Cold Eye of Heaven, The (23 page)

‘Unless she was sacked,' Conroy said.

‘Do you think she was sacked?'

‘Forget about if she was sacked or not!' Jacobs said

‘Ah, leave him, can't you?' Conroy said then. ‘Can't he go out with the girl if he wants? It won't change anything, he's not going to give up his whole future for some dolly, you know.'

‘I can't go out with her anyway, she's in Mosney. I don't even know where she lives. Jesus! And I'm not sure of her name, either.'

‘Chapelizod – she'd be easy enough to find,' Conroy said.

‘Will you stop encouraging him?' Jacobs said. ‘I'm telling you now. My uncle.'

‘What about your uncle?'

‘My uncle now has—'

‘Is it Marita – her name?' Conroy said. ‘Or Marian, somethin like that?'

The group split in half at the corner of O'Connell Street: the boys heading south for the ballroom; him and Jackie northways to wherever the fuck he is now.

Crossing over the road into Cavendish Row, Jackie had said nothing. And heading up Parnell Square East, he'd said nothing again. He'd waited in fact till they were halfway down the basement steps of a house in Denmark Street before opening his cakehole at all. And then, ‘She did get the sack by the way.'

‘Who? What? Here – how do you know?'

‘I know her pal's brother. Remember the little blondie one? She was sacked too.'

Jackie lifted his hand and rapped on the door. ‘O, and another thing, she is in her arse from Chapelizod.'

‘No?'

‘Ballyer more like. The Avenue, so far as I'm aware.'

The door opened then and they'd stepped into the fug. Jackie, dispatching him over here, had said, ‘I'll join you in a jiffy.'

A lot of jiffys have passed since then.

‘Rain!' the poet's voice bleats out from the shadows. Farley waits for the rest of the line but nothing arrives until the word ‘
rain
' again, this time it trembles on a note.

He thinks now of Conroy and Jacobs disappearing down O'Connell Street, Jacobs leaning back on Conroy's scooter, hands clutching onto the sides of the seat, and the swerve of them under the trees; full of themselves and the dance ahead. And the trees full too with frocks of leaves. Trees, frocks and the smell of summer. If he was writing a poem, now that's what it would be about.

Another pause, longer than usual, and Farley feels his belly warm up with hope. A few seconds of unbearable hesitation while people glance at each other. At his table one of the blokes lifts his hands then pauses. And Farley feels like saying to him, ‘Go on, clap for fuck sake, clap and he might stop because if Beardy claps, it means it's all over because he has a look about him of a leader of sheep. Then there'll be an interval. They hardly expect you to listen to any more than three of these on the
trot, without some sort of respite. An interval, and he'll be out of here.' But the poet slips into another verse and Beardy's hands return to the table.

He can't see Jack anywhere. He's not at the wall, at none of the tables, even over his shoulder by the entrance – he's nowhere to be seen. Interval or no interval, after this poem he's off. Because otherwise he's going to have to put his own hands around his own throat and strangle himself out of his misery. He tries a sip of the plonk and feels his face wince all over. He notes the two beards are having no such problem and is worried now they're maybe going to put the hammer on him again for bottle of piss number two.

He feels a bit sick now; his throat thick and dry as if his gullet is lined with felt cloth. He wouldn't say no to a bottle of minerals. He'd give anything in fact to be standing on the balcony of the ballroom, guzzling it back, feeling it fizz into his nostrils and skulk down into his throat. The floor below packed with the twirl of girls, the smell of perfume and hair oil; a different kind of sweat than the musty bang that's in here. And the band belting it out; movement and brass and life, and above all people who know how to act their age.

Australia comes into his head – not the country but all the aggravation that's been leading up to it. Ma doing her nut. ‘A
garage
?' she'd said when she found out. ‘Do you mean to tell me you're going to leave your good job, go all the way out to the other end of the world to pour petrol into other people's cars – is that what you're telling me?'

She was sitting at the dining-room table, the contents of the large envelope he'd stashed under his bed spread out before her, every scrap of paper to do with his future; letters from the embassy; his post office book with the few quid he's been saving this past year; his resignation letter for Mr Caine. And the trade catalogue Jacobs' uncle had sent showing pictures of the town with its peculiar-shaped shops and tan-faced merchants and the page marked with the photograph of the garage where he and Jacobs would work; slanted rows of big cars on the forecourt, in this town called Wilcannia on a river named Darling. ‘A
garage
?'

‘It's not that kind of a garage, Ma, it sells cars. I'm going to train to be a car salesman.'

‘But you can't even drive!'

‘Uncle Cal is teaching me.'

‘He never said.'

‘I asked him not to until I'd a chance to tell you myself.'

‘O, thanks very much and I wonder when that might have been!'

She sat pulling at her fingers like she was trying to unscrew them off her hand. Her face at once hurt and angry and her head loose on her neck, the way it tends to when she is building up to losing her temper. ‘I had to find the envelope under your bed—'

‘I was going to tell you.'

‘Or were you just going to disappear?'

‘I was waiting. And what were you doing rooting in my room anyway?'

‘I wasn't rooting, I was coming up the stairs and happened to spot the envelope sticking out from under the bed and I thought it might have been more letters from Mr Caine that you'd forgotten to give me – not for the first time either.'

‘Once, I forgot. Years ago.'

‘All the money I forked out for your eduction. All the years I've sat at this bloody table typing letters for solicitors too cheap to pay for a secretary. Four pound a year your school cost me – do you have any idea what sort of money that is for a widow? Because let me tell you, your father didn't leave it for you, he had better things to be doing with his money.'

‘What? What are you talking about?'

‘And now you're just going to feck off as if – well, now. You're a revelation I must say. Well. Who do you remind us of, I wonder?'

‘Look, Ma, I'll pay you back.'

‘Ah, that's not what I mean and you know it.'

‘I just want to—'

‘When I think of the people who'd love your job, the opportunity.'

‘Ma, I'll still be a clerk in twenty years' time.'

‘O well, excuse me. It was good enough for your father.'

‘Yea, and look how he was.'

It was brewing up for an almighty row and then suddenly she'd started to cry.

‘Look, Ma, they mightn't even take me. I just want to try something, you know, I want to, I don't know, to—'

‘Go on, say it. To get away from me.'

‘Ma, what do you have to say that for?'

Jackie had come in then, swinging his duffel bag off his back and onto the couch. ‘What's up?'

‘He's going to Australia, that's what.'

‘Yea? When's this?' Jack had asked as if she'd said he was going to Crumlin, then he'd sat on the edge of the sofa, pulled out a record and started to study the sleeve of it.

‘Not for a while yet. That's if they let me in at all.'

‘And what'll you do there?'

‘Jacobs – you know – his uncle has a car showroom, in New South Wales and he's sponsoring me and Jacobs to go out there because, you see, the motor industry it's really taken off and—'

‘Jacobs?' Ma muttered. ‘What sort of a name is that?'

‘Ah, it's not his real name, Ma, it's a joke.'

‘A joke?'

‘About a packet of biscuits, from years ago, it's nothing. Anyway, his uncle has this garage—'

‘Well, what is his real name then – Arrowroot?'

Jack laughed. ‘Very good, Ma,' he said, lifting the sleeve of his record like a communion host. ‘Guess what this is? Benny Goodman. The double album. Carnegie Hall
Nineteen Thirty-Eight
. Got a loan of it from a chap in college. Gene Krupa's on it, Harry James – the lot. Talk about ace!' He was tapping his foot and nodding his head as if he could already hear the music.

‘All the same, it can't be much of a place,' he said after a minute. ‘I mean, if they can't even find salesmen of their own. Or maybe it's just not that much of a job.'

Farley had felt like planting him. ‘No, no, it's not that. He prefers to work with his own. See he doesn't like Australians.'

‘O yea, and why's that I wonder?'

‘How would you know?'

‘There's a few of them in college – they're a pain, nobody likes them. They don't even like each other, if you ask me.'

They were punching him from both sides, pointing their questions at him, pecking him with their doubts and their unspoken secret, superior knowledge, their ability to express their thoughts. And he couldn't seem to explain what he wanted to explain, to get the words to come out right. In the end he'd had to get out. He'd opened the front door and then changed his mind and decided to go upstairs instead. Obviously they'd thought he had gone out. At least, he'd heard Jackie say, ‘You're worse, Ma, upsetting yourself – it'll never happen. You know what he's like. He hasn't got the moxie.'

‘The what?'

‘You know, the wherewithal. All cod that fella is. All cod and no chips.'

A few minutes later he'd heard the tick-tacking of her typewriter, and behind it the triumphant mayhem of Bennie Goodman's orchestra.

Farley hopes someone asks him about it tonight. He'd show them alright about wherewithal and moxie. He'd show them all cod. He hopes they ask right in front of Jackie too, because tonight he's more than prepared. He's read the catalogue, cover to cover; he's read all the embassy literature. Australia. Motors. Fellas are always interested in that kind of thing. He's even torn the page out with the picture of Jacobs' uncle on it. ‘Actually,' he'll be able to say, ‘I happen to have a picture with me – want to see? That man there, he'll be my employer and that car he's leaning on – well, that's the Holden, a bestseller in Australia you know – can't get them out of the factory quick enough.'

And he'd let them pass the page around, and watch as their eyes lingered on the car; the robust bonnet, the chrome bar across the front
grinning out; the logo like a badge of importance beneath it. And they could stuff their poetry and their jazz and their coffee talk in their sissy Grafton Street cafes. And they could stuff too their Benny Goodmans and their Gene Krupas and all those other oulfellas they thought so great, they could stuff them along with their pissy wine. Because none of them,
none
would ever go as far as Australia and none of them would ever have a car as good as a Holden.

‘Rain' has suddenly stopped; the poet himself confirms it, by tilting his ear into the spotlight and giving a tip of his head and Farley finds himself bashing his hands together; if not for the poem then for the magnificent Holden purring through the dusty streets of Western Australia, little sprays of sand in its wake. He lifts himself off the chair and tips the man beside him on the arm to indicate he wants to get out. An older man has stepped under the spotlight, a touch of the brigadier about him; ronnie overlip, cravat at throat, one hand half-slipped into the pocket of a checked blazer. The man beside Farley pulls himself up and leans back to make way. Farley moves to edge past them, already muttering his ‘sorry now sorrys', when the brigadier speaks. ‘The next poem is by a young man. This may very well be the first time you'll have heard his name, but I promise you it won't be the last. And we are looking forward to the publication of his first volume which will be coming out in the spring. So if you could please welcome John Grainger.'

John Grainger? Jackie? ‘Fuck!' Farley hears himself say out loud, and sits down again.

He feels like laughing out loud when he sees his brother up there; like they were kids again and Jackie had got up for a dare. Reading out of his tepee of light; Adam's apple as big as a fist, pimples zinging out of his face. The page – not a letter after all – gently shakes in his hand and Farley feels nervous for him then, can barely look. The poem is called ‘Death in Spring' and he's not sure what it's about, and he suspects Jackie may not be that sure either. But it sounds fuckin great. The words roll together, go off on waves, roll back again. And you can see what he's saying, even if you haven't a clue what that is. It's like the jazz last week, except more sullen.

Jack gets the biggest clap of the evening and Farley turns to Beardy number one. ‘That's my kid brother, up there,' he says. Then he looks the other way, to a man and a woman. ‘I was just saying there, that's my kid brother. Good – isn't he?'

The woman nods and smiles. The man says, yes.

By the time he gets up Harcourt Street the dance is almost over; early leavers already bailing out. Two plain-faced youngones linked to each other wander past giving out shite about everything; the music, the state of the fellas, the girls nothin but common tinkers squirting hairspray all over the Ladies'. A couple in the doorway of O'Hagan's solicitors are having a row. He gets to the ballroom – doors closed, just as expected. On the kerb outside a bloke astride a Lambretta scooter smokes a cigarette and absentmindely pats his quiff. Farley bends to the glass, sees the hands of the cashier through the half-moon window of her box office, fluttering with ticket receipts. He raps on the door, but if she hears him she doesn't let on. He takes a florin out of his pocket and ticks it off the glass; the bouncer looks up, shakes his head and looks away. Too late. He can imagine the boys inside; Conroy stuck into some youngone giving her the sugar and spice treatment. Jacobs' bony shoulders turning like a butterfly screw while he's doing the twist. Soon the last desperate dance; the smash and grab. Then the shuffle to the cloakroom for coats, or for the luckier ones, the shrugging for space in the jacks mirror before the walk home.