Forensic Songs

by Mike McCormack

  But he was as wilful as ever. He ignored completely my warning about going down and annoying the builders. Every morning he’d pull on the old anorak and tuck the bottoms of his trousers into his socks and make his way carefully down by the wall to the bottom of the yard. Once there he’d spend his time walking around the site with his hands clasped behind his back, patrolling like he owned the place. A couple of days after he began doing this, Frank Moran came up and had a word with me; Frank was fit to be tied.

  ‘Don’t let that fucker down near us again, Sean. If he comes round our work once more, one of us will swing for him; laying down the law and shaking his head and telling us we wouldn’t get away with this or that in England. Keep him to fuck away from us or I’ll pack up my tools and go.’ I passed on this message to him that evening; of course he had a different slant on things.

  ‘Those lads are pulling the piss, Seaneen, take it from me. You’re wasting your time with those lads.’

  I wasn’t going to argue with him. Just being around him now made me tired. Every word between us seemed to open up resentments and annoyances that were hollowing me out bit by bit.

  ‘Just stay the hell away from them; they’ll be gone in a couple of weeks. By the way, Margaret is going over to see mam this evening, do you want to go?’

  It startled me to see how deeply the question flummoxed him. I would not have thought he could be so easily rattled. He shook his head and snorted and turned away in a bluster of confusion. ‘Better leave her as she is. Sure that woman wouldn’t recognize me.’

  ‘Maybe, maybe not.’

  He gazed down at the table and now there was something etched deeper in his face than his thirty-five years. ‘You’re not telling me that in seven years she’s improved?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Still singing little songs and “Adeste Fideles”?’

  ‘It’s not always like that, she has lucid spells sometimes and if she mentions anyone it’s always you, never anyone else.’

  I sensed his anger and confusion deepening. I had seen it before, recognized the divided look about him that always had him casting about so savagely within himself. It was a dangerous mood and it usually ended with him lashing out at whoever was nearest, saying something damaging, something you could not walk away from. Time and again I’d seen it, the malignant bastard in him breaking out. And I wanted that now, some savage part of me wanted to meet it head on one final time and have done with it; some part of me that was sure of itself wanted it done with once and for all. But the moment passed and he seemed to wear himself out just standing there, all his vehemence fading through him, tailing off into bitter fatigue. I pulled my coat from the back of the chair. ‘Suit yourself; it’s what you’ve always done.’

  He looked up and his voice was hardened out to a thin emphasis. ‘That’s the last time you’ll ask me that.’

  It was Sean and Jimmy’s job to go down and scrape off the rust and grease with cold chisels and lump hammers from around the edge of the door. That done, they’d call up to Martin and Padraic and they’d get the five-foot Stillson out of the van, lock it onto the top of the spindle and lean into it. Twenty-four stone heaving and pulling on the Stillson and Jimmy and Sean down below, tapping the door with two hammers, trying to crack the rust and get it to rise up through the slides on both sides. Once ever they were beaten – on Pond Road in Strafford. After three days, three barrels of diesel and two broken Stillsons, Gary Withe came out to have a look.

  ‘What do you mean it won’t open,’ he said, ‘it has to open.’

  ‘It won’t open,’ Jimmy repeated blandly, tapping the broken wrench handle on the ground.

  ‘How did that happen?’

  ‘Go down you and open it.’

  Withe stood back and they showed him; Martin and Padraic leaning on the wrench and Sean and Jimmy down in the hole hammering away for ten minutes. No budge. Then Martin went to the back of the van and pulled out an eight-foot scaffolding pole. He slid it down over the handle of the wrench. Jimmy and Sean started climbing out of the manhole – they knew what was coming. Bang! The head of the wrench snapped off and leapt up from the spindle; Padraic and Martin went tumbling over each other onto the street. Withe pulled the handle out of the pipe and examined it.

  ‘Fair enough, close it up, I’ll mark it down some way.’

  And that was their job during those years – a contract from Thames Water that had them maintaining sewer gates and penstocks all over north London. The money was good, there was plenty of overtime and so long as the job got done no one bothered them.

  And of course it couldn’t last – nor would they have wanted it to. As a temporary circumstance it was ideal but in the long run there was little enough to it, certainly very little on which you could build a life. Not in that country; not, when all was said and done, in that world.

  He reached into the middle of the table for the bottle. A late dinner had lingered on over talk and a couple of beers and it was now well past midnight. Margaret had gone to bed, the table was cleared and the dishes were stacked in the sink. It had been a while since I’d sat up so late and the food and drink together were weighing heavy on me. Jimmy, however, always the night hawk, was just getting a second wind. He shoved his feet back under the chair and leaned onto the table to roll a cigarette.

  ‘So tell me, little brother,’ he said, ‘how does it feel?’

  ‘How does what feel?’

  ‘This,’ he said, ‘all this.’ He tipped his chin into the light, taking in the whole kitchen. ‘All this, the wife and child, the house and domesticity and so on. How does it feel?’

  ‘It feels fine, Jimmy, just fine. I’d recommend it to anyone.’

  He bent to building his cigarette once more. ‘Would you indeed? I have to say I’m surprised, I would never have figured you for it.’

  Something in his tone put me on my guard. This might be it, I thought; at long last, the showdown I’d been waiting for. And it didn’t surprise me that it was happening like this; Jimmy’s timing had always been blunt and sudden. But now that it was happening, I realized that some part of me – some part better left alone – was already rising up inside me to meet it. I pushed my glass into the centre of the table; he took in the move with a wide smirk.

  ‘So it feels good, does it, all this? But what about the books and the big ideas you were into, Seaneen, all the reading you used to do? Did you trade all those big ideas for this – a slatted house and a herd of dry cattle? Hand on your heart, now, was it a fair exchange?’ He sat back in the chair and raised his head, puffing a cloud of smoke up into the light over the table. ‘And I always thought you were going to be the great lad, the lad who was going to go to college and make his mammy and daddy proud.’ The scorn in his voice drew his lips back from his teeth. There was nothing weak or sour about him now. This was a measured vehemence, something he had obviously nurtured, something he had great patience with. Then, with a savage change of expression, the scorn fell from his face and he squared his narrow shoulders. ‘I’ll tell you one thing, Seaneen, and not two things; you’re only a cunt. You always were and always will be. I’ll bet you didn’t know that.’

  I spoke as calmly as I could. ‘No Jimmy, I can’t say that I did know that.’

  He nodded solemnly as if my cluelessness was something he could understand and had anticipated. ‘It’s not something you read in books, right enough. I didn’t know it either but it came to me in a flash.’

  ‘What’s all this anger and bitterness for, Jimmy, what’s it all about?’

  He stretched out his legs and pushed back. He was all swollen ease and comfort now, settling into himself properly. ‘This is about you, little brother. The way I see you here now and how that happened.’ He stretched towards me, putting his face into mine. ‘Tell the truth, Seaneen, you were afraid of your shite, weren’t you, afraid to go out and have a life of your own, afraid to make any mistakes of your own. You were only ever content to sit back and measure yourself a
gainst me, the ne’er-do-well of the family, the one who always made you look good. That’s all you were ever good for, amn’t I right?’

  ‘That’s not how I remember things, Jimmy.’

  ‘I’ll bet it isn’t.’

  ‘I remember you being off your head, being stone mad.’

  Jimmy shook his head. ‘I was young, Sean,’ he said evenly, ‘something you never were.’

  ‘You were off your fucking head,’ I repeated, my voice rising. ‘You had their hearts broken.’ I leaned onto the table, ready at last to go toe to toe with him. I’d got a grip on my own rage now, given it focus; this was my house, my table, I wasn’t going to listen to this shit. ‘All those drink-driving offences, breaking and entering and, to top it all, one charge of possession with intent to supply.’

  ‘A few fucking plants,’ he scorned. ‘For God’s sake.’

  ‘Bullshit! Mam opening the door that day and a plain-clothes detective shoving a search warrant in her face. I was there; I saw what it did to her.’

  Jimmy waved a dismissive hand. ‘A few fucking plants. You’d swear to Jesus I was running a cartel out of the hayshed.’

  ‘You might as well have been, how the hell were they to know? The squad car parked in front of the house for a full month, mam and dad ashamed to put their noses outside the door. You broke their hearts.’

  ‘That’s not how I remember it.’

  ‘It’s how I remember it. And the killing thing was that you nearly got away with it. You walked away with a suspended sentence. What was it your lawyer said – He has work set up in England, your honour. A nod was as good as a wink to that judge.’

  Jimmy snorted with bitter derision. ‘That judge was more sympathetic than the ould fella. He met me at the gate that evening and threw the case down in front of me. He told me to turn back the way I’d come, there was a road there that would take me. And then we stood there throwing fucks into each other, hammer and tongs, and the bingo bus came round the turn and every woman in the parish in it, looking out with their mouths open.’

  ‘I had to listen to him after that and I never got it clear in my mind which offended him most – what you’d done or the fact that you nearly got away with it.’

  Jimmy smiled. ‘I didn’t write the law, Sean, much and all as I might have liked to. But those were my sins and my penance; I don’t remember your name being mentioned anywhere in that judgment. There was no reason for you to follow me, was there? But of course you had to be the great lad, the man who had to be his brother’s keeper, the man who gave up the place in university to go to London on the pick and shovel. Don’t go telling me I was the one who broke their hearts because I have a very different memory of all that.’ His gaze fell to the table and he appeared to slump into a tired, sullen mass. Now his voice came from deep in his chest and it sounded reluctant, sorrowful. ‘I twigged you after that accident, Sean. I got a proper look at you that day.’

  ‘So this is it,’ I cut across him, ‘I saved your fucking life and you never forgave me for it. Now I see it.’

  ‘No, Sean, you don’t see it. But I did, I saw you after that day. I saw the great man in the pub with his little stories, happy as fucking Larry. The elbow on the counter and the ankles crossed, smirking out over the top of your pint like you were doing the world a favour by just drawing breath. I saw then what you’d done – you’d followed me to London so you could be close to the one person in the world who’d make you look good. I saw how you’d passed off your own cowardice as brotherly love. How did you manage that, Sean, how hard did you have to work to sell that lie to yourself?’

  ‘Fuck you, Jimmy, you’re going to tell me now that all this is for my own good.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m telling you. I’m your older brother, that’s what we do. But first of all I want you to answer me a question. I want you to tell me how does a man go about fooling himself like that.’

  My hands bunched on the table. Jimmy’s eyes lit up. ‘Forget it, Sean, you were never a fighting man.’

  ‘Were you always this pissed off with me?’

  ‘No, I was never pissed off with you. But I never forgave you for pissing yourself away like that.’ He lay back in the chair and closed his eyes. ‘I saw you after that accident, Sean, I saw what it really meant and I saw how it was going to continue. You would always be there, always beside me ready to rush in and pick up the pieces when things went wrong. You’d make that your life; you’d content yourself with that. But I couldn’t have that on my conscience because I realized that I had dreams for you as well. So the best thing I thought would be for me to go away, to force you to have a life of your own. One day you would come back to the flat and I wouldn’t be there. Then you’d be forced to find your own way, make your own decisions, make something of yourself. So that’s what I did, I packed a bag and fucked off, left you to your own devices.’

  A deep groan of anguish broke from me.

  ‘Bullshit, Jimmy! You’re a lying bastard.’

  He raised his right hand. ‘My hand to God,’ he said.

  ‘Come down off the fucking cross! You were never cut out for the martyr.’ My voice rang in the kitchen.

  ‘I’m telling you!’

  ‘Fuck you!’

  The door behind me swung open and Margaret stood on the threshold, holding her dressing gown closed at the neck. Her face was white with temper. ‘You two, Christ! Do you know what time it is? If you want to fight, take it up to the other house. There’s a child trying to sleep here …’

  ‘This lad,’ I shouted, surging from my chair, ‘this bollocks …’ The chair clattered sideways onto the tiles. ‘… he’d tell you how to live your fucking life, a man who …’

  Margaret swiped the air with her free hand.

  ‘No, Sean, I don’t want to hear it. If it’s not one thing it’s another. Just take it to hell out of my kitchen.’

  ‘I’m not listening to this shit in my own house!’

  ‘I don’t want to hear it!’

  ‘The woman is right, Sean, this is no hour; I’m going.’

  ‘Damn right you’re going.’ I took a step towards him, stabbing the air in front of his face with my forefinger. ‘I’m telling you this, Jimmy, if you’re bitter and fucked-off, take it away somewhere else. It has nothing to do with me.’

  He pushed by me into the hall, struggling with his anorak. He pulled open the front door and I watched him duck his head and shoulder his way out into the night.

  ‘It has nothing to do with me,’ I roared after him into the dark, ‘nothing to do with me!’

  Sooner or later it was bound to happen – an accident biding its time in a set of circumstances, nurtured there from the beginning and then striking out of the blue with no warning; an accident that leaves everything changed and not always in ways that are immediately obvious.

  It happened in Finsbury Park, just up the road from where they had the flat in Crouch End. Sean was sitting in the back of the van, pulling on his overalls; Jimmy was already down in the manhole, singing away to himself. Hank Williams, that’s what he always sang down in those holes. He reckoned Hank’s lonesome tunes carried better underground.

  Take these chains from my heart

  And set me free

  You’ve grown cold

  And no longer care for me.

  The singing and hammering stopped and when Sean looked down, Jimmy was sprawled along the concrete lip with his hand to his throat and one foot in the sewer, kicking.

  ‘The rope, Martin,’ Sean yelled, ‘Jimmy is down.’

  Sean shinned down the ladder and hauled Jimmy up into a sitting position. Thin and all as he was, he was still dead weight and nearly unconscious. The details of a weekend safety course came back to Sean in stuttering fragments – don’t panic, work quickly and above all don’t fucking breathe. He tied the rope under Jimmy’s oxters and heaved him to his feet; the lads up top took the strain and began raising him up, Sean clutching him between the shoulder blades, guidi
ng him up the ladder. The manhole was only twenty feet deep but he thought he would never get out of it. Now his throat burned and he was weakening with panic. It was only when Padraic reached in and pulled Jimmy out by the shoulders, it was only then, feeling the fresh air on his face, that he knew he was going to make it. Martin pulled him out and dumped him near the footpath. Beside him he could see that Padraic was already down on one knee over Jimmy with an oxygen bottle and mask. Jimmy’s eyes were rolled up into his head and he wasn’t moving. Padraic began pumping his chest and yelling at him.

  ‘Come on Jimmy, breathe you fucker, breathe!’

  Jimmy suddenly convulsed and jerked over on his side, throwing up in a violent gush. He raised himself up on one elbow and kept puking and then lay down on his back and pulled the oxygen mask onto his face.

  ‘I’m OK,’ he gasped, ‘OK.’

  Sean would remember this long afterwards, how the separate details of these slow moments came together in a blur. Lying there on the side of the road, he was vaguely aware of a small crowd gathering beyond the margins of his vision, peering in at him. Deep within his chest, his heart stumbled and a surge of pins and needles stippled the blood in his limbs. Off to his side, Jimmy had risen up again, for another bout of puking. Eventually the crowd drifted away. Padraic and Martin closed the hole and gathered up the tools.

  But the two lads lay there a long time after that, face up to the grey sky, with their chests burning and their eyes streaming.

  Nathan walks hand in hand with his mother down the stairs of the multi-storey car park. They might have taken the lift but his mother has chosen to come this way, knowing that the stairway, with all its echoes and security decals, will play a lot better to her child’s sense of adventure and curiosity. Because this is her mood now: happily indulgent and ready from the moment she decided to keep him from school to give Nathan a day to remember.