Cold Eye of Heaven, The (27 page)

The manager is known as a ‘clever man' and Farley sees Granda is listening carefully to every word he says. He mentions places like Suwon and Formosa. The People's Republic of China. The names sound like gold dust to Farley and he wonders exactly where they are.

‘If there's another war,' he hears himself blurt, ‘I could join up,
I
could be a soldier.' The words sound stupid and childish bouncing around the farmyard and the sideways glances he gets from both men confirm this.

‘It'll hardly come to that,' the manager mutters, folding himself into his van. Then he closes the door and drives away.

Wiggy comes out of the barn, cigarette poked from the corner of his mouth. He's dragging a milk churn behind him, the sound of it scraping
onto the yardstone. ‘I thought that fucker'd never go,' he says, the cigarette jumping up and down as he speaks. It's almost bright now in the yard and there's a smell of multi-flavoured shite; milky cows' plop, the gusty honk from the stables, the sweet-musty smell of the hens' poo. They step into Wiggy's office; a disused stable with an old teacher's desk for a table, a few bockety milk stools and bits of things hanging out of rusty nails. Granda takes a page of paper from his inside pocket and flattens it out on the desk, the names of the horses are all there. He puts his money on top of it.

‘The boys picked out a few,' Granda says, ‘if you wouldn't mind?'

Wiggy squints down at the paper and blinks. ‘Jaysus, who picked that treble?' he says. ‘Throwing good money away – is that yours?' he asks Farley.

Granda says, ‘No, that's the younger lad, he gets a bit carried away.'

‘I was thinkin you'd have more sense,' Wiggy says to him, and Farley nods although the truth is he can't even remember which horses he picked in the end.

Wiggy tells him to go into the barn and bring out a couple of eggs.

‘How many?'

‘Just the two.'

And Farley knows he's going to make Granda ask for the eggs again, because he always does that, makes people ask. It drives Farley mad and he wishes Granda would just buy his eggs in the local shop. Whenever he suggests this, Granda always says, ‘Ah, that's just the way Wiggy is.'

When he comes back in Granda and Wiggy are still discussing the racing. Wiggy is holding a blowtorch under the base of a kettle with no lid on it. The torch squirts fire up through the kettle. Wiggy turns a blank face to Farley as if he doesn't recognize him or know what he's doing with two eggs nesting on his palms. He has a fat, bare face, a pinkish head with just a few curls in the centre of it. His gummy mouth finishes off the look of a big fat baby. ‘Pop them in there,' he says, ‘slow like, I don't want them crackin.'

‘Into the kettle you mean?' Farley says.

‘That's right, two birds one stone, lower them in nice and aisy daisy.'

Farley tries not to look pleased when the eggs slip out of his hand into the water without any mishap. Granda tips a small hill of snuff onto the back of his hand. ‘Right, Char-less, I want you to go over to the convent, see if the luggage has arrived, then knock on Sister Marble's office and ask for the dormitory list so we can see which piece of luggage goes where – right?'

Farley nods. He watches the eggs bob around in the kettle while he waits for Granda Bill to snort up his snuff, give his nose a good rub, then pull out his hanky and barp. ‘After that you better check on the light bulbs in the classrooms.'

Farley is about to go when Wiggy realizes that he's forgotten a spoon for the eggs. He sends him down to the farm manager's wife.

But the manager's wife takes her time coming to the door, peeping around it, one hand clutching her dressing gown to her throat. Then there's another long wait while she shuffles back and the spoon comes around the door on its own.

When he comes back, he gives Wiggy the spoon and watches him chase the eggs with it round the water. He lifts the first one and settles it onto the top of an empty milk bottle. The other he leaves resting beside a stack of buttered bread on wax paper. He takes a packet of tea then and pours from it straight into the water the eggs have just left, then gives it a stir with the spoon before closing the lid on it. He brings the spoon over to the egg and clips off the top of it. ‘Ah fuck it in anyway,' he says, his face all puce, ‘it's hard now, so it is. If there's anythin I can't stand it's a fucken hard egg!'

But he turns it inside out and eats it anyway, taking a bite from the bread to follow. ‘Pour us out a sup of tea there will you?' he says to Granda through a mouth stuffed sideways with bread.

Farley gets to the kettle of tea before Granda, to save his stiff hands. Then he pours for the two men. Wiggy gets stuck into the next egg, takes a few gulps of tea in between, before stretching his mug out to Granda. ‘Here, give us another peg of that whiskey there.'

The flask glints into Granda's hand; the last dribble of whiskey clings to the neck of it. Farley knows then Granda's been tipping away at it because earlier at breakfast it had been full. Wiggy sips and swallows and says, ‘Ah, that's grand.'

Farley is about to leave when he notices a jacket hanging on a nail; a newspaper rolled into the pocket. He notices too that Wiggy is wearing a different jacket with another newspaper rolled into its pocket. Wiggy seems content now, a baby again, smacking his lips and licking his gums and so Farley decides to chance it. ‘Would you have a newspaper you're finished with, Wiggy? An old one will do.'

Wiggy frowns and says, ‘God now, I don't know did I throw them out?'

‘What about that one there, sticking out of the pocket? See, that jacket there,' Farley says.

‘O right. I'd forgot about that. What date is on it? Have a look there.'

‘Thursday.'

Wiggy takes the eggshell from the bottle and squeezes it in his hand, then he takes another sup of tea. Making him ask.

‘Would it be alright if I took it?'

‘What?'

‘The paper?'

‘Of course it would, youngfella. Take it away.'

‘He's getting very interested in world affairs,' Granda says and Wiggy nods and says it's as well to keep informed.

Sunlight gushes down on the yard; the sudden burst of it, tiring his eyes so that all he really wants to do is lie down and go to sleep. But the thought of Concilia pushes him on. He walks past the manager's house where he notices the curtains are still drawn, then through the yard round
by the back of the convent. He scans everywhere for Concilia; the lawns, the kitchen garden, the armada of bulging sheets outside the laundry, the windows all the way up to the crenellated rooftop where he reckons the music cells would be. He comes round by the front, keeping enough distance from the house itself, so that even if he can't see her, she might happen to look down and see him. In his head he hears Frank Sinatra singing ‘Autumn Leaves' – ‘But I miss you most of all, my darling, when autumn leeeeaves start to fall,' and he imagines himself, as he is in this moment, appearing in a later conversation. She will say: ‘It was when I looked down from the window and saw you walking through leaves, I knew then I could never be a nun, that from then on my heart could only go in the one direction.' She would take off her wimple, her long blonde – no, black hair would collapse onto her shoulders, he would lean down to her and find her lips and— He turns the corner of the house but all he finds is Jimmy Ball's black bicycle, empty basket frame tilted into a pot of geraniums, and there at the front steps Jimmy himself with a basket hooked onto his arms.

‘What the fuck you doin here?' Jimmy asks.

‘Helping me granda.'

‘Where's he then?'

‘Talkin to Wiggy.'

‘That fuckin thickhead.'

‘I've to check the light bulbs in the classrooms.'

‘Left school have you? About time too. Don't know how the fuck you stuck it that long. Tell you what – they like their breakfast, this lot.' He hoists the basket to show. ‘Drippin, rashers, the two puddins – O, and plenty of sausages. I'd say they're fond of a sausage in here.' Jimmy winks and sticks out a pink sloppy tongue.

Farley looks into the basket at the shapes of butcher's parcels stacked inside. He feels likes saying, ‘What do you expect them to eat – grass?' But he nods and says nothing. He's always been afraid of big fat Jimmy Ball.

‘So, what are you goin to do with your life then? Just fuckin work here for the nuns?'

‘No. No, I always help out before term begins.'

‘Doin what? Checkin the fuckin light bulbs? Sure that's not a job.'

‘During the summer I was working in the stables when the races were on. Mucking out and that.'

‘Sure that's only now and then. That's fuck all use. And what'll you do when the flat season is over? The smell of horse shite – disgustin. Don't know how you put up with it. No. What you want is a real job. I can ask if they need an apprentice in my place. I'm well in there, me. Boss thinks I can do no wrong, fuckin thickhead he is. One fella's missing the tops of three fingers – would you credit that? Two from the right, one from the left. You'd want to see him slaughter a pig.' Jimmy lets out a long pig squeal and then beams with admiration.

Farley looks down at Jimmy's stained apron, the dried blood under his fingernails, the offside stare in one eye that makes it impossible to look him straight in the face.

‘I'm going to write to me da's old boss. He probably won't give me a job in his office but he might refer me on to a colleague. Well, anyway, that's what he said at the funeral.'

‘Right,' Jimmy says, ‘suit your fuckin self so. By the way. Sorry to hear about your da.'

‘Thanks.'

‘No bother.'

The convent door opens then and Jimmy turns towards it. ‘Ah, good morning, sister,' he says, in a careful grown-up voice. ‘I have your delivery here, sorry to disturb you now but I tried round the back and there was no reply.'

Concilia stands aside, pulling the door with her into the entrance hall. They step in and she closes it, then the skirt of her habit swings around and glides away. They follow until they get to the kitchen then stand for a moment and watch her disappear up a long straight corridor. The dull polished sheen to its floor makes him think of a street after rain and he imagines the two of them walking along, her linking his arm, the collar of her trench coat pulled up to protect her black – no, blonde hair, the lights
from the shops dribbing onto the street and her purring into his ear, ‘The age difference doesn't matter to me; why you're more mature than most men
twice
your age.'

From the side of his mouth Jimmy Ball drops a comment – ‘An awful waste that – know what I mean?' Farley doesn't know where to look. To say such a thing. About a nun. About Concilia. He feels shocked, outraged, and utterly thrilled.

Granda lifts the back of his hand and pats his eyes dry. Farley doesn't know if this is because his eyes are sore on account of the mustard gas during the war, or if maybe he's crying again. Da's death seems to have made Granda old. He takes longer to haul the trunks up the stairs than he did last term, with more heaving sighs than usual and more rests needed, not just on the landings either but now mid-stairs as well. Every time he stops he gasps out a few words.

‘You have to concentrate, son,' he says.

‘I am concentrating.'

‘No, I don't mean in carrying this thing. I mean generally, you have to get yourself
interested
in something. Know what I mean?'

A smell of whiskey wanders from Granda's breath all the way down the slope of the trunk. And this annoys Farley, because too much whiskey makes Granda stupid, repeating himself and generally talking through his arse telling him what he hasn't and has to be.

‘You have to be a soldier now, Char-less, for your mother. A soldier like your granda. Your
two
grandas used to be.'

‘I'm not a kid any more, Granda. You don't have to talk to me that way.'

‘Exactly,' Granda Bill says and groans up another step. He stops again. ‘I treated the two boys the same you know. Your da and your uncle Cal. I never favoured Cal though many expected me to.'

‘I know that, Granda.'

Granda Bill nods. ‘Where did you say this one is going again?'

‘Middle dorm. Fourth bed down on the right.'

‘Right. How do you think young Jackie is – would you say? Would you say now, he's alright?'

‘I think so.'

‘A bit quiet, would you not think now? Spends a lot of time on his own.'

‘He's just playing with his collections and that.'

‘His collections?'

‘You know, the way he collects things – stamps, cards, now it's information on racehorses – he's making his own form book, you know?'

‘O right. But he still seems too quiet. Surly like.'

Farley doesn't want to say his brother is always that way, that he's just like his da was, surly by nature.

The trunk bashes upwards stair by stair, the sound of it banging through the empty school like gunshot. ‘We have to start thinkin about getting you boys home,' Granda says.

‘Is Ma home then?'

‘She will be on Monday.'

‘Is she better?'

‘Ah, better enough, I suppose. She'll be a while yet. And you pair will have to behave. How many stairs left behind me?'

Farley looks over his head. ‘Four to the landing.'

‘When you were a little fella you were in hospital – do you remember that?'

‘Of course I do.'

‘That was when your da was working down the country – do you remember that?'

‘Yea.'

‘And your poor ma was that worried about you, that when you were discharged she moved back to Dublin to nurse you better because, you see, you had to go for check-ups every week and the house in the country was too cold. Do you remember
that
now?'