Sudden Times

by Dermot Healy

  Or maybe just head home. That would have meant walking halfway across London. I just strolled along. And stopped every so often to see would a night bus come. I wasn’t bothered, till I spotted this buck on the top of a high building with a gun. So I sprinted across the road, shouting, and shouting.

  I got a hop. I ran up the road a bit, and then I leapt a hedge or wall. Anyway I lay there as long as I could and thought my moment had come. But there was no sound. Only my ears popping. The river one way, cars the other. Me, listening, but no shot, not that you’d notice anyway. I looked back over the wall. It was a really tall building and when I looked up out of this small garden – one of those allotments you see when the tube comes overground – I could still see him weaving. Spinning around like, looking to see where I went. So I decided the best thing to do was to get in through the window of the house behind me. But first I knocked on the door. Then I landed in on a carpet at the bottom of the stairs. There was another fellow there with a gun to my head.

  I said there’a fucker out there with a rifle!

  Calm down, he said.

  He was all right. He was a decent fellow.

  He rang the guards.

  I didn’t budge till they came. I was terrified when we stepped onto the street. I was put in a cell for the night for breaking and entering. At three o’clock the next day they decided I should be in hospital. They brought me to a hospital. When I got there they discovered the speed drying out in my urine.

  I told them I never take drugs. I’m hypersensitive as it is. I can go like a rocket. Who did it? Someone in the restaurant, someone at work, someone in that fucking flat, I don’t know. I reported Marty missing. They told me the man was not pressing charges. I was in the hospital for a week. At night only. They used let me out during the day for a pint and all. And each day I went to the site to check whether Marty had come home. He hadn’t. When I got out of hospital, the boss at Liverpool Street had kept my job, fair fucks, so I worked like a dog and went to find him, my mate.

  the glass-sprinklers

  This is a short confession. I have just seen the one in action and that was round that time. They are like a tank. They can spit glass round in a ring. One night I saw one when I was out walking, it never touched me. It was on a flyover at the motorway. You could hear the glass going whoosh, definitely glass. Some sort of yoke for breaking glass.

  It was serious. I walked away from that.

  frequency modulators

  What Marty said is that when the solidomite is in your head they can send a current through you. They have some way of controlling you. They say you will tell the truth for ever after. But I don’t know what to believe anymore.

  No.

  Since the day they poured the stuff on Ollie’s hair – I don’t know how – I don’t know what to think.

  my watch

  This protection crowd. I can’t figure it out. Confused I am. The protection crowd in blue broke a piece out of my watch so that it wouldn’t go anymore. But later I took the glass out and started mending it and got it going. I’m able to look after myself or I would not be alive today.

  When they fucked the water on me I was drenched. But nevertheless I saved my watch, I put a tape on it to stop the water getting in. It got broke when they attacked me, but afterwards I was able to mend it. It’s going still, look!

  National Front

  I don’t know much about them. I’d say they were the dangerous bastards in the blue jumpers.

  bookies

  I have that in the nature. This day I lost a lot of money. I left the bookies down-hearted of a Saturday and just set off looking for Marty.

  I must have walked Hammersmith over and back, up side streets, under the flyover, past skyscrapers, landscape painters, off-licences, road works. Come back, you fucker you, Marty! I saw a falcon above the Thames. I counted the cranes in the sky and walked to each but couldn’t find him. All that gambling had my brain unhinged. Still and all I went on searching.

  I sat in a Greek caff where I once had coffee with Marty. After midnight, I walked to his site. It was dark and silent. I shook the padlocked gate. Marty! I shouted. I went round the fence and saw in the distance the blocks we used to sit on at night, smoking and watching the sky. But there was no sign of anyone. I shook the gate again. Marty! The echo came back to me.

  Then I let myself in. A night bus rumbled by. Sunday morning, I trek off again.

  best friend

  Missing. My best friend. Missing for two to three weeks. Were there fuckers after him? I didn’t know. But I went through the whole of London looking for him. Because there were a lot of things I wanted to tell him. Like I believe you Marty. I believe you. But I was leaving those things till I was better. Except we never got better. Not the way we think anyway. So I went looking from one shop to another, one site to another.

  And then at last I saw the lorry.

  H122 ZFY.

  It was up a side street, the front inside wheels jerked up on the footpath and the nose turned slightly in. I looked in the cab. No one. She wasn’t locked. I went down the road to the caff, and searched the pubs but he was in none of them. Then I looked in the back to size up the job. There was definitely a man in the lorry but you can’t identify a man by his bones.

  21

  self-destruction

  I don’t know where or how to explain that. A mate of mine was done in with that. A mate of mine was found dead in the back of his truck with that. There was just the same bones. I had spent weeks looking for him. I asked around the shops and pubs.

  Marty Kilgallon, I said.

  I asked the woman in the caff he used go to. But there was no sign of him. I walked the streets there at night. Then I saw the truck. He must have pulled in on his way home to get some groceries. There was half-a-pound of ham and four tomatoes in two little bags on the driver’s seat. A few cans on the floor. I found him in the tipper part of it, in the body of the truck, covered in 5 or 6 litres of what I took to be paint. It burned my feet as I walked round the truck. My feet were destroyed in London. It would take the toenails off you.

  It’s serious.

  But I saved my watch.

  There was a lady in a caff nearby – a good friend of mine. She rang the guards. I didn’t want anything more to do with him then. He was gone beyond me. He was my friend, I’d looked for him and found him. Ollie’s feet were burning him. The police arrived in style.

  Then ambulances. I had to get new socks and shoes.

  They had to lift me. Then two women police questioned me. I was drinking cans – drowning my sorrow – on the scene. The police disclosed nothing. All they knew was what I found out. I told them he was afraid of some protection racket. Then he went north and disappeared. So then I went looking for him and saw the scenes. He was making too much money and the other boys were making nothing. Whether they were English or Irish I don’t know.

  I think they were English.

  fuck all

  I told the police all I knew. You can tell fuck all really. I gave them his address at home and they rang the Sligo barracks in Ireland. They brought me to the morgue. I was not able to identify him but I said that they were his shoes. And that might be his ring. It looked like the cut of him, I said. They took me to the site.

  I showed them the mobile and the garage.

  Who owns this place, Oliver? the cop asked me.

  I don’t know.

  You squatting here?

  No, guard, I said.

  If you’re living here, how come you don’t know who owns the place?

  Marty, I said, was in charge. A Japanese crowd I think. But the builders are known as McKenna’s.

  I see, he said.

  He just looked around but touched nothing. Then they brought me back to the station to make a statement.

  I told them I had been looking for him for days.

  Why? they said.

  He was a mate of mine, I said. And then he went north and disappeared.

 
; They asked me was he into politics.

  I said he was thinking of becoming a Muslim. He was a spiritual man. He was always given to such things.

  And you, Oliver?

  Me, guard? I have no politics, I said. I take no interest.

  None of you do, huh?

  Some do. Not me.

  Right. And you work where?

  Liverpool Street. I have my tax cards here in me pocket.

  Right. He looked at them, sent them to be copied, then said: Tell me, Oliver, who was Marty?

  He was a neighbour of mine from home. We sang in the choir together. He was always my friend. He looked after me when I came over.

  Why did you come to London?

  I came, I said, to broaden my horizons.

  And what education have you?

  Four honours in the Leaving.

  What does that mean?

  Four A-levels, I said.

  You have four A-levels?

  Yes.

  He has four A-levels, he said to his mate. He shook his head. Do you go home to Ireland often, Oliver?

  Sure, I’ve only just come over.

  Quite. Now why did you not report Marty missing?

  I did.

  To the police?

  Yes, I said. I was in this hospital and I told the police he was missing.

  The police made me tea and sympathized with my loss. They took my fingerprints, then the key to the site and left me there in the station a long time.

  Then the detective came and said, I see from the report that you’ve been in hospital.

  Yes, guard, I said.

  You were sick?

  I was, I said. Someone put speed in my sandwiches.

  And then what happened?

  A fellow on a roof took a rifle to me.

  Oh, he said.

  Mr Kilgallon

  In stepped Mr Kilgallon.

  Ollie, he said.

  We shook hands.

  Can I bring you somewhere? asked the detective.

  No, said Marty’s father. We’ll make our own way.

  The two of us walked to the site.

  I opened the gate.

  Is this where he lived? he asked.

  Yes, I said.

  I often wondered.

  He walked around the interior of the mobile looking at the books, the bearded fishermen, he opened the cooker and looked in.

  This all his stuff?

  Yes.

  God of almighty.

  We sat on the sofa together. He lifted up an atlas and leafed through the pages, over and back, seemed to study an item, for a second he was elsewhere, then he slapped the book closed and put it away, carefully.

  Will you look after his things?

  I will.

  These are sudden times, he said.

  He got up and went outside. I followed him. We walked round the site, stopping to look at the foundations, the flag on the crane waving overhead, the heaps of bricks in polythene.

  I can’t think, he said.

  Do you want to see where the truck is?

  I suppose so.

  I closed the gate and felt this great pressure on the back of my neck. We walked the side streets. He said nothing. He retched a little and spat. When we reached the place where Marty had been killed the truck was gone. He stood looking a while.

  And you say he was thinking of coming home?

  Yes.

  Now this.

  We were to go back together, I said.

  Aye. He turned away. I don’t know what to think.

  We left that street and went into another then he stopped again.

  I’m not blaming anyone, he said. Neither him nor you.

  I nodded.

  There’s nothing I can do here, he said. They won’t be releasing the body for months. I’ll go home tomorrow.

  Yes, Mr Kilgallon.

  And what about you, Ollie?

  I’ll be all right.

  I don’t know, he said. I don’t know.

  Honestly, I’ll be all right.

  He offered his hand.

  There’s things to be done, he said. Take care.

  I will.

  He headed down into the underground.

  the site

  I bought some jelly and light soya sauce and chicken and port and stir fry. I went back to the mobile to cook a meal.

  But didn’t.

  I drank a few glasses of port.

  These sightseers came. There were a lot of people going to and fro. I began to feel lightheaded and all. I turned on all the overhead lamps and trained them on the site till near midnight. Not long after I had switched them off a handful of stones rained on the roof. The heart went crossways on me. Then I went apeshit. I flew screaming through the site, brandishing my hammer, but there was no one to be seen.

  Come out, you fuckers! I shouted.

  Yelling, I dragged the hammer along the fence and beat the gate. I hammered till I was sick of it. I went back to the mobile and began to pack away Marty’s books and his porcelain heads. I’m getting out of here! Right now! I crawled though the site in the dark and listened. Nothing. I lay on the unopened sofa with a blanket over me and my woollen hat on my head and these hallucinations blinked on and off. Sometimes I’d get a clear run of sanity and know that what I was going through was not grief but some fucking madness. I kept seeing Marty in the back of the lorry. He was a bright-blue corpse with charred clothing sticking to him. One knee drawn up. The skull sideways. The burnt hand splayed.

  This was no good.

  If I closed my eyes I saw him emerge out of the dark. If I opened them he was there burning bright in my brain. Back and forth the image went. His bones ballooned. His breath rose like froth. I put on the light and saw that the windows had steamed up again. So I opened the door and let the night air glide though the mobile. I heard the first planes. The cartoon sounds of the city. Barrels. The roar of exhausts. Buses. Then came the early-morning cheers of the bin men as they came up the side street heaving garbage into the truck that screeched and strained as it bit into the waste.

  I dressed for work.

  I couldn’t tell you what day it was, but I was glad to have someplace to go.

  Ollah

  That evening after work I went back to the caff. Just. I was high, with the lips going, after all the interrogation the police had put me through. My mate was dead. I was looking for someone to explain this. I didn’t give a fuck at the time. I would now. So I travelled back to Hammersmith and headed to the caff just across the street from where the truck was found.

  I asked the Greek.

  Who else was out there at the lorry?

  And he said, Ollah, Ollah, the police have asked me all this. Now you. What can I say?

  I said, You know.

  No, no, he said, not me. Your friends, he says, they know. I do not want to get mixed up in this.

  I’m not a coward, I said. I might pretend to be but I’m not.

  I understand.

  Who were they?

  Men, men, men! he said.

  He went off down the far side of the counter to serve people. I followed him. No, please, Ollah, no! he said. Then he got on the telephone. So the police came. They brought me back to the site. It was then they asked me did I ever consider going back to Ireland. That night I thought about clearing out of there but I couldn’t go. The site was my responsibility now that Marty was dead.

  Mr McKenna

  That night I saw the squad car cruise by a couple of times but I was too tired to care.

  Then, near dawn, someone knocked on the door of the mobile and tried the handle.

  Hallo? a voice called.

  I jumped up in panic.

  Hallo in there! Open up, please.

  I looked out of the window and saw this cheeky bloke in a suit.

  Excuse me, I said, till I get dressed.

  You Mr Ewing?

  Yes.

  Right. I’ll be outside.

  He was standing by a white
van talking to the driver. He stood like a mongoose, hands held out like flippers at his chest as he watched to see where the danger might come from. Behind the van was a white Jag with three men stting in it. He smiled at me.

  Good morning, he said.

  Good morning, I said

  I’m McKenna.

  We shook hands.

  I believe, ah, Mr Kilgallon has met with an accident.

  He was killed.

  A terrible thing, he said.

  It is.

  I’m dreadfully sorry. Quite honestly, I was devastated. We owe him a great deal for looking after things here. Ah. Very, very trustworthy.

  He folded his hands behind his back, nodded and strolled away with me in tow.

  I’m afraid, he said, I have rather more bad news for you.

  Like what?

  He stopped, spun round and faced me.

  Well, you see, actually, he said, construction is about to begin here soon.

  Oh, I said.

  So I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to evacuate the site.

  You mean today?

  Yes.

  Now?

  Yes, unfortunately.

  At six in the morning?

  He nodded at the driver.

  Dick here will drop you wherever you want to go. And you might leave the key with him. You will have no need of it now.

  He offered his hand. And I took it.

  where to?

  Where to? asked Dick.

  Lovely Luton, I said.

  You must be joking.

  Sure. I’m only joking.

  So where to, mate?

  I don’t know. Liverpool Street?