The Hoarder

by Jess Kidd

  He frowns. ‘You have it here, this photograph?’

  I hesitate. ‘Not to hand. Can you tell me who she is?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Do you remember? Yourself and this little girl, next to the fountain?’

  He regards me, sourly. ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Could she be a relative? A friend of the family?’

  ‘I told you. I don’t remember.’ Gabriel stands and rolls down his sleeves, his face closed.

  I motion to the sandwiches on the tray. ‘Will we? Or the flies will be hopping.’

  Gabriel picks up his manbag.

  Mr Flood looks up. ‘And you can fuck off.’

  Gabriel walks down the garden path behind me, carrying a plate of bite-sized Scotch eggs.

  He nods at the old man with a resentful kind of deference. ‘I’m here for a little visit with you, Flood Senior. A chat and a bit of news about what your son has been up to.’

  ‘My son can go to hell.’ He fixes Gabriel with a baleful eye. ‘Get off my property, toad.’

  Gabriel smiles as if charmed by his father’s wit. ‘A moment of your time, sir, and then I’ll go. No quibbles. No dramatics.’

  ‘I want her to stay.’ It is no more than a growl, low in Mr Flood’s throat.

  Gabriel’s smile stiffens. ‘Of course you do. I’ll grab another chair.’

  He picks his way back down the garden path through broken flowerpots and abandoned standard lamps.

  Mr Flood glares at me. ‘Who are you to be letting this Antichrist in?’

  ‘Was I to turn him away from the door?’

  The old man snarls. We watch Gabriel rummaging cautiously behind a tarpaulin.

  ‘I’ll go back inside,’ I say.

  ‘You fucking won’t.’

  ‘Don’t you want some time alone with your son, Mr Flood?’

  He looks at me aghast. ‘That unctuous gobshite is not my son. If he told you he’s my son then he’s a lying bastard.’

  ‘I know you’re estranged—’

  ‘Estranged, my arse. I tell you that fucker is no son of mine.’

  I decide not to press it, for the old man seems truly riled. Instead I busy myself arranging the sandwiches and bits on the table.

  ‘Stay here. Talk to him.’

  ‘But, Mr Flood, I’ve work to do—’

  Mr Flood shifts in his deckchair and groans. ‘Please. Just distract him for a while.’

  I notice that his big hands are shaking.

  He clamps them between his knees and tries to smile. His smile is agitated, imploring. ‘Please.’

  Gabriel comes back with a sawn-off barstool. ‘It’s all I could find,’ he says.

  He puts it down and tries to sit on it but the legs are uneven. The effort of balancing gives him an uneasy, fretful air.

  Mr Flood gives me a tenuous nod. I start talking.

  For the best part of an hour I hold forth on subjects as diverse as spray tans, euthanasia, Copenhagen and potted shrimp. Gabriel looks startled. Mr Flood looks glazed. At some point Gabriel asks for coffee.

  I am pretending to make coffee while keeping an old pair of binoculars trained on Father and Son Flood from the kitchen window. They are arguing fiercely. Gabriel rubs his forehead from time to time and flicks through the papers he’s pulled out of his manbag. Mr Flood looks to be spitting: I can see foam. I can’t lip-read but I’m sure there are expletives on both sides. Gabriel jumps up and paces between the toolshed and the bank of black bags awaiting council collection. He looks back towards the house. I have the presence of mind to duck. It was always a flash of light on the lenses that gave the Famous Five away.

  They stop talking when I return with a tray and Gabriel checks the cuff of his shirt.

  ‘Maud, I must be off.’

  ‘No coffee?’

  ‘Next time,’ he says. He nods at his father and is off down the path, sidestepping cat shit in his loafers.

  Mr Flood is very pale. ‘And I wish you knob rot. A biblical dose of it.’

  I fancy that I see Gabriel’s hand tighten around the strap of his manbag.

  ‘That’s hardly nice, is it, Mr Flood?’

  ‘They would have me dead, Drennan. They would kill me and make it look like an accident.’

  Mary Flood, red-haired and faceless, scales a wobbly stepladder on the first-floor landing with a feather duster in her hand . . .

  ‘Is that so?’ I push the last of the sandwiches onto his plate. ‘Who are they, Mr Flood?’

  He ignores me. ‘But I have something Gabriel wants, the shitehawk, and he can’t risk anything happening to the old man before he gets his hands on it.’

  A splenetic expression haunts his face, a bitter kind of gloating. ‘We’ll call it my life insurance policy.’

  ‘What is it?’ I affect an innocent, disinterested kind of appearance.

  Mr Flood glances at me. ‘And I would tell you?’

  There’s a sudden movement from shrubbery to table, a streak of colour and the sharp russet face of a young fox is nosing the sandwich from Mr Flood’s hand.

  ‘Drennan, meet Larkin.’ He grins. ‘I raised him from a cub.’

  The fox takes the sandwich away a few steps and drops it on the ground. This close it is obvious that he is far more beautiful than any fox I’ve ever seen. His coat is rich orange, pale-flecked in places, with a white tip to his tail. His eyes are molten honey. I catch the smell from him: a fierce musky reek.

  Mr Flood studies him with pride. ‘He’s a fine fella. Too young for vixens, not a vice on him.’

  ‘He lives under the caravan, doesn’t he?’

  For a moment I don’t think Mr Flood has heard, then he turns in his seat to face me. ‘Do you ever think to wind your fecking beak in?’ he says. He makes a shape with his hand; with his fingers and thumb pursed together, pointed, he stabs at the air. ‘Before you go sticking it, here, here and here?’

  ‘I followed the fox, only.’

  ‘Slinkeens the pair of you.’ He mutters and picks up another sandwich. He throws it into the bushes, sending Larkin leaping after it.

  I pick up the puzzle book and feign nonchalance. ‘It could do with a wash, that caravan. Been anywhere nice in it?’

  I can hear a faint clacking noise as Mr Flood sucks his dentures. ‘It was already here when we came, marooned in the bushes.’

  ‘And you’ve never taken it away, on holiday perhaps?

  ‘It’s never moved from that spot.’

  ‘Not even to the countryside, the southwest coast maybe? Dorset is first-rate for a break, not too far from London.’ I glance at him.

  He stares at me. ‘Now what are you saying?’

  ‘Only that—’

  ‘Only that you’re going to give your fecking beak a rest.’

  ‘Just making conversation.’ I turn back to my crossword but I can feel his eyes on me. His long legs are jiggling. I wait until his knees stop hopping.

  ‘So you’ve never taken the caravan anywhere?’

  His roar sends cats scattering from sunny corners. ‘Why in the name of God—’

  ‘Just making conversation, Mr Flood.’

  ‘Don’t. Sit me back a bit in this contraption.’

  I help him put back the sunlounger and adjust the blanket over his legs.

  ‘Now feck away with yourself.’

  I sit back down and pretend to finish a crossword. Oddly jubilant that he’s ruffled. Like I’ve won a turn of a game I don’t know the rules of.

  But then, if he’s set the game up in the first place he’d want me to ask these questions.

  I steal a look at Bluebeard on his sunlounger: his eyes are closed and his still-dark brows have unknitted and his big hands have unfolded on his lap. He lies lulled by the hum of the bluebottles round the rubbish bags, the breeze and the warm early-autumn sun.

  It’s a golden afternoon.

  Even the cats have settled down and stopped fighting over wheelbarrows and upended mattresses. They lie stretch
ed out here and there, a patchwork of purring furs.

  Larkin noses back out through the bushes. Mr Flood opens one eye. ‘There you are now. Give me those sandwiches over for this man.’

  He holds the plate on his lap and throws one high into the air. It lands in dense bushes and Larkin shoots after it.

  ‘Did your mammy not tell you never to follow a fox in life?’

  ‘That particular piece of advice never came up.’

  ‘Don’t smartarse me, Drennan. Have you not heard the tale of the fox and the owl, the Irish version?’

  ‘Is this another story?’

  ‘It is. Is that a problem for you?’

  ‘So you want a bit of conversation now, Mr Flood?’

  ‘Away to hell.’

  I stifle a smile. ‘A story would be grand.’

  He stretches out his legs and squints up at the sun. ‘There was once a village on the west coast of Ireland. A wild, lonely place it was, battered by the sea on one side and surrounded by bog on all others. This village was held in thrall by an owl.’

  ‘Not much in the way of entertainment then?’

  ‘Sure, you’d know the kind of place,’ he says, offhand. ‘Wouldn’t it be the kind of backward hole you’d find in Mayo? Isn’t it Mayo you’re from?’

  ‘It is.’

  He throws another sandwich into the bushes and seems gratified to hear the fox rustle through the undergrowth. ‘Once a year, on the first night of spring, a great owl would settle at the top of the tallest tree in the village and wait there until nightfall. Her eyes were the size of hubcaps and her wingspan the height of a man. She wore her plumage like a cloak, her feathered shoulders as broad as any general’s.’

  ‘That’s some class of owl.’

  He narrows his eyes at me. ‘None of your shit.’

  ‘I was only saying.’

  ‘Well, don’t.’ He fishes in his breast pocket and pulls out a half-smoked cigarette end. ‘Now I’ve lost me place.’

  ‘The big owl sat in the tree.’ I’m straight-faced.

  He lights the stump of his cigarette. ‘When dusk fell and night settled on the village the owl would fly down from the tree with her great wings spread and her white face staring. “Death is coming,” she would hoot, “death is coming.”’

  He studies his spent dog-end with a frown. ‘I’ll need to make a fresh one of these lads.’

  ‘You could give them up.’

  He shoots me a look and pats down his pockets for his tobacco. ‘The villagers were terrified of the owl. Some hid indoors with their windows closed and doors bolted.’

  He extracts a cigarette paper and smoothes it flat on his knee, then he takes a pinch of tobacco and lays it along the strip. ‘Others, a little braver, stood outside and watched as the owl flew around the village, as she banked and rose, her face a second moon in the sky.’

  He rolls the paper and licks the seam. ‘The bird’s flight was a thing of beauty and of terror. For when it ended so too would the life of one of the villagers.’

  He twists a few flakes from each end of his cigarette then tucks it behind his ear. Ignoring my smile, he continues. ‘Every year the villagers held their breath and waited, until, with claws outstretched, the owl landed on the roof of a house. It was then that the villagers sent up a cry of grief or relief, for the owl had chosen her yearly tribute. She would send a soft hoot down the chimney and in a week’s time, to that moment, the owl would return to carry away the purest soul in the household.’

  Larkin stalks back through the bushes, ready to give chase to another sandwich.

  Mr Flood smiles benevolently at him. ‘Have you found it then? Good man yourself.’ The fox licks his snout in answer then drops to his hindquarters and stretches out on the ground. Mr Flood turns to me. ‘Over the years the families of the accursed tried everything. They’d pack their innocents off to Canada, or hide them down the well, or up at the church. Nothing saved them. Within a week the owl would return, then babies, mothers, grandfathers, all, would sigh once and die.’

  Larkin flops onto his side, his plumed brush tapping the ground like an angry cat’s.

  ‘So it was that time of year again,’ resumes Mr Flood. ‘As usual, the villagers were praying for the owl to pass them by and land on their neighbour’s roof. This time the owl circled round and headed out over the trees.

  ‘On the edge of town there lived a woman and her son. The husband was a great gallivanter who rarely came home. When she saw the owl scrabbling on her chimney she nearly died. The owl had come for her son, but she loved her son and was not ready to lose him. Now this woman was no ordinary woman; she was a gifted enchantress, so she set about making a quick spell. She ran into the house on feet and she jumped out again on paws, in the form of a sleek vixen.

  ‘The owl took fright and the fox followed, her trim red body weaving through field and bog after the swoop and rise of the great white bird. From time to time the owl drew near the ground to feed, but the fox jumped up and snapped at the owl, so the owl flew on.

  ‘The fox was tireless: she ran day and night. Until she ran so fast that her feet no longer touched the ground. The owl heard no footsteps and believed she had lost her pursuer, and so, flying over a forest, she landed in a tree to rest awhile.

  ‘The fox hardly stopped to draw breath; she drove up the trunk of the tree.’ Mr Flood stops. ‘I’ve a throat on me, Drennan.’

  ‘There’s tea in your flask there,’ I say.

  ‘Grand so, and where would that be?’

  ‘There, in front of your eyes. Get on with the story and I’ll pour it.’

  He grins at me as I unscrew the lid. ‘The fox climbed the tree and saw the owl perched on a bough. The fox crept nearer. But before the fox could get her maw around it, the owl spun her head round and started to talk. And the owl told the fox she hadn’t come for the boy’s soul at all, for she only harvested pure souls and his was evil to the root.’

  He pauses for the longest time. I glance at him. He looks to be gazing at Larkin, who is turning over again and again on the path, dust dulling his coat. But then I see Mr Flood is not looking at anything, not really.

  ‘Are you all right, Mr Flood?’

  He nods and drains his cup of tea, spilling it on the grey fuzz of his chin. ‘When the fox learnt that her son was wicked, her heart broke and, unable to stand it, she jumped.’

  Larkin stretches, watching Mr Flood intently, as if he’s listening too.

  ‘The owl peered down through the boughs of the tree to the dead woman on the ground below and screeched in disappointment. For one who had died by her own actions was no good to the owl. Later that night the owl would fly back to the village and claim the boy. For the owl needed her tribute.’

  ‘But he wasn’t pure, the son.’

  ‘Well, he would have to do anyway.’

  Larkin springs to his feet and runs off through the bushes.

  ‘What about the husband?’

  He looks up at me. ‘What about him?’

  ‘The enchantress had a gallivanting husband, couldn’t the owl have taken him instead of the son?’

  ‘She couldn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  The old man smiles sadly. ‘He was even worse.’

  I glance at him. ‘And was there a daughter?’

  He hesitates. Then he puts down his cup, his movements slow and deliberate. ‘No,’ he says. ‘Only a son.’

  We sit in silence. I wonder if I believe him.

  ‘What’s the moral?’ I ask.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Doesn’t that kind of story always have a moral?’

  ‘Of course.’ Mr Flood picks up his sudoku pad. ‘Now I’d have thought a bright young inquisitive gobshite like yourself would have that easily worked out.’

  ‘Maybe you overestimate me?’

  Mr Flood squints at me. ‘For being a gobshite, never.’

  Chapter 7

  There were two ways to reach Pearl Strand and both of them in
volved jeopardy. One way was the long way, out along the lane that ran by the side of Boland’s place, then down through his field. An area patrolled by Mister Boland’s Lady, a collie fully likely to rip the face off you. Sometimes Lady was chained up, sometimes she wasn’t. There was a gap in the fence halfway down that she could come out if she wanted. She never did, but she could if she wanted. We knew it and she knew it too.

  The best thing to do was take bacon rinds or, if not, a few crusts that had been in the fat. Bread and jam would also work. Oranges wouldn’t cut it. You threw the scrap at her bastarding paws just before you got to the gap in the fence. She would put her muzzle down to eat and you could get past with your legs intact. She’d look up and realise you were getting away and rush down alongside the fence barking. Sometimes we heard Mister Boland’s voice telling Lady to shut the fuck up, sometimes we didn’t. Sometimes we saw Mister Boland himself, sometimes we didn’t. If we saw him he would nod fiercely at us. The top of his head was narrower than the bottom, his neck went unshaven and his eyebrows went in a straight line. He had a gap in his front teeth and a big burgundy bulb of a nose.

  Mister Boland had shot his wife and four children and cemented them into the floor of his pigpen. He was looking for a new wife and children now; this was common knowledge.

  He would watch us pass, all the way down the lane, his eyes on Deirdre, taking in her swagger and her summer dress, her white sandals and her red heart-shaped leather bag. Lady watched too, slunk low at his side, all hackles and stare. Deirdre would keep her head up, her nose in the air. At the bottom of the lane she would flick her hair and look back at Mister Boland over her shoulder.

  The other way to Pearl Strand was through the car park and past Noel Noone’s kiosk. Old Noel had a wall eye. So, he could keep one eye on Deirdre and one eye on me as we went down to the beach, even if we walked five feet apart.

  There were two main dangers with Old Noel. The first danger was getting his spittle on you, for the man had only three teeth in his head and when excited, as he always was when he saw us, his chat was peppered with spit. The second danger was being caught inside the kiosk with him. Go too near and he would hem you in and before you knew it you’d be stuck between the buckets and spades and the bamboo beach mats. Then he would put his old, dry, spatulate fingers on your arm, or your face, or your hair. And he would tug and pinch and stroke. All the time talking nonsense in his strange, high, giddy voice, flecking your face with saliva.