Cold Eye of Heaven, The (26 page)

He goes out to the kitchen and his breakfast is waiting; tea in a big blue-striped mug, a back rasher buckled across a slice of bread. ‘Remind me now to mooch a couple of eggs from Wiggy this morning,' Granda
says. Then he takes a mug of tea in to Gran. When he comes back he sits staring into the empty fire grate while he waits for the tea to darken. After a couple more minutes he holds his mug out to Farley to pour – his hands, he says, are not the best this morning, must be all the rain. Farley pours him a sample drop, waits for Granda to check its colour, then continues to pour.

Granda Bill reaches into his back pocket; a silver flask twists into his hand. He pours a tawny slug of it into the tea and goes at it in short swift sips. ‘I suppose I better shave in case any of the girls are around,' he says, ‘we'll be indoors today – luggage day. Don't forget.'

By girls he means nuns and Farley knows this is a sort of a joke not meant in any way to be disrespectful, but it thrills through him like a greedy sin; the thought of all that flesh under cover. Bellies, backsides, diddies, whatever that contraption is they have down below. He feels him -self blush, his Adam's apple swells up in his throat. He's afraid Granda Bill will guess what he's just been thinking or what he's so often thinking these days. But Granda is already on his feet, face turned to the shaving mirror perched on the mantel. One bloodshot eye peeping out, he begins to foam up and the skin on his face, crushed with wrinkles, disappears under curls of lather. His nose, when he pulls it up, gives him the face of a garden gnome. Beside him, facing out, is a photograph of a young Granda Bill in full uniform, bar and badged, a Sam Browne belt across his chest. And there isn't a whole lot of difference between the old and the new, apart from the ronnie over the younger lip, the clearer expression in the eyes. He is not alone in the photograph; another soldier is standing beside him. The other soldier is a more handsome man, a good four inches taller. He's looking straight into the camera, whereas Granda Bill is looking away. The other man is Gran's first husband; Granda Grainger. The other man is Da's real da.

Gran once said they didn't have film stars as such in the days before the Great War, but if they did, Granda Grainger could have been one. He was easily the best-looking man she'd ever seen, on or off the screen. She told them that one day when Granda Bill was at work, taking the
photograph down and holding it low in both hands. ‘But of course,' she had said then, ‘looks aren't everything.'

In the mirror Granda Bill pats his old face dry, then carries the bowl outside. Farley looks around for yesterday's paper, spots it there, folded on the armchair, racing page facing out. He promised to bring Concilia another newspaper today, but he knows it can't be this one; not with Granda's equations like a secret code in the margin and Jackie's selections and his own wild guesses marked there for today's race meetings. Granda says there's nothing better for taking your mind off your troubles than picking out a few horses over a cup of bedtime cocoa. As soon as they'd finish work today, he promised, they'd come home for a quick wash and then they'd all go down to the pub to listen to the racing on the radio. They could eat their sandwiches there; they could even have a long glass of lemonade. Farley likes the names of the racecourses: Lanark, Manchester, Folkestone, Baldoyle; the names of the horses too: Soubrette, Devil's Dance, Dancing Flame – the way the names are pulled out of the names of the mother and father, a little something from each. When they were younger, Jackie and himself used to play this game of what their names would be if they were horses. Cranky Clatter and Face of Boiled Shite were the only two he can remember now. He gets bored with the arithmetic end of things; the talk of handicaps and draws, the form and forecast. And anyway, since he got the holiday job helping out in the racecourse stables, he can't bring himself to believe that any amount of thinking and totting could make a racehorse do something he doesn't want to do.

Granda comes back with a shirt collar in his hand; ducks his head and begins to fumble. ‘Do you want me to do that for you?' Farley asks.

Granda Bill nods and sits down. Farley stands at the back of the chair.

‘You see—' Granda begins to explain and Farley stops him.

‘It's alright, I have it.'

He knows it hurts Granda to talk these days or that at least he only seems to cry whenever he stops keeping busy and begins to speak at length. It's as if the sound of his own voice fills him with sadness. In a way
it puzzles him why Granda should cry so much, not because Da wasn't his real son, but because hardly anyone else in the family seems to have shed any tears. Apart from himself, but he wasn't really crying for Da. Ma might cry for all he knows, because he hasn't seen her since she went off for her rest a couple of weeks ago. And before he went back to Birmingham Uncle Cal gave himself and Jackie permission to cry. ‘It's alright to cry when somebody dies, cry all you like, boys.' But even though Uncle Cal said that, for the whole week he was home during and after the funeral, they didn't see him cry one tear for his dead half-brother.

Farley cried though. Farley cried on and off for over a week and men patted his arm and women gave him powdery hugs. He cried when they told him, ‘It's not looking good, son,' and he knew he'd have to cancel his trip with the cycling club. And he cried when they put the pennies on Da's eyelids because he knew the miracle he'd been praying for wasn't going to happen. He cried the next day when people were dropping in and out of the house and he thought of all the lads crowding the platform of Westland Row station. And a few hours later when Ma sent him out to make yet another cup of tea, and he thought of them all bobbing across the Irish Sea. When they took the coffin out and when they slid it into the hearse; when they took it out again and carried it into the church. When they carried it out of the church and put it back in the hearse. And every time he consulted the map he kept in his brain and wondered what are they doing and where are they now – Newhaven, Dieppe, Rouen? As they lowered the coffin into the ground he reckoned on Paris, and sobbed.

Granda Bill has gone quiet in himself these past weeks. Farley misses talking to him because when you get him on good form nobody tells a story like Granda Bill. Stories about the Great War. Stories about other things. In school teachers often warn them not to go pestering old soldiers. ‘They don't like to discuss these things,' was what Master Rowe used to say, ‘and it's not up to us to open old wounds.' But with Granda Bill there was never that problem; he'd talk about the war till his head fell off,
about the rats and the hunger and boots rotting off his feet. About the noise and the death and the smell of guts. He'd tell stories about Granda Grainger too, his old friend, that Farley used to believe, until Jackie said he had to be making half of them up because nobody could be that much of a hero, or that funny, or that clever. But Farley can't think of Granda Bill as telling lies. He just borrowed the best bits from all his comrades and gave them to Granda Grainger to make him look better; the man whose door he would knock on one day to break the bad news to his widow, the widow he would later snare for himself.

He settles the collar down and helps Granda put on his jacket. The suit is too heavy for summer, but it's as well to look respectable, Granda says, in case Mother Battleaxe is about the place, and in anyway it's an old enough suit so it doesn't really matter if there's a bit of damage done. He takes his Fusilier pin off the lapel and puts it into his pocket.

‘Some of them oul nuns,' he says, ‘do be fierce nationalistic.'

He has names for all the nuns; Mother Bernadette is Mother Battleaxe, Sister Ukaria is Sister Eureka, Sister Eugene is Sister Egghead, Jarleth is Garlic. He goes on about the suit for a few more minutes while he winds his watch and locates his snuffbox and checks the keys on a bunch hang -ing by the door. He's talking so much that Farley is afraid he might start crying again.

It's still dark enough when they get outside and because for once it's not raining Granda Bill says they might as well walk the short cut, because driving all the way round by the North Road would nearly take you as long. In a way Farley's sorry they won't be in the car because it would keep Granda distracted while he weaselled in a few of the questions that are stacked inside his head.

The first thing he'd ask is if Granda had a word with Ma yet, about his leaving school and getting a job. The next thing he'd ask about is the funeral – if Granda Bill had known any of those people who had shuffled across the front row, offering hand after hand, under a long blur of faces.
Or back in the house, the man who had called for silence and said he'd been asked to say a few words – just who had asked him? And who was he in anyway? And what about the woman at the back of the chapel with the feathery grey hat like a dead pigeon on her head – who was she? And what was she crying for and why hadn't she come back to the house?

Farley senses the frailty of the old man beside him, the grief that would crack like a shell if you touched it, and decides today is not the day to go asking questions.

They walk on. He can see Venus twitching in the still black sky and it makes him think of Concilia, the story she'd told him about borrowing the telescope from the science lab and smuggling it up to the music cells. And how every night when the convent is in darkness she sneaks up to watch Jupiter. Jupiter in the southern sky. The light around it delicate and flecked. ‘Like a jellyfish,' she said, ‘if you know what I mean?' He nodded even though he didn't know anything except the sound of her voice, the hard whiteness of her teeth, the blue-grey marble of her eyes. That was the first time he'd met her and it had all happened so quickly he hadn't had time to wonder.

He'd just come out of the second-floor dormitory where he'd been sent to fetch Granda's tools. And there she was, waiting on the flight of stairs above. She didn't say hello or show any surprise at a youngfella wandering around the dormitory on his own. She just started straight off about Jupiter and the telescope. Her face encased in its wimple had seemed like some sort of a moon. She said her name was Concilia, then she asked him if he could bring her a newspaper. It wouldn't have to be an up-to-date paper, any newspaper would do. Although not too old either, not months old anyhow – and she only wanted it at all if he could promise to keep it a secret.

He'd agreed on both counts. In return she offered to show him Jupiter. A sky, lightly clouded was best, she said. That was what was known as ‘a night of perfect seeing'. She could leave the side gate open for him, sneak him in. A little before eleven o'clock would be the right time for him to come.

He hadn't known where to look, what to say when she came up with this suggestion. She didn't seem old enough to be a figure of authority and she wasn't young enough to be a friend. She was a woman. A nun. At the same time something about her was all wrong. She'd been clutching the bannister as she spoke to him, turning her hands back and forwards over the lip of it. He had felt sure the palms of her hands must be burning. Her eyes too wide and bright, yet her voice was steady and soft; a posh voice, slightly purred, maybe Scottish.

He had begun to mutter excuses, ‘Well, I don't… I mean, see, I'm not sure if—'

Then she'd let a sudden gasp. Amplified on the echo it had made him jump along with her. ‘Shhhh, shhh someone is coming. O Jesus of mercy help me. O Jeee-sus.'

Her whisper was louder than her speaking voice, the way she'd said the second Jesus more like a curse than a prayer. She'd lifted the skirt of her habit and belted off up the stairs; black stockings and black granny shoes spinning like a rudder behind her. Farley was left standing on the return, mouth hanging open. He'd looked down the two flights of stairs leading to the big entrance hall and then craned upwards to the two flights above him leading past the top dormitory to the fifth narrow staircase for the music cells. He listened intently. He stayed there for moments. But there wasn't a sound in the house.

The dark eases and second by second falls away. The trees become trees instead of hovering black angels. The ground feels weak underfoot; a damp smell of soil and stone, the menthol tang of Granda's snuff. He can hear Granda breathe and grunt beside him. He wonders if he should tell him about the nun. But he knows Granda Bill, for all his little jokes and secret nicknames, worries about keeping in favour and doesn't want to add to the burden. ‘Who was the woman in the back of the church with the grey feathery hat, Granda?' he hears himself ask instead and wonders why a nun and a woman with a funny hat should be tangled up
in the same thought in his head. Granda stalls for a second, pulls out his hanky and blows his nose, then he walks on, breathing and lightly grunting again.

Farley imagines Concilia creeping through the dark house up all those flights of stairs. He doubts he would have the nerve to do that, certainly not at that hour of the night, not on his own. Even in daylight, after years of helping Granda, he still feels sometimes spooked; the empty beds, the hollow presses, the skeleton in the science lab, a forgotten hockey boot under a bench. Or that stand-up trunk in the luggage room still un -claimed after all this time; the girl's name on it – Sylvia Ridgeway. She must have died in the school and the trunk, no longer needed, had just been forgotten.

Concilia had said he would tell. Three days ago she said it, when he had slipped her the night before's paper. ‘Of course, you will tell.'

‘No I won't. I promise I won't.'

‘You're a man, aren't you? You'll tell.'

They come into the farmyard and Granda stops for a chat with the farm manager. They talk about Korea and Indo-China. The chances of another war. The manager says if it comes to it, Truman won't let them down, they could rely on the Yanks before, they can rely on them again.