The Red Men

by Patrick McGinley

  He left his papers with the receptionist and set off in the direction of the stone-built cottage. He found Old Gildea at the back of an outbuilding, struggling with a flat stone which he had dug out of the foundations of a derelict byre. He straightened, as he saw Joey approach, and felt the small of his back with his hand. He looked down at the stone with his short bow-legs wide apart.

  ‘Are you strong enough to lift her?’ he asked. ‘I’d lift her myself if the arthritis hadn’t broken me grip, but what can you expect at seventy-eight and a bit?’

  The breeze lifted a wisp of white hair over his bald forehead. He was lightly built, with a wizened face, narrow shoulders and big-jointed fingers.

  ‘It would make a fine threshold stone,’ Joey said.

  ‘She’ll make a backstone for the fire to see me out,’ replied Gildea.

  Joey carried the stone into the house and placed it on the pebble-paved hearth. The old backstone, which was standing behind a slow-burning fire, was cracked by heat in two places.

  ‘It’s tailor-made,’ he said. ‘All it needs is trimming.’

  ‘Leave that to me,’ said Gildea. ‘Even with the arthritis, I can still hold a hammer and chisel.’

  He laid his stick against the wall and lowered himself stiffly into an old armchair. Joey sat opposite, using the backstone-designate as a footstool.

  ‘I’ve come to make you an offer,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll do anything you say if you take fifty years off my age.’

  ‘Will you sell the island? That’s what I’m here to ask.’

  ‘Sell it? Why?’

  ‘For money.’

  ‘You can have my island if you take my infirmities as well.’

  He picked up his stick and shuffled painfully to the door. Joey followed, wondering what to say. The island rose out of the bright summer haze, low in the north and humped towards the south. From the house it looked like a half-submerged whale with a silvery spout where the white lighthouse stood on the higher ground.

  ‘If you have a lifetime to live, you will wake up one morning and wish for a bare island with no house on it but your own. Every man longs for his own island some time during his life. Now, what can make you want an island so young?’

  ‘I like the shape of it, long and narrow and high at one end. Some days it gleams like the blade of a knife in the sun.’

  ‘It isn’t long and narrow, it’s almost round, but it looks long and narrow from whatever airt you view it.’

  ‘You never built on it yourself?’

  ‘There was no need. I go to the door first thing every morning and look out over the Sound. “That’s my island and no one else’s,” I say before I put the kettle on the fire to boil. There’s only one thing wrong with it: every Tom, Dick and Harry can see it. Now, I would like an island that could only be seen from a single spot on the mainland known to me alone. What I’m saying is that it is isn’t perfect, so how much are you offering?’

  Joey hesitated, thought of a price and halved it.

  ‘Four thousand pounds.’

  ‘What will you do with it?’

  ‘I’ll run sheep on it in the summer.’

  ‘You’ll have to get rid of the rabbits first.’

  ‘I would hope to build a house on it.’

  ‘How much did you say?’

  ‘Four thousand.’

  ‘I wouldn’t part with it for forty thousand.’

  ‘It would be a lot of money to refuse.’

  ‘When you imagine this headland in the middle of the night, what do you see?’

  ‘A long mound of a hill with a hollow in the middle and sheep grazing in flat fields below.’

  ‘I see three things: my island, your father’s hotel and Fort Knox. A man who owned those three would be king of the headland. I may be seventy-eight but I’m not giving up my stake. How’s your father?’

  ‘Very low.’

  ‘He’s seventeen months younger than me. He shouldn’t have given in so soon. He was a hard man in his time. When he was building the reservoir over there before the war, I spent a summer’s day mixing his concrete and at dusk he gave me a shilling. I said nothing but I could have cried. He was a man more given to gathering than scattering. Are you?’

  ‘I try not to gather where I haven’t scattered, that’s all.’

  ‘I had one advantage over your father: a contented mind. I’ve always enjoyed good relationships with women, and I still do. Now, tell me what’s different about me since you last saw me?’

  Joey scrutinised the small round face, half-covered by a thin, grey beard. Gildea had lost his teeth. The collapsed lips puckered when he closed his mouth, which was the mouth of a makeshift purse pulled tight by a waxed drawstring.

  ‘You’ve grown a beard,’ Joey said.

  ‘I’m growing a beard, my first at seventy-eight. I’m growing it for a young woman.’

  Joey laughed. Gildea looked pale and wrinkled, the lobes of his ears white as flour.

  ‘She came to me last month and asked if she could paint me. She’s been painting me every day, and now she wants to paint my beard. She says she’s going to start a summer school for young artists here. She’ll bring students from every country and they’ll all sit round in a circle painting Fergus Gildea from every angle. Why, I keep asking, would anyone want to paint Fergus Gildea? Your father is a more important man, and younger too.’

  ‘You must have a more interesting face.’

  ‘She didn’t say “interesting”, she said “full of character”. I expected her to paint my hands because of the arthritis. Fair play to her, she was only interested in my face.’

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘You know her well, Alicia Bugler, a lovely girl. Her mother is high and mighty. Alicia takes after her father. Now he was a gentleman of a man.’

  ‘I didn’t know she painted portraits.’

  ‘She’d paint you if you asked her. She says she’s searching for faces she can make unforgettable on canvas.’

  Joey looked quickly away, then forced himself to meet the eye of the little man in front of him. Gildea’s head was certainly unforgettable. In shape it resembled an upturned bowl. Besides, it was a bowl that looked as if it had been shrunk by the pressures of physical labour and long endurance.

  ‘I must be going,’ Joey said.

  ‘What did you learn from me today?’

  ‘The island is not for sale.’

  ‘No, no, no. You saw a table with three playing cards: my island, Fort Knox and the hotel. Knowing that is more valuable than owning one or even two of the three.’

  ‘I shall think about it on the way home.’

  ‘If you’d offered me four thousand for the island two months ago, I’d have taken it. An artist has changed my life, and a pretty young girl has given me a good reason for getting up in the morning. Yesterday she gave me a kiss on the cheek.’

  ‘You’re a lucky man.’ Joey waved goodbye.

  ‘I hope your father mends,’ the old man called after him. ‘No man deserves to suffer, not even a man who has caused suffering.’

  On the road back to the hotel Joey leant on the stone bridge and looked down into the river which was overhung by thick gorse bushes. The river was stony and the iron-laden water a murky brown. In a pool under the gorse he thought he could make out the quivering forms of four minnows facing upstream.

  This was Cookie’s river and Pauline’s too. He could never cross it without thinking of them both, wading as children, searching for eels, lifting brown lumps of slippery stone. They were inseparable then. The river was a playground which they never shared with any other children from the neighbourhood. During the winter months she would romp with all four brothers in the empty bedrooms upstairs, but throughout the summer she was only Cookie’s girl. The bond, whatever it was, had long been broken, and Pauline did not seem to care. It was Cookie who remembered and sought to re-create a lost intensity.

  For Cookie and him the word ‘Pauline’ was a synonym
for pain. Bosco had his surplice to protect him; he was the only one of them who was free.

  ‘What would you like for Christmas?’ he’d asked Joey last year.

  ‘A thought-reading machine,’ Joey replied. ‘If I knew everyone’s thoughts, I wouldn’t ask to know more.’

  ‘A thought-reading machine?’ Bosco swept a straight-fingered hand across his forehead. ‘It’s like asking for the H-bomb! Only imperfect knowledge makes human relationships possible. The best of life is not knowing. Anything we can know isn’t worth knowing.’

  Bosco was protected by more than his surplice. His deadly seriousness was his deadly weapon. What went on in his head was as remote from ordinary life as what went on under the dome of St Peter’s.

  ‘I’d still like a thought-reading machine for Christmas. I’d train it first on Gulban, then on Bosco and Cookie. Finally, I’d enter Pauline’s pretty head. She knows the business backwards. She’s nurse to Gulban and secretary too. And his mind’s no longer strong. Cookie said yesterday, “She could be king-maker, Joey, have you thought of that?”’

  Joey, who had thought of it, was surprised that a man so innocent of guile as Cookie could have thought of it too.

  A boy in short trousers came tearing down the hill on a bicycle. As he crossed the bridge, Joey never looked round. The minnows had vanished. The gorse had lost its gilt, and the water itself had become an ugly primeval soup in which only misshapen enormities could spawn. It was the present rather than childhood which was a dream.

  He arrived back at the hotel with a sense of diminishment and defeat. He had a light lunch with Cookie and Pauline, neither of whom gave anything away. Half-way through the afternoon he found her reading the Sunday papers at one of the tables on the front lawn. There was an empty seat on either side of her. He chose the one that would enable her to avoid looking directly into his bad eye.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about how to invest the money,’ he said. ‘Gulban knew what he was doing. He’s given us a real teaser.’

  ‘I’m sure he didn’t mean it to be a headache.’ She spoke as she read, without raising her eyes.

  ‘It’s more like a toothache.’ He tried to make her laugh.

  ‘You’ll have to begin reading stories about bulls and bears to take your mind off the pain.’

  ‘I’m going to put two-thirds of it in property, and I’d like to give the rest to you.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s the way to maximize your income.’

  She looked at him kindly, the sun on her lightly freckled face. She showed no surprise, only an amiable interest that caused him pain.

  ‘Will you take it?’

  ‘I couldn’t. What made you think of such a thing?’

  ‘It’s only by taking that you’ll be able to exercise your greatest gift, which is giving. You’ve given more to Gulban since he fell ill than Bosco, Cookie or myself could ever give. Without you, where would we be?’

  He put his hand on her bare arm. His thumb sought the ulnar nerve. She didn’t move, yet he could sense the stiffening of arm and body as one.

  ‘It’s very good of you, Joey, but I couldn’t take it. What would I do with it? I couldn’t spend it and it isn’t my job to invest it.’

  She looked at him again, her eyes serious and bright, full of dispassionate assessment.

  ‘You may be right,’ he said. ‘But I can’t help thinking that you deserve it.’

  He went to his room and lay on his side on the bed for an hour. He felt excited and at the same time despondent. In his breast was a kind of sobbing, dry and soundless, while his blood whispered sickeningly in his ear.

  Chapter 9

  ‘What’s hard to believe is how quickly it happened. One day I was healthy and robust, enjoying life. The next I was old, old. I went straight from summer into midwinter.’

  It wasn’t quite true, she thought. For six months before the stroke he’d been complaining of dizzy spells and, a few weeks before, he’d dropped a hammer on his foot and said that he couldn’t understand how the grip had gone out of his hand.

  ‘Now, don’t fret, Gulban,’ she said. ‘It may take time but we’ll have you on your feet again, wait and see.’

  She helped him drag himself up from under the bedclothes. Then she put two pillows to his back, before tucking in the coverlet. Lastly, she combed his wiry hair and poured him a cup of tea which he held self-consciously between his hands.

  ‘Will you open the window, Pauline? I like to watch the curtains move in the breeze.’

  He looked vacant and pale. His hands shook but the tea didn’t spill because she knew by now not to fill the cup.

  ‘What day is it?’

  ‘Saturday. Father Bosco will be coming to lunch tomorrow.’

  ‘And the date?’

  ‘It’s the 29th of September.’

  ‘Nearly three months and no improvement.’

  ‘Don’t talk like that, you’re getting stronger every day.’

  ‘I’ve known a lot of old people in my time; not one of them died before he’d lost his grip on the truth. An old man is a man who wants to be swaddled in lies. He should have about him people who are strong enough to keep repeating the truth. He won’t thank them for it, he may even come to hate them. But, if they respect him, they will take him seriously as a human being till the end. Are you strong enough, Pauline, to keep telling me the truth, even when I don’t want to hear it?’

  ‘I always tell you what I think, no more, no less.’ She tried to look cheerful with no hint of uncertainty.

  ‘I’m no longer sure. I’ve lost confidence in my eyes and ears, and, worst of all, I’ve lost confidence in my brain-box. For the first time in my life I’ve been wondering if I’m right.’

  He spoke slowly, yet he slurred his words. The natural rhythm of his speech had gone.

  ‘You’ve been lucky not to have to wonder till now.’

  ‘Pauline, you’ll have to be my eyes and ears. You must be strong, you must correct me when I don’t think straight.’

  ‘You’re doing all right.’

  ‘I gave them talents and a year to use them. And I appointed myself to pronounce judgment.’

  ‘The year isn’t over. There’s another nine months to run.’

  ‘Time may be shorter than you think. You must help me to winkle out the truth. We mustn’t delay, we must give them tests.’

  ‘Tests?’

  ‘The talents won’t tell all. We must surprise them into giving their true selves away. Bosco, Cookie and Joey, they won’t suspect. Only you and me will know they’re under the microspoke.’

  ‘Microscope.’

  ‘That’s right, correct me when I’m wrong. The tests will be tests of character, I’m relying on you for help.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘I’ll tell you when I’ve worked the details out.’

  She went to the wardrobe to give him an opportunity to drink from the cup. She knew that he had to cock his lips and that he didn’t like being watched.

  ‘If only I could sit outside. I’ll lose my colour here. Maybe if I sat by the window, I’d catch a bit of sun.’

  ‘The doctor said you must rest. You’ve already been out of bed today for as long as he allows.’

  ‘I’m bored in-bed. I’ll sit by the window for twenty minutes and look across at my reservoir and at people passing in and out. Come here now and give me a hand.’

  She pulled back the bedclothes and slowly swung his feet on to the floor. She put her arm round his waist as he tried to stand. She staggered under the unexpected weight and he sank back on to the bed.

  ‘Hold on for a minute till I fetch Cookie.’

  ‘Don’t go bothering him. Ask Slash to come up. I want to have a word with him about the farmwork.’

  She didn’t like having to ask Slash, because he would make her feel that the favour was for her, not Gulban. He was in the vegetable garden doing something to the runner beans. He looked at her quizzically,
as if he understood more than she did. It was not a look of insolence. It merely expressed a covert withholding of sympathy and assent. It said, ‘I’ll do so if you wish, but I’m my own man with my own mind, and I do things in my own good time.’

  She waited for his reply, determined not to give him the satisfaction of making her repeat the question.

  ‘Tell him I’ll be up in a minute.’ He spoke without moderating the pace of his work.

  She kept an eye on him from the kitchen window for a minute or two. When she saw him leave the garden, she went up to tell Gulban that he was on his way.

  He greeted Gulban with an easy-going smile. She could see that they had summed each other up a long time ago and that the assessment of each had been accepted without grudge by the other. She went to her room and lay on the bed, knowing that Gulban wouldn’t need her, at least for half an hour.

  It had been a morning of scattered rain and sharp sunlight reflected in wet roads and pools of water. The afternoon was mild and clear, the light on the bedroom walls gentle and soothing to the eye. She felt hollow and inert, devoid of the will to shape and control. She was coming out of one death and at the same time going into another. Nursing Gulban demanded all that she had to give. Now she wanted to sleep quietly and wake up on a bright morning full of happiness and hope, curious once again about the world outside and everything that breathed and moved in it.

  ‘I should surround myself with life,’ she heard herself say. ‘I’m immersed in death and the fear of death.’

  She entered a building she thought she recognised, small as a cowshed outside and spacious as a cathedral within. A geology lecture was in progress; the words on the blackboard were cirque, corrie, cuesta and arête, while emblazoned on a scroll across a stained-glass window was the text:

  An intrusion is a body of igneous rock which has forced itself into fissures of pre-existing rocks.

  The lecturer was wearing his mortar-board at a rakish angle and a white Arran pullover and no trousers. She sat down beside Gregory Bugler, who had put the lecturer on canvas as sheep above and man below, the spitting image of Slash Gildea.