The Red Men

by Patrick McGinley

  She drove to the funeral with Cookie and Joey, sunk between them on the back seat of the car while they stared out of opposite windows. None of them spoke. All three walked quietly up the nave and sat in the same pew, while Father Bosco intoned the Requiem Mass in a special high-pitched voice she had not heard before, and which changed down an octave for the address. He spoke slowly and softly without modulation or embellishment, so that no phrase or sentence seemed more memorable than any other. She strained to catch each fleeting syllable, while remembering the heart-rending histrionics of his last sentence over Jack less than a year before.

  At the graveside she stood beside Cookie, who put an arm round her as the coffin vanished from view. Joey, who stood opposite, covered his face with his hand. She had become a secret member of the family, yet she could feel neither grief nor bereavement, only a kind of numb constriction that made breathing difficult. She sensed that she had been reborn; she knew less of herself today than she had ever known before.

  She tried to grasp what was happening. The sun struck blindingly through the overhanging ash. The air was mild and still. An ordinary summer morning with no wind to blow either sand or dust. Nothing to make extraordinary this most extraordinary of days. When Joey removed his hand from his face, she saw his good eye red from weeping and the trace of a tear on his cheek. As they drove back to the hotel, he spoke to Cookie of the sense of nothingness, of empty eternities, that Bosco had unwittingly conveyed in his unadorned address.

  After lunch Mr Looby arrived with his mahogany-coloured briefcase to read the will.

  ‘You, too, are to join us, Miss Harrison,’ he smiled. ‘Those are my instructions. I am here to carry them out.’

  In the office they sat opposite Mr Looby who, without a blink of hesitation, had taken Gulban’s chair. Bosco folded his arms and inclined his polished forehead to the light. Cookie passed a hand over his silken hair and waited with expressionless resignation. Of the three Joey alone seemed alert. He was a fiery ember that could only be described in terms of pain, though in any summation of his volatile personality it had to be acknowledged that the pain he gave was less intense than the pain he so obviously endured. Now all three looked at Looby, a man for all occasions who could assume any shape he pleased without an accompanying word or gesture of self-revelation. He drew a small tape-recorder from his briefcase and placed it in the centre of the table. He pressed a button, and she heard Gulban’s voice, more grainy than gravelly, coming out of the vacuum she sensed in the room.

  ‘I am dead now,’ he began. ‘No apologies for absence. The Day of the Talents is past; now is the Day of Judgment. Listen carefully, I am about to be brief. To Pauline I leave the hotel, shop and farm. To Father Bosco, Cookie and Joey I have already given talents to the value of ten thousand pounds each. That, my sons, is your patrimony. I trust that you have invested it wisely. Even if you haven’t, you will each receive in addition a share of Jack’s unused talent: £3,333.33 to Cookie, £3,333.33 to Joey, and £3,333.34 to Father Bosco, who, as the eldest, receives the largest share.

  ‘Now for a look at some skeletons from the family cupboard, or at least those skeletons with a bearing on the distribution of my estate. Pauline is my daughter. Mr Looby has in his possession several letters signed by her mother which put the matter beyond dispute. For the record, and to scotch unsavoury speculation, I should also reveal that Jack was Andy Early’s son, not mine. You may speak openly of these things now or you may keep them quiet among yourselves. As for Pauline, I have named her as my beneficiary, not merely because she is my daughter but because she has inherited my business imagination to a degree which renders even me uncritical. She is neither too rash nor too cautious; she has the businessman’s instinctive understanding of when to be bold without jeopardising what has already been achieved. I have no wish to pre-empt decisions that now belong to her, but here on this distant cloud I like to think that there will always be bed and board – room at the inn – for each of you at Christmas time, as there was for Andy Early. You know my thoughts, you’ve had my example. These are your true inheritance.’

  ‘So the old bugger had a sense of humour after all!’ With a raucous laugh, Joey banged the table.

  Father Bosco leant towards Pauline and whispered, ‘Congratulations!’ Cookie offered her his hand and Joey got up from his seat and kissed her cheek.

  ‘You’re my sister at last,’ he said. ‘What’s a little kiss between siblings?’

  Pauline struggled to speak. The dry detachment of Gulban’s recorded speech made her wonder if it were all a cruel and outlandish joke. She expected the brothers to start jeering and mocking at any moment.

  ‘We came in to hear you read the will,’ she said to Mr Looby.

  ‘It’s in my briefcase, all in order. I shall read it if you wish. I must warn you that it’s more formal than the recording.’

  ‘I think that after what we’ve just heard we can take it as read,’ said Father Bosco.

  ‘Your father was a perfectionist, a most extraordinary man. The recording you’ve just heard represented hours of his time and mine. He went over it again and again till every pause and inflexion was beyond improvement.’

  He smiled and turned to her.

  ‘Now I have a few things to discuss with you alone.’

  The brothers looked at one another as the solicitor and Pauline left the room. Joey took down a dusty old ledger and turned the crackling pages.

  ‘The history of the firm is here,’ he said. ‘“One crate of HP Sauce … fifteen shillings.” The kitchen has come on since then. Those were the days before Pauline became chief accountant. Why did she get it? How did she best us all?’

  ‘She’s an able manager and she’s got a talent for sincerity,’ Father Bosco said.

  ‘Sincerity is in the eye of the beholder,’ Joey reminded him. ‘No humour, no irreverence. Gulban wished for a baker of unleavened bread.’

  ‘We’ve gained a sister,’ Cookie said half to himself.

  ‘Then we must learn to love her as a sister.’ Joey laughed with forced gusto. ‘We must get to know that darling face afresh. Till today she wore a near-transparent veil. Does the veil that Gulban whisked away conceal yet another veil beneath? It all makes for excitement and the expectation of new surprises. It makes you want to be daring and think outrageous thoughts.’

  ‘Could Gulban have invented all this just to turn us arsy-versy?’ Cookie wondered. ‘A final coup de foudre to singe and blast us all. The irony of lives lived on false premises being suddenly up-ended by an even greater falsehood would surely have appealed to him.’

  ‘No, Cookie, that simply will not do,’ Joey reproved. ‘You must confront the grisly truth, reinvent your childhood and all those dreamy afternoons with Pauline in the river. You’ll have to reinvent the past six months as well.’

  ‘Childhood’s no problem, we keep reshaping it all the time. As for the last six months, I shall deal with them as best I can.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll discover some consolatory literary precedent. Father Bosco and I can only try to comfort each other.’

  Pallid and preoccupied, Father Bosco got up from his chair. He was in no mood for banter.

  ‘What are we to do?’ Joey asked him.

  ‘Accept. Simply that. Accept without question.’

  ‘Total submission to the stern and uncaring clout of providence?’

  ‘I must be off. I’ve neglected my parish work long enough.’

  ‘Have you no other word to say?’ Joey pursued. ‘Surely the Good Book must offer a little light: “It was sweet as honey in my mouth but when I had eaten it my stomach was made bitter.”’

  When Father Bosco had left, Joey returned the ledger to its shelf.

  ‘Our priest is nonplussed. He prayed for a hotel and was given a sister. Surely there must be some mistake, O Lord?’ Joey cackled and Cookie, ignoring him, went to the door.

  ‘Before you vanish to your room, let me give you a quote for the day, one you’ve
often aired in all innocence yourself:

  For lust of knowing what should not be known,

  We take the Golden Road to Samarkand.’

  Cookie closed the door and Joey’s gloating laugh seemed to precede him into the lobby.

  After talking to Mr Looby, Pauline went to her room to be alone. Now she had three brothers instead of none, and she must steel herself to meet them as brothers without allowing the past to tip the balance of the present. She herself might feel doubt and disquiet; she must not be the cause of doubt and disquiet in them. She must concentrate entirely on things to be done. What mattered now was continuity. She felt grateful for a new strength of will which could only have come from urgent necessity, yet she was troubled by a threatening sense of shapelessness, of familiar appearances made strange by distortion.

  That night she woke up in panic. There was no sound inside or out. The darkness round her bed was thicker than the darkness outside her window. She knew that she must have been dreaming. No image came to dispel the featureless gloom in her mind.

  ‘I am a Heron, not a Harrison.’

  The thought filled her with horror, as if she alone had been responsible for all the mean contrivances of an unloving life – the penny-pinching, the short measure, the tinkle of the insatiable till – for the ugliness of the village, for all the ugliness of the world. The Herons lacked innocence and joy. They were too full of care, containment and misery, and therefore too full of themselves. Jack was not a Heron, which must have been why she had taken to him. For all his lack of feeling and imagination, he had stood for the order of day-thoughts as opposed to the dream-demons of the night.

  ‘People keep wounding one another wittingly and unwittingly. Bosco’s scarred soul shows in Joey’s broken face. The wounds Jack gave were clean, they did not fester.’

  With morning came a kind of reasoned serenity which seemed hard won. The inner life, the craving to ponder and understand must remain, for the time being, unsatisfied. In common with all who seek to convince, she must be seen to think only thoughts with the stamp of certainty. She had an early bath and dressed carefully. She put on a little make-up and tied a ribbon in her hair. After breakfast she had a word with Joey in the back office; she had already decided to redecorate Gulban’s office before making it her own.

  ‘I want you to know that for the moment everything will continue as before. There will be changes in time, but they need not affect you at the shop.’

  ‘You want me to run the shop?’ He gave an uneasy smile with his parted lips askew.

  ‘Of course I do. You run it very well. We’ll talk about your salary later. That’s important. Gulban, being Gulban, saw work as its own reward.’

  ‘He was a kind of mountain, always there, there, there. We made jokes about him in order to communicate. What shall we find to say to each other now?’

  ‘We’ll miss him for a long time to come.’

  ‘I suppose he had already warned you about the will.’

  ‘No, it came as a surprise and shock to me as well. However, he did tell me that I was his daughter shortly before he died.’

  ‘Now, that’s a definitive surprise. It makes you feel that there will never be a surprise again.’

  He smiled at her as she left. She felt pleased. She had chosen to speak to him first because he was more touchy than Cookie, and less predictable. She would talk to Cookie before lunch. Father Bosco was different. She would give him time. He would come to her when he had found the words to lay new stepping-stones. The old ones were treacherous. They must never be trodden again.

  Chapter 29

  Not just a life but a world had ended. Gulban had lived in a castle with its own laws and internal economy. It was built of certainties, and those who lived within its moat had learnt to accept a life of one theme without variations. There was only one season. The year had been arrested in late autumn, and anyone who wished for winter in the hope spring might follow was condemned to dream in vain.

  In dying he had pulled down the castle walls. Now it was possible to see beyond the drawbridge a landscape full of beckoning roads leading off in all directions. Suddenly it was summer. A shimmer of excitement enlivened the surface of the sea.

  To Cookie it seemed as if he had spent his whole life in a keep. He had been through a succession of dark days and darker nights where dreams took the place of action. He had been going about with a quernstone pressing down on his head. Now the quernstone had been toppled. He was left with a sense of lightness and the memory of an unbearable weight which had crushed each new thought at birth.

  Pauline looked up as he entered the back office, pert and lively with a light blue ribbon in her hair. She was bright as a butterfly in a summer meadow, and as delicate. He had never laid eyes on her before.

  ‘I was looking for you earlier,’ she smiled.

  ‘You should have looked in Fort Knox.’

  ‘I’d like you to know that you are free to stay on here as long as you wish.’

  ‘I’ve already made up my mind. I’m leaving for Dublin tomorrow. I shall finish footnoting my thesis and then clear off to America – if they’ll have me. I shall start from scratch. I’ve put my life as a Heron behind me. I’ve decided to change my name.’

  ‘You’ll still have Heron blood in you, there’s no changing that. If you go to America, go as a Heron. Who knows, it may be the start of something.’

  ‘For me the Red Men are dead. They’re a fibre in the ganglion of lies that died with Gulban.’

  ‘That’s a bit harsh.’

  ‘We all see him differently. For me he was a dark, heavy cloud that blotted out the light.’

  ‘He was extreme and extraordinary. The world of the hotel and shop was too narrow to allow him elbow room.’

  ‘While he was in robust health, I never thought of questioning him. Once he began to die, I couldn’t but be aware of how he dithered. He made me realise that the only way to die is quickly.’

  ‘In time you’ll see him differently. He was an actor with a superb sense of ceremony. He could easily have prepared us for the will, but he found the desire to shock irresistible.’

  ‘The will showed him at his best. I think you got no more than you deserved. And he did you and me a great, if belated service. In the surprise he sprang we must acknowledge a sense of rightness revealed.’

  He waited for her to respond. She picked up a pencil and sharpened it with remote efficiency.

  ‘You’ve had a hard winter, you must feel tired.’ He broke the silence.

  ‘Tired or not, I must carry on. First, I’ll live from day to day, then perhaps from week to week. I don’t believe in digging up roots and shredding them.’

  ‘That’s how I feel too. I’ll content myself with looking at the surface glitter of the sea.’

  ‘What about Fort Knox? Is that surface glitter?’

  ‘Mrs Bugler sold it to me on condition that she could come back to stay for a month every summer. I’ll talk to her when I’m in Dublin. If she has no objection, I may invite you to make me an offer.’

  ‘Has it got nothing for you any more?’

  ‘I spent the morning going from room to room. It’s … empty.’

  ‘And Alicia? Was she mere surface glitter?’

  ‘She was special. She pretended to see only the rolling wave but her mind ran on sea caves and sea monsters. If she had lived, she would have found things to paint that no one had seen before. As I look back on the last year, I have a feeling that it’s all been Gulban’s creation. He, too, was an artist in his way. Without him there would have been no Fort Knox and possibly no Alicia.’

  ‘We ourselves aren’t giftless,’ she smiled. ‘Between us we created our idea of Gulban, which is why we feel so diminished. Joey, I’m glad to say, now seems more human. When I spoke to him this morning, there were no acid drops in evidence.’

  ‘He always says more than he means and he always means less than you think.’

  ‘If that is true, he said ve
ry little this morning.’

  She picked up her pencil and began ticking off a column of figures on a statement. After each tick, she turned over one of the invoices, seemingly unaware of his presence.

  ‘Time to start packing,’ he said from the door.

  Canon Sproule had gone to a whist drive and given his demon housekeeper the evening off. Father Bosco had the presbytery to himself. He was resting on his bed, leg-weary after a day of corporal works of mercy, yet not sufficiently quiet in spirit to put his head down.

  Sitting in the darkness of the confessional the previous evening, he had observed through the curtain an approaching penitent with a bulbous nose that gave his face the look of an old swede, mottled and coarse-skinned with one or two whitish scars. He listened to the predictable sins of intemperance and, as he gave absolution, he had a vision of a lake on a still summer day. There was no ripple and no sense of surface, only the incorporeal reflections of airy sky and cloud. He had felt on the brink of heavenly enlightenment, leading to something fine, distinguished and good. Then the man shuffled off and another middle-aged penitent took his place.

  After going home, he went to bed early and dreamt that he was in a dark room searching for the light switch, with moving figures just discernible against the faint sky outside the window. The figures looked stooped and predatory, and they seemed to be searching too. In panic, he realised that they were searching for him. He ran from the house to ring the police, and at last found a call-box in the external dark. He dialled 99 and hesitated as he strove to recall the third digit. He could not remember, so he dialled the operator who said: ‘At the third stroke it will be nine sins past the hour precisely. A man who believes in sin can do nothing but –’ A crackle on the line drowned the final word. He waited in the dark booth for a life-transforming perception that refused to come. The line went dead. All possibility of enlightenment had gone. On a square of cardboard above the telephone he scrawled in luminous chalk: DARKNESS RULES OK.