The Journey Home

by Dermot Bolger

  Justin’s BMW was parked in the driveway of Pascal’s house. A new Alsatian on a chain began to bark furiously when I approached and then stopped suddenly to whine from hunger. I pushed the button and heard the tape recording of a bell booming deep within the house. After a few moments Pascal Plunkett opened the door a few inches on the chain. He stared at me before undoing the chain and stepping back.

  ‘My old friend.’ His voice was half a sneer. ‘A social call I hope.’

  I looked around, scared, wondering in what room I would find the man I wanted and not knowing what I would do if I found him.

  ‘Well come on into the library. Never let it be said a Plunkett didn’t show a guest country hospitality.’

  I followed Pascal down the hallway carpeted in red with the family crest embroidered on it and into the library, and stared at the rows of red and black leather-bound books that had been bought by the box and never touched. The door closed and I found myself thrust against it. His hands were at my throat.

  ‘If you’ve come here thinking of blackmail, don’t, little boy. Do you hear me, wee Francy? I’ve been good to you. I’ve let you off the hook. No paper in this country will print a word about a Plunkett and don’t you forget it.’

  Behind his words I could sense fear.

  ‘I’m not,’ I choked. ‘Pascal, let go of me. Do you want somebody to come in?’

  ‘Somebody?’ he said, slackening his grip. ‘There’s nobody here except you and me.’

  ‘Justin?’

  ‘Oh the car? He’s gone abroad. The party thought it better. Let any publicity die down. It was a genuine accident, Francy. You know that, don’t you?’

  I said nothing, but for the first time since leaving the police station I began to cry, leaning against the doorway with my head down. As I did Pascal changed. His arms came up again but not in anger this time. I was too weak to prevent him embracing me.

  ‘I lost a friend too once,’ he said. ‘A very special one. Your age he was and your colour hair. He was all I lived for when I had nothing, down in Kerry with that old bastard of a grandfather collecting rates. My friend went to England for work. I was to follow him. He fell four storeys—a loose scaffold. Francy, the heart recovers. You have me again now and I have you. I’ll look after you, Francy—properly this time. No more flats and poverty. Like a son Francy. I always said you would come back.’

  He tried to kiss me but I moved my face away. I could feel his breath against my cheek, feel his trembling excitement as he half-shoved me towards the stairs and up back into his nightmare world. And I just clung to him now, unwilling or unable to resist. He undressed me in the bedroom with the light out. I lay on the cool sheet and just wanted to feel nothing, to be anywhere or nowhere, to be dead like Shay, away from all this. And in that room, that bed, I was as dead as I could ever be while breath still came from my body.

  When I raised my hand I could feel the sweat of Pascal Plunkett’s back. It seemed to break profusely through the man’s skin like clammy discoloured blood from a thousand invisible wounds. Although the room was dark as a coffin, I seemed to see the grotesque whiteness of his blubbery flesh. It did not feel human or warm in the dark; it was some monstrous thing consuming me, drawing off my youth, my life force, some spider living off my blood.

  And I kept seeing Shay where he was lying in the church, the skin as white and surely no colder than this icy touch, his arms folded and that old bewildered smile facing the nailed-down board. That dark church, where both of us had made our communions and confirmations, to which my father – who had lain in that same alcove – had once carried me three days after my birth in a frozen February to be baptized. How long was it since Shay had been there? And now they possessed him again. Tomorrow morning the two long aisles, still segregated when we had first knelt as children, would be half-filled with neighbours and friends, talking of him already as a distant, legendary figure. Shay with the wounds from the Bath Wars, a general leading his army of short-trousered soldiers with stones and clipped hair; Shay the scholar off to secondary school; Shay the rebel expelled; Shay the wild boy; Shay the lover; Shay the European emigrant.

  Pascal grunted as he ran his tongue and teeth down my chest, a hog wallowing at home in mud. ‘I knew you’d come back, I knew,’ he mumbled. ‘I’m your man, I’m the man for you.’

  Shay, I whispered in my mind, remember the bottle of whiskey we finished in the basement in Rathmines. The time there were no glasses at the party. One slug of neat whiskey followed by a slug of mixer. So outrageously drunk as we fell home, phoning Patrick Plunkett at four in the morning and asking him to raise a Dail question about why our stuffed hamsters wouldn’t breed. Falling about outside the phone box as the voice cursed us down the receiver. That night we got talking of death for some reason, staggering down Rathmines Road, past the kebab shops and the beggars. ‘Anything but a coffin,’ you said. ‘Fuck me into the Tolka in a plastic bag, but don’t put me into a hole in the ground.’ I promised if you died first to scatter your ashes over the North Road some night. You know, that last rise before the countryside where the trucks come swooping in.

  I lay in Pascal’s bed and spoke to Shay in my mind, apologizing over and over. Tomorrow they’ll take you Shay in the polished box that broke your parents’ savings and wheel you on a trolley to the hearse. I won’t be there Shay when the clay falls like a thousand blows on your skull. I don’t know where I’ll be, but I’ll not be there. Oh Jesus, Shay, what could I have done? It was me who called you to the window. I saw it all Shay and could do nothing. I need to know Shay: do you forgive me? Do you forgive?

  Plunkett shifted his body down lower, fingering my penis that was limp and tiny. ‘What’s wrong with you, Francy?’ he said. ‘I’m giving you a good time, boy. Respond. Respond.’

  I was crying. Shay, I thought, I’m crying for you and I’m crying for me, back in this trap, looking for something I lost, needing to go back before I can move on. Once it had been so good, Shay, before we touched this family, and every time we’ve touched them since we’ve fallen more and more away.

  The feel of Plunkett was like the feel of death. He was kneeling above me in the bed, trying to puzzle out my face in the darkness. He was out of his depth, no longer in control of the situation. He looked pathetic. I knew he longed to explode in anger and yet he was afraid. He had lost me once, he would wait till I was back in his web before making demands.

  ‘What do you want, Francy? I’ll do it for you. Just tell me. I’ve been taking care of you, son. Have you spoken to your mother? I’ve let her off those loans. The pair of us, we’ll make a great fist of it together. Are you thinking of your friend still? Tragic, tragic. But it brought us back together again. Lie back, Francy. I’ll make it good for you this time, I will.’

  He ran his fingers up to the wetness of my face and I flinched when I felt his touch. He moved his face closer towards mine. It felt like suffocation, but at least it felt. I was moving from the numb shock I had been in. I had to do something, I still didn’t know what, but if his lips touched mine I knew I was lost. My strength and courage were draining fast. Oh, Shay, Shay, I prayed, what the fuck do I do?

  Then the door burst open like a sword of light exploding. Both of us blinked and turned our heads away from its brilliance before peering back again at the form revealed in the doorway. I think we both thought that you were the ghost of Shay; certainly at that moment, Katie, you did not look like a human thing. And then your hand reached up for the light switch to let reality in. Plunkett moved like an animal. He had left the bed and was running towards you while the pair of us were still staring across the room at each other. You had a knife clenched in your right hand, the blade so large against your tiny wrist that it looked comical.

  ‘Where’s Justin? I want that bastard!’ was all you had time to scream before Pascal’s first blow sent the knife flying one way and you the other. He bent to pick up the knife, and as he did you climbed on his shoulders, scratching at his face with
your nails. He spun round in circles, one hand defending his face, and the other gripping your hair, trying to dislodge you from his back.

  ‘Don’t just lie there!’ he screamed. ‘The knife, get the knife, boy. Come on, move boy, move!’

  I had pulled the blanket up over my naked shoulders and was hunched in the bed crying. I hardly heard his words. You were screaming as he tore at your hair and banged you against the wall, and then he roared and sank to his knees as your fingers penetrated deep into both his eyes. I could see blood running out through his fingers as he fell and you jumped from his back to go for the knife. I got there a second before you and sent you crashing back against the wall with my elbow. As I clenched my fingers round the knife, you lay panting, looking from me to the door and back to Plunkett. He had risen to his feet again. The blood was smeared down his hands on to his chest and the ugly bag of a stomach. He put one hand out groping for me.

  ‘Hold her, Francy. Hold her!’

  I lifted my left hand to link with his outstretched fingers. I could see him try to smile through the blood. For the first time in his life he needed somebody. He moved closer and closer towards me, walking towards the blade. I don’t believe I would have had the courage to have used it otherwise. He stopped when he felt the tip against his breast.

  ‘Francy?’ There was a note of alarm in his voice and the jerk he made as he moved back released a fury within me. All three of us were screaming but it didn’t sound like my own voice I was hearing as I stabbed and stabbed. He fell to his knees clutching me with both arms, and kept repeating my name in a choked voice between screams as I moved the knife in and out. I have no idea how long I kept stabbing away. Long after he was dead, I think. Eventually my hand went slack by my side and when I stepped back his body keeled over at my feet. I was covered in his blood, as was the wall behind him. But I felt nothing, there was nothing left I could feel. I turned, having forgotten you were there, and maybe even who you were, and began to walk naked towards the bed.

  How can I describe that look in your eyes when I finally looked down? There was silence, and when you spoke it was in an almost dream-like voice, as though part of you was pleading with me.

  ‘Am I next? Are you going to kill me next?’

  If I had moved with the knife towards you would you have welcomed me? Did Shay mean that much to you as well, that there was nothing left after his death? I felt a stutter return from childhood and had to force the words out.

  ‘Get out! Leave me alone. Go!’

  Did you want to leave and found your legs too weak to move; or had the world ceased to exist for you too outside that blood-splattered room? I became aware of my nakedness and reached for a sheet to cover myself. Plunkett’s blood seeped through it as soon as it touched my skin. I shouted at you to go again but you were no longer looking at me. Your eyes were mesmerized by the corpse on the floor, the red eye sockets staring back at you.

  ‘What did it feel like, Hano?’ you said in that dream-like voice. ‘What did it feel like to kill?’

  During the struggle the mirrored doors of his wardrobe had slid open. A row of suits hung inside like echoes of him, reminding me, bringing back the shame of it. Everything in his house made me feel unclean except the blood that was caking into my flesh. I started pulling out the suits and the neatly folded shirts and jumpers. I was filled with a fury as I ripped them, as though his possessions were mocking me. The more of them I destroyed the wilder I became. The sheet had become a hindrance and I lost it as I ran from room to room, searching for traces of Patrick and of Justin. I wanted them both, wanted to kill every one of them, to destroy that family who corrupted everything they touched. When I overturned the bed in the spare bedroom a stack of bondage magazines fell out. Justin’s leather jacket hung from the back of the door. There was a cigar butt in an ashtray on the beside table and a box of matches had dropped on to the floor beside it. I lit one, watched it catch in the tangle of bedclothes and begin to lick the mattress above it. I had forgotten about you until you were suddenly beside me with a wet towel and my clothes in your arms.

  ‘Put these on, Hano,’ you said. ‘You have to get out of here before somebody comes.’

  ‘Leave me alone,’ I screamed. ‘Did you not hear? Get out or I’ll cut you fucking open. Do you hear me?’

  The room was starting to blaze, thick suffocating smoke filling my nostrils. You looked at the knife but this time differently. You raised your hand slowly to take it from me.

  ‘What good will it do you to die here, Hano? Put these clothes on, we’re leaving now.’

  The heat was becoming unbearable. I lowered my head.

  ‘Just go on, Katie. Are you blind or what? What do you want with me after what you’ve seen?’

  ‘I don’t give a fuck what you are or what he’s tried to make you. We’re just getting out of here.’

  You took my hand and began to lead me down the staircase. I was bewildered and ashamed and crying again by the time we reached the bottom. I sat on the step while you dressed me like a child, coaxing me to lift this arm or leg, wiping the blood from my face and hands, cajoling me until we were out in the night air and crossing the manicured lawn where the alsatian was straining on his chain, barking in terror at the fire. At the far end of the lane we saw the rolling white and blue light of a police car. It was that flashing light which brought me back to my senses. I knelt quickly to tie my shoes and, grabbing your hand again, began to race for the cover of the hedgerow, to plunge into that blackness overcome with a new strength and a savage joy like a convict breaking free. We plunged onwards through the briars and hedges while the sirens of the police, and then the fire trucks, filled the countryside around us and when we hit the tarmacadam we ran joyously onwards, breast to breast without speaking, no longer having to think, just careering outwards into the darkness till the lights of the first car sent us cascading down into the sanctuary of the ditch.

  I built a small fire from the dry timbers on the floor. You used a broken rafter to clear a space for us. Two birds outside gave their final cries and settled down to sleep. We had a sleeping bag and a single blanket. I hung the torch from an old nail near the ceiling. It cast a dim are of light downwards and left the rest of the cellar in shadow. Why I asked I don’t know; maybe it was just to finish something in my own head.

  ‘Would you sooner be here with Shay?’

  You looked up at me as you unpacked the food.

  ‘I preferred Shay as Shay. I prefer you as you.’

  We ate in silence and then undressed. I removed your blouse, you unzipped my jeans. I took each nipple under my tongue. To taste them was a shock of freshness. Your head was thrown back. I licked the expanse of your neck. You lay on the blanket and I fumbled in my jacket for the condom. Your hand reached out to halt mine.

  ‘It’s too late, Francis, for being safe now. It’s time to take chances. Let’s see what comes of it.’

  I entered you. The feel for the first time of flesh upon flesh, the incredible tightness, the almost painful sensation of my foreskin stretching back. When I came you pressed your hands tightly against my buttocks. I lay inside you drifting towards sleep. How long has passed since I woke? I do not want to sleep. Each moment is so important now when it could be our last.

  I hear the pad of animal paws outside, twigs snapping, dry leaves crinkling underfoot. Fox or badger, it means us no harm. Tonight at least you can sleep and I can watch and listen.

  I think I’m understanding, Cait, why this place remained so important for me, why I kept it secretly in my head all these years when I was in exile from myself. I used to think of here as the past, a fossilized rural world I had to fight to be rid of. I got the conflict wrong of course, though she had always understood it. When we walked this evening along the avenue of old trees up to here, she was not leading us back into the past, she was bringing us onwards into the future.

  Those rows of new bungalows clinging in deference to the main road, how brightly painted they looked,
like a bulwark against what will come. How solid they seemed, like the terraces of houses where I was born. But this crumbling house in the woods is the future, is our destination, is nowhere. I never understood it until now; soon it will be all that’s left for the likes of you and I to belong to. City or country, it will make little difference, ruins, empty lots, wherever they cannot move us from.

  For a while longer the lorries will keep coming, widening the roadways with their tyres, dumping the plastic sacks into the quarry until the holiday homes grow so close that the continentals will object. Our role is to offer tranquillity, not rivers awash with the eyes of dead fish. Some day soon a law in Brussels will silence the convoy, will close down the factory. Like the women I saw outside the flour mill in Dublin the workers will camp in for a while, jostling against the lorries as the machines are shipped out to the Third World.

  I wonder, will Patrick Plunkett have made it by then: Euro MP, commissioner? I can hear his speech now to the half-empty chamber – the French, the Germans outside waiting for the important business. The few Irish rooted to their seats like puppets, joining in the voting as if they somehow counted.

  In time, some workers will die from contamination, the rest subsist on the dole or merge into the exodus, stand in the foreign production lines where Shay once stood. The paint will peel on the bungalows, the multinationals will buy out the building societies and foreclose. The hire-purchase cars withdrawn, like toys from children at bedtime. All that once seemed permanent, what people had imagined they possessed. A foreign accent will supervise the bulldozers burying the last of the waste; an Italian expert shaking his head before the television cameras. No more fires will begin accidentally here, no more trees in the wind path will wither up. The last corner of Europe, the green jewel free from the paths of acid rain. A land preserved intact for the community. German tongues clicking in amusement at how it was run in those last years.