by Brian Moore
“There she is,” Feeley said maliciously. “A little girl that has seen a lot. Hello there, lovey,” he called through the windowpane, smiling and blowing a kiss at Kathleen. He laughed and turned back to Mangan. “I hope the wife doesn’t see me,” he said with a knowing wink. “I’ll let you out, so.” Bustling ahead, unlocking his office door.
“So there you are, Jim,” Kathleen said. “Hello, Seamus.”
“Where is your brother today?” Feeley said to her.
“He’s in Cork City, I think.”
“And what is he doing in Cork City?”
“Well, you know his truck was stolen,” Kathleen said innocently. “Somebody took it and tried to make off with a load of scrap metal from Kerrigan’s yard in Cork. The Guards found the truck and today they’re giving Con a lift down to Cork to reclaim it.”
“Oh, so that’s the story,” Feeley said, gurgling with a laugh that was all disbelief. “Is that what he told you, then?”
“It’s the truth,” Kathleen said.
“Not the way I heard it, but never mind,” Feeley said. “As I was telling your American friend here, the Guards were in to see me in connection with your brother letting people sleep in Mr. Harmon’s house.”
“Sure, what harm was there in that?” Kathleen said, smiling at Feeley as though to win him. “Anyway, Jim here has all sorts of money. He’ll be glad to pay you a few quid for rent if that’s what’s worrying you. Wouldn’t you, Jim?”
“I already offered.”
“And I already refused,” Feeley said, smiling. “Off with you now, the pair of you. And mind what I told you, Mr. Mangan. For your own good.”
“What was he telling you?” Kathleen asked as they walked back to the car. Mangan looked about him. Although there was no one on the street, he had a distinct impression of being under surveillance from every window.
“Nothing. Just some stuff about him being responsible for the house.”
“The stupid ould git,” she said and laughed. “Are you tired? Do you want me to drive the car?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“Still, I think you’d better go to bed the minute we get to the house.”
He looked at her. “So we’re going to the house, are we?”
“Too right, we are.”
“Will you stay with me, then?”
“Are you up to it?”
He laughed and started the car. They drove off, laughing, down the street of invisible eyes.
A few hours later something frightening happened. They were in bed. She had, as usual, brought gin and cake to their lovemaking and afterward fell into a restless sleep. He did not sleep. His head ached, his ribs hurt at each breath, his swollen upper lip throbbed like a pulse. The gin had left him light-headed but did not lift him into drunkenness, and now he lay in a pain-filled daze, listening to the mutter of rain on the bedroom window, watching cloud shadows drift across the room. Shadows made him think of the places which were now, officially, his homes: the cottage on Bluff Road in Amagansett, its windows shuttered against the winter gales; the apartment on Beekman Place, its venetian blinds like closed visors, slatting the furniture in the dusty rooms.
Homes no longer. Here he was the sailor home from the sea, the hunter home from the hill. He turned his head to look at the rumpled heap of bedclothes under which she slept, the sheet fallen away to reveal her naked back down to the cleft of buttocks. Gently, he ran his fingers down her spine to catch and fondle the soft swell of her bottom. At once, she shuddered like a foal, and sat bolt upright in the bed, as though he had electrocuted her. She screamed, deafeningly loud. Her head twisted around to stare at him, her eyes wide open, her face screwed in a rictus of terror. Her hands went up to ward him off as she continued to shriek, making a sound so loud that it filled the room, echoing off the mountaintop, away to the distant sea.
“Kathleen!” he yelled. “Stop it, Kathleen! It’s me.”
She stopped screaming and stared at him, as though she recognized him, but suddenly, in new terror, retreated back across the bed. Then, drawn by some awful curiosity, she came back, crawling on all fours across the coverlet to pull the blanket off him and reveal his nakedness. She stared at his genitals. “Oh, my Jesus!” she wailed. “Oh, Jesus!”
“What’s wrong? Kathleen, what’s wrong?”
But she screamed again, jumped off the bed, and cowered in a corner of the room. “What did you do?” she wailed. “Take it away. Take it away from me. Oh, God, are you going to die?”
“Kathleen, wake up. What are you talking about?”
She approached him uncertainly, staring at him in terror. “We’ll have to get a doctor,” she moaned. “We’ll have to have a doctor.”
“Look, it’s me, Jim.”
But she did not seem to understand. “You’ll have to get a doctor. You’ll bleed to death. Oh, God!” And she turned from him, huddled down in the corner, her red hair falling over her face.
He got off the bed, pulled on his underpants and trousers, and, careful not to frighten her, went toward her slowly, his hand raised in a gesture of conciliation. “Kathleen, wake up. It’s just a bad dream. This is Jim. Jim.”
But she rocked, keening, not looking at him.
“It’s all right,” he said. “Wake up. You’re just dreaming.”
But she was not dreaming. He realized that he was afraid of her. She looked up at him, her mad eyes seeing him, yet not seeing him. “Aunt Eileen,” she said. “I’ll have to get Aunt Eileen.” She turned from him and went distractedly to the window. “What will I tell her? What will I tell her?” She turned from the window and stared at him, her hand smoothing her hair back over her brow. As she stared at him, she seemed to see something she had not seen before and now, slowly, wonderingly, she came back toward him. He said nothing. She was mad. She did not know him.
But then, as she peered at him, she seemed to take hold of herself. “I’m just dreaming,” she said, and ran back to the window. She pulled up the sash and he went to her, thinking she was about to throw herself out. But instead she leaned over the sill and retched. He came up behind her. She retched. Rain wet her face and hair. He did not touch her. She leaned out, the retching over, panting, rain drenching her face. She pulled back, then closed the window. Her face was no longer haunted. She turned to him with a weak, shamefaced smile. “Did I have one of my turns?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. She went to the table, took up the gin bottle, poured herself a gin, and held up the almost empty bottle. “We’ll be needing more.”
“I’ve had enough.”
“I haven’t,” she said. “I thought you had plenty of money.”
“Of course I have.”
“Then we’ll drive down to Crookhaven. Anyway, we have to pick up food for our supper. I said Crookhaven because I’m not going to Drishane to have them all staring at us.” She bent and put on her cotton panties. She then pulled the long white dress up over her hips. “Or maybe you just want to lie here and rest. I can drive the car and do the messages. Just give me the money. I’ll not be long.”
She turned her back and he began to hook up the bodice of her dress. “No, that’s all right,” he said. “I’ll come with you.” He finished hooking up her dress and as he did she swiveled around and kissed him on the lips. “My own fillim star,” she said. “Did I give you a fright with that turn?”
“A bit.”
“Old nightmares about nothing,” she said and kissed him again. He kissed her. Better not to think. Better to drive her to Crookhaven and buy her all the gin she wanted. He did not want to lose her. He could not bear to lose her. It was only a nightmare, forget it.
“That’s right,” he said. “An old nightmare.”
And so he drove her to Crookhaven, at the end of a long inlet, a deep-water harbor, and a cluster of buildings along the quay. Rain squalls sent long, rippling shivers down the waters of the inlet, rocking the few fishing boats at anchor. The entire vista—vill
age, church, and boats—seemed empty as a picture postcard, and so it was with a sense of surprise that they rounded a bend outside the village and came upon a truck parked at the side of the road, a small truck which Mangan recognized as being the same one which had rattled past him the other morning when he visited the old cemetery by the sea. And the same four laborers were down in the ditch now, scything and shearing the hedgerows, wearing old suits of clothes, rubber boots but no overcoats, as though they held the rain in contempt. As Mangan drove past they looked up, and at that moment he remembered the day at the cemetery when one of them had hidden his face and he had believed the man was Dinny Mangan. And now as he searched the upturned faces, one of the workmen blundered up out of the ditch waving at the car as though to flag it down. The man, seen plain, was indeed Dinny. But as he waved to stop the car, Mangan ignored him and drove on, aware of Kathleen half drunk beside him, unwilling to have words with this disputatious relative. The other workmen, seeing him drive on, also began to wave. “Stop! Wait a minute!” their voices yelled after him.
Kathleen, rousing herself from a doze, looked back at the shouting men. “That’s Dinny. What’s he want?”
“Shall I drive on?”
“No, better not.”
Unwillingly, he brought the car to a stop and heard the sound of Dinny’s boots as the man pounded up the road behind him. “Does he work on the roads, then?” he asked Kathleen. “I thought he worked in some office.”
“And isn’t that just what he’d want you to think,” she said scornfully. “Sure he hides from you if you meet him with his mates. And would you believe it, every night he goes home and puts on his good suit and a tie before he goes out to the church for devotions. He used to—” But she stopped her sentence, for Dinny had now arrived at the car window, panting, his glasses misted, his old suit and collarless shirt giving him the look of a down-and-out begging on the street. He looked briefly at Kathleen as though gauging her intoxication. But then his gaze settled on Mangan, and at once he assumed an expression of awe as though he had just been vouchsafed a miraculous vision. “What happened?” he said. “Who did that to you?”
“Somebody hit him in a pub in Bantry,” Kathleen said. “Look, Dinny, we’re in a desperate hurry. We have to get to the shops before they close.”
“I declare to God,” Dinny said, still staring at Mangan. “Kathleen, do you remember the time my daddy was hurt after the football match?”
“Is that what you stopped us for?” Kathleen said crossly. “Come on, Jim, let’s go.”
Mangan put the car in gear, uneasy about offending her, yet uneasy at pulling away. But Dinny stepped forward and gripped the sash of the car window. “Hold on now,” he said. “I just wanted to ask you a question. Was my mammy up your way today?”
“She was not,” Kathleen said. “Is she on the loose again, then?”
“God forgive you for those words,” Dinny said. “And maybe He will not, after all my mammy did for you.” He looked at Mangan and Mangan was touched by the sudden humility of his look. “I’m sorry I was short with you the other day, sir. It’s not your fault that the sight of you upsets my mother. She spoke to you about it, didn’t she?”
“Yes, she did.”
“Well, she is missing again since this morning and it is my guess that it is yourself she is looking for. As long as you are in these parts, she will not be easy in her mind. If she does come to you, let me know and I will come and fetch her home.”
Kathleen leaned over and tried to disengage Dinny’s grip on the window. “All right now, you have said your bit. Will you let us go?”
But Dinny did not let go. “Listen, sir,” he said. “If you are on holidays, how long will you stay?” The distorted lens of his spectacles made his eyes swim as though he wept. “I am not asking out of curiosity, I am asking for the sake of my mother.”
“I don’t know how long I’ll be here,” Mangan said. “But I promise I’ll let you know as soon as I can.”
“Father Burke says you are interested in the poet Mangan?”
“Yes. Don’t you remember I asked you about him when we first met?”
“Oh, come on,” Kathleen said tipsily. “I’ll break your bloody knuckles if you don’t let go.”
“I was not helpful when you asked me,” Dinny said, his hands still gripping the window. “But listen to me now, sir. I will make a bargain with you. I will be able to assist you with those inquiries if you will promise me to leave here as soon as you find what you are looking for. Would that sort of bargain interest you?”
“It might,” Mangan said. He put the car in gear, aware that Kathleen’s impatience had turned to rage. “I’ll speak to you about it later. Maybe I could come up to see you at your house one evening.”
“All right, then,” Dinny said, at last releasing his grip on the car window. “And if you see my mammy, you’ll let me know.”
“Yes,” Kathleen shouted angrily. “Go on, Jim.”
The car leaped forward, but as Mangan looked back through his rear-view mirror, he felt strangely moved at the sight of that poorly dressed figure standing supplicant on the crown of that narrow, lonely road, worried for his mother, who had lost her mind. And as he drove on, he watched Dinny’s figure become smaller in the mirror until, at last, it was a tiny black silhouette, which turned and went back down the ditch.
“When did Dinny’s father die?” he asked, but Kathleen turned from him and stared in angry silence at the gray, shut village houses up ahead.
“I’ll need money for the food store. And I want you to go into Shea’s and get us two bottles of gin and a bottle of whiskey for Con if he comes back from Cork. And wait for me there in the pub.”
“Okay. But when you join me, will you tell me about Dinny’s father?”
“Oh, Jesus, Jesus!” she shouted. “Will you give over with that. I need a drink, I tell you. I’m leppin’ out of my skin with nerves. God, you’re like a bloody detective. Is that all you care about?”
He said he was sorry. He said of course he cared about her. He said he hadn’t meant to upset her. He said he loved her. By that time they had reached the food store and she took the twenty-pound note he gave her and got out, directing him to the pub up ahead. When he went into the pub the room was so dark that at first he could not see if there were any other customers. Gradually he discerned two heavy old men in cloth caps and the inevitable black greasy serge suits, sitting glum over huge glasses of porter. They eyed him, then gave him a tentative nod of greeting. There was no one behind the bar. He cleared his throat loudly and shuffled his feet, and at last a young girl came out from the back. She stared at him with distrust. “Yes?”
“Two bottles of gin, please, and a bottle of Irish whiskey.”
Silently, she went to fetch the bottles. His bruised face and swollen lip had again acted as his passport into that tinker world, stamping him as dangerous, drunken, a man you would not cross. The two old men at the bar exchanged the most minimal of glances when they heard his drink order, then dutifully addressed themselves to their pints as though engaging in a ritual of devotion which could not be interrupted by speech. He went to the pub window and, looking out through the glass lettered with the sign John jameson ltd distillers, saw Kathleen, not in the food store but in the green telephone kiosk down at the end of the street. She was speaking to someone, and as he watched she hung up and came out of the kiosk, turning in his direction, the hem of her long white dress swinging crookedly behind her. She pulled the lapels of her cheap cloth overcoat tight across her bosom as though she was cold, then stood swaying, looking about her as though lost. Uncertainly, she turned in the direction of the quay, wandered forward a few steps, and sat on a wet iron bollard, from which a big gray gull arose and flew away. He watched her as she sat there, saw her head sway as she began to rock in the same way he had seen her rock earlier when she had her “turn.”
“Will I put it in a bag?” the girl’s voice asked from behind the bar.
&n
bsp; “Yes,” he said, still peering through the glass. He saw Kathleen get up and wander toward the quayside. She sat down on the wet quay, letting her legs hang down over the water. In haste he paid for the bottles and ran outside, aware that the girl had come after him to see what was wrong. He ran across the street, reaching the edge of the quay just as Kathleen leaned forward dangerously, as though she were about to ease herself off and drop down to the greenish waters below. “Kathleen?” he called.
She looked up at the sky, as though listening to her name shouted from far off. He put down the bottles on the quay and knelt behind her, gently taking her by the shoulders. “It’s me, it’s Jim,” he said. “I’ve got the bottles. Shall we get some food now?”
“We have food at home,” she said dully. “I want to go home.” It was a sudden wail as though she would break into tears, and so, gently, he raised her up. “We’ll go home,” he said. “We’ll go now.” The white seat of her dress was wet and stained by the slime of the quay. It stuck to her bottom, but she did not seem aware of it. As he led her toward the car, he saw the girl and the two old men watching from the pub, and other watchers too, their faces pressed to the window of the food store. The wind whipped, blowing the front of Kathleen’s skirt up into her face. He smoothed it down again and, gentle as a nurse, brought her to the car and seated her in the front passenger seat.
“The bottles,” she said, without turning her head. “You forgot the bottles.”
He ran back to the quay. The plastic bag which he had placed upright on the ground had fallen over on its side, but the bottles were not broken. He clutched the bag to him clumsily, aware of the village faces, seeing himself as they must see him, a shambling figure with a bruised face, companion to a dazed, drunken girl. He got into the car and turned it around, driving back the way they had come. “Are you all right?” he asked, but she did not hear him. Farther up the road he saw the little truck and the men working in the ditch. Again they turned around, and this time three of them waved. Dinny did not wave but stood in the ditch staring at the car, the rain wetting the circles of his spectacles, giving him the look of a blind man. Mangan glanced at Kathleen. “Are you all right?” he said again.