Cold Eye of Heaven, The (2 page)

The love of his life.

His brother had been indifferent to it all; what do you care where he goes or what he fishes? And he didn't care, not really. He'd just wanted to see what his father was like, happy. And the sandwiches of course. He was curious to see what sort of sandwiches a man like his father might make. By the time he was eleven he'd stopped asking to go. By the time he was twelve the promise had slipped from everyone's mind. Soon enough after came the stroke.

Farley decides to stop thinking about his father. To concentrate instead on a plan. A strategy – that's what he needs. He knows he can't move. That every bone, every inch of his flesh is locked into the floor and that he'll have to rely on his voice. He's confident that there's plenty still in there. It just needs a bit of a rest, that's all. The thing to do would be to wait. Allow the energy to recharge of its own accord. Let it gather and thicken. That would be the thing to do now. When it gets bright, or almost bright. When the youngone from the house next door goes to take her bike out of the shed. That's when he'll let it go.
Then
.

The house next door. The youngone living there now. The tenant. That's right. An early riser, thankfully. A busy, early girl. Off every morn -ing to work in the fish market except Sunday and Monday. He often wonders how she survives down there with her pointy face and dainty ways, in among all those targers. Sonya – was that her name? Sonya or Sofia maybe. Silvia, that was it. From Poland anyhow, or one of those places.

The minute he hears her. Whatever strength he will have managed to save up by then, he'll muster it up, give her a roar. He wonders how many times he'll need to call out? A few times, probably. He'll have to ration himself so, not throw it all out first go.

He imagines her now, unclenching her bike from the other bikes in the
shed, and drawing it towards her. Then pushing it a little way up the garden path, a strip of white polyester from her overalls showing under the hem of her green tweed coat. Her wellies in the basket, the Fagan-style gloves on her hands with her little pink fingers poking out. He imagines her stopping just before the side entrance. Cocking up a delicate ear –
what? what was that?
– reversing her steps and the wheels of the bike. She'll frown. Then listen again. She might think she's imagined it. In which case she'll have to call on her housemates for verification. Three Polish blokes coming out to the garden then; tall, high-arsed, fairish. A touch of the Luftwaffe about them. ‘What?' they'll say. ‘What?' (or whatever the Polish equivalent would be). ‘Where? Up there? I can't hear no thing. Are you sure? Are you certain?'

He'd have to be ready for round two then, just at that precise moment to collect, aim, and fire: ‘Help…'

And she'd go, ‘Now – hear it
now
?'

‘Ah wait now – yes. Yes, yes.'

‘
Tak
,' they might say. (He thinks that could be Polish for yes.) He seems to remember she told him one day across the back garden wall.
Tak
is for yes,
zaden
– was it?
Zaden
means no. Or maybe it was the other way round.

Farley knows that it must be freezing. A sugary frost on the window-pane, a scrap of old snow on the cill. He should be freezing all over. He should be able to feel the radiator like a block of ice behind him. But he can't. Only on his left side can he feel anything, where the cold is lifting the skin from his flesh. The right side doesn't even notice. It's as if half of him has been cut away and moved to another room. More than anything else – the headache switching on and off; the recurring blur in his eye; the refusal of his voice to come out of its box – it's this uneven distribution of cold that gets to him.

He brings himself back to the matter on hand. The Polish bird – yes. She leaves around six. Unless it's a Sunday or Monday when the fish
market is shut. But it can't be Monday if he collected the suit yesterday because the cleaner's doesn't open on Sunday. But it could be Sunday, in which case he's fucked. But he won't think about that, it could be any day as far as he's concerned, except Sunday or Monday. So – she'll leave around six. And she'll hear his call and she'll bring the Luftwaffe out to the garden. The Polish blokes, being blokes, will be reluctant to intrude. They'll have to stand in a circle and have a discussion. They'll probably have to have a cigarette to help the discussion along.
Tak
,
tak
.
Zaden
,
zaden
. Should they call the police? Should they kick the door in? Get a ladder and look in the window? They won't want to involve the police. One of them might ask if she has a key to his house. Then she'll have to explain herself. At this point he could try sending down another shout.

Tumbling ashes. Soft grey light hatching out of the darkness. Farley notes the sudden rush of wind outside, the swish of the trees. He listens for sounds of traffic from the Kylemore Road. A squawk of a near-empty bus, the infrequent snore of a car, a motorbike's buzz. In between, the long silence. For a minute he thinks he's in his grandmother's house, the house where he spent so much of his childhood. Bang up against the wall of the Phoenix Park. When he was a boy the silence never seemed complete. You'd always hear something. Owls or other nocturnals, horses neighing from the army barracks up the way. Even the night sounds from the animals in the zoo. A lonely sound that. It used to make him fret, the thought of an animal howling alone in a cage, no one to heed or help it. He used to have to go to sleep with his pillow over his ears. But he's in a different house now. The house of his adulthood. Another area altogether. For all he knows they're still howling in their cages.

His headache is back, in full form now, pushing to break its own record. Farley feels the bulge rise and expand, rise and expand. A little stronger each time, a little hotter. Lava.

*

He opens his eyes, the light has lifted again, and he thinks he may have passed out for a while and if so, wonders where to and how long he's been gone. Then he wonders about the state of his pyjamas. Whatever way he has fallen, the top has risen and rolled under his arm. He knows this. But he can't remember when he last changed the bottoms and hopes the brown streak up the inside is a memory from a different pair, on a different occasion.

A day last summer comes back to him. The Polish girl hunkered down in the garden, hacking something out of the ground. He'd been busying himself in the shed, keeping an eye on her through the little window. Her dress had been flowery, her shoes made of rubber and he'd been thinking to himself how old-fashioned these people were, with their vegetables in the back garden and their cycling everywhere and their knitting and their second-hand shops where they buy their flowery frocks. Nothing wasted. Like people you'd see years ago. Or people during the war. When he came out of the shed, she had looked up and smiled at him. Then stood and came over to the wall for a chat. She was going later to have a picnic in the Park, near the Furry Glen. And that had seemed so old-fashioned too, a picnic in the Park, something he hadn't seen anyone doing in years. She'd been picking radishes to bring. ‘Look,' she had said, holding the bunch up, fresh clay dribbling out of it. ‘Everybody, they bring something. I have also a bread I make this morning and chocolate I buy in the new Aldi store.'

He had liked that she told him all that.

Then she had asked if he had plans for the weekend himself and for some reason the question had embarrassed him. ‘Ah you know,' he had shrugged, ‘just the usual.' And she had cocked her head at him as if she expected more. As if she expected him to explain what ‘the usual' meant.

‘Well, good luck now, enjoy the picnic,' he had said and began to walk off, afraid that she might think he expected, or even hoped, to be asked in for a taste of her bread.

She had called after him. ‘I just wanted to say, if you want you could. You know, give me a key, in case maybe there is ever—'

‘Sorry?'

‘In case you have. Or you need. If I have your key then I can? In my country is usual when an old person is a neigbour…'

For some reason the suggestion had winded him. He hadn't been able to think of a way to respond, so he just looked at her. And then began to step back.

‘Does that mean you don't want to give me the key?' she asked, her face colouring up.

He turned his back to her and kept walking until he was inside the house again, the door closed behind him. He'd been offended. But more than that – he'd been hurt. Hurt and even humiliated. Why though?

Because he had looked over the wall at an old-fashioned girl and liked what he'd seen? Because the truth was he'd had a little smack for her? Not that he would have expected or even wanted anything to happen. He had just liked having the possibility there on the air over the wall, between the two houses. Not that it had made him feel any younger, just a little less old.

Almost light. He can see more clearly now, the rusty bolt that fixes the toilet to the floor, and the white porcelain rise of the bowl's exterior, like a dowager's throat. He can see the pallor of the tiles on the wall, the faded beige folds of his dead wife's dressing gown on the back of the door. And the architecture of himself in the bottom of the full-length mirror on the wall beside it. He follows the curves and angles; the sole of his foot to the cap of his knee, above it a length of thigh. The bottom of his pyjamas are slightly down, flap wide open. It takes him a moment to understand the grey fleshy bloom lolling over his groin and inner thigh. He draws his eye upwards, sees an elbow, a part of a grubby vest, the tip of one shoulder. The jaw then, which looks broken and twisted off to one side. The view from the mirror shows one eye. It blinks at him, then blinks again.

Farley listens. There's a click from the side gate of the house next door. Footsteps. Then the thud of the shed door. The rattle of a bicycle being
pulled from the tangle. And Sofia, or Sonya or Silvia down there, unravelling the lock from her bike, standing in a moment to wheel it down the path towards the gate. In a few moments she could be standing right here, in this room. Standing above him, looking down. At him curled like a dog around the toilet, bollix hanging out of his dirty pyjamas. Drooling gob twisted off to the side. One weeping eye.

He opens his mouth, then closes it. It seems uneven, the lips not quite meeting. He goes to open it again then changes his mind. For some reason the dry-cleaned suit comes into his head. He searches for the colour, the texture of cloth. The pinstripe navy? The charcoal grey? Or was it the black – funeral black?

EVERY DAY HAS ITS
purpose; a structure on which to pin up his hours. Thursday – the pension; Wednesday – his visit to Jack. On Tuesday he feeds Mrs Waugh's cat while she visits her sister in Skerries. Friday he goes into Thomas Street; buys his few messages, has his weekly ration of pints. And Saturday; Saturday is his day for the garden. Sunday and Monday are a bit loose for his liking. At least, whenever he's looked back on a time to regret, it always seems to have fallen on one of those days. Boredom, he supposes. Other factors too that he doesn't care to put a name on. Before he so much as opens his eyes he rummages for the day and the date. Then he draws up a map of the hours in his head. It's a habit left over from his working days – scheduling was what Slowey used to call it – the ticking off of a list, the margin at the side for the where, what and when of it all. But he knows there's a touch of his mother there too, preferring one thing to belong to one specific day, from Monday a stew day, to Sunday a roast; week in week out, month after month, all the years of her housewifey life.

Today is unique; a day of preparation. He'll be run off his feet. For a start the clothes brush will have to be located, ditto his black overcoat. And in case he decides to go up to the altar, he'll have to check on the soles of his black leather shoes. The two white shirts he left steeping last night
will need to be rinsed out and hung up to dry – one for the removal tomorrow evening, the other for the Mass the following morning. That's the thing about funerals, they derail the whole week, giving rise to an entirely different batch of errands; a Mass card, the clothes brush, the shoes, and flowers – he'd better see about getting a few flowers. A wreath or maybe one of those oval-shaped jobs? He'd leave it to the girl in the shop to decide.

Farley stands in the hall, the suit rolled into a bag at his feet, his fists inserted into his good black shoes, turned upside down for inspection. The first safe day after snow. Nothing in the house but cornflakes and butter. He'd better get a few messages while he's at it. A list; maybe he should have considered making a list. He studies the shoes. Just as he thought – a hole in the right foot, the shape of an eye. The left one is perfect. Would he get away with just bringing the one shoe in to be soled, or would that seem like he was just trying to save a few bob? Should he bring both in then, just to prove he's not? He weighs the shoes, stepping them up and down on the air. But what sort of a fool would only get one shoe soled anyway unless only one shoe needed it? He tilts the shoes now to see what they'd look like on feet attached to legs in the kneeling position. The eye still glaring out. He feels a bit agitated, sort of itchy all over, but on the inside of his skin where it can't be scratched. And the light of snow is making his eyes a bit wonky. A short flare of anger warms up his chest. So what if they think he's a skinflint? They either want his business or not. And come to think of it – why is he even considering going up to the altar in the first place? It's not as if he's believed in
that
fucking eejit for more than forty years.

Farley pulls in a long breath and looks at himself in the mirror. Even under his good tweed hat and over the knot of his maroon cashmere scarf, his face has a greyish hue. A small round stain of resentment on each cheek. Cabin fever. Cabin fever on top of a bad's night sleep plus a lack of nourishment. That's all that's wrong with him. Nothing a bit of air, a
decent bit of grub wouldn't sort out. He plonks the right shoe into the bag on top of the suit and drops the left shoe onto the floor. And as for going up to the altar? Why wouldn't he go, if he feels like it? What or who's stopping him? It's not a question of believing anyhow, it's a question of belonging. He gives himself a nod in the mirror and repeats the phrase in his head. A question of belonging. Then he tucks the bag under his arm and releases the first chain on the door.