by Peter Murphy
Ah here, Lily...’
‘I’m telling you. Be on your way. I’ve had my fill of you for one morning.’
A chair scraped.
‘All right,’ Mrs Nagle said. ‘If you can’t be civil with me, you can keep your own company. God knows you’re used to it.’
She hurried into the hall and caught sight of me on the stairs. Her eyes narrowed into slits. She hurried out and slammed the door. My mother put the latch on and did a double-take when she spotted me on the step.
‘Did you hear any of that?’ she said.
I shrugged my shoulders.
‘Couldn’t help but.’
She rolled her eyes.
‘Pay no attention. Mrs Nagle says more than her prayers.’
Old Crow sleeps like a bat, hanging upside down by his claws from the withered bough of a dead alder tree, and as he sleeps he dreams, and what he dreams of is a thousand years ago, when a rabble drunk on mead plundered Clonmacnoise, and for their sins were stricken with a plague that laid waste to the county. Snow covered everything, cold caused the perishing of fowl and fish and wild animals. Lightning struck, crops were blighted and there followed a great earthquake; a fiery steeple appeared in the air for five hours, and out of it emerged flocks of black birds that picked up a greyhound from the middle of a town and carried it away, and in their wake there came the worst of all murrains.
V
Chapel bells pealed through the Sunday morning peace, calling the people of Kilcody out to Mass. Jamey and his family sauntered up the road like a troupe of weird birds, Maurice first, a tall man with a receding hairline and thin body, except for a bulbous paunch that put the buttons of his white sleeve-rolled shirt under pressure. Dee followed a half-step behind dressed in a sort of trouser suit, her tired blond hair loosened about her shoulders. As for Jamey, he was an eye-opener in his blah-coloured slacks, hair slicked back from his face with some sort of oily gunk, holding Ollie’s hand. They crunched across the pebbles, Dee sort of shooing the boys inside while trying to keep abreast of her husband.
Jamey stopped to scrutinise the coloured stones arrayed across one side of the path. He peered a bit, lip-synced what they spelled out—
MERDE A DIEU
—and a grin split his face. Dee snapped at him to hurry on, so he scrambled the pebbles with his shoe and tramped into the chapel, where hymn-singers had already started to hail the queen of heaven.
I was watching from among the headstones, hunkered under the great granite archangel, chuckling to myself. A shadow fell across the stone.
‘I’m watching you.’
Mrs Nagle loomed, ten feet tall. Her feet seemed to hover clear inches over the grass, and her finger was extended, the nail overgrown and twisted like a briar. She retracted her arm and receded from me, taking her shadow with her, moving backwards as if on wires, an optical trick, before gliding through the chapel’s open mouth.
‘Who said Mass?’ my mother asked when she heard me come in.
‘Father Quinn.’
‘Did he preach?’
‘For about a week.’
‘What was he saying?’
‘Something about life being like a mini-marathon. Couldn’t make out the half of it. That man talks like he has a toothache.’
‘That priest. Not that man.’
‘Is a priest not a man?’
She considered answering, thought the better of it.
‘Don’t be a smart alec.’
Ever since her operation my mother tried to quit the fags every few months, but the cravings always got the better of her. Her mood got worse each day she was off them, and didn’t improve a whole lot when she relapsed. I made for the stairs.
‘Hold on. Sit down here a second.’
Reluctantly I pulled out a chair as my mother jerked the table drawer open, removed a book and sent it skidding across the surface.
‘I found that in your room.’
I looked at the book. It was only Harper’s Compendium.
‘What’s the big deal?’ I said. ‘I’ve had that for years.’
She took out a cigarette, tapped it against the box and jabbed it in the direction of the book.
‘I know, and I don’t want you reading it any more. You’re a young man nearly and you’ve still got worms on the brain. It can’t be good.’
‘You’re not serious.’
‘I am.’
I made a grab for the book, but my mother was quicker. She snatched it from my fingertips and let me have it across the jaw.
I yelped, more surprised than hurt.
‘What was that for?’
‘Impudence, that’s what.’
Smoke trailed from her fag-hand as she crossed the room and picked up the Bible from under her armchair and slapped it on the table before me.
‘You’d be better off reading this.’
I grabbed the wireless from off the kitchen counter and stormed out of the kitchen.
‘It wouldn’t do you any harm,’ she yelled after me as I stomped upstairs to my bedroom. I turned the radio on so loud the loose bits rattled. The racket soon brought my mother upstairs, the door flying open, her face making a face. Her eyes roamed over the stacks of books, the heaped comics, the sheaves of papers and drawings, and she shook her head, as though denying permission for something I hadn’t asked for.
‘You need to tidy up this room,’ she yelled over the blaring radio. ‘It’s a disaster.’
She shut the door and her boots thumped down the steps. Soon after that, the front door slammed.
When I’d cooled off a bit I sloped downstairs. The Bible was where she’d left it on the table. I made a bread-and-butter sandwich and a cup of tea and used it as a tray and crept back up to my room. Belly down on the bed, I opened the Bible at random. Words glowed from the page.
How much less man, that is a worm? And the son of man, which is a worm?
Over the next few days I repeatedly asked my mother what she’d done with my book. Eventually she admitted to throwing it out. I stormed from the house and stalked off into the village. I made enquiries at the library to see if they could find me a copy, but when the librarian went through her files, she could find no record of such a book. It was as though it never existed.
Outside, tarmac bubbled and blistered on the road. The ground was so hot I could feel it radiating through the rubber soles of my runners. I set off for the dump on the outskirts of the village, a good half-hour’s hike. I’d decided to comb through the rubbish for Harper’s Compendium. The odds against finding it were a million to one or worse, but that wasn’t really the point. The point was to satisfy myself that it was gone for good.
The sun beat down on stubbled yellow fields. The earth was shorn of its blond hair, and the hay was gathered in bales the size of wagon wheels. By the time I got to the dump I was lathered in sweat. All afternoon I combed through heaps of refuse. I rooted through PVC sacks full of rotten food and dirty nappies and Styrofoam cups. I sifted mounds of sun-bleached newspapers, broken radios and VCRs and ribbons of videotape. I sorted through sad rain-spoiled soft toys, cracked plastic fish tanks, rotten rabbit hutches carpeted with pellets, big bulging sacks the shape of really fat people. By the time the sun had begun to set I was dog-tired and thirsty and my arms and legs ached.
The highest mound of muck afforded a panoramic view of the surrounding landfill and the bare fields beyond. The holy light of sunset transformed the dump into a glittering city of worship, mosques and cathedrals and citadels of junk, congregations of rats and cats and seagulls. It no longer mattered that the book was lost. I’d read it so often I could remember reams of it by heart. Probably could have recited the sections on parasites from memory. I sat lotus-legged atop the pyramid imagining I was some kind of Zen master or warrior monk. A seagull circled overhead, wingtips describing mystical whorls and spirals in the burnt-orange sky.
I drew a deep breath, located the centre of myself and called out to the gull.
‘For ever
y self-sufficient creature on earth,’ I said, ‘there are four parasites. 1.4 out of 6 billion people have roundworm. 1 billion have whipworm. 1.3 billion are infected with hookworms. Fourteen different kinds of parasites can live in the bowels of a duck.’
I rose to my feet and gestured at the sprawling topography of rubbish, and again called out to the wheeling, showboating gull.
‘The tapeworm is a flat creature with no mouth or eyes that lives in the intestines,’ I said. ‘It can lay up to a million eggs a day and grows up to sixty feet long. He—or she—is made up of thousands of segments, each with its own male and female organs. Having no mouth or stomach, the tapeworm absorbs food through millions of gills.’
My chest swelled and my eyes rolled over the landfill, taking in the banjaxed washing-machines and ratty armchairs, the collapsed cardboard boxes and broken umbrellas and discarded items of clothing. Shoes. Lots of shoes, estranged from their former partners, gone downhill since the separation, laces frayed, tongues showing. A duvet stained with the shapes of countries that never existed. Bursted pillows, feathers everywhere. Used condoms, bodily fluids curdled in rubber nipples.
‘Toxoplasma gondii,’ I said, ‘otherwise known as eggs in cat shit, can cause fatal brain damage in foetuses. Rats tested with Toxoplasma have been shown to become reckless to the point of being a danger to themselves. Some people reckon the same affliction makes human males feckless, women highly sociable and accommodating.’
I took another breath and spewed out facts like a human computer.
‘Tanbura’s guinea worms grow to two feet long and escape the body by crawling out through blisters. Threadworms live in the large intestine and the rectum, laying eggs at night. When you scratch your butt in your sleep, the eggs get under your nails, into your mouth, down the hatch, hatch, and the whole cycle starts again.’
All across the dump were scattered reams of wasted paper, bills, brochures, fast-food coupons, offers of credit cards, debt-consolidation plans.
‘If you eat and eat,’ I said, ‘but you can’t seem to get full, that’s probably a parasite stealing all the good from your food intake. This is how parasites make people underweight and cause drooling, bedwetting, insomnia and teeth-grinding. Itching in the ears, nose and assorted other cracks and crevices. How they make people go to the toilet too little or too much. How they turn your skin yellow and cause mucus problems and spots and headaches and bloody stools. Impotence. Gas. Fatigue. Depression. Baldness. Stupidity.’
Rats rustled. Gulls shrieked. Somewhere in the distance, the looped bow-wow-wow of a dog. And the drone of an engine, coming closer.
I squinted across the fields. The sound of the engine swelled. A white hi-ace van bumped down the grass-split lane and came to a stop just inside the gates. A man got out and began to rummage through the multicoloured mounds. He had on baggy slacks belted with nylon tights, belly bulging out of a short-sleeved shirt decorated with dice and death’s heads and fiery writing that said: ROLL THEM BONES.
It was Har Farrell. I hadn’t seen him since my tenth birthday, when he gave me the crossbow. He was five years older now, must have been pushing fifty, and he’d put on a fair bit of weight since. My mother said he’d been away to England for a while, and when he came back he’d given up the drink and was a whole new person. He traded in the Honda 50 and bought a van and moved into the video business—blueys according to gossip—then diversified into bootleg designer knock-offs, bulk orders of duty-free, black-market stuff.
I watched him poke through the spare tyres and broken household appliances. He must have sensed he was being spied on, because he stopped foraging and stuck his head up like a meerkat. When he saw me, he crossed himself.
‘Sweet Jesus,’ he said. ‘You gave me a scare there, young fella.’
His bushy hair was damp. He was pumping sweat.
‘You’re like a little green genie up there,’ he said. ‘All you’re missing is the fecken hookah. Come down here and not have me shouting.’
I scrambled down from the mound and grinned.
‘Hello, Har,’ I said.
‘Good god!’ He took a step back. ‘John Devine! You’re after stretching a bit. Last time I set eyes on you, you weren’t as big as a god’s cow. How’s your mother, son? I haven’t seen her this donkey’s years. Not since I took that television set off her hands. You were still only a scut.’ His bulging shirt shook with suppressed chuckles. Chewing gum poked out the side of his mouth like a crooked tooth. ‘By god, you weren’t too pleased about it.’
‘I remember.’ I reached into my jacket pocket for my cigarettes. ‘Smoke?’
He took another half-step back and held his hand out like he was stopping traffic.
‘Gave ’em up,’ he said. ‘The pipes are bad. Any sense, you’ll do the same. Bastard hard, though. Constipated for a month. Got piles on me arse like grapes. But I managed to keep my figure.’
He tugged at the tights around his waist.
‘What brings you here?’ I said.
‘Oh, just looking for bits and bobs. This place is a goldmine usually. Want to buy a phone?’
‘No thanks. Those things turn your brain to black pudding.’
‘Ah.’ He made a scoffing noise. ‘That’s your mother talking.’
He spat his gum into some silver paper, put it back in his shirt pocket, and with a flourish, produced a card and gave it to me.
Harry Farrell
Miscellaneous Goods
‘If we can’t get it, it can’t be got.’
‘You need anything son, anything at all, the number’s on the back.’
He moved the briefcase onto the passenger side, grabbed hold of the steering wheel and hauled himself into the van.
‘Tell your mother I was asking for her.’
He started the engine. I watched him drive away through the perimeter of rusting car hulks and patches of yellowed grass like crime-scene outlines testifying to recent acts of autocide, and then he was gone.
I walked home across the meadows, cutting through a three-cornered field with an old fairy fort in the middle, a stand of evergreens encircled by a wall built from quarry stones. The grass there was long and yellowed. I was exhausted by the day’s toil, so I lay down to rest in the shade of the fort. I gazed at the reddening sky, and after a while I could scarcely tell if I was lying flat on the face of the earth or hanging from its underside, magnetised by gravity. I closed my eyes, but the skin of my eyelids didn’t so much blot out the twilight sun as merely dim its intensity. My mind wandered, drugged with heat and fatigue, imagining the world as a stone skimming across the surface of space, sending ripples outward across the universe. Or maybe it was a ball bobbing in the vast blueness. A mote of dust floating across the pollen-strewn heavens.
A rustling sound made me open my eyes and sit up, dizzy and confused. When the sunspots cleared, I saw a grey buck hare, not ten yards away. He watched me warily before burrowing into a hole under the wall of the fairy fort. Slow and stealthy, I got to my feet and crept after him in a sort of caveman’s crouch, and I climbed over the wall and into the shadowy glade.
The air was rich with pine-needle smells. Cones were scattered on the ground like grenades. It was dank and cool, sheltered by a latticework of overhanging branches. I pushed through the leaves and came to a clearing at the centre of the fort, where the ground rose steeply into a clay mound.
Suddenly cold, I rubbed my arms.
At the summit of the mound was a nest of briars and twigs. I climbed the slope to get a better look. Inside the nest, a single black egg lay on a bed of black feathers. As I ran my fingers over its smooth surface, a jagged line began to work its way across the shell with a wet cracking sound. The egg broke apart and I caught a glimpse of blood-smeared flesh, a single eye, inflamed and rheumy, and I drew back and lost my footing and slipped and tumbled down the slope. Above me, something cawed and screeched. I scrambled to my feet and bolted, headlong through the thicket, thorns and briars scratching my skin, cl
othes smeared and torn. Hoofs thudded the ground behind me, hot breath on my neck. I cleared the wall and tore across the field, black wings rending the air at my back.
Spears of light seared through my eyelids. I opened them. My shirt was sodden with sweat and I was weakened by the heat. Above me, the dying sun glared down, a bloodshot Cyclops eye.
School was out long enough for the novelty to have worn off. The radio kept saying it was the warmest summer in years, that burn-time was down to an all-time low of twenty minutes. Everywhere felt central heated.
Slathered in my mother’s sun cream, I met with Jamey outside Donahue’s pub. He was slouched against the wall as though posing for a photograph, one boot flat against terracotta brickwork tagged with faded Tippex swastikas and Crass logos and H-Block slogans.
‘You gonna help me spend this?’ he said, waving a wad of notes.
Earlier that day his family had left on holiday, entrusting him with the keys to the house. Dee was nervous, and when his dad’s back was turned she slipped him a handful of twenties ‘for emergencies’.
‘I’ve to meet someone inside,’ Jamey said. ‘Have a pint with me while I’m waiting. I’m buying.’
We ducked into the pub. The dank shade and stale beer smells were a welcome relief from the blazing sunlight. A television blared over the bar. To the rear of the room, on a small stage set into an alcove that looked like a midget Santa’s grotto, a man in a short-sleeved summer shirt plugged a mandolin into a buzzing Peavey amp. He fiddled with a crackling lead and ran a plectrum over the strings. The chord rang out, almost medieval-sounding. Satisfied, he turned the amp off, killing the hum, and nipped out to the beer garden for a smoke.
Jamey brought two pints over to the corner snug and set them on the table.