The Salesman

by Joseph O'Connor

  Late that night I was here in the small room by myself, writing to you as usual – it was a stormy night, just like it is tonight, very cold and blowy – when suddenly I heard slow and heavy footsteps plodding up the drive. It was almost eleven and I certainly was not expecting anybody. The roads were icy, the radio news had said that some of the streets in town were almost impassable, and the forecast had been for heavy snow. For a moment I wondered if it was a traveller from the back field in search of money or a cup of tea. I remember rooting for change in my pocket because I felt pity for anyone out on a night like that. The footsteps stopped. There was a loud knock on the front door.

  When I got to the hall Quinn was poking his head out from the living-room. He looked nervous. He slid sidelong into the kitchen like a crab and came back a moment later with a steak knife. I motioned him to leave. He slipped down the hall and quickly upstairs. When I was absolutely sure that he had hidden himself away I opened the door.

  Seánie was standing in the porch with sleet whirling around him. His face was purple with the cold.

  ‘Seánie. Jesus. Is everything OK?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, just passing, Liam. Thought I’d beg a coffee.’

  Before I could think of an excuse to stop him, he had stepped into the hall. I closed the door and brought him in here to the small room. He brushed himself off, clapped his arms, sat down shivering in the bay window. I went and stoked up the fire. He seemed a bit distracted as he peered around and ran his fingers through his wet hair. Even when he smiled across at me I could see that he was anxious. I went to the kitchen and made a pot of coffee. When I returned, I found him standing up very straight with his head bent back and staring at the ceiling.

  ‘Anything wrong, Seán?’

  ‘Is there someone else here, Liam? In the house?’

  My heart skipped. ‘Not at all, I’m alone as usual. Worst luck, says you. If you hear of a nice blonde looking for company on a cold night you give her my number.’

  I passed him a mug of coffee. He cupped his hands around it.

  ‘Well, it’s official anyhow, Liam. I’m off on my travels again. Just heard this morning.’

  ‘Great, Seán. Whereabouts?’

  He blew on the coffee. ‘Nicaragua this time. Looks like I’ll be gone a few years.’

  ‘That sounds right up your street.’

  I noticed him staring around the room again. ‘Liam, you wouldn’t have a drink in the house at all, would you?’

  I laughed. ‘Afraid not. If you’d tried me ten years ago I’d’ve had a whole brewery.’

  ‘Yes. Well, never mind. How’s Lizzie?’

  ‘Well, fine, I think. She’s settling into the new place with Franklin. To be honest, I don’t see that much of her these days.’

  ‘Good. I mean I’m glad she’s well.’

  ‘She’s fine.’

  He nodded and tried to smile. ‘Well, you look tired, Liam. I’m sorry for calling so late.’

  ‘Well yes, I was just about to turn in actually.’

  ‘Do you mind if I stay just a minute or two all the same?’

  ‘No, Jesus, of course. Look, is everything all right, Seán?’

  He put his mug down on the floor and sighed. ‘No, Liam. It isn’t.’

  I heard the floorboards creak upstairs. He moved his fingers to his face for a few moments, then stared across the room at the fire.

  ‘Liam, I’ve something terrible to tell you. My conscience is at me.’

  ‘What’s that, Seán?’

  He looked into his glass. ‘We’ve been pals a long time now, haven’t we?’

  ‘Christ, yes, Seán.’

  He was silent for what seemed like an age. Then he got up, went to the window, took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. I noticed that his fingers were trembling badly.

  ‘God, Seán, you’re in a fierce bad way tonight.’

  ‘I am, yeah.’

  ‘Well lookat, if there’s anything I can help you with.’

  ‘It’s about Lizzie,’ he said.

  ‘What about her?’

  He splayed his fingers and touched the window-pane.

  ‘I’ve something I need to say about her.’

  I laughed. ‘What’s that?’

  He leaned his forehead against the glass. ‘You’ll be hurt by what I have to say, Liam. Very hurt. I’ll have to ask you to prepare yourself for a shock.’

  He turned around to face me. I felt my throat go dry as I nodded at him. Out in the garden the trees were creaking in the wind. I heard the floorboards upstairs groan again, but this time he did not seem to notice. His eyes were wild with fear.

  ‘Christ forgive me, Liam,’ he said. ‘But I’m Lizzie’s father.’

  The first thing I remember after this is the sound of hoarse laughter coming from my mouth. Perhaps I thought that it was some kind of sick joke. But then I looked closely at his face and knew that he was serious.

  ‘I meant to tell you before, Liam. There’ve been so many times I was close to it.’

  I heard myself quietly saying his name a few times. When he started to speak again his voice was shaking.

  ‘What happened between Grace and myself, Liam … It was one time when you two were after splitting up. I bumped into her this night, walking down the street in Ringsend. She’d been up to visit your mother. You know the way she was so fond of your mother. Well, I was heading off into town but I could see she was down in herself. Whatever row you had, she was upset. So I took her to this dance in town. We had a few drinks, I suppose. We lost the run of ourselves.’

  ‘Stop,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to hear the details, thanks.’

  ‘I wasn’t … I didn’t mean it like that. I was just explaining how it happened.’

  For a while I listened to the logs crackling in the grate. ‘This was one time when we split up, you say?’

  ‘No. There was more than one time.’

  ‘After we started seeing each other again?’

  He bowed his head and said nothing.

  ‘And after we got married?’

  ‘God, no,’ he said. ‘Not after that, Liam. I swear to Jesus.’

  I felt my hands clutching at the arms of the chair.

  ‘The day she came to tell me about the baby being on its way, I was playing football with a couple of lads down at the dump. Beside the gasometer in Raytown. I just glanced up and there she was, running across the field. I’ll never forget the sight of her. She was astray over it, absolutely despairing. She told me she’d been to the doctor, she was sure of it.’

  ‘So what did you say?’

  ‘I said it was a shame. I couldn’t think of anything else to say.’

  ‘And what then?’

  ‘Well then, it was me who arranged for her to go to England.’

  ‘It was you.’

  He nodded. ‘We kept in touch a bit. I sent money of course. And then after a while this letter came and asked me not to write again. So I stopped. I didn’t hear from her for a few years, not until she came back to Dublin and took up with yourself again. And then the night before you got married she came up to me in the seminary. You remember I was still living there. It was late, the Father Superior came into the dormitory and told me to dress myself and come down.’

  He leaned his forehead against his fist. ‘She was in a dreadful state, Liam. Absolutely dreadful. She wondered whether to tell you or not. She didn’t think she could get married without you knowing. She was sure it would cause problems later on, that you’d turn against the child. Or turn against her.’

  ‘And …?’

  ‘And God forgive me, Liam. But I told her not to tell you. I thought of all sorts of reasons, how it would hurt you and do no good. How it was better to let everything be. But really I was thinking about myself. I was afraid for myself. I told her on no account to tell you. We agreed that we wouldn’t ever speak of it again. And we never did.’

  I looked at this man sitting before me and refusing to meet my eyes. ‘But
you married us, Seán,’ I said. ‘You baptised Maeve.’

  He hung his head. ‘I know.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Seán, you gave the woman the last rites. Don’t you remember that?’

  His head was bowed so low that I could see a tiny circle of baldness on his crown. I stood up.

  ‘Get out of my house,’ I told him. ‘Before I do something I’ll regret.’

  He put his mug on the table and sighed. His hands rested on his knees for a moment. He nodded a few times, then stood and reached for his coat.

  ‘Liam, look,’ he said. ‘I know you’re hurt, I can understand that. I know that.’

  I said nothing. I felt the sinews contract in the base of my throat.

  ‘Liam, please. Won’t you shake hands at least?’

  I heard the sound of my open hand striking his face before I was fully aware of what I was doing. Then I saw the fading mark of my fingers, dark pink on his cheek. He stared at me.

  ‘I deserve that,’ he said.

  ‘You creepin’ Judas,’ I said. ‘Get out of my sight before you get what you do deserve.’

  He turned to leave. He put his hand on the doorknob. He stopped.

  ‘Liam, Jesus. I’m asking you to forgive me. After all we’ve been through.’

  I tried to speak calmly but my voice shook with rage. ‘Me? Christ, you lot never get the fucking point, do you, Seán? Me forgive you. That’s beautiful. What about her? What about Grace?’

  He looked confused. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Did you ever ask her to forgive you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’

  ‘How dare you come slitherin’ up here and ask me to forgive you then. I pity you, Seán. I never thought I’d see the day but it’s here.’

  ‘You must know she loved you, Liam. Always.’

  ‘A lot you’d know about love.’

  ‘Liam, please. You’ll never know the guilt I have about this.’

  I believe that I actually laughed here. ‘And you think I know nothing about guilt? You can’t handle what you did and you want me to take it away. Like that, one word. You weren’t man enough to deal with it then and you’re not now either.’

  ‘It isn’t like that,’ he said.

  ‘Professional Christians,’ I said. ‘Look at yourself, man, take a good look, you crawlin’ hypocrite. And you lot wonder why you’re up shit creek in this country these days. The fuckin’ God Squad.’

  ‘Liam, look, it’s the best part of thirty years ago.’

  ‘That’s right, Seán. One piece of silver for every year.’

  He looked quizzical.

  ‘It was thirty pieces, wasn’t it, Father? Remind me, why don’t you?’

  He smiled his sad smile. ‘You always knew how to hurt, Sweeney. You were always a fuckin’ bollocks when you wanted to be. I’ll give y’that much for nothing.’

  He left the room. The front door slammed. I heard his footsteps going quickly down the drive.

  I went out to the garden and walked around for a while in the sleet. It started to fall harder, it smacked against the dead leaves and the aviary roof. Before long I was wet to the skin but I did not care. It was dark in the garden, very quiet except for the sputtering sound of the sleet. I looked up at the white sky. That old voice from the past came into my mind again, your Uncle Stevie, close to Christmas, sleepspeaking the names of the stars.

  Andromeda. Perseus. Pleiades. Camelopardalis.

  I thought about your mother. I pictured her in a small, cold flat over a newsagent’s shop in King’s Cross on a stormy night. It was such a clear image, I could see the pale orange glow of an electric fire on her haunted face, and could almost hear the traffic moving outside in the street. How she would have hated the loneliness of a night like this. My eyes picked out a satellite moving slowly down the sky, tracing a line through the livid and ancient-looking clouds. I do not think that I had ever loved Grace Lawrence as desperately as I did at that moment.

  When I finally came back into the house I did not want to continue my writing. I went into the living-room and sat on the sofa. The television was on, I turned down the sound. A few minutes later Quinn came in with a teapot and cups on a tray. He put them on the table and poured me out a mug. He sat on the floor and stared at the television. The screen showed a heavy young man in a tattered Muslim head-dress firing a machine-gun and screaming. Then it cut away to a shot of a black tank firing a puff of orange smoke, being jolted backwards by the force of the shot.

  He cleared his throat.

  ‘Listen, Billy, I heard what your man’s after comin’ out with. I’m sorry, pal. I couldn’t help it.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘And I didn’t know your missus was dead, man. I’m sorry.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘It’s some slap in the gob though, isn’t it? About your girl.’

  I nodded.

  ‘You must be bullin’ now, are you?’

  ‘I don’t know what I am.’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’ He handed me a cigarette. ‘And did you never cop it before this, no? Did your old lady never tell y’about it?’

  ‘No, we never talked about it much.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Why?’ I said. ‘What’s it to you anyway?’

  ‘I’m only askin’ you, man. Put your eyes back in yer head.’

  I took a light from him. ‘We kind of agreed we wouldn’t talk about it, when we got married. I’d one or two notions of my own. There would have been gossip, you know, in the neighbourhood. But the little bastard I figured it was, he went to Canada and got married over there. And anyway I reckoned I’d drive myself half-mad if I thought about it too much.’

  ‘Fuckin’ sure,’ he said.

  ‘But I know she’d a hard enough time in England all the same. She told me that much. That little bollocks running around Africa in his dress, waving the Bible and standing up for the oppressed. Christ, it’d make you puke up your ring. He was probably ridin’ some baluba over there.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  He went to the fire and poked it a few times. The flames spurted and fizzed. He sat on the floor and stared into the fireplace, picking up bits of twig and tossing them in.

  ‘Well look, I’d say you were a good father to her, Marge, all the same. Isn’t that the main thing?’

  ‘Oh, sure I was.’

  ‘I’m serious,’ he said, and he laughed. ‘Sure my father, he was me natural father all right, but he was only a fuckin’ bollocks to me. He bet me black and blue. He did it for kicks. He’d ladder me from one end of the street to the other. He’d burst me soon as look at me. When I think back now, I can see why. Because nobody ever gave him a chance, that’s all. Every single time in his life he needed a break, he didn’t get it.

  ‘Like there was this one time he was in trouble in work. He worked in a paint factory. His fingernails were always manky from the paint. Because if you mix all the colours together, black’s what you get. Did you know that, no? Black. Anyway, one day a few cans go missin’ from the stores. He’s hauled up in front of the boss. I didn’t do it, says he. Fuck you, says the boss, y’did. Goes to the union. Fuck you, says the shop steward, we don’t want to know. He’s told to go home for the month. Came in scuttered and bet the mother around the place. Knocked lumps out of her, man. I could hear her screamin’ at him, Eddie, give me a chance, would you not gimme one chance? But he didn’t. Because he wasn’t given a chance himself. He was shat on, so he shat on her. And they both shat on me. That’s the way it went.’

  ‘And?’

  The flames leaped in the grate. He shrugged. ‘And nothin’. They shat on me and I shat on everyone else. By the time I was twelve I was in Letterfrack for robbin’ cars. Then it was Spike Island. And then the Joy. You name a nick, I was in there, man. I can’t even sleep somewhere there isn’t a locked fuckin’ door any more. And still, every time I’d get out, the father’d batter me soon as he’d see me. He’d take a belt to me, a bottle, whateve
r was goin’. He’d beat me till I bled if he was in the humour. Put me in hospital a few times.’

  He laughed. ‘Only the last time he tried that crack I fuckinwell hit him back. Just once. In the chest, bang. I had drink on me at the time. Doubled him up. He goes down on his knees kind of clutchin’ himself and red in the mug and then he falls over on his arse. And I tell him, you lift your hand to me or the mother again and I’ll kill y’stone dead, man. Stone fuckin’ dead, I mean it. And I walk out the door. And I never come back.’

  He took out a new pack of cigarettes and peeled off the cellophane. ‘I’ll never forget the sound of him hittin’ the floor. It wasn’t a good sound. It wasn’t like the movies, y’know. I’ve heard it a good few times by now, Marge. It always means fuckin’ trouble.’

  He scrunched up the cellophane and flung it into the fire. ‘Didn’t speak to him for six years, man. Not a word. I’d send him up a few pound when I had it to spare, but I wouldn’t see him. No way. And when me own kid was born I didn’t even tell him. He never saw the kid once. I wouldn’t have it.’

  He lit a cigarette and coughed a bit as he breathed out.

  ‘I didn’t know you had a kid.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘She’s over in Manchester with her ma.’

  He rummaged in the pocket of his shell-suit pants and pulled out a crumpled photograph which bore a thin white cross where it had been creased into four too many times. He glanced at it for a moment, then handed it across to me. It showed a beautiful, angular-faced blonde woman with dark eye make-up, holding up a fat smiling baby in a Superman suit.

  ‘That’s her,’ he said. ‘Niamh. We named her after the ma.’