‘What sort of trouble?’
‘Trouble.’ He looked vague. ‘Prison and that sort of thing.’
‘Prison? You’ve never been in prison, Roger. What on earth are you talking about?’
‘It was prison all right. I wanted to go to Oxford. I had it all set up. They made allowances in those days for chaps like … injured … you know… allowances.’
He looked past her out of the window, his eye, reflective, had lost its blue energy.
‘I could have managed.’
‘I’m sure you could.’
‘I wanted to be shown how to start my head working. I knew I had to do that before I could do anything else. No, they said. Damn it all, I’d passed those exams at school. Place all ready waiting when you come back from the war, they said. I could have managed.’
She was making a ring of cigarettes on the table, each one standing upright like a soldier, on its filter end.
‘No, they said. You’re not fit yet. Not fit to look after yourself. Not fit. When you’re fit we’ll reconsider. So, it was prison.’
‘Not prison,’ she said, keeping her eyes on the cigarettes. ‘You told me yourself, a nursing home.’
‘Genteel bars at my window, so that I couldn’t throw myself out. A shadow always there, always walking behind me, watching me read, eat, sleep. I wasn’t even allowed to lock the bathroom door. The degrees of comfort are irrelevant, the disciplines are irrelevant. A prison is always a prison.’
‘What had you done to them?’
‘I hadn’t done anything. They just wanted me to be normal. Fit. Fit to be taken about in polite society. Our hero son. Polite, hero, son. Heroes should be grateful for the passing admiration in the eyes of others. Grateful for a pension. Grateful for the small attentions we throw to them. Grateful to be alive. I didn’t want to fit in or to be fit. So they thought it was best to shut me up somewhere. They used to tell me how much money they were spending on me.’
He smiled again. The scar beneath his eye-patch puckered with the strain.
She saw it suddenly in terms of textures, painful colours mixed on the palette. A line of light ran from the black patch down to the jaw.
‘It was my money. They had nothing to complain about.’
‘That’s over, a long time ago,’ she said gently.
‘No. Now at this moment perhaps I’m free from the ghosts. But any moment, without any warning, Helen, they take over my mind … and my body. Pain and ghosts. I become imprisoned again.’
‘Those are all images of the past. I’m inept at this sort of conversation. It’s all over now. Stop conjuring up nightmares. Leave the past alone. That will be your freedom.’
He said nothing for a long time. Little pulses beat beside his eye and in his throat.
‘Why are you doing that with the cigarettes?’ he asked at last, his voice normal.
She flipped her hand and the standing cigarettes fell down. She began to put them back into the box.
‘I get quite nervous,’ she said. ‘When people talk. I talk so seldom to other people. I feel disadvantaged. It wasn’t inattention, I assure you.’ She laughed. ‘Like Mrs Hasson, I suffer from nerves. Luckily no exeema, just straightforward nerves.’
He stood up suddenly, the tension gone miraculously from his face. ‘Up, up, woman. Go and dress yourself. I’m going back to the station to collect the car and have a word with Damian and then we’ll go and have our picnic at the Devil’s Well. Tobar na … whatever you call it.’
There was no strong west wind blowing. The flat rocks were dry, the reflections in the narrow pools were without movement. Through the mirrored sky you could see clearly the sloping sides covered with barnacles and wisps of weed. Limpets clung just below the surface of the water and a discarded claw from some tiny crab lay among the pebbles on the bottom of one pool. She wondered how she could translate to canvas the opaque mystery of reflection imposed on the reality of granite, weed and shell. Odd, she thought, I’ve always looked through the reflection in the past, disregarded that dimension. Such blindness. Untrained eyes.
He took her arm and they walked to the edge of the blowing hole and looked down. Far below them, in the darkness, water plocked, glittered for a moment and was still, plocked again.
‘When Damian’s boat is finished,’ said Roger, ‘we’ll get him to bring us close in, to see the entrance to the cave. It must be very low down, totally covered, I’d say, at high tide. I wonder why they called it the Devil’s Well? It’s not a well at all.’
‘It looks like one from here. Those smooth sides look almost man-made. It’s not till you see it in action that you realise what it is. A spout. The Devil’s Spout would have been a better name. Wouldn’t it?’
She bent down and picked up a small stone and wondered whether to drop it into the hole. She decided against that traditional gesture and instead turned away from Roger and walked to the edge of the rocks. She threw the stone out into the sea and watched while it dropped out of her sight. A gull, interested for a moment, changed course, floated down almost to the water and then without any apparent effort rose back to its original flight path once more.
‘I get vertigo,’ shouted Roger. ‘I always have the terrible temptation to jump from heights.’
She moved back from the edge towards him.
‘It would be such an exciting way to die. They say you become unconscious quite quickly, so you wouldn’t feel the nasty bit at the end. You’d just fly out of life. That appeals to me.’
‘Too nice a day for morbid thoughts,’ Helen said. She stared down at the flat rocks.
‘Do you think these rocks are neolithic?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea what they might be.’
‘ “Of or belonging to the later stone age.” That’s what the dictionary says. Not much help. I did some paintings of them and wondered whether I could call them neolithic or not. The OED is usually more helpful than that.’
‘That’s probably helpful enough if you know the difference between the later stone age, the early stone age, the bronze age, the ice age. I’d use the word neolithic if it pleases you, if it seems right.’
‘I’d better not. Some elderly geologist would be bound to complain.’
She bent down and stirred in a shallow pool with her hand.
‘Will you marry me, Helen?’
Oh damn, she thought, straightening up, shaking the drops from her fingers. The tiny stains dried almost at once, leaving the rocks unblemished.
‘Helen.’
He was just behind her.
She was suddenly conscious of a lark’s song spiralling above her and she stared up into the sky, trying to catch sight of the moving bird. Roger spoke her name again, a foreground to the distant warbling.
‘No,’ she said.
‘Did you hear what I asked you?’
‘Yes.’
She turned round and looked at him.
‘Thank you. Yes, I heard. Thank you very much, but no.’
‘Why not?’
She laughed a little.
‘Men always ask why not.’
‘I mean, is it because of the way I am … physically? Is that it?’
‘No.’
‘I love you, Helen. I never thought I’d find myself in this position. I never thought I’d find anyone that… I never thought I could love anyone. Perhaps we could be happy, Helen.’
He picked up her left hand and held it to the whole side of his face. It felt almost feverish, she thought.
How unkind of God to dangle the prospect of happiness in front of me at this moment in my life.
They stood in silence for a moment. The lark continued to sing.
‘You don’t love me,’ he said at last.
‘I do. I promise you I do.’ She took a step forward and leaned her head on his chest.
‘Why, then?’
‘I want to own myself.’
‘Darling, it won’t be like that. I swear. I don’t want to take anything away fro
m you. I only want to give you whatever you want. Everything.’
‘I only want one thing, you know.’
‘I know what you’re going to say… freedom. Isn’t that right? I’ll give you freedom.’
‘I don’t want you to give me anything. I want my own space. A little bit of time. I don’t want anyone to give me anything. All that kindness, all that giving that you talk about, offer me, it could be like a prison. Couldn’t it? I’d rather love you outside that. I haven’t the energy for another marriage, Roger. Please try to understand.’
She rubbed at his cheek with her fingers. She smiled.
‘I’d say the same thing to Paul Newman.’
He pulled himself away from her and walked across the rocks back towards the lane where the car was parked.
‘Bloody man,’ she shouted after him, as if he were the cat. ‘Why don’t you understand? I thought at least that you would understand. That’s one reason I love you. Because … you should … you …’
He walked away.
Tears filled her head.
The lark was quite unperturbed.
The sea, the rocks, crumpled and splintered with the tears in her eyes.
I will not cry, she said. Not cry after any person who doesn’t understand.
‘Hail to thee blithe spirit,’ she shouted into the splintering sky.
‘Bird thou never wert
That from heaven or near it –’
The danger receded. The world came once more into her own peculiar focus. The bird flickered in the light, remained in her eye’s sight.
‘Pourest thy full heart in profuse strains of unpremeditated art.’
Flick, flick.
‘That’s what comes of sleeping through all those years of expensive education. You can’t get beyond the fourth line of one of the world’s classics’
Bastún. Ignoramus. Layabout.
She sat on the edge of a rock and felt in her pockets for the cigarettes.
Or was it perhaps the fifth line?
She heard his step on the rocks.
‘I’ve forgotten the rest,’ she said.
He carried the thermos flask under his arm and in his hand her cigarettes. ‘There’s a bit about harmonious madness. I never liked Shelley.’
She looked alarmed.
‘Keats. Surely. “Ode to the Skylark” is Keats, isn’t it?’
He sat down beside her with a heavy graceless thump.
‘Shelley. Nightingale Keats, skylark Shelley. I’m sorry, Helen. I didn’t mean to be insensitive. Here. I’ve brought your poison … and the coffee.’
She took the box and the matches from him and put them in her pocket.
He put the flask between his knees and unscrewed the top. He handed the top to her and then filled it with coffee. Her hand was shaking and the liquid swirled up to the edge and back to the centre again. She ducked her head down towards her hand and sucked some coffee into her mouth. It was black, sweet, laced with whisky.
‘Oh, that’s good.’
She drank some more and handed him the cup.
‘A loving cup,’ she said.
He took a drink and put the cup down on the rock beside him. He picked up her hand and kissed it.
‘I only thought that perhaps we could push a bit of loneliness away. Yours as well as mine.’
His mouth moved against her fingers.
The lark had now moved so far away that she could barely hear it.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Time. Perhaps if we’d been young there would have been time for everything. I don’t think so. You think that all time is there before you. Lovely empty time. If you’re not very careful your past is empty time too and you have nothing to recognise yourself by. That nearly happened to me. Only a cruel accident stopped it happening to me. A cruel miracle maybe.’
The sky was now silent.
‘I have so many questions to ask, Roger. Ask and ask and ask.’
He passed her the cup of coffee.
‘Thanks’
She took a drink, and then another and then handed the cup to him.
‘That’s all,’ she said. ‘That’s the only reason. It’s to do with me, not you.’
He looked silently at the cup in his hand. Tiny freckles patterned his wrist. She wondered how she had never noticed them before.
‘Marriage isn’t a cure for loneliness anyway. Sometimes it makes it more painful. I suppose some sort of close relationship with God is the only real answer to that. How absurd we are on such a day to be so melancholy.’
‘Yes.’
‘We can enjoy what we have, you know. There’s nothing to stop us doing that. Darling Roger, thank you so much for your generosity. I’m just sorry I can’t be equally generous in return. But let’s enjoy what we’ve got.’
She was wearing those damn shoes again and dampness was seeping through to her feet. Will you never learn sense? Dan had always been so right in the things he said to her.
‘Will you let me take you away somewhere … just a couple of weeks … a holiday… that sort of thing?’
‘Yes. I’d love that. As soon as I get my pictures up to Dublin, weather that storm. Yes.’
He smiled at last. He finished the coffee in the cup and poured some more into it from the flask.
‘It struck me the other day,’ he said, handing her the coffee. ‘That we should go to Florence. You shouldn’t spend the rest of your life here painting neolithic rocks without having been to Florence. It would give me great, great pleasure to be with you in that particular city.’
‘Oh, yes. Such a beautiful prospect. Let’s go home and light the fire and make plans. I love making plans.’
She stood up and held out a hand to him.
‘And make love?’
‘Of course.’
She pulled him up.
‘My feet are wet. Cold. Think of all the lovely Italian shoes I can buy. I’ll be able to throw all my clompers away.’
He laughed.
She bent down and picked up the flask and the top.
‘Loving cup again.’
She took a long drink and handed it to him. He finished it. She screwed it onto the top of the flask.
‘Are you sure about Shelley?’ she asked.
‘Quite sure.’
The miles drove by under their wheels.
As before, Manus didn’t speak, though this time he was awake, his eyes open staring out through the windscreen of the car.
It was the old situation of the right hand not letting the left hand know what it was doing. Presumably Manus had been organising the thing for days. If I followed in my mothers footsteps, I’d now be devouring the cigarettes, stick after stick. From time to time Manus broke a piece of chocolate from a bar in his pocket and put it into his mouth. Never offered it around. He must have had about a dozen bars softening away in there. Amazing he didn’t ever feel the need to puke.
He’d been standing outside the Arts block when Jack had come out of his last lecture and had followed him across Front Square to his rooms.
‘Right,’ he said, as Jack put his papers down on the table. ‘We’re off.’
‘Off where?’
‘Donegal. Come on. I’ve been hanging around for the last hour waiting for you.’
‘I’m supposed to be going to my grandmother tonight.’
‘Ring her,’ said Manus. ‘And get a move on. The lads are waiting beyond Maynooth with the stuff in a truck.’
‘You mean …?’
‘Don’t ask any questions, because I’m not answering them. Here’s money for petrol.’
He took six fivers from his pocket and handed them to Jack. ‘Now ring your fucking granny and let’s go.’
Half an hour later on the road heading out of Dublin, Jack spoke.
‘What am I supposed to do?’
‘Drive.’
‘Don’t be damn silly. When we get there? What then?’
‘We’ll see when we get there. There may be no call for you to do anyt
hing but sit in the car and drive me home again.’
‘It all seems a bit undefined to me.’
‘What does that mean?’
That was when he took the first bar from his pocket, Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut, a meal in itself. He snapped a row off the bar and dropped the paper on the floor between his feet.
‘Casual. Unplanned. Liable to fall apart at the seams.’
‘When I want your opinion I’ll ask for it. Just drive.’
He shoved the chocolate angrily into his mouth.
Jack drove.
Kilcock, Mullingar, Langford, Carrick on Shannon, Boyle, interminable flat miles.
From time to time Manus turned his head and stared out the back window, checking that the lorry was still behind them. Outside Killucan, Jack had drawn into a petrol station and he had watched the lorry drive past them, two men in the cab. He wondered what their load consisted of. Manus ate more chocolate. Through the town and the lorry pulled off the verge and fell in behind them again.
As it began to get dark, Manus spoke.
‘Don’t drive too fast. Don’t make it hard for them. We don’t want the buggers getting lost.’
Silence.
I wonder why I do this. I get no satisfaction, no glory… just an aching bum. What am I trying to do? Right some ancient wrong? Come, come, surely not that. Cancel out in some way the labels they hand on me … West Brit, shoneen, bourgeois? Show them … whoever they may be, that my heart is in the right place? He drove a car for fifty thousand miles for Ireland. Got blisters on his arse for Ireland and a first-class degree to please his grandmother… with a bit of luck. Some curriculum vitae that. Menial tasks for Ireland. What about the dead? The sad? The suffering? You can’t make an omelette without, ha ha, breaking eggs. I have my own dead.
My mother sat alone all those evenings. She never held my hand. I could run this whole damn outfit a million times better than Manus, with his devious ways and his bars of chocolate. This operation for instance. No plans … just a vague hope of muddling through. We’ll see what happens when the moment comes. Apart from the Englishman and my mad mother there’s Damian to contend with. Maybe I just conjure up difficulties. Have too much imagination, like Manus said. Officers should only see what will happen, not what might happen. Stick to driving cars, Jackson Cuffe, certainly until you have your motives sorted out.
The Railway Station Man Page 20