The Silence in the Garden

by William Trevor

  Mr O’Hagan noisily sniffed. ‘I have nothing against either horse or jockey. I have no bone to pick over either of them.’ He drew his breath in, holding it for a moment or two before slowly releasing it. Sometimes Tom had to buy a postal order for Mrs Rolleston from him and when he asked for it Mr O’Hagan did exactly the same thing, delaying the release of his breath for as long as he could, and only reaching for the box where he kept the postal orders when no further sound came from his nose.

  ‘Will it still be going?’ Tom asked.

  None of the men replied. Mr O’Hagan repeated what he had several times repeated already in connection with Butt Nolan. Mr Coyne said John Joe Shevlin’s father was a man who knew his onions, the way he’d got John Joe into a stables when he was five years old. It was a story he’d heard, and he didn’t doubt a word of it. Haverty said a Carlow man always knew his onions.

  ‘Will the knife-throwing still be going? Will we be late for it?’

  Haverty blinked. He pursed his lips in deliberation and for a moment his lean countenance seemed leaner. True enough, if they were late they could have trouble getting back across the water. They could run into difficulties because your man might be cantankerous about obliging them with the ferryboat.

  ‘Wait till you’ll have your bridge,’ said Mr Coyne.

  But Haverty said they’d have to wait a while yet. He leaned across the table with a smile of amusement on his face. He suggested there’d be hard words all round if he remained in Spillane’s until the bridge was completed, although for himself he wouldn’t mind. He laughed noisily and so did Mr Coyne. Mr O’Hagan said that if Butt Nolan came into the public house he’d give him the sharp department of his tongue.

  ‘Are they pleased across about the bridge?’ Mr Coyne enquired when the laughter had calmed down.

  Haverty shook his head. ‘How would they be? Isn’t it the wrong side for all of us?’

  ‘I know what you mean.’

  ‘Listen to me,’ Haverty said to Tom. ‘I have business I haven’t finished with Mr Coyne and Mr O’Hagan. Go on up yourself and see what’s doing and come down to the quays after it’s done. I’ll be waiting by the boat for you.’

  ‘The Zodiacs is famous the length and breadth of Ireland,’ Mr Coyne remarked. ‘When they’ve done their stuff throw them that.’ He gave Tom a ha’penny, and it struck Tom as odd that Mr Coyne should pay money for what he did not intend to witness. He accepted the coin, saying he would pass it on.

  ‘Don’t be long now,’ Haverty said. ‘Don’t have me waiting all night on the quays.’

  Tom hurried in South Main. Street, past familiar windows and doorways. ‘Hey, mister,’ Humpy Geehan shouted out at him from the steps of Lett’s Arcade. ‘How’re you, Humpy?’ he called back, which was how he’d heard other boys replying to the greeting. A cluster of bicycles leaned against Morrissy’s windowsills, a horse and cart was tied to a lamp-post outside Myley Flynn’s. People crowded into the confectioner’s and tobacconist’s before going on to the knife-throwing. Two dogs fought in the middle of the street. A girl was waiting outside Traynor’s Picture Palace.

  Beyond South Main Street the houses became taller. Brass plates indicated the services of Surgeon Woulfe and K. J. Ikely, B. Dent., of doctors, and solicitors who were also commissioners for oaths. Crowds hurried on the promenade, a bustling movement surging in the direction of the Zodiacs’ music. World’s Most Dangerous Act! fresh posters proclaimed. Regularly Performed Before Royalty! They were stuck on to the promenade lamp-posts and the telegraph poles and the sides of the bandstand; they decorated the flaking yellow walls of a billiard-hall where nobody played billiards any more.

  ‘Is it Tom?’ someone behind him said, and he knew without turning round that it was Holy Mullihan. ‘Are you out on your own, Tom?’

  I here was no reason why Tom should have been frightened of Holy Mullihan, for he was not a bully, indeed rather the opposite. It was just that there was something about him, something in his manner and his way, that caused apprehension when his company continued for too long. Holy Mullihan had a widow’s peak and soft dark hair on his upper lip. His wrists protruded from the frayed cuffs of a black jacket, and the ends of his trousers scarcely reached his boots. His black tie was tightly knotted within a soiled collar; his Adam’s apple bobbed noticeably in a scrawny neck. Holy Mullihan was never seen in the company of the boys who were his own age at the Christian Brothers’, preferring to draw younger boys aside in order to conduct conversations with them about religious matters. He had already declared his intention of entering the priesthood.

  ‘Will we go together, Tom?’ he suggested now. ‘Isn’t it great to see the people out enjoying themselves?’

  ‘Will we be late?’

  ‘As long as there’s people to watch, the entertainment will go on. It’s a hard way to make a living, Tom.’

  In his excitement Tom didn’t mind the company of Holy Mullihan, although normally he would have tried to get away from him. The music was now so loud that conversation in any case was difficult. You had to shout, the way you had to on the ferry, and Holy Mullihan’s voice was always kept very low, hardly more than a whisper. He had raised it in order to say what he’d said already, but as they walked together on the promenade he didn’t say anything else.

  The knife-throwing act took place on a piece of land donated by a man who had years ago left the town and become a candy king in America. A park was to be created there, to be called after Father Ignatius Quirke, a temperance leader of the past; but the money that was to pay for all this, and for a statue of the priest, had never arrived, and the town was left with a gift of derelict land only. Every year Duffy’s Circus set up its marquees there; so did Toft’s Roundabouts and Bumper Cars.

  A string of electric lights, high above the heads of the gathering crowd, now formed an illuminated rectangle on this wasteland. Within it stood a green van, close to which was a timber door attached to two posts driven into the ground. The back of the van was obscured by yellow curtains draped over a wire that ran around four similar posts, from one of which hung the Zodiacs’ loudspeaker. ‘… She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps,’ a tenor voice plaintively whined. ‘And lovers are round her, sighing …’

  Abruptly the music ceased. A woman in a red bathing dress emerged from the curtains at the back of the van and took up a position against the door. A man tied a red handkerchief around her eyes. He pushed her back against the door so that she was touching it. Then he disappeared into the yellow curtains and when he came out he was carrying his knives. He was a hollow-faced man in shirtsleeves, wearing neither collar nor tie and with a scar down the left side of his face. He held his arms out, brandishing six knives in either hand. It was a demand for attention, and when the talking did not cease he shouted out that he could not perform until the silence was total. Muttering and laughter dribbled and broke off. ‘A single flaw in this act,’ the man shouted, ‘and that beautiful lady will be deprived of life.’ When the gasp that succeeded this claim had subsided he took up his position, and then carefully laid the twelve knives in a row on the ground in front of him. ‘The Zodiacs have performed before royalty,’ he reminded his audience, ‘in four contingents. The Zodiacs, ladies and gentlemen, are strangers to fear.’ While he spoke the blindfolded woman bared her teeth in a laughing smile. At a command from her companion she became still and one by one the knives thudded into the door around her. When all twelve were embedded in the timber she stepped forward and turned round and round, still smiling and with her arms held up, to show that no blood had been drawn. Her companion gestured towards the door, drawing attention to the outline of her body depicted by the knives, which he then pulled out. When he had done so the woman again took up her position. He spread sheets of newspaper over her, attaching them swiftly to the door with thumb-tacks. Again the knives flashed through the air and when the last one had been thrown the woman stepped forward as she had before, bursting out of the newspaper. ‘Next yo
u will witness an act,’ the man announced, drawing out the knives and bundling away the newspaper, ‘never before performed. Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, we offer you the skill of the most daring knife-throwing act in the world.’ This time it was he who tied the handkerchief over his eyes. Two girls screamed. The woman kept her smile in place while the knives struck the timber around her. Tom didn’t look.

  Shouting and whistling caused him to open his eyes again. Coins were thrown on to the ground and the man and the woman bent to pick them up. He threw the ha’penny Mr Coyne had given him. ‘Did you enjoy yourself, Tom?’ Holy Mullihan said as they walked back along the promenade.

  Tom said he had. He’d never thought knife-throwing would be as good as that. He’d never forget it when the man had put the handkerchief around his eyes, when the two girls screamed. He’d never forget a minute of it, he said.

  ‘D’you remember the word I told you, Tom?’ Holy Mullihan enquired when they were back in South Main Street, where the music, which had started again, was less noisy. ‘D’you remember what I was explaining to you?’

  Tom nodded, in the hope that the conversation would not be repeated.

  ‘Illegitimate is what we have to say, Tom. The way a person is born.’

  Tom explained to Holy Mullihan what he had explained before: that his father and mother had been unable to get married due to the fact that his father had been killed. They would have been married the same week, he said. His father had the wedding ring bought. He had furniture bought for the gate-lodge.

  ‘I know all that, Tom. You told me.’

  Humpy Geehan called out to them, but Holy Mullihan didn’t answer. ‘You’re not in doubt when you say your Hail Mary, Tom?’ he said. ‘You know every word of it?’

  ‘I do of course.’

  ‘Don’t be sure of yourself, Tom. We’re not put on earth to be sure of ourselves.’

  Tom didn’t understand that. He began to ask, but changed his mind. ‘I have to turn off here,’ he said when they came to Narrow Lane. ‘I have to go down the quays.’

  Holy Mullihan continued on his way with him. There were other words that the boys at the Christian Brothers’ might use, he said, but they’d all mean the same thing. Having the ring bought didn’t make any difference.

  ‘He couldn’t help getting killed,’ Tom said.

  ‘There’s a story told, Tom, about St Francis of Sales. St Francis of Sales was going into heaven and they asked him for his sins, so he made a last Confession. “Another thing is,” he said, “I swallowed a shred of mutton on a Friday.” He ate the piece of mutton due to not knowing what day of the week it was. D’you understand that, Tom?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘St Francis of Sales was turned away from heaven and had to wait a day, Tom. He made an excuse after he’d finished his Confession. If he hadn’t done that he’d have walked in as he stood. D’you understand, Tom?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘St Francis of Sales told the story himself. There were labourers working in a field in France and St Francis of Sales appeared to them, coming back specially to tell that story. So’s that others would be helped. D’you follow the story, Tom?’

  ‘I understand it all right.’

  ‘I’m glad you do, Tom.’

  They had arrived at the quays, but Haverty was not there. Holy Mullihan said:

  ‘I have other stories I’ll tell you, Tom.’

  Before he could do so Haverty appeared. He made his way unsteadily along the quayside, the remains of a cigarette in the middle of his mouth. It was almost dark: on the other side of the calm expanse of water you could see lights in Carriglas.

  ‘I’ll be going so,’ Holy Mullihan said.

  He went immediately, slipping into the gloom before Haverty was near enough to notice him. ‘Is that Tom?’ Haverty called out, and Tom said it was. He’d never seen anything like the knife-throwing, he added. The man had done it with his eyes bandaged. She’d stood as still as a statue.

  ‘Did you see the ferryman, Tom? Was he here at all?’

  Tom said he hadn’t been. He’d only just arrived, he said.

  ‘The old fellow has the boat tied up. Isn’t that ridiculous, Tom, when he knows we’re abroad? I’ll have to rouse him from his bed.’

  Tom waited again, listening to the music and imagining the knives cutting through the air and the woman smiling. A man in the audience had been saying that if a knife went into her head or penetrated her heart, she’d be as dead as a doornail while you’d wink.

  ‘The young lad delayed me,’ he heard Haverty saying after he’d knocked on the door of the quayside house. Tom hadn’t known the ferryman lived there, and he tried to ascertain which house it was so that he could examine it in the daylight. ‘Would we have a quick one before we start?’ Haverty offered, and Tom heard a mumble of protest, and further cajoling from Haverty, and then the two men set off in the direction of a public house. He had to wait a while longer before they appeared again. He had never been in the ferryboat in the dark before.

  ‘Don’t mention Spillane’s,’ Haverty said when the water had been crossed and they were walking away from the pier. The music had accompanied them all the way across, the same couple of songs. Then suddenly, finally, it had ceased. ‘Say yourself and myself went to the knife-throwing,’ Haverty directed. ‘Never mind about the other.’ Miss Rolleston had asked him to enquire of Mr O’Hagan if he’d take charge of one of the traps or the governess-car on her wedding day, because there’d be people staying at the house who’d want conveying to the ferry. Years ago, before he passed the post office examination, Mr O’Hagan had been in charge of the stables at a house that got burnt down, and in those days he used to help at Carriglas on a social occasion. ‘That’s why I had to go into Spillane’s,’ Haverty explained. ‘To ask him if he could fix to be on his holidays on August the twenty-sixth. Well, I asked him and he said he would.’

  In the gate-lodge kitchen Tom’s mother was darning a vest, with the lamp drawn close to where she sat. He could tell at once that she was cross, even though she didn’t say anything. He could tell she was thinking she wouldn’t have let him go if she’d known he’d be out so late.

  ‘You should have come!’ he exclaimed, unable to disperse his excitement. ‘You never saw the like of it.’

  But when she spoke it was to tell him to go in to bed. ‘Hurry and wash yourself now.’

  He washed at the sink. All the time he wanted to tell her about Mr Coyne and Mr O’Hagan, how he’d had biscuits and two bottles of lemonade, how Mr Coyne had given him a ha’penny to throw down for the Zodiacs. He even wanted to tell her the story Holy Mullihan had passed on to him, how St Francis of Sales had appeared in a field.

  ‘Goodnight so,’ he said.

  I’ll come in in a minute.’

  He took the lamp she’d lit for him while he’d been washing himself, and in the bedroom he shared with her he took his clothes off and got into bed. Before she came to bed herself she would fold across the shutters to keep the draught out. When it rained the water oozed in at the window and dripped off the windowsill, whether the shutters were drawn or not. She said it was unhealthy.

  He said his prayers as he lay there, although he knew he should have knelt by the bed the way she liked him to, the way she did herself. Then he thought again about the knives flashing through the air and the woman’s naked legs and arms, and the things the man had said. When he’d been standing on the quays with Holy Mullihan he’d heard other girls screaming and he’d guessed that the man was putting the scarf over his eyes.

  ‘Goodnight so, Tom.’

  She asked him if he’d said his prayers and then she took the glass off the lamp and blew the flame out. Her own lamp cast her shadow on to the wall, making her much bigger than she was.

  I’m glad you enjoyed it, Tom.’

  ‘When she kissed him he knew her crossness had gone. His cheek retained the soft impression of her lips and he could feel her saying to him that it wasn’t he
who had caused the crossness, although in fact she didn’t say anything. He knew it wasn’t even Haverty who had caused it, by making them late. When he’d asked her once she’d said the crossness came and went, caused by nothing at all.

  3. Cornelius Dowley

  Honeysuckle again scented the dusty road, the fuchsia hedges reddened. Villana and her grandmother had tea beneath the strawberry trees, Tom went on his usual errands. By July the iron supports of the bridge had been set in concrete, twelve on the mainland, twelve on the island. Alien, perfectly upright, the line of their height on either side sloping to meet the level of the land, their graceless presence was only ugly. The girders that were to stretch between them lay among rocks and gorse, those resting on the ground lost in a growth of cowparsley and meadow daisies. Sheds of corrugated iron had been erected, trees felled, undergrowth cleared. The place of the bridge had already acquired a personality that had not been there before, a fleeting spirit of its own, imposed by labourers.

  In the Rose of Tralee boarding-house, on a hot afternoon of that same July, Mrs Moledy ran the tip of her tongue over her lips and called John James her king. Earlier she had sprinkled the sheets with eau de Cologne, which was her way. As casually as she could manage, she said:

  ‘Darling, is there no chance at all I could be invited?’

  ‘Invited to what?’

  ‘The wedding breakfast, pet. I wouldn’t come to the church; that wouldn’t be permitted for me. But what harm would there be in attending the breakfast afterwards? I’d only stay five minutes.’

  He made a motion with his head, indicative of shaking it.

  He’d had to walk through litter because the summer visitors had arrived. It was a disgrace, the litter there was in the streets, cigarette-packets and sweet-papers everywhere, orange peel and banana skins. The promenade was a holy show, no better than a zoo.

  ‘I would love above everything to be invited, darling.’

  He couldn’t arrange it, he protested. There was nothing he could do. After a silence, Mrs Moledy said: