The Salesman

by Joseph O'Connor

  You said nothing, just rolled around to face the wall.

  ‘I’m very disappointed with you,’ I said.

  ‘Well, aren’t you glad I used them? And didn’t end up like Ma?’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  You scoffed. ‘You know well.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘You bloody do so. Mammy the dirty whore.’

  ‘How dare you talk about your mother like that.’

  ‘I heard you do it often enough,’ you shouted. ‘You came out with a thing or two about her in your time. You’ve forgotten that maybe. Like you forget everything that doesn’t suit you.’

  ‘You’re one right little bitch when you want to be.’

  ‘Oh, I know, I know, I know. Just like Mammy.’

  ‘That’s right, love. Just like her.’

  ‘Yeah, look, change the fuckin’ record, Billser, all right?’

  ‘You’re so like her I don’t know why you don’t just shag off back to her.’

  You sat up in bed with your eyes flaring. ‘I remember you well,’ you roared. ‘Christ, don’t think I don’t, I remember what you were like, the fuckin’ state of you. Who the fuck d’y’think you are to lecture me, anyway?’

  ‘I’m your father, that’s who.’

  ‘Are you really? And how do y’even know that?’

  ‘It’s just as well you’re a girl,’ I told you, then. ‘I’d take a fuckin’ strap to you otherwise.’

  ‘Sure c’mon, don’t let that stop you. It never stopped you with her.’

  ‘I never laid a finger on your mother, that’s a dirty lie.’

  ‘Great, great, you didn’t beat her around the place. What do you want, a medal for bein’ the perfect fuckin’ husband now? Daddy dearest?’

  I left your room in a red-hot rage and went out for a long drive.

  A couple of nights later I was half-asleep when you knocked on the bedroom door and came in with a cup of tea for me. You sat on the edge of the bed and we talked for a while. You apologised for what had happened; I did too. We agreed to try again. I threw on a dressing-gown and we went down to the kitchen together where we wrote out some rules on the back of an envelope. You would not have your friends in without telling me, I would not shout at you when I lost my temper. You would not lie to me and I would not lie to you. I would allow you to stay out one night a week in a girlfriend’s house, if you cleaned your room regularly, and if I knew exactly where you were. And we would both – this was your idea – we’d both try to mind our language in future.

  ‘Because sometimes your language is fuckin’ atrocious, Billser,’ you said. ‘You’re settin’ me a fierce bad example.’

  Around that time things at work began to suffer: I had realised by then that I simply could not be away on the road as much as I had in the old days. I began to come home early so that I could be there when you got in from school. As a result my wage packet would often be well down, and in any event, there was rarely a whole lot to spare after I had made the monthly payments to. Grace. The arguments between you and me certainly did not stop overnight; in fact, you may as well know, love, there were many times when I really did think it might be better for you to go back to your mother. But eventually things seemed to calm down a bit. When you took up the acting again in school you were like a different girl. Sometimes I would find you actually reading a book or doing homework. The situation between your mother and yourself improved a little. In time I think you even looked forward to seeing her at the weekends.

  Slowly Grace and I began to talk to each other again. Sometimes when she dropped Lizzie down to the hotel on a Saturday she would stay and make conversation for a minute or two before you and she would drive away. One morning you suggested that all four of us could go into the hotel and have coffee together. It wasn’t great but it was something. After that day your mother and I agreed to stop communicating through the lawyers: she would telephone the house whenever there was a problem. She made it clear that I was to feel welcome to phone her too, although I do not think I ever did unless it was absolutely necessary. We began to meet once a month, when I would hand over the maintenance cheque instead of posting it. We attended a couple of parent–teacher meetings together and one of your plays in school. After Phil the Failure disappeared off to England, there was even a brief period when she and I would occasionally go out to dinner on a weekend night to talk about you and Lizzie. This, too, felt like progress of a sort.

  One of these nights you should know about. You were away on a class trip to Stratford, your mother and I had been to a play at the Gate and we had gone to supper afterwards in La Stampa. We’d had a good chat – I think we were talking mainly about Lizzie’s plans to attend art college, or possibly your own to go to UCD. Time slipped by. Before we knew it, we were the last customers in the restaurant. The waiters were putting the chairs up on the tables and switching on the lights. It was time to go home.

  For some reason your mother was driving the two of us that night. When she dropped me back to Dalkey, I invited her up to the house for a cup of tea. Of course she did not want to come in at first, but in the end I persuaded her. I said that I knew she had loved the house and did not want her to feel that she could never set foot inside it again; if we wanted to make an effort for you and Lizzie, this might be a good way to start.

  She seemed uneasy as she walked around the house; at first she did not want to take off her coat. In the living-room I tried to make a joke about the untidiness – I had finally got the builders in to begin fixing the place up a bit after all those years – but she did not laugh. She stared at the pictures on the walls as though she had never seen them before. I had an old photograph on top of the television, of you and Lizzie in Hallowe’en outfits – Arab head-dresses and fun furs of heart-attack pink. She picked this up and looked at it for a long time, rubbing the dust off the glass with the back of her hand. I remember going upstairs to the toilet and then, when I returned, finding her still looking at the picture.

  I made tea and we went for a walk in the garden. It looked a mess because the builders had dug a long, deep drainage trench all the way down to the back wall, and they had not yet put up the aviary, which was still lying in its flat crates under the apple tree. She looked at the photograph of the aviary on the side of one of the boxes and teased me that it looked like a prison cell. The newspapers had said that there would be a comet that night – in fact, a comet shower – but the sky was a little too bright to see it. We strolled around and talked about the plants. It must have been summer, because the garden was full of wild flowers. We talked about the names of the flowers, how beautiful they were: silverweed and ling, harebell and wild orchid, heart’s-ease, meadowsweet, cranesbill, feverfew. I told her that was a job I’d like for myself, being the man who thought up the names for wild flowers. She laughed.

  ‘It’s so lovely and quiet here,’ she said. ‘You could be in the country.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘The Residents’ Association finally blocked the sale of the back field.’

  ‘Our place is so small,’ she said. ‘If you let a good roar all the neighbours know. Not like here.’

  ‘Well, we don’t do that much roaring any more,’ I said.

  She looked around. ‘I don’t know how you find the time to look after the garden so well, especially now Madam Maeve’s in residence. If I buy a pot plant it keels over.’

  ‘Not me with the green fingers, I’m sorry to say. One of the old travellers from the back field comes in to me once a fortnight. Knows damn all about gardening, the poor chap, but he needs the dough. He’s kids to feed.’

  She reached out and stroked the leaves of a lovely tall purple fern that was growing around the trunk of the apple tree, its thick fronds digging into the bark. ‘You’re such a generous person, Billy,’ she murmured.

  ‘Indeed I’m not,’ I said. ‘I’m not long giving him a good roasting when he needs it, believe you me.’

  ‘No,’ she sai
d, ‘you are. It’s a lovely thing about you.’

  She turned to me then and stared at me.

  ‘Jesus, Billy,’ she whispered, ‘what happened to us?’

  I was taken aback. ‘I thought you knew that,’ I told her.

  ‘We had some lovely times though, didn’t we?’

  I nodded. ‘Yes, we did.’

  ‘What I miss most is being able to talk to you,’ she said.

  ‘Well, I miss that too, Grace,’ I said.

  We were standing very close to each other. She had on a dark short-sleeved silk dress, and I could see the tiny white hairs on her arms. She stared at the flowers again. I found myself reaching out and taking her fingers in mine.

  ‘Don’t, Billy,’ she said, but although she turned away she did not let go of my hand. With my other hand I touched her face.

  Your mother turned back and looked into my eyes. I began to kiss her. I suppose it is not quite true to say that I could not help it. But I did not want to help it. She kissed me back very gently. I remember touching her hair, the sweet winey smell of her hair. We kissed for a few minutes more. Then she pulled away from me and walked up and down the garden for a time, knotting her fingers, rubbing the nape of her neck. She looked weak with anxiety. I was just about to tell her that everything was all right, and that she was not to worry, and I was sorry for touching her like that, when she came back over and put her arms around me and kissed me very hard on the lips.

  We went upstairs and into our old bedroom where we took off some of our clothes and kissed again for a while. After a time she asked me to turn out the light and I did. In the darkness I could hear her removing the rest of her clothes. She asked me to do the same. We embraced for a few moments, I was trembling. She asked if anyone else had been in this bed with me and I said no, nobody had, which was the truth. We slid under the sheets together and made love very gently. I remember – and you may as well know this too, love – that afterwards we just lay in the dark, holding each other for a long time and crying.

  Next morning when I woke up your mother was gone. There was an earring on the table beside the bed. I threw it away.

  It never happened again. Less than a year later she was dead.

  Chapter Eleven

  On the evening of Monday 1 July 1994, I left the house at seven o’clock and drove down to Dun Laoghaire, where I parked the car on Marine Road, just outside the entrance to the Royal Marine Hotel like the milkman and I had agreed, and simply sat and waited. I knew what to look for. My friend would be about twenty-five years old, wearing tight black jeans and a black Chicago Bulls bomber jacket, a stocky lad, built like a body-builder, with big muscles and a skinhead hairdo.

  Unfortunately, this is a description that applies to approximately half of the citizens of Dun Laoghaire at any given time, or it did that night at any rate. The town looked as though a shipload of aspiring neo-Nazis had recently pulled into the harbour. Several times I was right on the point of giving the two hoots on the horn we had agreed or even opening up the car door to smilingly invite in some passing psychopathic degenerate when I realised at the last minute that I was wrong, and it was not him after all. Clearly I would have to be a little more cautious. The idea was for Quinn to get killed this evening, after all, and not myself.

  Finally I saw my friend, shaping up Marine Road from the direction of the Dart station with a holdall in his hand. I knew it was him because he looked a little out of place, as if he did not know where he was exactly and wasn’t familiar with the area. He sat down on the low wall outside the church and lit a cigarette. He was big all right. He looked like a nightclub bouncer or a boxing instructor about to get struck off by the authorities. He took a tabloid newspaper out of his jacket pocket and started to read it. I knew he really was reading it because I could see his lips moving. I hit the horn twice. He looked up and saw me. He pointed to himself and raised his eyebrows. I say eyebrows, although in reality he had just one long eyebrow which stretched all the way across his forehead, making him look a bit like a thuggish muppet. I hit the horn again. He leapt up and crossed the street to where I was parked.

  He opened the passenger door and bent down. ‘Billy, is it?’ he said, and I nodded.

  ‘Pony,’ he said. ‘Pony Sheehan.’

  He climbed into the car, reached down to adjust the seat, nodded and coughed. He smelt of carbolic soap. ‘Have you three and a half for me?’

  I opened the glove compartment, took out the seven fifties and gave them to him. He counted the money twice, lifted his backside and slid the notes into his jeans pocket.

  ‘Right. Let’s get a move on.’

  On the drive out to Bray he was very quiet. His eyes were shining brightly and he was chain-smoking. The smoking surprised me because he looked like a health fiend. By the time we got to Shankill the car was so full of smoke that I wanted to ask him to stop, but I did not do this; instead I just rolled down the window. There were all kinds of things I would have liked to ask him. I realised this as we drove along, that I was curious about him and wanted to know something about his life. But it was difficult to know where we might start, and after a while I began to think maybe it was a bad idea anyway.

  ‘Nice motors these,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘New model, aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He slapped the dashboard. ‘Nice finish in them.’

  ‘They’re a good solid car,’ I said. ‘Very dependable in the mornings.’

  ‘I heard that,’ he nodded. ‘Have to hand it to the Japs all the same.’

  ‘Do you drive yourself?’ I tried.

  ‘Well I do, yeah. But I’ve no motor just now.’

  ‘That’s a pity. A car’s handy to have.’

  ‘It is, yeah.’

  ‘When you’re mobile you’re laughing.’

  ‘I lost the licence a while back there,’ he said. ‘Bit of bother with the coppers.’

  We were coming through Shankill village now, past the church at the fork in the road and on towards Bray. He raised his massive head and sniffed.

  ‘I love the smell of a new car,’ he said.

  ‘Well yes, it isn’t that new actually.’

  ‘Y’keep it nice,’ he said. ‘It smells new to me.’

  ‘I’m a salesman,’ I said. ‘A good salesman looks after his car.’

  Out on the street a skinny lad in a tuxedo and a girl in a pink evening dress were having an argument. He looked out at them and snickered. We drove on. He seemed to be staring at me.

  ‘And he’s small, I hear?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Pope, man, who do y’think?’

  ‘Well, he’s not big,’ I said. ‘You couldn’t say that about him.’

  It was stiflingly hot in the car. But it surprised me how contented and calm I felt. I thought about getting up the next morning, how pleasant it would be to rise early and maybe take a walk in the damp garden before putting my case into the car and driving out to meet Seánie at the airport. Arriving tired in Lourdes around lunch-time, a sandwich in the hotel, one of those long French cheese sandwiches and a strong coffee, then maybe a short nap or a walk down to the basilica. And then a long deep sleep. To know that I had finally dealt with Donal Quinn, that he simply would not be there to torment me any more.

  ‘He looks like a jockey,’ I laughed. ‘That’s how you’ll know him.’

  ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘I’ll know him when you point him out to me, sweat. That’s how I work. You put the finger on him. I don’t want any fuck-ups.’

  He reached out his shovel-like hand and switched on the radio. It was playing a mournful old folk song with a plaintive melody. He seemed to know it. He joined in with the words, singing softly through his teeth

  Through field and town we’d roam around

  In search of the droleen;

  We’d search for birds in every furze

  From Lifford to Dooneen.

  The same boys who fought the auxies,r />
  And who braved the Black and Tans,

  Were the boys of Bar na Stráide

  Who hunted for the wren.

  As we came into Bray he reached his bomber jacket and pulled out a gnarled grey lump of metal welded to a set of metal rings which fitted neatly over the fingers of his right hand. From another pocket he yanked a crumpled khaki balaclava. The knuckleduster and the mask were not what worried me so much. It was what happened then. He thrust his hand into the holdall and took out a shotgun.

  I had gone hunting once or twice with Liam from the office but I had never seen a gun like this before. It was maybe nine inches long with a squat handle covered in thick layers of black masking tape; the barrels had been roughly sawn off. It looked like something home-made. I wondered was this possible. Next he produced one of those old-fashioned tobacco tins from his jacket and flipped it open. I saw that there were four cartridges inside. He took out two and loaded the gun.

  ‘You don’t think that’s a bit much?’ I said.

  ‘Not takin’ any chances,’ he said. ‘Some of these small lads are tough enough.’

  ‘I didn’t hear anything about a gun,’ I say.

  ‘It’s a last resort,’ he said. ‘It’s insurance. Way it is, I don’t work without it.’ He grinned at me. ‘I mean there’s a lot of fuckin’ crime around these days.’

  I was bothered now. I tried to think straight as I drove on. I certainly did not want him killing anybody. It had to be me who did it, that much was clear. No way did I want him to do it, not after all I had been through.

  ‘The only thing is, right,’ he went. ‘If things go arseways and if I have to use this – I’m not sayin’ they will, but – if I do though, then you’ll have to buy it off me. It’ll cost you four hundred.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s the deal I have. It’s only rented. There’s a geezer in town rents them to me. Fifty notes to rent it for the night, I cover that out of what you’re after givin’ me. But if the job goes baw-ways and I have to use it, then it’s traceable so it has to disappear a while. So you have to stump up for it. Four ton.’