The Sleepers of Erin

by Jonathan Gash

  ‘I’d strangle the lunatic. If I could reach his larynx.’

  Shinny was astonished. ‘Gerald? You can’t be annoyed at Gerald!’

  ‘He couldn’t have left us in a worse place.’

  ‘Can’t you see? He’s only looking after us!’

  ‘Bring the flask and that map.’

  The roadside was bare of cover, but the ground dipped from the road on one side. I pulled Sinead’s hand. We climbed over on to rather spongy ground. From there the slope undulated soggily up to a line of moderate hills. Walking across these fells would be murder, though Gerald had made it look easy somehow. Apart from a plastic bag or two, nothing. Another car hummed past heading for Mullingar. Another was coming from the south. Asking for a lift would be risky. What if it turned out to be Kurak?

  ‘Here.’ With some effort I dragged a longish stone astraddle two others. As long as we sat there we could not be seen from the road. Shinny came beside me, her arm through mine. She was still enjoying herself. I said sourly, ‘Lunacy run in the family, does it?’

  ‘Silly!’

  ‘Is this bog?’ I nodded at the damp brown-green countryside. We were leaning back. I’d never seen such a smooth fellside in all my life.

  ‘Sure what else could it be, you stupid man!’

  That surprised me. ‘I thought it was a joke.’

  ‘Some joke.’ She told me there were several sorts of bog. ‘I guess this is red bog. It came about 4,000 years BC. Just grew, so they say, covering everything. People are always studying it for interesting plants and digging up bones.’

  ‘Whose bones?’

  ‘The Giant Deer. Lived here, poor things, before they died out. Red bog’s ten yards deep.’

  ‘Down to what?’

  ‘Silly old stone, of course.’ She snapped the words and savagely turned on me. ‘Lovejoy. What am I doing here, wet through, talking about sphagnum moss when I could be warm and cosy miles away doing something useful? I must be off my head!’

  Women get like this. I said helpfully, ‘If you like, Gerald can drop me off at Mullingar—’

  ‘Lovejoy.’ She managed the bandsaw voice this time without effort. ‘You think you can hide from everybody for ever. All your crazy tricks, all your pretending—’

  There was more of this rubbish. On and on she went, yapping about my unnatural furtiveness and resentments of people’s perfectly human willingness to become involved. I sat meekly by, nodding attentively as if I really was listening.

  While she talked, though, my eyes were roaming the countryside and my mind was on the real surface of Ireland, ten yards down.

  I’d imagined hearing that familiar clattering engine a dozen times and almost given up hope when Gerald returned, an hour later.

  ‘Stay down, love,’ I told Shinny. We listened as the van creaked to a halt.

  ‘Repent, ye sinners!’ Gerald’s voice called. ‘Do not think that you can hide your fornication—’

  ‘It’s him!’ Shinny was delighted.

  We climbed up sheepishly and got in. Gerald wagged a finger at us.

  ‘Before we proceed onwards,’ he intoned, ‘you’ll be pleased to know I forgive you both!’

  ‘For what?’ I growled.

  ‘Sinead for refusing to give me her wifely duty—’

  ‘Whist, you terrible man!’ Shinny was rolling in the aisles.

  ‘And you, Lovejoy, for lack of trust.’

  I wasn’t having that. ‘You left us stranded.’

  ‘There’s a petrol strike at the garages,’ he announced inconsequentially. ‘We’re in terrible difficulty.’

  The gauge had never moved off Empty since he had met us outside Trinity College. I was near to taking a swing at the silly berk. Sinead’s hand fell restrainingly on my arm.

  ‘Gerald,’ she said, ‘why did you go off like that?’

  He looked suddenly shy and reamed an ear out with a little finger. Sinead reached for his hand.

  ‘Please, Gerald. Say. Lovejoy’s worried. He doesn’t understand.’

  Sheepishly he cleared his throat. ‘While we were having coffee and a chat, thirty-five motors passed us. One passed us twice, an old black Talbot. The second time, it was going back to Dundalk.’ He jerked his head at the slope. ‘Up there you can see quite far. The Talbot was parked a mile off. They followed me back into Kells. They’re locked in a garage.’ I drew breath to ask how come but thought better of it. ‘To delay them,’ he ended.

  ‘There, Lovejoy!’ Shinny’s eyes were shining. She pulled herself forwards and kissed him. ‘Isn’t he clever?’

  ‘Then marry me, you stupid woman!’ Instantly the old Gerald was back, and Shinny had to fight herself clear of his frantic leching.

  ‘Get away with you!’

  I was thinking, good old Lovejoy. Dim as a charity lamp. ‘Look,’ I said. ‘Gerald, mate. Sorry. I’m just a bit thicker than usual these days . . .’

  ‘Is apology needed between those who love the divinest poet—?’ He rolled the van out ahead of a demented two-tonner.

  ‘Er,’ I said, trying to make amends, ‘er, what sort of poetry do you write, Gerald?’

  ‘He hasn’t done any yet,’ Shinny explained.

  ‘Ah! But what lovely words they’ll be when they’re spoken!’ Gerald bawled, his limbs all on the go. ‘I’ve thought of first using an overly-simplistic sonnet format . . .’

  I subsided, Shinny holding my hand in consolation.

  At Mullingar I told him to follow the N52 straight ahead to Tullamore and Birr. He cried out that sure it was a darlin’ road, one to warm the cockles of your heart, and immediately swung us right on the N4 heading north-west for Longford. Shinny smiled at me. I swallowed, said not a word, smiled my best Sunday smile, and didn’t raise a finger.

  Chapter 18

  That journey to Limerick was weird. It sticks in my mind. Partly of course because of Gerald’s demented driving, his endless yap about poetry and thinking up daft schemes to get Sinead to marry him, and partly because of the route we took. On the map the N52 road does it all, running slap into the N7 Dublin-Limerick trunk only a few miles out of Limerick’s safe haven. Instead, we travelled over 300 miles that lunatic day, all of it through bland, endless countryside. I never thought I’d long for the sight of a copse or a forest.

  Gerald, spouting incomprehensible poetry, drove us all that day, through Longford and across the Shannon, to Roscommon where we might have turned safely south, on westward over the River Suck, then doubling back into Ballinasloe. There we had some fast grub and went to the loo, then clattering on south through Portumna and Scarriff into Limerick. It was getting dark by then, and we had to find a hotel with a restaurant. Even then Gerald couldn’t stay still a minute, fidgeting and standing up and walking about while Sinead and I ate. She saw nothing odd in his behaviour. (‘Oh, he’s a born glassbum, Lovejoy. Take no notice.’) Weirdest of all, nobody else in the hotel seemed to think him odd, either. They quite took to him, all prattling away over that black stout stuff.

  ‘Does he never stop talking?’ I asked.

  ‘Gerald?’ The question puzzled her. ‘Sure why would he want to stay silent, a man like him?’

  I gave up, still perished from that crazy journey. Shinny had been cold in the van’s uncontrollable gales, but not spiritually like me. I felt like clinging to the stone walls of real houses, streets, shops. I knew from the map that luscious docks, post offices, libraries and churches abounded – an oasis of mankind in all those miles of rivers, flat green-brown turf and low hills.

  ‘Is it the chill in your soul you have, darling?’ she said softly. We were in a hotel dining room, me wading through the main course second time round.

  ‘Just hungry.’

  She smiled. ‘Don’t think about those horrible people if it frightens you—’

  ‘Me? Scared?’ I emitted a harsh laugh. The twins had thought the same. Women really nark you, forever reckoning they understand how you’re feeling, the stupid berks. ‘Ice-cream was
the third course at Henry the Fifth’s coronation banquet,’ I told her. ‘Eat it up and be quiet.’

  ‘Full, thanks. What happens tomorrow, Lovejoy?’

  ‘We do the sights. Misericords in St Mary’s Cathedral, antique shops.’ Her eyes narrowed disbelievingly at this innocence. ‘Is the Hunt collection still at that Education Institute? I’ve heard those Bronze Age gold torcs are local . . .’

  I left Shinny and got through to Tinker in a phone booth a few minutes later. He was at the White Hart, and still only partly sloshed but delighted to hear me.

  ‘Tinker,’ I shouted into the hubbub of the taproom. ‘That furniture auction, Northampton, three years back. Remember? You, me and Margaret?’

  ‘Aye. That bloody escritoire.’

  ‘Tinker, that big bloke on his own. Bid for a lot of Regency silver and got none—’

  ‘You mean Big Joe Bassington? The sleeper man?’ Tinker’s emphysematous laugh ripped my eardrum. ‘Never bought a thing at an auction in his life, thieving Cockney bastard.’

  ‘Good lad, Tinker.’

  ‘First met him pulling the old sleeper game down in Bethnal Green with an early David Quare barometer—’

  With a quick cheerio I hung up. Tinker’s endless reminiscences were famous and intolerable. Besides, I had what I wanted. Big Joe Bassington was the sleeper man. So why all this Kurak-the-Slav business?

  After supper Gerald was still flitting about somewhere like a talkative cranefly so we left him and went for a stroll. There’s something about a town that no amount of picturesque rurality can convey, isn’t there, bustle and contact and human endeavour. They say the Irish love a good gossip, and as far as I’d seen it’s true, but Shinny told me that people living out in the remote countryside hardly ever spoke from one month’s end to the next. Anyway, all that rusticity was past. In the safe confines of Newton Pery – the posh commercial bit – we wandered and looked at the shops and peered at the other hotels. We went to the bus terminus and the railway station. I began to feel quite warm again. Near there was an antique shop where I bought a dumb violin for the price of a box of fags. Shinny thought me off my head.

  ‘What would we be wanting with that piece of rubbish?’ she demanded. ‘It’s not even got proper strings.’

  ‘We’ve just passed a music shop. Hurry, before they close.’

  We made it with five minutes to spare, and I got a complete set of four new strings, including a good steel E.

  I was delighted with it. ‘It’s a find, love. A really rare find.’

  ‘Is it something for the stage?’

  Dumb violins were made for practice, mostly in Victorian or late Georgian days. They are completely solid, not soundboxed like proper ones. This had rather faded sound holes painted on its table, and its wooden bridge was tied round its fingerboard with a piece of old cord, thank God. The purfling was beautifully carved. Most exciting of all, the line between the bridge feet was a straight horizontal, not a modern curve. The bow had gone, but you can’t have everything.

  ‘No. Doesn’t play at all – well, a sound like a trapped gnat. Only the player can hear, so you can practise to your heart’s content. Even with other people living or sleeping in the same room.’

  ‘Would you credit that!’

  ‘When we’ve time I’ll put the strings on and give you a silent tune—’ I was quite serious, but she fell about.

  ‘And you heathens think we are quaint! You’ll serenade me with no tune at all?’

  Her incredulity made me laugh and we returned slowly to the hotel calmer and happier than I’d felt for days. We looked in the bar but there was no sign of Gerald – or of Johno Storr, Jason, Kurak, the Heindricks, which was even better – so we settled down for a drink in the fug.

  We laughed and chatted a good deal. Some time during that evening she took my hand to look at it for a minute and asked me to promise we would all stay together, Gerald, her and me.

  ‘Promise,’ I said, still in good humour. We’d got away from our pursuers, hadn’t we?

  ‘You’ll keep your word, Lovejoy? It’s important. Gerald’s worried about something. I can tell. And I know you’re on edge.’

  ‘Hand on my heart,’ I swore. ‘Here. Keep my dumb violin as security.’

  Pleased, she took the thing and put it on the seat between us, me ordering more drinks and thinking Lovejoy and my big mouth. That would probably be the last I’d see of it.

  ‘Thank you, darling,’ she said mistily. ‘Now your money.’

  ‘Eh?’

  She said sweetly, ‘I’ll create a disturbance and get the Gardai called unless you do. As a token of your trust, darling.’ I heard this in silence, was thinking, the mistrustful bitch. She leant over and bussed me, a cynical creature of no illusions. ‘You can have it back at breakfast.’ In silence I handed my gelt over. She bought the next round, which was big-hearted. That’s women for you.

  Gerald did not return before the bar shut.

  The hotel gradually quietened, which meant Gerald must be miles off. I lay back and watched the ceiling.

  Funny old place, Ireland. I mean, who’d guess that hotels organize the nation’s baby-sitters? Or that the townships were all straight out of the old North Riding design of Yorkshire – a wide straight street of terraced stone houses? Or that obviously new graves were in evidence in practically every ruined abbey we’d seen, an indication of locals maintaining their familial right to monastic burial? Or that nobody much spoke Gaelic in everyday life? Or that you got money for actually living and working in the Gaelteacht, the Gaelic-speaking parts? Or that the museums and churches had such a wealth of antiquities that set your breathing wrong even as you drove past? Or that there was so little noise?

  Times like this, waiting for people to simply get out of the way, I wish I still smoked. Something to do. It was getting on for midnight. A few people used the stairs, one couple making me smile by talking loudly with the impervious good cheer of the tipsy. After that it got very quiet. I dozed a little, went over in my mind the possible antiques good old Tinker was hoovering up in East Anglia. I’d given him no money to slap deposits down on things, but locally they knew I was good for debts – useless with gelt, I thought wryly. If only I’d had a bit of credit. If I came this way again I’d bring every groat I could scrape up.

  In a closed antique shop window Shinny and I had seen a folding ivory fan. Closed, it was made exactly like a miniature 1780 musket, the unmistakable Short Land Pattern weapon. Only last year, such a mint treasure was an average weekly wage or less. Now it fetches half a year’s salary in anybody’s money. Look out for ivory fans in their original box if they’re Cantonese, because that doubles the value, and remember that the fashion for Chinese stuff which followed MacCartney’s embassy to the Court of the Imperial Dragon did much to stimulate copying Chinese art, but not much for imports. The almighty boom came around the time of the Opium Wars when Chinese (mainly Cantonese) bowls, carvings, screens, porcelains, statuettes, jewellery, clothes – much of it made in Kwantung mimicking Western fashions, to order – poured into England. I’ve yet to see an auction in any English town without a genuine piece of such date (1820–1850, give or take an hour) and origin.

  Japanese influence, on the other hand, came . . .

  My mind froze. ‘Who is it?’

  I could have sworn somebody scratched at the door of my room. Nervously I got off the bed and padded slowly across, wanting something handy to use as a truncheon. Nothing, of course, just when you want it. My throat felt funny.

  The hotel corridor was empty when I managed to screw up courage to open the door and peer out. But that quiet sound had been very definite. An envelope lay on the carpet just inside the door.

  Familiar scent and addressed to me in a woman’s handwriting. Worse, the note was on hotel notepaper.

  Dearest Lovejoy,

  How very keen you are to get started! And wasn’t that an absolutely lovely journey? Such pretty countryside! My husband has formed the
strong belief that the fishing will be absolutely superb here this year, and is already talking of the salmon. He so hopes you will join him. We have a delightful place away from that dreadful new trading estate. Kurt would value your opinion on our recent acquisitions. They include a splendid sugar castor, Lamerie I am told. You’ll love it. We will expect you in the morning for breakfast – say, nine o’clock? Our country house is on the old Ennis road, twenty minutes away. Kurak will call for you in good time. Please feel free to bring that scrawny female and her strange young man.

  Love,

  Lena.

  My overworked sweat glands panicked into action.

  That leaf-on-a-flood nervousness returned. Everybody else stirred up tides. Good old Lovejoy just drifted helpless. Lena’s message was clear and manifold: Limerick is home territory to us Heindricks; we are big in the land with many mansions and even our sugar sprinklers could buy and sell all the Lovejoys of this world put together. Not only that; the Heindricks’ scam was so big that even zillionaires were keen on its successful execution. That last worried me. I dwelled wistfully on Paul de Lamerie, and knew that there had been one such 1719 piece of his up in a recent Dublin antiques fair for a mere 29,700 quid. Lena said I’d love it – as a bribe?

  The phone rang.

  Once I’d subsided and got my heart back I said, ‘Yes?’ A bloke said, ‘Ah, just to check you’re still there, sor. I’m to say if you want anything urgent the two of us will be down in reception.’

  ‘Is this from Mr Heindrick?’ I asked.

  ‘His compliments.’

  That did it. I slammed the receiver down. Enough’s enough, even for pathetic creeps like me. I switched the light off, saw I had everything – in fact not a farthing, not a weapon – and looked out.

  Nobody in the corridor. Terror lends wings to others, but stealth to me. I floated towards the stairs past Sinead’s room – two along from mine. The passageway lights were still on, and stair wall-lamps so artistic you could hardly see a bloody thing. But in the well-lit lounge two tweedy blokes were swilling that black foamy drink in comfortable armchairs. The desk bloke was with them and the talk was all horses. No way past them, that was for sure, but I was past caring. The floor above had an end window and a fire escape, which squeaked from disuse when I trod on the fenestrated metal steps. Well if they heard me all that could happen would be they’d send me back to my room till ‘Kurak’ zoomed up.