The Dead Republic (19 page)

And that was how the oul’ one saw me. She was looking out the window, checking to see that she was getting value for her money and she saw the gardener trying to turn over onto his back, so he wouldn’t drown in her flowerbed. Both of my knees were bent, my feet were in the air - an ancient baby trying to stand up in its cot.
What about me!
She came straight out. I heard her squelch across the lawn. She had ten years on me, but she still managed to pull me out of the muck and carry me to her kitchen, around to the back of the house - she didn’t mind a bit of rain but she wasn’t going to let me dirty her hall. She carried me, my arms around her neck and one of hers under my knees, all the way, right over the fuckin’ threshold. I could tell immediately I wasn’t the first dead man she’d carried.

She sat me down in the kitchen, on a white-painted chair. She put old newspaper under my feet. She lifted each foot, no bother, and didn’t flinch or even pause when she held up one hard leg and realised what she was holding. She put it back down on the paper, and stood up without grunting. I looked around me while she went off somewhere for a towel - I knew; she’d gone looking for an old one - and I saw the photograph. I could just about see it in the hall, past the open kitchen door. A young woman, in the Cumann na mBan uniform.

She came back in with a thin, grey towel. I dried my head; the towel nearly fell apart on my face.

—What happened you?

She wasn’t a Roscommon woman, or she hadn’t been in a long time.

—My knee, I told her.

I looked at the water still running off me, onto the
Irish Press
at my feet. The print was going to stain her lino.

Her name was O’Kelly and she’d been married to the man I’d seen her walking with, past my door, every Sunday afternoon, until just before Christmas the year before. The Widow O’Kelly, still dressed, I noticed now, in black.

I looked at her.

She’d never been Miss O’Shea.

—Did it lock on you? she asked.

—It did.

It did
, I’d said, and not just
Yeah
. I was in
The Quiet Man
. (There were cinemas near enough to me, in Sutton and Killester, but I’d never gone to see it.)

—It happens to us all, she said.—All you can do is wait. You’ll have a cup of tea.

I didn’t tell her I never drank it. The cold was in me; I could still feel the muck on my lips.

She came back with some of her husband’s clothes. A pair of corduroy trousers, a jumper and a flannel shirt.

—What do you think?

—Thank you, missis.

—He’d be glad you have them. He thought the world of you.

—He was a good man.

—Ah, sure.

She stepped out of the kitchen. She brought the door with her.

—The kettle will be ready by the time you’ve changed. Bending down was a killer. The laces put up a fight; they were soaked fat and ignorant. But I got the boots off and managed to keep them on the paper. The trousers were tricky - the kettle was boiling, starting to rattle; she was right behind the door. My knee was still locked, so I had to change them sitting down. The kettle steam was getting into the corduroy. The fuckin’ things were wet before I got them on.

—How are you getting on in there?

—Grand.

I was buttoning up the shirt.

—Are you decent?

—I am.

She came in through the steam, and I was sure it was my woman.
Ah, sure.
The thin hair up in a bun. I stopped being old Henry and asked her.

—Were you ever a Miss O’Shea?

—No, she said.—I wasn’t.

She didn’t hesitate or raise a grey, wet eyebrow. She went straight for the kettle.

—How’s the knee?

I told my leg to straighten, and it did. One slight click and I was back in action. She wasn’t looking. She was messing with the teapot. I could have cheated; I could have stayed. But—

—Grand, I said.

I didn’t want to be helpless.

—You’ll have the tea before you go, she said.

—I will.

I will
. I hoped she’d look, and admit it: she was Miss O’Shea.

But she wasn’t. And she didn’t.

She gave me a couple of fig rolls. She watched me eat them. They were stale but I said nothing.

—Redmond, she said.

—That was your name before you got married?

—Yes, she said.—I was twenty.

—Young enough.

—Young enough, she agreed.

I stood up.

—Thanks very much, I said.—I’ll bring the clothes back to you.

—They’re yours, she said.

I was wearing a dead man’s clothes again.

—Thanks.

—They fit you.

It was true.

I went out the back door, after she’d slipped me a ten-shilling note.

—I’ll see you next week so, Henry.

—Yeah, I said.

But she wouldn’t. She’d see me, but not knee-deep in her garden.

I went to mass.

I went, and stood and kneeled - and sometimes groaned - and sat, and listened to the hum of the Latin around me. I looked at the mothers in their Sunday best. I stood up and left with everyone else. I even stood around outside and chewed the rag with the other oul’ lads and louts leaning against the church wall, waiting for the Manhattan, the pub across the road, to open. I went to the church every Sunday, so the priest would see me there, clean-shaven, clean-shirted, a widower, well able to look after himself.

There was a job going, and the priest had it. He stood in front of the bike one day, late afternoon, getting dark, when I was going downhill, towards the high cross - the real thing, stone, not a film prop - at the junction, the last steep stretch before home. I saw his new black shoes and I stopped.

I’d nodded before, two or three times, but I’d never spoken to him.

—Not a bad day now, he said.

—No, I agreed, although I was sick of the day and the weather that came with it.

He stared at my hands on the handlebars, and looked back up at me.

—You’re a hard working man, he said.

I said nothing back. I didn’t understand priests; I hadn’t a clue what he was doing there.

—Henry, isn’t it?

—Yeah, I said.—That’s me.

—Henry Smart.

He was used to being listened to; he was used to stopping traffic.

—That’s right, I said.

—I’ve been asking around about you, he said.

He was a lucky man; thirty years earlier, he’d have been dead for doing that.

—Why? I asked.

Then I made a quick decision.

—Why, Father?

—I have a job you might be interested in.

—Is that right, Father?

—That’s right, he said.—Caretaker of the boys’ school. Are you interested?

—I don’t know, I said.—Why me, Father?

—People speak highly of you, he said.—And good men are scarce. You’ll be kept busy. But I don’t think you’d mind that too much.

I nodded.

—The last incumbent wasn’t too fond of hard work, said the priest.—Or children.

I looked at him.

—I don’t mind hard work, Father, I told him.

—You’ve had children yourself, Henry?

I thought quickly about it.

—Two, I said.

—Are they nearabouts?

—They’re in America. Father.

—And the grandchildren?

I shrugged.

—You’ve lost count, he said.

I didn’t kill him. I stood up straight beside my bike. I pushed it an inch; I was ready to move.

—Will you think about it? said the priest.

—I’ll think about it.

—You’re interested.

—Yes, Father, I said.—I’m interested.

—Good man, he said.—Good. When I see you at mass a couple of Sundays in a row, I might even offer it to you. There are one or two other candidates I want to talk to first.

He stood aside.

—I’ll let you go.

He walked off, up the hill. I thought about going after him with the spade off my bike; his neck was an easy, red target. But it had started pissing down, black fuckin’ rain. A job with a roof - it was already keeping me dry. I went home and polished the alligator boots and I wore them to mass the next Sunday. I liked the company and the Latin. And five weeks after I kneeled at my first mass, the priest knocked on my door.

—The job’s yours, he said.

I took a breath. I kept my hands at my sides.

—When, Father?

—Tomorrow, he said.

—Thanks, Father.

He held out a fat set of keys.

—I won’t bother you with the which-one-is-which palaver, he said.—You can learn by trial and error. Eight o’clock tomorrow morning. You’re expected.

—Grand.

I liked the neat click of the lock in the front gate. It was new; it wanted to give. The railings were new too, and silver. The path along the perimeter was sharp and new, where the handsome mammies parked their prams while they wrapped up their eldest boys and sent them in to learn. The tarmac from the gate into the yard was new; it held onto my soles for just a welcoming second before letting go of me again. Everything was new. The teachers were young. The headmaster was a gentleman. The walls inside still gave off the good smell of new paint, even on the wet days when the corridors shrank between lines of damp, hanging coats.

I’d finally found a school that wanted me. I was maintaining a building that wasn’t falling apart. And I caught myself thinking, just the once: James Connolly would have liked this. I copped myself on; it was only a fuckin’ school. But I was content enough as I did my daily rounds, swept the yard, fixed the leaking tap, threw disinfectant at the cement urinal and listened to it hiss and eat the tiles.

The quiet life was mending me.

—You’ve abandoned us, Henry.

I looked and saw her, Missis O’Kelly. Outside the butcher’s on the Main Road. I’d just bought a load of calf’s liver. It was heavy and wet in my hand, beginning to seep through the brown paper. But I wasn’t going to take out my net shopping bag. It stayed safe in my coat pocket. This oul’ one had been in Cumann na mBan; men carried rifles, not shopping bags.

—Hello, Missis O’Kelly, I said.—Grand day again.

It wasn’t raining. The only thing dripping was the blood from the bag in my fist.

—Have you retired? she said.

—No, I haven’t, I said.

My back was as straight as I could get it.

Her eyes were brown, and younger than the rest of her.

—I’ve just moved on, I said.—A new job.

She looked down at my knee - at both my knees.

—It’s grand, I told her.—No bother since. I’m looking after the boys’ school.

—Looking after? she said.—Caretaking?

—That’s it, I said.

—But who’ll take care of my garden? she said.—It’s already growing wild.

She was well able to go into her own garden and beat back nature. She’d carried me into her house without sweating. But that wasn’t the point. A good garden looked better with a handy little man standing or kneeling in it. And I’d seen the way she’d looked at my knees.

The suburban life was doing things to me. I was grabbing back the years.

—I could drop by on Saturday, I said.

—Good, she said, like I’d finally seen reason.—That’s arranged then.

 

 

 

I heard the explosion from out on the roof. Some poor little fucker had dropped the bottle of ink.

By the time I got down the headmaster was showing the young lad how to use a mop. The kid was still snivelling, still half expecting to be hammered. But he wasn’t going to be hit, and his body was beginning to know that. The headmaster - I’ll give the man his name: Mister Strickland - he’d swept the broken glass to the side of the floor, and he was running the mop across the block tiles like a man who’d done it before and liked being useful.

—Good man, Henry, he said.—I beat you to it.

—I was up on the roof, I told him.

He said nothing to that and dropped the mop-head into the bucket and sloshed it around. He squeezed it out.

—Come over here now, Peter, he said.

Peter was small and probably ten. He pulled himself away from the wall and slowly made his way to Strickland. He kept his feet out of the blue-stained suds.

Strickland held out the mop handle.

—Your turn, he said.

Peter hesitated - I waited for the quick jab, the mop handle to his gut. I knew it wouldn’t happen but I still expected it. Peter took the handle. He was tiny beside it.

—Off you go now, said Strickland.—Let’s see what you’re made of.

He stood back and gave the kid his elbow room. Peter held the mop like it was a leper’s prick; he wasn’t happy at all.

—Go on, said Strickland.

We both watched Peter as he sent the mop out over the floor, and dropped it. He picked it up. He gathered up the suds. The ink was cheap - dyed water - so it didn’t stain the wood.

—Good man, said Strickland.

He took the mop from Peter.

—Now, Peter, he said.—Listen to me now. If you work hard in school, that might be the last time you’ll ever have to use a mop.

—Yes, sir.

—Off you go.

—Thanks, sir.

—And mind the wet floor there.

Peter didn’t move.

—The ink, sir, he said.

—What about it?

—Mister McManus sent me on the message, sir. To get the ink.

—Go back to Mister McManus—

I saw the fear hop into Peter’s face. So did Strickland.

—Tell him the bottle was empty, he said,—and I’ll bring the ink up to him myself in a few minutes. But I’ll have to mix some more first, tell him.

He watched Peter.