Carn (20 page)

“Come on . . . for the love of Jesus,” cried Jack Murphy.

Stray flakes of snow blew into the kitchen as they went out into the morning.

She lay there on the floor for the whole day long. The snow came and went at the window, the day passed and the light began to fade. Josie tasted salt in her mouth. The cold sweat dried on her
skin.
There you are now, a grand sight on your kitchen floor Miss Lollobrigida, it’s a pity your doctor husband isn’t here to help you now, what a shock he’d get if he were to
walk in and see the cut of his sweet young bride.

Josie cried and cried bitterly. The Sacred Heart became a grey silhouette. She felt her way to the bathroom. The side of her face was numb. A hag looked at her from the mirror and filled her
with revulsion. Between her legs she felt him pushing again and again. His face came at her and she tried to release herself by going forward, by lunging at the image, watching herself killing him,
blood pouring from the folds of his neck. She spat phlegm into the basin. The more she backed off from him, the more terror and pain she felt. She forced herself and his head went back and she did
it to him over and over.

She did not sleep. Her body had her primed for an imminent disaster she could not name. Her fists would not unclench. Her breathing was tangled up in her chest. In the corner the stained
dressing gown lay in a heap. When she looked at it out of the corner of her eye she began to cry again and her whole body shivered. She took a heavy cardigan from the cupboard and put it on.
Ah
that’s no outfit for La Lollo, the woman who stunned the streets of Manchester when she skipped off the bus all those years ago. You weren’t always like this, make sure they know it, oh
no, you had a face that could stop the street and no mistake, Phil Brady would vouch for that. You didn’t get a doctor husband but you got Phil Brady and a few others. Didn’t you Josie?
You got a thirteen stone docker who liked to dress up for you. And a man from Mayo who cried like a baby in your arms. Not to mention Pat Lacey—Pat Lacey the important official! You did very
well for yourself Josie—who cares about a doctor husband? Oh there’s no doubt, you could have got what you wanted had the dice tumbled the other way. But sure then, who couldn’t?
Who couldn’t Josie. The thing is, it didn’t. Eh? It didn’t Josie. That’s the trouble, you have to take what you get. Look at Cassie. Look what she got. Did you want her
life? You did, didn’t you? All you ever wanted was to be her. All your life you wanted to be Cassie Keenan, the best woman that ever lived, and look what happened. Culligan put you on the
wrong road and now you’re in with nobody, even the Sacred Heart will turn His back on you after all your trickery. Pity you didn’t stick it out like Cassie Josie. She’s on the
pig’s back now in that blue and never-ending place and damn the bit of her you’ll ever see, neither you nor the Buyer and his rough roving hands will ever set eyes on Cassie Keenan
again.

She held the dress in her hands. The camphor smell filled her nostrils. It was black satin, the dress she had worn the first day she walked into the Moss Side bar. It was a Gina Lollobrigida
dress. Her hair bobbed and a string of pearls. In the room over the pub she spent hours posing. A whole week’s wages gone on perfume. The swish of the net underskirt as she flitted behind the
bar and watched their eyes as they strained for a glimpse of her legs. It would look good with the veins in her legs and the black marks the barman had left like a pretty little string of beads on
her abdomen.

She sat at the window. The flesh of her arms bulged out through the tight-fitting sleeves. Her eyes were raw-red. A robin looked at her from the railway track and then went back to its
foraging.

They all came together now in her mind. A room of whispers and half-heard guffaws. And who was there with them only Vinnie, still with the nicotine on his fingers and the broad smile on his
fresh face. Him and Lacey and Murphy and the barman would have a lot to talk about now. They all knew Josie Keenan. They would be able to have a good long chat about her, no danger of silence in
that company. With the whole room to themselves, not a woman in sight, no women to come between them and their clandestine talk of bodies, more bodies, dead or alive it was all the same to
them.

Time went on. Josie’s tears dried. Her face muscles loosened. But they did not go away. They all sat there and the drink went down and arms went around shoulders. They clasped one another
and swore their secrecy. Vinnie looking well as ever with his hair brylcreemed and a gold pin in his tie that he must have got in England. The barman shaking his head as he began the story anew.
But Pat stopped laughing. No, Pat wasn’t the same as Vinnie. He wasn’t the same as the barman and now it was coming out as they stared at him confusedly. He was talking daft and there
were tears in his eyes too. “The bitch does things to me. I should never have gone near her. She makes me give her money. She’s a bad woman and she lived in all the worst dens in
England. I’m not like that men. I never wanted to do them things. I’m like you men. I’ll never go near her again. I’m like any other man. I am! I swear! I say, you gave her
what for, you and Jack gave her what for, eh?” He clutched the barman’s arm and looked hungrily into his face. “I say you gave her a dose of her own medicine. That will put a stop
to her gallop, eh?” He held his privates with his hand. “You gave her a rub of the relic, didn’t you? That will settle the bitch’s hash. You won’t tell anyone about
me, will you?”

Then Vinnie went, gathering himself up and off with a smile. Then the barman went. Pat Lacey was left sitting in the room by himself, looking about him furtively with a drink in his hand as if
expecting someone. He got up and went to the door. He was edgy, “Josie,” he said, “you didn’t hear me. You didn’t take all that seriously did you? I was only having a
bit of a laugh. A bit of a laugh with the boys . . . I never thought he’d go out to you Josie . . . Josie, please . . .”

All over Josie was like an open wound. She stared at him. The wisps of hair fell over his eyes like Phil Brady’s years before. The same eyes as the barman as he groaned on top of her,
siphoning his poison into her. Poison that coursed through her. She was stone cold as she stared at Pat Lacey. He moved back against the table. He didn’t know which way to turn. Molloy
shouted,
You’ll thieve no more in this house
and the nun towered above her and gripped her wrist but Josie steadied herself and cried inside,
Not this time not this time do you hear
me?

Her head fell but there were no tears. Her fingers were purple with the cold. She lit the gas heater. In the glass a reflection distorted by tiny rivers of melted snow looked back at her, a
jumbled mosaic. The dress was way above her knee. The room reeked of mothballs and stale perfume. A right looking sketch lads, eh, it’d take a good man to get up on the likes of that. What
about the barman, I hear he’d get up on the crack of dawn ha ha ha ha. La Lollo, eh, is that what she calls herself, it’s a wonder with all that money she couldn’t get a dress to
fit her. Maybe she should go back to Moss Side. Maybe there’s hard-up lads there would go for her. Maybe there’s hard-up lads there would be able to touch her with a barge pole. All
she’ll get about here is Lacey or the barman
—and he’d get up on the crack of dawn! I say he’d get up on the crack of dawn, boys!

Her stomach heaved. She plucked at the sleeve of the dress. She searched for the smiling face of Cassie, listened for the soft voice calling her to that place. But there was nothing except the
flap of the gas fire and the wind outside.

She went cold all over. It was different now. This time it was different. This time she had been asked to bear too much.

“This time it’s different. Not this time,” the words went through her mind. “This time it’s different. This time it’s different.”

Lacey.

XV

James Cooney had come up with the goods again. The week after the bomb an envelope containing a cheque for eight hundred pounds had landed on Pat Lacey’s desk. It was
from James Cooney and was made payable to the “Bomb Damage Appeal”.

JR Ewing could go and take a run and jump at himself. He simply wasn’t in the same league as the owner of the Carn Meat Processing Plant. That was the view of the workers on the factory
floor and there weren’t many in the town who would argue with it.

Who could begrudge a man like that his mansion? Wasn’t he entitled to it? He had worked damned hard to get it, harder than JR Ewing or any of his ilk. And he had spent his money at home
into the bargain. The money he had donated to the Bomb Damage Appeal simply showed that there was no end to the man’s good nature.

As one worker put it, in Carn, James Cooney was still “Al”.

So when the shop steward announced in the canteen that the entire workforce were to be addressed by Mr Cooney himself, the air tingled with excitement. Hot on the heels of his generous donation
to the council, what new goodies was he going to come up with? He was going to give them a really good Christmas present to bring home to their wives. He had something good up his sleeve for his
workers and he wanted to spring it on them as a surprise. Word travelled through the factory that it was to be a triple bonus for every man. Conversation hummed after the break as they waited for
the hooter to call them to the canteen for this great announcement. That was the great thing about James Cooney, that was what made him better than all the factory owners put together—he was
always ten steps ahead of the posse. Nobody could ever pinpoint exactly what was going on in his head. The workers wound themselves up like coiled springs debating the nature of the surprise.
Whatever it was to be, they saw before them pay packets bulging like never before. It was like waiting for Santa Claus. They pestered the shop stewards and the union officials to give them more
information but they just waved them away and said that they had been told to say nothing. All they knew was that Mr Cooney wanted to talk personally to the men. Beyond that their lips were
sealed.

As the sides of beef whirred past and the giblets were sealed inside plastic bags, children’s bicycles were bought, new televisions rented, wives’ faces lit up and gleaming hi-fis
beamed from living room corners. The afternoon stretched like eternity. But eventually the hooter went, aprons were thrown off and every man made his way to the canteen atremble with
anticipation.

James Cooney was looking snappier than usual. He wore a three-piece pinstripe suit and a starched white shirt. The Production Manager and two union officials sat behind him at a table with notes
and a clipboard in front of them. The Production Manager toyed with a silver fountain pen as he watched the men file in. There was a hubbub of chatter and smoke billowed to the ceiling. They pulled
up chairs and settled themselves. Gradually the din began to die down. They leaned forward expectantly, full sure that James Cooney would begin his address with an anecdote or a funny story of some
kind. But had they not been so excited by the fantasies which had taken root throughout the course of the afternoon, they would have noticed that James Cooney was wearing an expression which was
far from lighthearted. He looked at his shoes and his brow was knit anxiously. At the table the union officials gave all their attention to their notes.

James Cooney cleared his throat and played with his gold watchstrap. Silence floated down on the assembly like a parachute. James Cooney paced up and down, then began to speak. He started on
about his time in industry in America. How he had started off as a teaboy in a steel mill in Pennsylvania. How at one stage of his career he had had four jobs at once. Then he went on to his
dreams. The greatest dream of all, he said, had always been to come back to the town of his birth. To give it all he had, to build it from the bottom up and make it the envy of every town in the
country. He had wanted, from the day he left
The Shores of Erin
to come back and turn Carn into a boom town, a town that would never want for anything. A town that would forget forever the
closing of the railway. A town that would never again helplessly watch its youth take the emigrant boat to England and New York.

From the day he had stepped off the steamer with his suitcase and his coat under his arm, he had dreamed of making it all come true. His arms spread out to embrace the buildings of the
plant.

He spoke fondly of the first delivery of cattle by a local farmer. Men who had been with him at the very beginning and since moved on were wistfully recalled.
Believe me, men, those were
glorious days. Glorious days.

He went through the development and growth of the factory month by month, year by year.

As he went on, the workers began to shift about uncomfortably in their seats. They lit cigarettes and looked around them. They didn’t like the way James Cooney was going on, This was not
his usual form, going back over old times, raking over old dead coals that most of them had long since forgotten. He cared about the farmer who had delivered cattle on the first day? That was like
the way the old people went on about the railway. Where was the joke, the anecdote and the way forward? That was what they wanted, to hell with the way back. They wanted to hear about the triple
bonuses and the fat brown packages of banknotes that were coming their way.

When he had finished on the subject of times past in the factory, he turned and smiled at the Production Manager who came forward with the clipboard. He was an unpopular man, with none of the
style of James Cooney. He was a no-nonsense, greyfaced man who shot off home in his Sierra every evening dead on six o’clock. Figures were his life. He talked figures non-stop and when the
conversation was about some other subject, he could never rest until it had been switched to his favourite topic. Now he was in his element. James Cooney took a back seat as he went about his
business in the same manner as the icy businessman from the Great Northern Railway had done years before. He looked the men straight in the eye as he unrolled a litany of figures which completely
threw them, unprepared as they were for anything so sterile and demanding. What dislocated them even more was that James Cooney and the union officials seemed to have taken on expressions as grave
and doom-laden as the speaker. They held their heads and tapped their chins gravely. When the words “realistic” and “serious changes” were used, James Cooney nodded
morosely. The Production Manager outlined the reasons for the suddenness of the meeting. Mr Cooney had always believed in being straight. Everyone knew that. He did not believe in leading the
workers up the garden path. They had talked long and hard about it. They knew that they could rely on the maturity of the men to face up to the facts and make difficult, unpalatable decisions. He
spoke of a crisis in the cattle industry. Things had taken a disturbing turn for the worse in the past six months. Oil prices had hit every kind of production. Inflation was currently running at
fifteen per cent and rising.