The Traveller and Other Stories

by Stuart Neville

  “You don’t have to talk me into it,” I said.

  “I’d do it myself if I could,” she said. “Whether you believe or not, you’re doing a Christian thing.”

  “You don’t have to talk me into it,” I said again. “Just make me one promise.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “That afterwards, when it’s done, and everything’s settled. Promise me we’ll be together. The only way I can do this is if I know what’s on the other side. Promise we’ll be together.”

  She blinked, and a tear rolled down her cheek.

  She said, “I promise.”

  I nodded, removed my coat, and asked, “How do I do it?”

  She brought me to the table where a pestle and mortar sat alongside a scattering of torn sachets.

  “Morphine granules,” she said. “They’re supposed to be taken whole, he’s not allowed to chew them, otherwise the morphine will release too quickly. One sachet mixed with yogurt will keep him comfortable through the night.”

  Her fingertips brushed the rim of the mortar.

  “I’ve put ten sachets in here. I’ve crushed them up so the morphine will go straight into his system. He should just fall asleep.”

  She tilted the mortar up, tipped the powder into an open carton of strawberry yogurt and stirred the mixture.

  “He can’t hold the spoon himself. You’ll have to feed it to him.”

  She handed me the carton, the spoon standing in it.

  I wish I could say I had a moment of doubt, that I hesitated. But no. I simply took the carton from her hand, left the kitchen, and walked along the hall to the downstairs room that had been converted into a care unit for her ruined husband.

  I knocked and waited. No answer came, so I opened the door and entered. Mr. Garrick lay sleeping, his mouth open, drool shining on his scarred chin. A wisp of a moustache, neatly trimmed. His hair cut as well as could be managed.

  A mercy, I told myself.

  I went to the chair at his bedside and sat down.

  “Mr. Garrick,” I said.

  His eyelids fluttered open, revealing the blue beneath. Confusion on his face, then recognition that appeared like the sun from behind a cloud. He smiled, showing his remaining teeth.

  “Good to see you,” he said, his voice metallic with disuse.

  I showed him the yogurt and the spoon.

  “Mrs. Garrick sent me up with this,” I said. “There’s something in it for the pain.”

  “My medicine,” he said. “Helps me sleep.”

  He lifted the gnarled remains of his hands. Two fingers and a thumb on one, three fingers and no thumb on the other.

  “I can do it for you,” I said.

  He smiled again. “Thank you,” he said.

  I dipped the spoon in, scooped up a generous mouthful of yogurt, and brought it to his lips. He took it all, held it in his mouth, and swallowed. I watched the movement of his throat.

  “Like a baby,” he said, his voice weak.

  I gave him another spoonful.

  “If I didn’t have my faith, I couldn’t survive this,” he said.

  Another spoonful.

  “If the Lord wanted me dead, then I’d be dead. But He let me live, if you can call this living. Must have been a reason. He must want me alive for something. Don’t you think so?”

  And another.

  “I know so,” I said, the lie heavy on my tongue. “There are no accidents in this world. Not a leaf falls against His will.”

  “That’s right,” Mr. Garrick said, the S soft, the final T blunt.

  One last spoonful.

  “Every . . . everything . . . happens . . . for . . . for . . . a . . .”

  His eyelids fell and rose again, his pupils like tiny dots of ink.

  And then he went away. He snored once, a guttural, grating noise from deep in his throat, then his breathing became a wheeze, and then nothing at all.

  I watched him for a short time, feeling nothing, least of all like a sinner, before I stood and walked back towards the kitchen. My only thought was of Mrs. Garrick, and tomorrow, and the day after, and how soon we could come out to the world and—

  I found her at the kitchen table, leaning back, limbs loose, head lolling, sputum foaming around her open mouth. More torn sachets around the table, an empty glass in front of her, lined with a powdery residue.

  I dropped the carton and the spoon, metal ringing against tile.

  I fell to my knees and wished I had a God to forgive me.

  The Craftsman

  Albert Ryan watched his long fingers in the mirror as he buttoned his shirt collar. They showed no signs of bending to age, moving with the same deft grace they always had. Last winter, an ache had settled in the ring and little fingers of his left hand. It had neither worsened nor improved since then; it lingered like a dinner guest oblivious to the hour.

  He hitched up his tie knot, Double Windsor, smoothed the collar’s wings, and ran his hands down his breast. The tie’s silk whispered on his fingers. A Taoiseach had given it to him. He couldn’t remember which. Either Haughey or Fitzgerald, they swapped office like a game of musical chairs back in the eighties. Albert only remembered the presentation box—Italian, the politician had said—and Celia’s eyes when he showed it to her. She had kissed him like he was the only man in the world. It had been a Saturday night. They made love. She clawed the back of his neck and bit his chest. She insisted he wear it to Mass the next morning.

  Now he admired it in the dressing table mirror. It was a fine thing, black with navy and silver detail. A craftsman’s work if ever he’d seen it. Twenty-odd years old and it looked like it had been woven yesterday.

  Celia’s voice drifted from the grand old bed like paper on a breeze. “Bertie?”

  He stood, smoothed his Gieves & Hawkes shirt over his stomach, still flat and hard after all these years. His hands travelled to the small of his back, made sure the holster was secure. “Yes, sweetheart?”

  “Why are you all dressed up?” she asked.

  Albert watched her in the mirror. She smiled in the glass. Today was a good day, all things considered. Yesterday had been bad. She had soiled herself, and they had both wept as he cleaned her. But this afternoon she could see him, know him, talk to him. He hoped she didn’t remember the day before.

  “I’m heading out for a wee while,” he said.

  “Into town?” she asked.

  “No, love,” he said. “Into Dublin.”

  “Oh? What for?”

  He turned from the mirror. Her head tilted on the pillow, and her eyes glittered like a girl’s. He so wanted to press that pillow into her face. Spare her from the bad weeks and months ahead. She frowned, seeing his heart like she always did.

  “Such a saggy face,” she said, pouting.

  He had been jowly since his early thirties, despite his athletic build. He looked like a forlorn bloodhound by the time he met her at a party in Mallahide, when he was thirty-six and she a decade younger. Still now, he had no idea how he’d won her, only that she had stroked his cheek and called him “saggy face.”

  “Go back to sleep,” he said. He approached the bed. Portraits of Christ and the Virgin hung over it; smaller images of her favoured Saints stood on the bedside locker; her Rosary lay pooled on the blankets. Celia had gathered God close to her since the diagnosis. Sometimes she cried out for forgiveness in her sleep.

  He touched his fingertips to her lips. She dutifully pursed them, but there was no moisture, no warmth. Only the gesture, and that was enough.

  In a way, she was still as beautiful as that day in Mallahide when she’d made him blush by letting her hip brush his groin as she slipped past. There had only ever been Celia. She was the all and everything he knew about women. Still as beautiful, yes, but now cut from wax, a hollow mannequin modelled on the
woman who had claimed him wholly thirty years ago.

  “What are you going into Dublin for?” she asked. She stretched under the bedclothes, a long and languorous wave along her body, as if this were any lazy day. Only the crease on her forehead betrayed the pain it caused her.

  “To see a man about a dog,” he said, feeling a small but rapturous peal of mischief in the teasing.

  She smiled, showing her missing teeth. “My daddy used to say that. When he was keeping secrets. What secrets are you keeping, Albert Ryan?”

  He sat on the edge of the mattress, leaned down, and kissed her forehead. Her skin felt so thin and dry he imagined his lips pressed against her bare skull. Still, he kept his mouth there, letting his fingers tangle in her hair.

  “No secrets from you, sweetheart,” he said. “Never have, never will.”

  And wasn’t that his great mistake?

  She knew. All along, she knew what he did. He trusted her because she loved him, and he loved her. He would never have believed a vulgar sickness could render love and trust meaningless.

  “The doctor,” he said. “I’m going to see him.”

  “Why?” Her head turned so that the loose skin on her cheek wrinkled against the pillow.

  “To kill him,” he said.

  “But why?”

  Such sadness in her eyes. He turned away. “You said things.”

  “What things?” she asked.

  “About what I do—what I did—for a living,” he said.

  “I didn’t,” she said. “Did I?”

  “You did, sweetheart.” He placed his fingers against her cheek. He felt her remaining teeth through the thin curtain of flesh.

  “I didn’t mean to,” she said.

  He smiled down at her. “I know.”

  “You mustn’t,” she said, her mouth pinched with regret. “He’s good.”

  “I must.” Albert stood. “Sleep now. I’ll be home soon.”

  He walked the ten minutes to the DART station in Dun Laoghaire, overlooking the bay. The pistol nestled snug in the hollow at the small of his back. It was an excellent weapon, small, designed for concealment, and handmade to order by an Austrian gunsmith. A first-rate artisan, now dead some ten years, and the work hadn’t been cheap. The pistol’s chamber held one .22 calibre round. Albert had loaded it with a hollow-point. The same Austrian had made the round, also an exquisite thing. The bullet was soft lead, cast in a fluted jacket that would allow it to split into pieces on penetration, each fragment taking its own trajectory through flesh and organs. The pistol had a low velocity, so close range was preferable. A clear shot to the temple would be best.

  When Albert boarded the train, a kind young fellow vacated a seat for him. He considered protesting—even at sixty-six he was probably fitter than this youngster—but it would serve his purpose better to play the weak old man. He sat down and thanked the boy.

  The weapon did not rub or bulge. A soft buckskin holster held it secure. A fine craftsman from Walsall, near Birmingham, had made it. The best leatherwork in the world came from Walsall, as grey and oppressive a town as Albert had ever seen. He remembered collecting it from the workshop, and the warm velvet scent of the place. The holster seemed so insignificant among the saddles and bridles, but the craftsman had dedicated as much care to this small piece as he had the grandest items. It was beautifully stitched, and even bore a delicate brand in a Celtic pattern. Age had given it a deep red lustre, and he always admired it for a moment or two before inserting the pistol and sliding it down behind his waistband, affixing the loop to hold it in place.

  Albert Ryan admired nothing more than craftsmanship, for he too was a craftsman. Skill and care in one’s work gave a glimpse of the divine to anyone with the eyes to see it. He had owned many beautiful things in his life. The Aston Martin V8 had been the most treasured among them. He remembered Celia giggling and gripping his arm as he pushed it hard along a coast road in Antrim, across the border in the North, hedgerows whipping by on one side, the North Atlantic disappearing to infinity on the other. She had not asked questions when he left their hotel alone that night, or when he returned two hours later. And she did not protest when he forbade her to listen to the news the following morning. For all her girlishness, which she never lost as the years burnt away, Celia had flint at her centre. He loved her for it.

  He caught himself smiling and brought his hand to his mouth. A young woman smiled back at him from the seat opposite. He considered ignoring her, but for some reason he said, “Good memories.”

  Her smile broadened for a moment, lighting sparks in his stomach, before she returned her eyes to her paperback.

  Fool, he thought. This was why no one hired him anymore. He had softened in his later years. That was why the money had dried up and he had to sell the damn car. That was why he had to sell their home with the sea view, the home Celia loved more than anything, and take a miserable flat that overlooked nothing but other anonymous apartment blocks. Their wonderful things never seemed at home in the new place, so selling them off didn’t matter so much. Hardly anything mattered after Celia started bleeding.

  He disembarked at the Grand Canal Dock station and walked the short distance to the bus stop. The traffic would be slow to the clinic in Rathgar, but he didn’t mind. Time had taken on a strange elasticity these past few years, even more so since Celia fell ill. A few minutes here or there wouldn’t matter.

  Albert was gambling on the slender doctor, a handsome man wearing well in his young middle age, to leave the clinic at a normal hour. Ideally, Albert would study a subject for days, maybe weeks, before carrying out an action, but this particular matter was urgent.

  He considered it as he climbed aboard the bus and took a seat. The doctor would always nod and smile as Celia rambled, as she was prone to do these days. Sometimes she would recount her time in London, working as a secretary in the Irish embassy, or perhaps Paris. She had only been stationed there a few months, but she still found delight in recalling her walks around Montmartre.

  On occasion, her memories were more delicate. The visiting nurses blushed as she boasted of her husband’s prowess as a lover. “Oh, those hands,” she told them. “And he was never selfish. He always put my pleasure before his own. A wonderful thing in a man, that, you’ll be lucky to find the same.”

  Albert had smiled weakly as the nurses tried not to snigger. But this morning had been unfortunate. She had been speaking quite coherently about the importance of discretion when working at a consulate, the doctor giving her his most patronising smile as he examined her, his skilled fingers dancing across her body.

  “Of course,” she had continued, “discretion has been my greatest talent. All these years, and no one ever suspected anything of him. To think those hands, those giving hands, could have done such things. But he always kept them clean. I never once saw blood on them. Not a drop. Even that time we had to go away. Where was it, Bertie? Lebanon?”

  And that had been enough to end the doctor’s life, whether he understood the implication of her ramblings or not. Albert knew it only took one loose thread for everything to unravel. It may have seemed random nonsense from a dying woman, but if the doctor picked at it, if he thought about it at night as he waited for sleep, he might just get a hold of that thread and start pulling.

  And that could not be. Albert knew the procedure. At the slightest risk of exposure, they would close him down. That’s what they called it. Closure, as if he were a shop going out of business. One day, one evening, one morning, he would simply be gone. And then who would take care of Celia? They would send her to some desperate grey place where she would die alone and frightened, in pain, wondering why her Bertie did not come for her.

  No. Not while he had strength in his hands and iron in his chest.

  “I love her too much to let her die like that.”

  “Excuse me?” the plump woman next
to him said.

  He stared at her for endless seconds. Had he said that aloud? Good God.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, bowing his head respectfully. “I was daydreaming.”

  She gave him a thin smile and turned her attention to the Dublin suburbs slipping by the window.

  He reached beneath his overcoat and pinched the flesh below his ribs, hard. He had to focus, sharpen his mind. Killing must not be a reckless venture. He had learned that early on and taught it to others. Care and skill were second to only one thing: the will to do what other men can’t. But will without craft is empty bluster. Many a man forgot that to his cost.

  Thank Christ, Albert’s stop approached. The fat woman might take exception to the sweating old fool beside her, she might remember him when she saw the news that night, and all would be lost.

  Albert hoisted himself from the seat and made his way to the front of the bus. His feet shifted for balance as it slowed and stopped. He thanked the driver and stepped down. The woman did not watch him from the window as the bus pulled away, leaving him in tree shade on this pleasant avenue.

  The clinic stood opposite, an old Victorian house converted to provide the best medical care to those who could afford it. It was in that building that a great tube had swallowed Celia while she trembled. This practice had eaten the last of their savings. The doctor’s visit this morning had cost a fortnight’s rent on their miserable flat. It had cost the doctor much more.

  Albert entered the small park opposite the clinic, found a bench with a reasonable view of the building, sat down, and waited.

  “Mr. Ryan, are you all right?”

  He seized the wrist, claimed the assailant’s balance. Light and oxygen screamed into his brain, dragged him from sleep, battering his heart with adrenalin.

  Dear God—the doctor, staring down at him.

  Asleep.

  Albert sucked air in hard through his nose, letting its coldness blast away the murk behind his eyes.

  He had fallen asleep.