you can know.
The situation that you outlined to me is far from pedestrian. I can well understand your feelings of distress. Regrettably, I must reiterate that I cannot help you in any way with regard to the painting. It is not unknown for people to believe that a work of art can have powers beyond what is depicted on the canvas. I admit that I would have once scoffed at such a suggestion. However, quite early in my career I encountered a painting that I came to believe had some sort of malign force. It is not easy for me to forget the turmoil that picture seemed to engender.
I have written more than I intended. The painting you have is undoubtedly valuable. Selling it would solve some of your problems, but perhaps not all. I can only add that the painting that I encountered years ago was later burned by its owners, a step they did not regret.
Sincerely,
Walter Fennell
Eddie felt a pounding in his head. His skull felt heavy enough to tip him, face first, onto the lino floor. He almost wished for its cool flatness against his cheek.
His mother. Walter. Mikey.
‘Where did you get this letter?’ he said to Mikey.
‘Aunt Anne sent it. A few months before she died.’ Mikey paused, made a half-turn away. ‘That, and a few other things.’
‘What other things?’
Mikey hesitated. ‘There was a letter for me.’
Eddie almost snorted. ‘To you? You’re telling me my mother wrote to you.’
Mikey, who had a powerful taste for silence, took a seat at the table. Eddie pushed his food around the plate, feeling Mikey’s stare on his bent head.
‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ Eddie mumbled. He would have liked a drink. ‘Can I see my mother’s letter?’
‘No. She asked me to destroy it afterwards, and I did,’ Mikey said. ‘You’ll just have to believe me.’
‘So now you’re going to tell me that my mother forgave you for shooting her favourite son.’ Eddie could hear his own belligerent tone. He half expected a blow before he’d finished the sentence.
But Mikey’s patience was prodigious. He looked out towards the barn. ‘In her own way,’ he said, ‘I guess she did.’ He poured himself some coffee, pointedly ignoring Eddie’s drained cup. ‘Look, Eddie, I can’t make much sense of all this, but here’s what I understand: the painting seems to be haunted in some way.’
‘No!’ Eddie stood up with a harsh scrape of chair. He would not let Mikey say this. Mikey was a farmer. Used to ordinary things. Used to weather and soil and animals. Hearing Mikey, seeing Walter’s words on the card – pursed-lipped Walter – was too much. ‘I can’t believe you’re coming out with this stuff, Mikey. This is just crap.’ He felt the need to run from the room.
‘Sit down!’ Mikey’s voice was loud in the empty kitchen. ‘Listen to me, Eddie. You’re the one who drove all the way to Ohio with your hair standing on end. You’re the one I found hanging around the barn like some sort of freak. You’re the one who sat outside my house for two nights freezing your nuts off, so don’t tell me I’m talking crap. You know I’m not.’
Eddie sat. Mikey reached back, picked up the larger envelope, held it up, his face red. ‘Your mother wrote to me because she wanted to finish things.’ Mikey tapped angrily on Walter’s card. ‘She sent me this letter from some gallery in Brooklyn that says weird shit does happen and’ – he shook the enve
lope in his hand – ‘she wrote the saddest letter I ever … one that … will stay with me …’
Eddie saw the words catch in Mikey’s throat. The cousins stared at each other across the table. He wants me to go, Eddie thought.
‘She kept dreaming about the painting,’ Mikey went on. ‘Your mother. She kept it wrapped up, hidden away in a cupboard. That’s what she told me. She couldn’t understand about the dreams, so she took it out one day. When she looked at it, she reckoned she could see her Uncle Ivan in the painting. She swore he wasn’t there before. Do you remember that uncle who got some rare medal in the war?’
Eddie felt a sting of shame. ‘Yeah. Heard of him,’ he said. ‘How did she even know what he looked like?’
Mikey tipped up the large envelope. A small photo slid out onto the table. An old photo of a young soldier. A doomed boy on his doomed horse. Eddie picked it up. On the back, in faded ink: Ivan on Jasper. 1917.
‘She went to see this Fennell guy,’ Mikey said, ‘to try and get rid of the picture. Sell it, or whatever. He wouldn’t touch it, and she didn’t have the courage to burn it. In the end’ – Mikey wouldn’t meet Eddie’s eye – ‘she left it for you.’
Eddie stared. There was a soft click in his brain. ‘She left it for me. So that I’d break the spell. Sell it for drink money or something.’ The shame rose hotly up his neck.
Mikey ignored him. ‘After her Uncle Ivan appeared,’ he said, ‘she was even more terrified of that damn painting. She believed – her whole family believed, from way back – that when a new figure appeared, the next one had been chosen.’
‘Mikey, what are you talking about?’
‘That’s what she told me, Eddie,’ Mikey said. ‘Once her Uncle Ivan appeared, she knew the next one had been chosen. She was sure it would be Rory.’
Eddie felt the barn like a shadow on his back. He was tired beyond measure.
‘It was Rory,’ Eddie said.
1827. Bear Park Field, Shadwell, East London.
This Taste for Silence Page 14