The Salesman

by Joseph O'Connor

  The flight had been delayed, they told us, because of a security alert at Moscow airport. We went upstairs to the canteen, I got coffees and plates of fry for everyone. The priest with the baseball cap said he was sorry and didn’t mean any offence, but he couldn’t eat the bacon and sausages because he was vegetarian. Seánie laughed. ‘We’ll see how vegetarian you are, Niall, when we get over beyond. I’ll tell you what, six months in San Juan and you’ll ate your own head.’

  He turned to me and grinned. ‘These youngsters now, Billy. Honest to Jesus, so idealistic they are.’

  We talked for a while about the length of the flight, a long hard journey for them all the same. Down to Shannon, a few hours’ wait to connect with the Aeroflot to Cuba, and then on to Nicaragua tomorrow night. From Managua by jeep to some tiny border town in the South, from there by steamer to their final destination, a Miskito Indian village deep in the rain forest. Seánie said that they would all feel ten years older by the time they got there.

  We sat and talked for another hour or so. Then the announcement came over the loudspeaker, their flight had been called for boarding. I walked them down to the departures gate, shook hands with the two younger ones and wished them luck. Seánie put his bag on the deck and hugged me.

  ‘Mind yourself, Liam,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you whenever. Keep it country, what?’

  After they had gone through the X-ray machine I went upstairs and out on the balcony. The wind whipped against my face and threw dust in my eyes. A few minutes later I saw the three of them walking across the tarmac to the plane and up the wheeled steps. The doors closed and the staircase was driven away. I watched the plane taxi over to the apron and pull off down the runway. It climbed very steeply into the sky, its wing lights flashing, its engines trailing plumes of white steam. I stayed until the lights had completely disappeared from view.

  Ten minutes later I had just paid my car-park ticket in the automatic machine, love, and was about to get on the escalator when I saw your face. I could not believe it at first. I went closer. On the wall in front of me was a large framed backlit poster with a photograph of a group of students, all standing beside the lake on the UCD campus and wearing mortarboards. ‘Welcome To The Republic Of Ireland’, the slogan announced, ‘The Quality Business Base In Europe’. You were standing to the far left of the group with your head tilted to one side. You had your hands on your hips and you were smiling. Dominic was beside you, with his arm around your shoulder. You looked so like your mother. It was the most extraordinary thing.

  When I got home, Franklin, Lizzie and the twins were waiting for me downstairs, in front of the house. Conal and Erin had their buckets and spades and wanted me to take them down to Killiney beach. I tried to tell them it was too cold today; but no, they told me, they always go to the beach at this time of the year. In Australia, yes, I said. Not in Ireland. Conal looked as though he was about to burst into tears.

  I told them all right, but we would have a cup of coffee first. We came in and sat at the kitchen table. Lizzie filled the kettle and put it on the Aga. She moved so assuredly and unthinkingly around the room, it was as though she had never left the house. Franklin took out a pen and notepad and began to scribble something. After a while I noticed that Erin was staring up at me.

  ‘Are you Sweeney?’ she wanted to know.

  ‘Yes, love. And so is your mum.’

  ‘And am I?’

  ‘Well, I suppose you are, yes. If you want to be.’

  ‘Is Daddy?’

  ‘No. Daddy isn’t.’

  I gave her an apple. She tore out the back door and into the garden. Lizzie went to follow but I told her she should leave her, she’d be fine out there.

  A few minutes later I went out with a cup of hot chocolate for her. There is a new flower-bed now, down beside that mis-shapen old aspen. It has worked out very well, I must say. But we won’t get any growth there till the spring, of course.

  Erin was sitting under the apple tree waving her plastic spade in the air. When she saw me approaching she staggered to her feet, stretched out her arms and started to race around the trunk, cackling with malevolent glee. She stopped suddenly, swaying with dizziness, and gawped up into the branches.

  ‘Swee-ney,’ she cooed.

  I went down the garden and tried to make out what she was pointing at. But when I looked up I saw nothing at all, except the long knotted branches, dark like black lace against the sky. While I was staring, she cantered away from me and straight into the new flower-bed.

  I grabbed her out of it very quickly. We would not want her digging around in there after all, would we, love? That would not be a very good idea. It is never a good idea to disturb recently bedded-out plants. Bad for the roots. Any gardener can tell you that.

  I must remind the builders when they come back not to go near the new flower-bed, not for any reason.

  I held her for a few moments while she squirmed and kicked against me. Then I led her by the hand down to the aviary and explained it to her. She wanted to know why there were no birds inside. I told her that it was much too cold for the birds now. She gurgled and spat into her hot chocolate.

  It occurred to me that the garden really is in a mess these days. I walked around for a while just looking at the state of it. Yes, the lawn is all right now. But it could be such a beautiful garden, love, were it not for those twisted and broken plants, those strange hybrids and terrible snaking weeds about the place. It needs to be dug out and raked. Really, it needs to be started all over again, by a person with a bit of imagination.

  Because all gardens are stories, as somebody told me once, and all gardeners are storytellers.

  I went into the stable and found the old shovel, exactly where I had left it. I took it out and kicked the hardened red muck off the blade. I selected a patch of moist grass that simply took my fancy and began to dig. Erin poured her hot chocolate into the hole and giggled.

  And the earth was so soft today, even though the winter is here now. Your birthday has come and long gone. The sea at Sandycove is icy in the mornings. The nights have grown longer and darker. The siskins have settled in the stunted alder, the bramblings in the fir. The winter stars have appeared in the sky. Soon it will be Christmas again.

  The shovel felt good, solid in my hands. After quite a short time I was sweating, despite the cold. I took off my jumper and handed it to Erin. She hung it on the stable doorknob, tottered back to me, dropped to her knees and sank her plastic spade into the broken clay at my feet.

  Monoceros. Auriga. Hercules. Pegasus.

  I went back to work, my shovel slicing into the mulchy earth, the child in fervent silence digging around me.

  Acknowledgements

  Grateful acknowledgement is made to my family and to Anne-Marie Casey, to my agents Carole Blake and Conrad Williams, to Isobel Dixon and all the staff at the Blake Friedmann Literary Agency, to my editor Geoff Mulligan, to Peter Mullan, Móirín Ní Moynihan and Mary Ellen Ring for patiently explaining Irish court procedures and aspects of law (any errors or distortions are, of course, my own), to John McDermott at the Irish Council For Civil Liberties for further general advice on legal rights in Ireland, to Michael Paul Gallagher and once again to Bernard and Mary Loughlin at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Annaghmakerrig, County Monaghan, where part of this novel was written.