Cold Eye of Heaven, The (17 page)

And so it might have stayed out there in Donnybrook, only for Lennon. He keeps coming back to Lennon, because if Lennon hadn't been shot then Farley would never have pulled into the spot down the quay from the Clarence Hotel to listen to the radio news. And if he hadn't pulled in he wouldn't have seen Slowey dip in through the hotel doors and by turn wouldn't have decided to dip in after him. And then the conversation,
that
conversation, could never have happened.

He had followed Slowey into the Clarence because he wanted to discuss the summons for that priest out in Sandycove. Or because he'd felt a bit shook after hearing the news about Lennon and wanted to talk to someone about it. Or because he wanted to ask about the Christmas holidays. Or maybe just because he fancied the idea of the Clarence on a winter's morning, hot coffee in a dainty cup, a fire bouncing in the grate. For whatever reason, he had followed him.

Inside the Clarence there'd been the usual hush. A priest in the corner behind the door, drinking brandy behind a spread of newspaper. He could hear the clink and fuss of table-setting coming from the dining room and from a pair of barristers hunched under the long churchy windows, whispers drifted into the echo. An elderly maid polishing the hood of the phone booth bobbed a ‘good morning, sir' as he passed. And he had felt in good form and vaguely pleased with himself, as he tends to do whenever he goes through the foyer of the Clarence and remembers the way he used to be when he first started working for Slowey; embarrassed, guilty even, as if he'd had no right to be there and could find himself thrown out on his ear.

In the main bar, everything solid and contained; the fire, the wooden panels on the wall, the cranky porter wandering in and out pretending to be busy. At the bar, the bulky back of a man wearing a tweed coat and hat; behind it, a scarlet-faced barman. He hadn't seen Slowey at first, what with
the dim light and the distraction of the voice coming out from the bank of tweed. Loud, lordly – possibly English – on the way to or from being drunk anyway.

‘He means the
other
Lennon,' Slowey's voice said. ‘
John
Lennon from the Beatles.' And Farley saw him then, on the bend of the counter smoking a cigar. Slowey then turned to the barman, ‘… and
he
means the other Lenin, you know, the Russian revolutionary?'

The tweed coat drained his glass then lifted it out to the barman like a child looking for another sup of milk. The barman took a clean glass down and looked sideways at Slowey. Neither seemed to know what he was on about. Slowey rolled his eyes at Farley and said, ‘Jaysus, blankety blank. Come on, we'll go inside.' As he moved away he raised his glass to the barman and tapped it with his fingernail, ‘Another one of these and… coffee is it?'

‘Coffee,' Farley said.

They had the small back bar to themselves. Early of course. He'd been surprised to find Slowey drinking whiskey at this hour of the morning but of course had made no remark. A peculiar mood, Farley could see that straight away. It made him feel he was intruding, like he'd better throw out an excuse for being there at all. The news about Lennon was already too old to use as an opener so he ventured instead, ‘I saw you while I was driving on the quay and came in because see I wanted to ask you—'

‘Yea?' Slowey shifting around in the seat, shoulders shrugging, smoking the cigar that bit too quickly, taking up enough space for three men on the seat while he was at it. Not really listening.

‘O, I was just wondering if you decided about the Christmas break yet? That's all. See Jackie phoned last night and I said I'd ask.'

‘You thinkin of going over there?'

‘No. Well, I might after Christmas like. But I don't mind either if I don't.'

Slowey showed one eye over the cigar. The coffee arrived. The
barman went back to the main bar.

‘How long have you been workin for me, Farley?'

‘Since I was mid-twenties. Twenty years so. Why?'

‘You ever think of working anywhere else? I mean, I'm sure you must have had the odd offer – the wolves that are in this fuckin game.'

‘You're not sacking me, are you?'

‘No. Of course I'm not. I'm tippin you off, is all.'

‘Tipping me off?'

Slowey gave the cigar a short round lollipop-suck.

‘Look. Keep this to yourself right? The business – it's in trouble. And I don't know how and I don't know if – ah, it's this fuckin recession for a start or whatever they're calling it. And that bleedin National Understanding on top of it all. You know what the understanding is, don't you? It's that the employer goes out, grovels, gropes, begs for work, then the employee, instead of thanking him for a job grabs him by the nuts and squeeeeezes.'

‘Right.'

‘Yea, right. If they're not fuckin whingeing, they're calling a strike. They'll dismantle this country, same as they dismantled England – know what I'm sayin?' A longer suck this time. Then he'd pulled out the cigar and frowned at it. ‘I mean, grand, we might have some chance of gettin over all that but there's worse.'

‘Worse?'

‘Some prick has put a claim in against us. Don't worry, not on your patch – a Land Reg. job. Something that nine times out of ten wouldn't even be noticed but this little opportunistic bollix saw a chance to make a kill and in he goes like a light. A Spaniard. That size – yea, a Spanish midget. Drives a Mercedes, he can barely see over the wheel. Around my age, and he wears a leather jacket with a zip up the front. That's right, a fuckin zip up the front. One of those fuckers – know what I mean? Well, I either pay up or I can kiss me arse goodbye to insurance for next year. No indemnity insurance – no work. Or I could let it go to court and risk losing everything. Anyway, no point in going into all that now, mainly
because I'll give myself a fuckin heart attack – you know? A fuckin heart attack. Do you want another coffee?'

‘I haven't even begun this one.'

Slowey walloped back his whiskey and rapped it off the edge of the table. The barman peeped in, nodded and disappeared.

‘What will you do?' Farley had asked then.

‘Don't know. I'd sell up, but who's goin to buy a business in trouble? I could look for a partner but again, who the fuck wants to be a partner in a business that's going down the tubes? Not in this day and age. But I'll tell you what I won't be doing – and that's movin into the new house in spring, just a few weeks away from completion too. Jaysus, I've to tell Kathleen that yet. Happy fuckin Christmas, sweetheart – wha? I'll find a buyer for the house, wouldn't you think? Five bedrooms and a double garage – a double garage, fuck! When I think of it.'

They'd sat in silence then, Farley sipping the bitter end of the coffee, Slowey fidgeting beside him and suckling the cigar until Farley got up and went out to the jacks. And somewhere along the corridor or going up the speckled stone stairs, or having a slash or coming back down the stairs, he had somehow, without really realizing it, more or less made his decision.

‘How much like would a partner have to put in?' he'd asked when he sat back down, ‘just as a matter of interest.'

‘Depends.'

‘I mean, how much, how much would it take to get you out of trouble – to keep the business going?'

‘Twenty-five grand. But I'd still have to sell the house. Why, do you know someone who's won the sweeps or something?'

‘Ah, just wondering, that's all. It's a lot of money.'

‘Who are you tellin?'

On the way out to Donnybrook he'd got stuck behind an H-block demonstration, the chant coming through the windows – ‘WHAT DO WE WANT?' ‘POLITICAL STATUS!' ‘WHEN DO WE WANT IT?' ‘NOW!'
Pictures of young men stuck on the end of wooden posts, who were starving themselves to death. And whereas before he'd felt sympathy for them, just at that moment he'd felt like plowing through the crowd in his rush to get to the bank, to get one step ahead of himself, before he got sense and changed his mind.

Farley sits down at the kitchen table, moulds the latest page into a ball and this time flips it over one shoulder, where it sounds like it may have landed in the sink. He pulls another page from the pad and flattens it out in front of him. Then he picks up the pen. ‘Dear Frank,' he writes. Beneath that, ‘I just wanted to say…' He sits back, thinks for a moment before saying aloud, ‘I just wanted to say what? Come on, you fuckin thick – what did you just want to say?'

Outside the air is stippled with the hungry twitters of birds. He listens for a moment, then puts down the pen and picks up the bank draft. A paper slip with a few figures jotted on it and a round banker's stamp on the bottom. A promise – his own or the bank's, that he doesn't quite trust. Because somewhere between his childhood and his manhood, money seemed to turn into something else, something abstract; a notion that floats around in the air. You don't have to see it to have it – in fact the more you have, the less you probably see. He'd enjoyed being able to bring the draft around with him, just knowing it was there and that he was, for a while at least, comparatively rich, compared to most blokes he'd know anyway. It had put a little swagger to his walk, thrown a bit of light on his day, he'd even found himself playing up to the women. It had been good to know that even though he never would, he could, if he wanted, draw it out like a gun. He'd brought it into work each day, then home again each evening. Occasionally he had taken it out of one pocket and transferred it into another; his gardening trousers when he mulched the perennials, his corduroys when he dragged Ma's Christmas tree down from the attic and then spent an hour twiddling with light bulbs and wondering if he should tell her his plan, which of course he didn't. It was in his navy suit jacket
when he went on the office drinks do, where he'd hoped to get a chance to talk with Slowey; chance after chance slipping away until Slowey got so pissed he couldn't talk at all. It was still with him on Christmas Eve when he stood for a half an hour in Kelty's butcher picking up Ma's Christmas turkey.

‘New York dressed?' the butcher had said, laying the turkey out on the counter overarm like a garment while Farley prepared for the seasonal joke. ‘Says you – if that's the way they dress in New York they can stuff it.'

And he had felt like saying, ‘Is that supposed to be funny? Because it wasn't funny last year and what makes you think it'll be funny now and by the way, I'm carrying a bank draft for twenty-five thousand quid in me pocket, you stupid bollix.'

Until today he had only taken it out of the envelope once – that time he rang Jackie back to lie about how sorry he was he couldn't get the time off work to go over to see him. He had flapped it about a bit and tapped it off his nose while Jackie had lied back to him about what a shame that was because he'd really been looking forward to showing him around London.

‘But listen, I sent that few quid over anyway.'

‘O great,' Jackie had said, perking up because, let's face it, that's all he'd really wanted, the money. ‘Eh, when did you say you sent it again?'

‘Yesterday.'

‘So it may not get here till after…?'

‘O sorry, didn't think.'

‘Ah no, you're grand. Eh, how much did you say it was for?'

‘A hundred.'

‘A hundred,' he'd repeated.

Was there a whiff of disappointment in his voice? Farley wonders now. Because that would be Jackie all over. No matter what you'd do for him he'd never be satisfied. Like you still owed him something. And why exactly? Because once upon a long time ago he'd had a book of poetry published, a book so skinny it wouldn't swat a fly and now he works as a teacher in some kip in the arsehole of London?

Farley had hung up the phone and said, ‘If you're so fuckin clever
how come you're always so skint? And how come you never copped that Martina, working in an insurance company, would have herself well insured?' And then he had slapped the phone with the bank draft, once, twice, three times, like it was Jackie's face. And the funny thing was, even though Jackie hadn't heard a word of it, he'd felt great after, not at all like he usually feels at the end of these telephone conversations with Jackie – off colour and slightly bereft.

Farley brings himself back to the letter, testing a few start-up sentences on the air. ‘Dear Frank, if you are still. No.
If
you like I. No. I have this proposal to make. No, no, no fuck it –
no
.'

He takes the pen again and begins writing. ‘Dear Frank, I'm enclosing a bank draft for twenty-five thousand and hope you will consider…' Consider what? Farley stares at the page a while then pushes it off the side of the table. He waits for it to flutter to the ground, then tears a new one off the thinning pad and holds it up to the light. ‘Dear Frank, I'm enclosing a bank draft and hope you will consider taking me on as a partner in Slowey & Co. I meant to bring it up before now but thought you could do with the few days off to consider…' Consider? He's after using that word twice. Isn't that what Jackie said that time when he was advising him about writing letters – never use the same word more than once in a paragraph? And anyway, it's all too formal, too much like a letter looking for a job. Like he's begging Slowey to take twenty-five grand off him. ‘What is wrong with you?' he says and whacks the heel of his hand off his forehead.

He stands up, goes out to the hall, then into the parlour, then back out to the hall where he sits on the third stair from the bottom, staring out at the glass bubbles of grey light through the front door. The day he was married his mother had given him a hundred-pound note. And he remembers this now for the first time in years. A beautiful olive-green thing. Lady Lavery on one side. A smirking river head on the other. It had a power and mystery that same note. He can't remember how or when they spent it in the end, but they'd held onto it as long as they could. It
even came on the honeymoon. The note laid out on the bed between them and Martina giddy after the few Dubonnets and white with a towel pulled around her head, pointing at Lady Lavery and saying, ‘That's me,' and then turning over to the river head, ‘and that hairy randy-looking yoke – that's you!' And the clumsy overexcited sex they had then, the pair of them like chronic asthmatics, hardly able to breathe with a hunger for each other. And he had thought, Ah, this is fuckin great, this being married lark, able to do this anytime you like, no more groping and hoping in shop doorways and up lanes, this is the business now.