The Salesman

by Joseph O'Connor

  When I came back out I wandered around the rooms for a while, lost and very hot. It was just a standard family house but for some reason it felt huge. And yet, despite that, I felt claustrophobic and exhausted, badly in need of more drink. Finally I turned a corner and saw your mother. She was standing in the corridor talking to a pretty young man with round glasses and raggedy hair. He had on a smock, which made him look like some kind of Russian peasant. His face was very close to your mother’s. She was laughing softly, I remember, as he spoke to her, and gazing right into his eyes. She was laughing, the way she once used to do when I spoke to her, the way I had not seen her laugh for years.

  I said her name. The young man peered over at me as though he did not like me. Your mother’s eyes darkened. She introduced me as her husband – she did not use my name – and the youngfella nodded and muttered a slurred hello before slinking off down the corridor trailing his hands against the walls.

  ‘D’y’know where there’s any more drink?’ I asked her.

  ‘Don’t you think we should go?’ she said.

  ‘I was going to get another drink.’

  ‘You’ve had enough, Billy,’ she said. ‘Please.’

  ‘Grace,’ I said. ‘I don’t feel well. I need a fuckin’ drink.’

  Suddenly your Uncle Jimmy and two heavy men who I did not know were in the corridor staring at us. They seemed to be listening to the conversation and giggling. When Grace saw them her face went red.

  ‘I’ll be outside,’ she said, loudly. ‘I’m just going to say good-night to Catriona, then I’ll see you outside in a minute. And we’ll get a taxi back, Billy, you’re too drunk to drive.’

  She pushed past Jimmy and the other two and went up the stairs.

  One of the men stared after her and whistled though his teeth. Jimmy grinned at me. ‘By Christ,’ he said, and he swigged from his beer bottle. ‘I see you’re on the short fuckin’ leash anyway, soldier.’

  He laughed at this. And I made myself laugh too. I could think of nothing at all to say, so I stumbled off through the corridors trying to find my coat.

  Outside in the street your mother seemed very angry. She stood bolt upright with her arms folded hard around herself while we waited for a taxi. For a while she would not tell me what was wrong.

  I went to embrace her.

  ‘Don’t you dare touch me,’ she said, and nudged me away.

  ‘Grace,’ I said. ‘Please? What is it?’

  She whipped around to face me. ‘Don’t you know? You fall around the place like a fool. You let them all make a holy show of you. I hope you’re proud. That … that dirty little knacker, your brother, laughing at you like that. Making personal remarks. I didn’t know where to look.’

  I said that he had only been joking.

  ‘He’s a little pup, that’s what, and a tinker. You could have said something, but of course you didn’t. I can’t believe how bloody weak you are sometimes. It’s the thing I hate most about you.’

  A taxi pulled up beside us. I opened the back door and got in, your mother climbed into the front. She did not speak to me all the way home, except to ask for some money to pay the babysitter. When the neighbour’s girl had gone we sat in the kitchen for a while. I opened a bottle of beer I had in the fridge and started into it. Your mother was still fuming and waiting for an argument to start. For a time I was too drunk to fight with her. I wish that’s the way things had stayed.

  ‘Do you have to drink that?’ she said after a while.

  ‘It’s only a beer.’

  ‘Haven’t you had enough tonight? You must have had ten beers.’

  I told her I hadn’t realised she’d been counting. This, by now, was a familiar line in our arguments. When she heard it coming out again, she just sighed and stood up.

  ‘I’m going to bed,’ she told me.

  ‘Grace, look, I’m sorry if you’re upset.’

  Her cheeks were like blood drops in snow. ‘You’re sorry, good Christ. You bloody disgraced me and disgraced yourself and you’re sorry. I had to apologise to Catriona. I didn’t know where to look. Is that the way you were brought up, to behave like that in front of your wife? What do you think your mother’d’ve said if she’d seen you?’

  She turned away from me and went to the stove. There was a pot on one of the hobs and she began to stir it. That was all she did. Stirred it around with a wooden spoon and ignored me when I asked her to stop. Something in what she was doing completely enraged me, I can’t explain why. To this day, when I think about the events of that evening, which I do very often, I wish I had just gone to bed as soon as we got home, or even that I had fallen down senselessly drunk in the street, or on the floor of Stevie and Catriona’s house. But I didn’t. Instead, I came home and just let the rage come. I felt it, deep down in my stomach, like a drug. I sensed it flooding the walls of my veins. I looked at your mother’s long straight back. I took a drag on my cigarette.

  ‘You’re one to preach, all the same, Grace.’

  ‘What?’ she said, in a quiet hoarse voice.

  ‘Who was that effort you were talkin, to in the hall? When I came out?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That fuckin’ longhair you were talkin’ to. Who was he, anyway?’

  ‘I don’t know who he was.’

  I laughed. ‘An old friend, maybe.’

  She turned around slowly, a glass of water in her hand. ‘What does that mean?’

  I looked at her. I felt out of control now. The room was spinning and full of strange light. My tongue felt like a slab of soap. ‘But sure, come on, that’s where you met him, isn’t it? Lizzie’s auldfella. At a party? Full of poets and artists, wasn’t that it? No knacker Sweeneys there, like my brother. No tinkers. No commoners. Just Grace Lawrence’s intellectual friends that the likes of fuckin’ me was never good enough to meet.’

  Her body sank back against the stove and she put her fingers to her forehead. Still I continued. I do not think I could have stopped. It was that cold stage of drunkenness when a parody of rationality takes over and you will say anything you have to in order to hurt.

  ‘Maybe that was him tonight, was it? Maybe it was him. Would’ve been nice to meet him after all this time. Yeah, lovely, shake his hand. Buy him a fuckin’ drink. Let him know how his kid is gettin’ along. His bastard kid I’m payin’ the bills for. And you’re going to lecture me about fuckin’ shame, Grace. You hypocrite.’

  Your mother hung her head low for a while. She took a sip of water and ran her fingers through her hair. When she raised her eyes to me again there was a look I had never seen before on her face, an expression of absolute white-hot loathing.

  ‘What did you say to me?’

  ‘You heard me.’

  ‘Say it again.’

  ‘Fuck you, Grace.’

  ‘Billy Sweeney,’ she said, ‘I curse the day I met you.’

  I laughed at her then. ‘Sweetheart, that makes two of us.’

  Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes narrow and glimmering. She took a step forward and threw the water in my face. She dropped the glass and it shattered on the tiles. I stood up shaking with fury. I remember being aware that I had clenched my fists.

  ‘Go on,’ she screamed. ‘If you’re man enough, go on. It’ll be the last fucking thing you’ll ever do, you whore’s melt.’

  I staggered to the sink and got a towel.

  ‘You low dirty cur,’ she said. ‘I hope you die tonight.’

  ‘So do I,’ I said.

  ‘I’m glad I lost your child,’ she said. ‘Christ help me, I’m glad.’

  ‘If it was mine,’ I said.

  She put her hands into the pockets of her jacket and dashed from the room.

  ‘That’s it,’ I bawled after her. ‘Run, Grace. Oh, you’re good at that, all right. Always were. You just run, baby, that’s the fuckin’ style.’

  I heard her feet on the stairs and the sound of the bedroom door slamming hard. Shortly after this I heard the
sound of your bedroom door opening. There were voices upstairs. I heard the ting of the telephone being picked up and quickly replaced. I remember hearing the toilet flush. I listened to the pipes for a while, as they gurgled in the wall. I remember looking at the plaque which the old rector had screwed up in the kitchen: ‘Man does not live by bread alone’.

  I went into the boxroom where I was sleeping at the time on a camp bed. I lay down. Everything was quiet. The room seemed to be somersaulting, spinning on several axes, but I felt fine. I felt happy. I felt so good that I wanted another drink. So after a while I got up again and crawled on my hands and knees back into the kitchen where I had hidden a large bottle of vodka down behind the fridge. I opened it and drank all of it.

  I believe it was Lizzie who found me on the kitchen floor when she came down for her breakfast the next morning. I believe it was you, love, who called the ambulance. I vaguely remember the sound of you shouting into the telephone that the house was hard to find and had a strange name.

  Glen Bolcain. Glen Bolcain. Glen Bolcain.

  They had to pump my stomach and put me on sedatives. Your mother never once came to see me in the hospital. The day I was finally released I was driven all the way home from Carlow in a taxi. Even then, she and I did not speak one solitary word to each other for almost three months. It was a hell of a night, love, your cousin Molly’s christening. If the truth is told – and why not tell it now – I do not think we ever got over it.

  Chapter Ten

  Finally.

  I was at my desk in the office one morning in the middle of July when the telephone rang. I had just asked Hopper to give me the precise address of a sex shop he knew in the city centre, so I was laughing like a drain when I picked it up. There was a crackling, distorted voice, like it was a bad mobile connection.

  ‘That Bill?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Bill Sweeney?’

  ‘The same. Who’s this?’

  ‘It’s Nap here. The milkman of human fuckin’ kindness.’

  I almost dropped the phone with shock.

  ‘How did you find out my real name?’

  ‘I’ve a pal a guard, Billyboy. Got him to check out the reg on yer car.’

  ‘Where are you? How did you get my number?’

  ‘Y’d be amazed, Billyboy. Now listen to me, I’ve only a minute, right. That thing y’talked to me about, it’s on for Monday night.’

  ‘It’s on?’

  ‘Yeah. I’m after talkin’ to yer friend and it’s on. He’ll do it for y’Monday night.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Course I’m bleedin’ sure, man, what, y’think I’m guessin’? Only thing is, he’ll need six.’

  ‘Six.’

  ‘Six ton, yeah.’

  ‘That’s not what we agreed.’

  ‘Well lookat, it’s all the same to me. I’m only tellin’ y’what I was told.’

  The line bleeped a few times. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I can manage six. But no more.’

  ‘We’re laughin’ so,’ he said. ‘We’re laughin’, Larry.’

  But I did not really feel like laughing at all, to tell you the truth, when I hung up the phone. My mind was racing. I went to the toilet and bathed my face with cold water. I smoked a couple of cigarettes. I knew it was important to try to think clearly now. I got out my notebook and jotted down a few details. It was absolutely vital not to panic, not even to show any excitement. I went back to the office and sat at the desk.

  I switched on the computer and pretended to do some work, my fingers so sweaty that they kept slipping on the keyboard. Gradually managed to calm down. I picked up the phone, rang Seánie and told him that I would come to Lourdes with him after all. He was leaving the next Tuesday morning; I would travel on the same flight if I could get a ticket. He sounded delighted. Then I went into O’Keeffe’s office and told him that I would be taking two weeks’ holidays from Monday. I was going to Lourdes. He looked up at me blankly.

  ‘Monday?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Lourdes?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘As in Virgin Mary Lourdes?’

  ‘No, Hugh. As in Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas Lourdes.’

  ‘Jesus. Thanks for all the notice, Billy.’

  ‘It only just came up, Hugh. We’re quiet enough at the moment, anyway. The lads can manage.’

  His face changed then. He started to do his understanding expression that he learnt on the staff-relations training course he had attended the previous summer. I always find this upsetting. To me the sudden appearance of O’Keeffe’s understanding expression is like bumping into someone in an alley who is wearing black tights and a mask and lightly swinging an executioner’s axe.

  ‘So I suppose the new love is coming with you?’

  ‘I don’t know, Hugh,’ I said. ‘Maybe. She’s busy just now.’

  He sighed, nodded, wrote something in his note pad.

  ‘Well listen, I’m thrilled skinny for you, Bill. We all are. I was just saying the other day how well you’re looking lately. Because you didn’t seem yourself for a while there.’

  ‘Yes, Hugh,’ I said.

  ‘Everyone needs someone, don’t they?’

  ‘That’s true, Hugh.’

  He laughed. ‘You’re a dark bloody horse, Bill. Anyway, have a good time over there, the pair of you.’

  I went to leave. Just as I got to the door he called out my name. When I turned around his face was dark and serious.

  ‘You know the really gas thing about Lourdes, Bill?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  He grinned. ‘They say the only virgin in the whole town is the one in the bloody grotto.’

  Back at my desk I found it hard to focus on anything much. Hopper’s mobile kept ringing, which drove me crazy, I wished he’d switch the damn thing off. The computer was printing out some long complicated-looking document whining and straining and rattling from side to side as it tried to deal with the graphs and pie-charts. After a while I could not stand it any more. I got my keys and told them that I was going out. Hopper grunted. Liam ignored me. What a surprise. You could tell that pair you had just grown a ten-foot tail where your coccyx used to be and Hopper would grunt and Liam would ignore you.

  I headed into town and got parking on Ormonde Quay. The sex shop Hopper told me about was just where he said, in a tiny laneway off Bachelor’s Walk. Out front there were stainless-steel shutters splashed with graffiti warning drug pushers to get out of the area. Inside was a long narrow fluorescent-lit room stuffed with racks of dirty magazines and books.

  Down the back was a row of three tall glass cases full of headless dummies in different uniforms. There was a nurse’s outfit, an air hostess’s suit, Jesus Christ, there was a nun’s habit done out in white leather and black lace, complete with rubber veil and stockings. On a shelf beside this sat a collection of blow-up dolls in boxes. The illustration on one of these boxes grabbed my attention because this particular doll looked exactly like Mrs Thatcher. It was actually a bit frightening, the resemblance, but it was there all the same, the same candyfloss hairstyle and fearsome glint. The doll was anatomically correct, the box announced in day-glo green letters. She certainly did not look it to me, I must say, but then neither did Mrs Thatcher, at least not very often, and in any case I had no intention of checking. On the wall by the counter there were long rows of vibrators and false penises and vaginas made of plastic. Underneath this were cardboard boxes of playing cards with pornographic pictures on them, tubs of lubricants, chocolate nipples, candles shaped like breasts, fruit-flavoured condoms. They have kiwi-fruit-flavoured condoms nowadays, for Jesus’ sake; when I was a kid they did not even have kiwi-fruit-flavoured fucking kiwi fruits. And handcuffs. There they were. Hopper had been right, after all. I picked up a set and gave them to the long-nosed youngfella behind the counter.

  ‘Want any videos or mags?’ he asked. I told
him no.

  ‘Do you a good deal, no? Summer sale.’

  ‘No, no. Just these.’

  He nodded and smiled not at all unpleasantly. He looked a bit like an unambitious junior civil servant, I thought, as he put the handcuffs into a bag and sellotaped it up.

  ‘How much anyway?’ I said, taking out my wallet.

  He peered up at the ceiling and scratched his head. ‘Ah, I’ll take ten off you. I’m in good humour today. Must be the nice weather, what?’

  Back in the car I got the handcuffs out of the box and tried them on. They were fine. They had a little pink fake-fur lining on them, ‘for comfort’, the instructions explained. Not that Quinn would be wearing them very fucking long, I told myself, but at least he would be comfortable for his last few minutes on earth. This thought amused me. I sat in the car and laughed out loud for a while. I laughed so much that a couple of snotty-looking kids on skateboards stopped to gawp in at me.

  I took a spin out to the hardware shop in Sallynoggin and bought a thick roll of refuse sacks, good strong tough ones that would not leak – it actually said ‘Leakage Resistant’ on the packet, which was reassuring in the circumstances. Once again I paid cash and made absolutely sure that the girl at the checkout did not get a good straight-on look at my face. Now I had everything I needed. There it all was, in the boot, laid out neatly under the blanket.

  Next morning I gunned it down to the bank in Dalkey to collect the French francs I had ordered for the trip to Lourdes, along with the 1,950 in punts I knew I would need for the plan. The girl behind the counter asked me to say a prayer at the grotto for her mother who had lymph cancer, and I assured her that I certainly would. Just as I was leaving, the manager, Ronnie McDermott, ambled out of his office and saw me.

  ‘Ah, Billy,’ he said. ‘How’s tricks?’ He put his hand on my shoulder. It felt like a spanner.

  What I was thinking was: Hello there, Ronnie, I’ll tell you exactly how tricks are, Ronnie. Outside in the back of the motor I have a hunting knife, a hammer, a fan belt, leakage-resistant plastic rubbish bags, a pair of handcuffs and a gag. You feel like taking a stroll out to see, Ronnie, do you? Ah come on, Ronnie, I could do with a bit of practice actually, Ronnie, you crawling Cork shit-heap, and it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. ’Mon out to the car park with me, Ronnie, I can’t wait to thank you for all your fuckin’ support over the years.