Creatures of the Earth (12 page)

‘What on earth are you doing, Mother?' He caught her by the hands when she didn't answer.

‘It's time you were up for Mass,' she said.

‘What are you doing with your dresses?'

‘What dresses?'

‘All the dresses you've just been tearing up.'

‘I don't know anything about dresses,' and then he saw there was something wrong. She made no resistance when he led her up the stairs.

For some days she seemed absent and confused but, though he watched her carefully, she was otherwise very little different from her old self, and she did not appear ill. Then he came home one evening to find her standing like a child in the middle of the room, surrounded by an enormous pile of rags. She had taken up from where she'd been interrupted at the herring-bone skirt and torn up every dress or article of clothing she had ever made. After his initial shock he sent for the doctor.

‘I'm afraid it's just the onset of senility,' the doctor said.

‘It's irreversible?'

The doctor nodded, ‘It very seldom takes such a violent form, but that's what it is. She'll have to be looked after.' With a sadness that part of his life was over, he took her to the Home and saw her settled there.

She recognized him when he visited her there the first year, but without excitement, as if he was already far away; and then the day came when he had to admit that she no longer knew who he was, had become like a dog kennelled out too long. He was with her when she died. She'd turned her face towards him. There came a light of recognition in the eyes like a last glow of a match before it goes out, and then she died.

There was nothing left but his own life. There had been nothing but that all along, but it had been obscured, comfortably obscured.

He turned on the radio.

A man had lost both legs in an explosion. There was violence on the night-shift at Ford's. The pound had steadied towards the close but was still down on the day.

Letting his fingers linger on the knob he turned it off. The disembodied voice on the air was not unlike the lost day he'd stumbled into through the light on the beech chips, except it had nothing of its radiance – the funeral during the years he carried it around with him lost the sheltered burden of the everyday, had become light as the air in all the clarity of light. It was all timeless, and seemed at least a promise of the eternal.

He went to draw the curtain. She had made the red curtain too with its pale lining but hadn't torn it. How often must she have watched the moonlight on the still headstones beyond the laurel as it lay evenly on them this night. She had been afraid of ghosts: old priests who had lived in this house, who through whiskey or some other ill had neglected to say some Mass for the dead and because of the neglect the soul for whom the Mass should have been offered was forced to linger beyond its time in Purgatory, and the priest guilty of the omission could himself not be released until the living priest had said the Mass and was forced to come at midnight to the house in all his bondage until the Mass was said.

‘They must have been all good priests, Mother. Good steady old fellows like myself. They never come back,' he used to assure her. He remembered his own idle words as he drew the curtain, lingering as much over the drawing of the curtain as he had lingered over the turning off of the radio. He would be glad of a ghost tonight, be glad of any visitation from beyond the walls of sense.

He took up the battered and friendly missal, which had been with him all his adult life, to read the office of the day. On bad days he kept it till late, the familiar words that changed with the changing year, that he had grown to love, and were as well his daily duty. It must be surely the greatest grace of life, the greatest freedom, to have to do what we love because it is also our duty. He wasn't able to read on this evening among
the old familiar words for long. An annoyance came between him and the page, the Mass he had to repeat every day, the Mass in English. He wasn't sure whether he hated it or the guitar-playing priests more. It was humiliating to think that these had never been such a scourge when his mother had been alive. Was his life the calm vessel it had seemed, dully setting out and returning from the fishing grounds? Or had he been always what he seemed now? ‘Oh yes. There you go again,' he heard the familiar voice in the empty room. ‘Complaining about the Mass in the vernacular. When you prefer the common names of flowers to their proper names,' and the sharp, energetic, almost brutal laugh. It was Peter Joyce,
he
was not dead. Peter Joyce had risen to become a bishop at the other end of the country, an old friend he no longer saw.

‘But they are more beautiful. Dog rose, wild woodbine, buttercup, daisy …'

He heard his own protest. It was in a hotel that they used to go to every summer on the Atlantic, a small hotel where you could read after dinner without fear of a rising roar from the bar beginning to outrival the Atlantic by ten o'clock.

‘And, no doubt, the little rose of Scotland, sharp and sweet and breaks the heart,' he heard his friend quote maliciously. ‘And it's not the point. The reason that names of flowers must be in Latin is that when flower lovers meet they know what they are talking about, no matter whether they're French or Greeks or Arabs. They have a universal language.'

‘I prefer the humble names, no matter what you say.'

‘Of course you do. And it's parochial sentimentalists like yourself who prefer the
smooth sowthistle
to
Sonchus
oleraceus
that's the whole cause of your late lamented Mass in Latin disappearing. I have no sympathy with you. You people tire me.'

The memory of that truculent argument dispelled his annoyance, as its simple logic had once taken his breath away, but he was curiously tired after the vividness of the recall. It was only by a sheer act of will, sometimes having to count the words, that he was able to finish his office. ‘I know one thing, Peter Joyce. I
know that I know nothing,' he murmured when he finished. But when he looked at the room about him he could hardly believe it was so empty and dead and dry, the empty chair where she should be sewing, the oaken table with the scattered books, the clock on the mantel. Wildly and aridly he wanted to curse, but his desire to curse was as unfair as life. He had not wanted it.

Then, quietly, he saw that he had a ghost all right, one that he had been walking around with for a long time, a ghost he had not wanted to recognize – his own death. He might as well get to know him well. It would never leave now and had no mortal shape. Absence does not cast a shadow.

All that was there was the white light of the lamp on the open book, on the white marble; the brief sun of God on beechwood, and the sudden light of that glistening snow, and the timeless mourners moving towards the yews on Killeelan Hill almost thirty years ago. It was as good a day as any, if there ever was a good day to go.

Somewhere, outside this room that was an end, he knew that a young man, not unlike he had once been, stood on a granite step and listened to the doorbell ring, smiled as he heard a woman's footsteps come down the hallway, ran his fingers through his hair, and turned the bottle of white wine he held in his hands completely around as he prepared to enter a pleasant and uncomplicated evening, feeling himself immersed in time without end.

The wind blew the stinging rain from the Gut, where earlier in the bright weather of the summer the Sergeant had sat in the tarred boat, anchored by a rope to an old Ford radiator that clung to the weeds outside the rushes, and watched taut line after taut line cut like cheesewire through the water as hooked roach after hooked roach made a last surge towards the freedom of the open lake before landing slapping on the floorboards. The wind blew the rain from the Gut against the black limestone of the Quarry, where on the wet tar, its pools ruffling in the wet wind, the Sergeant and the young State Surveyor measured the scene of the road accident, both with their collars up and hatted against the rain, the black plastic chinstrap a shining strip on the Sergeant's jaw. ‘What age was he?' the Surveyor asked, as he noted the last measurement in his official notebook and put the tapewheel in his pocket.

‘Eighteen. Wheeling his bicycle up the hill on his way to Carrick, apparently for a haircut, when bang – into the next world via the bonnet, without as much as by your leave.'

‘Will you be able to get manslaughter? From the measurements she wouldn't appear to have a leg to stand on.'

‘Not a snowballs's chance in hell. The family's too well in. You see the wooden cross on the wall there his parents put up, two sticks no more, and they're already complaining: the poor woman has to pass it twice a day on the way to her school and back, and the cross disturbs her, brings back memories, when bygones should be let to be bygones. Her defence is that the
sun blinded her as she came round the Quarry. She'll lose her licence for six months and there'll be an order from the bench for the bend to be properly signposted.'

The Surveyor whistled as he turned towards his car in the forecourt of the Quarry, his back to the rain sweeping from the mouth of the Gut.

‘They're poor, his parents, then?'

‘As mountain snipe.'

‘Fortunately, Sergeant, you and I don't have to concern ourselves with the justice or injustice. Only with the accurate presentation of the evidence. And I have to thank you for those drawings. They are as near professional as makes no difference. I wish all my jobs could be made as easy.'

‘I was good at figures at school,' the Sergeant said awkwardly.

‘Why don't you let me drive you back in the rain?'

‘There's the bike.'

‘That's no problem. I can dump it on the back.'

An evening suit hung in the back of the car, a scarf of white silk draped round the shoulders. On the seat lay an old violin-case.

‘You play the fiddle?' the Sergeant noticed, glad to be in out of the rain beating on the windscreen.

‘Indeed I do. The violin travels with me everywhere. Do you have much taste for music?'

‘When I was young. At the dances. “Rakes of Mallow”. “Devil Among the Tailors”, jigs and reels.'

‘I had to choose once, when I was at university, between surveying and a career in music. I'm afraid I chose security.'

‘We all have to eat.'

‘Anyhow, I've never regretted it, except in the usual sentimental moments. In fact, I think if I had to depend on it for my daily bread it might lose half its magic.'

‘Is it old, the fiddle? The case looks old.'

‘Very old, but I have had it only four years. It has its story. I'm afraid it's a longish story.'

‘I'd like to hear it.'

‘I was in Avignon in France an evening an old Italian musician was playing between the café tables, and the moment I heard its tone I knew I'd have to have it. I followed him from café to café until he'd finished for the evening, and then invited him to join me over a glass of wine. Over the wine I asked him if he'd sell. First he refused. Then I asked him to name some price he couldn't afford not to take. I'm afraid to tell you the price, it was so high. I tried to haggle but it was no use. The last thing he wanted was to sell, but because of his family he couldn't afford to refuse that price if I was prepared to pay it. With the money he could get proper medical treatment – I couldn't completely follow his French – for his daughter, who was consumptive or something, and he'd do the best he could about the cafés with an ordinary violin. I'm afraid I paid up on the spot, but the experts who have examined it since say it was dead cheap at the price, that it might even be a genuine Stradivarius.'

Streets of Avignon, white walls of the royal popes in the sun, glasses of red wine and the old Italian musician playing between the café tables in the evening, a girl dying of consumption, and the sweeping rain hammering on the windscreen.

‘It was in Avignon, wasn't it, if I have the old church history right,' the Sergeant said slowly, ‘that those royal popes had their palaces in the schism? Some of them, by all accounts, were capable of a fandango or two besides their Hail Marys.'

‘The papal palaces are still there. Avignon is wonderful. You must go there. Some of those wonderful Joe Walsh Specials put it within all our reaches. The very sound of the name makes me long for summer.'

‘I'd love to hear you play on that fiddle.'

‘I'm sure that's easily arranged. After all, there's only a few more petty things to check, and then our work is done for the day.'

‘We can play in the barracks, then. There's no one there. Biddy can get us something to eat, and then you can play.'

‘That doesn't matter at all.'

‘Still, the inner man has to be seen to too. Biddy's my housekeeper. She's a good soul, but I must warn you she's deaf as a post and shouts.'

‘Let that be the least of our worries.' The young Surveyor smiled indulgently as the car ground to a stop on the barracks' gravel. ‘Do you find time hard to kill in this place?' he asked as he got out of the car.

‘It's no fun in this weather but in the summer it's fine,' the Sergeant answered while they unroped the bicycle. ‘I take out the old boat you see upside down there under the sycamore. Row it up into the mouth of the Gut and drop the radiator over the side. Time runs like lightning then, feeling the boat sway in the current, a few sandwiches and stout or a little whiskey, and unless there's a bad east wind you're always sure of fish. It's great to feel the first chuck and see the line cut for the lake.'

‘You grill these fish, then?'

‘Sometimes Biddy cooks them but mostly I give them away. I don't care about the eating. It's the day in the good weather, and the fishing. I've often noticed that the people mad about fishing hardly ever care about the eating.'

Biddy was turning the handle of the metal sock-machine clamped to the corner of the table when they came into the big kitchen. Its needles clacked. The half-knit sock, weighted with small pieces of lead, hung close to the cement. She didn't turn around. When the Sergeant placed a hand on her shoulder she did not start. She began to shout something to him. Then she saw the Surveyor with the violin-case in his hand at the door, and drew back.

‘This is Biddy. She knits socks for half the countryside. More to pass the time than for the few pence it brings her. She's proud as punch of her machine. Pay no attention to her for she'll not hear a word you say.'

The Surveyor changed the violin from his right hand to his left before taking Biddy's hand. ‘It's nice to meet you.' As she released his hand she shouted, ‘You're very welcome.' The
Sergeant went and took a bottle of whiskey and two tumblers from a black press in the corner, its glass covered with a faded curtain, joking uncomfortably, ‘I call it the medicine-press,' as the Surveyor opened the violin-case on the table. Biddy stood vacantly by the machine, not sure whether to return to her knitting or not; and as the Sergeant was asking the Surveyor if he would like some water in his whiskey she eventually shouted, ‘Would yous be wanting anything to ate now, would yous?' ‘Yes. In a minute,' the Sergeant mouthed silently. As soon as he poured the water in the whiskey and placed it beside the Surveyor, who had taken the violin from its case and was lovingly removing its frayed black silk, he apologized, ‘I won't be a minute,' and beckoned Biddy to follow him into the scullery. The door was opened on to a small yard, where elder and ash saplings grew out of a crumbling wall. Three hens were perched on the rim of a sawn barrel, gobbling mashed potatoes. As soon as Biddy saw the hens she seized a broom.

‘Nobody can take eyes off yous, for one minute.'

She struck with the broom so that one hen in panic flew straight to the window, rocking the shaving mirror.

‘Oh Jesus.' The Sergeant seized the broom from Biddy, who stood stock-still in superstitious horror before the rocking shaving mirror, and then he quietly shooed the frightened hen from the window and out the door. He banged the door shut and bolted it with its wooden bolt.

‘We'd have had seven years without a day's luck,' she shouted, as she fixed the mirror in the window.

‘Never mind the mirror.' He turned her around by the shoulders.

‘Never mind the mirror,' she shouted, frightened, to show him that she had read his lips.

‘Keep your voice down.'

‘Keep your voice down,' she shouted back.

‘We want something to eat.'

‘We want something to eat,' she shouted back, but she was calming. ‘There's eggs and bacon.'

‘Get something decent from the shop. Cheddar and ham. There's salad still in the garden.'

‘Cheddar and ham,' she shouted. ‘What if his ham is crawling and the price he charges? Not the first time for him to try to pass off crawling ham on me.'

‘Go,' the Sergeant said and forced her into a coat he took from the scullery wall.

‘Will I pay cash or get it put on the Book?' she shouted.

‘The Book.' He handed her a small notebook covered with old policeman's cloth from where it hung from a nail in the wall and rushed her out the door. After he bolted it he whispered, ‘Jesus, this night,' and drew his sleeve slowly across his forehead, feeling the braided coarseness of the three silver stripes of his rank, before facing back into the kitchen.

‘If you live like pigs you can't expect sweet airs and musics all the time,' the Sergeant said in shame and exasperation as he swallowed his glass of whiskey. The Surveyor hadn't touched his whiskey. He was tuning the strings.

‘It'd never do if we were all on the side of the angels,' the Surveyor answered absently.

The Sergeant filled his glass again. He drew up his chair to the fire and threw on a length of ash. The whiskey began to thaw away his unease. He raised his glass to the Surveyor and smiled. He was waiting.

‘The Italian street-musician was playing Paganini that first evening in Avignon.'

The bow flowed on the strings, the dark honey of the wood glowing in the early evening. Wind gently rustled the leaves of a Genoan olive grove. Metallic moonlight shone on their glistening silver as a man and a woman walked in the moonlight in a vague sweet ecstasy of feeling.

‘Wonderful. I've never heard better, not even on the radio.' The Sergeant downed another glass of whiskey as the playing ended.

‘Isn't the tone something?'

‘It's priceless, that fiddle. You got a bargain.'

‘I'm sure the experts are not far out when they say it most probably is a genuine Stradivarius.'

‘The experts know. You go to the priest for religion. You go to the doctor for medicine. Who are we to trust if we can't trust the experts? On the broad of our backs we'd be without the experts.'

A man of extraordinary interest was Paganini, the Surveyor started to explain. He was born in Genoa in 1782, of a poor family, but such was his genius and dedication that he brought the world to his feet. In London, the mob used to try to touch him, in the hope that some of his magic might pass over to them, in the way they once tried to touch the hem of Christ's garments – like pop stars in our own day – but nothing could divert him from his calling. Even the last hours given to him in life were spent in marvellous improvisations on his Guarnerius. The Church proved to be the one fly in the ointment. She had doubts as to his orthodoxy, and refused for five years to have him buried in consecrated grounds. In the end, of course, in her usual politic fashion, she relented, and he was laid to rest in a village graveyard on his own land.

‘And the Church bumming herself up all the time as helping musicians and painters out,' the Sergeant declaimed fervently when the Surveyor finished. ‘It'd make a jackass bray backwards. But why don't you drink up? You have more than earned it.'

Apologetically, the Surveyor covered his glass with his palm. ‘It's the driving, the new laws.'

‘Well, I'm the law in these parts, for what it's worth. And there's the CWA party tonight. You could play there. It'd give the ignoramuses there a glimpse past their noses to hear playing the like of the Paganini. You could stay the night here in the barracks, there's tons of room.'

‘No. I have to drive to Galway tonight.'

‘Well, what's one man's poison. I was never a one for the forcing but that's no reason to stint my own hand,' he said as he filled his own glass again.

‘It's your turn now to play, those lovely jigs and reels,' the Surveyor demanded.

‘Not since the dances have I played, not for ages.'

‘Can't you take the case down anyhow? You never know where the inspiration may come from.' The Surveyor smiled.

The case lay on the long mantel above the fire between a tea-box and a little red lamp that burned before a picture of the Sacred Heart in a crib bordered by fretted shamrocks. Clumsily he got it down. It was thick with dust. His hands left tracks on the case, and the ashes or dust scattered in a cloud when he started to beat it clean with an old towel. The Surveyor coughed in the dust and the Sergeant had to go to the scullery to wash his hands in the iron basin before the mirror. When he came in and finally got the case open, one string of the plain little fiddle was broken. The bow had obviously not been used for years, it was so slack.