Cold Eye of Heaven, The (9 page)

She nearly jumps out her skin when she sees him. ‘Jesus Mary and fucken Joseph,' she cries out, slamming two crossed hands on her chest
and gasping at him, ‘you frightened the life of me yafuckabastardya.'

‘O, that's lovely language for a lady, I must say!'

Noreen gives him a slap in the arm as she passes. ‘I can't wait for you to leave,' she says, ‘you oul bastard, I'm sick of the sight of you.'

She takes off her coat and hangs it outside in the hall, alongside his. He notices she isn't dressed up and hasn't the hair done either. Their eyes catch, then look away. Noreen stretches her back and rubs one shoulder.

‘Go out and stick on the kettle there,' she says to him. ‘Go on. It's the least you could do for me on your last day.'

When he comes back in with the steaming kettle in his hand, she has the mugs out and ready, two napkins laid out on her desk, a small fat bun sitting in the centre of each one. ‘Special occasion,' she says. ‘You're early. Don't tell me you walked into work again?'

‘I did.'

‘The bus strike is over – you do know that? So it's not as if you would have had to get a taxi or anything,' she says this with a glinty eye.

He plays along, ‘Don't start me. Hungry shower of bastards. The more I think of…'

They smile at each other. ‘Ah, I felt like the walk,' he says, accepting the mug of tea from her hand. He waits a moment before asking, ‘How's himself doin?'

‘You don't want to know.'

‘O. Well, will you be alright later like, for the little do, and that?'

‘What do you mean
little
do? I heard half the city is coming. A few strippers, Catherine Nevin jumping out of a cake. That's what I heard in anyway.'

‘O yea, right.'

‘I'll have to go home first. I've asked his sister to keep an eye on him but well – I wouldn't bank on it, Farley. She's not the most reliable.'

‘No?'

‘That's the worst about having no family of your own. If we'd had a few kids at least
one
of them would be bound to be alright. I mean they couldn't all be selfish shitheads – could they?'

‘Some families have them in litters.'

Noreen nods. ‘So, any more about Jackie? How's he doing?'

‘One minute he's grand. The next he's… Well, I don't know what he is really. They'll be running a few tests on him in the next couple of weeks. They're talking as if, as if it's you know, the same thing as your fella, but I don't know. He seems a bit young for that – like he's younger than me. And a schoolteacher too, Jaysus, you'd expect them to, you know? He's coming tonight. I think. Maybe. I hope. Well, I do and I don't. What do you think? You know, after going through it with Jim, what do you—?'

‘Shut up and eat your bun,' Noreen says.

Farley picks the bun up and holds it in the palm of his hand. Then closing his fingers around it, bites down; a dry bulge in his throat. He throws a wallop of tea in after it and gulps. ‘Sorry, Noreen. I shouldn't have brought it up.'

She shrugs, takes a sip of her tea, then begins plucking the bun apart with her fingers. ‘Not today, Farley.'

Farley watches her. She probably knows him better than anyone else – since Martina died anyway. Things he would have told her, other things she would have just picked up by herself. If he was to be honest she could well be the best friend he has. And yet, after today he might never see her again, or at least seldom see her. ‘We'll keep in touch, Noreen,' he says.

‘What are you on about? Of course we will. So – tell us, have you decided about your trip yet? Come on, details, I want details.' She claps her hand off the desk, her eyes suddenly bright.

‘What sort of details?'

‘For a start,
when
are you going?'

‘I better hang on a few weeks – you know, till everything's settled here.'

‘You mean till the dosh is safely in the bank?'

‘Exactly. The meeting is today so, we'll see how that goes.'

‘Right. Who'll be at the meeting?'

‘Frank, Tony, the accountants, I presume.'

‘O God, Farley, you'll be loaded – why didn't I ever ask you to marry me? Make a pass at you, even.'

‘Would it be because you have taste?' he asks, even though he could just as easily have said – Actually you did make a pass, several times when you'd a few on you.

‘O, that's right, I forgot about my taste.' She rolls her eyeballs at him and he wonders if she's relieved or vexed that he appears to have forgotten.

He leans forward. ‘Anyway. What I've decided to do is this – when everything is settled this end I'm off to London. Stay a week or two and book the rest of the trip from there. They say you get a better deal in London and you know what – I've never been there in me life – have you?'

‘Once. Just a couple of days.'

He waits, but she's dipped her face behind her mug.

‘Right. Well, that's the plan so far,' he says.

‘How long will you be gone?'

‘Depends. After London – America. I've always wanted to see America. I might even chance a tour round the world. You see they do these flights and you can go one way round the world and back another – sort of like a spiral. The thing is, once I started reading the brochures and looking at the options. Well, do you know what it is, Noreen? The world is a terrible big bloody place.'

She laughs. ‘You'll probably never come back.'

‘Course I will. I can't leave Jackie. And I've the house to worry about. But do you know, do you know what I'd really love to be able to do? Rent the house out for maybe two or three years. And not come back at all during that time. Do the lot, you know? Lay a map of the world out on the table and look at all these places and names I used to read about when I was a kid and just say fuckit and
go
. Places like Malaysia. Or Bombay. You know, I always swore one day I'd do the lot. But of course, I never did. Because that's the way it is, isn't it? One thing leads to another, one year the next, and you postpone things and then postpone them again. Till you simply forget all about whatever it was you always wanted to do and, and by then it's too bloody late anyway.'

‘You could still do it, Farley.'

He stares into the carpet, turning the idea over in his head. ‘Ah. I don't think so. I'll be happy with a few European capitals, Paris, Rome and that. And of course America. New York. San Francisco. Vegas maybe. That'd be enough for me. More than I ever thought I'd have, let's just say.'

Noreen stands up, flicks the bun crumbs off her blue jumper. ‘You'll probably forget all about us in here.'

‘What's this your name is again?' He looks at her, waiting for the joke to be turned back to him.

But Noreen is saying nothing; her mouth twisted, tears stand up in her eyes. He nearly dies when he sees them. ‘Noreen – what is it?' Farley puts his hand out to touch her, but she's turned from him and is walking away into the back room. He hears the front door open into the hall then and the hall fill up with the sound of young men's voices talking young men's shite. Behind him a telephone starts to sing, another one follows. From the back office, a fax machine clucks.

He still calls him young Slowey, although he turned forty last year and getting to look more like a slug every day – the smooth, clammy head on him, the thick neck. Farley pats his palm on his own greying hedge, more salt than pepper these days, but still there at least. He wonders about younger men nowadays and why, the minute they start losing their hair, it's out with the razor? An act of defiance maybe? An all or nothing bra -vado? Because surely they can't think it makes them look any better?

Young Slowey. He wears an earring which annoys Farley as much as it makes him ashamed – on behalf of the Slowey family or on behalf of the company, he couldn't say which. Bad enough if it were the same earring, like he put it in there when he was fifteen or sixteen and just forgot all about it, but the fact that he has a selection which he changes on a regular basis: a little gold cross, a silver stud, a small gypsy's hoop – for fuck sake, and of course worst of the lot, the diamond he is wearing today – that's the one that really gets on Farley's wick.

He has tried with Tony. But the truth is he never really took to him,
not even when he was a kid; a spoilt little whiner then with far too much to say for himself – in other words a smaller version of the man he would grow up to be. All bluff and blow with his ‘projections' and his ‘thinking outside the box' and his stupid waste of time monthly management meetings. Along with the rest of the arseology he brought with him from the so-called business college his oulfella had to pay for, because he couldn't even muster up two honours in his leaving cert to get himself into UCD. ‘Number crunching,' that's another one. Or his ‘I'll be swinging by the courts on the way to the office'. That's another – as if he was a monkey. Or what about last month's special? ‘What I'm about here is injecting a younger image into the company.' And Farley had felt like saying, ‘But you're not young any more, Tony. Forty is
not
young.'

He glances out to the hall, young Slowey, phone set stuck to his ear -hole, deep in conversation. Of course, he couldn't just take the call in the privacy of his office, he had to do it on full parade, up and down the hall, in and out of the rooms, now back in the hall again, moving as if a camera is following him. Young Slowey looks up, catches him watching. Farley gives an upward nod, a sketchy smile which is returned with something similar.

In fairness, Tony has never liked him either. The only one in the family who has never called him ‘uncle' as Miriam with a few jars on her had highlighted last Christmas. ‘Ah, we all love our Uncle Farley with his cute little sticky-up hair – don't we, Tony? Don't we love Uncle Farley?'

‘He's not my uncle – is he?' Tony had said.

Farley sticks his nose back into a file. He sees the hulk of Tony's shadow loom from the hall into his office and now here he is standing at the edge of the desk. He looks up, tries to arrange an air of mild surprise on his face.

‘Ah Tony.'

‘And how is our soon-to-be man of leisure?'

‘Not bad now. Not bad. Yourself?'

‘Great yea, great. So – what time suits you for this meeting?'

‘Whatever time suits everyone else, I suppose.'

‘Actually, there'll just be you and me.'

‘O? I thought—'

‘What?'

‘I thought your da, the accountants and that.'

‘No use dragging the accountants in till we've everything settled – wha'? Time enough then. And Da's only back from Spain this afternoon.'

‘I didn't know he was in Spain.'

‘Just a few days, a bit of business. That apartment block – did he not tell you?'

‘O yea, that's right,' Farley says. ‘I forgot.'

‘Anyway, he's back this afternoon. Wouldn't miss your party now would he?'

‘No. I suppose.'

‘I was up with Ma on the way in this morning, she wants him to have a bit of a rest before tonight. He's probably been tearing the arse out of things over there without her to keep an eye on him, you know what he's like and with his blood pressure and that.'

‘Your ma wasn't with him then?'

Tony scratches the side of his nose. ‘Anyway, I thought we – you and me – could have a prelim.'

‘A prelim?'

‘A preliminary – you know?'

‘Jaysus, you make it sound like an exam or something.'

Tony smirks. ‘A chat then. Will we say after five? When things die down here?'

‘Yea, grand. After five. Whatever you want.'

‘No, no. It's whatever
you
want, Farley, whatever suits you.'

‘After five, then.'

‘Great.' Tony gives his desk three short pats. ‘We'll crunch a few numbers anyway – righ'?'

Farley watches him cross over the room. He'd love to shout after
him, ‘The only numbers I'd like to crunch is the two little balls between your legs.'

Young Slowey stops at Brendan's deak; skimpy Brenner, invisible behind him. He can hear the mumble of office talk between them. And he remembers again, the night a few years ago when he hadn't been able to sleep for worry about the poxy VAT man and had decided to come back into the office to have another look at the returns. And there was young Slowey, hard at it, trousers looped around his shins and his big white arse rutting away at some young one who was sitting up on the desk; the legs on her like two bendy sticks wrapped around his thick hips. Only three days before his wedding.

Farley bites down on his pen. It annoys him that he continues to remember this because it's not a sight he wants to keep in his head, nor does he care what Tony does or doesn't get up to. And yet every time he looks into Tony's eyes, it's like it only happened yesterday. It dawns on him now that this could well be because it's never left Tony's head. It's there like a condensed photograph in his eyes. An accusation, even. Like it was Farley was the one who did something wrong. And Tony was the one who couldn't forgive it.

Tony moves away from Brendan's desk, leaving an exposed Brendan blinking in the light.

‘Later, Farley – righ'?' Tony says.

Eleven o'clock. Something's not right. His skin feels too tight; the back of his hands, under his collar, his scalp. And there's a small anxious lump heating up in his gut. Like someone is sticking pins in him. Needled, that's it. He feels needled. Farley continues to play the morning; pulling letters off the pile, throwing his signature across the bottom of them, taking or making the odd joke over his shoulder.

Every few minutes he lifts the phone to his ear. The punters friendlier than they'd usually be; lingering. Word has obviously got around. Sometimes he's even called to a phone on another desk – Just wanted
to say. Good luck to you now. Well for some. God I'd tell you, what I wouldn't give.