Portobello Notebook (11 page)

IT DREW HIM BACK
. Again nature was advancing, resolute now. A tendril of ivy worked in above through the warped frame of the kitchen window, and grew up the pale painted wall. Field mice squeezed underneath the door. Jackdaws dropped sticks down the chimney, and would continue until one lodged. A storm lifted the roof from the turf shed and blew it across the field like a hat. The silence took on a life of its own; at night it seemed to move out from the walls into the centre of the room. One night a fox’s laughing mask appeared at the dark window, and for half a minute held his stare. To get out one evening, he went for a walk, along the thin tar road, down by the wind-crushed hawthorns, down to her new home.

IT WAS ON A STEP
of a steep hill. Its door opened onto the road. Children’s toys lay on the roadside, there was road grit inside on the floor. There was a piano, a brindled greyhound she had rescued from Travellers, and a boxer dog that a divorced friend had given her to mind. His eyes followed her as she moved about the kitchen, tidying while she talked. She was pregnant – she was with someone else now; she was the talk of the townland, she smiled. Cattle roared from a slat house nearby. He gave money to the children, and looked at their school homework. They couldn’t remember
his name. When they reminded their mother that they were going shopping to Lidl, he stood to leave. As she searched for her car keys and put up the fireguard, she said an absent goodbye. The moment they had shared in green twilight was scattered, like the toys on the side of the road.

As he continued down the steep hill he saw her daughter’s Hello Kitty purse on a stone wall, soaked, with a few cents rusting inside. Crossing the wall, he walked down through sedge grass already stiffening with frost. Memories hung in every hawthorn, like her green scapulars and Buddhist bells. He remembered when there had been a lake there, where in winter the old men had hunted for pike; walking on the ice with a sledge hammer, striking when they saw a shape below; smashing open the ice then and drawing out the stunned fish. The lake had been drained, there was only a stream now, winding through a bed of white marl. The old men had said that long ago, before the lake was there, the Fianna had raced their horses on this plain …

There was a rasping cry; two snipe flew from the rushes, zigzags of silver and brown. As he stood to watch them he heard a shrill chattering, and saw a migrant flock of starlings settling for the evening in the trees about the ruined big house. They rose suddenly like a swarm of bees, and he saw a kestrel gliding towards them – sickle wings and long straight tail, like a small anchor in flight. With a rushing sound like wind in trees the flock closed tight. The kestrel turned away, and the flock scattered. He heard the sound of their wings, like a fire burning overhead.

He stood in the cold air, watching as the kestrel returned, copper against the dark cloud. The long skein of birds drew into a black ball. Now it was a sound like a furnace burning, a quiet roar. The kestrel flew into its centre, which shattered open like a thousand broken pieces when he passed through. A fourth attempt
followed, and again they made a hedgehog ball, into which he plunged. Again he appeared from the other side without prey. They dropped suddenly behind the old island, a thicket of alder trees in the lake bed, to shelter until it was dark. He heard the whistle of a bird or an otter, then a squeal like a rabbit’s, as he walked back to the road.

Her car had gone, the door was shut, the greyhound and boxer were lying outside. She was learning what it was to live all the year in this place. He had always been a visitor like the starlings, flying from its grip, always coming back – for what? As he left the Hello Kitty purse on the windowsill he saw the fire burning quietly inside, a red glow in the dark. The dogs snarled, and he turned away. They lay down at the door again, watching as he walked up the dark steep hill. At last he had made up his mind. He would spend one last night in his uncle’s house. He would go into town next morning and see the auctioneer.

IT’S LATE
, 11.30 at night. It’s raining, the first rain in a month. Both windows are wide open still, it’s been so warm. He can hear the rain falling in the back garden, rattling on the privet trees. He can see their cream blossoms even in the dark. The sweet scent comes even through the rain. Then he hears a groan. Standing up, he looks out at the dark backs of the houses in the next street. It comes again. It’s like the sound of another species. It’s been so long since he was a part of that, it’s a while before he realizes what it is. His wife goes on reading, he goes on writing his letter. It goes on for five minutes more. There’s a boy’s cry, and at last it’s over. A light comes on, and a girl’s face appears at an open window, leaning out smoking a cigarette.

AFTER THIRTY YEARS
living in this street he sees it through the glass of time. When the young couples leave their doors open these summer evenings, he sees not just their pale sanded floorboards
but the carpeted front rooms of the people who lived there before. There’s a story in every house. The derelict garage door is black because Mr Campbell came out one morning, sweating, in a miniskirt, with a pot of paint, and covered it with white zigzags. They took him away. The black cat is watching Delia’s house because she gives him food.

He’s been here so long he remembers the beginning of that story, a few street cats slowly growing wild. They hunted the
canal-bank
reeds for ducklings; waited under cars for street pigeons to land. At night he heard them on the rooftop, running down the alley after rats. When his children were small they had tried to tame one, lured it inside at last and shut the door. That was when they saw what wild meant – spitting, screaming like a firework, throwing itself against the window until they set it free. He saw it on the back garden wall one evening crouched under a tom, and the next year a wild litter was born. And the next. One winter night he saw a dozen of them, a black inbred pack, hunting in the snow. A neighbour called the Corporation, who came and trapped a few. Others left for better territory. In the end there was only this one. He waits until the door has shut, then advances slowly. The thick lace curtain opens and Delia appears at her front window to watch him eat.

AND NOW THERE IS
the new face that appears at the back window – young, golden-brown, in a frame of oiled black hair. If she weren’t so tall she could be from the Philippines. Maybe South America, he thinks. When he goes down for the milk and paper in the morning, she is coming round the corner, setting out for work. She doesn’t walk on the pavement but in the middle of the street, along a straight black seam of tar. He notices her springy breasts, her pale tight blue jeans, her bottom twitching like the waterhen’s white rump when it runs down the canal bank from the cat.

One day going past the restaurant, he sees her inside cleaning the big window. As she reaches up to spray the top half with an aerosol he sees her bared brown stomach, a jewel swinging from a gold navel ring. He smiles at her but she looks through him, as if he were a windowpane.

HE GIVES
the same glance to old Delia. She reminds him of what’s ahead. Usually he walks past with a word about the weather, but now she has a pretext. ‘You didn’t see Mister Pock?’

‘Who?’ He has to stop.

‘The cat. That’s what they do call him.’

‘He was in our garden yesterday, he killed a sparrow.’

‘Well did he?’ Seeing his look, she withdraws. ‘Well isn’t he terrible.’

Her wirrastrue country accent, the
Maria
wooden plaque screwed outside her door – everything about her gets on his nerves. He is about to slip away, but she says, ‘You wouldn’t open a tin for me. That tin opener, it’s as stiff.’

She can’t go upstairs any longer, her bed fills the front room. A Sacred Heart picture hangs over the fireplace, the heating is on full blast, Daniel O’Donnell is on the TV crooning a song. As soon as he opens the tin of Whiskas he almost runs out the door. But a threshold has been crossed. Now each time he passes he has to stop and talk. Her big lonely eyes fix on his. He can’t escape.

So he remembers how it happened, he knows how it was done. He’s at her doorstep talking when the cat comes around the corner, belly slung low, yellow-green eyes with black-slit slanted pupils looking left and right. It’s the first time he’s been so close to him, he sees his black coat is flecked with white hairs. Delia smiles, and he rubs his side against the lamppost, then he brushes against her legs. ‘Well, Mister Pock,’ she says. ‘Are you going to come in?’
She goes inside, leaving the door open. The cat glances over his shoulder, then slowly steps in.

AS HE’S GOING
down the street one morning, her door opens and Mister Pock slips out. Delia blushes like a girl when she sees him. He glimpses her bare feet, a pink nightdress as she withdraws. But another threshold had been crossed. Soon she is ringing him at night.

‘Well, were you looking at the
Late Late
?’

‘I missed it,’ he says.

‘Indeed you didn’t miss much. They had this fella with long hair on talking for half an hour. Now, Pat, I said to myself, if you’ve any sense you won’t argue with him. That’s just what he wants …’

He doesn’t answer one night. An hour later the blue flashing light of a squad car stops outside her door. Two guards go in. He rings when they have gone.

‘What happened? Are you all right?’

‘I couldn’t open the tin, and I said to myself, I’ll ring Kevin Street. Well they were nicest lads – and do you know what, one of them is from Ballindine. Delia, they said, do you mean to say that the neighbours wouldn’t do that for you?’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Delia, they said, it’s no trouble in the wide world. Any time you want, just pick up the phone, they said.’

‘Don’t,’ he says. He has to. ‘Ring me.’

SHE RINGS
in the evening, as soon as they turn on the light. ‘It’s only me.’

‘How are you?’

‘Well I’m that worried, I couldn’t sleep a wink. I haven’t seen Mister Pock these two days.’

‘I’ll keep an eye out for him.’

‘You couldn’t have a look now?’

He can’t refuse the timid weak voice, he can’t fight back. With the phone to his ear he walks around the corner, and down the next street. He finds him lying under a hedge in a neat front garden beside a fat ginger cat.

‘He’s here.’

‘Oh thanks be to the Sacred Heart. Where?’

‘Right beside me.’

‘Pock –’ she begins, and he holds the phone through the railings. Pock bares his stained brown teeth and draws back. ‘Pock, do you hear me? Do you know what I’m after buying for you? A bit of chicken …’

The fat ginger cat slides out through the railings. Mister Pock follows at her tail. He hears their mating screams from the derelict garage roof that night.

SHE RINGS
as usual when their light comes on. He kicks the wall savagely, then picks up the phone. ‘How are you?’

‘Musha, only middling.’

His kick leaves a mark in the plaster. He kneels down and rubs it clean. ‘How’s Mister Pock?’

‘Look at him, lying on the bed like a lord. Do you know what, I think he only comes here when it suits him.’

‘You don’t need anything?’

‘Well that’s what I was going to ask you. You wouldn’t feed himself while I’m away?’

‘Where are you going?’

‘They say I have to go into hospital.’

‘When?’

‘Tonight, they said. You wouldn’t come over, and I’ll give you the food.’

She hardly ate any longer. Her legs are as thin as her walking stick. He says, ‘You should get the Meals on Wheels when you come home.’

‘Indeed I tried that. Sure it’s not food at all.’

‘And what would you like?’

‘Do you know what it is, I think there’s nothing nicer than a nice new potato.’

‘Why don’t you try that?’

‘Well God knows you’re right …’ She turns to a cardboard crate full of cat food. ‘What he likes is the liver-flavour Whiskas, mixed with rusks. Isn’t that right, Pock?’

‘Don’t worry about him.’

Pock slides from his armchair and springs onto her lap. From there he sticks out his small pink tongue, as if to say fuck off. He’d like to, but he sits and listens as Delia talks on and on. It’s only right.

She came from a village in Mayo. Her parents died when she was young. She worked in a hotel in Dublin, and with her savings bought this small house … He sees that everything about her is valiant. He still wants to run out the door.

‘And then you came along …’ She tries to lift the cat with her bird’s-feet hands. He’s too heavy. She stoops to kiss him instead. She begins to cry when the doorbell rings. He slides from her lap when the taxi man comes in, then walks in a slow circle, rubbing against his legs. The man takes her suitcase and goes out to the car.

‘You’ll look after him, won’t you?’ Her voice is piteous, tears trickle down through the wrinkles in her cheeks.

He says, ‘I will.’

HE’S SQUATTING
on his haunches, pouring rusks into the plastic bowl. And who comes by? The beautiful girl. She stops when the cat walks around her, rubbing his side against her legs. Even standing
still she is moving all the time – her hands, head, eyes, hips – restless, natural, eager, in a way that reminds him what youth is. She is like blossom the day it opens, stiff as the stem, rippling as if in a breeze. She makes him want to shine, but not to show off. She makes him want to be worthy of life, to be noble somehow.

She asks about the old woman he minded. He says she’s gone into hospital. He asks where she comes from. She says Uruguay. He asks what is the capital of Uruguay. She says Montevideo. He thinks this could go on all day. He says he thinks the Irish used to emigrate to Montevideo. She says now it’s the other way round, and he feels the force of her shining smile. It won’t have weariness, it won’t accept déjà vu. He can no more leave it than go indoors from the spring sunlight. She says she sees him from her window, she asks is he retired. He says he sees her working in the restaurant – and then he makes a mistake. To keep the conversation going, to go on breathing the scent of her youth, he asks what her boyfriend does. She says she doesn’t have a boyfriend – there’s an eye blink’s pause, and he sees her realizing what he meant. As she walks up the street along the straight black seam of tar, he knows she won’t speak to him again. He’s made a mistake.

WHEN DELIA DIED
she was brought back to her village and buried. Her house was put up for sale. Everything – the Sacred Heart picture, the Welcome doormat, the lace curtain – was thrown out into a skip. That was a year ago but the cat comes up the street every morning, belly swinging low, yellow-green eyes glancing left and right. There are saucers and dishes outside a dozen doors now – meat, chicken, milk, fish – all for Mister Pock. He springs onto a parked car’s bonnet, lies on the sun-warmed metal, springs down and chases his shadow, dabs a paw at a blowing leaf. The young couples stroke him, he rubs his side against their legs, rolls onto
his back. They walk away slowly, looking over their shoulders, calling. He follows for a few yards, then stops. The old writer and his wife leave their door open, but he won’t go in. He won’t enter any other house. He looks across the street at Delia’s window and cries, piteously.