Sudden Times

by Dermot Healy

  Praise for Sudden Times:

  ‘I reached two conclusions when I got to the end of this disturbing, funny, mad and beautifully human novel: it’s a great book, and Dermot Healy is Ireland’s greatest writer.’ RODDY DOYLE

  ‘Dermot Healy’s excellent Sudden Times throws us headlong into the mind of Ollie Ewing, an Irishman trying desperately to escape a terrifying and violent past … There are shade of other Irish writers here, too: particularly Samuel Beckett. This is a book written within an ongoing national tradition, with all the rewards that one expects from that tradition: an unpretentious delight in words as words; wit (the book is often very funny), the sense of a real voice talking; the capacity to take on the world’s darkness.’ MICHAEL NEWTON, Guardian

  ‘This is a novel set in the world of the everyday, told in everyday shabby language which, through his talent, Dermot Healy turns into something original and astringent and touching and eerily pure. It’s a wonderful book which asks to be compared with Joyce and Beckett in more than just an idle way.’ GORDON BURN

  Dermot Healy

  SUDDEN TIMES

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Parts of what became this novel first appeared in Cyphers 31 (Summer 1989) and Force 10 (issue 10, Autumn 1998). I would especially like to thank Leland Bardwell for her encouragement to write the piece which appeared in Cyphers.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Acknowledgements

  I

  On High Street

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  II

  The Rap

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  III

  Blessed Be This Day

  12

  13

  14

  IV

  Old Grudges

  15

  16

  17

  V

  The Party

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  VI

  The Case History of Ollie

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  VII

  An Afterlife

  32

  33

  34

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  Copyright

  I

  On High Street

  1

  after London

  After London it was serious.

  I lay low.

  I stayed with the mother a while, pottering in the garden, walking the beach with all these images in my wake. I dropped into Gerties pub the odd time, but people were wary of me at the beginning. Then I suppose they got used to me again. But in my mind’s eye I kept seeing Redmond serving behind the bar. And I found it hard to talk to anyone with that constant argument in my head. Argument with the father.

  Then would start the lament: If I had done this, none of that would have happened. If I hadn’t. If I hadn’t. If I had. It went on till I was sick of my own consciousness.

  This guilt was stalking me.

  I could not get by the first dream.

  the first dream

  It always happens in the first dream. If you can get by that you’re away. But I was pinned to the bed by these voices. For hours on end I was interrogated by myself. If you had. If he had not. What if. What if. And nothing was ever resolved. Sometimes the voice was that of a barrister. Sometimes it was the voice of my father. Sometimes it was the voice of someone I didn’t know. Whoever they were they were relentless. I was a man listening to complaints and sermons, jibes and asides. This could not go on forever.

  I went looking for a job. I scoured the ads in the Champion and walked into town. I presented myself at various places with no luck. All I got was hassle. What were you at before? Why did you leave your last job? That shite. More argument. Then I saw this new pub was opening. They took me on the night I called. I was set up. I moved into a room at the back. One evening – maybe two weeks later – I could tell something was wrong.

  Your man, the head buck, called me aside.

  I got this sickening feeling.

  Ollie, he says.

  Yes?

  I’m afraid you are not the man we are looking for.

  I went, What?

  I’m sorry.

  Have I done something wrong?

  No.

  Don’t I work well for you?

  It’s not that, he said. I just have to be careful who I take on. You know what I mean?

  He gave me an extra week’s wages. So I got my gear from overhead and rather than go home, I moved into the hostel. I could not face the mother. I was shamed. Days I walked the town. It was unreal. Then I got myself a labouring job on this site near the river. Urban renewal. It was not so bad. And I liked the hostel till I met this fucker from Atlanta who claimed later he was not from Atlanta. Still and all I met Sara there and we were together for a couple of months. Then one evening I went:

  What’s up?

  I’m breaking it off, she said.

  Why?

  I put a hand on her shoulder, but she shook it off. Then I knew she knew. I was bad news. I had no luck with the ladies. She left me. I was not well. I took to the bed. I walked off the site a few days later and got a job in Doyle’s. Fair deuce to the man for taking me on. I told him I’d give it everything. Doyle’s for bargains! Then I took this room with these bloomin’ artists on High Street.

  the attic

  That was home. I had to stoop to dress because the ceiling of the room was so low. The walls of faded boards sloped in on all sides. Most of what I had hung off the back of the door. On a hanger I had what I wore to work suspended from the ceiling in see-through plastic. The clean vests and shirts sat in a biscuit box in a nook in the corner. The dirty clothes went into a bag under the bed. A pile of paintings left behind by the last tenant were stacked facing the wall at the foot of the bed.

  I could have thrown them out. He was in India. He might come back. I hadn’t the heart.

  I’m tidy.

  I had all of Marty’s things round me. His atlases, dawk-cue-ments, travel books, his bearded heads of fishermen. I had my brother Redmond’s box of cassettes. Sometimes I might play Queen or Pavarotti with the window thrown open on to the street below. The attic stood on the top of a three-storey house. You could say I was on the fourth storey but it was not really a storey, more a bird-cage under the roof. After a storm the slates, one by one, would click back into place. The beams expand with a grunt. The floorboards give. I’m not one to complain, but most mornings I woke with a start wondering what had happened. Then went to bed the next night wondering what would.

  You had to watch your head. Every time. No matter where you are you have to watch the head. The only place you could stand up straight was in the centre. And then there was the window. You had to duck to reach it. By day it was like any other window in the world. You crouched and looked out and saw what you saw – every jackdaw in town croaking, monks in white ascending to Harmony Hill, the roofs over High Street, shoppers, newspaper vans.

  It was a light everyday melody, cheerful even. It would not do your head in.

  But by night it was something else.

  It’s like this.

  If you left the fucking window open it turned into a loud-speaker through which a town in turmoil screeched its wares.

  Every sound travelled straight up from the street – drunks, women screaming, church bells, taxis, skinheads. Some frantic demon seemed to grip the folk once darkness fell. At
night the whole town bedded down with me. It was a ward of the insane.

  In this room I was to start my new life.

  the water tank

  Yes. It sat in a hardboard box in a corner of my room. Some plumber had thrown the box together out of shuttering.

  I often thought of pulling the whole thing apart and doing a proper job, but I’d lost the head for carpentry. Being a chippie was a thing of the past, though in case I ever changed my mind I still kept my spirit level, saw, the two hammers, a fine chisel and one Stanley tape measure in a duffel bag under the sill.

  All pipes in the house led to that confounded tank. And why wouldn’t they?

  What do you expect?

  When I lay down in the bed I’d wait for it. Just a turn of the tap somewhere below and the beast groaned. And if one of the artists went to the toilet in the middle of the night, the tank began clanging and spilling, next it would change gear and explode, the water run downhill, the filling begin and then this drip would start.

  It wasn’t nice. It was cat. Every time someone went to the toilet I went with them. I heard their door open, the footsteps descend to the second floor. As they squatted I held the chain. At the first plop my heart trembled. When they rose I pulled the chain.

  I wasn’t sleeping.

  I was losing it.

  So I hung a sign in the toilet.

  PLEASE DO NOT FLUSH AFTER MIDNIGHT!

  That was all right. Next day I found someone had hung a sign alongside mine.

  PLEASE DO NOT PUT ON LIGHTS AFTER MIDNIGHT!

  That was to do with the lights on the stairs.

  the bride

  It was the night I moved in I saw her make her appearance. A cruel evening in November. Businesses were just closing shop, lights going off and street lights coming on. I sorted out my gear and lit up.

  Then I ducked down in my new home and looked out the window – that finished it – for there on the opposite side of the street I copped the bride.

  I couldn’t believe it.

  She was like one of the Luton ladies I used follow. She wore an illuminated wedding dress with a slight hint of pregnancy. She was faceless and still, just a white veil, nothing else. It took a while before I could make out that she was in the window of a shop. The window of a launderette and dry cleaners. I had never seen her before though I must have passed that shop many days. But there she was. I looked away and lay on the bed. Went back, there she was again. All night she stayed lit beside a green tank of orange fish. She was an apparition, and the cleaners was her grotto.

  Next day after thinking about it I went across with my wash. I sort of dived in before I could stop myself. There was a strong smell of male socks and motherly underwear. The washing machines were going like billy-o. I found myself perspiring. The place looked wrong and the flashback came. The woman said, Yes? Yes? she said again. What can I do for you? I don’t know what I said. I could have said anything. She took my bag without a word and slung it overhead. As she wrote out my docket I turned by the way to look at the bride. She didn’t exist. She wasn’t there. The dress was there all right but that was all she was – a wedding dress. She had no head, no hands. The wedding veil was tawdry and under the tresses no one. Just musty warm air.

  I must have made her up, I thought.

  Then I saw that the windows were steaming up.

  I just grabbed the docket and left.

  It took me a couple of days before I worked up the courage to go back. I never enter a cleaners. Not since London. Ever. I know what the story is. And I wouldn’t have gone into one that day only for to see the bride.

  A ghost of happy marriages

  I studied her from my room till all hours.

  By day she disappeared. The light of day did not suit her. But by night the bride came into her own. As the fucking clamour increased throughout the town and squad cars piled to a stop with a screech outside the Lamp and these fuckers began cheering over nothing at the monument, the light in the launderette began to intensify. The more the tumult the more the light. The more the light the more the magic. The steam cleared from the windows and she came in from the back. She stood up in the dark to the left of the counter, drew her pleats and bridal veil up in one missing hand and with the other made some strange gesture towards the passers-by. Each side of her were racks of dry-cleaned suits, dresses, raincoats, all hung in cellophane. She was radiant, laundered and shimmering. A ghost of happy marriages smiling in a blue beam of light till the early hours.

  I didn’t mention her to anyone except Liz and that was in a moment of weakness.

  It’s something best kept to yourself.

  You know what the story is.

  the kitchen

  It was the pits, as Liz would say.

  Liz is a pal of mine. The first pal I’ve had since Marty and La Loo. I met her in the Rap where she was doing this mime thing on stage. Yes, Liz, looking beautiful in a slouchy way, hair boyish and fair, would disdainfully pick a single vessel out of the dirty sink, and with a sigh run it under a spout of boiling water from the kettle, scoop dried colourless beans out of a small saucepan and make a meal from there.

  What she excelled at was desserts, fruit cakes and humming.

  But not washing up.

  The men artists were bad enough but the women worse. Why that is I don’t know. Like the stairs and the rooms the kitchen reeked of various oils and plaster. If I was away for a few days I came back to find the linoleum by the gas cooker coated in grease, the hob stained with curry and Bolognese. If you turned on a ring there was a sharp smell of burning. An onion peel glowed and spat. The oven stank. And the sink was full of unwashed delph.

  Being the oldest there, and always tidy because of something far back in my nature, way back, it fell to me to wash up. And I always did last thing at night, for there is nothing worse in this world than to wake up to a sink full of unwashed delph. I can’t face into that.

  I don’t mind. Students are all right. But the kitchen itself was very depressing. The one window in the back door looked out on a wall a few feet away. There was just enough room in the yard for briquettes, one single flowerpot made out of a chimney flue and an overflowing dustbin. Beside it a cat’s home. I made a box for the cat but not for the tank. I often looked at that wall and marvelled. It was about eighty-five foot high. Just a plain block wall at the back of a barn owned by a carpet-seller who sold Dutch furniture.

  Dutch furniture mind. Fuck him.

  Not a lick of paint or a taste of piaster, just a high wall shutting out the sky so that you breakfasted in darkness.

  It’s true.

  I used to curse a lot when I was younger.

  the stairs

  It was like this.

  I might be working late in Doyle’s or be cleaning up after hours in the Rap and then I had to climb those stairs to my room. Rickety is the wrong word. The steps were very uncertain. I could not get up them in the dark no matter how I tried, so I’d put on the light and then the commotion would start on each floor. The problem was that each bedroom door had a glass partition overhead and the bulbs shone straight on to the sleepers within. The artists would start shouting. Hi, put out the fucking light! The light for fuck sake, the light! Even Liz would yell out, although she said she didn’t. But I heard her.

  By the time I raced the last few steps to my room I was in a lather of sweat.

  At last, flipped the switch and the house below me went quiet.

  But not me. I wasn’t the better of it. It got so bad I was afraid to go back to the house once I went out. But if I went out I had to come in again. I bought two torches and they were nicked. Best thing was to be up there in bed before them. Then I had only the tank and the rascally town bellowing through the window to contend with. But I had to work late and those days I had no place else. And I was only being charged £25 quid a week, which wasn’t bad no matter how you looked at it.

  And I had Liz as a friend.

  I don’t complain.


  The stairs were a cross I had to bear.

  2

  Doyle’s for Bargains!

  Doyle’s Supermarket. Doyle’s for Bargains! It was a great shop to think in.

  I was an all-round man – giving out trolleys at £1 a head when the lad was off, sweeping up round the cashiers, stacking shelves by night. I wanted nothing too complex. I was just waiting for half-past six. Sometimes I’d say it out loud to myself – Half-past six! Half-past-six! Half-past six! And if I was on early nights I’d hear myself saying Half-past two! Half-past two! Half-past two! People often said to me that I should return to the carpentry, but after those things happened in London I was not the same. There was no looking back. You have to break out before you can learn the laws of the tribe. And you have to break inside before you can learn your true nature. There’s no need being too serious.

  I was serious once.

  The head would not take it.

  As the chippie says – I was offering it up.

  Doyle’s was all right. I picked up around £115 after tax at the end of a five-and-a-half-day week. There was plenty of overtime. And supermarket people are very down to earth. The cashier girls might get a bit high, but generally everything is very sensible and busy. In fact the place is a scream. I get high there myself. And then when you think that I live in High Street – well. One day people in authority turned on the butcher boy and demanded he take the ring out of his nose and put it in his ear because punters complained at the meat counter. Well I don’t know. I say a ring in your nose makes you look hygienic. I didn’t take them serious. I didn’t want any bother. I needed a routine. Working there gave me a new lease of well-being.

  The only bad thing – doing the trolleys in winter was hardship. The heat began inside the sliding doors. Where I’d camped out lay open to the elements. It had a roof against the rain, but nothing against the cold. I did myself up each day to be on the safe side, why, woollen cap scarf long Johns padded shirts you name it I was wearing it.