How deep was that small lake—more a turlough really, filled with water in autumn and winter, a dry hollow in summer—and would the car restart for him? If he asked her to climb back in and wind the windows down, would she do so without questioning? As water poured through the window and he tugged frantically at his belt, wanting that last chance now it was too late, would she sit serenely beside him, her eyes closed, the water rippling over her face, the twin trail of bubbles up to the surface until both of them lay slumped together? He remembered the look on her face when he turned with the knife, half terror, half expectation. Katie shivered suddenly beside him as though guessing his thoughts and tugged at his arm.
‘I don’t want to die Hano. I don’t want to fucking die.’
He put his arm around her and turned his back on the desolate mountain. He helped her down the bank and tried to restart the car. The water had drained out and three times he went to the lake to fill his shoes before, after choking several times, the engine caught with an unhealthy rattle. He released the brake and edged the car forward. Katie was watching him, hunched down against the turf bank as far from the car as possible. She looked ready to run in her bare feet up the incline into that wilderness. He had the driver’s door open. The car was gaining speed down the slope to the lake. The water sparkled in the low sun which had begun to glitter in the east. He thought suddenly of her father, the bend before him, the child at home waiting by the window. As the front wheels splashed into the water he jumped clear and was drenched in the spray as he rolled away.
The car was floating with the bonnet down and its back wheels raised like a duck scavenging for food. It bobbed its way round to face him and, as it took in more water, began slowly to sink until, gradually, the turmoil on the lake surface subsided and the last ripples spread out to touch the shore. He watched it sink with a sick feeling, imagining himself strapped into that seat. When no trace was left he rose and walked back towards Katie. She was hunched in the same position and crouched even lower when he approached as though suddenly afraid of him. He knelt and she backed away. He held his hand out, and very tentatively she stretched hers out to take it.
‘Don’t know what to do Hano. Will they catch us? Will they?’
He found he couldn’t lie. He nodded slowly.
‘Sooner or later. If the police don’t, Justin Plunkett will. Rest a few minutes here before we move on.’
He put his arm around her and they huddled together against the damp brown clay. The overhang gave them some shelter from the wind and they could see the end of the boreen clearly while being concealed themselves. Katie shivered.
‘Talk Hano, just talk.’
There was a slight bulge in his jacket pocket. He felt it and found one cigarette in a crumpled packet. He struck a match, inhaled and handed it to her. She cupped her hands around the red tip as though it could give warmth. Then he told her the story of the woman with the house in the forest.
To be without it is to be excluded from warmth. She convinces you in the subterranean light of the factory, describing the house as the two youths laugh. That evening the men will come, two to keep guard outside, one walking between the puddles on the concrete floor, his face indecipherable in the gloom. You must have money then. The snap of the locks on the briefcase is amplified by the walls. To be empty-handed when they click is to remain in the cold.
Once when the man was sick his boss himself came, the neat suit, the youthful face of a politician’s son. You arrived late that night, pushing your way in with the notes held in your fist. He was leaving. He laughed at your haste, said the chemist’s was closed for the night. Remember his hand over your shoulder as you pleaded in the dark passageway, how it lingered on your breast when he deliberately paused to see if you would pull away.
And you stood there, not moving as it made its way slowly across your jumper to pluck the notes. The package placed into your hand like sweets given to a baby. And then he was gone and you walked unsteadily on to where the group huddled, sharing needles and jokes.
Be numb, say nothing and you will survive. You follow the youths out and through the lane to the stolen car. At your side she hums and stumbles slightly. You turn by the canal and railway tracks, cruise through red-bricked terraces till you find the house. ‘The brother was laying a new carpet here last week,’ the driver’s voice drones on. ‘He’d the drawer open and the notes almost in his hand. The old git just came up too quick, too quick.’
Leave your jacket in the back, creak open the gate. Above the door a plaster Infant of Prague. You knock. The old man comes slowly from the kitchen, a blurred figure in the glass. You step forward when he opens the door. Surprised, he steps back. A long dead pope is marooned in a sea of Latin on the wall; beside him a madonna hovers over a holy water font. A smell of damp penetrates your nostrils. Beside you she begins to move and you make yourself follow suit, two T-shirts peeled off to reveal the upraised teenage breasts. He startles back as though struck, his eyes seeming to magnify. You smile now and move forward till you are almost touching. His breath comes loud and unsteady, his hands tremble as they rise. They fold like a corpse’s across his chest as if it were he who was exposed. You are gaining yard by yard, never speaking, staring him out. He tries but cannot lift his eyes from the pert white breasts. You have never seen such terror before, such bewilderment, such unwanted desire. You have reached the kitchen now and still he stumbles back against a wall bedecked with icons and sepia photographs, still unable to find the will-power to lift his eyes. You stare at the veins on his hands like a living coloured flex strapped to his flesh, the jowls on his neck drooping down, the peeling texture of his forehead.
And then the first crash comes, hard against the floorboards overhead. His eyes lift up for the first time, enveloped with horror and self-disgust. He pushes you back but as he moves the thunder of footsteps descend the stairs. You both turn to run as a youth calls in, ‘You dirty old man you! You dirty old man!’ They are already in the car, with the rear door flung open. They know he will never report the robbery. You dive into the seat, scrambling for your clothes. A youth snaps the elastic band on the roll of discoloured notes, throws the jewellery back over his shoulder. She picks it up beside you on the seat and says ‘That locket is worthless’. The car is already speeding as it is thrown from the window. The glass breaks when it hits on concrete, cracking into a hundred pieces over the face of the dead country girl with the curling hair staring out from the cheap frame.
They came from Donegal, from Leeds and Liverpool, Bradford and Stoke, his brothers and sisters who only gathered together now for funerals. I was eight when I last saw them all together, and to see his brothers now, like so many distorted reincarnations of him, was a shock. We packed into Plunkett Undertakers for the rosary before the lid was placed down, but I could not bring myself to join the procession up to kiss that mouth tasting of powder and lipstick. I already had enough memories both painful and sweet, I didn’t want the last one to be of a painted figure who had once been my father.
In the church the neighbours filed slowly past us. I sat in the front pew beside my mother, the man of the family now at nineteen. I kept thinking for some reason that Shay would appear, the final person up, having known somehow on his travels what had happened, understanding my pain yet piss-taking the whole ceremony in a low voice, keeping sanity alive. Only one destination in the final taxi. The lyrics came back from those poker sessions in his flat, not defiant now but mocking. And it was only the neighbours and the men from Plunkett Motors who trailed up, awkwardly shaking hands along the line.
Both Plunkett brothers appeared at the graveside. It was the talk of the house afterwards when the mourners came back. Very few funerals saw them together. Their presence conferred a posthumous importance on my father in people’s eyes. I watched Patrick Plunkett scan the crowd with a sure professional eye, tending his flock carefully—a chosen word, a sympathetic smile. Pascal stayed at the back of the crowd, ignoring everyone as he stared t
ransfixed through the mass of bodies towards the crater of earth. I kept praying that Justin wouldn’t appear as well, that my father would not be another dummy run for the future minister. The hole had been dug by a JCB which was moving away along a mucky track between the headstones, its bucket nodding sagely.
When they had lowered the body down and covered the hole with the green awning the crowd filtered slowly away. I found myself walking beside Pascal Plunkett.
‘You’re just idling up in that filling station I believe,’ he said.
I nodded.
‘Black money, I suppose?’
‘As the ace of spades.’
‘You have the exams and all I’m told. Not like me and your daddy, we’d no need of them things. He was a good worker your daddy. Never missed a day, never caused trouble. No talk of unions or labour courts. No shite if you get my drift. Do you think you could be as good?’
We had reached the two hired cars that were parked near the railing of the cemetery. The chauffeur was holding the door open as my mother arranged her children inside. He stiffened respectfully as his employer approached. I hadn’t replied to him.
‘I’ve told your mother to send you down to me on Monday. I promised her nothing now, but we’ll see what we can do.’
The state car was about to leave. Patrick lowered the window.
‘I’ll give you a lift, Pascal,’ he called.
I remembered from the newspapers that Pascal had had his licence endorsed and been suspended from driving for a year. One rumour had it that he had been sacrificed, willingly or unwillingly, by his brother as a public relations stroke to show his impartiality as the Junior Minister for Justice.
He grunted at his brother, walked toward the car and climbed in beside him. My mother climbed out of the car and almost ran to catch Pascal and begin her thanks again. He disentangled his arm gently and closed over the door of the Mercedes, leaving her standing on the gravel alone before neighbours circled around her. I got her into the car and the cortège moved off for the house.
When the final visitors had gone that evening and the bottles and stale sandwiches were taken away, I took my two small sisters in turn on my knee and told them that I was their daddy now and I would look after them. They slithered away still excited after all the visitors and the pound notes passed into their palms, and went to play, jumping from the bottom of the stairs. I knew they were not willing to let each other believe what had happened yet. With my two brothers I was more awkward suddenly.
When we had got them to bed I sat my mother down and made her take out all the bills, the bank statements, the IOUs to Plunkett. She went over each item eagerly, anxious to try and forget the silence that awaited her when she closed the door of her room. It took a long time to add up everything we owed.
‘Mr Plunkett gave us credit on the funeral bill,’ she said. ‘But sure, the only way I could have paid him would be to borrow the money off himself.’
My father had never offerred me advice about work. I have only one memory of him ever mentioning the subject. On Saturdays as a child when I used to bring him down his lunch I briefly became fascinated by the garage. One day I told Eddie it was where I wanted to work when I was grown up. I still remember my father lowering his mug of tea on to the scarred work-bench and bending down to say quietly: ‘You can be anything you want, but no son of mine will ever work for a Plunkett.’
After my mother had climbed the stairs and I was alone I put my jacket on and went walking in the streets. The pubs had closed an hour before and there were few people to be seen. Occasionally I’d pass a young couple pressing themselves into the shadows of a doorway, an old man walking slowly nowhere or a young girl in bright clothes half-running in fear. Beneath the amber lights I walked for hours, past Plunkett Motors where a light shone in the watchman’s office, by the church where he had lain, criss-crossing the village until finally I gave in and stood below the flat I had shared with Shay.
The bookie had still not let it. I had a key and let myself in, climbing up the stairs like a burglar afraid to put on a light. I wanted Shay back. I wanted to ask him what to do. Just months before we had drunk in that room where the moonlight now crept in over the dusty floor and it had seemed that I was free, about to enter a life of my own. Now here I was trapped, suddenly a father to four, alone.
I walked into Shay’s bedroom and lay down on his bare mattress, wondering in what bed Shay was lying that night. In what corner of Europe was he—ready to move on to the next town, the next girl, the next experience? It felt as if I had imagined him. I knew that no matter how long I waited in those rooms, how many stories I remembered, it would make no difference. I had no choice but to walk back into the garage where my father had worked out the last twenty years of his life, to climb those wooden stairs and knock respectfully on Pascal Plunkett’s door.
On my final morning in the petrol station, I unlocked the glass door and stood beside the old man in the bluish light. When I told him who I was going to work for, he spat on the concrete steps.
‘I remember him well, thirty years ago, traipsing round from door to door selling sets of saucepans on the tick. Sure half the housewives thought he was giving them away for free. The missis came in to me with three of them gleaming under her arm to ask me what I thought. “Take them if you want,” I told her, “but if you do you can take yourself with them out of this house and trail around the streets after that knacker.’”
On Sunday mornings Shay had always loved to clear his head by following the course of the Tolka as it wound through the Botanic Gardens. On the far bank was the convent, a green expanse where occasionally cattle wandered past a small stone grotto where an old bath-tub had been left out as a trough.
The Sunday morning before I started in Plunkett’s I returned to the gardens for the first time since Shay had left. The keepers were just unlocking the gate and the avenues of flowers and tree-lined walks were deserted. I turned right at the glasshouse for the giant water lily and went down the steps towards the water. There had been heavy rain over the weekend and the river was swollen and murky brown. For my father’s sake I had wanted the church service to mean something to me but it had just been cold words still familiar from my childhood. When people die you need to say farewell to them before they pass on to wherever they go. That is what I believe anyway, but it is as hard finding the words to say goodbye in death as it is saying you love them in life.
When the river had risen it had carried off whatever junk was left on its banks. A battered fridge was stuck among the rocks by the large weir near the bridge where the river split into two. The relatives had gone home; the fuss of the burial was over. I stood alone on the bridge with a dozen unsolvable memories and watched an old car seat floating down the river towards me. At first I thought it would be swept off in the rush of white water tumbling down the weir. But it was too close to the bank and instead was borne slowly onwards beneath my feet and down the meandering canal that snaked through the gardens for a hundred yards before rejoining the river.
I found myself following the seat’s slow passage, and remembering those stories about the funeral biers of old chieftains cast out on to the ocean, until in my mind I was following my father’s bier as it slowly spun and bobbed its way down to join the rush of water that would carry it out into the sea. I walked in step with it, promising him to look after those he had left behind, and when the car seat bounced against the wooden gates of the tiny lock and was trapped on the surface of the water, I found a stick to push it down until it slipped beneath the planks and was free to career off in the white torrent of water away from me.
I had imagined that Plunkett himself would interview me. Instead when I arrived on the Monday, Eddie handed me a brush and told me to sweep up and generally pretend I was busy. It felt eerie being where my father had worked. In his final months he had wasted away so much that he bore only a slight resemblance to the man I had carried lunch down to. Now whenever I saw a figure in overalls bendin
g over a bonnet or a pair of heels underneath a car, for an instant I imagined it was my father or his ghost.
Sentiment was not a quality associated with Plunkett and the men were surprised but pleased to see me. I knew how few new hands he took on. As the recession grew so did the workload of the men in the garage. Those who left were frequently not replaced. The men grumbled among themselves but few were foolish enough to argue. I knew their faces well enough to feel relaxed among them. Most found a quiet opportunity to mention my father and then it was open season for slagging. I went home that first evening with a dozen new nicknames relating to laziness, enough dirty jokes to turn Stalin’s shirt blue, and still no real idea of what my job was supposed to be.
It was two days before I saw Plunkett. I was helping George, one of my father’s closest friends, to clean the inside of a Ford Fiesta when he appeared from nowhere and began to abuse the man loudly about a car which had gone out the previous day. I worked on with a cloth in my hand, embarrassed at having to overhear their conversation. Later I was called to the office where two of the younger mechanics were being grilled. I turned to wait outside but Plunkett beckoned me back, forcing me to stand there while he called them incompetent and threatened to sack them. They replied defensively, but I knew from their tone how my presence unnerved them, making them feel awkward and exposed. When they were gone he looked down at the papers on his desk until after a few moments it was I who spoke.
‘Did you want something Mr Plunkett?’
‘Oh yes, Francis. Or Francy is it they call you?’
The Journey Home Page 16
