The New Policeman (21 page)

7

“Call him off!” said the priest.

J.J. had never yet given Bran an order. For one thing, she wasn’t his dog. For another, she had been born a millennium or two before him, and what that might mean in terms of seniority he hadn’t worked out. But he could see why the priest was so upset. She was being very aggressive.

“Bran!” he said. “Stop!”

She glanced at him and dropped, with relief or resignation, onto her belly. Her snarls diminished and died away, but she was still watching the priest with a keen eye.

“Put her out,” he said.

J.J. considered the situation. The priest was an older man, in his sixties at least. He was shorter than
J.J. and lighter. He looked much more frightened than frightening, and J.J.’s curiosity was getting the better of his nerves.

“Out, Bran,” he said as convincingly as he could. She looked up at him with pleading eyes.

“I mean it. Out!”

She was desperately weak. It was all she could do to haul herself to her feet and wobble slowly out through the crawl hole. J.J. heard her claws clicking on the stones and the little grunt she gave as she lay down on the other side of the wall. He lifted the candle and stepped forward into the room.

“Who are you?” said the priest.

J.J. didn’t answer. His eye had fallen on something, and his attention was riveted. Behind the shadowy figure of the priest, at about the height of his hip, something was jutting out of the wall. At first glance it looked like a stick or a branch, but already, even in the dim light cast by the priest’s candle, J.J. could see that it wasn’t. It was too regular and smooth; someone had shaped it like that. It was hollow, and it had a small hole in the side. More than one.

It was a flute.

The sudden rush of understanding felt like a landslide in J.J.’s brain. He knew whose flute it was and
who had made it. He knew who the priest was; he even knew his name. And he knew how time was leaking into Tír na n’Óg. The time skin was sealed quite perfectly around the barrel of the flute, but the flute was hollow. The membrane could not reach the bore.

J.J.’s first instinct was to pull it out. He took a step forward, but the priest moved to the side and blocked his way.

“Who are you?” he said again.

J.J. was tempted to rush him. He was sure he could do it; grab the flute and be gone with it before the older man could stop him. Even if it came to a struggle, he could probably come out on top. But something restrained him. His great-grandfather, the first J.J. Liddy, could have done the same thing all those years ago; he could have used his youth and superior strength to reclaim his flute. He hadn’t done it. J.J. wouldn’t either. He would find another way.

“Are you deaf?” said Father Doherty.

“No. My name’s J.J.” He knew better than to confuse the issue by giving his great-grandfather’s name. “J.J. Byrne,” he finished up.

“J.J. Byrne,” said the priest, eyeing him carefully. J.J. noticed that he paid particular attention to his blue-
and-white sneakers. “That’s a strange name for a fairy.”

“It would be,” said J.J. “But then, I’m not a fairy.”

“Well, you have the manners of one,” the priest snapped.

“Sorry, Father,” said J.J. He went to mass with his parents every Sunday morning. He had plenty of respect for priests in general, but not this one.

“If you’re not a fairy, then what are you doing here?”

J.J. thought hard. He had no intention of telling Father Doherty why he was here, and to say that he had been introduced to Tír na n’Óg by a local publisher wouldn’t sound terribly convincing. A groaning sigh from Bran on the other side of the crawl hole inspired him.

“I followed my dog down a hole,” he said. “And now we’re trying to get home.”

Father Doherty’s response was unexpected. He stepped up close to the wall, laid a possessive hand on the end of the flute, and gestured toward the corner. “Off you go then.”

J.J. grasped at straws. “But that’s a stone wall,” he said.

The priest smiled. “It looks like a stone wall, but it isn’t. Have faith, child. Trust me.” When J.J. still hung
back, he went on, “You may think you can’t get out at the other end, but you can. There are big stones in the entrance, but there is a light flagstone in one corner. There was one here as well, but I suppose your dog must have disturbed it. You will find it lifts easily, and there’s plenty of room for you to climb out.”

J.J. felt trapped. He could still make a lunge for the flute and wrestle it away from the priest, but it had to be a last resort.

“But what about you, Father?” he asked. “What are you doing down here?”

Father Doherty smiled and sat down on a large stone beside the wall. His hand was still resting on the flute, and J.J. got the impression that he was very much accustomed to that posture, as if he had spent a great deal of time sitting in it.

“I have to stay a bit longer,” he said, “but I shall be leaving here shortly as well.”

“Why do you have to stay?” said J.J. “What’s that you’re doing with the flute?”

Father Doherty smiled, more to himself than to J.J. “Stroke of genius, wasn’t it, to use the flute? I am achieving a lifetime’s ambition, J.J. Byrne. I am ridding Ireland of the fairies and their insidious ways forever.”

“Why?” J.J. wanted to keep him talking while he worked out what to do next. It was proving easy enough to do.

“They have been the bane of Irish life for generation upon generation. They corrupt the people’s minds with their music and their dancing and their deceitful ways. Don’t you agree?”

“I don’t really know too much about them, Father. But I’m sure you must be right.”

“They have turned the Irish people into an idle race full of fanciful dreaming and heathen superstitions. They have even corrupted our blood, J.J. Did you know that?”

“I didn’t, Father.”

“They steal our children and leave their own brats in their cradles. And that’s not the worst thing they do. They walk abroad among us, J.J., in the broad light of day. Their menfolk charm our girls with their seductive ways and then leave them to bear the consequences of their mortal sins.”

J.J. wasn’t sure he understood that last bit. The priest enlightened him.

“Children born out of wedlock, child. There are those among us even now who are tainted with the blood of the sidhe.”

He fell silent for a moment, seeming to lose himself in the flame of his candle, which sat in a puddle of its own wax on the ground. “I have a vision for Ireland,” he went on. “I see a God-fearing Catholic nation peopled by industrious citizens, each one of them determined to put the old, feckless ways behind them. I see an Ireland where every man has a motorcar and spends his time improving his lot and the lot of his family, instead of wasting his days growing potatoes and his nights drinking and dancing. I see an Ireland that has grown wealthy and taken its rightful place among the great states of Europe.”

“But all that has happened already,” said J.J.

“Already?” said Father Doherty.

“You should see Ireland now, Father. No one sees fairies anymore. They don’t even believe in them.”

“Are you telling me the truth?” said the priest.

“I am, Father,” said J.J. He didn’t feel that he was lying. Most of what Father Doherty had envisaged really had come true.

“I didn’t expect it to happen so soon,” said the priest. He looked closely at J.J. again, and his eyes came to rest on his sneakers. “What year is it, child?”

J.J. told him. The priest’s eyes lost focus. He repeated the year, and J.J. sensed a sadness in him as
he said it. “Who would have guessed that time could move so fast over there?”

“So perhaps you don’t need to stay any longer?” said J.J.

But Father Doherty shook his head. He took a large fob watch out of his pocket and held it to the light. “Another three hours,” he said. “That’s all I need.”

“J.J.?”

Priest and boy froze, their eyes locked together as the voice boomed down through the hollow halls.

“Who’s that?” whispered the priest.

“Aengus Óg,” said J.J., unable to think of anything else to say.

“Keep him out!” hissed Father Doherty urgently.

J.J. scrabbled through the first crawl hole and called up from the next one. “I’m here, Aengus. I’ll be out in a minute. Wait there for me.”

Back inside again, he whispered to Father Doherty, “Why do you need another three hours?”

The priest was clearly terrified of Aengus Óg. His voice trembled as he answered. “Night. I have to stay until night falls.”

“Why?”

Father Doherty released the flute and made a
swift, pulling motion above it. “I pull it out.”

J.J. stared at him, trying to work out the significance of what he was saying.

“Time stops again,” he went on. “Forever. Eternal night in Tír na n’Óg.” He laughed, which isn’t easy to do in a terrified whisper. “That will put an end to them, don’t you think?”

J.J. didn’t know what to think. “But Father, surely that will make them all come over into our world?”

“It might,” said the priest. “In which case they will die, just as you and I will die. And then they will have to atone to their Maker for their century upon century of sins.”

“J.J.?” Aengus sounded closer this time.

“Keep him out!”

“I can’t, Father,” said J.J., grasping at a sudden inspiration. “But I think your watch must be slow.”

“What?”

“It’s already dark, Father.”

“Is it?”

“Look.” J.J. pressed the time-zone button on his watch and hoped for the best. He put his wrist beside the candle. It had worked. He turned the watch face toward the priest. “It’s a quarter past eleven.”

“The Lord be praised,” said Father Doherty.

“What are you up to in there?” Aengus was at the crawl hole. Another moment and he would be in there with them.

“Quick,” said Father Doherty. “Follow me.”

He pulled the flute out of the membrane, paused for an instant to cross himself, then stepped through. At the last possible moment, J.J. made a grab for the flute and prepared to hang on tight. As the time skin closed behind the priest, there was a slight resistance on the other end and then it was gone. J.J. held his great-grandfather’s flute in his hand.

The time leak had stopped.

AFTER THE SUN GOES DOWN

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PART FIVE

1

In the Chinese restaurant, Helen experienced a sudden release of pressure, as though a weight that she had been struggling beneath for years had unexpectedly been removed from her. She took a deep breath and looked at the others. They were looking at her quizzically as though they too had felt something. All three of them breathed a deep sigh and relaxed in their chairs. Looking round the restaurant, they noticed other customers doing the same thing.

They had been worried that there wouldn’t be time for a decent meal before they had to get back for the evening milking, but now, when Ciaran looked at his watch, he saw that there was plenty of time.

“Dessert, anyone?” he said.

Across the length and breadth of Ireland, and way, way beyond it, the same sense of relief was felt. Those who talked about synchronicity and similar intangible things would continue to talk about that day for years to come. Those who were silent in regard to such matters were not beyond noticing it either, and even the scientists had something to say about it. They were yet to be introduced to the existence of Tír na n’Óg and the potentially lethal effect of flutes, and thus they proved, beyond any measure of doubt, that an actual change in the speed of time was outside the realms of possibility. They put it down to an obscure “hundredth monkey” phenomenon; an inexplicable but welcome change in the psyche of the species. Much as some of them might have wished to, the one thing they could not do was deny that a change had taken place. They experienced, along with the rest of the population of the planet, a sudden and dramatic increase in time in their day-to-day lives.

Everyone adjusted rapidly, though few forgot the nightmare days of the past when the hours had flown past like snowflakes in a blizzard. No one could understand how they could have allowed it to happen. There was plenty of time. There must always have been plenty of time. They must have used it wrongly,
that was all. Adults took up old hobbies or revisited forgotten childhood passions. Hand-knitted sweaters and gloves and scarves came back into fashion. Workplaces got on schedule, many of them for the first time ever, and employees and management alike discovered that there was room in their lives for their families as well as their jobs.

As for the children, they found that there was, after all, time for more in a day than school, homework, and washing up. There was time for reading books as well as watching telly. There was time to mooch along country lanes; time to pick an ash plant and wallop the heads off stinging nettles; time to pop the big white bindweed flowers out of their little green beds. There was time to mix mud with orange juice to see what it would make; time to stand in puddles and watch the water go in over their shoes; time to stay out in the rain until they got really,
really
, REALLY wet. And none of it mattered now, because there was time for their parents to make them hot milk and dress them in warm pajamas and tell them a bedtime story that went on and on and on until finally it became part of their dreams.