The visit, p.20
The Visit, page 20
‘Colm. A quick word if you don’t mind.’
He stopped and sighed at the inconvenience.
‘All sorted,’ I called across the lobby and the receptionist waved a hand of acknowledgement.
‘Do you remember me at all?’
‘I do, Sergeant Field. Of course. You were Garda Field when I left.’
I smiled. ‘And you were a boy when you left. I’ll walk out with you.’
‘I don’t have long, I’m afraid. Long day ahead.’
‘That suits me fine.’
He stalled on the footpath as if he didn’t want me to see what way he was headed. Two American men came out behind us, talking about the weather, their accents making me wonder if my brothers had picked it up.
‘Plenty of Americans inside these days I suppose?’
‘They’re good for a round at least. Happy to put a drink on the expense accounts.’
‘There’ll be plenty more on the way. Kennedy doesn’t have a shave without them writing about it. It won’t be enough to tempt you into staying a bit longer?’
He looked me in the eye for the first time. ‘An Irishman in London can’t afford to stand still.’
‘You’ve done well for yourself, Colm. Fair play. You know I didn’t recognise you when I saw you first – you’re a far cry from the skinny youngfella I remember.’
‘You haven’t changed much,’ he said and I felt it a polite way of saying anybody would be able to recognise these ears no matter how many years had passed.
‘Any family?’
He smiled. ‘A boy and a girl. And a wife from Laois. Yourself?’
‘One girl. And a wife from Cork.’
‘That’s right. Somebody told me you were married to the best-looking woman in town.’
‘I don’t blame you for selling up, Colm. No more than any man could blame you for leaving when you did.’
‘What’s this about, Sergeant?’
‘Patrick should have been looked after. He has nobody else – no wife from Laois or Cork.’
He lifted the end of his tie with an index finger and examined it, then patted it back into place. ‘You know, I couldn’t believe the cut of him when I saw him. If I didn’t need the money, I’d have left him to stay there.’ He sighed. ‘Listen, I’m only trying to do what’s best.’
‘Having him sent to Senan’s? That’s what’s best?’ I shook my head. ‘I hope you never have to set foot in one of those places. Christ, we’ll look back in shame. We hear about how badly some Irish are treated over in America or England, but is it any wonder when we treat each other like that?’
‘I didn’t believe it would come to that. History repeating. I thought he’d heed the warning and take what was offered. You know I was there when they made the same plans for my father?’
‘When who made plans for him?’
‘My mother for a start. Your old sergeant – Kilcummins. Casey too, of course. She told me to wait outside the station, not realising the window in the office was open and that I could lean against the wall and listen in. She was always so keen to be in Casey’s good graces, to get invited up to the house for one of his parties. Christ, it used drive me mad that she couldn’t see where she wasn’t wanted.’
‘What has that to do with Sean?’
‘She wanted rid of him as soon as he showed signs of failing. She wore that wedding ring the way Christ carried the cross. I’ll never understand why she married him, other than not wanting to end up a woman on her own. We know what Casey wanted of course. Daddy was a quiet man, but if his mind was right, he’d never have let the last of his land go. He was so proud of the place. But once his mind was gone.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘There are men who do whatever Casey wants.’
‘That there are.’ I thought of Flood.
‘Not you though.’ He looked at me.
‘Not intentionally anyway.’ I always knew that I was a pawn in Peter Casey’s game. Did exactly what he’d set me up to do and swept Sean from the board. ‘The same old greed a decade on,’ I said, to myself as much as to Colm. ‘When does a man have enough?’
He gave the question thought, as if we might arrive at an answer to explain this great flaw of men. ‘I left Wexford when I was nothing more than a boy. I neither knew nor cared that she’d left that house to me until one of Casey’s men walked into my office a few weeks back and handed me a solicitor’s letter. London – it’s full of men who think a dirty young Paddy or Mick shouldn’t even be in their country, let alone have the gall to go toe-to-toe with them.’ He hardly stopped for breath and he tapped his chest as if in time to a racing heart. ‘There are nights I can’t sleep, worrying how I’ll keep a roof above my children’s heads. Then I get this gift from the grave – land and a house that I can sell. Think of your own daughter, Sergeant, and tell me you wouldn’t do the same. I thought Patrick would take his share and that would be the end of it. I didn’t know he was so far gone. When he told me that he’d put a bullet in me, I didn’t doubt him for one second.’
‘Do you’ve any idea where he might be?’
He exhaled long and slow through his nose and shook his head, then opened his mouth as if an idea had come to him. He paused. ‘I’ll probably never see him again. I hope he finds some peace. I don’t think I’ll ever see you again either, Sergeant Field. Give this to him if you see him, would you?’ He took an envelope from beneath the newspaper and handed it to me. I could see him battling the tears. ‘Good luck.’
He slapped the rolled-up paper against my arm and was crossing the road before I could say anything else, headed towards the river. I opened the envelope and counted through a thick bundle of notes. Eight hundred pounds. The price he got for the land and house, split right down the middle.
28
He stood in front of the mirror wearing the balaclava of leaves, ash darkening the skin around his eyes. He wore his father’s still-damp coat, soiled brown and tightened with belts and rope and shrouded in greenery. He spent most of the day sewing leaves to it with green wool. He smiled, wishing he could see himself with his eyes closed – no whites to give him away – a human-shaped shrub, a man turned into nature.
He travelled south towards Newbawn, swapping between fields and roads, looking for a place to test his disguise. He carried his gun, garlanded with greenery of its own and twice he crouched into the thick hedgerow. First for a car that continued its journey without slowing, an expensive-looking rig of the sort Casey might own. The second time was for a man on a cart behind an ancient old workhorse. The man and the animal came so close he could smell them and he heard the man singing to himself as Gaeilge. If they saw him, on his haunches by the road, they gave no clue.
He walked on until he heard the calls of men and the rattling engine of a TE20. He knelt and looked through the hedgerow to a field where around a dozen men were at work. Some moved in a line behind the tractor, tying sheaves. A bent old man worked alone, swinging his scythe with the rhythm of a clock, as if he was racing the machine to prove a point, slicing the grass while a young boy held the pole. They were too far away to hear what they were saying, but in the drone of voices he could make out the comradeship of shared labour, like those who went to war, or battled sporting opponents together. An unwritten and unspoken contract between men – all that needed to be said was said in the act of helping and protecting one another, and he longed to be among it.
Looking over his shoulder to make sure nobody was following, he stopped at an enormous oak in a distant corner of the field. He watched the men and thought that in their toil they looked the picture of peace. They’d finish stiff and blistered and hungry and feel all the better for it. He remembered once being part of a team like that – his father shaking him awake before first light, too small to be of much value but doing as he was told by men with red and wrinkled faces and smiles and jokes for one another. The flies and the dusty smell of the field, the weak tea at break time, his father giving him two sandwiches and eating nothing himself, despite cutting more than every other man.
He grabbed a low branch and secured a footing against the trunk, then hoisted himself up. He was far enough away to doubt that they’d spot him even without a disguise. The heart of the tree swallowed him, made him part of it. He steadied himself, then stretched across the thickest branch and pulled himself along it, the gun slung over his back, and a scattering of leaves came away from his suit and fell to the ground, the dry smell of bark in his nose.
‘Take it easy, Patrick,’ he whispered, staying still for a couple of minutes, slowing his breath, as if to allow the tree to get used to his weight and presence. He wrapped his legs tightly around the branch and moved his right arm slowly to draw the gun to his side, then raised his head and chest and positioned the decorated weapon under his shoulder so it extended from him like a smaller branch. The movement caused another shower of leaves from his suit and he knew it needed alterations.
The men worked on, as they would until the sun was squeezed close to the land, drained of every drop of light. He took aim at the sky and even though it was an unmissable target, an endless span of pink and orange and white, he followed his usual routine of counting three slow breaths and pulling the trigger just after the final exhalation.
The shot sent birds flying from every tree and the men straightened, looking to one another then in every direction. Only the old man and boy kept working, sensing a chance to make up some ground. After a pause they carried on, the sound of a gun nothing new. He fired again, and again they stopped working, this time turning in more deliberate circles like men who might be under attack and still no look lingered in his direction. They returned to work and Patrick moved the gun to his back and lay in the tree and watched them until they left through the corner gate in near darkness, clapping backs and shaking hands, bundles of fresh cutting lining the field in rows like flowers left on unmarked graves.
29
I was the only person in the station, other than Frank Sheflin, who was asleep in the corner of a cell, dirty brown saliva dripping from his mouth to make a damp boutonnière on his lapel, like a rotten flower. In another life he might be wearing a red rose to a daughter’s wedding. Flood had hauled him in before five, a few hours earlier than Frank’s usual. He’d found him at the side of Ryan’s, where Frank had gone to piss against the wall, then fallen asleep in his own puddle, the last of his decency sagging out of his open fly.
Flood had denied ever having driven a Land Rover and seemed to enjoy that I knew he was lying, pulling his shoulders back as if he was daring me to resort to beating it out of him. One quick way to get rid of me.
I went to the phone on the top floor and I could see the sunset, strung like copper-wire between a gap in the buildings across the way.
I sat on the desk and heard the call connect.
‘Hello,’ she said, her voice familiar and distant. I imagined her, standing in the back room of the pub. What Con once called his office – now a sort of second storage room, with kegs and lost hats and scarves and coats, old election posters rolled up and scattered around the big desk with the phone, that plenty of locals still came to use.
‘Hello, love. How are ye getting on?’
She laughed. ‘Daddy had Catriona in behind the bar today, standing on a stool and taking orders then calling them out to him. She was playing to the crowd by the end.’
I smiled and sensed she could hear it. ‘Just like her mother. How’s Margaret?’
‘Still wrapped in her apron. Still doesn’t know how to stand still. Up and down to the well every day.’
‘Going strong, so.’
‘Oh, she’s definitely strong. You know, I was counting it up.’ I heard her sit and take a breath, closed my eyes and saw the glow of light in her eyes while she came to her point. ‘Two five-gallon buckets. More on washing days, less the odd time. Near enough every day for 35 years married. That puts her up at about one hundred and thirty thousand gallons carried.’
‘I wouldn’t bet against her doubling it.’
‘Nor me. I haven’t had to carry any for years. Maybe that’s how we should measure improvements? Tomorrow I’ll calculate how many pounds of turf Daddy has cut from the bog.’
‘They grew up tough, there’s no doubt about that.’
‘You know Daddy’s only a decade older than Kennedy? You wouldn’t think it. They haven’t been out of Cork since they came to see our house. Once in a decade. Once in a lifetime as far as I know.’
‘That’s Cork people for you. Have you decided on a train back? I could come and collect ye?’
I heard her hold the phone away and tell somebody she wouldn’t be much longer. ‘I was thinking of staying for a week. Mammy and Daddy are going to go see Kennedy in Cork and I thought myself and Catriona could go with them. There’s a convoy going from around here, lifts being arranged and seats being claimed as if they were the last lifeboats.’
‘Come back and see him here. I thought it would be something special for her in time, seeing Kennedy in her hometown. With her mother. She’d likely never forget it.’
‘We might as well be in Cork. And you’ll be working anyway. It’ll probably be Christmas before we’re back here and Catriona loves it around the farm.’
‘Well, think about it. Ye’re badly missed – I’ve only Frank Sheflin here for company. Mrs Rattigan didn’t even answer the door to me this morning.’
‘She does her devotions in the morning. How’s that headache?’
‘On and off. I’m on an antibiotic since you left.’
‘You went to a doctor?’
‘Not exactly. A doctor came to me. In a storage room. I was over at the general to talk to somebody and Susan Quinn spotted me. The quickest way out was to do as she said.’
‘Did he say what’s wrong with you?’
‘He was the sort of doctor who was certain what it was, but decided it was best kept secret. Something invisible anyway.’
‘But was he worried?’
‘He was worried about how quickly he could be rid of me. It’s nothing, love. I’m sure the tablets will clear it up. Between what Murphy gave me and what this man gave me, they’ll do something.’
‘There’s something else troubling you.’
‘You mean apart from being on my lonesome? Without my girls.’
‘What is it?’
‘Ah. You’re sick of it.’
‘Hatten again?’
‘He hasn’t been round for a couple of days at least. The house has been sold, and Casey’s work has started. There’s a man in the hospital missing a kneecap that I know has something to do with it all. I’m worried that either something has happened to him, or while everybody in this town is looking one way, Patrick Hatten is going unwatched. And that he’ll soon have their attention. If there’s any trouble on the 27th we might as well plan on retiring here.’
There was a quiet on the line. A horn droned down at the dock. Downstairs, Frank Sheflin banged on the door of his cell.
‘Maybe he’s just left, Jim. What other choice had he?’
‘No. He wouldn’t.’
‘Jim, pet, there’s a woman here wanting to use the phone. I better go.’
‘Yeah. Tell my little girl I said hello, will you?’
‘I will of course. Bye, love.’
‘Siobhán?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Before you go, let me ask you a question.’
‘Go on.’
‘Who’s more handsome, myself or Kennedy?’
She laughed and then groaned. ‘Let’s see. The one who looks so good in a suit, with a fine head of hair, a great smile, and a little girl that he loves.’
‘And a beautiful wife?’
‘Yes, that too.’
‘So, which of us is it?’
Another laugh. ‘Bye, love.’
‘Bye.’
I took Murphy’s medicine from my pocket and swallowed a day’s worth dry, then went downstairs and took what was left of my liver and onion sandwich from my desk and a bottle of Powers from a cabinet in the staff room – left over from some Christmas party or retirement-do, or a long, slow nightshift when the lads broke the rules. I poured a drop into a cup then locked it away again.
Frank was sitting on the narrow bed when I opened the hatch.
‘I’ve been banging on that door. How is it ya didn’t hear me?’ He staggered across the cell as if he could smell the drink. I could only see his big belly and his stained shirt, buttoned up wrong. I passed the cup and sandwich in.
He let out a slow laugh that sounded like a death rattle.
‘You’re a good man, Jim Field.’ He swallowed the whiskey and the cup appeared in the hatch. ‘Very good, sir,’ he said, in his best British accent. ‘Bring the bottle.’
‘Sleep tight, Frank.’
There was music coming from Ryan’s and evening birds circled the town in time. The sun glowed along the horizon beyond the river, like a lit fuse, burning its way around New Ross.
Colfer’s love interest, Claire O’Gorman, walked along South Street, arm in arm with Ronan Casey. Poor old Colfer hardly stands a chance. Though I suppose the same was said about me.
The incline of Craywell Road tested me and I stopped once, to watch the brown slurry of the Barrow flow in the opposite direction. I turned to face the town and tried to imagine what Kennedy might think – a summer breeze on his face, CBS boys chasing his car in their white shirts and trousers, the patchwork of Wexford fields on the far side of the river. Turning onto John Street, pulsing with tricolours, stars, stripes and thousands of cheering and smiling faces, greeting him like a long-lost son or brother. There are still people who’ll tell you it will mean all but nothing to him. But standing there in the near-dark, with midges shimmering all around me, after months of talk and planning and scrubbing and painting and cleaning, it was as if the whole town was sparkling with a one-time-only sort of magic.
