The Salesman

by Joseph O'Connor

  I never found the hotel I was supposed to stay in that night. I am sure you remember Galway, love, you know the way the centre of the town is a medieval warren of tiny, curling streets. It is a maze. It is comparatively easy to get lost in Galway even when you are stone-cold sober but when you are drunk it is almost inevitable. All I remember is stumbling around the dark wet lanes for what seemed like hours and then, I think, running hard for a time, as fast as I could. Then the speckled sweep of the stars behind the navy blue silhouettes of treetops. And then nothing.

  The next morning I woke up on the grass in Eyre Square. It was very early and there was nobody at all around. I stood up and tried to find my balance. My head was reeling and I could see patches of shimmering blackness. I think I managed to totter a few steps and then I fell. I lay on the ground looking up at the clouds. After a while I realised I had soiled myself in the night.

  I went in behind a bush and took off my trousers and underpants. I do not mind telling you, love, that I was actually crying with shame at that point. I think I tried my best to clean myself with grass and leaves but it was little enough use. I threw my underpants away and put my trousers back on.

  Then I think I must have fallen asleep again, I cannot really remember. The next thing I do recall is startlingly bright golden sunlight, and two tourists standing over me looking worried. They were a young Italian couple, students I suppose, or backpackers. They offered me money. When I would not take it, the girl took a packet of sweets from her rucksack and offered me those. I think they must have thought that I was a tramp sleeping rough. They helped me up on to a bench and asked if I was OK. ‘OK’ was the only English word they seemed to know and they just kept repeating it – OK? – OK? – and I nodded until they went away.

  That was when the paranoia started to bite. I remember being absolutely terrified that some passer-by would see me and call the police, or somehow telephone Grace. That’s how nuts I was. I went into the filthy public toilet in Eyre Square and cleaned myself up a bit. Then I started thinking that a policeman would come into the public toilet and see me there, and I remember running into one of the stinking cubicles and locking the door. I do not know how long I stayed there. When I came out I felt a little better. I decided to go for a walk. Soon I found myself back in front of the window of the shop where I had been frightened by the living picture of Christ. I saw with some relief that the picture was actually designed like that; it was one of those optical illusion things which change their image when you look at them from a different angle.

  I walked back to the hotel where I had left my bags the lunch-time before and rang Grace. She was worried and had been awake most of the night. She had telephoned the hotel around midnight and found that I was not in my room. We had a bad argument over the phone. I think it was the first time that she ever accused me of infidelity.

  I got into the car and drove the four hours home to Dublin. You were at the kitchen table drinking orange juice when I came in. I will never forget your expression. I went to give you a kiss but you pulled a face and told me I smelled horrible.

  ‘Mammy says you don’t care about us any more,’ you said. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ I said.

  Grace came into the kitchen and saw me. She was wearing a blue dressing-gown. Her face was white and she looked very tired. She went to the cooker, put on the kettle, rinsed out some cups. She looked at you and asked what was wrong.

  ‘You know well.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘You said Daddy didn’t care about us. You said you were going to go away.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t mean that, pet,’ Grace sighed. ‘I was only play-acting.’

  ‘You weren’t.’

  ‘I was a bit upset, love. I’m sorry. We all say silly things when we’re upset.’

  She poured you another glass of orange juice and sent you inside to do some homework.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked me, and I nodded.

  She sat down at the table and looked at me.

  ‘Is there anything you want to tell me, Billy? About where you were?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I just walked around for the night. I was in a funny mood.’

  ‘Were you drinking again?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You weren’t drinking?’

  ‘I suppose I might have had a few.’

  Her eyes darkened. ‘You must think I’m some damn fool,’ she said.

  ‘What does that mean, Grace?’

  She laughed bitterly. ‘Is that the truth? You walked around Galway all bloody night? Since when were you so fond of walking, Billy?’

  ‘That’s what happened,’ I told her. ‘It’s all the same to me what you believe.’

  For a while I think we said nothing much. Your mother made tea, we sat there drinking it. She asked if she could have one of my cigarettes and I nodded for her to take it. She smoked the whole thing in silence. Then she asked if I wanted something to eat. I shook my head.

  ‘Please talk to me, Billy,’ she said. ‘You can tell me anything.’

  ‘There’s nothing I want to tell you.’

  She sighed. ‘Billy, look, don’t sulk with me. I’m sorry if you thought I made a fuss this morning. I suppose I just got a bit of a shock when you weren’t at the hotel.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t fucking think you’d be checking up on me,’ I said.

  Her lips started to quiver and her weary eyes flooded with tears.

  ‘I only wanted to talk to you, Billy,’ she told me. ‘I missed you and wanted to hear your voice.’

  Your mother was crying, love. She was crying like a child, in great breathy gulps. I went and put my arms around her and told her I was sorry. She said nothing but just cried harder. I remember that after a while she took my hand in hers and kissed it and squeezed it hard.

  ‘Oh Christ, I love you so much, Billy. I love you. Please, you wouldn’t ever leave me, would you? Or cheat on me?’

  ‘Course I wouldn’t,’ I said. ‘Jesus, Grace. I’m sorry. Don’t be talking like that, sweetheart.’

  ‘I get so afraid that you’ll leave me sometimes. That I make you unhappy some way. My head, Billy. It just fills up with all kinds of things. I think I must be going mad half the time.’

  ‘You’re not going mad, love. I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you rang. Really I am.’

  ‘I just wanted so much to talk to you. I was missing you. I get so lonely when you’re away. I wanted to hear your voice and say good-night. I love to hear your voice before I go to sleep. You remember the way you always used to ring me at night, Billy, when you went on the road first? It used to make me feel so safe. That’s stupid, I know.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ I told her. ‘Grace, please, I’m sorry.’

  ‘And anyway, I wanted to tell you about something.’

  ‘Well, can’t you tell me now, love?’ I said.

  She wiped the tears away from her eyes and peered at me. ‘I’m going to have another baby, Billy,’ she sobbed. ‘I went down to the doctor yesterday. I’m two months gone.’

  As long as I live, darling, I will never forget the look on your mother’s face that morning. Never. It was a look of the most pure, undisguised fear.

  After that day I tried to give up alcohol again, but could not do it. If anything my drinking got worse. Soon I found that I could not go out anywhere socially without drinking a quarter of a bottle of whiskey beforehand. Before too long Grace noticed this. For a while I got very good at fobbing her off. I would lie to her, sweetheart. Or I would tell her she was paranoid or nagging. I began brushing my teeth more often to hide the smell on my breath. I would brush my teeth fifteen times a day sometimes, and buy the strongest mints or mouthwash I could find. Then I discovered one particular cough medicine that had a strong smell of aniseed and let me tell you, love, for a while your old man got more serious coughs than poor old Keats did in the bad years. There was even a ludicrous occasion when your mother made me go see a doctor, think
ing I must have TB or bronchitis, and I actually had chest X-rays in St Stephen’s hospital, where you are now, and went along with all the pretence of that like a merciless bastard. And then I discovered vodka somehow, which has hardly any smell at all, or so the drunk will tell himself, and this seemed to me a very good thing. No more coughs. No more colds. For a while your mother was happy and so was I.

  I started regularly drinking at lunch-time. Salesmen drink, that wasn’t a big deal. For a salesman, drinking is a way of keeping up with the competition, finding company, counteracting the loneliness of the job for a short time, maybe picking up tips. But I would also drink on my way home from work. I would drink late at night, down in the kitchen by myself. And then, darling, after a time I found that I could not go out to work in the mornings if I had not had a drink. I would always have a bottle in the car, under the driver’s seat or in the boot, where your mother would not come across it. This is the biggest mistake made about people like me; everyone thinks we drink to get drunk. But the true alcoholic drinks to feel normal, to function, to hold down a job, to be able to make love and experience the truth of that. Of course, he also goes blind screaming crazy from time to time and drinks to escape his demons. But mostly he does it just to stay on some kind of level, just to get back up to zero. It is the strangest thing in the world, but pretty soon it became everyday to me.

  I hid bottles in the back garden of the house, I put them in plastic bags and dug them into the flower-beds, I would stick them into the bushes and the branches of the trees. The garden behind our flat was the only one in Ireland that grew brandy and beer. I would go out there last thing at night for a walk, and sit in the grass swigging down as much as I could in a few minutes. I began to take drink into the flat or the house shortly after this. I had various hiding places where I knew Grace and you kids would never look. Under a loose floorboard in the cupboard beneath the stairs, inside the toilet cistern, inside the toolbox I kept in the spare room. I found a way of screwing off the side panel of the bath, behind which I could put two or three naggin bottles of vodka at a time.

  Whenever I thought about it – which was not very often in those days, believe you me – all of this surprised me because I did not like the taste of alcohol. I found it unpleasant and harsh and vaguely nauseating, except for sweet dessert wine or sweet sherry, but that made me sick to my stomach after only a few. I spent a lot of time and effort in my early thirties trying to find a drink that I liked to taste. I never succeeded. But I kept going anyway. You would be very surprised indeed, love, by the number of alcoholics who cannot actually stand the taste. Or perhaps you wouldn’t, I don’t know.

  It is a thing that always surprised me.

  Chapter Nine

  Several weeks after I had given the first of the money to the milkman, he still had no news for me about what we had agreed. I would drive down to Sandycove around dawn, swim for a while to the sound of frenetic birdsong, watch the sky turn gold and green, get dressed on the rocks, wait for him to show up. It was always the same story. He had not seen his friend, he would say; nobody in the area had seen him recently, there was talk that he was in England or down the country. One morning I was told that his friend had been spotted in a rough pub on the northside the night before, the next that he had been put into Mountjoy for a week following a fight outside a dance-club in Temple Bar during which a man had lost an eye. I began to get impatient. He reassured me, everything would be fine in a while, he had left a message for his friend at a certain place. Often, when I went silent, he would laughingly begin to relate his friend’s exploits and adventures to me, long stories of what his friend had done to the people who had crossed him, how marvellously skilled his friend was in the art of knowing exactly which bones to break, how expert his friend was at fractures, how his friend could beat a man in such a way as to leave no marks, if that was required, or beat him to make him look half dead if necessary. He would always finish by telling me that I would have to bide my time. Maybe there would be some news soon from his friend.

  I continued with my own preparations. Spring began to yield to the early summer, the dawns came earlier and more swimmers appeared down at the Forty Foot. Every night I went out to Bray after work to watch for Quinn. I got to know all his haunts, his habits and associates. I bought a thick notebook and began to note down even more precise details of his movements, times, dates, sketches of the street plan around his house, various addresses, an estimate of his body weight: ten stone five or six. No detail was too small for me to note. I dug out the newspaper articles and photographs I had collected at the time of the trial and the escape: some of these I pasted into the notebook also.

  Most nights I would find him quite quickly and easily enough and be able to follow him for a while. I grew confident enough to be able to take a half-hour break, go for a coffee or a Coke and then be able to catch him up again, whenever I liked. But then there were the occasional evenings when I would stalk the neon-lit streets of Bray for hours at a time, lost in the growing crowds of wide-eyed, half-drunk, savagely tanned night strollers, and not see him anywhere. Those nights, I need not tell you, were more than a little annoying.

  But then a good salesman thrives on the changing challenge.

  In work, Hopper and Liam were convinced that I had met a woman. They would tease me about it, ask me why I was so busy these nights. They would laugh knowingly at my clumsy lies and evasions. One lunch-time Liam took me to one side and told me how happy he was for me, how great it was that I was managing to put the past behind me now, how he and Teresa would love to have the two of us over to dinner when I felt that the time was right. It was definitely what Grace would have wanted, he added, I was not to feel guilty or ashamed, Grace would not have wished me to be alone, she would have wanted the world to turn. I went along with their suppositions; in time I even added to them. Whenever they would invite me for a game of pool after work I would say the same thing. I can’t, lads. You know I can’t. I have a hot date tonight.

  I suppose, in a way, it was true.

  A strange event I remember from that time: late one night I was walking that part of the Bray sea front which is used by gay men as a meeting place when I saw someone I recognised. There he was, hands deep in his pockets, and staring out at the water. It was Seánie, wearing ragged old jeans and a denim jacket. He looked distracted, as though something complicated was on his mind. His feet kicked at the rails in a desultory way as he took long slow drags on his cigarette. When I called out his name he did not hear me at first. I shouted again. He turned and appeared absolutely shocked. Then he tried to smile, but I could see from his expression that he was not at all happy to see me.

  ‘Liam, Jesus. What are you doing here?’

  ‘I was going to ask you the same thing, Father.’

  He shrugged. ‘Ah, just hadn’t been to Bray in years. I’d nothing on tonight so I wandered out on the Dart. I’d some thinking to do.’ He nodded in the direction of the amusement arcades. ‘Changed a bit, hasn’t it?’

  It was after midnight, so I knew that the last Dart would have left and the train station would be closed. When I told him this, he accepted my offer of a lift home. I walked up to the town with him, profoundly aware all the time that he was behaving as though I had caught him out in something. In the car he was very quiet. I tried to make conversation, told him that I had heard from Lizzie and Franklin recently, that they were thinking of moving to Ireland with the twins. He nodded and stared out the window. It was unlike him to be so silent and uninterested; for ten whole minutes he said nothing at all. After a while I asked straight out if there was something worrying him. He confessed that working in Dun Laoghaire was becoming difficult, getting him down. There was too much administration, too much organising sales of work, coffee mornings, bloody table-tennis tournaments in the youth club. It depressed him that so many people would come when he said mass, but hardly a soul would show up for anything else. He had tried to start up a prayer group, a centre for batte
red women, a soup run for the homeless but the parish priest had not been keen on any of his ideas. They had quarrelled badly. A summer vacancy had since come up in Lourdes, for an Irish priest to minister to those of the pilgrims who were terminally ill. He was thinking of applying. I told him it sounded a fine idea. He seemed strangely gratified – even relieved – to be encouraged.

  ‘Sure if I get it, Liam, you might come over for a fortnight. Bit of a break?’

  I laughed. ‘I don’t know about that, Seánie. It doesn’t sound like much of a holiday. Not that I’m in holiday humour anyway these days.’

  ‘Don’t be such a dry shite, will you. Lourdes is gas at night, all the Irish bars.’

  ‘Well, I’m not supposed to be frequenting Irish bars, am I?’

  He slapped my arm. ‘You know what I mean. We’ll have the crack over there. You and me, what? Nice to spend a bit of time. Like the old days, what? I’m going in July if I get it.’

  I told him I couldn’t. Lizzie and Franklin’s last letter had said that they planned to come home around then, if they were coming at all, and they might want me to help them find a flat.

  It was almost one in the morning by the time we got to the presbytery in Dun Laoghaire and I was very tired. At first Seánie did not seem to want to leave the car. He asked if we could smoke another cigarette together before he went in. All the time he smoked he kept staring up at one of the upper windows of the house, which he explained was the parish priest’s bedroom. He wanted to wait for the light to be switched off, he said. Yet when the room finally did darken he seemed disappointed that he would have to go in now. He thanked me for the lift and told me he was sorry if he had seemed a little offhand. It was just that he had things on his mind. He had not been himself lately. He had so many things to think about.