Carn (12 page)

The gas fire in the corner flickered. On the sideboard, Josie smiled in a London street, behind her the teeming crowds and flashing neon of the city. Her skirt was pulled tight against her
behind, her bosom visible just above the neckline of her sweater. She held her sunglasses delicately in her right hand. In those days she was Gina Lollobrigida. She had flicked through a magazine
and read that La Lollo had prayed to the Sacred Heart as a girl, and asked Him to send her a doctor husband, fame and a lovely daughter. And by the age of twenty-one, she owned a princely mansion
and had married a millionaire. But the Sacred Heart was not so flush twice and she had to settle for a room in Moss Side where the club across the street played Connie Francis records into the
small hours and, to the sound of girlish innocence, Josie stared at the ceiling as they travelled her body smelling of tobacco and guilt. Cassie was always in her mind at those times in a happy
place that would not end, where her father smiled down, clean-shaven and said softly, “There’s nothing, only goodness in this world and you Josie pet, you’re the one and only
apple of Willie Keenan’s eye.”

She went into the bedroom and sat in front of the mirror. She brushed her hair and drew an arc over one eye with a pencil. She pouted. Mmmmm—ah! She stroked her profile.
She thought of the pin-ups in the daily papers. Kittenish women curled up in straw. The way she had been when they smiled at her in a room above a Manchester bar.

She thought of the first night a Carn man had come to the cottage in the Hairy Mountains. Like Phil Brady of years before, a frail body soon to be invaded by the moloch of age. Standing in the
doorway, a cigarette shaking in his hand. “Maybe I could come back another time . . .”

Josie
knew
.

And the word of her knowledge soon travelled among the old and lonely men of the town and its hinterland.

She gave them the dark womblike world they wanted, drew them further into the web of their own weakness which they hated but could not best, she took them into the corners of their souls best
left alone. And anything she felt within herself, she kept hidden from them. Only once had it got the better of her, when one of them had drooled like an infant at her breast, taking the nipple in
his mouth and crying
mama mama
.

She emptied her stomach into the sink that night crying,
Why please what makes them do it Jesus Christ sick
—

Since then, she kept their gnarled obsessions as far from her as she could.

But now as she thought of it, the disgust crept up on her from that time. She dabbed two powder spots on her cheeks and laughed. She told herself it was a laugh that couldn’t lose. She
laughed louder and tears came to her eyes. Then she stopped laughing altogether. She fell on the bed and tried to stop the feeling that was coming over her, that nothing was ever any good, that
nothing would ever be any good again. It was a feeling she had come to know well, and when they started again, she felt her hands begin to shake. The voices crept up on her, in no hurry, whispering
in the distance at the back of her mind.
Come in for your tea Josie—isn’t our Josie a wee pet? He passed away an hour ago sister, the poor child she’s as well to know nothing.
Tell her he’s gone on a holiday poor thing and her with no mother
. . .

An acidic taste came into her mouth. She went to the dresser and took down the bottle. She emptied two of the capsules into her hand and washed them down with a vodka.

She stared out at the bending branches of the hazel that reached towards the wreck of the railway and the town and, as the wind whistled through the leaves, she held back any tears she felt
rising and saw the sunlight on the river again as her mother stood on a bucket half-buried in the field and snipped the catkins cleanly with a pair of scissors, handing them down to her. She
bunched them in her arms and smiled as her mother stepped down gingerly and wiped the yellowish motes from her apron before they set off once more for the town.

I might as well do it now, go to that place where you are, that blue place far away from here. I haven’t a thing to lose in the town of Carn or the world
.

Then the drug began to cloud around her and her hard-edged thoughts softened, all the blame and anger within her eased and she felt nothing as she repeated the words again and again. After
spilling clay on the little hands and the little toes, there was nothing more to lose.

The clock ticked on the mantelpiece. Inky clouds drifted desultorily across the anaemic face of the moon. Josie waited until the second gentle tap came before she got up. The
man in the doorway looked about him uneasily, clutching his cap. She did not speak, and when he did, terrified by the silence, the words blurted out of him. “I heard . . . a man you know told
me . . .”

Josie smiled and said, “Come in.”

She took his cap from him and led him inside. She poured a drink and handed it to him.

“You’re very quiet,” she said to him. The glass was unsteady in his hand.

“So you heard about me?”

She moved closer to him. “You’re shy,” she said in a soft voice.

The man nodded and turned away.

“Oh now, don’t be like that.”

She put her arms around his neck and kissed him on the nose. He reddened and she laughed. His fingers strayed on his cheek.

“What do you think of my house?” she said, in a deeper huskier voice.

“It’s . . . it’s a fine wee place . . .”

“And my wallpaper? Do you like that? I put it up all by myself.” She looked deep into his eyes. “All by my little self. And the pictures. Look—Venice By Night.
Venice—what would the likes of us know about Venice?”

She laughed mockingly and he sighed with relief. Josie went on, “We’d look well rowing up the river in one of them gon-doh-lahs, eh? Look, here’s a picture more in our line.
The Sacred Heart. Names here for all the family and a big space at the top for mammy and daddy. That’d be more for us now and never mind them swanky foreign places. Eh?”

She stared at him. He frowned and his eyes fell. Then all he could see were the red shadows of the Sacred Heart lamp as she breathed on his cheek. For a long time Josie did nothing, just stood
there stroking the side of his face with her long red fingernail. His lips tightened, he tried to fight it off but each stroke whittled away his resistance. He wanted to collapse before her power.
There was nothing he could do to stop her when she began removing his clothes, prolonging each movement as if to torment him. She ran her tongue along her bottom lip. The red shadows floated around
her. He stood in the centre of the room like a pale sheared sheep. Josie stood back from him and stared. He whimpered. She stroked his shoulders gently, kneading the flesh. He began to cry.

“If my wife . . . you wouldn’t tell? Would you?”

“Ssh.” Josie put a finger to her lips.

She led him into the bedroom. She lay him on the bed and stood over him. The sound of her breathing filled the room. She began to remove her own clothing. Her dress swished to the floor. Her
breasts fell. She straddled his body and began to massage the parchment of his back. Small quivers ran down his spine. She bent down and whispered into his ear. “What’s your name? Mmm?
Have you got a little name for me?”

“Pat,” he stammered. “It’s Pat . . . Pat Lacey—for the love of God tell no one . . .”

“I knew I’d seen you before. I saw you in the paper.”

She ran her soothing fingers through his hair, occasionally giving it sharp little tugs. She could feel his heartbeart racing.

“Is this what he told you about? This is what you expected—isn’t it?”

“For the love of God, don’t breathe a word to anyone, I’ll pay you anything you want . . .”

She saw the tears trickling from his eyes.

“I’m sorry—I don’t mean to be like this.”

He took out a handkerchief and wiped them. She ran her fingers through his hair.

“I’m not a bad man, Josie,” he said. “I try to fight it. I know it’s wrong. I have everything. A good family, a lovely daughter. There’s nothing I want for.
There’s people in this town would die for me. But it isn’t like they think it is. Sometimes it goes wrong, doesn’t it? I loved her Josie. I loved her like any man should love a
woman. But women can’t understand everything about a man. Sometimes—sometimes something fades away. We don’t argue. My wife and I . . . we don’t lay a finger on each other.
These things get inside my head Josie and I don’t know how they get there. I never touched a woman until I was thirty years of age. That’s the way it was when I was growing up. These
things in my head—I try to stop them coming. But there are times I can’t. They take me over. I think of you—the way you know. Like no other woman can. It’s like I wake up
out of a bad dream and then I’m here—in this house. It makes me afraid. If it ever gets out that I’m like this . . . Mr Cooney or the priest—if they found out Josie . .
.”

He gripped her forearm fearfully. Josie smiled.

“What would they do, Pat love? What would they do if they found out what you liked?”

Without warning she slapped him across the face. His tears stained the pink bedspread. Outside the wind howled. The bedsprings creaked. She stroked his forehead. She dried his tears with her
sleeve.

“I don’t know how it started. I was caught one time. I was only young, Josie. I didn’t know. The priest—in the school—he caught me in the toilet. I had a picture. A
picture of a woman. He caught me with it. I was half-naked there in the toilet and he caught me with it. It was like I told you—a bad dream. I came out of the dream and he was standing there.
He pushed me out of the toilet. I fell. Then he took the picture and pushed it into my face—over and over again. He started kicking me. He couldn’t stop himself, there was spit on his
mouth. He just kept kicking. It did something to me that time. I know it did. He beat me because of her and he beat me till I couldn’t stand. He was afraid of her and he took it out on me,
Josie. He told me the picture would haunt me till the day I died. Maybe that’s why I am the way I am, Josie.”

“Ssh,” Josie soothed.

“I know it wouldn’t be like this if I was away someplace. Anywhere. I know Cooney doesn’t give a curse for me. He uses people like me. I’m not stupid Josie. That’s
the only thing I ever did with my life—a football club. That’s all I have. I should have left this town. I’ve lived here all my life. I never seen places. I never gave myself a
chance. I should’ve left a long time ago . . . I saw nothing, Josie. The football club—what is it? What is to me or anyone else?”

She touched the nape of his neck with her hand. Hard pimples pocked the reddish skin. He trembled as he wept on her chest.

Josie was cold. The wind rattled the window. For a split second she stood outside of herself and looked down, then turned away in horror from what she saw, her tongue licking an old man’s
ear as she cooed, “There there. Who’s a little baba? Who’s a little bitty-baba?” and the sound of Pat Lacey’s whimpering increased as he covered his face with his
hands to hide out all the world.

VIII

In Carn Poultry Products, the procession of claws continued past Sadie Rooney, the glazed eyes of the inverted fowl fixed on the ceiling girders as the deejay ranted
breathlessly from the wall speakers. Only occasionally did Sadie bother to cock her ear to catch the name of a singer or the position of a song in the charts. Across from her the frenzied topic of
discussion was the forthcoming factory outing to Kilkenny. Fact and fiction overlapped as incidents from the past were embellished with glee. The removal of the foreman’s trousers, the
ducking of the office girl in the swimming pool. They shook their heads and wiped the tears from their eyes. Sadie smiled along with them but she knew only too well that they would eagerly disown
it all in the morning and secretly longed for the day when they would toss the nylon overall in a corner, curse Farrell the foreman yet again and walk away from it all for the last time. Much of it
Sadie no longer heard, but when Una Lacey announced her engagement over the metal whirr of the assembly line, her words went right through Sadie like well-aimed bullets. “We finally got
around to it, Sadie. Are you not going to congratulate me? It was eighty pounds!”