Edna O'Brien

by In the Forest (epub)

  Suddenly the visitor is hitting the table, pounding with his fists, no time for coffee, no time for a leak, time to go.

  ‘We’re ready we’re ready,’ she says as she grabs her shoulder bag and their coats.

  ‘He’s a robber he’s a robber,’ Maddie whispers and she pinches him to be quiet.

  Crossing the field O’Kane talked back to the birds, shouted at them to belt up. As they arrive at the grassy fork where her car is parked he runs to where he has stashed it and she sees the brown gauntleted handle of dark wood and the barrel covered in different coloured plastic paper.

  ‘I never let my child near guns,’ she says.

  ‘Uncle Rodney . . . the boys in the north, the balaclava crowd want to recruit me . . . I’m a crack shot but I’m no one’s poodle ... a loner ... a lone cowboy, that’s me.’

  ‘If that thing is loaded, I’d like you to unload it.’ 117

  ‘Drama queen are you . . . get in the fucking car . . . we have business, missus.’

  Maddie begins to shout and kick, refusing to let the robber into the back seat.

  ‘That’s my seat . . . that’s my seat . . . it’s not his seat.’ ‘Now now, darling . . . it’s only a short journey.’ ‘Darling,’ the stranger says, then grabs the long plait of her hair, runs it over his mouth and nibbles it.

  The car starts, stalls, backfires as with loud swift bangs they are off.

  ‘You’ve got a small gun yourself in your exhaust,’ he says jokingly.

  His arm is across the back of her seat and he tweaks her hair from time to time.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that,’ she says.

  ‘Angry are you . . . you should take a course in anger management . . . noisy car you’ve got.’

  ‘Yes ... they’ll hear us coming.’

  ‘But they won’t hear us going baby. Baby. Into the sunset . . . had breakfast had you?’

  As they approach the town he huddles down in the back seat and pulls his jacket over his head and Maddie is howling, trying to undo the straps of his carry cot, yelling to get out because the robber has turned into a monster. She slows down outside the pub only to find it closed, the green blind drawn, nobody about except a woman in the distance, going down the hill walking her dog. Outside the post office, Birdie’s van is parked under the palm trees and Birdie is in the passenger seat sorting a bundle of mail. With her whole being she wills the woman to look in her direction. Birdie does look and merely shakes her head to indicate that there are no letters for her.

  ‘This is where we part company,’ she says, turning to him.

  ‘Put your foot down . . . put your dainty foot down,’ he shouts from the shelter of his jacket and she feels the cold graze of the gun slide down the side of her neck.

  Once out of the village he begins to laugh, loud, gutsy peals of laughter, the laughter of somebody locked inside a barrel and frantic to be let out. They pass the town hall, the hurling field, the funeral parlour with a lit cross, ponies in a field, and clumps of yellow gorse just coming into bloom. A man at a gateway looks in her direction, then looks away as if he has not wanted to see her.

  At the crossroads she swerves onto the tarred road toward the next big town, believing that their ordeal will end there. He is shouting at her to reverse, reverse, fucking bitch, fucking cunt. She reverses back to where there are two signs bearing the name of the wood -Cloosh Wood. One is high up and written in black on a white signpost and the other a fish shaped oblong of oak with fancy lettering. At the first entrance to a dirt road there is a red and white barrier and he shouts at her to go on, go the fuck on. At the third entrance there is no barrier and he leans forward and grasps the wheel, steering them towards a dirt road and a grid over which a carpet of young green branches have been laid.

  ‘Where are we?’ she asks.

  ‘God’s country,’ he says boastfully.

  To one side is woodland, a sombre-green gloom stretching as far as the eye can see, the village, the showery apple orchards of home far behind them, an emptiness that is ghastly. She listens in vain for the thud of a hammer or the revving of a chainsaw, but there is none, only him starting up a yodel as he runs around coiling and uncoiling an imaginary lasso rope.

  ‘Wayyupwayyupwayyupwayyupwayyupwayyup,’ he keeps saying and it takes her seconds to interpret it as ‘Way Up’.

  ‘That’s how gamesmen lift the birds,’ he tells her, except that there are no birds, no birdsong, no evidence of life except a tub shaped black barrel with Poison scrawled on its surface and a wooden tool-shed, the very new wood syrup coloured in the sunlight. Perhaps it meant that workmen came and went and presently she expects to see a forester materialise out of that wilderness of green. On a nearby tree at the entrance to a shaded path is a round mirror with a rubber rim, his spy glass and that along with the strewn branches over the grid tells her that he has planned this escapade. She jumps as a forked twig drops onto her jacket and he flicks it off.

  ‘Is that Kelly green?’ he asks fingering the collar.

  ‘It’s royal blue actually,’ she says tersely.

  ‘OK OK . . . wrong script . . . erase . . . erase . . . wipeout.’

  ‘People saw us you know,’ she says, the calm of her voice in contrast with the pelting of her heart.

  ‘There’s no one out there for you ... or me sunshine,’ he says.

  ‘I have friends ... I do community work. I teach . . . they’ll be on our trail,’ she says.

  ‘Lonesome trail,’ he says. He is staring at her, his eyes both penetrating and dead looking like worn leather.

  ‘Why don’t we have a smoke,’ she says.

  ‘Your shout,’ he says and they sit on a log, their backs to the wood facing a wasteland of tree stumps and ash heaped earth. He watches her take the brown cigarette paper from its folder, make a trough, then flake some tobacco into it and roll it.

  ‘Lick it ... lick it,’ he says and watches her moisten it, then tells her to light up.

  ‘Top o’ the world rna,’ he says grinning then throwing off his jacket and he leans back along a log, smoke wreathing across his young face and his mad chuckling eyes. He is not yet twenty she reckons, his Adam’s apple supple, like a yo-yo, his arm muscles thick and corded. The short hairs of his moustache reddish brown in that light, have the bristle of a cornered hedgehog. Maddie has not said a word, his face buried in her lap, peering out at moments through the lattice of his outspread fingers.

  ‘Ever see White Heat?’ O’Kane asks.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Top film . . . Cody’s mother thought he was the little lamb of God.’

  ‘Every mother thinks that.’

  ‘Bollocks. Town bicycle every mother.’

  ‘You’d want to watch your language,’ she says and as she gets up and crosses to the car he grabs hold of her ankle and squeezes it.

  ‘Yonder,’ he says pointing to the wood.

  ‘I don’t want to go in there . . . it’s dark . . . it’s dismal,’ she says, in a voice a little quiet, a little placatory.

  ‘That’s where you’re going Goatgirl . . . that’s the deal.’

  He waits until they have crossed to the narrow entrance between a line of trees and then he follows, calling ‘So long’ to the ash heaped wasteland behind them.

  How engulfing the darkness, how useless their tracks in the rust brown carnage of old dead leaves. Pines and spruces close together, their tall solid trunks like an army going on and on, in unending sequence, furrows of muddy brown water and no birds and no sound other than that of a wind, unceasing, like the sound of a distant sea. But it is not sea, it is Cloosh Wood and they are being marched through it. The ground is soggy under foot, with here and there shelving rock sheathed in slippery moss. Not even an empty cigarette carton or a trodden plastic bottle, nothing: emptiness, him, them, insects like motes of dust suspended in the air, yet crawling onto her and onto Maddie, who is scratching and whimpering to go home. She is carrying him and hums to simulate some normali
ty. She thinks before she turns then asks, ‘What is this for?’

  ‘They’re after me.’

  ‘Who’s after you?’

  ‘Dublin gang . . . knackers.’

  ‘They’ll find you here anyhow.’

  ‘No way . . . they’re afraid of the banshees.’

  ‘Look, I’ll drive you wherever you want . . . I’ll drive you to the boat . . . I’ll give you money.’

  ‘You’ve no money.’

  ‘I’m getting a loan from the bank on my house . . . we can go there and draw some.’

  ‘To the branch?’ he says puzzled, then a flying smile. ‘To the branch,’ she says matter of factly.

  ‘By the way, that’s my house you’re in ... I dossed there ... I left that bracelet in the coal bucket.’

  ‘You can have it back . . . you can have it all back . . . the house, the bracelet, the land, the lot.’

  ‘Trying to bamboozle me?’

  ‘I’m not bamboozling you . . . this child is delicate . . .

  he has to have medicines every four hours ... he suffers with palpitations ... we were to drop you in the village, that was the deal. Now we come to this . . . forest.’ ‘Your man stayed all night . . . under the sheets . . . did you walk up his leg or down his leg ... make any babies?’

  ‘He was a friend ... a platonic friend . . . he’s helping me to sort the house out.’

  ‘Fucking prostitute.’

  Mick Rafferty is on the phone to his wife, in the shop where she does part-time work. He talks in a hushed urgent voice and she talks back in the same way, not wanting to be heard.

  ‘I think I saw the Kinderschreck.’

  ‘Oh Jesus, was he in our barn again?’

  ‘No ... in the back of a car . . . with the newcomer, the redhead . . . laughing like mad.’

  ‘Michael are you sure.’

  ‘I’m sixty per cent sure.’

  ‘Oh God protect us.’

  ‘You’re going to your mother’s tonight . . . you and the children . . . you’re to come now and pack the bags.’ ‘And what about you?’

  ‘I can tackle him ... I have a gun . . . but if everyone is here yelling I’m powerless.’

  ‘Why would he be laughing Michael?’

  ‘I don’t know . . . maybe he was telling her a horror story.’

  ‘Maybe he was . . . maybe she’ll fall for him . . . maybe she’ll take him off our hands.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ he says and slowly puts down the phone. He recalls the desperate look on the woman’s face and the Kinderschreck laughing so bad that his back teeth were showing. He knows that laugh. He and his wife and children have heard it and trembled to it in the nights that the Kinderschreck had slept in their hay shed and he had been too afraid to go out and order him off. The only traces of him in the morning being lavatory paper and empty biscuit packets.

  They are standing arguing. O’Kane takes a round tin box from his pocket, a box that held floor polish once and he rattles it jubilantly. Maddie listens with his eyes, with his ears, with all of him as the lid is slowly turned. She jumps several paces back, staggers and gasps at the sight of the cluster of bullets, brass coated, their snouts close together. He picks up the rifle, takes out the magazine, puts the bullet in, closes it, then pushes the catch forward and holds it with his index finger, studying them.

  ‘Please . . . please don’t fire that gun . . . talk to me.’

  ‘Boom boom boom,’ he says and as he pulls the trigger, a sharp brittle clatter breaks the immense silence, the lead slug cutting through the tree tops, the leaves swirling in its aftermath and a burning smell.

  ‘Imagine if you were a child hearing that,’ she says.

  ‘Don’t touch them . . . don’t touch one of them, they’re mine,’ he is yelling, bent over Maddie who has crouched by the tray of bullets, studying them.

  ‘Leave him alone ... he doesn’t know what they are . . . he’s never seen one . . . he’s a child,’ she shouts.

  ‘You will behave yourself whilst here,’ he says and lifts Maddie by the collar of his jacket and she stands between them, daring him to strike her, brave cowboy that he is.

  He seems amused by her flaring up - ‘Relax . .. Goatgirl.’

  ‘Look . . . listen . . . put yourself in our shoes . . . our . . . predicament.’

  ‘You know what your problem is?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your problem is you don’t trust.’

  ‘And what’s your problem?’

  ‘My fucking head isn’t right . . . my heart is right but they fucked my head up.’

  ‘All right then . . . let’s talk to your heart.’

  ‘Give us a snog.’

  ‘Don’t be cheeky.’

  ‘We’re not talking heart to heart are we . . . we’re talking shit . . . are you wired?’

  ‘Where are your family?’

  ‘Family . . . that’s funny. They killed my rna . . . the way they killed Cody’s rna.’

  ‘There must be somebody.’

  ‘Only my granny . . . and my sister.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Loughrea.’

  ‘I know Loughrea. I have friends there . . . why don’t we go and we can call on your granny?’

  ‘Too risky.’

  ‘What are you wanted for?’

  ‘Larceny, robbery, possession of firearms . . . devil’s work . . . bastards want to put lead in me.’

  ‘But it’s not fair to punish us . . . we’re not your enemy . . . we don’t want to put lead into you.’ ‘You’re the one,’ he says and takes a folded brown envelope from his pocket and hands it to her. Her name is scrawled in pencil inside a crude drawing of a pumpkin. ‘Read it.’ She looks down at the daubed ruled page, the laboured childish handwriting and recognises it from the note that was left on her car seat outside the caravan site. She reads rapidly:

  I am asking you to go with me I know you might not understand what it means but I would like if you say yes please say yes do not show this letter to anybody or tell anybody because they would tease us don’t tell anyone please understand if your answer is yes we will start now please say yes don’t be embarrassed signed Michen.

  ‘It’s for you,’ he says as she hands it back.

  ‘It’s an old letter and it says Veronica, Dear Veronica.’

  ‘She fucking pulled back . . . she’s for it ... should’ve given her lead.’

  ‘I’m not Veronica . . . you know that.’

  Furious now he snatches the letter back and shouts, ‘Giveusthephone giveusthephone giveusthephone.’ He bellows his orders into it - ‘Reported on sick parade . . . metal in Vomitus. Released from medical centre. Reunited with family at front gates. Energy level terrific. Chlorophyll feed. C and D not necessary. Proceeding north west as per coda. Over. Over.’ He is looking at them but not seeing them, arguing furiously with a host of voices, his answers clotted, indeterminate.

  Mick Rafferty is bundling his wife and children into the car. Aoife, the youngest, is crying because the boogie man that slept in their hay shed is back. His father says that he is not in their hay shed now and never will be.

  ‘Are you sure it was the Kinderschreck,’ his wife Tilly asks.

  ‘I’m seventy per cent sure.’ ‘You were only sixty per cent sure an hour ago.’ ‘I’m sure for definite.’

  ‘Maybe you should go to the guards.’

  ‘If I go to the guards it’ll only bring him back on us . . . the guards are as afraid of him as you or me.’ ‘You said he was laughing.’

  ‘The girl wasn’t laughing. She looked scared . . . dead scared.’

  ‘Oh God grant someone will tie him up soon.’

  They are walking again, Eily’s face caked with mud and scratched because twice she has tripped and fallen. At moments her eyes seem to go blurry. Endless line of trees, tree trunks, thin branches jutting out like spikes. Maddie keeps slipping down onto her hip and gently she hauls him back, trying to fold him in sleep, because asleep he i
s not crying, not fretting, he is dreaming, dreaming of home maybe, of Elmer and his blackthorn stick for thwacking the cows. At moments the needles and branches appear to her to have gone inside her mind and inside her mouth. Tiny insects crawl in the corners of her eyes and nest under her clothes. The air is stifling. ‘Hold on ... hold on tight,’ she whispers to Maddie each time he begins to slip. At moments she is weirdly calm, telling herself there is a particular place, a point they have to reach, for some bizarre reason, which will be the turning point and they will be going back home. She even asks herself why it had to be, why her, some lesson to be learnt, some truth, some indelible truth. Other moments she begins to hallucinate, sees the apple blossom blowing through their garden, sees Declan and Cassandra and Sven, all waving to her, holding up a burned kettle. She remembers the harried drive along the road, the gorse coming into bloom, the postmistress in her van, the tall man at the gate ignoring her. As for the time she has no idea. This is all time and no time. Her twenty odd years condensed into this lunatic present. So it is the next step and the next and the next half step and Maddie beginning to pee and taking him behind a tree, the steam, warm and sweet smelling, his face stark white but his cheeks red as tomatoes.

  ‘Mama.’ He has not called her by that name since he was tiny and it has come back to him in this extremity.

  ‘I’m here . . . I’m here,’ she says, smoothing his sweating hair.

  ‘Will Cass and Sven and Declan and everybody come?’

  ‘Yes they will.’

  ‘And tie the robber up.’

  ‘They will,’ she says holding him tight, tighter, willing him back into her, into safety. He looks so little, so helpless with his dungarees down around his ankles, both knowing and not knowing what is going on.

  ‘Up up up,’ she says hoisting him over her shoulder. She thinks that if they can come through the darkness and out into a clearing that the worst will have transpired. Not yet thinking the unthinkable. She stops all of a sudden, falters, then her legs buckle, refusing to carry her any further. Sunk to the ground and looking up at O’Kane, she pleads with him - ‘You wouldn’t put your granny or your sister through this.’