Cold Eye of Heaven, The (13 page)

‘Nobody else.'

‘No, I mean – who else will I
see
?' She bites her lip and glances over to the television.

‘Ahhh, right. You mean what programmes? Do you want me to write them down for you?'

‘Yes,' she says, then smiles and lifts her two thin arms up to him for a hug. He lowers his eyes and pretends not to see.

He might as well finish his tea. Coming back to the sofa he perches himself on the far end of it, places the mug on the floor by his feet, then opens the newspaper at the television page. Her arms are still open but at least they've veered towards the telly, now pleading a hug from a man on another sofa who's talking Ascot hats to a twinkling presenter.

‘Ah no,' she says crossly, ‘don't just mark it. Don't just do it the lazy -man's way.'

He looks up to see if she's speaking to him or the man on the telly.

‘Lazy, lazy, always lazy. Write it proper out.'

‘Pass me the copybook so,' he says.

She lowers her arms, lifts the copybook, kisses it, gives it a little rub, then opens it out on the last page, folding the cover back and passing it to him. ‘Only that page,' she says.

‘Right. Let's see now – this is breakfast television you're watching now. And that'll be over at half nine.'

‘What time is it now?'

‘Just half eight. You can see the time on the little clock on the bottom right corner of the telly.'

‘I haven't got me glasses.'

‘You're wearing them, Ma.'

‘Ah, what are you talkin about now!' she shouts, startling him. ‘If I get me hands on you, I'll give you such a, such a—'

He sighs. ‘Do you want me to do this or not?'

‘Yes.'

‘Alright then, behave yourself. After this you can listen to the radio, if you like.'

‘Who will it be – Gay?'

‘No, he's not on at that time. Pat Kenny.'

‘Ah, I'm not listening to him. He's as bad as yourself. Lazy. Stupid. Talking through his big backside.'

‘Right. Don't bother with the radio so. Wait till this is over then change the telly to number three – see on the remote.'

‘What colour is three?'

‘Red, I've marked it red. So you can watch till
Home and Away
comes on and when it's over you'll know that Jackie will be here in a minute.'

‘Give us a kiss,' she says, ‘you oul puddin.'

‘I have to go to work now.' He closes then folds the newspaper.

She picks up a cushion, cradles it in her arms and nuzzles it with her cheek. Now she is fluttering little kisses along the top of it and making mewling sounds as if it's a kitten. The mewling sounds turn into whispers, so it could be a baby either.

He hasn't told Jackie about this latest development, this talking to the objects she's chosen to love. Jackie is barely able to cope with the on -slaught of affection as it is. ‘Intolerable gush,' he called it last night on the phone before going off on a rant about how she never touched them when they were kids unless it was to hit them. And how she brought them up to feel that affection was some sort of failing.

Of course, Jackie blames her. For everything – his marriage break-up, his gambling, his having to come back from London. But most of all his failure to reach the lofty notions she put in his head when he was a kid.

‘The trouble with Jackie,' Slowey often says, ‘is that he's
too
fuckin intelligent. And that's why he makes a bollix of everything.'

Farley stands. ‘I'm going now, Ma. You'll be alright?'

‘Ah, don't go, don't leave me. I'll be good. Am I not good?'

‘You are good. I'll only be gone a while. Jackie will be in soon.'

‘I want to go home,' she says.

‘You are home.'

‘I want to go home. It's the wrong colour here.'

He thinks she could be talking about the wallpaper but then her hands begin stroking on the air and he recognizes the caress. She misses the long grass, the green of the Phoenix Park just outside her door. ‘I'll get Jackie to bring you out to the garden, it looks great, all the flowers.'

Her bottom lip pops out. ‘It's too small. There's no sky.'

‘O Jesus, Ma. Come on now. I have to go to work.'

‘I want to go home. I want to go home to the baby.'

‘We're not babies any more, Ma.'

‘Not you.
The baby
.'

‘There's no baby.'

‘The baby. Ah, you know her, the baby. Something beginning with, beginning with… B!'

‘I'm goin. Now.'

She cocks up her nose. ‘Ah shut up you, you big fool.'

‘Right.'

‘I want to go home. I want to go home.'

‘This is your home now, Ma. You live here with me.'

‘Where's your wife then?' she asks.

‘She's dead, Ma, this long time.'

‘What?' She puts her hand over her mouth and her eyes grow big with sorrow and shock.

‘Ah no, I'm only joking.'

‘You killed her, you bastard. You put a pillow over her face and squashed the air out.'

‘She's gone to the shops.'

‘But she'll be back on Sunday?'

He nods.

‘At four or half four?'

‘Four.'

‘Will Mrs Kennedy be coming instead?'

‘No.'

‘Just a pop-in for a little cup of tea, even?'

‘No, Ma, she won't.'

‘A weenchy teenchy…?'

‘No. Mrs Kennedy is not coming again.'

‘O,' she says, ‘O, O, O no,' shuttering her face with her hands, shaking her head from side to side.

He waits for her to forget. Because there is that at least; she always forgets. But he can feel his patience slipping away. The day already cut in half because of the match. The worry that she'll freak out now and that he won't be able to leave her. The amount of summonses he has to serve because they've fallen behind. He thinks he'll never get out that door. Away from this room, this woman, this unlucky house. A sour taste leaks into his mouth; a bile of resentment towards his brother; the thoughts of him, in his neat little teaching job finished at three every afternoon. His long holidays, his smug little flat, probably chosen for its lack of space; room for one only. One man and his misery.

He begins to gather up his documents, stuffing them down into his briefcase. Then he picks up his wallet and car keys.

She is glued to the telly again where a sinewy woman, poured into a shiny green leotard and matching tights is scissoring her legs and grinning like a maniac. Ma, grinning back, repeats the mantra, ‘Point and flex, point and flex…'

She is his child now. The child he never had. Even the way she speaks, all sugar and spice, except for when she turns on him. Then her old voice takes over, cutting like glass through his head. Lazy. Stupid. Do you want a belt of this – do you? Stop hanging out of me for Christ's sake. We are not affectionate people.

He stands at the door and she turns and looks at him. ‘I love you,' she says.

He nods and rattles his car keys.

He's still thinking about Jackie as he drives towards town; the memory he has, long and convoluted – all the shit it manages to hold on to, like he has another intestine inside his head. Figures and facts, politics, world history. Horses, horses, horses. And every minute from his own past. No wonder he suffers from headaches, having to lug all that lot around.

He thinks about Jackie's wife too, the sister-in-law he's never met nor so much as seen in a photo. Her name is Jasmeena, something like that.

‘What is she – Indian or something?' Farley had asked one night in the Mullingar House shortly after Jackie had come back from London.

‘Don't be so fuckin stupid,' was the reply. So she could be Indian. Or she could be a hippy maybe. Or she could be that oulone at the bus stop outside the tyre depot combing her hair. For all he knows.

The most Jackie had been prepared to say – and that was only because Slowey had put the screws on him – was that they'd met at Aintree, married in York, divorced in London, that she worked on the tote, that the marriage had lasted a few years and that somewhere in the middle of all the irreconcilable differences, they had managed to have a child. The kid would be about sixteen now. A photo of him as a toddler does exist but stays in Jackie's wallet unless he's really locked then he might take it out
and look at it under the table. Only once did he show it – again, on Slowey's insistence – the picture so crumpled it had looked like the boy had one of those rapid ageing diseases. Turlough – that's what they called him, just in case there'd be any chance he wouldn't get slagged in his English school.

The traffic. When it does move, it moves in opportunistic little thrusts – every man for himself, every man in a hurry. A red van breaks the lights onto Con Colbert Road, comes tearing out from the Inichore side, so that he has to slap his foot down to stop himself from ploughing into the side of it. The driver loops out in front of him with an apologetic wave and a
you-know-yourself-the-day-that's-in-it
sort of a grimace.

‘Yea, well we're all under pressure,' Farley shouts into the windscreen.

Before the second set of lights the traffic clogs up completely. And there's the van again, only two cars up, well and truly trapped – after all that trouble and risk.

He could be stuck here for at least ten minutes. He could be stuck with nothing to do only think. Think about her. Because it seems every time he gets a blank moment, in she slips. And he doesn't want that. He can think about work, Ma, Jackie, work again. But he will not allow himself to think about
her
.

He turns on the radio. A procession of women's voices; variations on a theme of selfish bastard husbands. ‘He swore to me,
swore
like that he'd be back after Sicily and now he's off to that other place, that—'

‘Genoa?' the presenter helpfully suggests.

‘Yea there. Sleepin on the street like a tramp and askin me to send money. I mean to say – our
mortgage
money.'

‘OK, stay there, Carmel. I want to bring Imelda in on this. Imelda, now tell us about your husband – he set off for two days, how long ago was that now?'

He switches to another station. A singer screaming blue murder; male, female, he couldn't say which but it's like getting your head kicked in from the inside out. He switches off the radio altogether and turns his thoughts on Jackie again. His brother is starting to wriggle. His brother wants out.
Of course, he takes it too personally, this whole business with Ma. This whole ‘gaga carry-on' as calls it himself – as if she's doing it all for the fun of it. And the thing is, the
oddest
thing is Farley doesn't mind her that much at all. He'd prefer it not to be happening, of course. He'd prefer her not to be there at all. To be somewhere else, a nursing home maybe or even, if he's to be honest, in a plot in a graveyard that he could plonk a few flowers down on now and then. But she doesn't repulse him, not like she does Jackie. Other things get to him. The sense that death is waiting every time he puts the key in the door. But that's nothing to do with pity or love. That's all got to do with Martina. Martina's last months – that's what he hates. Whereas Jackie on the other hand just hates Ma.

He tries the radio again. More talk about the match. He's a pain in his hole listening about the match. He'll watch it, feel it, live and breathe it. He just won't listen to any more waffle from any more back-seat drivers. He lowers the radio, leaving a purr of voices to cover the silence. Then he flaps open his briefcase. Dipping his hand in, he fiddles about at the various papers until the rim of a yellow page shows – the schedule. He takes it out and rests it on the dial of the steering wheel. Five summonses that should have been served by now; solicitors threatening to go elsewhere if they don't get the finger out. He runs down the list. Two of them to be served in Fitzwilliam Square; a doctor and some poor fucker who thought he could make a living out of renting out fax machines. A woman who owns a boutique off Grafton Street. The doctor and the boutique owner – handy enough – bread-and-butter jobs, won't want a scene in front of customers. What next? A summons for St Michael's Estate – how had he missed that? He snaps the page with the back of his fingers. He could have gone there first, caught the punter unawares at this hour of the morning, missed all this traffic while he was at it. ‘Ah fuck, fuck, and fuckit anyway,' he says.

He goes back to the list, the last name on it: Larry Phelan, a mainten -ance dodger – always a pain, usually have someone to cover for them too. ‘He's not here, he was never here, O that's right I just remembered, he's dead.' Three unsuccessful attempts already made on Phelan. Farley turns
the page and reads the report: ‘No reply from the premises at blablababa. Two cars in the driveway, BMW and a Fiat Punto.' Second attempt: ‘Only the BMW in drive. A man answered the door but never heard of anyone called Phelan.' Third time: ‘Saturday morning only the Fiat, this time a woman answered, said the man called Phelan had moved to Australia.'

Of course, it would not have occurred to Easton to join up the dots. That's if he bothered doing anything more than driving past on one occasion.

He picks up the car phone and calls Noreen.

‘Where are you callin from?'

‘The car.'

‘O yea, keep forgetting I'm working for James Bond now. What's up?'

‘That summons – out in Rathfarnham, the maintenance dodger – was there a check run to see who owns those two cars, do you know?'

‘Funny you should ask about that – Easton has just been on.'

‘What's he want?'

‘A reference.'

‘Does he not realize he's been sacked? Does he not realize that when you write something down in a report it's supposed to be true? And does he not realize it's down to him that we could lose one of our best clients? And God knows what else he's made a balls of while he's been at it. This Phelan case for example.'