Cold Eye of Heaven, The (8 page)

He stands in the doorway of the main office, looking through. The cleaners have been – wax polish over the dry, musted aroma of paper. Above all that a taint of lavender. The lavender not real of course, but from one of Noreen's plug-in contraptions: Ocean Breeze, Highland Heather,
Malaysian Mist or some such. She'll often make him guess and he'll play along to please her – although they all stink the same to him. He likes this vantage point – one room blending into the next; the feeling of space and possibility. The opposite to his own little house – like living in a snackbox, as he overheard some snide bitch say the day of Martina's funeral. It appeals to him too, the sense of past lives that have been lived in here; first as reception room for a family of merchants. Later a tenement flat for God knows how many. Later again a series of come-and-go offices before Slowey & Co., Legal & Town Agents, finally came to roost here. Chrissy once told him that these two rooms were a ballet school in the twenties and that she could remember, when she was a child, the girls doing their bar exercises along the walls and the walls themselves lined with mirrors so that just a few could make it look like a full company of ballerinas. He had just loved the idea of that. Slowey, of course, had knocked it on the head: ‘Do you not think now, there'd be traces, the mark of a nail, a Rawl-plug – something?' he'd asked, stroking a large dismissive hand over the walls. And he'd been sorry after that he'd mentioned it at all.

He comes into the office and stops in the centre. He could happily live here in these two rooms. Not now maybe, but a couple of years down the road. After he came back from his big trip, gotten used to his new life, his new money. Money made anything possible. What he'd do now is this – turn the back office into his bedroom, maybe knock a door in the side wall to give direct access to the kitchen, the jacks too of course, stick in a shower while he's at it; something decent like you'd see in a hotel. The front room here meanwhile could be his living area – sofa by that wall near the window, desk (he'd have to keep the desk) at an angle over there. And the two fireplaces of course; Italian marble. He'd have them opened up. In winter he could light a fire in the bedroom – the luxury of that! Lying in bed watching firelight pat up the walls. And to be living right in the centre of town – it could open up your whole life. Better than walking the streets of a housing estate day after day like some bewildered oulone, up and down to the shops, stopping at gossipy corners. Or else fluting around in the front garden, hoping someone would drop an hello over the
railing. The suburbs is no place for a man. Not unless he's a dedicated drinker. Nothing to inspire, nowhere to go. Where do they go? A few of the retired men on his road joined the gym in the new hotel up near the Naas Road. He'd considered it, for about half a minute. The thoughts of the changing rooms had put him off; oulfellas standing around in the nip, hands on hips, waggling their nudgers at each other, while they pontificated on the issues of the day; issues that were really no longer any of their business. A city would be different but. A city could make you feel part of itself. He could join something; a film society, a chess club. Learn how to play chess first of course. He could go to the theatre, broaden his range, start reading the
Guardian
maybe, like Jackie – give himself something to talk about. You'd never see Jackie short of a topic. He could make new friends, invite them round for a drink. ‘You know,' he'd say, resting a careless arm across the back of his new leather sofa, ‘in the twenties this used to be a ballet school.'

He passes through the front office, into the back. The rack is filled with job sheets hanging like bunting, corner to corner; jobs for today, jobs for tomorrow, jobs for next week. He is leaving the business in good fettle; it both pleases and saddens him to know this. In the middle of the room, a big square table is topped with telephones. On one wall pigeonholes climb towards the ceiling. A counter runs the length of the other two walls. The fax machine, the photocopier over to the side. In between, the nap of the carpet worn down like footpaths in grass. The turn and return of clerical footsteps. How many have worked in this room? Must be near to a hundred clerks clocked up by now. Unusual names may drift into his head now and then: Titley, Wheatley, Carabini, Quirke. Or faces maybe of some who, for one reason or another, left a mark. That Easton bloke that he'd had to sack one time. Or the ginger messenger boy from Longford who threw all the deliveries in the Liffey and pretended he'd been robbed. But the truth is, once gone, usually forgotten. Alright in ones or twos, for a drink at the bar or a bit of company walking up to the courts, but an annoying bunch of fuckers, by and large – much as he was himself at that age. The stupid jokes and young man's swagger; Monday morning farts
and the stink of cheap aftershave; the countless umbrages and senseless cruelties; the know-alls and the know-fuck-alls – will he miss any of that? he wonders.

Farley comes back to his own office and stands at the window. Outside on the quay, a shoal of passers-by. Across the road, a foreign-looking youngfella is huddled by the river wall, begging. It used only be the tinkers you'd see; Paddy the knacker, women with children shawled into tartan rugs – a little some-hin for the babbee, God'll give you great luck – he will in his bollix, he often felt like saying. But you only ever see foreigners begging now. He doesn't know why this should make him feel proud, but it does.

Noreen, he will miss. He'd interviewed her himself, God knows how many years ago. A smiley little thing in a pink fluffy jumper, scratching her forearm. Just out of secretarial college and O so eager to please. Slowey had slagged him at the time about keeping his hands to himself. ‘Youngones love a bit tragedy,' he had said, referring to the fact that he was a young widower, ‘so you keep your eyes
and
your hands on the job.' But he'd known she'd be no distraction – not with the woman he had on his mind then, filling every inch and corner of it. A silent screeching siren, only he could hear.

He looks down at Noreen's desk, adorned with the toys of a middle-aged clerical typist: baubles and dangly toys, pictures. A framed photo of Clinton with her own face superimposed on it, so that it looks like her head is lying on his shoulder. A holiday postcard from her mother, now dead. A photo of her husband before he went gaga, a pitch-and-putt trophy in his hand. And hanging overhead the birdcage of course, a planted pot standing in place of the tailor's parrot. Back in the hallway he throws a glance up the stairs. The tailor topped himself up there, on the second-floor landing. A Saturday afternoon, some time in the seventies. Summertime, because he can remember the sisters were away on holiday, and down here in the office they'd been getting the accounts in order for an audit; Slowey, Noreen, himself. It was the squawks of the parrot brought them upstairs. Slowey had cut the tailor down. Noreen rang for
the police. It had been clear from the room that the tailor had been living there. A filthy sleeping bag rolled into the corner. Scraps of cloth on a long table; fractions of unsewn suits all over the floor; a small primus stove on the window ledge; a bottle of curdled milk. When the guards left they went over to the Abbey Mooney for a drink; somewhere quiet, Slowey had said, where they wouldn't run into anyone and have to make conversation. Best keep this to ourselves, they'd agreed, huddled together in a corner like abandoned children.

The violence of the death had been what really upset Noreen. The fact that he should choose to die that way when he'd left no one behind him. ‘Why didn't he just slip quietly away,' she had said, ‘take sleeping tablets or something – you know? It's like he was trying to punish someone. But who?'

‘Himself maybe?' Farley had suggested. And Noreen had covered her face in her hands.

‘Or the parrot?' Slowey said. And Noreen had taken her hands away. They'd looked at each other, shocked for a second and then suddenly they couldn't seem to stop laughing.

Farley looks across the hallway; two doors to two offices. The one on the right belongs to Frank. The other one was, at one time, intended for Farley. They had taken over the two rooms after the dress-hire woman had packed it in, leaving a right bang behind her – old perfume and dead women's sweat – that no amount of airing or Noreen's Highland Heather could subdue. For a few years they'd used the space for storage, then, when Farley became a partner, it had been decided to turn them into offices. One for Frank, the other for himself. About which time young Tony Slowey decided to honour the company with his presence. And so Farley had let him have the office. Partly because he knew that the others wouldn't work well for Tony out in the main room, and partly because Frank, without quite asking, had asked.

He turns the doorknob of Tony's office – locked, of course. The cute bastard, no doubt has something to hide.

The door to Frank's office opens with a tell-tale-tattler's whine; the neatness inside betrays the fact that Frank hasn't so much as stuck his nose in for the past few weeks. Because between one thing and another and Cheltenham included, he's been sticking it elsewhere. ‘Time for us oulfellas to start taking a step back,' he'd said, a few years after Tony had come in. What he'd really meant was, time for you to stay where you are, and for me to spend more time racing. Not that he'd minded – the truth was he'd rather have been here than anywhere else. And besides, someone had to keep an eye on young Slowey.

At the desk now he pulls out a drawer. Old notebooks and legal forms that have recently become obsolete. A confetti of ancient bookie dockets. A stainless steel comb. At the back the baby bottle of brandy that Frank always keeps for bad news and accidents. He opens the second drawer: an array of unused gifts from various staff members over the years; lighters still in their boxes; cartons of old cigars; pen and pencil sets, or pens on their own – like nobody ever noticed that Frank, apart from the very odd cigar, had given up smoking and that due to some obscure little superstition, has always preferred to write in an ordinary green-inked biro. In the last drawer Farley finds an old-fashioned hardbacked ledger – Slowey & Co.; 1960 – their very first job book. He flicks through the pages, plenty of them blank. The end of June 1960 records forty-nine jobs for the month. By December the number has increased to 102. Slowey's green comment at the bottom of the pages: ‘A hundred jobs in one month. Did we ever think we'd see the day!!!!' Farley claps the book shut; a hundred jobs in a month? They'd see that in one day now, and the rest of it.

Replacing the job book he notices the silver corner of a photograph frame. Cracked glass at one corner. The frame nearly comes apart in his hand. He lays it carefully on the desk, puts on his specs and the Slowey family shift into focus. Michael's first communion day; taken about twenty years ago, judging by the age of the kids. There's Tony, like a bean-pole, the big mop of hair on him, of which not one blade remains. Miriam next, a teenager dressed up like a little oulone. And young Jamesie looking down at his feet, as if he's ashamed to be part of the family photo. At one
end of the group sits Slowey, his hand on little Michael's shoulder; steadying him up. And Kathleen on the far end, in a ladylike perch on the edge of the photographer's sofa. He remembers that dress – green leaves with flecks of orange, although time and the camera have dulled its colours. He remembers the matching shoes and bag too. The dress was made of a silky material. Farley returns the frame to the bottom of the drawer, then changes his mind. He takes it back out, pulls it apart and releases the photograph, then lifting the wastepaper basket to the corner of the desk, scoops bits of wood, glass and sly little nails, into its open mouth.

He lifts the photograph, folds it once, then twice, then eases it like a letter into an envelope which he slips into his inside pocket. He notices then a shiny red seed of blood on the inside of his trigger finger. Closing the door behind him, he sucks it.

Back in his own office Farley sits at his desk; his own little territory. His field of land. He has always loved the old-fashioned sense of importance about it, the insert of green baize, the weight of the drawers in his hand. They got it at an auction somewhere off the South Circular road – the Office of Public Works giving the stuff away, in their hurry to modernize the civil service. A relic from a non-disposable past – himself and Frank had nearly broken their backs getting it up the steps.

Farley lifts his head and looks into the room, a lurch in his stomach that feels a bit like homesickness. He comes back to the stack of letters waiting for his signature; reports on summonses served, or failed to be served; files that need a final update before he passes them on to dopey Brendan who'll frown at them for a while before thumping his stamp on them and passing the buck back over to Noreen. His eye catches on the last paragraph of the top letter… ‘let me just add that's it's been a pleasure doing business with your company over the years and that I retire safe in the knowledge that Slowey & Co. will continue to serve…'

He throws his signature across the bottom of two letters but he can't seem to sit still or concentrate for more than a few seconds. It's like all this energy is squeezing through his veins and he'll burst if he doesn't get rid of it quick. After the long walk into work and the lack of sleep in an
endless last night, he'd thought he'd be at least glad of a sit-down. A mixture of dread and excitement had kept him awake, like a kid at Christmas who knows where his ma has hidden the presents but still can't help worrying that Santy won't come. He stands again, arches his back, begins pacing the floor. At what point should he start giving out his own little presents that he's bought for the staff? Cufflinks for the blokes, bracelets for the girls. Before the party? Or maybe just leave them here for them to open themselves when he's already gone? A day from his childhood comes to him; the day after his first communion when he'd spent all his money on sweets for the boys in his class because he'd been the only Catholic in their little school and had felt bad for getting a day off and a new suit of clothes and the few bob of course, on top of everything else. And he remembers going around, the fat, holy face on him, handing out the sweets with a sanctimonious air, and then later getting battered by Jimmy Ball for his trouble and then getting another wallop from his mother when he got home because there'd been blood from his nose all over his good new suit. He glances at the bag of presents, the small individual cards he's written, the messages and little jokes inside each one, that he'd tried to make personal. The cards no doubt that would be turfed into the bin in a day or two and he worries now that the presents will make him seem like some sort of a sap. He's struggling with the notion of maybe hiding them away somewhere, not giving them out at all, when he hears Noreen pushing on the front door: a quarter to nine. Bang on the second. He listens to her fiddling around with the locks and knows he should go out and open it for her, because it'll take a few goes before she realizes that somebody has already opened the door and that she's in the process of locking herself back out again. But he's too nervous suddenly; shy even. He stands at the window and watches the jig of her elbow, her clenched shoulders, the slight lopsided pull to her right shoulder. Her face. Even in profile it has the strain of her husband written all over it. The front door gives; Noreen steps into the hall.