by John Brady
She thought of the times they did it in the kitchen. Dimly reflected in the glass of the cooker, she witnessed his lust and shock and helplessness. She had known then that she had won something. Dare you. Do it, so, she remembered murmuring to him, turning back to look out the window again. She had seen enough. She heard his breath and believed he was a little frightened as he tugged at his trousers and stumbled into her, panting with those tiny, squeaky sounds, rough. When he asked her, she had told him she wanted it this way.
“I can’t wait,” he wheezed. “You’re a savage, so you are.”
I am that, she thought. He opened his eyes and they wandered around her skin, hardly ever looking into her eyes. He had grabbed her at the door and pulled their clothes off. All fingers and shoving, he had pinned her against the wall with his hips. Probing, shoving, his fingers. All he thought of was between her legs. He had pulled her hair there but she didn’t want to cry out. His nails were dirty.
“You like it,” he said. “You just don’t like to admit it.”
She squeezed him and he shivered. Her best friend had shocked her when they were twelve: you can lead any man by his… After he had stripped her, he had made her stand in the doorway so he could look at her. Posing the way she had seen in his magazines.
“I saw him take a naggin of whiskey from the cabinet and put it in his pocket,” she whispered. “He’s in love with the drink as well as the guns.”
His frown lasted for several seconds: he hadn’t understood.
“He’ll screw up on you, you know. It’s just a matter of time.”
Her thumb sought out the opening again and she pressed down lightly as it pulsed, as if it was a button. Then his face clouded. He spoke in a careful, surprised monotone.
“You fucking bitch. Don’t start up on that now.”
She held his stare until his face slid into rapture as she bit gently on the tip. He suddenly grabbed her head and pushed her down with both hands. She had guessed he would. He lifted and pushed into her. She felt his tics, the itch in her throat. He’d never understand, she knew. He fell under her and the mattress bobbed with their bodies’ weight. She looked up at his face. He was staring at the ceiling, his tongue slowly rubbing along his lower lip. His cheeks were flushed. Later, she knew, he’d tell her to do something and she would do it. It could be the mirror, or the plastic thing, or something really stupid when she couldn’t help but laugh out loud. He didn’t like that, even when she had told him that it felt stupid.
“Did you like that?” Now his voice was soft.
“Yes,” she lied.
He closed his eyes again. Maybe later he’d tell her to go outside in the dark and take her. In the stable, probably. She still had the bruise on her hip. That didn’t matter either, she knew.
“By the way,” Minogue yawned. “Thanks.”
Kathleen looked back at her husband. They had gone out to walk the fields before tea-time. Minogue looked around at the grass and the thinning hedges. The air already had the metallic, lilac hue of evening.
“For what, exactly?”
“For helping to set me up with Crossan.”
“I did no such thing.”
“In cahoots with Maura, that’s clear enough.”
Kathleen Minogue pursed her lips as the words of a retort formed on them. She too was looking out over the hedges at the drumlins. The world turning in on itself more every minute, he thought.
“All Maura knew was that Crossan wanted some advice off you. Was that too much to ask?”
“More than that he had on his mind-”
“Well, let’s leave the matter there for the time being, can’t we?”
They stepped over a stile in the stone wall into a field adjoining the armyard. The farm dog, a wily and stealthy collie, came out to meet them. Maura was standing by a gate.
“Hello all,” she called out. “There was a phone call for you, Matt. From Dublin.”
Minogue was drowsy and dry-throated even before they hit the Dublin Road proper. They had sat around over tea while Minogue became even more impatient and then left.
“‘Single-vehicle accident,’” he said to Kathleen. “You know what that means.”
“Um,” she said.
“That’s often code for a drunk driver.”
“You never got to talking to Mick or Eoin about the future,” she said.
Minogue held his breath to keep himself from issuing a sharp reply.
“Knocked out but he had his belt on. Overnight tonight again.”
“Why didn’t you phone him at the hospital?”
“Eilis said he didn’t want me to know.”
“A great way to pass along information.”
A sizeable bump shifted Minogue in his seat. His thoughts returned to Bourke. He had tossed Crossan’s envelope into the suitcase in a hurry. Bourke was a crackpot, dragging Crossan in with him-all because Crossan felt remorse for doing well out of life while Bourke had not. Christ, there’d be no end to it if he got pulled in.
Kathleen fell to wondering aloud about their son. In his last letter home, he had been enthusiastic about a job interview he’d had. Minogue had noted the Americanisms: world-class, leading edge. Dark shapes gathered in the outer orbit of his thoughts as they drove the by-pass route out of Portlaoise. They advanced in a relentless phalanx and clutched at him. Caught in no-man’s land between Kilmartin and Tynan like a shuttlecock. Kathleen’s bloody apartment scheme. Crossan trying to finagle with this Bourke thing. Now Hoey. He had a momentary glimpse of himself in a few years’ time, sitting in a pod called an apartment, trying to pen letters to his son in the States, asking to be remembered to Kathy. Or maybe making forays into town to meet Iseult for lunch so that he could borrow some of her brave disdain and shore up his own diminishing life. No garden to rescue each spring, kitchen appliances that worked flawlessly, carpet everywhere. Desperate.
He felt Kathleen’s eyes on him as he jerked the wheel and crashed the gears. He had put it off too long, he realised, put it off too long to avoid a real row now. Now there’d be hurt when he’d tell Kathleen that he couldn’t face a future like that. His own fault: he had deceived himself into inertia by hoping she’d get tired of the idea. She hadn’t, and her stupid husband had played his cards too close to his chest. The remorse pulled at his belly and left him helpless and weak. Later, with the Fiat climbing up onto the grassy plain of the Curragh, he found himself staring into the yellow glow of Dublin as it spread out on the windscreen.
“Please God Seamus is on the mend,” he heard Kathleen say. Her steadfast and conciliatory tone betrayed to him that she had been happily thinking about her plans at the same time he had been hoping to avoid them.
He came down over the stone wall and landed lightly on the sod. Without the dog he felt uneasy. He stopped and listened again. Could dogs be ghosts, like people? More than once he had caught himself making remarks aloud, waiting for the dog to respond with the gasps, the happy whines and paws Shep had used to converse with her master. He had found himself standing and waiting for the dog to return to his side from the darkness, to bound up to him, to rub against his legs. Once he had even called out to Shep before he realised what he had done.
He knew the gorse-patched hedges, the fields and the faltering stone walls over which he had come. Here the ground was covered with blackberry bushes dying back before the winter. To the east the lights of Rossaboe were hidden behind the drumlins of these outer edges of the Burren. He grasped his stick tighter and slashed at the brambles while he skirted crumbling sections of wall. He used the stick to steady himself while he stepped through a gap in one wall, over the jumble of rocks mossed over and half-buried under the wild grasses.
He stopped again and stared at the lights of the cottage. Not a breath of air, he thought. He was warm now and he undid the top button of his jacket. The strangeness of the still air and what he was about startled him. Is this what a ghost feels, he wondered. He stood listening, but he heard only the swish of h
is own blood in his ears, the muffled throbs of his heart. He peered out into the darkness toward the sea but he saw nothing until he turned toward the Galway side of the bay. Far off and slowly came the sweeping beam of a lighthouse. The water shimmered briefly as the light revolved and left the water dark again. My place, he thought, my fields. His mind felt clear now, the way it hadn’t felt for years. Had he been asleep these years? The drugs and the routines of prison life had put his mind somewhere beyond reach. Once he recalled watching his own body as three warders hit it. They had even tried to make him do it to himself when he was released: Keep the routines, keep your head down, keep track of the medication. Stay in touch with the social worker. They had made him his own jailer. But no more.
He turned the walking stick around in his palm and swung it at a bramble. The noise of its slash reminded him of a whip. It pleased him. He struck again and again, stopping only when the fear pierced his euphoria. That fear rushed into his mind more often too now, and it left him shaking. He knew the risk he was taking. If they found out… But even if they came for him, that couldn’t be worse than the torture of not being able to remember, of having something just out of reach. He was certain that something was there, and that remembering would help him reverse the flow of his life since that night.
He had tried to write down more for Crossan as the ideas and pictures came into his mind. Sometimes he had been too excited by the explosions of half-formed images and feelings that had crashed around him. When he looked at what he had written later, he knew that he couldn’t show it to Crossan. He couldn’t afford to risk turning Crossan off. He had even begun to remember her voice, longer bits of the conversations they’d had. When the voices had first started coming back to him, he had been terrified. He had thought of going back on the pills or going to the social worker and telling him, but after a few nights he had become used to them. After all, the voices were his own-and hers. Their clarity stunned him. Her accent, the expressions she had used, slang and curses they used in Canada, her mocking tone when she slagged him. He had always believed that his agony would be over someday, that he could get back what had been hidden from him, that he could regain the shore of whatever he had been swimming in, floundering in, all these years.
There were other voices too. Those ones had brought back the stabs of fear. Hearing those voices before had brought him trouble, paralysis, agony. Some days he wouldn’t leave the house for fear he’d hear the voices and have nowhere to run and lock the door. They’ll take everything, one of the voices said. They’re afraid of you. They want to put you away again. Dimly he understood that if everything was coming back to him there’d be good and bad, so he might as well get used to it. There was no going back on it. Everything comes around again. This time they’d not get him.
A faint memory rushed up to him then-faces of adults chastising him, warning him as though he were a child. Him screaming and hitting out with all his limbs, trying to bite at the restraining arms alarmingly strong, the straps around him, tightening. He swung harder at the brambles and swore aloud to get back the feeling of hope.
“Bastards,” he hissed. “Fuckers! Robbed I was, and ruined!”
His eyes flooded with tears but he kept beating the grass and brambles. “Dirty fucking thieves and bastards, you took everything, my mind even! And you think you can plough away and take more anytime you want!”
He heard his own sobs then as though they were coming from someone else. He wondered if he had said the words aloud. That had happened a lot last night, he remembered, when he wasn’t sure whether he had just been thinking or really saying things to himself. Yesterday he had caught a glimpse of himself passing the mirror that hung over the sink. He had stood watching the face for several minutes. His face had felt numb and his cheeks twitched while he stared at the mirror. There’s a piece of me, a huge piece of me, missing these years, he had heard a voice say. The face in the mirror had puzzled him at first, but then he had begun to laugh. The laugh had lasted for only a few moments before despair seized him.
He picked his way along the wall toward the cottage. And I won’t listen to him if he tries to tell me that he didn’t notice. Or that he can’t speak English or something. I won’t have any of that fucking bullshit off him, I won’t. Seen him too often with that stupid smile on his face, clapping away to the music and blathering away in that German accent. Bastard. He stopped and again considered going back to the house and waiting for the morning. He could be in Crossan’s office first thing. Then maybe even get Minogue to do something about this too. Yes, maybe he should have gone straight over to Minogue and just started talking last night in the pub instead of waiting around in the street and having those three bastards start a row with him. After all, Minogue had stared at him in the pub, recognised him. Crossan must have passed the stuff along after all. Talk to Crossan in the morning, see what had happened with Minogue, see what he would do now.
Have a look at the car first, he decided. Make certain. There’d be some sign on the car. He winced as he remembered the sound of the car hitting Shep. A shriek of tyres, a yelp and the thump which had propelled him out of the chair and onto the road in his stockinged feet. At first he couldn’t see more than the tail lights of the car because the driver was still standing on the brake pedal. He had shouted and run toward the car, a hundred yards distant, but the brake lights went out, and the other lights too, as the car sped off. He had almost tripped over Shep in the roadway. She was still breathing but her head was at a wrong angle to her body. Her body shuddered and a faint whine escaped the shattered mouth. He thought he saw Shep’s eyes roll slowly into her head, but the low rasp of breathing continued while the dog waited for death.
He had stood up from his knees, the night wild and terrifying around him. He ran back a few paces toward the house but changed his mind and ran back to the dog. She was still breathing but there was a low squealing sound that seemed to come from near her. She was trying to move her head. His pants were stuck to his knees with blood. He had felt his own body turn to water and he wailed in anguish when he realised what he must do. He ran to the shed and grasped the spade. He couldn’t find the flashlight. Out on the road again, the clammy, cold tar underfoot seemed to hold his feet fast as he stood over the dog, too stricken to move. He aimed for the neck and, with a great shout, brought the spade down. Two blows had been enough and he threw the spade down the road before falling to the pavement himself, slapping his hands on the road while he howled.
He shivered and took a deep breath. The curtains were drawn, but muted light still caught the metal on the car parked by the side of the cottage. He wiped his eyes and walked in a roundabout route past the shrubs and the fallow vegetable garden. Did these people have a dog? How the hell could they have a dog and they doing what they did last night? The car bonnet was wedged under a forsythia growing by a side gate to the cottage. He kept out of the dull glow of light from the windows and moved around the car. D for Germany sticker next to the BMW badge on the boot-lid. Fucking people. Thought they owned the world. Their city money.
Rather than tread on the gravel, he backtracked slowly onto the grass. He stopped to observe a lighted window again. The faint sounds were voices from the television, he realised. He listened intently for a full minute and heard nothing more than the changing tones, the jingles and the futile enthusiasm of ads. He moved sideways along the doors of the BMW, raised his stick to hold back the forsythia and stooped to get around to the front of the car. Cute fucker, he thought with the anger catching fire in his chest again, trying to hide the damage by shoving the car in the bushes.
A branch escaped along his stick and flicked onto the bonnet. He hunkered down and leaned against the shrubs to see the front of the car proper. While he paused to get his eyes used to the darkness there, he thought about what he should do when he was finally sure that this was the car that had left his dog mangled in the road. Were there other cars in the village or the area with D stickers on them? Maybe Crossan’
d give him one of those sympathetic looks and try to fob him off. To hell with Crossan and to hell with these tourists and to hell with Tidy Howard and to hell with Sheila Hanratty and to hell with Minogue.
His fingers found the grille and traced the broken plastic mouldings. Cheap hoors, he thought with satisfaction, a fancy car made of plastic. One of the headlights was broken. His fingertips sought out any traces of hair. Branches slid off his stick and lashed his face, but he didn’t feel their sting.
He stood, leaned into the bush again and raised his stick to fend off more of the shrubs. The click he heard then was very different from the scratching which the branches had traced on the bodywork of the car. He looked over the car and froze. He stayed that way for less than one second, for less time than his brain needed to confirm what his eyes sought out so desperately in the shadows, for less time than he could utter a word, for less time than he could will his body to move. An unbearably bright and thunderous flash lit up the side wall of the cottage. Jamesy Bourke catapulted through the forsythia and flopped like a sack full of rubbish on the rocks behind.
The Minogues reached Dublin at half-nine. Kathleen looked up at the bus crammed next to the Fiat while they waited for the traffic light near Portobello Bridge. Minogue fell to staring at the rills of canal water cascading over the lock.
“So that’s the story of Jamesy Bourke,” he murmured.
He had been surprised at Kathleen asking him about it. Perhaps she felt badly about her part in pushing Crossan at him.
“How was I to know Crossan was going to ask you to get involved in something like that now?”
“How indeed,” Minogue grunted. He led the Fiat away from the green light. “Well, he can’t be all bad. Trying to ease his conscience is no offence in my book. But Bourke sounds like a real head-case. Still and all, if I ever get the time sometime-maybe-I’ll see what’s in our files about him.”
