Cold Eye of Heaven, The (16 page)

‘It's bits from different operas,' she explains and he knows by the sound of her voice that while she speaks she is crying again, trying to form the words, to keep her breath, ‘and the girl in the shop, she said… She said, the thing to do is to listen to them all first – get to know them and that, see which ones you like before you go buying the whole opera. I suppose it's a bit like a
Top of the Pops
, only posher.' She gives a long sniff then he hears her blowing her nose.

‘Yea,' he says. ‘Yea great, thanks. I haven't got a you know? A thing to play it on.'

‘Ah, can't you buy one, Farley?'

‘Course I can.'

Quieter now, she lifts herself from her corner of the bed, reaching out to the ashtray on the dressing table. Farley gets there first and hands it to her. She begins to search through her bag for cigarettes.

‘Have you something you want to say to me?' he asks her when she has the cigarette going.

‘Tony knows.'

‘Tony? How could he know?'

‘Well, maybe not for definite but he's suspicious. He won't be long putting it together.'

‘Ah, you're imagining it. How like?
How?
'

‘He's not a kid any more, Farley, he's a grown man.'

‘I know he's a grown man, the world's full of grown men, that doesn't mean they all know.'

‘They phoned from Italy this morning and I was talking to Frank and
then Tony came on and I said something like, Ah God, it'll be lonely here on me ownsome watching the match what with Michael gone down to Wexford with Miriam and he said, just like that, and his da right beside him, “Can't you phone Farley if you're so lonely then?”'

‘Ah, he probably just meant—'

‘It was the
way
he said it.'

‘Well, you know, he probably just meant like me being a friend of the family and that.'

‘But you're not – are you, Farley?'

‘Not what?

‘A friend of the family. I mean, come on, for fuck sake, you're screwing his mother. His father's wife. You're no friend.'

The bitter way she says it. He opens his mouth to answer, but nothing comes out.

She's weeping now, big breathy sobs. And he hasn't seen her like this since the day of Martina's funeral. He gets up and crosses to her bed and sits down beside her, curving his arm round her shoulder.

‘I was down with me ma last night,' she says, ‘and you know she's not well at all and anyway she'd all the old photos out and was talkin about Martina, and I just. I can't. I just can't any more. The wedding photos – Jesus. You and Martina. My mother, your mother. Me in me little bridesmaid's dress. O God.'

‘Shh,' he says, ‘shhh. It'll be alright.'

‘I'm not taking the risk. The whole thing is all wrong. No matter what you say, Farley, it's wrong. It's not fair to anyone. Least of all you.'

‘Me? What are you worried about me for? Jesus.'

‘You should have married again by now. You're not a bad-looking fella, you know.'

‘O, thanks very much.'

‘Instead of wasting all these years on me.'

‘Don't say that. It wasn't a waste. It isn't.'

She drops her head on his arm. ‘They're me kids, Farley. I can't risk it. Neither of us is worth that.'

Farley takes the pillows from the bed, puts them behind his back and leans against the wall, still holding her. She smokes a couple of fags. He rubs her hand. Once she strokes his face and says, ‘You need a shave.'

‘I know,' he answers.

They stay like that for a long time listening to the distant roar of the match, heaving below them.

‘I wonder how they're gettin on,' she says.

‘Yea,' he says. ‘I wonder.'

She looks at her watch and he knows the time has nearly come. He lets his head fall back for a moment, the edge of the window-cill slicing into his shoulder blades. He looks up at the flowery curtains and the plywood pelmet which, he notices, is about to come away from the wall.

He could always suggest they do it anyway, one last time, for old times' sake. When he was younger he might have chanced it. But he doesn't want to; not now.

He leans forward and kisses the top of her head. She slides off the bed, picks up her bag and goes to the door. There's a sudden, ominous hush from downstairs. In the silence he thinks of all the sex they've had over the years; the small, self-contained violence that sometimes existed between them, like they were punishing each other. Hers always physical, scratch, pull, bite, pinch. His, she once told him, was too emotional. He had and hadn't known what she meant.

Downstairs something erupts, like the spark of a huge furnace. Noise crashes through the hotel, a frenzy.

‘We must have won,' she says.

The plastic kettle hops, the cups beside it rattle. The door at her back shudders. ‘There you are,' she laughs through the tears, ‘and we thought the earth wouldn't move today.' She looks at him for a moment, the slight stare in her eye more pronounced, as it always is when she's tired. Then she opens the door, and she's gone.

The noise continues, if anything it gets stronger. When he stands it seems to go right up through the soles of his feet. He is surprised to see how still the world outside is when he stands at the window. Still and
deserted, except for her figure, crossing the car park. It happens, sometimes, when he sees her like this, at a remove, that he thinks he's looking at her older sister. He remembers now, another room; a room out in Bray somewhere. She'd whispered into his ear just as he was about to come, ‘I know. I know you're pretending that I'm her.'

He'd been a bit shocked but came anyway, because it had been too late to do anything else.

‘But guess what?' she said then.

‘What?'

‘That's OK because I'm pretending to be her too.'

He wonders if she's stopped crying.

Farley steps into the small square hall and stands at the parlour doorway. Ma, still on the sofa, but asleep. Jackie, conked out on the armchair by the fireplace, head flung back, mouth dropped to one side, looking a bit like Da after he'd had the stroke. A banana skin on the floor at his feet, a few stray Jelly Tots scattered on the chair beside him, the wrapper of the Club Milk on the fire grate. On the table a bottle of sherry that must have been in the press since God knows how many Christmases ago. Two cans of Guinness from the back of the fridge scrunched up in the fire grate. The room stinks.

Farley stays in the hall and tries to shake off the day. He puts his back to the wall, pressing it, stretching. Weary now, the turning points are slurring through his head. The fax man, the doctor, the woman with the black hair crossing over the car park of the West County Hotel. And the car, always the car, moving one minute through silent, deserted streets, the next through streets that are overrun by hysterical fans. Danger everywhere; fellas swinging out of lamp posts or hanging out of car windows. One of them, who had been standing on the roof of a moving van, had slipped off and landed on the road right in front of him. If he'd been going any bit faster…

He'd slammed on the brakes, got ready to call an ambulance. But the
youngfella had bounced back up again: ‘If you love Packie Bonner clap your hands. Clap your hands!' And he'd felt like getting out and knocking him down again with a punch.

Finally, the bloke in Rathfarnham, answering the door with a grin on his chops. A little gurrier with a Hitler moustache, full of himself with his three taxicabs on view through the open door of the garage and his little ponytail and his sovereign ring on his middle finger. The grin of course dropped the minute he copped what Farley was at. Cute little fucker, knew the drill right enough, throwing his hands up in the air, backing off – ‘Here, you never touched me with that. It's not legal unless you touch me.' Then pouncing on the door and trying to close it in Farley's face.

But his foot got in first. He could have decked the little bollix there and then. To hell with the consequences, to hell with the fact that he could lose his licence or that some of the guests were beginning to notice and that in a few seconds' time he'd be making a run for the car. Farley reached in, grabbed him by the arm and through his teeth said, ‘How about I stick it up your arse – it'll touch you then?' Then he'd shoved him away. ‘They're your kids, for fuck sake. Your kids.'

There could be trouble over that. But if there is, Farley tells himself now, it'll be tomorrow's trouble.

Inside the parlour; a smell of cigarettes and drink, something else, vaguely floral. The early hours of the morning. On the telly a different world gently glimmers: green grass, slow legs in white trousers, the languid purr of a cricket commentator. Ma's eyes open.

‘That fat bitch ate all the biscuits,' she says.

‘She wasn't here, Ma.'

‘And he gave me the wrong copybook,' she says, pointing to Jackie.

‘Yea, Ma, I know.'

She goes quiet then for a minute, watching the cricket, pinching the edge of the duvet.

‘Charlie?' she says. ‘Charlie Grainger.'

‘What, Ma?'

‘Charlie?'

‘Yea?'

‘Charlie Barley Farley Grainger.'

Her hands go up, her arms stretch out. ‘Weewee,' she says.

Farley sighs, takes off his jacket and helps her out of the nest, then lifts her, like a bride in his arms and carries her up the stairs.

She feels like nothing in his arms; her ribs through her nightdress; her lightness and lack of substance. She hums as she goes, laying her head on his shoulder. She does this sometimes, nestles up to him, becoming coy and even flirtatious, hinting at a former life that she may have had with Da. Once she even stuck her tongue in his ear and he nearly let her fall down the stairs he got such a fright. Of course he'd never tell Jackie that. There's that smell again. The floral smell. It makes him think of honey that's gone off. The smell of? He sniffs again, moves one hand slightly and feels the wet cloth of her nightdress. And so it's happened, just like Jackie said it would happen.

‘We better get you a clean nightie,' he says.

HE OPENS THE BACK
door to a mucous-grey morning; feels the damp coming up from the soil, the tired silence. Next door an old rubber glove hangs like a skinned hand off Mrs Carroll's clothes line. In his own hand, a bag of birdseed; on his mind, the half-written letter he's just left on the kitchen table. He can't remember how many starts he's made on this letter – at some point he'd taken to balling the rejects and bouncing them off the wall – but imagines when he goes back into the kitchen the floor will look like a yard of dead, white doves.

He brings the bag of birdseed outside and pours careful little mounds of it onto the feeder tray, then throws a few long scatters over the grass for the ground feeders. He steps back to allow the birds access and while he waits, reads the back of the bag. His eyes can't quite grasp the words and he wonders, not for the first time in recent weeks, if maybe he needs glasses. He lifts the seed bag closer to his face, then away from it and the list of ingredients comes into focus: black sunflower, white millet, naked oats, linseed. He likes that each of these smallest of things should have its own name, and he likes too the idea of people out there somewhere who actually work at picking and sorting the seeds, bagging and boxing them,
just so birds can be fed and saps like him can take some small pleasure out of a dank Saint Stephen's morning.

Already a couple of robins are bouncing over the grass and a chaffinch is pooching under the feeder. The blackbirds next; one then two, then three of them. Farley turns and goes back into the kitchen. He looks down at his latest effort. From where he's standing he can't make it out. He lifts the page, passes it back and forward until he finds the right eyeline. It reads as nonsense now anyway, whereas five minutes ago, before he got the notion to go out and feed the birds, he had thought that maybe, finally he had hit the right tone. He puts the seed bag down and from his jacket hanging over the back of the chair, pulls an envelope out of the inside pocket, the slip of paper within.

For two weeks or more he's been carrying this bank draft around, since the day John Lennon was shot, in fact. Twenty-five grand. Until the moment the cashier's hand bashed the stamp down, Farley – when and if he did think of it – often had doubts about its existence. He had looked on it a bit like he looked on God – it might be there and then again it might not, but either way it wasn't going to make much odds to his life.

He has a memory of the cheque arriving a few months after Martina's death and of him going to the bank and shoving it into an account which he opened just for that purpose. The bank out in Donnybrook – a branch he'd never been to before, and he has no explanation for this choice unless he had picked it for pure inconvenience. And he can remember too declining first the offer of a chat with the bank manager, and next the offer of a spot of advice from a suit through an iron grille wearing a badge that said ‘Victor'. The name had annoyed him; the suit; the colour, shape and length of the tie. He'd had to bite back the urge to tell Victor to go fuck off and mind his own business. That had all happened during a particularly angry phase in a long black winter that had lasted for maybe a year and a half; most of which he's forgotten. All he had wanted then was to get the cheque out of the house, out of sight and of mind. In any case he had always thought of it as Martina's money; her insurance, the price and worth that was put on her life. Besides, he had never really wanted to buy
anything that couldn't be managed on his own weekly wage. He wasn't a smoker, didn't bother with gambling, not much of a drinker and as Jackie pointed out last time he put the hammer on him: ‘A man with no family always has money.'