The Salesman

by Joseph O'Connor

  ‘I don’t know if that’s such a great idea,’ I said.

  ‘Well, I’d like to,’ he said. ‘If y’could see your way clear some time. Wouldn’t have to be today or tomorrow, like. Just before I go away.’

  ‘Why would you want to do that?’

  ‘It’d set my mind at rest about her. Before I go away, like. T’England.’

  The smaller budgie spread its wings and hopped up on to the perch.

  ‘So what d’y’think there, Marge?’

  I did actually think about it for a moment or two. I tried to picture how this could happen. If it could happen. I closed my eyes. Your powdery white face seemed to loom up at me. I saw your hands stretched out to full span, just as they had been on the video screen that day so many months ago in the courtroom.

  ‘No. No, look, I don’t think so, son. I’m sorry.’

  ‘OK,’ he nodded. ‘Fair enough, so. Just thought I’d ask.’

  He put his boots on and went back out to the stable. The wind seemed to die down a bit. He emerged with the old lawnmower and started cutting the grass.

  Chapter Twenty

  Quite early the next Tuesday morning I got up, took a long hot shower and drove down for a swim at the Forty Foot. There was nobody else around that morning, and the grey swirling water was so indescribably cold that when I plunged in I thought at first I was going to scream. Even after ten minutes of hard crawl my skin was still aching. Around me the black-headed-gulls whirled and dived low.

  I was backstroking gently out in the swell when suddenly I saw this enormous freak wave coming in slowly from the middle distance. It was perhaps six feet high, but all on its own, just one towering wave. It was an odd dreamlike sight, quite beautiful, but I did not exactly have time to admire it. It was heading straight for me. I turned and began to swim as fast and strong as I could for the shore but it caught me. I actually heard it rushing up behind me, gaining on me, fizzy flecks of foam spattering through the air. I felt it lifting me, raising me up like a giant invisible hand and pulling me along with it, dangling me in space just for a moment and then dropping me down on the shore. It left me standing right there on the mossy rock.

  I clambered up the rock, dried myself slowly, rubbing my still smarting skin hard to try to generate some heat. I was quivering and my knees felt weak as I began to dress. Just then a fit-looking old man with a red face and woolly beard came tiptoeing down over the damp stones with a thick towel under his arm. He nodded at me and grinned as he took off his straw hat and unbuttoned his shirt. He had a discoloured tattoo of a scallop shell on his chest.

  ‘I see you got a bit of a lift in,’ he laughed. ‘I was watching you on me way down the front. The way the big wave carried you in.’

  ‘Amazing, yes,’ I said. ‘I got the land of my life.’

  He chuckled again. ‘Happened me too the other week. Thought I was losing the marbles altogether. But it’s only that damn Sea Cat.’

  ‘The … ?’

  ‘That new super-ferry they have going over to Holyhead every morning. From Dun Laoghaire, you know. The Sea Cat, it’s called. Huge big thing the size of an office block but it does fifty miles an hour. It’s some kind of newfangled what do you call it. Hovercraft.’

  ‘Oh yes. I’ve seen it.’

  ‘Well, it churns up the water to beat the band. But you only get the wave in this close ten minutes after it’s gone past and you can’t see it any more.’

  He slid his trousers down. His legs had blue varicose veins showing through old porridgy skin. ‘I believe they’re putting up warnings about it soon,’ he said.

  I had tea and toast in a café in Sandycove village and met Quinn outside the ruined teetering hulk of the Pavilion cinema just after nine o’clock, like we had arranged. We were a little early for visiting hours so we decided to take a walk up the metals. He asked me why the metals were called the metals when they’re only lanes beside the railway track. Would it not have been easier just to call them lanes? I told him I could not remember why, but they had always been called the metals: they had been there since the track was first built in the late years of the last century, the labourers had made them to carry the granite and marble slabs down to the shore from the quarry in Dalkey. ‘So you could walk all the way home to our gaff through there?’ he laughed. I told him yes.

  Our gaff, if you don’t mind.

  Soon it was a lovely sharp wintery morning. A creamy sun appeared in the grey and white sky. The steep banks on each side of the track were thick with blackberries and wild roses, ferns and ivy and huge clumps of flame-yellow gorse. I told him the names of the different plants. As if he gave a shit. Young men in red corporation oilskins were swinging scythes at the long brown foliage. Near the bridge at Glasthule Dart station the cutting was strewn with rubbish. A carpet of shattered beer bottles and a pile of mouldy yellow newspapers. A warm ammoniac aroma rose from the mound. We turned back and walked down together as far as the entrance to the People’s Park. We went in there for a few minutes and strolled around looking at the blackened, empty flower-beds. I could see by his face that he was getting nervous. Down in the playground, the roundabout was gently creaking as it turned in the wind.

  We came back out to the street and walked slowly down in the direction of the hospital, taking our time, our breath turning to soft white globes of steam. He was very quiet now, and chain-smoking madly. We turned into the hospital. We crossed the car park. We were actually on our way up the steps to the lobby when he stopped.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked him.

  He looked as though he was about to throw up. ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I can’t do it.’

  ‘Well lookat, you’re here now.’

  He shook his head. ‘No. No, I can’t do it, man. I’ll catch you later.’

  He whipped around and walked away very fast, weaving through a line of parked ambulances. I went after him and followed for a while, back down the main street, past the shopping mall, down Marine Road, all the way down past the Pavilion and as far as the entrance to the metals. I called out his name. He did not turn when he heard me, just started to run. He ran hard off down the metals and I let him go.

  When I got back to the hospital the doctors were with you. A specialist had been called. You had contracted a minor lung infection. Ordinarily this would not be anything to worry about but your immune system was getting low. They might have to operate if the infection did not disappear or at least recede, they told me.

  When I got back to Glen Bolcain his door was locked. I knocked a few times but he did not answer. I noticed that the radio was not on, and that surprised me.

  I went into the office and tried to work for a while. The specialist rang several times that day to tell me how you were doing. At about four in the afternoon he called once more. You had deteriorated again, he would definitely have to operate that night. I could be in the recovery room if I wanted.

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘But it’s a minor enough thing, isn’t that what you were saying earlier?’

  ‘I said the condition was minor. But no operation involving a person in Maeve’s condition is minor.’

  ‘She will be OK, won’t she?’

  ‘Nothing is certain,’ he said.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Just that, Mr Sweeney. Absolutely nothing is certain here.’

  ‘Should I be prepared for the worst?’ I asked him.

  He sighed. ‘I suppose we all should, yes.’

  Next morning I slept late. When I got up Quinn was gone. Money was missing from the kitchen table – about fifty pounds and some change – and he had also taken my dictaphone. I searched around the place for a while, certain that there must at least have been a note, but there was not.

  I went out to the garden and looked in the stable, thinking that he might have moved back out there for some reason. But the stable was empty. I had not been in it for a few weeks, not since the time that the gun went missing. It had been completely cleaned, r
ight down to the stone floor. It was gleaming. The window-sills had been painted white, the wooden beams stained with fresh sweet-smelling varnish.

  His shaving things were gone from the bathroom. In his bedroom, his new clothes had been taken from the wardrobe. His pictures and posters from the newspapers and magazines had been taken down from the walls; even the strips of sellotape and buds of Blu-Tack had been peeled off. The radio was gone. There was no trace at all of him in the house. It was almost as though he had never even been here.

  I was in the kitchen making tea when I noticed that the plaque on the wall over the Aga – Man does not live by bread alone – was gone too. I had to laugh. The four screws that had held it in place were in a beer glass on the draining board, along with the screwdriver that he must have used.

  I waited by the phone all morning thinking that it might ring. But it didn’t. Just before noon I was in the garden leaving out a few sultanas for the blackbirds when I thought I heard it. I ran up to the house but it was only some student selling magazine subscriptions.

  Around lunch-time I drove down to the hospital to see you, making sure to bring my mobile with me. The procedure had gone better than the specialist and surgeon had anticipated. They thought you might be rallying. They thought that for a few days. Rallying. But soon they stopped thinking it again. When I saw you in the ward this morning you looked even more pale and thin than you did in the days after the operation. Your weight is down to less than seven stone now. I can hardly bear to look at your hands.

  The house seemed lifeless and ludicrously empty without him. In the middle of the night I would often wake and find myself listening out for the sound of the television or the radio, for his tuneless, childish whistle, for the fall of his footsteps on the stairs. But there was only silence. Sometimes in those nights I would find myself imagining him and his girlfriend together with their child. Would he tell her what I had done to him? What would she say about it? Would I ever see him again?

  On the night of Monday 10 October I came in quite late from the hospital and went straight to bed. The phone rang at about two in the morning. At first I thought it might be news of you. But when I picked it up nobody spoke. I sat up in bed and held the receiver tight to my ear. I said hello a few more times and then I said my name, but still there was no reply. ‘Please speak to me,’ I said. There was a soft undulating sound like a radio wave, followed by a rasp of crackles. I did not want to hang up. I thought that I could hear the sound of traffic then, but only faintly, and possibly the sound of muffled rock music. I stayed on the line for several minutes. Every so often I was sure that I could hear the clang of another coin being pushed into the slot. After a while I was certain that I could hear breathing. I said hello again and asked who it was. Nothing.

  ‘Is that you, son?’ I said.

  The line clicked, bleeped and went dead.

  I lay down and tried to get back to sleep. A few minutes later the phone rang again.

  ‘Mr Sweeney?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This is your friend here.’

  ‘My friend?’

  ‘Yeah. I met you a while back. In July it was. We took a spin out beyond to the seaside one night. To Bray.’

  I sat up slowly. ‘Sheehan?’

  Silence for a moment. ‘I think y’know well who it is.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  I heard the deft scrabble of mice in the walls. ‘I can’t tell you that. I’m not far away.’

  ‘Do you know anything about Quinn?’

  ‘I know a lot about him, yeah.’

  Above me, a gust of wind seemed to race through the attic. ‘He’s after gettin’ himself into big trouble with some people. I was asked to take care of it. Can you hold on a minute there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I could hear him whispering to somebody, the clack of feet on wood, a man’s voice I did not recognise hissing the word ‘No’, a sharp noise that sounded like a window slamming down.

  ‘Sorry, Mr Sweeney. We were talkin’ about Quinn.’

  ‘I heard he was gone away to England.’

  ‘No, he’s not.’

  ‘So where is he?’

  The line crackled again. ‘He’s closer than you think.’

  ‘Is he in trouble?’

  ‘You could say that, yeah.’

  More whispers and footsteps. ‘Can I do anything for him?’

  A deep sigh. ‘No, you can’t, Mr Sweeney. I’m sorry. It’s all taken care of now.’

  ‘It’s taken care of?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Can you not at least tell me where he is?’

  ‘Go out the back garden,’ he said. ‘Take your mobile with you. I’ll ring you back in a minute.’

  ‘To the garden?’

  ‘And be sure and bring your mobile.’

  ‘How do you know I have a mobile?’

  ‘Mr Sweeney, I don’t have an awful lot of time here.’

  ‘Will I give you the number?’

  ‘We know the number already. Just go on. Make tracks.’

  I got out of bed, pulled on a pair of slippers, an old mac over my pyjamas. It was raining hard as I stepped through the back door. The night was bitterly cold, very dark. For a moment I could see nothing except shadows. I remember the wind, screaming over the back wall. The tops of the trees shaking. The stove-pipe on the stable roof squeaking and rattling in its moorings. I went down the wet steps. I walked forwards, into the garden.

  The security light blazed on.

  He was slumped with his back against the apple tree, naked except for a pair of underpants and track-suit trousers which had been pulled down around his thighs, his arms tied behind him around the trunk. His head was bowed very low to one side. His legs were bent and twisted into a grotesque tangle. As I came closer I could see the thick smears of blood across the white skin on his chest. A small robin was sitting on his bony shoulder, preening its wings. It stared at me for a moment before lifting off and fluttering up towards the house. When I raised his head a thin trickle of watery blood flowed out of his bruised mouth. His nose was a wet red pulp. There was a small dark hole in the centre of his forehead.

  I felt tears smoulder in my eyes as I began to untie his ice-cold hands. His wrists were scarred from the rope, his knuckles and fingertips caked with dried blood. He seemed to lurch forward into my arms before sliding down my body, his neck lolling, his ruined hands sagging, a broken leering puppet.

  The mobile rang in my pocket. I laid him slowly down in the wet grass. I was crying so much that I could barely speak.

  ‘You’re out the back garden now, Mr Sweeney, are you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Nothing for a moment. The crunch of dead leaves. Flutterings in the branches.

  ‘Listen, I’m sorry anyway, Mr Sweeney. I was asked to take care of it.’

  ‘Did you have to do that to him first?’

  ‘Yeah. We had to get some information. I’m sorry. I can’t really give y’the full story on it.’

  ‘You’re sorry?’

  A cough. ‘Well, I liked him actually. Always actin’ the hardchaw. Tough little fucker. But he wasn’t the worst. Just played out of his league in the end.’

  ‘How could you do that to him? Why did you bring him back here?’

  ‘I have t’go now,’ he said. ‘But I’m after bein’ told to tell you somethin’.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I was told to say if you breathe one word about this, Mr Sweeney, them two grandkids of yours’ll get a lot worse before they get the same. Do y’understand me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re sure now?’

  ‘I understand, yes.’

  ‘All right so, Mr Sweeney. Take care now. I’ll say goodnight to you. And I’m sorry again.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Sunday 27 November 1994

  And if it can be possible for me somehow to reach into that dark realm where you find yourself now, then permit me to say a last thi
ng to you. It is a thing every father should say at least once. I cannot remember if I ever actually told you that you were cherished, that you saved my life, that you brought to the darkest of days moments of helpless sacred joy, that I did not deserve you, that your presence in my life blessed it. Simply that I loved you. It was true then. If anything, it is more true now.

  If some day you do come to read these words, no doubt now as they reach their end you will be wondering why I continued to set them down when I did not know if you would ever awaken to them. I have no answer, is the truth of it. This is something I have wondered about too. Perhaps it was because I could not – would not – believe what had happened to you. Sometimes even now I see a girl of your age in the street, and I am sure she is you. One night recently, very late, when I was out on the road I stopped at a phone box on a petrol station forecourt just outside Kinnegad and rang Glen Bolcain, half-expecting you to answer. I must have stood there for five whole minutes, listening to the phone ring, while the trucks and cars thundered by through the rain outside. I do not know why I did that, just as I do not know why I have kept all this going. Maybe it was because I wanted to finish something I had started, to be faithful to some small important thing for just once in my life. To keep one promise.

  Nobody will ever see these words, except you. I have arranged for what is written between these covers to be lodged in a secure place to which only you can ever have access. With the one exception of Lizzie, and that will not be for a long time yet, I promise nobody will ever see these pages. But the strange thing is that sometimes I think you can see them already. I feel you so close to me when I sit here late in the evenings and write. Sometimes I sense that you are actually here in the small room with me and looking over my shoulder. Isn’t that odd?

  This morning I collected Seánie at the presbytery as arranged and drove him over to the airport. We had to leave quite early and take the toll-bridge route because the traffic in Dublin is so awful these days, even on a Sunday. This is because the country is doing so well, apparently; any time Ireland is doing well it takes you a lifetime to get from one side of the city to the other. The two young priests who were going with him were already in the departure lounge when we arrived. He introduced me. I found it hard to believe that they were priests. They had fluorescent rucksacks, fashionable haircuts, T-shirts emblazoned with the names of rock groups. One was wearing a baseball cap that said ‘Beavis and Butt-Head!’.