A Pack of Lies

by Geraldine McCaughrean

  ‘He won’t have eaten,’ said Mrs Povey at last.

  ‘No.’

  ‘We ought to offer him some supper, I suppose.’

  ‘It’s only polite.’

  For one hopeful moment Ailsa thought that MCC Berkshire had changed his mind and gone. The shop was a silent, unlit labyrinth of piled-up shadowy furniture, buttressed with bow-fronted chests and treacherous with reaching chair-legs and trailing electric flexes. Something moved, between the wardrobes and the leaf-fold tables, but it was only Ailsa’s reflection moving in a big, old, gilt-framed mirror.

  Then she caught sight of him perched at the top of a step-ladder by the bookshelves, the thin beam of a pencil-torch illuminating the cuffs of his white trousers. He did not seem to see her, for his face was sunk towards an open book on his lap and he was reading with all the still concentration of a mosquito sucking blood through a sleeping man’s skin.

  ‘You’ll ruin your eyes like that,’ said Ailsa, but he did not stir. ‘Mother says, do you want some supper? It’s only macaroni cheese.’

  His eyes remained riveted to the page, but after half a minute or so he lifted one slow, absent-minded hand, to acknowledge that he had heard, and gave a kind of quiet moo.

  ‘What does he say?’ asked Mrs Povey, when Ailsa got back upstairs.

  ‘He says “Hmmm”. He’s reading.’

  So they waited, and grumbled, and watched the macaroni cheese congeal between them on the table. But MCC Berkshire never came for his supper. Not that night or any night.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE CLOCK:

  A STORY OF SUPERSTITION

  Next day, Ailsa was uneasy about leaving her mother alone in the shop with MCC Berkshire. But he seemed harmlessly engrossed in a book called Furniture for the Amateur Collector.

  ‘I’m sorry we don’t have anything more interesting,’ she heard her mother say apologetically, and she shook her head in despair: Mrs Povey was no commander of men. That evening Ailsa hurried home from school and questioned her: ‘Has he been a help? Is he good with the customers? Has he sold anything?’

  Her mother smiled wanly. ‘He’s been no trouble at all. Really. He hasn’t been under my feet or anything.’

  Ailsa’s suspicions were confirmed. ‘He’s read all day, hasn’t he? He hasn’t got up off that chair since I left this morning, has he? Be honest.’

  ‘Well, he did have a cheese sandwich with me at lunchtime.’

  ‘Oh Mother! He’s going to be nothing but a drain on the cheese supplies. I’ve a good mind to tell him … he’s got to go!’

  ‘Oh yes, dear? You do that, then.’ (She knew how to call Ailsa’s bluff every time.) ‘He says he’s researching the subject - so that he knows about the furniture in the shop.’

  ‘What’s to know about it? It’s junk furniture.’

  ‘Ah no, MCC says there are some nice pieces in among it all. And isn’t it lucky that we had a book on the shelves about …’

  ‘At least he’ll go when he gets to the end of reading everything,’ said Ailsa sourly. ‘It’s a good job we haven’t got many books in stock.’

  ‘Ah yes, well, this woman came in this morning with a whole suitcaseful of books …’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I told her we didn’t deal much in books. And that I hadn’t got much cash to spare at the moment.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘MCC gave her a credit note for £10 and took the books.’

  ‘Ten pounds? Oh Mother!’

  ‘Don’t nag, Ailsa, there’s a good girl.’

  The next day was Saturday, and Ailsa was able to see at first hand the buzz of trade in action. It did not help that the newsagent next door had set up his ladder against his shop front, and that in their efforts to avoid walking under it, most passers-by walked out into the street and skirted Povey’s Antiquary entirely. A couple came in at about 11 o’clock and said in loud voices how there was not a thing worth buying. A tramp came in to get warm for a while, because he knew Mrs Povey was always good for a cup of free tea. A schoolchild came in looking for a birthday present for its mother, and Mrs Povey pretended she had labelled a hand-mirror wrongly at a pound, and sold it to the child for ten pence. After the child was gone, certain nick-nacks were missing from the nick-nack table. An old man came in and knocked over a hat-stand so that it broke a china vase and chipped a wash-stand. And the milkman called, wanting to be paid.

  All this while, MCC Berkshire lay like a cat along a green velvet chaise longue and read a book. One customer might have been interested in the chaise longue if it were not for the strange young man sprawled along it reading Superstition and the Unexplained.

  At last, in the middle of the afternoon, a very pleasant, smiling major of a gentleman with a copy of the Racing Times tucked under one arm strode to the shop doorway, passing directly under the ladder outside. He went straight to a grandfather clock standing against the shop wall. He was obviously interested, judging from the animated way in which he stroked his soft, white moustache. Ailsa’s heart rose. If only her mother would keep silent!

  ‘This is a handsome timepiece. Yes indeed,’ said the old gentleman.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s a bit big for most people’s houses,’ said Mrs Povey.

  ‘Oh, but I’ve got one of those draughty old places with high ceilings,’ said the old gentleman, fingering the shiny panels of polished wood.

  ‘I’m afraid it doesn’t keep time, though … in fact it doesn’t go at all,’ said Mrs Povey apologetically.

  ‘Oh dear.’ His face fell.

  ‘The chains and things inside are all knotted up and broken.’ She opened the front panel to show a heap of tangled, rusty hooks, chains and weights, and together they stood staring sadly at the disembowelled clock. ‘I think it must have fallen over at some stage,’ said Mrs Povey. ‘You see the clock face is cracked, too.’

  ‘Oh dear dear,’ said the old gentleman, and turned away. ‘What a pity.’ Ailsa scowled at her mother’s back.

  ‘Well, and won’t you be telling him the story behind it, Mrs P?’ said a lilting voice from the other end of the shop. MCC Berkshire jumped up off the chaise longue and came down the room like a Grand National winner, leaping the furniture in his path. ‘And won’t you tell the man the story of how that fall came about?’ he cried, rushing breathlessly to the clock and throwing one arm around its shoulders as if it were a cherished old friend.

  ‘But I don’t know …’ began Mrs Povey, alarmed.

  ‘Don’t know? Well I do, madam, and it’s a story that needs telling!’

  ‘Mr Berkshire, I never knew you were …’ But MCC had turned on the major.

  ‘Now I don’t suppose, sir, that you have the least interest in horses or the Sport of Kings, or you’d have heard of Lucky Finbar of Connemara.’ He ran and pushed a moth-eaten winged armchair close up behind the major so that the old gentleman’s knees were knocked from under him and he fell into it with a grunt. ‘Well and maybe you wouldn’t after all - him being born such a while ago and you such a young gentleman still in the eyes of history. Let me tell it to you the way it was, and you judge for yourself if there isn’t a meaning and charm in the decline and fall of this clock.’

  ‘Good God,’ said the major, but he tucked his fingers together on the crown of his waistcoated stomach, sat back, and listened to the story MCC had to tell.

  ***

  Before it came here, this clock was owned by an Irishman who had risen from stable boy to wealth thanks to a great talent for buying and racing horses. He won his first horse in a game of horseshoe-throwing with a jockey. The jockey should never have challenged Finbar to the contest: he had been drinking home-made whiskey since morning and could see three pins instead of just the one. Onlookers said it was no surprise he lost: he was too drunk to have hit the sea with a brick from a low-flying hot-air balloon. But Finbar saw things differently. He knew that Luck had smiled on him. Only that morning he had shaken hands with the seventh son of a seventh son, and
that was why he had won himself a horse made of the very best horseflesh. He made certain of keeping on the right side of Luck after that.

  He never missed Sunday Mass - unless he got out of bed the wrong side by mistake and dared not leave the house for fear of bad luck. He always carried silver in his pocket so as to turn it over if he saw a new moon, and when one was due, he left all the windows of his cottage wide open, even in winter, for fear of glimpsing the new moon through glass.

  Luck did not fail him. He won a multitude of races and acquired a string of horses, and any one of them fit to win the Dublin Gold Stakes. Of course, his success might have stemmed from living in Connemara, among the best horses in the world and the shrewdest horsemen in all Ireland, but Finbar knew differently. Luck was smiling on him.

  So he always left something on his plate for the fairies, and he always said ‘White Rabbits’ on the first day of the month. His carpet wore a dandruff of salt, for he was forever throwing it over his left shoulder to blind any passing witches. Seeing him do this, Father Mulcahy asked if this were not ‘a little on the pagan side’. But Finbar said there was no harm in being on the safe side. He wore more holy medals on his chest than a war veteran.

  Luck was so kind to Finbar that he moved into a large house and could afford servants to keep it spick and span. But he fired the housemaid on the day she put his boots on the kitchen table to polish them. ‘Don’t you know that boots on the kitchen table are unlucky, you stupid girl!’

  If he left a thing at home by mistake, he would never go back for it without turning round three times and sitting for ten minutes in the armchair. His house swarmed with black cats and (because he left the windows open at new moon) white cats and greys and tabbies, too. Cats will be cats, after all. And still good luck came to Finbar in plenty.

  He planted yew trees in the garden, to fend off evil spirits, and banished all but lucky heather from his garden beds so that in spring they turned the colour of a bruise. He even took to drinking heather tea and poking sprigs of it into his horses’ feeding net - though the horses spat it out which Finbar thought was a rather bad omen. He took to carrying a gun in case he saw any magpies on their own (which was bound to bring him sorrow). When Sergeant Yeats saw the gun he said it was a poor idea of Finbar’s, but who can argue with a man who has just won the Connemara Four Mile Handicap?

  Finbar was getting almost too good to hobnob with the likes of those at the County Fair. But he had started feeding a new mare of his on nothing but lucky heather, and he wanted a chance to try her out in a race. So he entered the County Races. When the local bookies saw that Finbar was riding in the afternoon, they packed up their suitcases and went home - for everyone liked a bet on Lucky Finbar and Lucky Finbar never lost.

  But the leprechauns (or perhaps it was the heather) made the mare fractious. No sooner did Finbar mount up and the toe of his boot touch the mare’s swollen belly, than she took off in a string of great bucks and leaps, bit a steward, and bolted towards the starter’s chair.

  Now at the Connemara County Fair in those days, the starter used to start the races sitting on the top rung of a whitewashed step-ladder. It was a very tall step-ladder, but not as tall as the starter would have liked when he saw Finbar’s mare pounding towards him, neck outstretched, teeth bared, eyes rolling. He drew up his legs and blew his starter’s whistle and wagged his flag, but it only seemed to madden the horse even more, for she put her head down and charged like a bull at a toreador.

  If Finbar had seen what was coming, he would most surely have hurled himself out of the saddle on to the turf. But all he expected was to be slightly maimed against the starter’s chair. He did not foresee how the mare - groaning as only a horse which has stomach-ache can groan — would duck beneath the A-frame of the ladder and try to carry the starter off, like an elephant under a howdah. Finbar flattened himself along her neck. The starter passed by overhead … and they were safely out the other side, with nobody even scathed. The mare galloped herself to exhaustion, then rolled over on her side and lay foaming at the mouth, looking as bloated and glassy eyed as Father Mulcahy after his Christmas dinner.

  As Finbar walked back the way he had unwillingly come, he saw the dreadful truth of the situation. The starter was still clinging, dazed, to the top of his chair, like a look-out on the mast of a foundering ship. The chair itself cast a dark arrow of a shadow which seemed to pierce Finbar to the heart. For it was a ladder!

  Had he not passed beneath a ladder - the unluckiest act of them all? Would not all the misfortunes of Heaven rain down now on his unprotected head? A sweat broke out on Finbar that washed all the colour from his face for evermore.

  ‘Maybe it’s not really a ladder in the true sense of the word,’ he told himself. But even as the hopeful thought passed through his head, the owner of the starting chair came out of the crowd and began shouting, ‘That’s the last time I lend me ladder for such purposes! I hope me ladder’s come to no harm. ’Tis me best ladder, too, and me tallest, and I thank God ’twas tall enough on the day!

  ‘Ah shut your misbegotten mouth,’ yelled Finbar, to the man’s astonishment. ‘I’m a ruined man for sure!’

  It might have been better if Finbar had sat back and waited for bad luck to crush him. But it preyed on his mind very greatly, and he could not decide finally whether a step-ladder being used as a starter’s chair was indeed a starter’s chair or a step-ladder. Besides, he felt a need to know what particular shape his bad luck would take when it came. Would it be injury, horse-flu, bankruptcy, a losing streak, robbery … or worse?

  So when he saw the advertisement in the Connemara Chronicle which said:

  ASK GYPSY JO PAIDRIC

  WHAT’S IN STORE:

  HE KNOWS MORE!

  he was quick to follow its advice. He put on his best suit, and caught the train to Ballymuchtie where Gypsy Jo Paidric the Clairvoyant had a small consulting room over a fish shop.

  Now anyone on the superstitious side might think it meaningful that Finbar happened upon that particular advertisement and that particular gentleman. Paidric Conlan had become a gypsy shortly after his betting shop closed down. A bankrupt man must make a living where he can, and there was no-one so thoroughly bankrupt as Paidric Conlan the day after the Dublin Gold Stakes.

  He got by now by telling young ladies they were in line for handsome husbands, and telling mothers that their babies would grow up into great men. He gave some delight. He did no harm. There was no malice in him. Not much, anyway.

  White-faced with worry, Finbar threw himself down in the chair opposite Conlan and bared his soul. ‘In my past, sir, people knew me as Lucky Finbar, and I’ll be the first to admit that Luck has smiled on me since the first day I was born.’ He paused.

  The gypsy clairvoyant had dropped his pipe into his lap and was in a fever to brush the burning tobacco off his trousers. Paidric straightened his headscarf and breathed deeply: there was a lot of colour in his cheeks. ‘I’ve heard tell of you, now I think about it. Lucky Finbar? Yes. Didn’t you have a great deal of the winning kind of luck in the Dublin Gold Stakes a couple of years back? Do go on, sir.’

  ‘Well, I believe I’ve done a dreadful thing – bad enough to dent my luck all out of shape and let the leprechauns in to plague me. I … I passed under … a ladder!’ And he recounted the fearful events of that terrible day, while Paidric sat staring at the ceiling and shuffling a deck of playing cards.

  ‘Deal the cards for me, Finbar, and I’ll tell you the worst,’ he said.

  Finbar dealt a rather jolly pattern of red cards all over the table-top. Gypsy Paidric sucked his teeth and said, ‘Try it again, sir. I don’t like the look of it.’

  Finbar dealt again. Paidric shook his head and rolled his eyes. ‘There’s no softening the blow, sir. You’ll be dead before the year’s out, and that’s a racing certainty.’

  Finbar’s eyes bulged and he clutched at his hair. ‘D … d … dead? Is there nothing I can do? It wasn’t all that much of a ladd
er at all, you know?’

  ‘Who can cheat his fate?’ said Paidric stoically, and packed his cards away and opened the door to let his customer out. ‘That will be ten shillings, sir.’

  When Finbar had gone — stumbling down the stairs like a milk bottle kicked off the step - the clairvoyant bared his teeth in a bitter grin and muttered, ‘Revenge!’ If it hadn’t been for that fluke string of winners at the Dublin Gold Stakes meeting (and all of them ridden or owned by Lucky Finbar, the bastard) Paidric Conlan would not have been cleaned out, ruined. Only once in a generation does a bookie get as unlucky as that. If it were not for Lucky Finbar, Paidric Conlan should have been a rich man now instead of pretending to be a gypsy in a one-room hole over a fish shop.

  On the way home, Finbar found the world had turned vicious all of a sudden. Every hurrying horse-drawn cab, every lout lounging on the street corners, might suddenly turn murderer. On the return journey, he fully expected the train to hurl itself off the rails, or the rivers to rise up and drown him. Trees shook their branches at him menacingly, and roof slates lay in wait, ready to throw themselves at his head and brain him. He counted thirteen magpies roosting in his garden before he could get his key to turn in the lock and could rush indoors into the sanctuary of his fine big house.

  And who should be standing in the hall to greet him but the great, walnut grandfather clock, his one-time pride and joy. It gazed down at him, the hands standing at ten-to-two like a smug grin. Tock tock tock. The sound of it filled the quiet house, picking off the seconds, one by one, of Finbar’s remaining life.

  He fired his cook, for fear she poison him. He fired his manservant, for fear he was secretly a notorious murderer. He fired the housekeeper, because she said he was ‘a mad old fool of a superstitious pagan to go wasting good money on clairvoyants in fish shops.’