Cold Eye of Heaven, The (3 page)

He notices the bag comes from Clery's then and can't imagine why, because to the best of his memory, he hasn't been there these years. A woman was with him last time – maybe as far back as his first suit for work. In which case it wasn't a woman as such; it was his mother.

The phone catches his eye, sitting up there on its crescent-shaped table. He reminds himself that in the past twenty minutes, he's checked it twice already for messages. Once after he'd been upstairs having a shave, in case, just in case. And again when he'd come back in from doing the rounds of his snow-injured garden. No point in checking again. He sets to work on the door bolts, shoving and grinding until, reluctant as old bones, they eventually give and he draws them back; one, two and three. Then, as if to catch himself off guard, he skips back to the table and snatches the receiver from the phone. The earpiece cold on his ear. He listens for the broken signal that means a message is waiting. But all he can hear is the relentless
eeeehhhhhhh
jeering down into his earhole. He replaces the receiver and pulls on his gloves. You'd think one of them, even
one
of them, would have bothered their arses to pick up a phone.

Outside the cold air grabs a hold of his face. His hand, clumsy in its glove, stays on the doorknob. Maybe they left him a note? He toes the corner of the doormat back – nothing but a light skim of ice. Then he checks the letter box from the outside in, in case – alright, a very small note – had somehow got jammed there. But all he can see is a clear view of the hall he's just left, the curly iron legs on the hall table, the shoe on the floor, the smug, silent phone. The mirror.

A dark blue car comes around the corner, a quiff of old snow on its roof. An Audi it looks like, a good car in anyway; something one of the
Sloweys would drive. Farley feels his heart reach out to it. That could be one of them now, come to break the news to him in person. The car slips by, a stranger's face at the wheel. No. No, of course not. He'd had to hear it from Mrs Waugh last night. And she'd only phoned because the cat had gone missing: ‘I can't stop thinking the worst,' she had said. ‘I mean, every time I open the back door, I keep expecting to find him frozen stiff on the step, like that poor man in Wexford found at his own back door –
imagine
.'

He hadn't liked to point out that it was hardly the same thing; a man, a cat. And that anyway a cat would be far more likely to survive with its pelt of fur and its natural slyness, than some poor snow-bewildered fool who'd probably just locked himself out of his house by mistake.

‘Ah, he'll be back, Mrs Waugh,' he'd said, ‘don't you worry, he's just gone off on a ramble, cats are like that, you know.'

‘He's been neutered,' she'd sniffed, like he'd been trying to insult the cat's character. And then just as she'd been about to ring off, like an afterthought she could just as easily have forgotten: ‘Ah, comere you'll never guess who's after dyin!?'

The way she had said it. Detached but affectionate – the way people are when an old actor or television personality pops off. A distant death anyhow. For some reason Bruce Forsyth had come dancing into his head.

‘Who would that be, Mrs Waugh?' he had asked, wondering how much longer he was going to have to stand freezing his balls off in the hall.

‘Ah, you know, your man, what's his name? Always drove the big car – even when no one else had a car. Ah God, what's this his name was?'

An alarm went off in his head – the car.

Mrs Waugh cackled, ‘Ah, what am I talkin about – sure you probably know all about this already – didn't you used work for him?'

Silence. He couldn't think of the smallest word to break out of his silence. He was sure she would notice and wonder.

‘Slowey!' she squealed, all delighted with herself for remembering. ‘That's right, Mister Slowey. Of course, I didn't know him meself, just to see, like in passing, he might give a wave out the car and that. Fine-looking
man but. They had the house with all the extensions on it – that's right. A few kids – hadn't they? Two boys and a girl? No, three boys. One of the boys emigrated – am I right? '

‘Yes,' he'd said. ‘No, yes. I mean, no.'

‘How old would he have been – in his seventies anyway, I suppose – was he?'

‘Seventy-seven last week.'

‘Go away! Well, he didn't look that now. Not a bit. Harriet got the impression the removal was Friday, which struck me as a bit funny because you'd think it'd be tomorrow. Like if he died this morning? The snow maybe, delayed matters.'

‘Harriet…?'

‘Ah, you know Harriet?'

‘O, of course,' he had lied, just to avoid a big long explanation of whoever Harriet and all belonging to her might be.

‘She heard it in Centra. Anyway. There you go! Another one gone! Which one of us will be next, I ask! So listen – won'tin you not forget now to give us a ring if Shifty turns up?'

‘Who?'

‘Shifty, the
cat
. If he turns up. And meanwhile if he comes home I'll be sure to let you know straight away.'

‘O, please do,' he'd said, as if he gave a fuck about her or her stupid cat.

Farley looks into the snowy estate and slowly lets go of the front door knob – there will be nothing to hold onto for the ten steps or so that it will take to get him from here to the gate. He looks up at the sky, a fragile blue curve above the dark houses that puts him in mind of a china bowl from a long-ago sideboard; his mother's or maybe his grandmother's. Then he pulls his hand through the loop of the bag, settling it in at his elbow. Martina hadn't thought much of Clery's – a dear hole, was what she always called it.

He won't fall, he won't fall. He imagines what he must look like now,
dithering along the garden path like a half-pissed tightrope walker, testing each step as he goes. He wonders should he keep his foot light, in case he needs to regain his balance, or should he put the weight down on it, to secure his position? He thinks of the two boy scouts who called to the door during the last big snow in the eighties and tries to remember what's this they'd said was the trick to keeping the balance? Something about turning the toes of one foot inwards or was that outwards? A picture comes into his head then; an upright skier padding along in the snow. He turns in his right foot and proceeds.

At the gate Farley pauses, holding on to it for a moment while he peers up and down the endless road. A mile and a half long – someone once told him. He sees others who have ventured out, moving at intervals, gingerly along, keeping close to the railings. Even the younger ones seem a bit wary, although most of the snow has skulked off during the night. Only a few grey humps remain, along the shaded side of the road, caught against a wall or tucked into a kerb, like mounds of dirty underwear waiting to be brought to the laundry.

You'd think they would have sent
someone
. A grandchild, a neighbour, a lackey even. Or had the Sloweys run out of lackeys by now?

He moves off. Gaining a bit more confidence as he goes, he loosens his stride and firms up his footfall. The lukewarmness of a fizzy sun on his face. No boy scouts this time to see how the old folk are faring. Conroy would have said that's on account of all the child molesters that's going these days. Kiddie fiddlers, Conroy used call them; a term Farley always found a bit hard to stomach. Years ago they'd say a child was interfered with. But then again, that's probably not strong enough either. He straightens his toe, his two feet realign – he won't fall, he won't fall.

His eye grazes ahead, pausing on houses where he knows old people live on their own. People he might never have even spoken to, beyond an occasional nod or a ‘not a bad day after' in passing. But he watches out for them just the same, the way he knows they watch out for him. Older people are like that, he reckons. A combination of concern and competitiveness. Who gets through a cold spell, who perishes. Who's been unlucky,
who's been a fool. It keeps them going. That touch of glee in Mrs Waugh's voice last night when she broke the news about Frank, for example. Or the way you'd see some fellas in the pub hop on the obituaries in the paper before they'd so much as read another word. Often it would be the fellas in the worst shape who'd be keenest to read, like they were half-expecting to find their own names in there. There was a time you could rely on the house itself to keep you informed. A wisp of smoke from the chimney; a bottle of milk not lifted from the doorstep. Now bar banging down a door and sticking your nose right in, it's near impossible to guess who's in and who's out. Who's lying on their own at the bottom of the stairs. Who's turning into a human iceberg right outside their own back door.

He leaves the estate for the main road where he waits at the kerb for a pause in the traffic. Farley knows he could stand here all day waiting like Moses for the Red Sea to cut him a passage. Or he could walk on down the road to the pedestrian crossing maybe fifty yards or so away. But he feels tired, a bit weak even, and fifty yards just seems way too far. All the sudden fresh air, he supposes. One tingling cheek, like a dentist's anaesthetic beginning to wane. He's as happy to have the traffic as an excuse to stay put. His eye relaxes into the blur of moving cars, his ear is lulled by the dull arrhythmia of passing sounds. He thinks about snow; man's strange relationship with it, almost romantic. The way it lures you into a false sense of serenity with its beauty and silence, and yet would do you, given half the chance.

A few days ago, enchanted as a child, he had stood at the window, watching its dainty arrival. Twilight, and as the light had diminished, the snow had gained momentum. And a sort of yearning had come over him that it would stick to the ground, stay and expand until all the houses and gardens in the estate were swollen with snow. It had grown dark, but he hadn't turned on the light. He wanted to stay gawking out, without the neighbours seeing him. Even though all over the estate, grinning like simpletons out from dark houses, there were probably others just like him; Mr Kerins around the corner, Mrs Waugh in the house backing onto his; the youngone next door. By morning it had already started to turn vicious,
devouring his garden, killing his little plants, freezing the blood in his body. Laying siege to him too, making him afraid, making him worry. About food and fuel and the fact that he'd no candles if the electricity went. About the fact that boy scouts don't call any more. Nobody did, nobody would. Not even the girl next door. And yet for all that? He had stood out in the back garden mourning all that had perished, while at the same time he'd been filled with an inexplicable belief in life, feeding the birds with bits of fruit pulled out of the back of the fridge – stupid fuckin tears in his eyes! He had said out loud, ‘I don't want to leave this; I don't want this to be my last snow.' Wherever that morbid thought had come from! Of course, he hadn't known about your man in Wexford at that stage or he probably wouldn't have chanced going out in the first place. Garden or no garden. Birds or not. Elderly, the news had said the man was. Sixty-five years old? Since when did sixty-five become
elderly
?

Behind him a bus screeches and stops. From the corner of his eye the shapes of passengers alighting, tiny and blurred, spilling out of his eyes like tears. He blinks and his vision almost settles. Two youngones, school bags to bosoms, step up beside him, faces turned to the traffic, knees slightly bent as if waiting to jump into the turn of a skipping rope. He decides to take the lead from their young eyesight, placing one foot off the kerb onto the road. But the youngones are too quick for him, and are across the road before he can think, in the careless half-run, half-walk of limbs that don't have to worry about falling. Two men come up behind him, yoddling to each other in foreign voices. Farley wonders if maybe they're his neighbours, the housemates of the little gnome next door. They step around and stand right in front of him as if he just isn't there. Big brawny lumps smelling of baby talc. They don't even break their stride as they cross over, in fact one car has to slow down to facilitate them. Finally, there's a father holding his daughter's hand, patiently listening with a tilted ear. The child breathless to report every inch of her story which they take between them across the wide busy road. Leaving Farley alone.

He looks up the road. Traffic herding over a crest in the distance. There's definitely something the matter with his eyes. The cold maybe? Because it feels like he's looking through a skin of ice. Shapes tumbling into one another, breaking into pieces, then re-forming again. He closes his eyes and shakes his head. When he opens them again, one side of his vision is completely blotted out. A speck of dirt maybe. He pulls his right eyelid to one side, stretching it out, until bit by bit the darkness disperses. He steps back up onto the kerb and passes over the grass verge towards the pavement that leads to the pedestrian crossing fifty yards or so down the road. Yet another thing he knows he will never do again – is stand at that particular section of the kerb, taking his chances, cheating the traffic. He walks slowly under the lean winter trees.

By the time he notices the Hardimans, it's too late to backtrack.

They are standing at the crossing, linking each other; short and sturdy, both dressed in monkey hats and puffed-up coats. Mr Hardiman isn't a bad sort; does a bit of gardening and in the summer evenings they might stop by each other's gate for an exchange of gardenish talk. He wouldn't be too keen on the wife. One of those community types. Always pushing things through the letter box; leaflets about drop-in centres and cake sales or envelopes looking for church donations. Stops him now and then about old-folksy things; a tea dance one time, another time a meals-on-wheels deal. As if he wouldn't prefer to eat his own vomit.