Creatures of the Earth (15 page)

That afternoon I helped him fill the tar barrel with water for spraying the potatoes, though he made it clear he didn't want help. When he put the bag of blue stone into the barrel to steep, he thrust the watch deep into the water before my eyes.

‘I'm going back to Dublin tomorrow,' I said.

‘I thought you were coming for two weeks. You always stayed two weeks before.'

‘There's no need for me now.'

‘It's your holiday. You're as well off here as by the sea. It's as much of a change and far cheaper.'

‘I meant to tell you before, and should have but didn't. I am married now.'

‘Tell me more news,' he said with an attempt at cool surprise, but I saw by his eyes that he already knew. ‘We heard but we didn't like to believe it. It's a bit late in the day for formal engagements, never mind invitations. I suppose we weren't important enough to be invited.'

‘There was no one at the wedding but ourselves. We invited no one, neither her people nor mine.'

‘Well, I suppose it was cheaper that way,' he agreed.

‘When will you spray?'

‘I'll spray tomorrow,' he said, and we left the blue stone to steep in the barrel of water.

With relief, I noticed he was no longer wearing the watch, but the feeling of unease was so great in the house that after dinner I went outside. It was a perfect moonlit night, the empty fields and beech trees and walls in clear yellow outline. The night seemed so full of serenity that it brought the very ache of longing for all of life to reflect its moonlit calm, but I knew too well it neither was nor could be. It was a dream of death.

I went idly towards the orchard, and as I passed the tar barrel I saw a thin fishing line hanging from a part of the low yew branch down into the barrel. I heard the ticking even before the wrist watch came up tied to the end of the line. What shocked me was that I felt neither surprise nor shock.

I felt the bag that we'd left to steep earlier in the water. The blue stone had all melted down. It was a barrel of pure poison, ready for spraying.

I listened to the ticking of the watch on the end of the line in silence before letting it drop back into the barrel. The poison had already eaten into the casing of the watch. The shining rim and back were no longer smooth. It could hardly run much past morning.

The night was so still that the shadows of the beeches did not waver on the moonlit grass, seemed fixed like a leaf in rock. On the white marble the gold watch must now be lying face
upwards in this same light, silent or running. The ticking of the watch down in the barrel was so completely muffled by the spray that only by imagination could it be heard. A bird moved in some high branch, but afterwards the silence was so deep it began to hurt, and the longing grew for the bird or anything to stir again.

I stood in that moonlit silence as if waiting for some word or truth, but none came, none ever came. Only what
was
increased or diminished as it changed, became only what is, becoming again what
was
even faster than the small second hand endlessly circling in the poison.

Suddenly, the lights in the house went out. Before going into the house, I drew the watch up again out of the barrel by the line and listened to it tick, now purely amused by the expectation it renewed – that if I continued to listen to the ticking some word or truth might come. And when I finally lowered the watch back down into the poison, I did it so carefully that no ripple or splash disturbed the quiet, and time, hardly surprisingly, was still running; time that did not have to run to any conclusion.

‘I want to ask you one very small last favour.'

‘What is it?'

‘Will you stay behind for just five minutes after I leave?'

It was the offer of the blindfold, to accept the darkness for a few moments before it finally fell.

‘If we leave together we'll just start to argue again and it's no use. You know it's over. It's been over for a long time now. Will you please stay five minutes?' She put her gloved hand on my arm as she rose. ‘Just this last time.'

She turned and walked away. I was powerless to follow. She did not once look back. The door swung in the emptiness after she had gone. I saw the barman looking at me strangely but I did not care. The long hand of the clock stood at two minutes to eight. It did not seem to move at all. She was gone, slipping further out of reach with every leaden second, and I was powerless to follow.

‘A small Jameson. With water,' I said to the barman. As I sipped the whiskey, the whole absurdity of my situation came with a rush of anger. It was over. She was gone. Nothing said or done would matter any more, and yet I was sitting like a fool because she'd simply asked me to. Without glancing at the clock, I rose and headed towards the door. Outside she was nowhere in sight.

I could see down on the city, its maze of roads already lighted in the still, white evening, each single road leading in hundreds of directions. I started to run, but then had to stop, realizing I didn't know where to run. If there were an instrument like radar … but that might show her half-stripped in some car …
her pale shoulders gleaming as she slipped out of her clothes in a room in Rathmines …

I stared at the street. Cars ran. Buses stopped. Lights changed. Shop windows stayed where they were. People answered to their names. All the days from now on would have to begin without her. The one thing I couldn't bear was to face back to the room, the room that had seen such a tenuous happiness.

I went into the Stag's Head and then O'Neills. Both bars were crowded. There was no one there that I knew. I passed slowly through without trying to order anything. The barmen were too busy to call out. I moved to the bars off Grafton Street, and at the third bar I saw the Mulveys before I heard my name called. It was Claire Mulvey who had called my name. Paddy Mulvey was reading a book, his eyes constantly flickering from the page to the door, but as soon as he heard my name called his eyes returned fixedly to the page. They were sitting between the pillars at the back. Eamonn Kelly appeared to be sitting with them.

‘We thought you were avoiding us,' Claire Mulvey said as we shook hands. Her strained, nervous features still showed frayed remnants of beauty. ‘We haven't seen you for months.'

‘For God's sake, isn't it a free country?' Paddy Mulvey said brightly. ‘Hasn't the man a right to do his own things in his own way?'

‘Blackguard,' Eamonn Kelly said gravely, his beautiful, pale face relaxing in a wintry smile.

‘Why are you not drinking?' Empty half-glasses stood in front of them on the table.

‘I'm afraid we're suffering from that old perplexity,' Mulvey said. ‘And we've been waiting for Halloran. He was supposed to be here more than an hour ago. He owes us a cheque. He even left us a hostage for reassurance.' He pointed to a brown leather suitcase upright against the pillar.

‘I'll get the drinks,' I offered.

‘Halloran went off with a boy. I've been telling them he'll not be back,' Eamonn Kelly volunteered.

I got four pints and four whiskeys from the bar.

‘I should thank you for this,' Eamonn Kelly said as he lifted his whiskey. ‘But after careful consideration have come down against it.'

‘Why?'

‘Because I've decided you're a blackguard.'

‘Why me?'

‘Because one must have some fixed principles. I've decided you are a blackguard. That's an end of it. There is no appeal.'

‘Oh, for God's sake,' Mulvey said. ‘You're not drunk enough for that yet. Here's health.'

‘Good luck,' Claire Mulvey said.

‘What are you reading?'

‘Another slim volume. I'm writing it up for Halloran,' and he started to speak of the book in a tone of spirited mockery.

I tried to listen but found the arid, mocking words unbearable. Nothing lived. Then I found myself turning towards a worse torture, to all I wanted not to think about.

She had asked me to a dinner in her sister's house a few days before Christmas. We'd met inside a crowded GPO. She was wearing a pale raincoat with the detachable fur collar she wore with so many coats. Outside in O'Connell Street the wind was cold, spitting rain, and we'd stood in a doorway as we waited for a bus to take us to the house in the suburbs.

The house her sister lived in was a small semi-detached in a new estate: a double gate, a garage, a piece of lawn hemmed in with concrete, a light above the door. The rooms were small, carpeted. A coal fire burned in the tiled fireplace of the front room.

Her sister was as tall as she, black-haired, and beautiful, pregnant with her first child. Her husband was small, energetic, and taught maths in a nearby school.

The bottles of wine we'd brought were handed over. Glasses of whiskey were poured. We touched the glasses in front of the coal fire. They'd gone to a great deal of trouble with the meal. There were small roast potatoes, peas, breadcrumb stuffing
with the roast turkey. Brandy was poured over the plum pudding and lit. Some vague unease curdled the food and cheer in that small front room, was sharpened by the determined gaiety. It was as if we were looking down a long institutional corridor; the child in the feeding chair could be seen already, the next child, and the next, the postman, the milkman, the van with fresh eggs and vegetables from the country, the tired clasp over the back of the hand to show tenderness as real as the lump in the throat, the lawnmowers in summer, the thickening waists. It hardly seemed necessary to live it.

‘What did you think of them?' she'd asked as she took my arm in the road outside.

‘I thought they were very nice. They went to a great deal of trouble.'

‘What did you think of the house?'

‘It's not my kind of house. It's the sort of house that would drive me crackers.'

‘What sort of house would you like?'

‘Something bigger than that. Something with a bit more space. An older house. Nearer the city.'

‘Excuse me,' she said with pointed sarcasm as she withdrew her arm.

I should have said, ‘It's a lovely house. Any house with you would be a lovely house,' and caught and kissed her in the wind and rain. And it was true. Any house with her would have been a lovely house. I had been the fool to think that I could stand outside life. I would agree to anything now. I would not even ask for love. If she stayed, love might come in its own time, I reasoned blindly.

‘Do you realize how rich the English language is, that it should have two words, for instance, such as “comprehension” and “apprehension”, so subtly different in shading and yet so subtly alike? Has anything like that ever occurred to you?' This was Mulvey now.

‘No. I hadn't realized.'

‘Of course you wouldn't. And I'd rather comprehend another drink.'

‘Comprehension. Apprehension,' Eamonn Kelly started to say as I went to get the drinks. ‘I'll apprehend you for a story. An extraordinarily obscene story.'

‘Jesus,' Mulvey groaned.

‘I hope it's not long,' Claire Mulvey said. ‘Where have you been all this time?' she asked as he began. ‘We don't have to listen to that. Those stories are all the same.'

‘I got mixed up with a girl.'

‘Why didn't you bring her here? You should at least have given us the chance to look her over.'

‘She wouldn't like it here. Anyhow it's over now.'

‘I'm glad you're here,' she said.

‘Is he?' Eamonn Kelly shouted, annoyed that we hadn't listened to the story he'd been telling.

‘Is he what?' Mulvey asked.

‘Is he here? Am I here?'

‘Unfortunately you're here,' Mulvey replied.

‘Hypocrites. Liars.'

‘Lies are the oil of the social machinery.'

‘Don't mind him,' Mulvey said.

‘Lies,' he ignored. ‘She ate green plums. She was pregnant. That's why she's not here. Blackguard.'

‘This is terrible,' Mulvey said.

The anxiety as to where she was at this moment struck without warning. ‘Did you ever wish for some device like radar that could track a person down at any given moment, light up where they were, like on a screen?' I turned to Mulvey.

‘That would be a nightmare.' Mulvey surprisingly rallied to the question, his interest caught. ‘I was never very worried about what other people were up to. My concern has always been that they might discover what
I
was up to.'

‘Then you've never loved,' Eamonn Kelly said grandly. ‘I know what he's talking about. There were times I too wished for radar.'

‘I wouldn't mind putting radar on Halloran just now. To get him to give me that cheque, to give him back his damned suitcase. We've ferried the thing around for two whole days now.' Mulvey turned aside to complain.

‘You must have wanted to know sometimes what I was doing,' Claire Mulvey said.

‘Never.'

‘Even if that is true, I don't think you should say it.'

‘That's precisely why it should be said. Because it is true. Why else should anything be said?'

They started to quarrel. I bought a last round. It was getting close to closing time. Eamonn Kelly had begun an energetic conversation with himself, accompanied by equally vigorous gestures, a dumbshow of removing hat and gloves, handshakes, movements forward and back, a great muttering of some complicated sentence, replacing of hat and gloves. The Mulveys had retreated into stewing silences. I was bewildered as to what I was doing here but was even blinder still about possible alternatives. A whole world had been cut from under me.

‘Do you have enough for a sugar bag?' Mulvey suddenly asked. ‘We could go back to my place.'

‘I have plenty.'

‘I'll make it up to you as soon as I see Halloran.'

The sugar bags were strong grey paper bags used to carry out bottles of stout. They usually held a dozen. I bought three. Eamonn Kelly assumed he was going back to Mulvey's with us, for he offered to carry one of the bags. Claire Mulvey carried Halloran's suitcase. There were many drunks on the street. One made a playful pass at the sugar bag Mulvey carried, and got berated, the abuse too elevated and fluent to get us into trouble. We could not have looked too sober ourselves, for I noticed a pair of guards stand to watch our progress with the case and sugar bags. Mulvey's house was in a terrace along the canal. A young moon lay in a little water between the weeds and cans and bottles.

‘
The wan moon is setting on the still wave
,' Eamonn Kelly took up from the reflection as he swayed along with a sugar bag.

‘Burns,' Mulvey said savagely. ‘And there's not a wave in sight. What do you think of old Burns?' he said as he put the key in the door.

A red-eyed child in a nightdress met us. She was hungry. Claire Mulvey soothed her, started to get her some food from the cold press, and we took the sugar bags upstairs. There was no furniture of any kind in the room other than empty orange crates. There were plenty of books on the floor along the walls. The room was chilly, and Mulvey stamped on some of the orange crates until they were broken enough to fit into the grate. He lit them with newspaper and they quickly caught.

Eamonn Kelly was busy opening the bottles with a silver penknife. When Claire Mulvey joined us he had opened all the bottles in one of the sugar bags. The orange boxes had all burned down, taking the chill from the room, leaving delicate traceries of blackened wire in the grate.

‘She's gone to sleep again. There was some milk and cereal,' Claire Mulvey said.

We drank steadily. Eamonn Kelly opened more bottles. Mulvey lectured Kelly. Then he lectured me. The toilet in the corridor didn't work. I fought sleep.

The room was full of early light when I awoke. I'd been placed on a mattress and given a pillow and rug. There was nobody else in the room. The books were scattered all along the walls. Empty bottles were everywhere, the room filled with the sour-sweet odour of decaying stout. The shapes of blackened wire stood in the empty grate.

It was the first morning without her, and I could hardly believe I'd slept. I got up, picked my way between the bottles to the outside toilet that didn't work, ran the water in the sink, picked my way back to the mattress. The palest of crescent moons still lay on the dirty water of the canal.

Church bells started to beat the air. It was Sunday – seven o'clock. I got up and let myself out of the house. Everywhere
people were going to Mass. I drifted with them as far as the church door, turning back into the empty streets once Mass had started, walking fast until I came to a quiet side street where I sat on the steps of one of the houses. There were five steps up to each house. The stone was granite. Many of the iron railings were painted blue. Across the street was a dishevelled lilac bush. They'd taught us to notice such things when young. They said it was the world. A lilac bush, railings, three milk bottles with silver caps, granite steps … I had to rise and walk to beat back a rush of anger. I'd have to learn the world all over again.

The Mulveys were sitting round the table in the kitchen when I got back. The child was eating cereal, the parents drinking tea from mugs.

‘I'm sorry I passed out, last night.'

‘It's all right. You were tired.' Mulvey smiled – often he could be charming in the morning.