Collected Stories

by Bernard Maclaverty

  INTERVIEWER: Do you have family? Daughters?

  PROFUNDO: No? I’m by myself here.

  (The subject then realised that the question was brought about by the contents of the box. He seemed embarrassed.)

  Oh that. You weren’t meant to see those. Is that machine of yours still going?

  INTERVIEWER: No. I’ve switched it off now. I hope you’re not offended by this question, but are you homosexual?

  PROFUNDO: No, I’m not offended and no, I’m not a homosexual. I’ve been in love with many women in my time. Sometimes I like to imagine myself as one. Wearing their clothes is a kind of tribute to them. It does no one any harm.

  INTERVIEWER: (After an awkward silence) And how do you see the future?

  PROFUNDO: I wait for it to come and then look at it (laughs).

  INTERVIEWER: And lastly what about trade secrets? Can you tell any?

  PROFUNDO: There aren’t any to tell. You’d better switch your machine on again. Okay? Trade secrets. I used to keep the blades very clean – wipe them down with spirit. But there’s as many germs on the bread that goes into your stomach, so after a while I stopped that.

  INTERVIEWER: But how on earth do you swallow that big one?

  PROFUNDO: The Claymore? The same way as all the others. It’s a craft. I can’t explain it. I once worked with a man who could eat light bulbs, pins and needles, but I could never do that kind of thing. My talent is different.

  INTERVIEWER: Thank you.

  REMOTE

  AROUND ABOUT THE end of each month she would write a letter, but because it was December she used an old Christmas card, which she found at the bottom of the biscuit tin among her pension books. She stood dressed in her outdoor clothes on tiptoe at the bedroom window waiting for the bird-watcher’s Land Rover to come over the top of the hill two miles away. When she saw it she dashed, slamming the door after her and running in her stiff-legged fashion down the lane on to the road. Her aim was to be walking, breathing normally, when the Land Rover would indicate and stop in the middle of the one-track road.

  ‘Can I give you a lift?’

  ‘Aye.’

  She walked round the front of the shuddering engine and climbed up to sit on the split seat. Mushroom-coloured foam bulged from its crack. More often than not she had to kick things aside to make room for her feet. It was not the lift she would have chosen but it was all there was. He shoved the wobbling stick through the gears and she had to shout – each month the same thing.

  ‘Where are you for?’

  ‘The far side.’

  ‘I’m always lucky just to catch you.’

  He was dressed like one of those hitch-hikers, green khaki jacket, cord trousers and laced-up mountain boots. His hair was long and unwashed and his beard divided into points like the teats of a goat.

  ‘Are you going as far as the town this time?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Will you drop me off?’

  ‘Sure. Christmas shopping?’

  ‘Aye, that’ll be right.’

  The road spun past, humping and squirming over peat bogs, the single track bulging at passing places – points which were marked by tall black and white posts to make them stand out against the landscape. Occasionally in the bog there were incisions, a black-brown colour, herring-boned with scars where peat had been cut.

  ‘How’s the birds doing?’ she shouted.

  ‘Fine. I’ve never had so many as this year.’

  His accent was English and it surprised her that he had blackheads dotting his cheekbones and dirty hands.

  ‘Twenty-two nesting pairs – so far.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘Compared with sixteen last year.’

  ‘What are they?’

  He said what they were but she couldn’t hear him properly. They joined the main road and were silent for a while. Then rounding a corner the bird-man suddenly applied the brakes. Two cars, facing in opposite directions, sat in the middle of the road, their drivers having a conversation. The bird-man muttered and steered round them, the Land Rover tilting as it mounted the verge.

  ‘I’d like to see them try that in Birmingham.’

  ‘Is that where you’re from?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Why did you come to the island?’

  ‘The birds.’

  ‘Aye, I suppose there’s not too many down there.’

  He smiled and pointed to an open packet of Polo mints on the dashboard. She lifted them and saw that the top sweet was soiled, the relief letters almost black. She prised it out and gave it to him. The white one beneath she put in her mouth.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said.

  ‘You born on the island?’

  ‘City born and bred.’ She snorted. ‘I was lured here by a man forty-two years ago.’

  ‘I never see him around.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. He’s dead this long time.’ She cracked the ring of the mint between her teeth.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  She chased the two crescents of mint around with her tongue.

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘He drowned himself. In the loch.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘On Christmas Day. He was mad in the skull – away with the fairies.’

  There was a long pause in which he said again that he was sorry. Then he said, ‘What I meant was – what did he do for a living?’

  ‘What does it matter now?’

  The bird-man shook his head and concentrated on the road ahead.

  ‘He was a shepherd,’ she said. Then a little later, ‘He was the driver. There should always be one in the house who can drive.’

  He let her off at the centre of the village and she had to walk the steep hill to the Post Office. She breathed through her mouth and took a rest halfway up, holding on to a small railing. Distances grew with age.

  Inside she passed over her pension book, got her money and bought a first-class stamp. She waited until she was outside before she took the letter from her bag. She licked the stamp, stuck it on the envelope and dropped it in the letter box. Walking down the hill was easier.

  She went to the Co-op to buy sugar and tea and porridge. The shop was strung with skimpy tinselled decorations and the music they were playing was Christmas hits – ‘Rudolf’ and ‘I saw Mammy Kissing Santa Claus’. She only had a brief word with Elizabeth at the check-out because of the queue behind her. In the butcher’s she bought herself a pork chop and some bacon. His bacon lasted longer than the packet stuff.

  When she had her shopping finished she wondered what to do to pass the time. She could visit young Mary but if she did that she would have to talk. Not having enough things to say she felt awkward listening to the tick of the clock and the distant cries of sea birds. Chat was a thing you got out of the habit of when you were on your own all the time and, besides, Mary was shy. Instead she decided to buy a cup of tea in the café. And treat herself to an almond bun. She sat near the window where she could look out for the post van.

  The café was warm and it, too, was decorated. Each time the door opened the hanging fronds of tinsel fluttered. On a tape somewhere carols were playing. Two children, sitting with their mother, were playing with a new toy car on the table-top. The cellophane wrapping had been discarded on the floor. They both imitated engine noises although only one of them was pushing it round the plates. The other sat waiting impatiently for his turn.

  She looked away from them and stared into her tea. When they dredged him up on Boxing Day he had two car batteries tied to his wrists. He was nothing if not thorough. One of them had been taken from his own van parked by the loch shore and the thing had to be towed to the garage. If he had been a drinking man he could have been out getting drunk or fallen into bad company. But there was only the black depression. All that day the radio had been on to get rid of the dread.

  When ‘Silent Night’ came on the tape and the children started to squabble over whose turn it was
she did not wait to finish her tea but walked slowly to the edge of the village with her bag of shopping, now and again pausing to look over her shoulder. The scarlet of the post van caught her eye and she stood on the verge with her arm out. When she saw it was Stuart driving she smiled. He stopped the van and she ducked down to look in the window.

  ‘Anything for me today?’

  He leaned across to the basket of mail which occupied the passenger seat position and began to rummage through the bundles of letters and cards held together with elastic bands.

  ‘This job would be all right if it wasn’t for bloody Christmas.’ He paused at her single letter. ‘Aye, there’s just one.’

  ‘Oh good. You might as well run me up, seeing as you’re going that way.’

  He sighed and looked over his shoulder at a row of houses.

  ‘Wait for me round the corner.’

  She nodded and walked on ahead while he made some deliveries. The lay-by was out of sight of the houses and she set her bag down to wait. Stuart seemed to take a long time. She looked down at the loch in the growing dark. The geese were returning for the night, filling the air with their squawking. They sounded like a dance-hall full of people laughing and enjoying themselves, heard from a distance on the night wind.

  ACROSS THE STREET

  ON SUMMER EVENINGS she used to practise the flute in front of a music-stand with the window open. She played with verve, her elbows high, her body moving to the tempo of the music. Every time she stopped she flicked her shoulder-length hair with her hand and, with a little backward-shaking motion of her head to make sure it was out of her way, she would begin again. In the pauses of her playing Mr Keogh could hear the slow hooting of pigeons.

  From his window on the opposite side of the street he would sit on his favourite chair, a round-backed carver which supported his aching back, and watch her. He fitted the chair the way an egg fits an egg-cup. His fat hand would rest on the top of his blackthorn stick and when she had finished a piece he would knock its ferrule on the floor between his splayed feet in appreciation.

  ‘The girl done well – the girl done very well,’ he would say. Once Mrs O’Hagan, the landlady, had come the whole way up the stairs to see what he wanted.

  ‘Me? Nothing. I’m just at one of my concerts.’

  ‘You might have been having a heart attack,’ she said and slammed the door. ‘You’ll cry wolf once too often,’ he heard her shout from the landing.

  If the afternoon was sunny he would come down the stairs stepping carefully sideways one at a time and sit with Mrs O’Hagan at the front doorway. The houses were terraced and each was separated from the street by a tiny area of garden just wide enough for Mr Keogh to stretch out his legs. Most of the other houses had privet hedges and a patch of mud or weeds but Mrs O’Hagan’s had white iron railings and was flagstoned. Window-boxes and a half barrel, painted white, bloomed with azaleas, nasturtiums and begonias. There was also a little windmill with a doll figure of a man in a red waistcoat supposedly turning the handle every time the wind blew.

  ‘It’s a bit like the tail wagging the dog,’ Mr Keogh had said, pointing his pipe at it. When he smoked in this garden Mrs O’Hagan insisted that he bring out an ashtray for his spent matches. Once he had struck a match on the cement between the bricks and she had looked at him in such a way that he knew never to attempt it again.

  She always sat on a canvas chair and knitted while he used the more substantial wooden chair from the hallway. She knitted jumpers and pullovers and cardigans for the church bazaars at great speed. Mr Keogh noticed that she never looked at her hands while she was working but could keep the street and everything that moved in it in view. Sometimes he read the paper but in bright sunlight the tiny newsprint and the whiteness of the paper created such a glare that it hurt his eyes.

  ‘There’s your little concert artiste,’ said Mrs O’Hagan. Mr Keogh looked up and saw the girl coming from Mrs Payne’s door on the opposite side of the street. She wore a long kaftan and, putting her head down, walked quickly along the street. Away from her music-stand she seemed round-shouldered.

  ‘She can fairly tootle,’ said Mr Keogh.

  ‘Aye, she’s always in a hurry somewhere.’

  After lunch, if it was not raining, Mr Keogh liked to walk the quarter mile to Queen Alexandra Gardens. He would sit on the first vacant bench inside the gate to recover his breath. One day he saw his flautist. She lay back with her face tilted and the undersides of her arms turned awkwardly out to catch the sun. Her eyes were closed. The weight of Mr Keogh descending at the far end of the seat made her look round.

  ‘That’s the weather, eh?’ he said. She smiled a kind of wan grin then went back to her sun-bathing. A little later when he was breathing normally he said, ‘You play the flute very well.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ The girl sat up and looked at him.

  ‘I live opposite you.’

  ‘I didn’t know you could hear.’

  ‘It’s like everything else,’ said Mr Keogh. ‘There’s not much you can do in this world without people getting to know.’

  She shrugged and assumed her former position, feet thrust out, neck resting on the back of the bench. He noticed that when he moved she bounced slightly at the other end of the seat. He tried to keep still. He cleared his throat and asked, ‘Are you working?’

  ‘Does it look like it?’

  In the silence that followed Mr Keogh took his pipe from his pocket and lit up. What little wind there was carried the smoke to the girl.

  ‘What a good smell,’ she said without opening her eyes. Mr Keogh smiled and puffed little clouds into the air. He closed down the silver lid and sat back. The girl jigged at the other end of the bench. She sat forward and scrabbled in her bag, produced a cigarette and lit it. She did this with the same urgency as she walked – as she played the flute.

  ‘I used to play,’ he said.

  ‘The flute?’

  ‘The cornet. In a band.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘A police band.’

  One of the old march tunes went through his head and he began tapping his foot to it. He didn’t whistle but clicked his tongue. The girl got up and walked away with short quick steps, her head down. She disappeared behind a clump of laurel bushes. Later, when he was leaving the park, he saw her sitting alone on a bench, her wrists still turned to the sun.

  That evening in the twilight he watched her. She had switched on the light in her room with its massive white paper ball of a shade. She played a melody, some phrases of which reminded him of a tune he knew from County Roscommon. Often he had heard a flute played in the band hut and always was conscious of the spit and blow and breathiness of it. But now from across the street it was a pure sound, filtered by distance, melodic only. Her playing suddenly stopped and she made frantic flapping motions with her hands. She came forward, closed the window and pulled the curtains. Moths. Drawn by the light. Mr Keogh did not like them himself. If there was a moth, or worse a daddy-longlegs, in the room he could not sleep until it was dispatched with a firm rap from a rolled newspaper.

  Mr Keogh groped his way from the chair to the bed and turned on his light. He toed off his shoes and flexed his feet. Slip-on shoes were the boon of his old age. For years he had made do with the kind of police boots he had worn in the force. Morning and night he had nearly burst blood vessels trying to tie and untie them. Now in the mornings he just put his socks on while lying in bed, swung his feet out and, with a little wiggling pressure, would insert them into his shoes, while his eyes stared straight ahead crinkling in a smile at the ease of it all. At one time he had been glad of the big boots, had even added steel tips to them so that they would make more noise. The last thing in the world he wanted was to confront and grapple with a surprised burglar. Give them plenty of time to run. That way nobody got hurt, especially him.

  It was funny how the size of the feet never changed after a certain age. For as long as he could remember he had taken
size eleven while the waistband of his trousers had doubled. His mother had made him wear shoes to school but he had preferred to take them off and hide them in the ditch until he was coming home. He did not want to be any different from the rest of the boys. When he did get home the first thing he would do would be to take the shoes off. His mother praised him for not scuffing them until she found out his trick, then she beat him with a strap for letting the family down in front of the teacher.

  A thing they’d learned in the Force for an emergency birth was to ask the woman what size of shoes she took. The bigger the feet the easier the birth.

  In his pyjamas he rolled on to the bed and into the depression his body had made in the down mattress. He slept, when he ever did sleep, propped on pillows because of his hernia. The doctor had said there was a gap in him somewhere but Mr Keogh had refused to allow an exploratory operation to find out where. A lump you could find, a gap was a different kettle of fish. The nearer he slept to the upright position the less it bothered him.

  He turned out the bedside lamp and watched the sliver of light coming through the girl’s curtains which had not been drawn exactly. Occasionally he saw her shadow fall on them as she moved around but she passed the slit of light so quickly that he could get no sense of her. She could have been naked for all he knew.

  ‘What’s that you’re up to?’ said Mr Keogh.

  ‘Doily mats.’

  The little man in the red waistcoat did not move, the day was so still. Mr Keogh wore a floppy straw hat to protect his baldness from the burning sun. He had had it since the days he dug a vegetable plot by the Waterworks. The cat had settled herself in the small square of shadow beneath Mrs O’Hagan’s chair.

  ‘What about the knitting needles?’

  ‘This is crochet.’

  Mr Keogh nodded and tilted his hat farther over his face. Mrs O’Hagan looked up at him, her hands still whirling.