Cold Eye of Heaven, The (21 page)

‘What's that?'

‘A good ride.' He points his finger at Farley then hits him on the top of his arm. ‘Careful – you nearly cracked a smile there.'

He's halfway down the path when Farley calls after him, ‘Cal?'

‘Yea.'

‘Just wonderin – is Frank, you know, is he goin mad?'

‘Nahh. He's just worried about you, that's all. We're all worried about you, son.' He opens the gate, closes it and points his nose towards town. ‘Doesn't mean he won't sack you though.'

He watches Uncle Cal bustle down the road and then slowly makes his way up the stairs. Keeping one eye on the ceiling he listens out for something strange and alive. Behind the everyday household gurgles and creaks there is silence. He doesn't know how long he's been standing outside the bedroom door; the door of the room he shared with Martina. He's push -ing it open now anyhow and even if the rat took up a cane and started to dance and sing Dixie, he wouldn't be able to hear it over the punch of his own heart.

A long time since he's been in this room – months maybe – the first time he's been in here sober since she died anyway. The wardrobe door is partly open; sleeves of her clothes peering out, one toppled tan leather boot beneath them. The bed is completely bare; the stark cloth of the mattress jars him. It was Mrs Carroll who stripped it. ‘Let me know,' she had said, ‘let me know when you're ready to sort through her things and I'll give you a hand.' He had nodded, turned away, unable to bear the sight of her kind brown eyes.

He sits on the end of the bed. Her side. He sits as he would have done on mornings when he'd time to bring her a cup of tea. Mornings before she was really sick, because from then on, even if she hurled the tea straight back up into the sick bucket, he always made sure to have time. He wasn't all bad.

He stares up the bed at the headrest, scanning it for the flimsiest piece
of evidence that he once had a wife who once had black hair, who once had slept there. And that he had once slept beside, on top of, and spooned behind her. But Mrs Carroll has done such a good job of cleaning the place, not a trace, even of his Brylcreem-slicked head, his own little run mark, remains.

He lies back on the mattress, eyes closed, feet on the ground. He remembers the morning he woke in this bed and found her dead beside him. It was August and clammy, which is probably why, before he was fully awake, he noticed the cold patch on his arm where her hand had been resting. And a presence – which was odd, because surely it should have been an absence? A strange awkward presence, anyway, as if a thief had come into the room during the night and couldn't find a way out again. That was the morning after he'd gone on the piss with Uncle Cal. He was only supposed to be giving him a lift; one of those memorial service jobs they throw the odd time, for all the old codgers who'd fought in the Rising. And he hadn't liked to leave Cal to make his own way home, so had decided to hang around for a bit and wait. He had started to drink, one pint first, then another. About halfway down the third he felt this warmth coasting through him and it became a sort of joy to be there amongst all these old men who had seemed so alive and vibrant compared to the young death waiting at home. He was enjoying himself; it was as simple as that.

In the course of the evening he had phoned her – he wasn't all bad. And her voice – now that he thinks of it – the last time he would have properly heard it, told him to enjoy his few drinks. But not to drive the car if he got buckled. ‘Is there someone sober there could drive it for you?' she had said.

‘Course there is,' he'd answered, looking in at a crowd of scuttered oul lads, doddering on the edge of their seats.

She'd been asleep when he got home. Not dead, no, definitely not dead. Because he could remember rubbing her bare head with the palm of his hand, the strange, suede feel of it and her saying ‘Shhh' to him.
Shhh
. She died in the night. The doctor said she would have felt no pain. But what
did he know about the pain of her nights? All those empty hours she'd had to endure, sitting up holding her head in her hands from the pain of medication that just wasn't working? What did he know about her husband who had tried to stay awake with her, tried to share the parallel life she was leading. Usually falling back asleep soon enough, but at least he tried – he wasn't all… Bad. And he would start every day by asking, ‘How did you sleep after?' and even if he knew she was lying, he'd call her a good girl when she said yes. Like sleep, any sleep was an achievement. Which of course it was, in the end.

Her cold hand on his arm. That's what kills him. The fact that she may have been frightened, have known this was it, this was the end now, and had been trying to wake him, trying to call his name. And him lying like a lump of meat beside her snoring his head off; the Guinness souring in his stomach, sweating and farting its way out.

Farley opens his eyes. He wants to tell someone how bad he feels, but there's no one to tell. If the phone was working he could go downstairs and pick it up and call a priest or a Samaritan or fuck it, the talking clock. And what would he say? ‘The night my wife died I was too drunk to notice.'

He says these words now, out loud. ‘The night my wife died I was too drunk to notice.' He shoots them up at the ceiling; twice, maybe three times and it makes him feel a bit better. An image comes into his head then, of the rat, on the other side of the ceiling. In black profile, an intelligent tilt to his head, a paw or a claw or whatever the fuck they have, resting on the side of his nose. Hearing his confession. The idea comforts him; the absurdity of it, along with the sound of his own voice, which seems the most absurd thing of all.

Farley turns to his side, pulls his knees up towards his chest and thinks about those few weeks just after the funeral. He had loved his wife completely. Completely. And yet after she'd died – a day or two after – every and any woman he'd come across he had wanted to knock the arse off her. Any shape or size, from twenty to ninety – it didn't really matter. His beautiful wife dead, warm in her grave, and him going around on a permanent horn.

He sits up again, puts his feet on the floor, stares into a stupid-looking picture on the wall of a tree in a field that someone gave them for a wedding present. It makes him think of the brasser. The brasser he picked up a couple of weeks after Martina died. Benburb Street, in the lashing of rain. He'd brought her up to the Phoenix Park in the car. Paid her the tenner in advance. And as she'd begun climbing all over his lap, trying to get him going and get his mickey out and up and have the whole thing over as quick as she could so she could move on to the next punter, he began to feel this rage take a hold of him, as if it was all her fault, that it was
she
who was disrespecting his wife. He'd pushed her off and out of his way. He'd called her a poxbottle and she'd called him a bollix and then he'd leaned over and opened the car and shoved her out in the rain. He had no doubt that he'd hurt her. Not intentionally but just the same. And he'd driven off up the road with the passenger door swinging open. The sight of her in the rear-view mirror with her dress up around her arse and her arms waving and her mouth wide open screaming like a witch down the road after him under the rain.

Farley looks at the photo standing on the dressing table; Martina holding her younger sister's baby in her arms. The sister not married five minutes when she was pregnant. ‘What sort of a man am I?' he asks the little group.

He stands and his face is wet. He didn't even know he'd been crying. Pulling the end of his jumper up he gives his face a swipe. The things he'd forgotten, the things he'd rolled up into tight little balls and burrowed into the cracks in the walls. The next phase. Jesus, when he thinks of the next phase. Farley hears himself let out a small, tight laugh as he walks around to the far side of the bed. The wanking weeks. After the brasser he'd started coming in here to have a wank. Three, maybe four times a day. It was like being a youngfella again; red raw from pulling himself off. He'd usually go for one of Martina's pillows. Hold it in his arms and pull away. One night – Jesus, now that he thinks of it – he even put a nightdress over the pillow.

Farley stands with his back to the window and lets the minutes pass
away. After a while he pulls a pair of his shoes out of the wardrobe. Socks still stuffed inside them. Socks he'd have worn when she was alive. He sits down, brushes the looser dirt off the soles of his feet and puts the socks and shoes on. Taking his time he leaves the bedroom and comes back down the stairs. In the hall he looks at the ceiling again. ‘So, Father Rat, what do you think?' he says. ‘What do you say? Am I absolved?' A noise in the kitchen. He feels himself stiffen. What sort of noise – he can't make it out. A thrashing sound, like a whip. The fucking rat, the half-poisoned rat, his tail lashing out against the walls of the press. O Jesus. O fuck. He reaches for the phone, remembers then that it's been cut off, drops it, opens the front door, closes it, then opens it again. Next door. He'll have to use the phone in the house next door.

He's either dreaming again, or else he's gone mad. Two midgets, dolled up to the nines, are standing in the doorway of Mrs Carroll's hall. Beehived hair on top of their heads, make-up all over their faces, big brassy earrings. They're wearing dresses cut away from their shoulders with wide spangled skirts on them and sparkly high-heeled shoes. The midgets squirm to stay in the frame of the doorway, the skirts of their dresses like umbrellas around them, wavering from side to side.

He just stands there looking at them.

‘
Maaaaam-eeee
,' one of them then shouts into his face, ‘it's Mist-er Grainger from next door.' He realizes then that it must be two of her kids he's looking at.

Mrs Carroll appears out of nowhere wiping her hands on a tea cloth. ‘Ahh Mister Grainger. Come in, come in.'

The two girls, moving as one, waddle to one side to let him through then they push away up the narrow stairs like a two-headed glittery creature.

‘I was wondering if I could I use your…?' he thumbs in the direction of a white phone on a polished table. ‘Mine seems to be out of order.'

‘Certainly, Mister Grainger. You go on right ahead there.' She twists her
head to look up the stairs: ‘Girls, have everything ready now – your lift will be here soon,' then lowers her voice to Farley like she's telling him something in confidence: ‘They're going into the competition in the Claremont. Hence the, you know,' she lifts her finger and twirls it like a wand, all over her face, hair and body. He hasn't a clue what she's on about but nods and picks up the phone.

‘Will you have a cup of tea, Mister Grainger?' she calls from the kitchen, ‘while you're here?'

‘Ah, no thanks, I won't.'

‘A bite to eat then – something. A bit of apple tart? A – a sandwich maybe. I've a nice bit of ham here.' Her face round the door now, her worried, kindly gaze on him.

He must look as if he needs feeding, or maybe women just think all men without women do.

‘How have you been keeping, Mister Grainger?'

‘Great. Not a bother.'

‘I do often mean to drop in but like, you know yourself, I don't like to intrude.'

Her face is all red, like she's embarrassed. He feels it too though he can't make out why. She could be worrying about ringing Uncle Cal of course and ratting on the rat. He could be ashamed of the rat. It could be a simple matter of that illogical awkwardness that the dead seem to leave behind them. Or it could be something to do with the pillows in his bedroom, Martina's nightdress – what if she'd found them, guessed what he'd been up to? He feels the burn on his own face now. They stand looking at each other for a moment, two red faces on opposite ends of the hall, beaming like traffic lights at a crossing.

‘Well, I leave you to your call, Mister Grainger,' she says finally.

Farley nods, looks at the business card and begins to dial.

‘O!' Her head pops out of the kitchen again. She stops when she sees him with the phone in his hand, puts the inside tips of her fingers over her mouth. ‘Sorry.'

‘No, go on – you were saying?'

‘I've a parcel for you. The postman left it in a few weeks ago. Norman knocked in a couple of times but. Well, anyway, I'll leave it there for you.' She lays a bag against the wall nearby him. Farley looks at it, sees the logo.

‘Is it from Clery's?' he asks.

‘O God no, I just put it in there to keep it safe like.'

‘Thanks.'

‘No trouble, Mister Grainger. O and listen, if you want me to go in and help you sort through Martina's things.'

‘O. It's done,' he says, ‘all sorted.'

‘O good. That's good.'

Farley goes back to his phone call; the dialling of numbers, the tone bleating down the line. She still calls him Mister. Probably knows more about his private life than he does; the little secrets women think nothing of telling each other across a garden wall or over an afternoon cup of tea. Martina she called Martina from the word go, but to the woman next door he's always been Mister Grainger.

He can hear the two youngones upstairs dancing and chanting over the landing, ‘One and two, one and two, one to the left, one to the right, one in, one out. One
and
two, one
and
two.'

‘Hello, is that Ronnie the R—' he says. ‘I mean, is that Ronnie?'

The ratcatcher leans his arse on the corner of the kitchen table, a small sack bulging in one hand, a cigarette in the other. He's still wearing his surgical gloves. ‘Right,' he says, ‘we've your man from the kitchen press, your woman from the attic. That should be it now.'

‘Your woman?'

‘Honeymooners by the look of it. Put it this way, she was up the pole – about to pop any minute too. Lucky you called me when you did.'