Cold Eye of Heaven, The (22 page)

‘I didn't call.'

‘O, that's right, you were away. Where were you anyway?'

‘Well, I—'

‘Thought so. Inside – weren't you?'

‘What?'

‘You know, prison. The Joy – was it?'

‘No.'

‘Don't tell me – Portlaoise? Limerick then? You look like a head that's been in Limerick. Ah now, you don't have to be ashamed with me,' he says, coyly fiddling a curl of hair between his rat-scented fingers. ‘I do a lot of work in prisons – teeming with rats, most of them do be. You get to know – you know?'

‘Right,' Farley says.

‘And I tell you something else.'

‘Yea?'

‘Some of the nicest people you'd ever meet.'

Farley nods.

The ratcatcher straightens up, holding the butt of the cigarette high. ‘Where will I put this? Does it make any difference says you?' He goes over to the sink and flicks it in on top of the dishes.

‘I don't know who you had mindin the gaff while you were away, but tell you what, if it was my gaff I'd slit their fuckin throats for them. Good luck to you now.'

‘Yea, good luck,' Farley says.

He turns on the radio and waits for a hint of the date. The bells of the angelus growl into the kitchen. He searches out a pen from the drawer by the sink, then on the back of an envelope pulled from a pile starts making a list.
Plastic sacks
.
Cleaning cloths
.
Disinfectant
. He can't think of what else he might need for a clean-up on this scale, nor does he fancy the idea of going into a shop and asking for advice: ‘See, I haven't lifted a finger to clean the house since the wife died.' (O, you poor man, here sit down and I'll make you a sandwich.)
Scrubbing brush
.
Washing powder
.
Stuff for the dishes
.

Martina had looked after all that sort of thing; working and reworking
the house and the garden like a woman with a compulsion. Or a woman with no kids, as his mother had often pointed out.

The angelus clangs off into the distance and is immediately replaced by the news in Irish: all gobbeldy-gook to him bar the occasional ‘Nixon' popping out of the jumble.

Bleach for the jacks
.
A mop
.
Tea cloths
.

He lifts his head from the list, his eye catching on the plastic sack of rubbish in the corner. Bumps through black-sheened skin. It makes him wonder about the mother rat, the babies inside her and if they all died when she died or if there were a few agonizing minutes, while the poison filtered through, of squirming and wriggling around in her belly. He feels sick now. Sick and childish and alone. Like a boy who finds himself locked into a dark school after all the other boys have gone home. A heave in the back alley of his throat; a long, dry retch: the drink pulling out of his system. He takes in a few deep, sour breaths – his own, or maybe the kitchen's – until the nausea passes away. His eye then falls on the Clery's bag. He goes to it, lifts it and looks inside. A brown paper package inside. Martina's – it would have to be. He never had a parcel sent to him in his life. Farley takes it out, his hand shaking slightly. An English postmark. He opens it up and finds another package inside bandaged in plastic. There's a covering letter but he can't bring himself to read it properly, darting through half-sentences and isolated words.
Dear Mrs Grainger
…
enclosed… catalogue… wish you… future… growth
.

He begins to unwind the plastic from the packet which turns out to be made up of more wrapping than content. Eventually he gets to the heart of it; several packets of seeds held in bunches by elastic bands. He flicks through. On the front of each sachet, a picture of a blooming confection in full and glorious technicolour. The names strange – even more so in English than Latin.

Farley goes to the kitchen window; through the smeared glass an un -recognizable garden, unruly and full of neglect. He stuffs the seed packets into his pockets and goes outside.

On the air, a perfume of impending decay. There's a slight chill
run ning through it, like the end or the start of a season. The garden path is no longer visible. The grass almost knee-high. He wades through, feels the bite of a nettle sting on his hand, a prick of thistle on his opposite wrist. When he reaches the back wall he makes a parting in the long grass, then presses it down and stamps on it. Here he gets down on his knees. The flower beds by the wall are stuffed with bunches of growth bursting out of themselves. In between are straggles of sinewy foliage. He can't always tell the weeds from the flowers, the good from the bad; what should be killed off; what could be saved. In the end he picks on one area and gets stuck in. It's like pulling hair out of a head, he thinks, strand by strand, grooming away, until a beautiful patch of bald brown earth appears. He rips open a sachet of seeds, sprinkles a circle of yellow specks around this alopecia of soil. When the packet is empty he stands and comes back into the long grass. With his teeth he begins to open the rest of the sachets: African Bride, Honeywort, Love-in-a-Mist. He streels the seeds randomly over the garden – wherever they fall they fall. Farley turns in a circle, sees the sky, the top bedroom windows of the houses behind him, the crows on the crust of the rooftops before him. He sees the rough thick boundary wall between him and the street outside and the black apostrophe of a cat on Mrs Carroll's fence. He turns east, towards the city; west towards the sunset; north to the Park; south for the sea. He faces his own house, its windows and guttering. He turns away from it, then faces it again.

FOR THE SECOND TIME
in a fortnight he finds himself in one of these basement dives, surrounded by sweaty bastards. Last time there'd been jazz and women in slacks. Now it's just poems and blokes wearing beards. The poet, so-called, stands at the top in the spotlight of a dodgy-looking bulb that's strung up in one corner. The beam of light, slightly off-kilter, means his head stays out of sight and his voice full of eked-out emotion, is coming from the shadow. This may well be for effect but even if it's not, Farley isn't complaining – bad enough having to listen without having to look at him as well. The poem is called ‘Rain' and seems to have something to do with the soul of Africa, or Africa in the soul of some down-at-heel under a bridge in London. It's a poem of few words and many pauses. He wonders if the rest of the punters, with their angled jaws and frowning foreheads, can really be as interested as they seem to be? Or is it a case of one half of them pretending to know what it's all about, while the other half is biding time till it's their turn to get into the spotlight and spout?

It could be of course that he just doesn't get it – because according to Jackie that's his problem with most things: politics, poetry, women, horses. ‘You just don't get it – do you?' His brother's favourite dismissal.

One thing he definitely doesn't get is this – why Jackie asked him to come here in the first place, if he intended leaving him on his tod the minute they got through the door? Because he's been here at this table for at least twenty minutes, an upturned beer crate branding his arse, and still no sign of Jackie. He's clubbed in for the wine because two blokes sitting beside him had asked him to. But the smell of it now is enough. Last time there'd been bottles of Macardles and a piano. Conroy and Jacobs had been with him too, all in flying form after the cure from the previous night drinking at that party in Butlin's. The music had been alright too, once you got the hang of it and realized that those little outbursts of reverent applause didn't necessarily mean the song had come to an end. He'd liked the way the musicians had worked on a tune, running off with it, bending it into these peculiar shapes, then bringing it back completely changed, and yet somehow the same. And he'd liked too the girl with a voice like Kay Starr who'd got up out of the audience and sang ‘Volare'. It had reminded him of the youngone in Butlin's; the redcoat with the black hair. The Kay Starr girl had sung a different version of course, slow and slightly sleazy. But the girl in Butlin's had sung it in Italian. He wonders again what happened to her after; how much trouble she got into and if maybe she got the sack.

His eyes are beginning to stream. He squints into a cave of mauve fag smoke and tries to swallow a chain of yawns. Last time – the jazz night – his eyes had been streaming too, but that was because he'd been laughing that much; mostly at the expense of Jackie's college pals. At least you
could
laugh. And talk too, between songs, or numbers – as Jackie's mates called them. He could talk about anything now after the few pints in Mooney's. The drink unscrewing his tongue. The Redcoat girl had said it to him; ‘God, you don't wear yourself out talkin, do you?' But he'd talk to her now, if she was here, he'd have plenty to say alright. About the night in Butlin's. About thinking of her since, any time he hears that song that never seems to be off the radio. He'd tell her things too; about the driving lessons he's been taking from Uncle Cal – he could make that funny while at the same time let her know he's a go-ahead bloke. He could tell her about Conroy's
bird being up the pole – although he'd have to think of a nicer way to put it. He could ask her all about herself, what it's like being a redcoat, what she does for the rest of the year and how come she knows the words of ‘Volare' in Italian? He could tell her bits about himself then; his job, his brother, the jazz session last week. O, and of course, about Australia. He keeps forgetting about Australia.

The poem trudges on. Outside, somewhere overground, is a warm August evening and Conroy and Jacobs are out there in the middle of it. They should be at the ballroom by now; probably in the queue, sucking peppermints and eyeing up the talent. If they were here he'd be choking by now, trying to hold down the laughing. Conroy mightn't be the soundest skin, certainly not as reliable as Jacobs, but he's the funniest. Conroy would knock a laugh out of his own funeral.

He'd done his best to persuade them to come along. Earlier in Mooney's when Jackie had gone out to the bog, he'd even begged. But the boys wouldn't budge.

‘Ah, go on,' he'd said, ‘it'll be a laugh.'

‘You must be bleedin joking me,' Conroy said, ‘after stewing in that other pot last week – what was it called again?'

‘The Cat's Tail.'

Conroy dipped his face into his pint and came back up with a comical tip of cream on the end of his nose. ‘The cat's hole, more like,' he'd said and Jacobs' head nearly fell on the ground with the laughing.

‘Ah, go on, just for an hour?'

‘Listen, pal, this could be one of my last nights of freedom, so you know – no offence, but get stuffed.'

‘I don't want to go on me own,' he'd said.

‘You're not on your own, Jackie's with you.'

‘Ah, you know what I mean.'

‘I do know what you mean,' Conroy said, ‘you'll be stuck with a load of snotty fuckers who think they're the only ones ever read a book, who believe, sincerely believe, they know more than you, me and him put together. And you'll probably have to listen to them prove that to you as
well as to each other. All night. And I sympathize, really I do. But we're still not fuckin going.'

‘I don't know why he wants me there anyway,' Farley said, ‘it's not as if we didn't make a show of him last week.'

‘What a bunch of saps!' Conroy said, throwing his head back. ‘What a bunch of thoroughbred dopes.'

‘It's because you're going away,' Jacobs said. ‘He probably just wants to knock around with you a bit more, that's all. Look, why don't you go in for an hour and then make an excuse. Follow us down. You'll get in if you don't leave it too late.'

‘Anyway,' Conroy continued, suddenly morose, ‘I don't know what you're complaining about. You'll be in Australia soon enough. You both will – lucky bastards.'

‘O yea, Australia.'

He'd forgotten all about Australia.

When they'd come out of the pub Jackie had hung back. At first Farley'd presumed he was lighting a fag, though a second glance had shown him turned to the wall, reading a letter. The air and the light had hit him, and he'd heard himself asking about the girl. ‘That bird?' he'd said, ‘that bird, you know that youngone we met in Butlin's last week – the redcoat?'

‘Which one? Sure they all had red coats on them,' Conroy said, his eyes startled from the drink.

‘Black hair, she sang that Italian song, you know? From Chapelizod, I think, she said. You know the one who came up to us in the lounge earlier.'

‘O God now, let me see, let me see,' Conroy had said with a wink for Jacobs, ‘can I remember – was she a hatchet-faced one with an arse the size of the back of a bus?'

‘What?' Farley asked. ‘No, not at all, she was—'

‘O, hold on now, I have her – the dumpy little one that looked a bit like Jimmy Durante?'

‘Ah, what are you being so smart about? I'm only asking do you think she got the sack after?'

‘What do you fuckin care if she did? You're off to Australia.'

‘I know. I just wondered.'

‘Don't go complicating things now,' Jacobs said, taking a sidelong step in to him, ‘remember, if my papers are already through, then yours won't be long after.'

‘
What?
You don't think I'd… Jesus as if I'd—'

‘Well, now, I'm just saying like, my uncle's gone to a lot of trouble getting you sorted and all and—'

‘What do you think I am? As if I'd—'

‘Just sayin now. You don't want to end up like Conroy here.'

‘You shut up,' said Conroy.

‘Amn't I learning to drive and everything? So I'll be all ready for action. I can't wait to go, I can't. Anyway, she's in Butlin's, isn't she? She'll be there till the end of September, won't she? I'll be gone by the time she's back in Dublin again.'