by Brian Moore
“And you are living here? In this house?”
“Well, it’s just temporary. I was staying in a house farther down the road. I’ve just spent one night here.”
The policeman rubbed his hand over his wet red face, wiping away a drop of rain which had gathered on the end of his nose. “I believe it’s an Englishman who owns this house. A Mr. Harmon. Are you a friend of his?”
“No. I was asked to stay here.” Mangan pointed uneasily at the white face behind the window of the police car. “He asked me.”
“Him?” the policeman said. “I understand he’s just the caretaker now.”
“It was his house until recently.”
“It was,” the policeman said. “That’s right. But it’s not now. His sister is not in the house, you say?”
Miserably, Mangan nodded.
“Well.” The policeman appeared to consider. “If you see her, will you tell her we are taking her brother to Bantry to make a statement? And that herself and yourself may be called as witness.”
“A statement?” Mangan said.
“In connection with the theft of a lorryload of scrap metal,” the policeman said. “You will be staying on in this area for a few more days, I take it?”
“I think so.”
“What is the license number of your car? I forgot to put it down,” the policeman said, pulling out his notebook again.
Mangan felt for his wallet, found the rental receipt and read off the license number.
The policeman wrote it down. He turned and looked up at the sky. “I hope this weather will clear for you,” he said. “Of course, we do normally have rain at this time of year. But we don’t get many tourists in January.”
“Yes. That’s why I can’t get a hotel room.”
“Is that a fact?” the policeman said disbelievingly. “Well, now, enjoy your holidays.”
He tramped back across the yard and got into the driver’s seat of the car. The overhead violet flasher was switched off. The police car’s tires spun on the wet cobbles as it accelerated out of the yard and down the steep road. Mangan reached for the front door, its wooden footboard making a clattering sound on the stone as he drew it shut. At once, as though she had been waiting for the sound, Kathleen appeared at the head of the stairs, huddling against the cold, her worn tweed overcoat pulled tight about her neck. “What did those boyos want?” she asked.
“They’re taking your brother to Bantry to make a statement.”
“About what?”
“Something to do with stealing a load of scrap metal.”
“Oh, God, wouldn’t you know it. He has nothing but bad luck when he teams up with Packy Deane.”
“Well, there’s something else I’m not crazy about,” he said. “Your brother told the police he was with us yesterday. Here and in Skull. I had to lie to that cop to back him up. We may be called as witnesses.”
“But what’s wrong with that?” she said. “What else would you tell the police?”
“Well, it makes me an accomplice, or something. And you, too. If it’s a robbery, we’re guilty of collusion, or perjury, or something. You could be put in jail for that.”
“You’re a Yank. You’ll be all right. You’re not going to turn informer on your own cousin, are you? Anyway, it’s not you has to worry, it’s Con that has to worry. Listen, the thing now is for us to go up to the caravan and get some breakfast in us. Then we’ll drive to Bantry and inquire for him at the Guards station. He’ll be needing a lift back when they let him out. Here—will you do that for me, now?” And then, as though to seal her power to make him do what she wanted, she came up to him and kissed him on the lips, a Judas kiss, bonding him as her accomplice. “Come on, then,” she said, and led him to the front door, smartly shooting up the tent of her big old umbrella as they stepped out under the pouring heavens. She slipped her arm in his and led him across the yard and up the steep road. Rain reverberated on the umbrella top, and on either side of the road the ditches were fast-flowing rivulets of water and broken reeds. The rain sealed them in under the umbrella, and as he leaned forward into the road’s incline, he thought of his present world, tiny, enclosed by Kathleen. And he thought then of his father and his mother, neither of whom had the slightest idea of what was happening to him. He wondered if, indeed, they ever thought of him these days.
He imagined his father in his newspaper office, initialing some proof pages, then calling out to his secretary to place a call to California. He imagined his mother picking up the phone in her Naugahyde armchair in her office facing the Pacific Ocean at Santa Monica. In the dayroom behind her, waiting for their art-therapy class, mad people in playclothes. “Have you heard from Jamie?” he imagined his father asking, and his mother, pleased at the novelty of this call, but still confused by her old angers over his father’s betrayal, saying plaintively how would she have heard, she was so far away now, and then his father telling his mother that Jamie had gone to Ireland to track down his ancestors. They would gossip briefly about the irony of Beatrice’s leaving all that money to him, thus enabling him to indulge these whims, and would end by promising each other to be in touch in case they heard from him.
But they had not heard from him. Nor would they hear from him. And now, as Kathleen tightened her grip on his arm, urging him up the steep incline in the driving rain, it came to him that, unbeknown to his parents or to anyone else who knew him, he was again a woman’s prisoner.
Three hours later he drove with her up the narrow peninsula from the land’s end of Ireland to the town of Bantry, coming in along the seafront to the great open square where a fair day of horse selling was taking place against a backdrop resembling a Norman seaport, the cluster of gray, severe buildings, a jumble of narrow streets in which poorly dressed people milled about, raw boys and girls, women in black dresses, red-faced farmers in flat cloth caps. There, on Kathleen’s instructions, he parked the car outside a pub facing the Civic Guards station. “All right now,” she said to him, “I’ll wait in the pub. You go in and ask about him. They’ll heed you, you being a Yank and a tourist. Just find out what’s up and, if you can, tell Con we’re waiting over here in Glendon’s Lounge. Will you do that for me, love?”
He would. But first he took her into the pub and settled her with a drink in the nearly empty lounge bar, behind the noisy male clamor of the public bar out front. “I won’t be long,” he promised.
In the outer room of the Civic Guards station a woman was sitting on a bench trying to quiet a large barking dog. There were four old bicycles stacked against a wall, and a row of black raincoats hung on hooks along another. At a desk a young policeman, his tunic unbuttoned, was laboriously filling out a document. He looked up when Mangan entered, relieved at this break in his penman labors.
“You were wanting?” he asked.
“I came to see if you have a man called Conor Mangan here.”
“And why did you come to ask that?”
The dog began to bark.
“Shuush, now,” said the woman. She slapped the dog on its back, causing it to cringe beneath her feet. Then it rose and barked again.
“Well, he was brought here from Drishane to make a statement,” Mangan said. “I wanted to give him a lift home when he’s finished.”
“Is that a fact?” the young policeman said. “Well, nothing has happened yet. We’re waiting for the sergeant.”
“I see. Well, I’ll be over in Glendon’s Lounge. If you’d tell him that?”
“Ah, will you stoppit, you bad dog,” the woman cried, striking the beast across its muzzle.
“I will tell him, then,” the young policeman promised. “As I said, he is here and we are expecting the sergeant. But when he has made his statement, it will have to be typed up and signed. You’d better be prepared to wait awhile, if you’re going to wait.”
“Fine,” Mangan said. The dog suddenly lunged at him, pulling the woman from her seat as she held on to its collar, dragging it up short, its forelegs in the air
. He waited until the barking subsided, the woman again striking the dog across its muzzle. Then, with a nod to the policeman, he left the station. He cut across the busy street and re-entered Glendon’s Lounge. Earlier, when he had left Kathleen in the lounge, the only other customers had been an elderly man and his wife, who sat on high bar stools, looking through the opening into the public bar, bored with each other, envious of the life in that larger room. But now, when he reentered, the couple had gone. Instead, there were two young men sitting in the booth on either side of Kathleen. No one else was in the lounge, and neither they nor Kathleen noticed his arrival. He stood stock-still, filled with jealousy until he realized that she had not invited them to sit with her. They were here to bait her.
The taller of the youths wore a darned navy fisherman’s jersey and rubber Wellington boots. His raw face split in a loose grin as he tried to put his hand down the front of Kathleen’s cardigan. His companion, a chubby youth in a greasy blue suit, pushed his fingers down the waistband at the front of her jeans. She struggled, pushing and slapping at both of them. “Quit it, will you! Get away, now. I’ll tell my fella on you. He’ll be back in a minute.”
“Go on with you,” said the tall one. “You have nobody. Where’s his drink if there’s two of you?”
“Will you stop that!” Kathleen said, as she dragged the chubby one’s hand out of her jeans. Enraged, Mangan stepped forward. At once, the taller youth swung around and gave him a hard stare.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Mangan said in a thick angry voice.
Both louts at once slid out of the booth, wary, facing him in a wrestler’s crouch, their hands held low. “Enjoying your holidays?” the tall one said. His chubby mate gurgled in appreciative laughter. Mangan struck out at the tall one, who deflected his blow with skilled ease.
“Easy there, Yank,” the tall one said. “I’d say you’re a bit past taking on the pair of us at once.”
“Say you’re sorry, now,” said the chubby one.
“Yes, say you’re sorry,” said the tall one. “What call have you going around hitting people who never did you harm?”
In answer, Mangan swung again, but again the tall one deflected his blow, then, smiling, raised his fist to menace Mangan, who at once ducked back, falling into a boxing stance. Both louts laughed. “Lookit,” the tall one said. “Mohammed Ali himself.” Then turned his back contemptuously. “Come on, Mickey, we’d better go and see to that mare of yours.”
And they went out, banging open the glass-paneled door to the public bar, the door swinging shut behind them as they were swallowed up in the move and shouting and press of the all-male crowd in the larger room.
“Sorry about that,” Kathleen said. “Come and sit down, love.” She patted the seat beside her. “What happened with the Guards?”
“Who are those bastards?” Mangan said, ignoring this. “Do you know them?”
“I don’t. I met the big one at Crookhaven at a dance last summer, and when he came in the bar, he remembered me.”
“Why didn’t you get up and leave?”
A white-aproned barman came around the bar from the public side. “Will you be wanting anything?”
“Yes, a gin-and-tonic,” Mangan said. “Kathleen?”
She nodded. “Two, then,” Mangan told the barman, who began to make the drinks while Mangan explained to Kathleen what had happened in the police station.
The barman put the drinks on the counter. “Now, sir,” he said.
Mangan went to the bar, paid, and picked up the drinks. “By the way, where’s the men’s room?” he asked.
“The gents is through the public there, down at the end of the corridor.”
“Thanks.”
As he went back to the booth, he glanced through the glass-paneled swinging door, but there was no sign of the louts in the public bar. He put the drinks down by Kathleen. “I have to go to the toilet,” he said.
“Are those lads still out there?”
“No, I checked.”
“Well, be careful, so.”
He went through the glass-paneled door into the public bar. A roar of talk and the heavy smell of draught porter met him as he moved among the farmers, horse dealers, and fishermen at the bar. Again he took inventory, but his adversaries were nowhere in sight. At the end of the room a passageway led to the rear of the premises. On the right at the end of this passageway was a door marked Fir in Irish script. It was a cold, concrete-floored room like an outhouse. There was no toilet. The floor was wet, and an overpowering smell of urine, vomit, and porter pervaded the place. A primitive, chest-high flush pipe spilled greenish jets of water down the urinal walls. An old man passed him, buttoning as he went out.
Fastidiously trying to breathe through his mouth to lessen the stench, Mangan stood up to the wall and began to urinate from a full bladder. As he did, the door opened behind him. Vulnerable, his back to the intruder, he felt a momentary flicker of alarm.
Suddenly a hand grabbed at the seat of his pants, taking a firm grip on the slack of material. Simultaneously, a second hand gripped his collar. Still urinating, he was jerked away from the wall. He let go of his penis and peed down the leg of his pants. He was whirled around, like a drunk about to be thrown out of a saloon, and in that brutal trajectory saw the face of the smaller, chubby lout grinning as, efficiently, the lout kicked him on his right shin, then kneed him in the groin. The hands which held him from behind released him as, choking, he fell on his knees on the wet, stinking concrete floor. The tall lout loomed over him, dragging him to his feet, then jerked him forward to smash the flat top of his head into Mangan’s face. At once, Mangan’s nose bled, and he felt as if his teeth were loose. Again, that ramming head struck him full clout. Hands released him. He fell on the floor and rolled over into the gutter of the urinal, full of yellow piss and vomit. No word had been spoken. He heard the sound of footsteps behind him, and suddenly he was kicked in the small of his back. The kick made a noise like a woman beating carpets on a line. The chubby one was now above him and his foot was raised to stamp down on Mangan’s ribs. Mangan, gagging and moaning, felt a new and terrible pain in his chest. He fainted. He came awake as a kick landed on his rump, then heard them grunt as they went on making a football of him, kicking him as he rolled slowly across the foul floor. And then one of them kicked him in the head. Pain shot up behind his ear. A sheet of white light filled his shut eyes. He did not hear them leave.
He woke, looking up, seeing unknown faces peering down at him. He gagged. “Easy now,” a man said, cradling an arm behind his shoulders and raising his head. He felt a severe pain in his chest and again lost consciousness. When next he opened his eyes he was being carried down a back alley, among a double row of peering faces. Two men were waiting and lifted him up into a panel truck. “Easy now. Steady there.” He was laid on blankets and it was then that he saw Kathleen scramble in and hunker down beside him. The panel door shut. The truck engine started up. “Where are we going?” he asked thickly. His mouth hurt.
“The hospital. Now, you’re all right. You’ll be all right.”
“Yes, you’ll be all right,” one of the men said, holding him steady in the moving truck.
“How many was it come at him?” the driver asked.
“Who knows,” Kathleen said.
The truck’s motions jarred his spine. He felt like vomiting but held it in. After a while the truck stopped and he was lifted down onto a stretcher trolley and wheeled into a hall with marbled walls and a salmon-pink ceiling. “I want to throw up,” he told Kathleen, who walked beside him, her hand on his shoulder. A nurse came with a kidney dish and he vomited, then spat blood. His chest hurt. He told this to the nurse. He remembered little after that, until a doctor examined him, asking him where he hurt.
“Were you kicked?” the doctor asked, and then said to the nurse that he had better go to X-ray. In the X-ray room they took pictures of his chest, then rolled him over on his stomach for more pictures. He had a
vague memory of being wheeled into a small ward. A young doctor in a white coat taped his ribs and questioned him about the fight. “Did you give as good as you got?” the doctor asked, then turned to a nurse and said: “Wash him. There’s a terrible niff.”
He slept and was wakened often so that they could take his blood pressure and his temperature. He woke on his own in the middle of the night and heard a man beside him in the ward calling for the nurse. In the morning, an old woman in a blue coverall came by and swept up under the beds. A young girl in a white coat brought him a tray with a cup of tea and a boiled egg and a piece of toast. After a while, Kathleen came in. She bent over him and kissed him on the cheek. “Ah, poor love,” she said. “Anyway, you’re all right. The doctor says you can go home today.”
A nurse came in with his clothes. “You have a couple of broken ribs,” Kathleen said. “They gave you a right hammering, whoever they were. I told the Guards you didn’t know them and you never saw them before.” She narrowed her eyes at him, warning him to say nothing in front of the nurse. “They’re a right scourge, those Guards. They say they want to speak to you before you go.” She turned to the nurse. “You’d think when a visitor to this country gets hurt, they’d have the decency to take his word for it that he didn’t know the fellas that did it.”
The nurse said nothing. She looked at Kathleen in a way that spelled disapproval. “You’ll have to wait outside now, until I get him dressed,” the nurse said. Kathleen went out. The nurse pulled a curtain around his bed. While the nurse was helping him to dress, an older doctor in a white coat came in with two young doctors who seemed to be Indians. The old doctor looked at the chart on his bed.
“Any respiratory problems?” he said to no one in particular. “No, sair,” one of the Indian doctors said. The old doctor then looked at Mangan. “Bad luck a thing like this happening on your holidays,” he said. “Did you have a lot to drink?”
“No, not at all.”
“They just set on you, did they? Well, anyway, I want you to take things very easy for a week or two. Will you do that now, like a good man?”
