Death and Nightingales

by Eugene McCabe

  As he grasped a handful of dry dead bracken fronds he half-stood suddenly, startled, blinking rapidly, listening, one hand hoisting his trousers, the other bunching the bracken in sudden fright. He could not make sense of the sounds nor put on them a familiar image. At first they seemed like a sow rooting and grunting through clods of earth, then it changed to a high pitched singing and humming which seemed human, followed by guttural sounds like foreign words. Some madman escaped from Monaghan asylum? Some neighbour who’d lost his wits? or worse, the Garvarry ghost, which his mother said went all round Ulster with a turf barrow gathering up the dead.

  Both saw each other at the same instant: the Dummy McGonnell with his lips drawn back aggressively, his nose twitching grotesquely in response to Blinky’s function. Blinky’s staring eyes were now fibrillating with relief.

  ‘Ah, yah wandery auld cunt; you put the heart across me!’

  The Dummy drew back his lips like a horse that’s bitten a sour apple. He then put his thumb and forefinger to block his nostrils, turned sideways to let Blinky see his gesture in outline, glancing back every now and then grinning, lip-reading Blinky’s further abuse.

  When almost out of sight in the mist he stopped and turned back to Blinky who now had thumbed up his braces and stepped out of the ditch. There was about fifty yards between them. As Blinky was about to utter more invective the Dummy began what seemed like a dance, lifting his right foot high, his two arms curved over it and then all three moving together in unison as Blinky shouted:

  ‘You mad frigger! What the hell are you at? go back and dance some other place; do you think you’re a fucken railway engine?’

  The Dummy suddenly stopped, shook his head and repeated the mime, slowly finishing it with an uplift of both hands, a gesture of throwing clay over his shoulder. He kept up this digging mime as Blinky watched, his mouth open, transfixed. The Dummy stopped and grinned again. He could see fear, puzzlement and disbelief in Blinky’s face as he asked in a subdued, almost frightened voice:

  ‘Are you after a job cutting turf? Is that it?’ The Dummy shook his head slowly, smiling, and stared at the ground making low grunting noises of contempt. Suddenly and it seemed almost violently he pointed straight at Blinky and the grunting became a kind of hysterical high-pitched accusing sound.

  ‘What in the hell is wrong with you now!’ Blinky shouted.

  The Dummy could see that Blinky’s face had gone very white, a kind of blinking death mask. With a gesture of obscene comtempt, he turned and walked away down the haggard field out of sight. Long after he was gone, Blinky could hear the odd gurgling sounds and a kind of mad laughing. Only when the sounds had gone completely did he realise that he was still holding the handful of bracken. It was trembling in his hand.

  14

  From a long way off she could sense Ward’s approach. It was nothing she could hear. She went to the front window of the cottage; nothing to see but the street and Laban Lake set in its landscape of bare tussocked fields on either side giving way to spongy bogland of heather, bracken, rock and rough grasses. As she was about to turn away from the small window, a dark figure came up from the hollow of the lane. It could only be him, Ward, nobody else. Aloud, she heard herself say:

  ‘In the dove-grey light he comes, my love Liam, my hero comes.’

  Her heart began to hobble painfully. She wanted to turn away, to cry! She forced herself to keep watching. With a great intake of breath her heart steadied and her vision cleared. Yes, there he was, still coming well up into the landscape now, walking steadily up the rutted lane leading from the lake towards the cottage. He would be about five minutes. Where to be? How to be? She had been awake all night into the dawn, brutally beaten, shown the road by Billy Winters. It would be normal enough for her now to lie either on a couch or across the table and pretend to be sleeping.

  She got a rug and pillow from the bedroom, put the rug round her shoulders, the pillow on the table, closed her eyes and turned her swollen face so that he would see the bruised congested cheek, the closed eye, her swollen hand resting alongside her head, now grossly welted and enlarged where it had been struck by the hunting-crop. He would stare for a while, then waken her. She tried to imagine his face, his eyes, his first words. These imaginings so agitated her that again she found it difficult to breathe. She heard the footsteps approach and stop. He would be looking at the key in the door, trying to make out who was inside, guessing that perhaps it was her. She became aware of cold dawn air as the door opened. She knew Ward was standing now in the kitchen looking at her, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. Then his hand on her shoulder. She waited a few moments, opened her eyes which immediately found his:

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ he muttered, ‘he got you taking it?’

  She was looking up into his face trying to discover what she must have missed before. Nothing different. The same face, the same slightly odd squint, same irregular teeth. It was not the face of a murderer. He was less than three feet away and looking at her very closely:

  ‘Yes, he caught me.’

  ‘Didn’t you give him the bromides?’

  ‘He spilled some whiskey, maybe he got sick, anyway they didn’t work. I was at the safe. He got me with my hands in his treasure; didn’t you hear him shouting like a bull?’

  ‘W . . . I heard nothing.’

  He had almost said ‘we’. This so electrified her that she almost said ‘you and who?’

  ‘What was he shouting?’

  ‘I’ll give you death and nightingales . . . you’ll fly from here, forever, with rooks, daws and magpies, you’ll croak like scald crows from now on with fellow thieves and vermin. Things like that.’

  She was watching his face. He was not as she had imagined he would be; he was in no way evasive. If anything he seemed angry. She had bungled, been caught. He and Blinky had not managed to bury her and get away with the gold. It had gone wrong, it was her fault. She found herself more fascinated by what he must be thinking than what she herself was feeling, like a nightmare until she realised she was laughing oddly, almost hysterically. Through this she heard Ward say:

  ‘It’s not funny . . . we’re bogged now.’

  ‘We have our two selves,’ she said. ‘We’re young, we have our health, we’re not being hunted by Constabulary, we don’t have to hide, we can walk out of this house and sail away to a new life, to another world . . . maybe it’s our good fortune.’

  ‘We’ve no fortune, we’ve nothing.’

  ‘You’ll get something for the lease of this place. Eighty, a hundred pounds: that’s ten times more than a million others who left here. Anyway, they say people with a lot of money are seldom happy, they say “show me a rich man and I’ll show you a brute,” and I say Billy Winters isn’t a happy man and he has a lot of money. He’s never happy except when he’s drunk and then he’s hateful, but you know all that . . . you’re now my white knight, Liam, my hero, my saviour, my lover, my husband-to-be, the father of our children-to-be . . . my protector, my defender, my guardian angel, can you not forgive me, love, for bungling?’

  ‘There’s nothin’ to forgive.’

  She could sense him looking at her with a curious expression, almost now she thought with more hatred than anger. Could hatred be infectious? Maybe he now felt what she was feeling, or could he sense the mockery aimed in her every word.

  ‘This is the first day proper of our new life, May 4th, our elopement day; a bit unlucky maybe, but they say a bad start bodes a good finish. I wasn’t happy at the idea of stealing because I’ve never stolen as much as a farthing in my whole life so far from anyone, but for you, my love, I was willing to rob my guardian, take every ounce of gold he had. She paused, waiting for him to respond. He kept looking at her with an expression she now found repulsive. It made her say:

  ‘You took no risk, you paid no penalty, lost nothing; I’ve lost everything and maybe now without the gold you don’t want me, don’t love me.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Ward s
aid in a flat voice.

  ‘You can prove that now, you could murder Billy Winters, take his gold; we could leave then together as planned.’

  She could see his eyes dilating as he thought about this. She had not meant the idea to be considered, thought he would dismiss it out of hand.

  ‘Today would be a bad day to try that out.’

  ‘Well then, tomorrow, next week, next month? He deserves to die. Do you think you could do it, love?’

  Again she could see that Ward was looking at her intently and now said:

  ‘You’re talking very odd.’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘Very.’

  Outside there was a frenetic hissing followed by heavy wingbeats, then a hoarse voice whispering urgently:

  ‘Go way, go to hell, quit, will yous go way, go way.’

  Ward crossed to the small window and peered out as Beth asked:

  ‘A visitor? At dawn!’

  ‘It’s nobody,’ Ward muttered as he moved towards the door.

  ‘Does “nobody” have a name,’ she asked.

  He glanced back at her, muttering as he went out to the street:

  ‘Blinky Blessing . . . Drunk most likely.’

  He could tell at once that Blinky was unnerved. He met this nervousness with a cold stare and a faint head-jerk to indicate someone in the cottage. Alerted, Blinky looked from door to window making a silent round with his mouth which asked ‘Who?’ Ward answered in something less than a whisper:

  ‘The Winters girl. Billy waked; kicked her out.’

  ‘What’s she doin’ here?’

  ‘She’s no place else to go.’

  Blinky took Ward’s arm and led him away from the cottage talking very quietly as he went:

  ‘I’ll tell you why I’m here, Liam.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be.’

  ‘Hold on! I was hunkered below in the ditch after you left when the Dummy McGonnell come by in our front meadow. We saw each other at the one time.’

  Blinky swallowed, his eyes dilating.

  ‘Go on, go on.’

  ‘I think he knows somethin’, Liam.’

  ‘What could he know? He’s deaf and dumb!’

  ‘Not blind . . . and he’s a cute auld hoor.’

  ‘Go on.’

  Blinky glanced back at the cottage door and ran his tongue along his top lip.

  ‘After he seen me in the ditch he begin to make all kinds of faces and ciphers, you know the way he carries on, so I shouted at him.’ Blinky imitated the Dummy’s digging motion, then looked directly into Ward’s face.

  ‘It give me the quare scare.’ Ward’s expression did not change, his eyes dropped from Blinky’s ravaged face to the street.

  ‘What do you think, Liam?’

  Ward looked away up to Cam. They could hear two cocks and a jackass welcolming the growing light. Blinky kept studying Ward’s face:

  ‘Suppose he goes to the Constabulary?’

  ‘About what . . . there’s no law agin digging a hole in the ground.’

  ‘Aye, true, that’s all we done.’

  ‘Anyway, he meant you should have brought a spade to bury your shit.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Most likely.’

  ‘Christ, you could be right, Liam.’

  ‘You’re a nervy bloody man; she’s going to wonder now what in hell you’re doing here.’

  ‘Maybe it’s all for luck.’

  Ward looked away coldly.

  ‘Is this your notion of luck?’

  ‘Well if Billy hadn’t catched her the way he did, she’d’ve catched her death from us, and if the Dummy seen us, we’d’ve catched our death at the end of a rope; an unlucky night’s work.’

  ‘You’re still drunk.’

  ‘I could never have faced it sober. Even if it went right a while back, it might have stayed wrong ever after and a body can’t stay drunk forever.’

  ‘The whole thing,’ Ward said, ‘is a bungle; we’ve missed a king’s ransom and I’m bogged with this one.’

  Blinky began to giggle and then winked.

  ‘Be God, Liam,’ he said, ‘she’s laid on handy now, like a pump in the yard; let her bake and scrub, make use of her, throw the leg across at night!’

  Ward studied Blinky’s face:

  ‘You’re an eejit, Blinky.’

  ‘Am I? What does that make you but an eejit’s comrade?’

  Blinky grinned and added:

  ‘There’s a pair of us in it, Liam, and I’ll tell you for more . . .’

  His expression suddenly changed:

  ‘Your one inside is at the door this minute lookin’ at the two of us.’

  Ward turned and said matter-of-factly:

  ‘Blinky here’s on the tear, wants to borrow a mouthful of whiskey.’

  Ward walked away from Blinky towards the cottage door. Beth went inside, and Ward entered followed by Blinky saluting clownishly with his right forefinger at his right eyebrow. He was licking his lips. Beth could see that his mouth was dry, his eyes blinking, inflamed. The Dummy’s caricature was accurate. She could also see at a glance the putty-coloured clay on his boots; the clay of her grave. Murder boots. No clay on Ward’s boots. Too fastidious? Too lazy to dig? ‘You’re getting a heap of gold for a small labour Blinky, all you have to do is kill her quick and bury her deep.’

  It was all too incredible to take in. Now here they were, both standing in front of her. As she looked from one to the other, she wondered how they had planned it. How would she have been enticed from the avenue into the scrub? Ward would have stopped her. Some pretext. A whispered word. Some change of plan, my love. Some problem about a train time. As he talked Blinky, from behind the tree or a rhododendron would act: that blunt hammer with the spike. Or with a club: a single blow to the skull. The spike doubtful. Too much blood. Garrotting? What was that? A rope tightened round the neck. Unable to scream, staring into her lover’s eyes. Blinky choking her from behind?

  She felt her heart slow again as the images recurred, aware that blood was draining from her face. Seeing them side by side, she imagined what it would be like if they were roped back to back on the floor. How easy, how simple it would be to cut their throats one by one, Blinky first, then Ward. Kiss first, then kill. Vengeance, truly horrible, the blood spraying her skirt. That, she thought, would be more distasteful than slitting their gullets. It calmed her to think of this. The violence of feeling and images was so strong that she looked away lest they could read in her face the repulsion she felt.

  Ward had opened the cupboard of the dresser, took out a half-bottle of whiskey, placed it on a shelf of the dresser as Blinky crossed to the corner and lifted out a porringer of wacer from a cask. He drank greedily, refilling the porringer and then tipping it into a glass which he held up saying:

  ‘The best water in Ulster, Miss; see . . . blue; pure, a woman body in this house’d be off to a good start with water like that.’

  She could see him looking closely at her face as his eyes became accustomed to the poor interior light.

  ‘Liam was just tellin’ me you got a hammerin’ above . . . You wouldn’t be the first woman whipped by that fella. You’re well away from that house – and you neither kith nor kin.’

  She stared at him without replying, watching him drink the second pint of water, his adam’s apple pulsating. He put the glass down, pulled a black-nailed claw across his forehead removing the hair from his eyes. He then stood holding his cap in front of his testicles.

  ‘That would make me a bastard,’ she said.

  Blinky exploded with laughter and elbowed Ward:

  ‘Better that than any blood of Billy Winters’; the grandfather and his grandfather before him was a terror to the world, the worst breed of landlord, highwayman more or less . . . robbers of the Irish people . . . am I right, Liam?’

  ‘High seas man,’ Ward corrected.

  ‘A what?’ Blinky asked.

  ‘He was a class of pirate, the first of the Winte
rs.’

  All the time she could see Blinky was watching her face very closely. Now he said:

  ‘Boysadear, Miss, but you got a woeful hammerin’; thon face of yours is a fright!’

  ‘More a birthday treat,’ Beth said.

  She tapped at her swollen face, smiled back, and said:

  ‘Fist and horse-whip.’

  Ward and Blinky glanced at each other. Neither spoke. Beth went on:

  ‘He must have heard from someone, Liam, that we were “great” and you being a tenant, that in Billy’s book means a gale-day liar, a debtor, a latter-day Fermanagh bush-kerne, a witless spade-man, a hired spalpeen, a stable brat, the lowest of the low, a landless Paddy, a less-than-nothing nobody, and, being unavailable for punishment, he took the whip to me! It’s common enough the world over.’

  She touched her face again and said:

  ‘Must be millions like me, whipped half-blind by blind-drunk men, for this, that and the other . . . or nothing.’

  ‘Song,’ Blinky said, ‘he didn’t spike the run of your tongue, Miss.’

  ‘No, and you’re a wit of sorts yourself I’m told.’

  Blinky grinned yellow teeth at her:

  ‘Who says that?’

  ‘Mercy Boyle tells me you’re a witty man, full of “spakes” she says.’

  ‘Mercy, is it?’

  ‘Mercy Boyle . . . She swears it’s the goats’ milk you and Wishie take to bed every night in a baby’s bottle.’

  Blinky’s grinning teeth vanished suddenly.

  ‘She’s a liar then,’ he hissed.

  ‘I couldn’t believe it either. Not Attie, I said; maybe the brother Wishie, the bard, but Attie’s much too manly, I said . . . he’s a butcher.’

  Blinky stared at her uncertain, lifted the half-full bottle of whiskey and said through the side of his mouth:

  ‘That’s the only bottle I bother with night or day.’

  He moved towards the door, turned awkwardly:

  ‘Good luck to you now, Miss Winters, you’ll need all the luck that’s goin’.’