He watched Katie run her fingers along the blinds. They swayed, knocking against the sill with a wooden thud. Light came from a red lamp in the hallway. Pale slats of moonlight criss-crossed her face. One moment he could see her eyes, the next they had slipped into darkness.
‘I ran home from school and waited here as they’d told me. At the window, holding the lace curtain back. What was dada thinking Hano? That’s what haunts me. Him and me alone in this house, winter nights walking home to a cold bed. There were women’s things we could never have spoken of, you know what I mean? Was she crying, Hano, as they drove? Was she thinking of me standing at the window? Some nights in dreams I see his face, staring at the road ahead, at the bend with the ramp and the bog far below. All he had to do was keep his hands steady, keep staring.
‘I stood here till it got dark, till I saw the lights of the police car bumping down the track and Tomas crossing the hill, running down, caught in the revolving blue light.
‘I’ve never told a sinner Hano, but when I turned she was there in the doorway. Like I remembered her once. Smiling. She’d her arms outstretched. You know, her flesh, it was luminous, like the statue of the Virgin somebody brought her from Lourdes. She opened her mouth, gazing straight at me. “Look little Cait,” she said, her voice full of wonder. “My arms are no longer thin.’”
Katie was walking towards him with her arms stretched out. He was too terrified to look towards the door.
‘I used to pray Hano. Out here in the woods, waiting for Our Lady to appear like in the film they took me to. And when I prayed long enough it was like everything was white, behind my eyes, all whiteness.
‘When my uncle stole me I prayed, Hano. I knelt on the lino and prayed and prayed. The whiteness never came. They said I was mad, you know, my cousin’s friends up in Dublin, laughing at me, jeering my accent. Couldn’t pray anymore, couldn’t get white by being good. Like God had left me on those buckled streets, the grey houses, the grey shagging gardens. They said I was backward, teachers in the school, couldn’t figure my accent whenever I tried to talk, so I shut up. But I got back to whiteness, Hano. Took glue, took cider, took every fucking pill I could lay my hands on, but I closed my eyes and I got there.’
She had stopped a few feet from the edge of the bed, her voice like the hissed intonation of a prayer. Her face was in shadow. He felt scared; sensing her pent-up energy about to explode.
‘I cursed this place Hano, tried to rid myself of it. Tomas’s eyes, my mother’s hands. One time, there was this old man in Dublin. We tricked him, led him on so we could rob his house. You know, I looked at his jowls, big awkward hands trembling and Tomas’s eyes came back. But I didn’t feel any shame. No, I wished he was Tomas, I wanted to desecrate every fucking memory still haunting me. I wanted to say, “You see me Tomas? Where’s your world now; where did it fucking bring me?”’
In the half-light she had slowly begun to undress. She turned her face towards the doorway, moisture glistening on her cheek like a snail’s trail. Hano tried to stop her but she pushed him away.
‘So what do you say now Tomas, eh? I don’t believe in ghosts, not yours, not theirs. Don’t want yous. Do you fucking see? You deserted me, left me alone. Oh Jesus, Hano, hold me, I’m cold, so cold.’
He put his arms around her. Her back was cool like ivory, warm like fever. He buried his head in her hair, brought her down beside him on the mattress edge.
‘You got anything Hano, a rubber?’
‘We don’t have to do it.’
‘I know. I want to.’
She pulled the quilt over her and watched as he searched in his wallet for the small packet. He undressed in silence with his back to her and swung the door half-shut so only a thin strip of light came through. He walked towards the bed and she pulled the cover back.
‘Hano?’
She paused, wanting him to understand.
‘Hano?’
When their tongues met he thought of Shay, saw him standing some evening grinning from a doorway. Her kiss tasted green and glistening like sap in a bud, his head shifting as their tongues twisted. Her small breasts were beneath him, her slender limbs turning. He felt himself stiffen as tentative fingers brushed against him. He reached his hand over to the bedside table, tore at the packet and drew the condom out. He twisted to his side to pull it on, turned back to her, closed his eyes and stopped. The face was no longer Shay’s. He jerked away.
‘Can’t do it, Katie. Jesus I can’t. His face, Jesus, breath stinking of whiskey. Oh Jesus, Katie, oh God.’
She pulled him down, kissed him urgently, ran her fingers along his back. He had slackened, felt the rubber hang loosely against his leg.
‘Fuck them, Hano, we’ll fuck them to hell together.’
Her tongue burrowed deep within him, suffocating every memory, leaving him choking for air, swamped with heat. When he entered her she bit his hand to stop from screaming. It was only afterwards, when he lay curled against her, that he noticed her blood on the sheet along with his.
CHAPTER THREE
Tuesday
Against the window a small branch was tapping irregularly in the light breeze. Sleep should have come, Hano’s limbs were straining in tiredness as though strapped to the bed. Even to turn on his side seemed an impossible task. Yet his eyes remained open and he knew Katie’s were open too, close to his head, staring up at her parents’ ceiling split into thin slats of light and shade by the long drift of moonlight through the blinds.
‘I wanted Shay to be the first,’ she whispered. ‘Every lad I met tried it on with me at some stage. Mono, Git, even two of Justin Plunkett’s men. You’d know it would always come down to that at some stage in the factory or a stolen car. But I wouldn’t do it, though I’d let them pretend I had if they wanted. Anything else, but not that. I was keeping it for somebody I thought would never come along. Used to wonder what it felt like. It wasn’t pain I was afraid of, or God, none of that shite. It was just mine, the only thing really mine since I left here. I’d stripped away all the nonsense they’d taught me, I was a hardened woman but, Hano, I couldn’t shake the notion there was somebody among those streets who could change things.
‘Then, after that old man in his kitchen, I felt so dirty inside, I didn’t want to find him. It didn’t feel like me, I just woke up with an empty pain and found the pill to fill it. You know, I’d stopped feeling Hano; it was better that way.
‘And then, one afternoon by the carriageway, there he was. I’d seen him a year before when I was one of those girls babbling in a uniform as he waved a kettle from the window over the bookies. You know, in class we’d giggle about what happened up those wooden stairs. He vanished then and when I saw him again we were both like different people, survivors of something, I don’t know fucking what.’
Hano wanted to reach beneath the covers to take her hand but he knew he was not a part of this story. He listened to her describing the afternoons sitting alone by the carriageway, feeling the lorries’ slip-streams blow against her face. She always saw Shay crossing the metal bridge after lunch in that stillness when the women had finished their shopping, the kids were not yet out of school and only a few old men shuffled down to the bookies. Shay would stop sometimes to nod down at her, both staring at each other between the passing trucks.
‘He appeared behind me one afternoon,’ Katie said, ‘and asked who I was waiting for. I looked up and said I was waiting for a juggernaut to take me out of that kip. I saw him grinning and he started telling me that the Juggernauts were idols of Krishna carried around in big cars that disciples flung themselves under. Then he told me there were fuck-all Hindus in Meath and I’d have more chance of a coffee. I thought he was taking the piss till he showed it to me in a dictionary.’
That first afternoon Katie went with him without thinking. She kept trying to stay cool but he was like a slow flame drawing her reluctantly out of her dead world. Hano listened, remembering a year and a half before, how alive he had felt the first
night in Murtagh’s.
‘I knew at once Shay was the man I wanted. Figured nothing more would come of it, be just one afternoon like dozens for him. But I wanted that one moment of life to happen. But after an hour in your flat I didn’t know if Shay was bent or something was wrong with me or what. We smoked, played music, talked. I knew why he’d asked me and he knew I knew…the same reason any man ever asked me anywhere. There was no bullshit, you know what I mean? And I kept waiting for him to move but, like, each time he seemed about to, he’d check himself. Then at six o’clock you arrived and I thought, Fuck this, a pair of queers; what am I doing here?
‘I wanted to forget him, Hano, but next afternoon I went back, hating myself for knocking. And, you know, Shay didn’t turn me away. He made me tell him things, about the girls and the factory or my uncle’s house, just listening till I found myself talking like I’d never done before, things I’d made myself forget—my parents, this house we’re lying in. I couldn’t believe it.’
Those afternoons became her life. She went there to remember. The grey world stopped outside his flat, kept out by coffee and music, the smell of dope and by Shay. She realized there was nothing but a strange bond of friendship between Shay and him, and guessed from their talk how many women had passed through Shay’s room.
‘I was frightened he’d grow bored with me,’ Katie whispered. ‘Felt like a child plaguing him. I mean, if he’d only touch me, take me, I’d feel I was giving him something. I couldn’t figure it, Hano; I waited, letting him know I was available. The girls began jeering me for spending so long in your flat. They used to give odds on what position he’d last screwed me in. Once I tried to claw Carmel’s eyes out when she asked what his sperm tasted like. But you know, the longer I spent in your flat, the less I saw of them. I just couldn’t fit back there. They were strung out more: now it was gear, smack, stuff I didn’t want to get into. I didn’t want to kill each day, Hano; suddenly I wanted to live it. I didn’t need speed or pills, I just needed him.’
Hano listened, closing his eyes, feeling sleep about to swamp him. One morning Katie had called after he’d left for work. Shay was still in bed. He came down to the door in his jeans and, with that same amused smile, let her in. She had lain awake till four that morning listening to her cousin sleeping beside her. Then she had dressed in the dark and gone walking the deserted streets. Hano could see the carriageway in his mind as she described the lights coming on in the dairy and the crates being stacked on the vans. She kept walking in the blue light through miles of streets and all she could think of was him.
‘I was in love, Hano, you know that; suddenly I was able to feel again. I wanted him to make me clean. When I made him laugh he’d call me his little sister but I wasn’t. I was a woman of sixteen, Hano, I wanted to know love. I kept thinking something must be wrong with me that he didn’t want to touch me; I needed to know why.’
When Shay had gone to wash in the bathroom she entered his room, felt the sheets still warm from his body. She had planned nothing, just found herself like a little girl stripping away her clothes, removing the T-shirt and the jeans, then the socks and the bra and panties. It was cold there, she told Hano. She remembered trembling with goose pimples lining her flesh as she waited by his bed. Finally the door opened and he came in, wiping his face with a towel. He stopped when he saw her. She meant to stare him out but found herself lowering her eyes, feeling foolish, wanting to cover herself but even more wanting him to take her, to do what any man she’d known before would have done without thinking. Her teeth began to chatter and, though she didn’t want to cry, huge sobs rose up in her throat. She made to run past him but he caught her, placed the towel over her shoulders and eased her down on the bed beside him. He held her against his chest, stroking her hair as she clutched him and cried on and on till there was nothing left inside.
“‘What’s wrong with me, Shay? What the fuck’s wrong? Why don’t you want me?” I kept asking.’
He had said nothing for a time, then very gently laid her back on to the mattress with her legs hanging over the edge. He knelt between them and slowly began to circle with his tongue, pausing every few moments to change direction, the tip of his tongue revolving back, causing ripples of heat through her till she was unable to keep her legs from trembling. How long he continued she didn’t know. She could hear the loudspeaker in the bookies but it could have come from another planet. There was only a slow, drowsy journey towards pleasure. She tried to fight it when it came, feeling exposed by its intensity, but his arms pinned her down though she tore at his hair. Then she was there and cried out and he stopped and, exhausted, rested his head on her thighs as she lay back, drifting into a dreamless sleep.
‘When I woke, Hano, the curtains were pulled so it seemed like night though the battered travelling clock beside the bed told me it was half-four. It felt funny, me lying between the sheets and him sitting, fully dressed, on a chair in the room, watching over me with that same half-smile. He left the room and came back with a cup that he placed beside the clock. I smiled and drank from it. I didn’t know what the fuck to say to him. My clothes were folded at the bottom of the bed. He went out and came back with toast, smiled again, left and didn’t return.
‘After a while I dressed and went out. It was weird emerging into daylight after his room. And, you know, he never mentioned it, Hano. Like it had never happened. I wanted to get out of there before you came home. It was only at the door that he put his hand on my shoulder and said, “There’s nothing wrong with you, Katie, and never was.” Just that. Then he closed the door, and when I stood on the street it seemed so unreal, I could have dreamt it, and yet all the tension was gone from my body. You know, I slept so well that night, Hano. Jesus, I’d love to sleep as well again.’
Katie was silent and at that moment it seemed to Hano there were three people in the room. Ever since his death he had been trying to say goodbye to Shay, and yet Shay seemed more alive to him now than in the months when he had wandered through Europe. She must have known he was thinking of him because her hand reached out and she said:
‘You know, I never understood that man, Hano, but he didn’t expect you to. He had his ghosts he never spoke of. I think he was being true to them.’
They must have both slept then, face up in that awkward position because Hano was still lying that way when the click of the switch woke him. He opened his eyes and shut them quickly again in the glare of the electric light. Eventually he managed to focus on the well-dressed, middle-aged woman watching from the doorway. He thought of Katie’s mother, waiting for her to stretch her arms towards them. Then he woke fully and knew before she spoke, from her carriage, her clothes and the contempt on her face, that she was foreign. He still had Katie’s hand in his. He tugged at it, trying to wake her. She mumbled sleepily and shrugged his hand away, curling over on to her side. The woman stared as he shook her again.
‘Sleep…Hano…tired now,’ Katie muttered, but when the pressure on her shoulder continued she woke and with a start pulled the blanket up to her neck as she saw the intruder. In the silence Hano tried out a tentative smile. The woman’s eyes narrowed as she began to scream.
‘Dreckige Irische! Gypsies! You filthy Irish worse than pigs. First you murder the old man now you want to murder me. Los aus meinem bett! Out of my bed! Get out of my bed!’
She grabbed an ornament from the coffee table in the hall and flung it at them. They both ducked beneath the covers as it smashed on the wall above. Then he heard Katie’s voice.
‘It’s not your home, you stupid bitch.’
‘My home you robbers, thieves!’
There was another explosion of pottery against the wall. Hano regretted the abandon with which he had undressed.
He held a sheet around his waist as he climbed from the bed to search the floor for his clothing, avoiding the woman who kicked out at him when he came too close. He called to Katie to get dressed but the two women ignored him as they traded abuse.
&n
bsp; ‘You murdered him,’ the woman screamed. ‘One of your own. You burnt the roof over his head.’
‘I was going to marry him. I filled his pipe for him when he let me. You never did that, you shagging old hag. Fuck off back to Germany with your bleeding microwave!’
He gathered up parts of her clothes and, pulling her from the bed, bundled them against her bare flesh.
‘Get dressed Katie and let’s get out of here,’ he hissed, but she ignored him and stood shouting at the German. He pushed her towards the door, picking up the clothes as they fell from her arms. The woman struck out with her fist as he pushed Katie past her in the doorway.
‘Back to the side of the road, you pigs!’ she shouted.
Katie turned and kicked with her bare feet, screaming:
‘Back into a field, you shrivelled old cow!’
Suddenly they were locked together, tugging at each other’s hair. On the table Hano saw a bunch of car keys and, pulling Katie free in a headlock, he opened the door and ran towards the car. He had the passenger door open and Katie thrust into the seat before the woman realized what was happening. She raced down the path as he tried to open the driver’s door.
‘The button, Katie, lift up the button!’ he shouted through the glass, but she had seen the woman approach and was climbing back out, shouting:
‘This is my house! My house!’
Cursing her, he ran back to separate them, having to push the woman on to the ground to do so. He got Katie inside, locked the door and clambered over her into the driver’s seat. But before he could start the engine the woman had climbed on to the bonnet and was banging on the windscreen. Hano gestured to her in despair and began to drive slowly in circles to dislodge her. She clung on, her face pressed against the glass inches from his head, her fists pounding, until finally he braked and, as the car jolted, watched her roll off into the darkness. He swerved to avoid her and accelerated down the track, the car bumping wildly over the uneven surface. He braced himself and called to Katie as they reached the gate but he was still thrown against the glass by the force of the collision. The gate was half-down. He reversed and this time was able to drive over the tangled remains of the bars. One of the headlights had been knocked out and they drove through the trees in semi-darkness. Katie was hunched down in the seat beside him, clothes strewn on the floor as she muttered angrily to herself. There was a fleck of blood on her cheek where the woman’s nail had caught her. He put a hand out to stroke her hair and she shrugged it away.
The Journey Home Page 12