‘Hi, I didn’t bring matches,’ the woman said, smiling down at him, much too close for his nerves, sweeping a hot storm over him. He felt himself gawking up at her. His smile was gone, words gone, mouth half open. Idiot! he cursed himself. He tried to speak but uttered nothing. Now his head would not move. The woman seemed to be floating. Was it all in a half-second, this paralysis? Then her puzzled expression gripped him. She was playing with his scrambled brain, that was it. A witch casting a spell over him, waving her white wand in his face. Then the noise came back.
‘You’re American?’ she said. ‘I’m guessing.’
‘Eh . . . well, em – ’
‘He’s a yank,’ declared William.
‘I love Americans.’ The woman’s smile unglued his stuck face.
‘Well, I’m not, I’m not really, I’m . . . born in Dublin.’
‘So was I – here in Ireland, I mean.’ She extended a slim unlit cigarette and asked with her smile for a light. ‘Didn’t bring matches,’ she said.
Tony rose up, but when erect he found himself too close to her, the bench behind allowing no retreat. As much as he could, he forced his body and face into casualness. He patted his denim jacket pockets, then his shirt pocket, then his jeans and jacket again and back to his shirt.
The woman held firm. ‘I bet you don’t even smoke. Do you smoke?’ Her voice was gentle, teasing. She radiated an I-found-you-out smile that pulled from him a laugh that went on too long and became what they were sharing.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m, you’re right, I don’t. It’s just that I – I don’t see, you know, see many people – ’
‘Like me?’
‘No, no, I don’t mean that. I mean, I don’t smoke. But I usually do, carry matches, with me, just in case, to light a fire. But I don’t have any, right now. I do a lot of hiking; that’s why I usually have them, matches, but I don’t..’
‘Not to worry. Truth is I don’t smoke either – when I’m feeling down I do.’
‘You’re . . . meeting a friend?’
‘Kind of. Not now. Where are you travelling to?’
Her intensity muddled his brain, roamed around inside him, saw all he was thinking, he was certain; she was being entertained by his fantasies and there was no way he could stop them, or her.
‘Actually, just before, just now, I was thinking of getting coffee, or tea. I have about an hour to fill – free, I mean, an hour free. You feel like – ’
‘Coffee? Are you serious? Around here that’s not easy.’
‘In the village, I thought, got to be some place open.’
Lenny’s manner of half-smiling had become a trap that caused him to stumble among words he knew nothing of until they had escaped from him. Now she looked at him as though carrying out an intimate assessment, a sensual examination of all that was private in him, his darkest secrets, at least that’s how it felt to him. His mind yelled again at him to say something sensible that would halt her invasion, enable him to hide. But he could not, dared not, speak his thoughts. Yet all other words, the polite words, felt wrong, foolish even, as he simultaneously endured and took pleasure in what she was doing to him.
He found comfort eventually in the realisation that they were both aware that what they were doing was no longer accidental. They were choosing this, whatever it was, each was knowingly expressing something: a need, a beginning, a longing, an interest, an emptiness. He didn’t know what it was. Nothing in his past had felt so compelling. In this moment was hope as he had never defined it. A rope lowering into the grey yard of his life. Perhaps.
‘Anything sounds good,’ she said, after what was probably only moments but not to him. ‘Remember though, we might be on to a lost cause – the coffee, I mean; we might not get any this late in the day.’
He smiled, shrugged his shoulders. She mimicked his gesture, which sparked them both into laughter.
She offered her hand. ‘Hi, I’m Lenny, Lenny Quin.’
‘Great. I’m Tony – ’ The silk off her fingers tripped his words. ‘MacNeill. Tony MacNeill. Like I said, from Dublin.’ Her grip tightened: soft, sensual, firm. ‘Right now from Phoenix, Arizona. Actually, Tempe, south of Phoenix.’ On his second try her hand released, left a tingling.
‘Tony MacNeill. So nice to bump into you.’
The way she said his name sounded like music, like the fire of the pipes, carrying intonations of things he found too deep to indulge, things almost terrifying.
‘I’m from here, this place, County Mayo,’ she said, ‘from Claire Abbey.’
‘You’re a monk?’
Her outburst of laughter, loud and undisciplined, echoed through the station, then tamed into radiance that stole from him even greater devotion.
‘No, I’m not a monk. Really I’m not. I think I’d know if I was. Someone would have told me.’
He sighed. ‘Glad to hear that.’
‘Far from being a monk, believe me. Claire Abbey is where I live, a three-hundred-year-old castle, just a mile and a bit up the hill, overlooks the water.’
‘Sounds nice. I’d like to hear about it.’
‘You would? You mean it? Then what are we doing here?’
They started off, pursued by William’s troubled stare.
‘I’m looking forward to this,’ she said. ‘Should I link you – or pretend we’re strangers?’
For a moment he lost her in the worship of his eyes. ‘Sure you’re not a monk? Or a witch? I heard there’s witches in these parts.’ His arm opened out. Her hand slipped through.
At the station’s gated exit she passed through first, Tony close behind. As he emerged, a hand pushed hard into his chest. In front of him stood a rough-looking man, red-faced, heavy body pressed into a tightly-buttoned suit. Tony’s senses kicked in: five-nine, near his own height, a heavyweight but not a fighter, a hard-man face much too close, chin exposed. In his past he permitted himself only an instant for this, the weighing up of an opponent, rarely the pause he was allowing now, even when it was sensible. But those days were over; he was no longer the old Anto MacNeill, as he was once known, but the new one he’d learned to control. Yet still it lurked inside, what he had been, what he had paid for. In need, it would never be far away. Right now he had to remember: it was Ireland, the 90s, not Newark, not the penitentiary. Hands down, cool head, feet balanced. If he was forced to deal with this so-far-lucky moron, he would. Parole or no parole. He had the fucker’s number, no problem, power wound, release one command away.
‘Y’hear me or what? Push off. That way!’ The man’s bulky head jerked toward the village.
Tony’s neutral stare held. This was enemy flesh, so close he could smell him, within range: straight left, right cross.
‘Dominic! That’s enough,’ Lenny yelled.
‘What’s the problem?’ Tony asked.
The man sneered. ‘Can you fucking hear? You bollox. Fuck off, get outa here. Right?’
Tony entered hair-trigger mode. The unconscious guile of the street fighter had taken his hip through a slow rear rotation, dropped his right shoulder and lengthened his first-strike arm. The body he was reading had made no such preparation, was standing flat-footed, square to him, a big soft mark, he’d go down fast.
‘Tell you what,’ Tony said in a steely monotone. ‘Get out of my face or they’ll be picking you up in pieces.’
‘Yeah?’ The man’s face warped. ‘You’ll put me down?’
‘Count on it.’ Tony’s attention glued to the small muscles around the man’s face, for the sign that would set fire to fists pleading for release.
‘Stop this!’ Lenny cried. ‘Dominic!’
The man flicked a look at her.
‘Stop! You hear me! Stop this now or you will not have a job tomorrow.’
The man retreated one step, then a second. Tony’s stare followed him, until it was broken by a burst of sobbing from Lenny. He moved to her, guided her aside.
‘You alright?’ he asked. ‘What’s this about?’
Head down, she clutched him, shaking.
‘Who’s this guy to you? If he’s giving you a problem let me sort it out right now.’
‘You can’t. You can’t.’
‘Why? What’s wrong? Tell me. You in trouble?’
She shook her head. ‘There’s nothing you can do. I have to go, please.’
‘No you don’t! You don’t. Listen, let me help. I want to help you.’
‘You can’t hope to understand. Just let me go.’ She tried unsuccessfully to pull away. ‘I’m okay. Really, I’m okay. Thank you so much, thank you.’ She followed the man to a white Mercedes.
Tony watched, cold sweat sticking his shirt to his flesh, a double-pulse in his heart. But he didn’t move. Just berated this new him for not being sure what to do. No other time had he been like this, no other time would it have cost him a thought. But ex-cons couldn’t expect breaks, anywhere in the world.
As he watched, her anguish built in his mind. He could still intervene, he told himself. But she had seemed so resigned. For her sake, much less for his own, he’d let her go. For now. But it was not over.
From the car, the man stabbed an index finger at him, mouthed silent words. The Mercedes sped off into the approaching dusk.
* * *
‘I warned you, young fella. Loud and clear I told you.’ William’s voice bellowed from inside the closed gate. ‘That bucko; you need to keep away from his sort. A boxer he was once, so they say. And that’s his name, Boxer. Wait there and I’ll get the key and you can come back in; I locked it up when that blackguard started.’ The old man waddled down the path, his shoes squeaking.
In the near noiselessness of the Mayo night, Tony MacNeill gripped the cold bars, reliving the incident. It didn’t make sense, he told himself. Her class, with a fat swine like that, they didn’t go together, not as partners. And how she threatened him, made him back off; what gave her such power over him? Then leaving with him. Just when it was all feeling like a new dream, new hope, for minutes, then over, taken away. Why? What if she was being abused. Bad marriage. Mixed up in political trouble. What could he do anyway? One thing was sure, Boxer didn’t scare him. He’d beaten plenty of brawlers, not worth anything against a fighter. Whatever the story, he wasn’t accepting defeat, wasn’t walking away. He’d find out, he’d talk to Lenny Quin again, some way.
‘You can come back in now.’ William rattled his keys, pulled open the gate. ‘Twenty minutes your train’ll be in. Loads of time to tell you what you asked me before. I’ll tell you as much of it that’s good for you to know. Then off you’ll head for Dublin, then off to America, like all before you, all them other Irish boys and girls that are never coming home again.’
On the same bench they had shared earlier, William slipped into his tale of Lady Leonora Quin, as he had referred to her.
For three years now, he explained, she had been coming into his station to wait for the evening train from Dublin. But only in September, hardly ever saw her at any other time of year. Nobody could tell who it was she was expecting, or if there was anybody at all. These days nobody bothered to ask, not any longer. He’d heard talk in the village, he said, of other goings-on, a whole different class of trouble altogether, not that he knew a thing about what they were talking about on that score. One thing he did know, though, she lived up at Claire Abbey, top of Aranroe Hill, an old castle now a posh hotel. The Abbey, all the locals called it, for golfers and tourists. Rich people. And she never married, far as he’d been told, and never went to any of the local céilis. Just the same, she came to his station, hail, rain, snow or storm, every evening of a September. Always alone. Once in a blue moon the Boxer Dunne fella would wait outside, snoring in the car or acting the big man with the lassies. Besides all that there was always the gossip, hard-to-believe things that he’d not repeat, that he’d heard tell were said to account for the woman’s odd ways, but his lips were sealed and that’s the way they were staying.
Tony let him babble on, words that would not tell. Then he stopped listening. He’d heard enough to be scared, but not scared off. He wasn’t ready anymore to leave Aranroe. His mind had turned. Now he had a mission.
‘Here she is!’ William bellowed.
Tony’s head spun around, he twisted quickly to his feet, searching about. No one. Then a blast pierced the night.
‘The Dublin train,’ William said, then into his aged face came a realisation of what his words had done.
As the train shuddered to a stop, the old man stared with deliberateness into Tony’s distress. ‘Go back to America, son. There’s nought but trouble for you here, grand young fella like you.’
Tony dug out a smile, slung his backpack over one shoulder, and walked away from the train.
William sighed. Then he wobbled forward to greet his full-service express from Heuston Station in Dublin. This night, he’d have not one passenger departing.
Tony exited the station, back into the stone-saturated countryside.
* * *
He drifted beyond the ancient round tower, through the village streets, back to the boarding house where he had stayed since his arrival three days earlier, and re-rented the same sparse room. He phoned Claire Abbey, gave a message to the receptionist: Lenny was to call him as soon as possible.
By 3pm next day no response had come. He called again, left the same message. And again at 8pm, stressing urgency. Earlier in the day he had set out for Claire Abbey, only half prepared for what he might find. Part way there something had halted him. It felt like fear. Not the fear he knew, something different. What was it? What was he to be afraid of, he deliberated. After further stops and starts he turned back. He was a stranger in a new world, pushing into someone else’s privacy, he told himself, into who knows what, into lives where he did not belong, into money. Later, the day almost over, he rambled out again, this time to the station, where he sat for two hours. She was nowhere to be seen.
Saturday arrived wrapped in vapour and brought still no contact. Just more waiting, hoping, staring at bare walls. Waiting and boredom. Hope fading into afternoon and dusk, then late evening and another empty station. Then Sunday came, grey again, crazy sky, and it crawled by, slowed by emptiness and silence and more emptiness. And now it was feeling harder to go to her, maybe impossible, despite the urge. Had she abandoned everything, the station, whomever she had been waiting for? No way to know, but he wasn’t willing to be beaten.
Monday morning, the receptionist reported again there was no response from Lenny’s apartment. She’d pass along his message, when she saw her, if she saw her.
At mid-afternoon it ended. He’d go there, he decided, find guts. He’d walk through the town, up the hill to Claire Abbey. Find out. In person. He was through fucking around, no more fear, ex-con or not, working class or not, out of place or not.
The room phone screeched; he grabbed it.
‘Tony. I’m sorry . . . about Thursday night. I – ’
‘No. Listen, listen, that’s okay, it’s okay, are you alright?’
‘I am, I truly am, I’m so sorry. And Tony – ’
‘Sure you’re okay? You sound tired, your voice, what’s – ’
‘I’m fine, I’m fine. Tony, look, it’s not what you’re thinking, it’s – ’
‘I’m not, I’m not thinking anything, nothing. Can I see you, now? Now? You free now?’
‘No, I can’t. I can’t now, but . . .’ Her voice died off into silence.
‘Lenny? Lenny? What’s wrong? Lenny.’
‘Look, I can’t! I just can’t. I’m very sorry. That’s all.’
‘You’re married, right? That it? Living with someone who’s hurting you? Say it.’
‘That’s not it. It’s not. Anyway, Tony, look . . . I’m thrilled we met. I so enjoyed the time with you. I’ve not laughed like that since, since I don’t know, since in another life.’
‘Lenny, listen. It’s Monday. I’ve been calling you since Thursday. Do you get your messages? Do you?’
‘Monday. Monday? What messages?’
‘The phone messages I left, five messages. They didn’t give them to you, did they?’
‘Phone messages.’ Her voice faded, became indistinct. ‘That’s what. . . I have to go.’
‘Lenny, no, don’t, please, don’t go. Hold on, hold on. I have to see you. Listen to me, Lenny, you know the Horslips Hotel?’
‘I’m not . . . What?’
‘Horslips. Horslips. The hotel. Beside Loch Doog. Meet me there, please, at eight o’clock? It’s ten after six now. Can you do that, can you?’
He waited. Not even her breathing broke through.
‘Lenny! Are you – ’
‘Horslips. I’ll try, I’ll try. Tony, no!’
‘What’s wrong? Tell me. Trust me. What’s going on there?’
‘I am, I am fine now, I’m fine, fine.’
‘You’re not fine. What was – ’
‘Tony, can you forget we met? Can you do that? You have family in America, people you care about?’
‘I’m not married, if that’s what you mean. I’m leaving for America in a few days. Meet me, please.’
‘I’d like to. I would like to. I don’t think so, I . . . I don’t think.’
‘Lenny, I’m not following what you are saying. Let me help. Listen, meet me at the Horslips at eight o’clock. Tonight. We’ll just talk, that’s all, I promise. Okay?’
‘Well . . . fine, fine.’
‘You’re sure now, right? Horslips Hotel, eight o’clock?’
‘Loch Doog. Dark water.’
‘Dark water? Is someone listening? Is that it? You sound, you sound – ’
‘Always listening, Tony. Listening to me. Looking to find me. You don’t know that.’
‘I don’t follow, Lenny. But it doesn’t matter; we can talk in less than two hours, about whatever you like. Eight o’clock, right? You’ll be there? OK?’
On the Edge of the Loch: A Psychological Novel set in Ireland Page 2