Twenty
‘Excuse me, I’m looking for Mary Murphy.’
That’s what Tobias said in the end.
The house on Swords main street was exactly as Mary Murphy had described it. The paper and sweet shop her father ran on the ground floor, the living quarters over the shop, redbrick with sash windows and net curtains, behind which one could make out a vague outline of flowers in a vase. She had told him they were artificial flowers that had been there for as long as she could remember. She told him a lot about her home. Her country. As if, in the telling, she was preserving it in some way. Keeping it safe until her return.
She was determined to throw away the artificial flowers when she got home. Replace them with fresh ones.
She said that life was too short now for things that weren’t real.
The flowers in the window were artificial.
It was raining. It was always raining in this country, Tobias thought, although Mary had been right about the softness of it against your face, how it released the smells of the earth, sharpened their potency.
Standing outside the shop in the rain, Tobias thought about what he would say to her.
He drew his father’s pocket-watch from its place in his waistcoat, glanced at it. Ten o’clock in the morning. He was due at work at noon. In the two months he’d been working at Mr Goldstein’s watch repair shop on Little Britain Street, he’d never been late. Never missed a day, even when he’d been sick, never received any complaints from customers or from Mr Goldstein himself. He intended to keep it that way. Truth was, he was grateful for the job. And for the bedsit that Mr Goldstein rented to him in the house next door. He’d got the job four weeks after he arrived in Dublin. After he had taken the ferry to England, another one to Ireland.
April 1946 he had arrived. He had been transferred to a prison in Hamburg after he was discharged from the hospital. He had spent a year there while the Allies decided what to do with him. It wasn’t the worst kind of place. It had been a printing factory, located on the outskirts of the city. Partially bombed during the war, but a section of the stone building had endured, like a tribute to everything that was good about Germany. That had been good about Germany.
He had shared a cell with four other German prisoners of varying ages and experiences. They passed the time playing cards and swapping stories of war. Tobias said little and, being the youngest, his silence was, for the most part, indulged.
At times, he felt as unknowable to himself as he was to his fellow prisoners. He could make no sense of the past and struggled to imagine the future. Perhaps this was why he allowed Mary Murphy to take a seat in his head. Perhaps this was why he dreamed of her. Everything else was like a scab over a wound; he didn’t want to pick at it, make it bleed again.
‘It’s got no pretensions to grandeur, mind,’ Mr Goldstein had said that day when he showed Tobias the bedsit after he’d offered him the job.
‘It will be fine,’ Tobias said, following Mr Goldstein out of the shop and down the street.
Mr Goldstein stopped all of a sudden and Tobias narrowly avoided walking into the back of the diminutive man. Mr Goldstein had reached an age that was impossible to guess at. Somewhere between seventy and a hundred was the best Tobias could come up with.
He looked at Tobias, allowed his eyes – still a defiant brown, as if they had given time her marching orders – to travel across Tobias’s face, the lines across his forehead multiplying and deepening as he did.
‘I know you’re not Austrian, son,’ said Mr Goldstein.
Tobias shook his head. There seemed little point in doing anything else.
‘I don’t care where you’re from. I never did care about that sort of thing. I’m a businessman, understand? I’m looking for a hard worker, someone with a bit of know-how up here.’ He pushed a long, narrow finger against his shiny, bald head. ‘Understand?’
Tobias nodded. Waited.
‘Is that the last untruth you’ll ever tell me?’
‘I’m sorry sir, I didn’t—’
‘Answer the question, please.’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t care about the past. My business is time. Fixing it, getting on with it. Understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t want to talk about what happened, who did what to whom. That’s in the past and we’re all about the future, boy. What are we about?’
‘The future.’
‘That’s it.’ The old man turned again, continued down the path with surprisingly long strides on such short, skinny legs, his arms swinging like he was on parade.
Tobias worked six days a week, noon till closing. Mr Goldstein liked to open up by himself in the mornings. Said it was his favourite time of the day. He stood at the corner of the street, keeping an eye on things along Capel Street as he smoked the first of the day’s five cigarettes, crushing the lit end between his fingers when he was finished and slipping it into the tin box he kept in his trouser pocket. He smelled of tobacco, and although Tobias never smoked, he grew fond of the smell.
At night, in the bedsit, Tobias used the utensils available to him – a small gas stove, a frying pan and a kettle – to make dinner, which usually turned out to be bread and cheese and mugs of tea. The coffee in the corner shop was terrible and he’d grown used to the bitter taste of tea.
In his free time, he improved his English, studying Mr Goldstein’s newspaper of the previous day, underlining words he didn’t understand, which Mr Goldstein took pleasure in explaining in the afternoons. ‘I like to see a young man with ambition,’ he said. Tobias didn’t think he had ambition. But he wanted to be able to talk to Mary Murphy when he saw her again. Like she had talked to him.
He didn’t know what he would say if she asked him why he had come to Ireland. He had no family here. No family anywhere.
He could say that he wanted to thank her. And that was true. She had saved him in ways that he struggled to explain.
He wanted to tell her that he was no longer the boy she had cared for.
He was a man now.
He wanted to let her know how she had made the future seem ... possible once again. Because what is the future, only the plans we make and Tobias’s plans were filled with Mary Murphy.
He wanted to tell her that he ... he wanted to say many things. He was not sure if he could find the words.
And now here he was, so close now, standing outside her house.
‘Excuse me, I’m looking for Mary Murphy.’ After all the lines he had rehearsed, this was the one he ended up saying.
‘Who are you?’ Tobias’s first impression of the man behind the counter was that he seemed like someone who looked older than he was. He couldn’t say why exactly. There was a hard set to his face, as if the muscles there were unaccustomed to expressing themselves. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up to a pair of bony elbows, revealing sinewy white arms roped with raised blue veins, as if he’d recently carried out a job that was physically demanding.
‘I’m ... Tobias Hartmann.’
‘That means nothing to me, son.’
‘Are you Mary Murphy’s father?’
The man nodded, moved to a brown box on the floor, hauled it onto the counter and reefed it open with a Stanley knife. He had a pronounced stoop when he walked, like the weight of the world had overcome him.
‘Your daughter ... Miss Murphy ... she nursed me when I was injured. During the war. I ... I was passing and I wanted to thank her.’
The man stopped what he was doing – lifting magazines from the box, arranging them on a shelf – and sat down suddenly on a stool Tobias hadn’t noticed before, tucked behind the counter. ‘I told her she shouldn’t go,’ he said, his voice smaller now. He shook his head and laughed a short, bitter laugh. ‘I don’t know why I bothered. She never did anything I ever told her and that’s a fact.’ He reached into the pocket of his trousers, took out a cigarette, lit it and closed his eyes as he inhaled. Tobias thought perhaps it was his cue to talk
but then the man went on, as if Tobias wasn’t there. ‘Working for the Brits. After everything that’s happened in this God-forsaken country.’ He shook his head as he spoke, kept shaking it, even when it seemed like he had nothing else to say. Then he glanced at Tobias, pulling hard on the end of his cigarette. ‘A good nurse, was she?’
Tobias nodded. ‘Yes. And she was kind. To everyone. And brave. She was so ... brave.’
The man shook his head. ‘Just goes to show you. Bravery’s no use to anyone in the end.’
‘So.’ Tobias cleared his throat. ‘Is she here?’
The man shook his head, stood up and crushed the butt of his cigarette into an ashtray on the counter. ‘The Brits got their pound of flesh out of her, then sent her home with TB at the end of the war. She died last Christmas, God rest her soul.’
Last Christmas. Tobias remembered Christmas Day in the camp in Hamburg. They had marked it with a football game in the concrete square of the yard. Took off their jackets, used them to mark the goals, despite the bitterness of the cold. They warmed soon enough running around. Tobias remembered laughing when he scored the winning goal and they hoisted him onto their shoulders and bore him around the yard. He had been laughing and Mary Murphy had been dying. He had been warm and laughing and full of hope and plans for the future and everything was about her. All his hope. His plans. They had all been about Mary Murphy. And she had been dead all along.
‘I’m very sorry for your loss,’ Tobias said. He offered the man his hand and the man hesitated then shook it. After that, Tobias couldn’t think of anything further to say so he bought a newspaper and left the shop. In his pocket, the photograph. The black and white one that a soldier had taken of her in the hospital. The soldier had tucked the photograph inside his jacket pocket. Tobias had slipped his hand into the pocket one night. Taken it.
In the photo, she is turning her head, her mouth is parted, as if she is about to say something. Tobias thought perhaps he should give the photograph to Mary’s father. But he left the shop with his hand in the pocket, his fingers wrapped around the photograph as if he were safeguarding it, although for whom or from what, he couldn’t say.
The rain had stopped but the clouds hung heavy and grey to the west and it was only a matter of time before it would begin again. Outside the bank, there was a bench. Tobias sat on it, on the sodden wood of the seat, and remained there. He thought how lucky poets and writers were. They had words to express themselves. Tobias had no words. Just an emptiness inside him where words should be. It was like all the things he had done, the things he had failed to do, were here now, inside him somehow. He had reached his destination to find ... nothing. Nobody. He sat on the bench as people moved along the street, around him, past him, like he wasn’t there at all. The emptiness inside him swelled and surged until it seemed it would swallow him whole. Part of him welcomed that notion. And part of him knew that he didn’t deserve to feel like this. Hollow. He had no right to mourn for Mary Murphy. She had never been his. She had been a dream. The kind of dream a child dreams. Full of impossible hope.
He stood abruptly. He would open a bank account. Today. He had time. Mr Goldstein recommended regular saving. That was the way to a secure future. A little bit put by every week. He would do it here. In Swords. He would walk to Swords once a week, maybe take the bus if it was raining. He would pass by the house where Mary Murphy had grown up with the flowers in the window that would always be artificial now. He would allow himself to think of her, briefly, as he passed, and then no more.
Twenty One
Early morning. Cillian’s favourite part of the day. The hiss and spit of the coffee machine and the creak and settle of the house around him. He poured coffee and stood at the patio doors, watching the pale light of morning slip across the night, ease it away.
Stella walked into the kitchen, pulling the strings of her dressing gown – kimono? – around her waist. She snapped on the main light and Cillian blinked in the sudden brightness.
‘Did I wake you?’ he said. Her face glistened with a fresh coat of make-up. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her without it.
She shook her head. ‘I thought we could have breakfast together.’
‘I was about to leave. And I’ve already eaten. Sorry.’
‘A banana?’ She eyed the banana peel on the table. ‘That’ll not get you far.’
‘I never eat much in the morning.’
‘You need fattening up,’ Stella said, opening the fridge and reaching for a box of eggs.
Cillian stood up, rinsed his cup in the sink. ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked. Perhaps her ‘visitors’ had arrived during the night?
‘Never better,’ said Stella brightly. ‘What have you got on today?’
‘Just, you know, the usual.’ Today was the second anniversary of Paulie O’Sullivan’s death but he had never told Stella about the boy before, so he made no mention of it now.
‘I’m going to spend today shopping, before I head home in the morning.’ Stella said. She was setting the table now. For two.
‘You’re going home?’
‘Ah, look at your wee face.’ She was beside him now, wrapping her arms around his waist. Her perfume gathered like a cloud around him; dense and sweet. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ she said, her voice muffled against his jumper. ‘It’s just ... I said I’d help with the favours for Selene’s engagement party and I need to get myself ready for school starting back next week and ...’
‘Yes! I mean, no, of course I don’t mind, I ...’
‘And you’ll be home too. Soon. Won’t you?’
He nodded, disentangled himself from her. ‘Listen, I think it’s time you did a pregnancy test.’
‘Gosh, you’re keen, aren’t you?’ She laughed – hahaha. ‘I’m only a few days late, Cillian.’
‘Seven. Seven days.’ He tried to keep the edge out of his voice.
‘OK, OK, I’ll pick one up.’ When she kissed him, he tasted lipstick.
He got the call about Roman on the drive to work.
‘Fuck sake,’ Cillian shouted down the phone. ‘I warned them about Jimmy’s nephew. They knew Roman was a target.’
‘It could have been worse – he’s not going to lose the eye apparently.’
‘Has his mother been informed?’
‘Yes.’
Cillian felt relief. That he hadn’t had to tell Rosa about her son. He remembered Paulie’s mother. Her face when he’d told her.
* * *
‘Put the gun down, son,’ Cillian had said to Paulie that day. ‘It’s not too late.’ In the distance, the drone of a siren. The gun looked huge in Paulie’s white, skinny hand. He pointed it at Cillian. His eyes were black with pupil and already his face had the caved-in features of an addict.
The boy’s finger tightened against the trigger and, before he pulled it, he ran towards Cillian, shouting, and his face was so alive in that moment, filled with fury and noise.
In the report, it would say that Cillian discharged his weapon at 15.36. Cillian did not remember pulling the trigger. He remembered the boy. The way he had stopped running. Like he had frozen in place. In time. Like he was suspended against the indifferent grey of the February sky. He was dead before he hit the ground, the sound of the shot still ringing in Cillian’s ears, the weight of his gun hot in his hand.
The boy was fourteen years old.
The Super said Cillian didn’t have to tell her. Paulie’s mother. About her son. He told him to go home after the ambulance staff had cleaned and dressed the bullet wound on Cillian’s arm. He’d send somebody else.
Cillian remembered every detail of Mrs O’Sullivan’s face when he told her. The grey, almost green pallor of it. She shook her head, she kept shaking her head, kept shouting, No no no, as if, in this way, she could change everything. By the sheer force of her will. A mother’s will.
Behind her, in a frame on the hall table, a photograph of Paulie – Cillian recognised the boy’s heart-shaped face – in shor
ts and a T-shirt on a beach, holding a cone with ice-cream plastered all over his face, dripping down his arm. He was maybe three years old in the picture. His mother beside him, leaning towards him with a tissue in her hand, her other hand on his small three-year-old shoulder.
* * *
‘Cillian?’
Cillian looked up from the computer screen. His colleague Mick stood at the door of his office, a concerned expression across his face.
‘What is it?’ said Cillian.
‘I said the boy’s mother is here to see you,’ said Mick.
‘What boy?’ For a moment, he thought it might be Paulie O’Sullivan’s mother.
‘Rosa Matus. Roman’s mother,’ Mick said.
‘Oh. OK. Tell her I’ll be right out.’
He shut down the file he had been studying, forced himself out of the office to the reception area where a mother was waiting for him. Another mother. This one hadn’t lost her boy but she probably felt like she had.
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