The visit, p.24
The Visit, page 24
38
He thought about leaving without saying goodbye, until the idea of Roche turning to bone stirred a loneliness he’d never known, and he decided that the man deserved a word.
There was a foul smell of waste and rot in the byre. When he pulled back the sheet Roche’s head was barely recognisable as a human thing and Patrick wondered if six feet was deep enough for a grave. Life twitched under the skin and insects played out battles on Roche’s corpse, the maggots moving in rippling waves and feeding on flesh, attacked by flies and beetles. Patrick covered his mouth and nose and his eyes watered and he knew it was a sight never supposed to be seen. He pulled the sheet back over Roche and knew he would never remember the man he’d known in any other way.
‘I hope you’re not still here to see yourself, Joe,’ he said. ‘You didn’t know many people, but you knew my father. You knew me. And I knew you. You were a good man.’
He shut the door after him.
In the main room, he pulled on the lower half of his camouflage and folded the jacket and head covering into the cloth sack with the balaclava and a bundle of fresh leaves that he’d wet in the barrel.
He took the bicycle north, knowing it would be its final journey. He saw very few people and the ones he did see were busy and distant.
On the road towards Lacken Fairy Woods, he passed dense treeline and imagined his old home behind it, untouched with no more work carried out since he’d seen it last. He’d lost his memory of his father and Roche at their best, and he didn’t want to risk his memory of the house. It would stay with him as he’d known it that morning in the sunshine, when he was on his way to talk to McCrann.
An old man he didn’t recognise was fixing a lock on a gate and eyed him and his trousers of greenery and didn’t say anything until Patrick said hello and he said it back.
He pushed his bike through the woods. The place was in full summer, berries and mushrooms and wildflowers, the thick canopy offering shade and silence and Patrick carried his bike over lower branches, through green light, winding his way to the centre and a spot so deep it felt as if he’d slipped through a tear in the world and into another. When the bike was too awkward to carry further, he sat against a tree and took his army knife from the cloth sack. He took the wheels off and then took apart the seat and lay the parts on top of the frame and covered it with leaves.
Small shards of sky dangled over him. He put on the jacket and balaclava, then put his head against the tree and waited. He closed his eyes and thought of all the times he’d been in this wood. Of how he knew the land for miles around as well as he knew the lines and ridges on his own hands. The product of wandering since he could wander, first with his father, then to escape the house after his father was gone. Then to survive – hunting and fishing and washing. And now to hide. He wondered how long it would take to get to know some other place so well, if such a thing was even possible.
39
The two wiry inches of grey eyebrows rose into John Ryan’s wrinkled forehead when he saw me near the counter, with Con at my shoulder.
‘You’re becoming a regular.’
‘This is my father-in-law, John. Con Sheehan.’
The men shook hands over the dark wood bar. Con complimented the place and introduced himself as a fellow publican, then called two pints. He spotted a snug and went for it as if he might be beaten to it even though the place was near empty. A few after-work drinkers at the far end, no band, no music, and it seemed a different pub to Friday night.
I followed Con over and he took off his jacket and folded it, then rolled his shirtsleeves and clasped his hands on the table. I felt like a constituent, meeting my local politician about some problem to do with land, or right of way, or a poisoned well, or potholed road. Con seemed to be rehearsing for a return to the world of politics, energised by his daughter and Kennedy.
A pint was his suggestion. I’d seen him relax into the idea of a holiday. Walking Catriona to the river in the morning, watching television in the evening. He walked the town in loops after lunch, and came home from every stroll with word of some new friendship or acquaintance he’d struck up. Over dinner, he told us about Martin Stokes’ daughter’s upcoming wedding. About Orlagh Gibbons’ dog and its litter of 12 pups. About the chef in the Royal, smoking treble what he did a month ago, run off his feet with all the guests and room service and the odd requests of the Americans – cheeseburgers and Cokes and eggs ‘over easy’. He was loosening his tongue, readying for a run in ’65. The weather helped his wandering, more sunshine than I could do with, as if my blood was on a constant simmer and brought to the boil in any bit of heat.
‘There’s a man like this Casey character in every town in Ireland,’ he said. ‘Sometimes more than one – and that’s when things get interesting.’
‘He won’t let this go, I’m sure.’
Con shrugged. ‘He can hold on as tight as he likes. He can take it to bed with him at night if that’s what he wants, but you’d be mad not to run this up the ladder. He walked in to tell you himself that this mad lad said he’d shoot him. For the love of God, what does he expect you to do, wink and tell him he owes you, then send him off to Dunganstown?’
John put two pints on the table.
‘Sláinte,’ Con said, and drank. ‘You don’t look convinced?’
‘When this is over, I’ll be left to deal with a man who knows all the right ears to whisper in and all the right hands to shake, making a mission of seeing me blocked at sergeant. It’s not just for me that I want to make Inspector, Con. There’s Siobhán and Catriona to think about.’
He looked at his drink. ‘This Hatten lad. You have to ask yourself honestly, Jim, black and white – is he capable of something like that, shooting a man?’
‘He’s most likely already shot a man.’
‘But to kill a man?’
I thought about the last time I saw Patrick. When he helped me off the floor and I left him in that dusty room with a warning and advice. His dirty fingernails and the flowers on his windowsill. Of his itching and his tongue pressed into the gap in his teeth, and the impossibility of knowing what’s going around in his head from one second to the next.
‘Maybe,’ I said and Con sat back and rolled his eyes.
‘I asked for black and white. Grey is what got you into this mess in the first place according to Casey. Would you have been better off locking this lad up when you had a chance?’
‘That wasn’t grey. That was a decision I made. If you ever find yourself elected, Con, I’ll make you promise to visit one of those places. I won’t play any part in a man being thrown into Senan’s without good reason. I’ve done it once and I’ll never forget it.’
‘We carry our mistakes until we atone, Jim. The best place to bury the past is in the future.’
‘Well, I might never atone. But I learned from it. Casey should have listened to me. You take a youngfella and tell him he’s no good and cut him off from the world and a chance of work, or any sort of purpose to get up in the morning, and what will he do? He’ll find his own purpose. Even a dangerous purpose will be a damn sight more appealing than staring at a wall all day, waiting for the dole to come in.’
He nodded, no doubt imagining the same young men without work who sit in his bar while he plays witness to their passing lives.
‘It’s certainly a mess, Jim. If he does plan on hurting Casey, why would it be Thursday? Why doesn’t he just go knock on his front door and shoot him as soon as he opens it?’
‘Because it’s not just about Casey anymore, that’s what I’m saying. This town treated him like a leper since he was a boy. An ugly, wild thing in dirty clothes was all anybody needed to see. They pretend fine little boys who say their prayers and help the teacher after school, and who come from wealthy families are born good at heart. Lads like Casey’s eldest, a spoiled and arrogant lad, with young women lining up to link his arm and their mothers and fathers all but praying that he chooses to marry their daughter.’
‘You think Hatten wants to ruin the big occasion? Some sort of revenge.’
‘I do.’
‘Well, there’s your answer – case closed. Call whoever it is you have to call to make sure Peter Casey’s name isn’t on any list that puts him anywhere near Kennedy. Or I’ll do it myself. God above, could you imagine it? Making us look like savages. You see the Germans on the news today. Impeccable, not even two decades after the mess they made. And there we’ll be, Paddy Irishman, shooting each other in the street over a miserable few acres.’
I drank and he raised a hand towards two men who came in the door behind me.
‘Tell me,’ he said, considering the Casey issue resolved. ‘What do you aim to do with those rockets?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Don’t get me wrong, I understand the fascination. But when you’re finished with them, do they just stay on the shelf?’
‘They used to. But I’m going to take them in to the school, once it starts again. Let the children see them.’
‘Well, I’ll drink to that.’
‘What about you, you’re walking around these days like a man imagining that anything is possible.’
He grinned. ‘You never know how much you need a break until you take one. I was thinking of Catriona in behind my bar, locals already knowing her by name. We’ve been in that community a long time.’
‘Will you go for it again in ’65?’
‘Ah, I’m getting too old. Too tired. I was thinking of younger blood. There’s a lot to be said for a strong family name in a community like ours.’
‘One of the lads?’
‘No, no. They’re great sons, and have their own skills, but they wouldn’t be cut out for it.’ He drank, then looked at me. ‘Not the way Siobhán would be.’
‘Siobhán?’
‘Aye, Siobhán. Why not?’
‘Apart from us living here? There isn’t a long line of women in the Dáil, Con.’
‘Where did I just tell you to bury the past?’
‘In the future.’
‘That’s right. Anyway, I’m only daydreaming. But there’ll come a time when people want something new. Just look at Kennedy.’
We sat and didn’t say much else and more than once I resisted the urge to ask him when he thought Siobhán would be back.
I waited outside while he spoke to John for a few minutes – about running a pub and their shared challenges and the price of kegs and spirits and import tax. We walked home as the sun set and he stopped at the top of the hill to turn around and face it. He took in a lungful of evening air. On the way into the house, he put his hand on my back, then went into the room and turned on the television. I lay awake despite the tiredness, thinking of what he had said about Siobhán, listening to the sound through the floor until the programmes stopped.
40
He felt his way from the wood, palms pressed against barks and branches, sometimes with his eyes closed and the sound of twigs snapping underfoot, moving like a blind man through surrounds he knows well, until he emerged in weak moonlight.
The walk was short compared to the miles he’d been putting in. The fields around Casey’s stud were enclosed by a mix of dense hedgerow and high fencing. His camouflage rustled with every step. He could have walked through the broken wall outside his old home and crossed the field without trouble, but didn’t want to see what state it was reduced to.
He walked through Casey’s front gate. A dog tethered to the pole of the washing line failed to bark, curled up and dreaming. There were lights on above the front and back doors, and Patrick smiled at the thought of Casey sitting up in bed or his kitchen, twitching at every noise. He saw nothing at Rose’s window beyond the memory of how she’d looked at him like a stranger, and he knew that his Rose was gone, if she’d ever existed.
He rounded the house and crouched in the rear field, the rifle standing on end and taller than him, his hands gripping the barrel. He thought about knocking on the door, knowing Casey would answer. Of saying nothing, just shooting him between the eyes. A cold wind came over the field and Patrick balled his hands against it, letting the rifle lean onto his shoulder. He imagined Casey’s sons awake with weapons too, ambushing him from a top window or the side of the house.
He continued across the field and climbed a gate. His shoes dug into the earth on a slight descent and he walked carefully over the hardened divots left by cattle and horses.
The stables were silhouetted by the moon, like some king’s house under construction. There were no lights on in the house or the yard. There was an empty bucket hooked over a tap against a shed wall, rattling lightly. Cars and Land Rovers bordered a tarmacked yard and a water tank dripped next to a round pen to the left. The home he left was somewhere in the darkness, across the paddocks and downhill.
He ran his hand over the stable door, then gripped a padlock as thick as his fist. He went to the side of the stables and took a couple of stones from the ground and threw the first stone high, thudding against the centre of the stable’s wooden wall and falling into the grass. He waited a short time, then threw another stone, harder, then whistled once. He waited for a minute and nobody appeared.
The huge rear door of the stables was similarly padlocked. He took Rose’s purse from his pocket and unzipped it, then took out the single key and put it in the lock. He smiled. He opened the door a foot and stepped inside and shut it, then took a torch from his belt and held it at shoulder height, the rifle in his other hand.
It felt like standing in a nave, with a high cathedral roof arching above him. He walked with the soft footsteps of somebody walking to the confessional, between empty stalls until he came to the final one. He raised the lamp and the horse was looking at him, as if he’d been expecting him. It made no protest against his appearance and Patrick wondered what it thought it was seeing. A living tree, holding a ball of light. He put the lamp down and set the rifle against the stall. He walked to the horse, then reached through the bars and rubbed the bridge of its nose, then brought both hands to its jaws and massaged them gently, whispering reassuring sounds. The nostrils and ears moved and Patrick rubbed down its neck and circled his palms around muscular shoulders.
‘You really are something else.’
He remembered Bullet. Sitting next to him, whispering while burning chains of lightning whipped down the length of the sky as they sheltered in the cold and damp shed, and felt guilt for admitting to himself that Bullet was like a similar species, but certainly not of the same species as this horse. He read the name carved next to the gate and didn’t know what it meant. Altair.
He stepped back and lifted the rifle, then aimed its long barrel at the horse, who shied to the back of the stall. He shut one eye and took sight at a target impossible to miss. He counted his breaths in a long and slow one, two, three.
‘Bang,’ he said, at the end of the final exhalation.
41
Catriona was at the table with Con and Margaret when I came down. They stared at the front page of the paper as if it might come to life. I looked over Con’s shoulder and read the headline. ‘Ireland Ready to Welcome Kennedy.’ There was a picture of JFK, standing in an open top car in Berlin. He was due in Dublin in the evening, with Lemass and Dev to greet him, alongside a small army of guards and security.
‘I never thought I’d see the day,’ Margaret said, breaking the spell cast by the smiling man on the front page.
I poured some tea and went to Catriona, rubbing her head then wiping her chin with my hand. ‘Did you put sugar on them Corn Flakes? You don’t want another bad tooth, do you?’ She looked to her grandfather.
‘Ah, we let her put sugar all over them for the day that’s in it, Jim. The homecoming.’
‘We’ll have another homecoming today, won’t we? An even more important one.’ I drank my tea and raised my eyebrows. Catriona looked to Margaret and Con, wide-eyed, and they looked at each other, confused.
‘Oh, Siobhán,’ Con said. ‘Right. I have you. She’d want to be getting a move on.’
‘She didn’t tell ye when exactly?’
Margaret offered a sympathetic smile. Con pulled the newspaper closer and turned the front page. Some moments are supposed to be shared. Standing in the kitchen on the morning of the arrival, I wished she was with us.
‘Be good,’ I said and hugged Catriona.
‘Is that all you’re having, a sup of tea?’ Margaret said and I told her I’d get something in town once I’d finished signing the dole cards. She followed me to the door. ‘If she gets in, I’ll send her round to you straight away.’
‘Thanks, Margaret.’ I gave my best smile and she watched me go.
Cyril and Aidan Fay waved from the dole queue as I walked up the steps to the station. I started with a call to Kerins, explaining the Casey situation. He let me ramble on and then made little of it, seeming surprised that I called at all and saying that anybody who wasn’t approved already wasn’t going to be approved at this stage.
‘Whoever was promising him a front row seat must have been leading him on,’ he said. ‘Men like Peter Casey are so used to playing the game that they don’t realise when they’re being played.’
‘Thanks, Super,’ I said, before a bit of back and forth about loose ends and best feet being put forward.
It would do no good trying to explain to Casey that I had no role in his exclusion, but still it eased my conscience a little, knowing all too well how much people wanted to see Kennedy up close, hardly believing I was only a day from it myself. I looked to his words on the wall.
The phone rang almost as soon as I had recited the last few paragraphs.
‘Jim Field,’ I said, expecting Casey or some intermediary to be on the other end of the line.
‘You’re busy, I take it?’
‘Nollaig. What can I help you with?’
‘It might be me that’s helping you. Or it might be nothing. Meet me at the top of the turn for Raheen.’
