The Salesman

by Joseph O'Connor

  ‘Whose ma?’

  ‘Mine. y’gobshite.’

  ‘I thought you might have meant your girlfriend’s.’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘Yeah, right. We were going to call her after the girlfriend’s ma allright, but we didn’t think Frustrated Aul Bitch was much of a name for a nipper.’

  ‘Niamh Anne Morgan,’ he sighed. ‘That’s a name-and-a-half, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s a name-and-a-half.’ I handed him back the picture. ‘And what’s the girlfriend’s name?’

  ‘Daphne,’ he said. ‘I think her auld dears got it out of a book. Daphne Morgan.’

  ‘She was some beaut,’ he said, and grinned. ‘She was gorgeous lookin’. Like a model she was. Even that picture there, it wouldn’t do her justice. We used to all go and play pool in this place down the quays on a Saturday night. And my Christ, Daphne’d come into the place with her mates and you’d nearly hear the fuckin’ promises breakin’ around you. Dressed up, she’d be. Like a princess, her hair piled up on her head, beautiful clothes.’ He laughed. ‘And she could play pool. True as God, she’d beat the arse off any bloke.

  ‘I never thought I stood a chance with her. She had that look, y’know, that she’d swallow y’up and blow y’out in bubbles if y’went near her. She was classy, y’know, she was soft, she wasn’t like me or mine. And then one night I seen her at a wedding. She was all dolled up like you wouldn’t believe. It was me cousin Anne-Marie’s wedding. The do was in the North Star Hotel in Amiens Street.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘I remember it like that.’

  ‘And anyway, we’re all there havin’ a dance. Doin’ the air guitar, Status Quo, the lot. Loads of drink. Great crack. I suppose I’m a bit jarred so I’m lookin’ at her all day, y’know? I’m doin’ the thousand-yard stare, but she doesn’t look back, she’s with her mates. Christ, Marge, if y’could’ve seen her, you’d’ve fallen for her yourself. She was so gorgeous that day. And anyway, there we all are, on the dance floor, it’s nearly the end of the night. The band’s playin’ ‘Stairway to Heaven’. Everyone’s twisted. Fuckin’ locked. And suddenly, doesn’t your one walk up to me and she gives me this ten-penny piece. What’s that for, I ask her. And she looks at me, givin’ me the eye, y’know. It’s for you to go and phone your mother, love, she says. Because you’re comin’ home with me tonight.’

  He sniggered. ‘She was mad,’ he said. ‘You’da liked her, Marge.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Ah, we just fell out,’ he said. ‘She didn’t have any time for me when I was dealin’. Couldn’t stand all that. Specially after the kid came along. And there was other women involved too, she wouldn’t have it. Fucked off t’England. I was a tosser, wasn’t I, man? Look at her. She was lovely.’

  ‘And the kid never met your father?’

  He shook his head and stared at the photograph, holding it very lightly in both hands as though it was on fire. ‘When he was dyin’ he sent a message for me. Wanted to see me. Fuck him, I said, but the sister made me go up to him. So I do. And he’s lyin’ in the bed in the hospital and he’s already in the shroud. I didn’t know they did that, Marge, but they do, they put y’in the fuckin’ shroud before y’even kick it. Miraculous medals and holy water everywhere, it’s like bleedin’ Knock in there, they’re sprayin’ the holy water around like snuff at a wake. For that dozy bollocks, never in a church in his life except to rob the poor-box. It’d make you spew. Crucifix on the wall, rosary beads in his hands, the works. And they’re after combin’ his hair across his scalp to hide him goin’ bald, like it bleedin’ matters at this stage. So he looks like Jackie fuckin’ Charlton lying there in the scratcher. And his fingernails are still mouldy with the paint after all that time. The stupid cunt, they can’t even clean his fingernails and him dyin’.’

  ‘And he gawks up at me in the bed, the poor tool. Was I a good father to yeh, Donie? he goes. Tell us the God’s truth now, Donie. Was I?’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said, yeah, Da. Course y’were. The best. And then he starts coughin’ and spewkin’ out of him. I could never talk to me auldfella, he goes, I was afraid of him. But you could always talk to me, couldn’t y’son? And I go’ oh Jaze, yeah, Da. Till the cows came fuckin’ home. I could talk to you all right.’

  ‘And when I used to hit yeh, he says, y’knew it was only because I loved yeh, didn’t y’son. That was only my way of sayin’ it. And I go, yeah, Da, course I knew that, don’t be worryin’.’

  ‘And why did you tell him that?

  There were tears in his eyes. ‘Why d’y’think, Marge?’

  ‘I don’t know. Because you loved him?’

  He wiped away the tears and scoffed. ‘My shite, I did. No. I couldn’t stand him. Wouldn’t’ve pissed on him if he was on fire. But it didn’t matter a fuck to me any more. And it did matter to him, the stupid poor cunt. It did to him. So I just said it, ’cos it didn’t cost me anythin’ to say it. And that’s my natural father. That’s how I felt about him. He rid the mother and I was born? Well big fuckin’ deal. Congratulations. There’s more to a father than that, man, or supposed to be anyway.’

  He picked up a log and threw it into the fire. He poked at the embers until they reddened and glowed. Then he started to laugh again.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘Ah well, nothin’. But I go up to his grave every year on his anniversary with the mother, just to keep her sweet, and we leave him a bunch of flowers. I always tell her we’d be as well off gettin’ a bottle of Johnny fuckin’ Walker and pourin’ it into him, but anyway. She likes goin’ up there. And this one year we’re up in the boneyard and the mother is saying the prayers and blessin’ herself and all that crap. And this other auld one is just down the way, y’know. And she sees the mother and comes over to her.

  ‘Oh, I’m terrible sorry for yer trouble, ma’am, she goes to the mother. Me husband knew your chap well and never had a bad word for him. You must miss him awful now he’s gone.

  ‘And the mother looks down at the old man’s grave for a sec. No, she goes, not really. I’ll tell you the God’s truth now, missus, he was never a man I liked.’

  He throws back his head and snorts with laughter. He looks like a child when he laughs. And I can’t help laughing back, despite the way I feel.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Next morning the snow was thick on the roads, banked up into slushy heaps on each side of the Stillorgan dual carriageway. I phoned Zulu Dawn from the car and told her I would be in late. O’Keeffe came on the line and started up with the whip-cracking act but at this stage I did not really care. In fact I was right on the point of telling him what he could do with his poxy job when there was a roar of splintering static down the line and he got cut off, which was maybe just as well.

  When I got to the apartment and came up in the lift, I found Lizzie in the kitchen dressed in her overalls. She looked so happy and well, she had just finished giving a lesson. Her easel was set up near the window and she was painting a scene of the river. She told me she’d be with me in just a minute, she wanted to finish this one section. I went and looked over her shoulder. It was a big vivid picture full of blues and purples and mad greens. She had already sketched in the Ha’penny Bridge in broad black lines and now she was doing the dome of the Four Courts in copper brown and sepia. The kitchen smelt of linseed oil and paint. There were thick sheets of newspaper on the floor under the easel.

  The distant sound of loud power chords being blasted out on an electric guitar told me Franklin was in the bedroom. I looked at Lizzie’s face reflected in the window. Such a beautiful face, so full of longing, like a paler version of your mother’s. I watched as she frowned in concentration, the tip of her tongue protruding from her mouth, her bright restless eyes darting from the board to the river down below. She caught my glance and smiled. I told her I loved to watch her painting and she scoffed at me.

  ‘Jesus, I wouldn’t call this painting, Billy. It’s only a
daub. But I sold one yesterday.

  Some German yuppie over for the Yeats festival. Herman. Herman the German. Kept saying he loved my earthy quality. I wasn’t sure whether it was me he was talkin’ about or the bloody painting. I thought maybe I needed a wash.’

  I said there was something I wanted to talk to her about. She took a palette-knife from the table and started smoothing out a rectangular wodge of red in the sky.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Well, it’s about your mother, love. And I suppose it’s about you.’

  ‘OK. Fire away.’

  I took a deep breath and started into the story. After a moment or two she stopped painting. She plopped her brush into a jamjar and stared out the window, up at the long clouds. When I started to speak again she held up her hand to interrupt me.

  ‘Billy,’ she said. ‘Listen, Ma told me years ago.’

  ‘She told you?’

  ‘About Seánie, yeah.’

  ‘Jesus. Why did she do that?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t really know. I’d talked to her about it a bit when I was a kid. I think I might have pushed her on it, you know, trying to get the gen. But I dunno. Didn’t she ever tell you about it, no?’

  ‘No, she didn’t.’

  ‘Jesus. So you’ve only just found out?’

  ‘Yeah. Last night.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Fuck is right. And have you ever talked to him about it?’

  She shrugged again. ‘I was going to a few times, but then I don’t know, I just didn’t bother my arse. But why? What does it matter now anyway?’

  ‘Well it bloody matters, Lizzie, that’s why.’

  ‘But Billy, why? It doesn’t. It really doesn’t, when you think.’

  ‘How could it not matter, love?’

  ‘Billy, Jesus, don’t make me spell it out for you.’

  ‘Spell what out?’

  She laughed softly and pushed her hair out of her eyes. She shook her head a few times. Then she came over and touched my face. ‘I have a father already.’

  Franklin came ambling into the kitchen in his Karl Marx boxer shorts. He stood in the doorway for a few moments with a vaguely startled look on his sleepy face.

  ‘Somebody kick the bucket or what?’ he said. She ignored him.

  I held her close to me and kissed her hair. Franklin sat down at the table and stared at us.

  ‘I don’t deserve you, love,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘That’s true, you don’t. But you’ve got me. And you’ve got Seánie too.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me about that creep,’ I told her.

  ‘No, I want you to forgive him,’ she said. ‘Just make up your mind and do it. He’s not a bad man, Billy. He made a mistake, that’s all. He was only a kid himself and he made a mistake. Then he got scared and he lied. It happens.’

  ‘Some bloody mistake, though.’

  ‘Billy, listen, if you feel there’s anything you owe me from the old days, then forgive him. Just do it for me and do it fast. Please. Do that for me and we’re quits.’

  ‘Don’t ask me to do that, love. I couldn’t.’

  ‘Billy …’

  ‘I said I couldn’t.’

  Suddenly her expression darkened. She sighed bitterly and held up her hands. ‘Well look, don’t involve me then, Billy. You want to open it all up, then it’s your fight.’

  ‘What do you mean, my fight? The way he hurt your mother like that. Jesus. The way …’

  ‘She’s dead, Billy. Mum’s dead. Face it, all right? She’s not hurt any more.’

  The abruptness of the interruption shocked me. ‘And that makes it all right?’

  ‘I’m not saying that’. She turned away and went to the window.

  ‘So what are you saying?’

  She whipped back around to face me, her nostrils flaring. ‘I’m saying I don’t think it’s Mom’s hurt you’re so fucking worried about here, Billy. Or mine. If you want to know the truth.’

  I sat down at the table. She went to the sink and began furiously washing her hands. Franklin blew gently through his pursed lips and lit a cigarette. A moment later Conal came tottering in and stared at us.

  ‘Why is everyone being quiet?’ he said.

  He crossed the floor and climbed into Lizzie’s arms. She kissed his neck. Franklin coughed ostentatiously and nodded in my direction. ‘Listen, wench, did you tell Fatty here the news?’

  ‘You tell him.’

  ‘I’m afraid to,’ he said. ‘It’d be better comin’ from you.’

  She turned to me and grinned. ‘So I’m pregnant, Billy. I’m due in April.’

  Franklin put his hands in the air and stepped backwards into the doorway. ‘Don’t look at me, mate,’ he said. ‘I never bloody touched her, I swear to God.’

  Late on the following Friday night, I was awoken from a deep sleep by a loud crashing noise coming from somewhere in the house. I remember thinking at first that I must be dreaming, but then it came again, a loud thump, a shattering. It was then that I realised it seemed to be coming through the wall next door, from your room. I sat up and looked at the clock. It was just after three in the morning. Another crash, then the tinkle of broken glass.

  Quinn was on the landing with a sweeping brush in his hand. He looked scared. He put a finger to his lips, motioning me to be quiet. We crept towards the door together and now there was a soft swishing sound coming from inside. I unlocked the door and pushed it quickly open. Silence. Quinn reached around for the light switch, but the bulb had gone, it was pitch dark in the room. We listened. There was something alive in there.

  He ran into his own room and came back with a torch. He flicked the beam around your bedroom a few times and it glinted in the dressing-table mirror. The window had a jagged, star-shaped break in it. I thought I heard a soft anxious croak. I gestured to him to move the light over towards the bed.

  A fat elegant blackbird was standing on the pillow and pecking at its right wing, its beady eyes glimmering in the darkness. Quinn cursed, sighed with relief and we went in. The bird regarded us without moving its head. It allowed me to come right over and touch it.

  ‘Poor thing,’ I said, ‘how did you get in? You’re after scaring the life out of me, you daft bird. You put the heart crossways in me, didn’t you?’

  I stroked the back of its head and its dirty yellow beak. It nuzzled against me.

  ‘Jesus,’ Quinn said. ‘It’s like a Christian. Look at it. Tame.’

  ‘Poor creature. You didn’t see the window, did you? You’re lucky you didn’t break your wing.’ I ran my knuckles gently down its back.

  ‘You’ve a way with the birds, Marge,’ Quinn laughed. ‘I always said it.’

  I grabbed its soft plump body with both hands. Of course it took fright then and started flapping and squawking and pecking at my fingers. Quinn rushed over to the broken window and opened it wide. We let the bird out into the night and watched it beat its way against the gusting wind and off over the travellers’ field.

  Afterwards my hand and wrist were in rag order. We went down to the kitchen, found some band-aids and disinfectant and I washed off the blood before bandaging myself up. Quinn has turned into a medical expert now and keeps informing me that I’ll need a tetanus shot but I tell him to shag off, I’ve been pecked by more birds, et cetera. But it was aching pretty badly, I have to say, and the thumb seemed to have gone a bit stiff. He made us toast and a pot of tea. I found some classical music on the radio, Schubert, I think. We sat there for a while just eating and drinking and listening to the music. The wind was blowing hard outside and I could hear the loose slates clacking on the roof.

  ‘That’s shite depressin’ music,’ he said.

  ‘Well, that’s what we’re listening to,’ I told him. ‘So you can like it or lump it.’

  He went back to his tea. I picked up a paper and started to read – I think it might have been something about the divorce referendum.

  ‘Listen, Marge,�
�� he said, ‘I was thinkin’ I might shag off over t’England after all.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘I thought I might go and look up Daphne and the kid. See how they’re doin’. Y’never know. She might be glad to see me, what?’

  ‘That’s true. You never know.’

  He nodded. ‘Plenty of work over in England, isn’t there? Everyone says that.’

  ‘Yes, they say England’s great for makin’ money. I nearly went myself when I was your age.’

  ‘They don’t like the Paddies much though, do they?’

  I took a swig. ‘I don’t like the Paddies much,’ I said. ‘If it comes to it.’

  ‘Outdoor work I’d like,’ he said. ‘On the sites and that. Y’can make a packet I hear.’

  ‘So I believe.’

  ‘They say the beer is only pisswater in England though.’

  ‘I’m sure it isn’t.’

  ‘Yeah. Y’wouldn’t mind, Marge, would yeh?’

  ‘What the fuck are you on about now?’

  He grinned. ‘I just thought y’might be lost for company without me, Marge. That’s all. I don’t know how yer gonna manage without me sometimes.’

  ‘I’ll manage just great, believe you me. Now shut your face and listen to that music, will you?’

  In the late afternoon of that same billowy day I was in the kitchen feeding the budgies when I saw him trudging up the garden in one of my old jumpers and a pair of muck-smeared wellingtons. He strolled in, pulled off the wet boots and sat down shivering in front of the Aga. For a few minutes he held out his hands, massaging them together and warming them, in between munching on a biscuit. Then he turned to me.

  ‘I’ve somethin’ to ask you about your daughter,’ he said.

  ‘Who? Lizzie?’

  ‘No, the girl in the hospital. Maeve, isn’t that it?’

  I did not like it when he said your name. Just something about him uttering the word made me tense up. ‘What about her?’

  ‘D’y’think I could go down and see her some time?’

  The budgies squawked and jabbered in the cage. He got up from the chair, came over and looked in at them. He broke off a piece of biscuit and pushed it through the bars, making a soft clucking sound with his tongue.