The Journey Home

by Dermot Bolger

  No one calls when your feet splash through the puddles of water and oil. So bright outside you blink, the wind against your face. A woman passes with a shopping trolley, her eyes never leaving the concrete. You wonder will they still come, the speckled capsules your friends have outgrown. Feel the old ten-pound notes in your jeans, smelling still of his mattress under which they have lain. Why are his eyes holding you back, feverish and terrified, gazing at your breasts? You had the needle in your hand. Guardian angels have many shapes.

  They cease talking when you rejoin them, already sensing you have ceased to belong. You wander towards the carriageway wall, wait for nothing in the still afternoon. This is where I will find you soon, your eyes a mesh of burst blood vessels, ladened with shrunken resignation.

  I should have known where it was leading. Perhaps I did but kept running away from it. We were climbing slowly from debt. Not too fast, I knew Plunkett would ensure that, but enough to keep hope alive. Every morning at home I woke to the smell of frying, my mother keeping the breakfast hot till I came down, a clean white shirt folded over the chair. I could say nothing as she sang that man’s praises. If I had told her the truth she would have refused to believe.

  But my mornings at home were more infrequent. Often, it was so late when we left Mother Plunkett’s Cabin, and I was so drunk, that having barely managed to steer the car safely to his house, I wound up sleeping on the living-room sofa. Those nocturnal drives seemed unreal when I looked back on them, the BMW shifting from side to side on the road, while behind me Pascal mumbled on about nationalist politics and business scandals, eulogizing the qualities of his mother who died when he was one and mispronouncing the names of classical composers he’d heard on drunken visits to the National Concert Hall with his brother. Sometimes he’d attempt to whistle out of tune highlights of their work, then lose interest.

  ‘Tschaikfuckoffwsky my bollox,’ he’d roar, and break instead into The Kerry Recruit:

  ‘About four years ago I was digging the land,

  With my brogues on my feet and my spade in my hand,

  Says I myself what a pity to see

  Such a fine strapping lad footing turf in Tralee…’

  ‘Sing up there young Francy, ye Kerry Recruit,’ he’d shout, laughing at his own joke. But always at the back of the songs and shouts was the veiled but unmistakable dropping of innuendoes.

  How can I describe how I felt then, or was I so numb as to feel nothing? I have an image of myself as an embryo with unformed eyes driving that figure through the blackness of a womb. I was completely alone, with no one left I could speak to, hurtling deeper and deeper into the darkness that was Plunkett’s world.

  It came at three o’clock one morning. The only drink in his house was whiskey. I cannot taste it since without sensing evil. We were sitting in the kitchen at opposite sides of the table. Plunkett rose unsteadily and approached. He had been droning on about his kindness, how people always took from him but never wanted to give anything back. He swayed in front of me. I felt sick with drink, all evening I had been answering him back, smart-assed. He called me a wee Kerry pup, then put his hand out, saying friends, and held it there until I shook it. Then, so quickly that it took me a moment to realize what was happening, he was kissing me. I remember the sensation of shock and yet the total absence of surprise. More than anything else I felt my own stupidity at not realizing it was going to happen. It seemed to take for ever to pull my head back, stare at his sixty-year-old wrinkled face and, pushing my chair over, run.

  The lights had been extinguished throughout the house. I was so drunk my legs could hardly hold me. I ran from room to room with Plunkett lunging drunkenly behind. I could hear him call.

  ‘Come back, Francy, come back. I can be good to you, I’ll be good. Let’s just talk.’

  There was a short flight of stairs leading into the hallway. I stumbled on them and he almost caught me. I drew my elbow back, felt it smash against his face and ran on. I was almost at the door. I had only to turn the lock and I was gone. And yet even as I reached for the handle I knew instinctively that he had locked the Chubb. I was still twisting it when his hands caught me around the neck and pulled me down in a headlock on to the floor. I lashed out with my feet and he punched me repeatedly in the face until I stopped and lay still. We were both breathing heavily. Neither of us spoke. Blood was trickling from my nose, he ran his finger lightly over the flow, trying to soothe me as he would a frightened calf. I shivered when I felt his touch. Then very slowly he brought his lips down to mine. When they touched I twisted my face around and flailed out desperately with my legs. Again he drove his fist hard against my face until I was able to see nothing from one eye. Above my own screams I could hear his voice, insistent, animal-like, repeating:

  ‘I want! I want! I want!’

  Then we were both silent. He relaxed his grip and I slumped back against the door. My eyes were closed. I heard a rustling before he grabbed my hair with both hands and pulled my face downwards. I was crying. I opened my mouth to scream and felt his prick being shoved deep into my throat. It was stiff and hot with the taste of salt. I gagged. For a moment I thought I would choke. I tried to pull back and he tightened his grip on my hair. I felt strands of it come loose with a tearing pain but still I couldn’t free my head. He was rocking it back and forth. I could feel vomit about to rise and kept thinking I was going to choke, I was going to die. Then he manoeuvred his fingers down to squeeze my nostrils shut and I was forced to open and close my mouth purely to try to breathe.

  Pascal said nothing, even after he had come. He withdrew and I spat out whatever I could. He released my head, leaned forward against me with one hand clumsily draped on my shoulder, and after a time I realized he had lapsed into a deep sleep. I knew I had to get up now, not to search the kitchen for a knife and stab him like I longed to, but just to rise quietly and leave his house. To walk home across the fields, pack whatever few clothes I had and leave this country. But I could not. Even while he slept he exercised that same inexplicable hold on me. I felt guilty, as though I had been an accomplice all along, leading him on deliberately, knowing how it was bound to end. I worried that there was a part of me I had never known which he, with those animal instincts, had seen. I felt dirty. My face was puffed and caked with blood and there was a ringing pain in my head. But all I could think of was that somehow I was at fault. I sat watching dawn flesh out the hallway, my body trembling in shock as I wept, and listened to the loud peaceful breathing of Pascal Plunkett asleep with his head nestling against my shoulder blade.

  I must have finally slept because when I woke I was alone in the hall. It would have been half-seven or eight in the morning. I tried to rise to see if the door behind me had been unlocked and as I did Pascal came down the stairs with a basin of water and towel. He was impeccably dressed in a clean suit, his hair groomed, leather shoes gleaming. I slumped back. He knelt beside me and began to gently sponge my face, repeating you poor boy, you poor boy, as though somebody else had inflicted the damage. I kept waiting for him to try to kiss me but now he was a different person, concerned, courteous, fatherly. He bathed the cut above my eye and placed a plaster over it, then helped me up and made coffee in the kitchen. He set the cup down in front of me.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

  I nodded without looking up. I still hadn’t spoken.

  ‘You’ll have to tell your mother there was a fight in the pub at closing time. Don’t come in for a few days; rest up until you’re feeling better. One of the men will bring your wages round. I’ll drive you home now Francy.’

  ‘I’d sooner walk,’ I said.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  I rose from the table.

  ‘Francy…?’ he said, with a question in his voice.

  ‘I’ve told you before, my name is Francis. Like you say, I’ll rest up now.’

  I found my jacket and left.

  On the following Tuesday evening, when my mother came home from the un
dertaker’s, she very deliberately placed the children’s allowance book on the bedspread beside her when she came up to see me. She wasn’t sure if I had known and I gave no sign that I had. Pascal Plunkett came the next night. I heard the knock and, from the bustle in the hall, knew who it was. He was dressed at his best, and just calling in, he told my mother, on his way to meet his brother at a reception in the Dutch embassy. She stood between us in the box-room for a moment, waiting to be dismissed in her own house. He smiled professionally and waited till her footsteps descended the stairs before turning towards me. The suit and Crombie coat lent him a curious air of dignity. He placed a bottle of cognac on the bedside table. We stared at each other for a time, then he smiled again, a sadder smile, an honest one.

  ‘I’ve one of the mechanics driving me, but it’s not the same, he’s able to drive straight.’ He paused. A lesser man would have looked down but he stared me in the face. ‘Francis I miss you, I want you to come back to work. Not now but when you’re ready.’

  I could see he wanted to sit on the bed but was afraid to. I said nothing and watched him stand awkwardly in the centre of the room.

  ‘I’ll tell you a story,’ he said. ‘It won’t excuse anything but it might explain.’

  He stared at me as if waiting for permission to speak. I looked away from his eyes.

  ‘When I was your age there’s nobody ever gave me nothing but a kick in the arse and a curse and told me to get the hell to England. What was there for me here? What could I be? You feel things as a child…feel different. Nobody ever let me be who I am. How could I…’

  He paused.

  ‘I saw them when I went Francis, those rented rooms in Cricklewood, old men with nothing of their own. That’s what I was fodder for. Oh my grandfather would be proud of me, one of the workers at last, a pick in my hand and a union card in the other. And there’s no one would thank me for climbing out of that pit. But I did, Francis, I worked hours no man would work, sent money home to get that brother of mine the hell out of Kerry and into training college, and saved money when the others were drinking to get myself the fuck out of there.

  ‘Just once I allowed myself to be myself. He was a Galway lad, soft hands covered in blisters from the shovel. Here’s The Vaseline Kid the men on the site jeered every time he passed. He was in tears one lunch-time, I just put my hand on his shoulder. I thought we were alone. I’d three ribs broken; the doctor thought I’d never have the use of the fingers on my right hand again.

  ‘That taught me Francis, taught me gentleness was a luxury for the likes of me. I switched cities, another site, worked my back off, rose to foreman, never let anyone see me weak again. Then I undercut, got contracts myself. Oh, I made the rules now and no one else. What they said I could never have I took by force. The English, thick as shite on a blanket. All straight mind, no curves. You play the thick Irishman and they smile their big empire smiles while you’re running rings round them. Education my arse, any gobshite from the back of the bog would have more cop on than a hundred of them lined up with their degrees flapping out their arseholes. And I’ve got used to getting my own way. And to taking what I couldn’t have by force. It’s always been that way for me and always will.

  ‘Because even now they’d pack me back to the arse of the bog if they could. I’ll see it tonight at this Dutch bash, like a thousand other nights. They’ll tolerate me with their cocktails and speeches because I’m my brother’s brother but I can see it in their eyes. I’m just a savage even though I could buy and sell them all. You know me, Francis, you know how hard it is for me to come here, so don’t make me have to ask for anything. Just come back to work Francis, for a while even. Nothing else, I promise. You owe me that at least.’

  When I still didn’t reply he smiled again and left. I imagined him all evening moving through the pin-stripe suits and clink of glasses, a tribesman from a vanished place, collecting snubs he would never forgive. For the rest of the week I lay in bed or went out only after dark to walk the streets alone. Most nights I’d stand outside the flat, looking up at those dark windows. One morning, before the punters came in, I went to see the bookie. The same female voice on the Extel machine was calling out runners. He was sticking up the cards for the English courses. He hesitated at first when I asked him, studying the bruises still on my face.

  ‘It would be the same rent you know.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to re-let it. I was hoping to move the office back up there whenever I got time. Still I liked yourself and young Seamus.’

  I carried my stuff down in cardboard boxes. My mother watched nervously as I packed the last one. She sent my sisters to play outside.

  ‘You’re different, son, it’s like I don’t know you any more. Yesterday you snapped at the girls when they ran up to you. You were never like that before. And now you’re moving out again.’

  She put her hand on my arm and I flinched involuntarily at her touch. She started back as though I had struck her. I could see she was close to tears.

  ‘I’m just down the road ma,’ I said. ‘You’ll see me most days and I’ll still give you the same money each week. Sure you’ll be better off without me to feed as well.’

  I knew she was aware there was more to it than that. She didn’t believe the story of the fight in the pub. But now I couldn’t bear to be near anybody I had felt close to. I wanted to lose myself, just to be alone. That evening I wandered around the bars in town and met a girl who had worked temporarily like me in the Voters’ Register. We swapped stories about Mooney and I laughed for the first time in weeks. We switched to shorts as closing time came. It was the most natural thing in the world to go with her to the nightclub she suggested, to let the night take its course and wake up once again cramped in a single bed in some Rathmines flat. But when the time came to leave the pub I lost all confidence. I was terrified that when I’d lie naked beside her in the dark it would be Plunkett’s face I’d see, his eyes rendering me impotent and ashamed in her arms. When she was in the Ladies I slipped quietly out and walked home, cursing myself and cursing him.

  The following Monday I returned to work. Plunkett handed me the keys and we drove from site to site. We spoke little.

  I sorted out what papers he needed and handed them to him. I drove him to the pub that evening and joked with the barmen about the last traces of bruising on my face. He had told them I’d been caught by a jealous husband and my prestige behind the bar had suitably increased. He came out from the back room at ten o’clock, told me I could go on if I wished to in the car and he would walk home. I told him I would wait. He was pleased. At half-eleven I drove him back.

  ‘You know you’re welcome to a nightcap,’ he said, outside his door.

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  He got out and walked with surprising dignity up the steps without looking back. For four nights it continued like that. I would leave the car parked in the garage forecourt and walk across the metal bridge to the empty flat. It was late on the Thursday night, when the wind was blowing up with gale force warnings on the car radio, that Shay came home.

  Late that afternoon they saw the helicopter. The noise of propellers alerted them first. They looked uncertainly at each other, trying to reconcile the sound with the wild landscape, then simultaneously began running towards a small outcrop of rock nearby. They squeezed beneath it as best they could, Hano lying on top of her as the machine suddenly scaled the crest of the mountain and moved slowly past them, the whirling shadow of a crucifix transfixed on the gorse and rock as Hano peered out through the crook of his arm. After the noise died away they were still too afraid to move.

  Finally Hano raised his head. Dusk was hours away and the bare mountainside offered no shelter for miles. He was hungry again though his body had passed beyond tiredness into a numb state where it moved automatically. Neither had mentioned their destination, though at some stage of his story about the woman, both had instinctively known. It might be no less futile than
Leitrim but it would serve as a destination to lend some purpose to their journey. Now when he mentioned the woman it was like an unspoken code between them. Hano eased his weight off Katie. They lay face up, soaking in the autumn sunlight, afraid to speak of going there yet, trying to keep that tiny flame of hope alive.

  ‘She had a caravan in a field beyond the village,’ Hano said. ‘My first night there I woke to this faint crying. At first I thought it came from inside the caravan but then I realized it was from underneath. She came out of her room in an old jacket and jeans. “Do you hear it too?” she whispered, and climbed outside. I pulled on a pair of jeans and followed her.’

  Hano closed his eyes as he spoke and saw again the lone white light of the last street lamp at the corner of the road. The only other light had come from the stars. The woman had crouched down, shining a torch between the concrete blocks that held up the caravan. The crying had been replaced by a low whine. And when he bent down he could see it: the cat trying to crawl towards the torch. The woman reached in to cradle it in her arms, carried it inside and laid it on a woollen jumper on the floor. She had never seen the cat before. Its back was broken, as if a car had run over it, and somehow in its pain it had known where to crawl for attention. The woman stroked it, murmuring softly, giving it every piece of love inside her. The cat rested its head on her fingers and looked up pleadingly, silent except for the irregular rasp of its breathing. The woman sighed and fetched a bottle of chloroform and a swab of cotton wool from her room, sat with the cat on her lap on the floor and gradually, still stroking and murmuring to it, put it out of its pain. They had not spoken but Hano had been aware of the extraordinary sensation of peace in the caravan, her own three cats quietly watching in one corner, her dog lying at her feet as she gently rubbed the fur till she looked up, dry eyed, to tell him it was over.