Cold Eye of Heaven, The (15 page)

He turns the pages. Her hand is a little shaky but still good enough for him to recognize what or who has been in her little world over the past few days. This surprises him because he'd presumed the drawings would be like her thought process – full of scribbles and haphazard shapes. There's Barney and Betty Rubble from Friday's
Flintstones
. Flipper popping his head out of the water. A black fella at a piano – that's right, Nat King Cole. Your woman who reads the news. The girl on the sofa from breakfast telly. And notes too, she's written little memos to herself. ‘The man says we're not allowed eat beef. Tell Charlie the cows are gone mad.' On the next page is a picture of Jackie on the telephone. At the end of that page is another note. ‘Biscuits for Mrs Kennedy.'

He turns the page. ‘Mrs K is dead. Mrs Kennedy is dead. Dead Dead Dead. No more Mrs Kennedy. Don't ever say her name again.' And he knows by the thickness in the ink that this was an angry note, a lucid moment when it all got on top of her; shame, anger, confusion. She often forgets Mrs Kennedy is dead.

He turns the page. ‘But not Rose Kennedy. She's not dead. Yet.' Farley laughs.

There are two further pictures of Jackie on the phone and the telly in the background with a horse's head in the frame. He wonders if this is Ma's way of telling him that Jackie spends the afternoons watching the racing in between making calls to his bookie or Racefone or whatever the fuck it's called. He closes the copybook and begins to worry. What if she's recorded more than Jackie's carry-on? What if he were to flick through the pages and find a drawing of someone else? He thinks now of a careless moment in a careless afternoon a few weeks ago when Jackie hadn't been available to keep an eye on Ma. Ma was having her nap on the sofa when she'd arrived. They'd gone upstairs and when he was sneaking her
back out again Ma opened her eyes – ‘O, hello there, what are you doing here?'

He flicks over the pages, one after the other, looks for a trace of a handbag on the floor in the hall, a coat through the gap of the door hanging on the end of the stairs, a woman with black hair hurrying out the front door. Nothing. It seems Jackie is the only one she's ratted out.

‘Tell Charlie about that,' the note says. ‘Tell Charlie. Tell him.'

Farley closes the copybook again. Something catches his eye; the dip of a creamy bald head disappearing down the basement stairs.

‘Gotchya,' he says and jumps out of the car.

By the time he gets back to the office, bangs off the reports to the solicitors and listens to everyone going on about what a great fella Slowey is for giving them a half-day from the comfort of his hotel terrace in Genoa while he waits for a tout to deliver two overpriced tickets for himself and young Tony. And by the time he drops Ma's copybook back up to the gaff and listens to Jackie moaning for half an hour about how hard it all is and about how he can't see why they don't just sell Ma's house, put her into a home where she'll get proper care.

‘She gets proper care here,' Farley says

‘Ah, come on now, just look at her,' Jackie says.

‘What? She's an old woman asleep in the afternoon. What's wrong with that? Put her teeth in when she wakes, she'll look better then. And here, don't forget her tablets. I'll give you a ring.'

‘I can't stick this much longer,' Jackie says, grabbing his hair and giving it a little tug, ‘I'm telling you that now.'

‘It's your turn, Jackie.'

‘I'm not talking about now.
Today
. I'm talking about the foreseeable future.'

‘Well, lucky for you she doesn't have that much of it left. Listen, we have the girl coming in Monday to Thursday, we can do the rest between us. What are you moaning for anyway? I'm the one has to live with her.'

‘Suppose she starts, you know, shittin herself and that?'

‘Jesus, what are you sayin that for?'

‘I've been reading up on it. Intransient incontinence, it's called. That is, before it becomes established incontinence.'

‘Fuck you and your whatever it is incontinence.'

‘Why can't you just agree to sell her house? What the fuck are you holding onto it for?'

He can hardly tell him why and so he lashes the ball back. ‘What's the matter, Jackie? Thrown all your money at the bookies again?'

And he's sorry he said it, the minute he says it, because when it comes down to it they both have their ulterior motives.

By the time he's done with all that, it's nearly four o'clock and he might be raging with Easton and Slowey and Jackie and the world and his wife but he's still fuckin starving and the match is starting in twenty minutes.

The car park of the West County Hotel is stuffed corner to corner and so he has to park on the kerbside outside. He takes a Thom's directory out of the cubbyhole and searches for the address he's been given for the maintenance dodger. The house registered to someone called Johnson; the dodger's landlord.

He calls directory enquiries, asks for the number for Johnson, jots it down on his hand and phones it. The new bird picks up. He can hear chattering voices behind her like there's a party going on in another room.

‘Hello,' she says and a doorbell rings. ‘O, hold on a sec please.' He listens as she greets someone. Her voice is excited, overly nice, trying that bit too hard, as the new bird tends to do; the party, her idea most probably, a chance to get his old mates on her side, to show off their life together in this upmarket, albeit rented house. ‘O hiya. Mick, isn't it? Nice to see you again.'

‘Ah howiye,' Mick says. ‘Is Phelo not here yet?'

‘Go on through, he's out the back. Lar? Larry? Mick is here. Sorry, Mick, just on the phone here.'

His mates call him Phelo.

‘Sorry about that,' she says, coming back to the phone.

‘Ah no bother. Just wanted to tell Phelo I've been held up and I'll be late getting there…'

‘Do you want to speak to him?'

‘Ah no, God don't disturb him and the match about to start. Sure I'll be there later.'

‘Who is this?'

‘Sorry, love, the line is very bad, what did you say?'

‘I said, Who is this please? Who will I say?'

He gives her a name that sounds something like bllalaaargh and she says, ‘
What?
'

‘I'm on one of those car phones, can hardly hear you. Look, just wanted to check you'll be there for the night – or will you be going on somewhere else?'

‘No. We'll be here – there's food after. A party.'

‘Great stuff. Looking forward to meeting you at last.'

‘O.' She gives a small uncertain laugh. ‘Yea, me too. Seeya then.'

He manages to get what has to be the last sliver of space out in the foyer. Jesus, the noise. That spiky, haphazard, nervy commotion of a herd collectively shitting itself. The double doors to the hotel bar have been removed, inside a cinema-style screen has been rigged up for the occasion; the backs of hundreds of heads turned towards it, and more spilling out to the foyer. A pair of lounge boys in cheap shitty waistcoats struggle down the stairs with a telly that's obviously been taken from one of the bedrooms and another pair, bearing another telly, waddle out of the lift. These tellys, along with two or three others, are plugged into different points around the foyer, attracting little breakaway groups from the glut at the doorway to the bar.

He's lucky to get the sandwich at all. The staff, if they're not arsing around with the tellys, are swaying through the crowd with overloaded
drink trays and it's only because he helps one stick-armed youngfella who couldn't be more than thirteen years old to carry a tray of pints to a table down the end, that he's rewarded with what looks like the last ham sandwich on earth. ‘Five minutes to kick-off,' he hears a woman squeal.

‘Do you know what,' her husband groans, hugging his stomach, ‘I think I'm gonna get sick.'

He'd prefer to watch the match on his own; not to have to listen to the innane little commentries going on all around him. To cry if he wants to cry, bite the hand off himself if it comes to it. He's not sure he can put up with all this: the push, the sweaty smell of fear, the false alarms, the tension. He's not sure he can't trust himself when he's surrounded by all this emotion. He decides to eat the sandwich, take a couple of slugs of the lukewarm coffee, go off then and listen to it in the privacy of his own car while making a slow way out to Rathfarnham.

He has his jaws poised around the sandwich when he feels a tip on his elbow. He turns, looks over the sandwich and sees her walking away from him, not looking left nor right, but straight ahead and up the stairs. He looks around; all eyes on all televisions. Farley lays the sandwich down and stands up. Fuck the sandwich, fuck the match, fuck Phelo or whatever he's called, and, as the sign in St Michael's Estate earlier said, fuck all the begrudgers. He's up the stairs like a light.

Before he turns onto the corridor he hears the sound of the key jigging into the lock. A clef of dark hair then, a sleeve of summer cloth and she disappears. Farley thinks of nothing beyond that door, all the things he will have to pass along the corridor in order to get there: pictures of kittens in ramshackle frames, a cigarette singe on the carpet, a splash of afterhours beer on the skirting board. A fire extinguisher.

‘Hiya,' she says when he comes through the door and then she looks away.

A nod, a smile and he averts his own eyes.

It's always like this before they settle; hardly able to look at each
other, hardly able to think of a thing to say. After all these years it's still that way.

‘Sorry I couldn't make it on Friday.'

‘That's OK.'

‘Michael, you see. I'd no one.'

‘And today?'

‘Miriam brought him down to the mobile for a few days.'

Today's room – two beds; a small double and one single, quilted in shabby orange nylon. A plastic kettle stained brown at the spout, a short bare shelf up on the wall, where until moments ago a television would have been perched. He wonders if she's comparing this room to others. He knows she will be able to remember, off the top of her head, each and every one. Not just the room either but the reception desk, the attitude of the receptionist, the date, the amount of weeks that had passed since the previous room. He'd have to be reminded, his memory prompted and poked – apart from the few memorable ones like that chintzy place in Wicklow. Or Killiney Castle the time of the snowstorm. And the dives of course – plenty of those – for all the times she could only get away for an hour and hadn't wanted him wasting his money: Drumcondra, Parnell Street, the stadium end of the South Circular road. For the past year or so, since his mother moved in with him, it's every Friday afternoon in the abandoned house where he was reared. Apart from that one time, a few weeks ago at his own house, but that was a once-off, too risky and too upsetting for either of them to want to repeat.

‘How did you know I was here?'

‘Your car. I was passing and…' she gestures to a place outside this room, the world out there. ‘I'm sorry, I know you want to see the match but—'

‘No. No, I don't mind. Not at all. Were you not afraid anyone would? I mean, it's packed down there, you know? Anyone could.'

‘Mandy, a friend, she works on reception. I didn't even have to go to the desk.'

‘Can you – you know – trust her?'

‘Ah yea, I know her this years, lived around the corner from us, we went to school together.'

He nods then scratches the back of his unitchy neck. ‘So, that means she would have known—?'

‘Martina? Yea, she knew Martina.' She gives an impatient sigh, a slight toss of her head. ‘Jesus, Farley,' she says.

‘What? What? Jaysus, I'm only asking.'

She sits on the edge of the double bed near the window, showing one red cheek. He's annoyed her now and that's the last thing he wants. The first thing he wants is to be over there beside her, pulling the clothes off her, making himself blind and deaf with the feel and smell of her.

‘I'm only saying, if I'd have known, I could have got somewhere nicer for us, that's all.'

She nods but she's still not right.

He takes off his jacket, lays it on the back of the chair. ‘Look, I can't have you paying, anyway,' he says, putting his hand down into his pocket.

‘Stop it,' she snaps. ‘Just…'

He sees now that she's been crying. He wants to ask why, to comfort her. He wants to cure whatever, or kill whoever it is that's upset her. But he just stands there. He can't stop looking at her hands. They are both staring at her hands. Clasped together on her lap, fingers pulling and twisting at each other like one live thing chewing another.

She says, ‘I got you a present,' and her hands break apart and move away to pick up her bag from the floor.

He wants to touch her. Any sort of a touch, her elbow, her shoulder. He knows that sometimes the slightest touch is enough, to break it all down. To take him from here, into that blind, sweet silence. She shoves the present at him; small, square-shaped in a flimsy plastic bag. It strikes him that in all this time she's never bought him a present. He catches her eye and now he gets a sense of what may be coming.

‘Farley?' she begins, then stops.

‘Yea?'

‘Farley?' she begins again, stops again.

He pulls the plastic bag away from the present and asks, ‘So – what is it?'

‘It's a CD,' she says. ‘That fella you like, sings the football song. Pavarotti.'

For a minute he doesn't know what she means – see dee? Pav who? What fella is she talking about?

He sits on the end of the single bed by the door and looks at the CD box in his hands. And he can hear now, through the floorboards, the rumpus of the football match; an ocean of noise, lifting and falling, lifting again.