Cold Eye of Heaven, The (20 page)

‘Would one of you not help me? Can somebody not give me a hand here?' he asks. ‘Just help me bring my little girl out to the doctor. There's something wrong, you see, she's too heavy and she's too small and I can't. I can't…'

He's crying, and the baby, a newborn infant with a squashed-up face and eyes like two pink-raw molluscs says, ‘Ah stop that now, that's not helping anyone. Pull yourself together. Be a
man
for Christ's sake.'

‘But I am a man,' he blubs, ‘I
am
.'

Behind him the door to the terrace opens. He reaches down, grabs the baby and slowly drags her along the floor. He can see the doctor leaning on the balustrade, the dark gleam of the lake behind him, the two nurses. He waits to see will the doctor come over; but the doctor, beckoning him to come forward, has no intention of moving. He clenches his teeth and braces himself. A sound curdles in his lower throat, a deep unbroken grunt. He feels his head swell with exertion, his heart expand, his legs strain and ache. One last effort, one more heave, and at last. At last she lifts off the ground. But her weight is too much and he loses control of it, the dress rips in his hand. She swings away from him like a discus, over the balustrade, into the light, towards the black glass of the lake. No splash, no sound but he knows she's gone in. He covers his face with his hands and attempts to call out her name, but finds after all he can't remember it. He hears himself mutter into his hand, his teeth gnaw and scrape at his palm, they chew and suck on the torn cloth of her dress. The crowd closes in on him again. In the background someone calls out his name. ‘Farley! Farley! You in there? I have someone here for you. Let me in, let me in.'

‘I'm here, that's me. That's me. Have you found her? Is she alright?'

Somebody pulls his hands away from his face and he sees a man standing there, holding a matchbox in his hand. ‘There you are now,' he beams. He slides the box open. A type of insect wriggling inside; a brittle, ugly, tiny thing with paper wings and a body made up of minute bones.

‘O Jesus,' he says. ‘O Jesus Christ, please help me.'

His eyes flick open, his neck and limbs jolt. He hears his breath catch.

Farley waits for his body to settle.

‘I know you're dead, Martina,' he says then. ‘I know that. I know that
when I turn around you'll be lying there, dead.'

But when he turns his head there's only a blank blue wall. He can't understand it – he'd fully expected to see her there; cold and stiffening at the edges. Her skinned head on the pillow beside him; her closed, bald, lashless eyes; the hands, with their long bones and translucent flesh that were beginning to remind him of a long ray fish. His Belsen baby as she'd called herself. And it comes to him then, that was something that already happened; weeks, days, months ago. In another bed, in another room. Before he'd taken to sleeping in here; a single spare bed shoved against the wall.

He hears his name. ‘Farley! Farley! You in there? Come on – will you open the bloody door?'

He identifies those sounds that had been trying to break through his dream: the clap of a door knocker, the buzz of a bell, a hollow voice through the letter box. He lies still, gropes around in his head for the details, the child. But all he can find is water and shadow.

Uncle Cal on the doorstep. Uncle Cal and some blondie bloke with hair like a girl; long and flicked at the shoulder. The bloke, otherwise burly, is frowning. In one hand he holds a black bag, in the other a contraption with a long nozzle attached to the top. It flits across Farley's mind that maybe he's come to take him away, that Uncle Cal's about to have him signed in somewhere and he wonders how and where the fuck that nozzle is going to come into play. But then he takes a second look at the white van parked out on the road – not an ambulance. A company van with a company logo glaring out: a large black rat with the words ‘Pronto Pest Control' resting over the curve of its tail.

‘You had to tell the whole neighbourhood, I suppose?' Farley asks as Uncle Cal steps in.

‘Yea, well, the man has to advertise his business, you know. Make a living and that. Hint. Hint. This is Ronnie by the way. Ronnie the Ratcatcher.'

Ronnie tucks the nozzle contraption under his arm and offers his hand to Farley. The hand, taut in a surgical glove, comes as a bit of a shock. ‘I prefer the term pest controller meself,' he says, ‘but some people find that whole Ronnie the Ratcatcher thing funny.' He drops a glance at Cal and continues, ‘So, what sort of evidence we lookin at here?'

‘Evidence?'

‘You know, droppings, torn bags, scuttlin, scratchin – whatever it was made you suspect there's rats in the house.'

‘Could be mice either.'

‘Could be,' the ratcatcher says but looks doubtful.

‘Anyway, I didn't call you.'

‘I did,' Uncle Cal says, ‘after a neighbour phoned me about seeing one sniffing across the gutter.'

The ratcatcher nods. ‘Kitchen?' he asks and Farley stands back to let him through.

He lays the bag on the floor, stoops into the press, showing over his trousers a crack in a plump, pink moon.

‘Cup of tea, Cal?' Farley offers, reaching for the kettle.

‘You must be fuckin jokin me,' Cal says, looking around, ‘thanks all the same.'

He tries to see the kitchen through Cal's eyes: a sink that looks like a small car has crashed into it; an archipelago of solidified grease all over the cooker and worktop. Old food left out on the table, a black plastic sack stuffed with rubbish.

‘Like is it any wonder,' Cal says with a sweep of one hand. He pulls out a chair as if to sit down on it, takes a look at it and puts it back into the table. ‘I'm an old man, you know, I shouldn't have to be puttin up with this.'

‘You can go if you want,' Farley says, lifting the sole of a bare foot to see it layered with crumbs and dust.

Cal takes off his hat and presses his forehead into his hand. ‘Jesus, son. I just don't know what to say to you, I just— I mean, I feel bad enough, you know I do. But for fuck sake would you not just…'

The ratcatcher stands, two dainty bullets of shit balanced on the back of his middle finger. ‘Rats alright,' he says, ‘see – the shit is longer, tubular shaped. More robust, if you like. The mouse now is more of a pellet man.'

He brushes the shit off his hand and begins to outline his plan of campaign. Farley half listens. The rat's intelligence is mentioned a few times, his razor sharp memory is complimented. Something about the rat having picked out his travel route and how most likely he's set himself up in the attic. ‘Would you have heard any sounds to that effect yourself?'

‘I suppose. Thought it was cats or pigeons pecking at the tiles. Then I thought I might just be imagining it.'

‘Sounds like our boys, alright.'

Farley looks over at Uncle Cal, notices he's wearing his good crombie carefully brushed, his scarf, his little pork-pie hat, his best suit showing through the chink of the opened coat. He vaguely wonders why he's all dressed up and why too he's wearing so many clothes.

‘The rat, you see, will have worked out his area of transit. Food transit, that is.'

‘O right, yea,' Farley says.

‘And my guess is,' the ratcatcher pauses here and with the finger he had moments ago used to display the rat shit, lifts a long curl of blond hair behind his ears, ‘he comes from the attic, down through the walls, in behind the sink there, along this wall and in the back way to
that
press.' He flicks the press open and Uncle Cal jumps. Then he puts his hand in and takes out a packet of rice, beans, barley – some sort of white stuff anyway.

‘See these rips in the plastic? Only a rat'd have teeth that size.' He lets out a gentle sigh. Farley can't work out if it's respect or envy he hears in his voice.

‘Ah-ha! Just as I thought,' the ratcatcher continues, ‘run marks.'

‘Run marks?' Cal asks.

‘Yea, look here, on the walls of the press.' He steps back to clear a view although neither of them avail of it. ‘Sort of oily stains that rub off his body as he brushes past the walls. I say he, but of course…'

‘O Jaysus,' Cal groans.

He's at his hair again, back behind the ears, tossing it away from his shoulders. ‘Now. What I'll do is this – lay a trap in the press there, another couple in the attic. I'm going to pull up a few floorboards there, lash down a bit of poison. And I'll be back in a few days.'

‘A few days?' Uncle Cal says. ‘What do you mean a few days?'

‘If you just let me finish – I'll be back in a few days
unless
you hear anything, in which case you phone me and I'll be back pronto – as the card here says.' He reaches into his pocket and comes out with a card stuck between his two latexed fingers. ‘It shouldn't take any more than three days. After which time they begin to stink,' he smugly adds.

‘They?' Uncle Cal says.

‘Could be a lone ranger, could be a whole colony. Who knows? Anyway, the attic?' He picks up his bag and his nozzle and makes for the door.

Farley says, ‘There's a stepladder on the landing.'

‘Won't be necessary,' he says with another flick of his yellow hair.

Uncle Cal and himself are left standing with the filthy kitchen table between them. ‘You off somewhere?' Farley asks just to make conversation.

‘Into town, to see Nixon, a few pints after.'

‘Who's Nixon?'

‘Who's…? The president of America, you fuckin moron.'

‘O, I didn't know he was—'

‘You don't know what's going on – do you? You have your mother up the wall. And only for that nice woman next door – what's her name?'

‘Mrs Carroll.'

‘Yea, only for her you'd probably be found dead, eaten be rats. Rats for fuck sake, Farley. I tell you, even in the worst days of the civil war, days when we were on the run like animals – we lived cleaner than this.'

‘I know.'

‘And Jackie says you told him fuck off when he called down the other week.'

‘Did I?'

‘Yea, not that I blame you. He should be told fuck off more often. Did you see his beard? What the fuck's he like?'

‘A poet?' Farley suggests.

‘A knacker more like. Anyway, I'm off.'

Farley follows him into the hall.

‘Look, I have a message for you,' Cal says over his shoulder. ‘From Slowey.'

‘Why didn't he just ring me up?'

‘Because your phone's been cut off – in case you didn't know. He says, you better get your arse in gear and back into work or you can kiss that same arse goodbye to your job.'

‘I'm sick, I have a doctor's cert.'

‘A cert from Halpin? Don't make me laugh. Listen, I could go down to that quack this minute and he'd put me on maternity leave if I asked him to. You're not sick, son, you're grieving, we all know that. But you have to get on with things. You just have to do it. Are you still drinking?'

‘No. I stopped a couple of days ago.'

Uncle Cal lifts one eyebrow.

‘Really, I just couldn't stomach any more. I'm finished with it now.'

‘Take my advice, keep it that way. At least knock it on the head for a while. I know now what I'm talking about. It might seem like a solution, but it only makes matters worse. You have to go through what you have to go through – know what I'm saying? And nobody, I mean nobody, likes a drink more than me. But not at times like this. Now, I'll tell Slowey you'll be in next Monday, that'll give you time to get back on your feet, clean up this gaff, get rid of your pals in the attic.'

‘Monday?'

‘Yea, that's a week from today. Don't tell me you don't even know what fuckin day of the week it is?'

‘Ah, I do.'

‘Yea, of course you do.'

The ratcatcher comes slowly down the stairs, clearing his throat. ‘Right, that's me done. That'll be twenty quid so.'

‘Twenty?!' Cal says. ‘Are you fuckin jokin or what?'

‘Would you rather the rats?' he says.

‘No, we wouldn't. Fix him up there, Farley.'

‘And cash, if you don't mind,' the ratcatcher says. ‘I'm not taking any more cheques till this strike's settled.'

‘I haven't got twenty,' Farley says. ‘What strike?'

The ratcatcher looks at him. ‘You serious? The bank strike, it's been on weeks now.'

‘You mean it's still not settled?'

‘He's been away,' Cal says. ‘Needs to catch up. Only just back in fact – and that's how come there's been rats.'

Uncle Cal puts his hand in his pocket and hands an envelope to Farley.

‘What's that?'

‘From Slowey. And if you had any idea the trouble he had getting that cash.'

Farley picks two tenners out and the ratcatcher reaches for them.

‘Ahahah,' Cal says, swiping the money from Farley and laying it on the hall table. He points at the money and steps back. ‘Don't go near him. Don't,' he warns. The ratcatcher gives him a sulky look and lifts the money.

‘I'm not the one with rats in me house,' he pouts. ‘O, and it mightn't be a bad idea either to give this place a good cleaning.'

The ratcatcher leaves and Cal buttons up his coat, settles his hat, plumps up the knot in his tie. ‘Of course, everyone's drinking like fishes now – the pubs are the new banks, only place you can cash a cheque but only if you keep a full table – know what I'm sayin? Hungry fuckers. Hope half of them bounce when the banks open again.' He looks in the hall mirror. ‘How old do I look?' he says.

‘I don't know – how old are you?'

‘Seventy-two.'

‘You look great for that.'

‘Yea, I know, I take care of myself, that's why. Nutrition, that's what
it's all about. Nutrition and takin it handy enough with the gargle. No smokin, that's another tip. Know what I could really do with though?'