Katie had stopped at a crossroads ahead of him where road signs pointed in three directions. It was difficult to decipher the lettering and it took him a moment before, with a thrill of recognition, he made out the name of a village near the old woman’s. It was five miles there and then possibly another seven to her village. He knew if they had descended the mountain properly they would have been nearer but, despite this, felt a sense of pride at getting so close, and, suddenly, of fear at knowing their journey would have to end.
The new road was larger than the one they had left, with what little traffic there was heading in towards the village. When they saw headlights they pressed themselves clumsily into the ditch, knowing they could become no wetter. His clothes stuck to him, caked in mud; his feet were raw, frozen inside waterlogged shoes. They had walked for an hour when they heard music blaring across the fields. It grew louder and less muffled but still they couldn’t place the tune which sounded eerie in the darkness. Then he heard the familiar words.
We are the soldiers, we are the party
We’ll march together on the long road.
We are one nation, we are one people
With one strong leader to bear our load.
Before they realized what was happening, the convoy was upon them, a police car with its revolving light flashing against the bushes, and the two speeding coaches of the victory party behind it. One man with his shirt sleeves rolled up glanced out into the rain and, seeing their outlines, clenched his fist. Although they couldn’t hear it, they saw his mouth opening to let out an animal roar. The drivers were beeping their horns to the tune, drenching them with spray as they passed, well over the speed limit, careering from side to side along the road and leaving them in blinding darkness. Hano had forgotten about the election and, looking after the convoy, realized with a shudder that Plunkett’s party had won again. Then he asked himself what difference did it make which of them held power. His generation would still be forming long snakes outside the American and Australian embassies or scraping together the money not for the boat this time but for cheap Apex airline tickets.
‘Don’t worry about hiding tonight,’ Katie said, ‘they’ll all be too pissed to notice.’
They walked on, raindrops striking his skull like Chinese water torture. His shoes squelched as he walked, the water dripping from his chin and nostrils. His stomach was too sick to want food. After midnight they reached the village. The rain had slackened and then temporarily stopped. Both pubs were open, people milling in and out of their doors. Two policemen smoked as they leaned against the bonnet of their squad car. Hano and Katie watched from the shadows as party officials argued and looked up at the sky. Finally one shouted over to a van and a man climbed down with a microphone. He tapped it with his hand to test it and then called for attention, his voice echoing through the main street. The drinkers began to drift from the pubs and cluster around the doors with their glasses still in their hands. A squat man in a pinstripe suit emerged with men clapping his back as he strode towards the microphone.
Katie wanted to push on but Hano stopped her, mesmerized by the scene. The face was familiar from television. He was a TD famous for arriving early at party conferences, and clinging in boredom to the same seat through all the resolutions and debates, so that when the platform filled up for the leader’s speech he would always be positioned two rows up, jutting out like part of the leader’s right shoulder on the television screens. The TD began to roar into the microphone as though speaking in a parish hall without amplification. It muffled his words but Hano could still follow them.
‘You all know why we are here!’ A huge roar went up. ‘Today is a historic day for the party and for this constituency. This evening, on the fifteenth count, we have captured a third – a rightful third—seat in this constituency. And our tally men say it was transfers from this village that swung it in the end.’
The screams were wild, inhuman. One man near the front shouted, ‘That’s enough speeches, Conor. Come back in here and buy another round.’
The politician raised his hand and laughed. ‘There’ll be time enough, don’t worry, and rounds enough! There are no guards here tonight, only Irishmen. There’ll be no licences endorsed this night!’ The two policemen shifted uncomfortably as the crowd laughed. ‘We in the party have always held this village dear. We have always looked after you and you have always looked after us. It is time this village had a new parish hall. It is time this village had a sports complex. Our new TD, our third TD, whose aunt is the postmistress across the road there, is going to say a few words to you now. And by God, let me remind you if this party does not forgive its enemies, it does not forget its friends!’
The main street was a mass of bodies as the new TD, a fresh-faced man in his twenties, was carried shoulder high towards the microphone. Hano turned and caught sight of an evening paper displayed in the window of the closed newsagent. The victory was proclaimed in black headlines and, in a corner underneath, his own picture stared back at him, cut in half below the eyes where the paper had been folded. He knew the picture, taken a few weeks before at his sister’s confirmation when Hano had stood beside his mother in a suit, trying to be like a father. The eyes in the window made his plight real at last, filling him with terror. He grabbed Katie’s hand before she saw them, and began to walk quickly and then run until they reached the edge of the village and were lost again out in the black night, blundering along the road, away from the country they were exiled from.
The next day in work Mary was more tense than I had ever seen her. When Mooney was out on business she vanished into his office and as I passed the door I could hear her arguing on the phone with a woman from Personnel. The girls were friendlier to Jennifer, she was more relaxed, laughing for the first time in the euphoria that swept the room whenever Mooney was absent. At lunch-time I asked Mary if she wanted to go across the road. Butts were piled in the ashtray at her elbow. She sighed and gave a wry smile.
‘I’d love to Hano, you know I would.’ She squeezed my shoulder momentarily and was gone, out among the girls heading for the coffee shop. Mooney only returned for half an hour in the afternoon. At three o’clock he emerged in his hat and coat and left without speaking to anyone. As he. retreated down the stairs I felt a sudden surge of joy. Like a dictator in disgrace, heading for the last helicopter as his regime collapsed, he vanished slowly through the hallway. He had never left that early before. The girls at the middle table began to sing, working their way brokenly through the charts. Every person in the room was smiling except Mary, and, when I looked down after Mooney’s departure, Jennifer. I gazed at Mary, trying to lure her into a game of statues, to coax a joke from her. She kept her head down, eyes trained on the rows of figures. Once I would have put the clock on five minutes but now it seemed like cheating on a friend.
At five o’clock the girls ran down the steps into the freedom of the weekend. I put my coat on and left the room where Mary and Jennifer remained sitting, divided by two long benches. I meant to walk out and leave them, but on the landing I paused and, ashamed, eavesdropped on their conversation.
When she finally spoke I could hardly recognize Mary’s voice. The same Liberties accent was there but the words were delivered in the slower, more precise tones of an older person. Personnel were willing to ignore Jennifer’s remarks this time, but she would have to control her imagination. She was no longer a schoolgirl; this was a job for adults and she would have to decide for herself if she was mature enough to take it. The incident was closed but if word of it got out it would be held against her at the highest level. The voice droned on, growing harsher with each sentence. I came to the door. Mary was still sitting at her desk with her back to the girl. She didn’t see me but Jennifer did. A look of shame and hatred crossed her face as though I had set her up for my own amusement. She grabbed her coat and ran from the room.
Mary still didn’t look up when she heard the footsteps. I crossed over to stand behind her and placed my
hand on her neck. She put her own hand up to rest on mine.
‘I feel like dirt, Hano…feel like dirt.’
I should have felt angry, but I wasn’t even surprised, just disappointed with myself for being so naive.
‘Six months, Hano. They were making him take early retirement anyway. Six months from now there’ll be computers, databanks, the whole works in here. The place will be gutted apart. But for now they don’t want to know, they don’t want any trouble that could complicate their plans. Jesus Hano, did you hear me talking? Good Jesus.’
Her hand gripped mine tightly. Her head was bent down, she may have been crying.
‘There isn’t a girl here he hasn’t touched at some stage. Years ago there was one girl from near his own place in Monaghan he used to follow home. If she looked out her flat window at night she’d see his car parked across the street. I told Carol and when she did nothing I despised her. I never forgave her for it Hano, never mentioned it but never let her forget. Now I just despise myself.’
I waited a moment before taking my hand away. I left her with the dusty light pouring in through the high windows, blinding me when I looked back, so that she seemed no more than a silhouette of some lost person who had always been there and always would be: efficient, servile, discardable.
Heading into town that evening I caught sight of Pascal Plunkett. I was crossing the metal bridge and, looking down the little V of roads that had been amputated like an unapproved border crossing by the carriageway, I saw workmen refitting one of the small row of old shops there. Two men were mounted on ladders erecting a large neon sign with Plunkett Videos in curved red lettering across it. A sign writer was outlining opening times in white paint on the plate-glass front, where posters of muscular soldiers and half-clad victims were being displayed. Pascal stood impassively on the footpath watching the men work. Shoppers who passed greeted him respectfully, proud when he condescended to nod back. I wanted to run but stood watching by the railings of the monument, until after a moment I realized that, although he had never tumrned, he knew I was there. It was the way he deliberately kept himself at full height like a girl sensing she was being watched at a dance.
I felt flushed and guilty as I quickly walked on down the old main street that bore the litany of his name on every second shop front. I thought of the recurring dream I still had of him, where I lay in my old bed while he sat on the chair beside it, father-like, concerned, dressed the way he was when he visited me there, his hurt face wondering why I had abandoned him. In the dream I wanted to order him out and yet his power held me, made me feel ashamed for not trusting him. Then he would lower his face to whisper something, and when I lifted mine to hear, his tongue came out, slipped between my lips and was rooted there. I would feel it, coarse and slippery like an earthworm, making me sick as I found myself too paralysed to shake him off. I’d try to scream, knowing that if I did I’d choke. And then I’d wake and lie in the flat, not sure if I had woken Shay in the next room, and wonder how I could explain it if he came in.
That would be one less worry from now on, I thought, wondering in what country Shay was by then. There was a party for a girl leaving work in town that night. I didn’t want to be alone in the flat, so I went. Mick was there as always, same battered hat, same cheerful indifference to everything, same appetite for drink. We drank at the bar while the chit-chat of work went on around us, girls still filing cards in their minds, lads opening ledgers in thin air. At closing time, when feelers were being put out to procure a flat to party in, we left.
People were leaving a fancy-dress night in a pub off Dame Street. Girls dressed as French maids and tarts, youths in giant nappies clutching bottles of whiskey. A decapitated gorilla, sporting a man’s head, took a slug from a brown bottle and flung it down a cobbled passageway. The city was coming alive. We made our way to the Home of Billiards. Smoke stung our eyes as we climbed the steps. Men clustered around the top table where the sharks played. An ancient black-and-white television blared above the counter, ignored by all. The bottom table was free. We played till two o’clock in the rich, melancholy silence – figures bending over the baize, the quiet click of balls in the chalky light, the intake of breath at the perfect track. I can’t remember who won, it was of no consequence. Afterwards I took a taxi from O’Connell Street to the top of the carriageway and walked up alone to the flat.
The hallway was empty. I was at the top step before I saw the bottle of champagne parked exactly where it had been the night Shay first returned. He was not only marking his home-coming, but serving warning in case I was with a girl. I picked the bottle up, feeling both fear and elation. He was lying on top of his bed, dressed in a business suit, his hair cut and carefully brushed. There was still traces of bruising, but he looked now as if he had received them not in a street fight but a Lansdowne rugby scrum. Without him needing to explain I understood. He flicked a small roll of notes across the room towards me.
‘Back rent,’ he said.
‘We could have managed.’
‘Take it.’
I put it in my jeans pocket and turned to go.
‘Hey, Hano.’ He paused. ‘Pleased to see me?’
‘I don’t know, Shay. I don’t know.’
He thought about it for a moment.
‘There might be a game of ball in the Fifteen Acres tomorrow. We chance it and take a taxi up?’
I didn’t reply. I went to bed and dreamt the dream about Pascal Plunkett again.
Over the next six weeks my brain cried out daily during the hours of work. Some evenings if Shay asked me what had happened that day, I was unable to even recall leaving the building at five o’clock, or couldn’t be certain if an incident had occurred that afternoon or the day before. The work was automatic, numbing in its simplicity. Mary stayed out of my way as much as Mooney. I sat in silence at the small table by the door with Mick. We had exhausted our blue jokes, swapped all our experiences, considered the probable contents of every take-away which had ever made us sick, and were now too apathetic to talk. At morning and afternoon break we both went down a quarter of an hour early to lie on the canteen tables while the kettle boiled. If the afternoon was mild we burnt cardboard boxes. Now we only drank on payday in the Irish Martyrs; without Mary and Shay it seemed pointless.
Once a week Shay would don the same business suit, leave on a Thursday, return late on Friday night. We never mentioned his departure or arrival, they were just the latest forbidden topics. You called to the flat less often Katie, but when you did it was with greater desperation. You’d sit sullenly in the corner, digging yourself deeper in the chair as the night progressed, as though it were a refuge. You’d want dance music always, complain if we put on Tom Waits or Randy Newman, take the record off so violently it scratched, and sulk when we shouted at you. I could see Shay’s irritation but he would never ask you to leave. Before when you’d come the ashtray would be littered with the butt ends of joints, the air heavy with cloying scent. But now Shay never carried and never rolled. I had wondered if you only came for the dope but I was wrong, you still banged on the door, stormed in from the night, only now that we were straight there was even less to say. Or at least Shay and I were straight, often you staggered on the stairs, and from the glazed brightness of your eyes and your edginess I knew you had taken something.
I’d grown used to your presence, Katie. In some ways you belonged to the flat now as much as the laughter of Shay’s girls once had. I no longer bothered trying to understand your relationship, I just left the pair of you alone and went back out into that jaded world of parties and bedsits. Coming home in the early mornings, and again on my way out to work, I’d step over your body curled alone on the floor beneath a ruck of blankets, and remember myself, like a distant creature, a year and a half before, longing only to be allowed to lie down and feel that I had found a home.
Justin Plunkett never came near the flat now. I had no idea where the pick-up was, except that it would be far from him. He would si
t surrounded by alibis, waiting for any danger to pass. I wondered if he knew that the cuts and bruises to Shay’s face had been ordained by his uncle. The bruises had long healed, but it was a different Shay who emerged along with the new skin over the cuts above his eye. A third Shay: not the open figure I first knew nor the indecisive, defeated one who had wandered the city like a ghost after his return, but an empty figure, a man who had stepped out of feeling.
Each Thursday he would dress methodically in the bathroom, comb the hair which was cut that afternoon, don the suit, take the briefcase and with a sort of indifferent nod, as though walking to the shops for cigarettes, step out the door when the taxi appeared beneath the window. Sometimes on the Friday nights I would be asleep when he returned. If I got out of bed I’d find the living-room lit only by the television’s flickering rays and Shay staring intently at the figures in the late movie with the sound turned off. The next day we would talk as normal, but in those moments when I watched him from my doorway I had the impression that he would not hear me if I spoke, that some papier mâché creature had returned in his place and sat waiting for flesh and blood to bring it to life.
When he’d been broke I had carried him and now whenever I went to the bookie I found that Shay had paid the rent in full. If I offered him my share, Shay looked at me with a quiet smile that was a thin-blooded descendant of his old one, waved his hand dismissively and turned his gaze back to the window. I gave the extra money to my mother, guilty that I didn’t call to her more often. She never crossed that metal bridge dividing the village, except to work in Plunkett Undertakers. If she wanted anything in the West she sent one of my brothers. Each Saturday morning I called to leave the small envelope and drink tea while my young sisters circled me like a curio, no longer sure what relation I bore to them. She was disturbed by the way Pascal Plunkett treated her. She had grown used to him over quarter of a century, both as the wife of an employee and later an employee herself, and then as one of the hundreds of desperate women driven to him for loans when no one else wished to know them. Always she had received the same burly contempt, but now he crept around her. If she asked for time off she received it. Even the manager was terrified of her as though a single word of complaint from her mouth would see him back hoovering corpses again. She had always known anonymity, sheltering her like a cloak. Now she stood out and was frightened. I was the only person who could explain it, but I knew she would never ask the questions she wanted to, and that even if I told her everything it would still make no sense to her. I could never bear to stay more than a few minutes there.
The Journey Home Page 27
