The visit, p.8
The Visit, page 8
It came to me then, while I sat looking at the near-finished model on its start table. All the little parts of that face I saw outside the Royal. The angled jaw, the nose flat in side profile, the eyes set a little too shallow in their sockets. The curls of brown hair that I could see around the hat he had on. It reminded me of Patrick himself, and then it came ringing through my head as clear as an air-raid siren. It’s his brother, Colm. Colm Hatten back from England and meeting Peter Casey in the Royal Hotel could only really mean one thing. He was home to sell the land. I sat in the armchair in the corner of the room, trying to think of any other reason, but try as I might, I couldn’t come up with anything that would be good news for Patrick.
10
He woke facing the opposite wall to the painting and when he turned over, it disappointed him. Without the benefit of sunlight or lamplight or the backdrop of the easel, it looked blotted and unfinished, as the man had warned. He stood in front of it and considered it in its new light and thought that maybe the man was a poor painter, then thought that the same man probably didn’t care the least bit whether he was good or not – sitting with his easel in the quiet of a foreign country, painting for no other reason than the pleasure of it. He could probably set fire to every landscape as soon as he added finishing touches and have lost nothing at all.
He ate a bowl of porridge and left some almost-turned milk for the cat, which managed to hide in its small confines, then stood outside the door of the toolshed and spat, looking through the trees at the tractors. He left for the woods off east, kicking away the tyre tracks left by the car the previous evening as if by doing so he could rid his land of its memory. He was armed with a spear-thrower as long as his forearm and a dart as long as himself, the faces of the men in the pub still grinning in his mind. Both were carved from carefully chosen pine – the best darts coming from the lower branches of mature trees. Anything too light would be as unstable as a kite at the top of the Blackstairs. Anything too heavy meant needing to get too close to easily spooked prey. He didn’t take his gun. The challenge was to make a perfect shot with a single dart. To kill his prey the way man did it before man could speak.
The road was busy with hauliers and vans on their way to the creamery, overtaking and leaving a trail of 2-Star fumes for him to near-suffocate on. Some passed so close he almost ended up in the ditch. Cans and bottles rattled on the back of a cart driven by a pair of old women, taking near every drop of milk they’d drawn to sell for pennies. When he reached the river, he followed its journey south, his short shadow cast on the surface like something for the flies to feed on. His feet began to prickle as if he was walking over thorns and he closed his eyes and breathed slowly, willing the sensation away.
He crouched on the bank and scooped a handful of water over his head, then opened the buttons of his shirt and splashed his chest. He took off his boots and sank his feet into the water and the prickling eased as if it had never been there. Voices came from downstream and he leaned forward to watch the distant shapes of men pulling sparkling cobwebs of net from the water, catching fish like flies, and drowned the thought of being the one who sold them the kit they needed.
He kept his feet in the water until they felt like frozen trout, and he imagined the crowds down at Arthurstown, sweating and queuing for ice-cream and chips, kicking ball and swimming, burning in deck chairs. He stood and walked on barefoot, his boots hooked on his fingers. He hoped he might see Rose, walking the road or sitting against a tree in one of Casey’s fields, and more than once, his mind tricked him into believing that he had.
He’d been in the forest an hour and ignored a group of fallow that were too easy to pick off. Puncturing one of them with his dart presented no challenge. He needed a kill that called for patience, planning and skill. A kill that focused the mind.
He walked slowly, sometimes shutting his eyes to see if he could make his footsteps completely silent. In one of these closed-lidded moments, he heard a rustling to his left and opened his eyes to a young stag angling through a clearing, its antlers mutated and curled, its head stooped and shaking, milky bands of spit hanging from its mouth. Patrick had seen the affliction before and what the deer needed more than air was a dart through its flank. He whistled through his gap and something took flight overhead. The stag looked at him and didn’t bother running, just aimed a sad, black eye like a plea.
He pressed a finger to one nostril and released a pellet of snot from the other. He let the animal stagger on a few paces and every step seemed to hurt it.
‘You poor bastard.’
He spat and placed his dart in the thrower, knowing that a poor shot would mean a slow and painful death, without the option of a mercy bullet. He held the weapon horizontally behind his ear and steadied his breath, watching his target’s head gripped by the shakes like some drunk on a windowsill waiting for the pub to open. After a slow exhalation, he put his weight on his front foot, snapped his throwing arm forward and watched the dart hurtle through space and into the broadside of the deer. It fell sideways to a grave of leaves, both lungs punctured.
Patrick walked to it and pulled out the dart and watched the blood seep from the wound.
‘It’s okay,’ he said, crouching and putting a hand on the deer’s head. He looked into the eye, like a fine and rare black glass that reflected the world. He saw his own shape backlit by the sky and imagined the deer begging him to ease its pain while blood filled its lungs. He took its ear between his thumb and index finger and circled it gently, making shushing sounds while it died.
He sat next to it for a few minutes, turning his bow-knife in his hand and eyeing the forest, unable to spot the herd that had abandoned it.
11
Siobhán came into the kitchen, bringing morning with her. She kept her voice down while she scolded me for not sleeping in our bed. I didn’t mention my worries about us, and the empty envelope and how it reminded me of when she left me all those years back, plans suddenly revealed and strangers waiting in a car to take her away. I told her I was up thinking about Patrick.
‘Why are you fixated on him? What is it that’s worth you looking so run-down?’ she asked, putting a pot of tea in front of me, Catriona still sound asleep and the cat moving between mine and the table’s legs.
‘I’m not fixated on him.’
‘Didn’t you talk the ear off me yesterday evening. About his dole and his house and the quiet of the place. I prefer when you’re going on about rockets and Kennedy.’
‘I’ll hold you to that,’ I said, but she didn’t smile. ‘Stop worrying, love, I can manage plenty of things at once.’
‘You can, yeah – when you’re going through Disprin at the rate you are and only eating half of what you normally do.’ She shook her head and leaned to open the window, letting the stuffy air escape to the yard.
‘Once Kennedy has been and gone things will settle back down. I can’t help that Hatten’s name keeps coming up.’ I poured two cups of tea. Siobhán adds enough sugar to make a paste and thinks she’s married to the strangest man in Wexford because I take mine black. I shook my head and said nothing more, only put the lid back on the sugar bowl, drawing a look from her. I’ve explained it all to her before. That I drove the lad’s father to Senan’s and stood next to him the day he was made an orphan, watching his mother’s body being plucked from the garden and loaded into a van the same as a sack of vegetables.
‘You don’t have to go running every time, as if he’s the most important thing on your plate.’
‘The man you saw Casey with, love. Outside the Royal.’ She looked at me from over the rim of her cup. ‘I’m near-certain it’s Colm Hatten.’
She put her cup down and her eyes did some calculating. ‘The lad who went off to England?’
‘The eldest son home like magic after both parents are gone. We both know how that goes.’
She hesitated, her shoulders softening her posture to something like concern. ‘But he’d hardly throw his brother out. His own brother.’
‘Who knows? But it looks like Casey already has him hooked.’
She put an elbow on the table and her forehead against her hand. ‘What a mess. Do they understand that the boy won’t leave his home without trouble?’
‘Well, they couldn’t have timed it worse.’
‘Promise me you’ll be smart, Jim, we can do without being in Peter Casey’s firing line.’
‘I will. But if Casey wants that place, it will be done properly.’
She gave a nod of weary acceptance. ‘All I’m saying,’ she said, standing at the sound of Catriona’s waking calls, ‘is that getting on Casey’s bad side will be more trouble than it’s worth. It doesn’t matter what side of Patrick Hatten you’re on, he’s liable to do anything. I don’t want your goodness to blind you into thinking he cares one bit what effort you go to for him.’ She put her hand on my shoulder as her final word on the matter. ‘It’ll be a hot one today,’ she said, and left the kitchen.
When she talks about me like that, about my supposed goodness, I swallow the guilt like poison. Can a man ever be good after what I did?
I heard her singing to Catriona while they got ready for the day. They came back to the kitchen, the warmth of her bed still on Catriona when I wrapped my arms around her. Siobhán put a cardboard box in front of me, filled with homemade jam, butter, bread, Fairy Liquid and baking soda, paraffin oil and candles.
‘Now, since you’re doing home visits these days, you can drop that down to Rita after work.’
I gripped the cup with my weak hand, squeezing it so tight I thought it might break, then drained my tea and stood, lifting the box and kissing Siobhán on the ear, thinking that it looked as if I had a day of strength ahead of me and that I’d better make the most of it. What was it Kennedy said, about fixing the roof while the sun is shining?
The place was lively when I got in, everybody up to their eyeballs and in bright and early to make sure they got out on time for dinner and the long, warm evening that was promised. The countdown well and truly on. Revising plans and contingency plans and every man and his brother coming with a question or asking for a favour. There’s no leave allowed while Kennedy’s touring our little island. Even though it’s not my say-so, I’ve lads coming in complaining about needing the leave and wives torturing them over trips that were promised. Any guards that don’t have the new uniform are to be posted beyond Kennedy’s orbit, so some of our own will be standing off route, staring into fields instead of getting a look at the man who stopped us from blowing ourselves out of existence.
When he walks by in Dunganstown, it will take all my strength to keep my hands by my side and not offer one to him. It takes vision to see the possibilities of space. And vision is only half the battle. Having the guts to follow through is the other, when so many will tell him it’s a fine way to waste money better spent for what’s needed here on Earth. I’ve heard fellas saying that the visit is nothing but a politician’s move, to shore up Irish votes or to charm us into NATO. I’m not one of them. I’m among the countless others, unashamedly under the spell of the suits and sunglasses and speeches. The eyes that stared down the Soviets and didn’t blink. I look at Kennedy – a man born only a few years before the Free State – and see Ireland’s full potential, some version of the future that we’d be better off hurrying up and arriving at.
I heard Casey before I saw him. Laughing with Flood outside my door, ashamed at him for all but bending the knee and asking how the stables were coming along. I’d found him early, eating breakfast in Croake’s with an egg-stained plate in front of him and a newspaper folded open on the racing pages. I asked him to come in for a word when it suited, to see could I get out of him what he wanted with Colm Hatten. I could have talked to him there and then, but I like to think that even a man as sure-footed as Casey feels at least a bit off balance inside the walls of a station.
He knocked as he walked in – no chance he’d wait to be called – then lowered himself into the chair, putting his hat on his knee.
‘Jim,’ he said. ‘You want to talk to me, and as it happens, I want to talk to you.’
I rubbed my eyes, in no humour for his performance. ‘I see you’ve brought Colm Hatten back from the dead.’
‘Oh, that boy was far from dead. Quite the opposite. That’s the sort of Irishman we should be sending into the world, not the shower that give us all a bad name. Chancers, beggars, brawlers and half-wits.’ He joined his hands on top of his stomach. A fold of pink skin spilled over a shirt collar so tight that I imagined the top button gnawing his Adam’s apple every time he swallowed. His dark hair was combed to one side, comet tails of grey streaking through it.
I wiped some crumbs from the desktop and let on I knew all about Colm Hatten’s ventures in England.
‘I assume it’s his land you’re after?’
Casey smiled. ‘Exactly right, Jim. The last piece of the puzzle.’
I put my hand on a notebook on my desk. A ploy I use, to hint to whoever is across from me that there are things written inside that he doesn’t know about. ‘It could be a bigger problem than you think.’
‘How’s that?’ He trapped his top lip with the bottom one, and glanced from side to side as if some person might have come in bearing new information. ‘I see a straightforward deal. Aside from the trouble I had tracking Colm down. He’s selling, I’m buying.’
A phone rang in the next room. Flood passed the door holding a cup of tea and for a second I thought he might bring it in and put in front of Casey, like a waiter desperate for a tip. I thought of Siobhán warning me to tread carefully.
‘What about Patrick?’ I raised my hand before he could interrupt. ‘I’ve no place telling you what you can and can’t buy, but humour me a minute. Like it or not, that’s his home and it’s been his home a lot longer than his brother’s. He’s just a lad about the same age as one of your own boys, Peter. You know as well as me that he won’t find it easy if you take it from him.’
He traced his finger around the dark rim of his hat.
‘Jim, there’s finer lads than him leaving every day. Maybe it’s best he joins them. Even better if he hops off halfway across the Atlantic. Or Colm can sort him out, but that’s family business. I’m creating jobs at the stud that mean some of those lads might be able to stay.’
‘So why not give a job to Patrick Hatten? Sweeping the yard, cleaning the stables, shovelling horseshit. You could soften his landing at least.’ I shook my head. ‘This is personal, Peter. Why else would you have those tractors looking over his wall?’
He showed his hands as if there was no other way to see it. ‘This is business, Jim. If you want charity, take him to the church. Have Siobhán sort him out. The tractors were upsetting my horses so I moved them down the field. Nothing more than that.’
‘With a front-loader all but resting on his wall, Peter.’
‘Come off it, Jim, this isn’t the border in Berlin. There’s land bought and sold every day in this county. His mother certainly had no problem taking my money. If she squandered it, I suppose that’s my fault too?’ He leaned forward. ‘If I’m to compete with the likes of Ballydoyle or that shower over in Newmarket, I need more space. More space means cutting through the hovel he calls his home. I held back while Maura was still there, out of respect. But my respect doesn’t extend to that dirty divil. I’ll not bring up what he did to my youngest. Now that, I’ll grant you, was personal.’
‘We’ve been over that plenty. None of it helped his standing any.’
‘He didn’t help his own standing did he, doing what he did?’
‘What you said he did.’
‘Said he did?’ He set his jaw in defiance. ‘Watch your step, Jim, and don’t play the fool. A lad like that has all the sense of an animal. Gets a sniff and thinks a girl is ready to lie down for him because she was stupid enough to give him the time of day. I won’t risk her being so stupid again.’
I raised my hand. ‘Enough.’ He settled back and moved his hat to the other hand. ‘You could move the whole operation thirty yards east and not know any difference.’
He shook his head and smiled like a headmaster in response to a pupil’s naivety and I knew I was going to lose, playing out a few desperate moves and running out of board.
‘Not according to the engineers. And even if I could, Patrick Hatten would be haunting the place and too close to Rose.’ He laughed at the absurdity of the thought. ‘Owners and syndicates down to see their thoroughbreds and their investment. Demanding a place worth big money, and that lad skulking around. Animals worth a fortune within his reach.’ He shook his head. ‘Shouldering that gun every time I see him. Looking at me like he wants to blow me away. If we sent the fucker to the moon, he’d still be too close.’
He shifted his gaze to the far wall, where some dark premonition was taking shape and for a second, I could see it myself, and understood the root of Casey’s scorn.
‘I don’t know how I didn’t see it until now.’
He turned back to me. ‘See what?’
‘You’re afraid of him.’
‘Ah, Christ, now I’ve heard it all.’ He laughed, playing to an invisible audience, but he couldn’t hide it. ‘I warned you once to watch your step.’ He pointed a finger at me. ‘You’re getting two chances only because of the office you’re in.’
I put my elbows on my desk and clasped my hands. ‘Peter, I can manage Patrick where he is, I’ve done it long enough. Whatever trouble you think he is now will be much worse if you chase him out of sight. And let’s say the law says he has a claim to the place? What then?’
The pointed finger turned into a raised palm. ‘On that front, I have no worries.’ His hat changed hands again. He seemed to stop breathing while he decided if he should carry on, but couldn’t resist the chance to show that he’d thought of everything. ‘Colm Hatten – as well as almost everybody in town – understands that his brother isn’t the full shilling. He told me he drove out the other evening and saw his brother on his bike and was shocked by the cut of him. Like something haunting the place. He wondered if it wouldn’t be best to send him the same way his father was sent. For his own good, of course.’
