Saints and Sinners (8 page)

"This is nice," he said. He liked the wine, though he was not used to it. She could tell he was not used to it because his eyes became a little foggy, like steam on a kitchen window when pots are boiling over. They could hear Wynne talking to the dozy girl in the kitchen, as their arrival had created a little flurry.

"Your eyes are the color of tobacco," Mona said.

"Is that good or bad?" he asked.

"It's good," she said.

Turning to Wynne, who had just come in with a loaf of bread, he asked what the room rates were for the night.

"We could negotiate that," Wynne said, and winked as she toddled off.

"You're not thinking of staying in this dungeon," Mona said.

"No one would find me here," he said, gravely.

"Where will you live, Shane?"

"Maybe in the west," he said, but vaguely. She pictured him in some cold, isolated cottage, by himself, wrapped in an overcoat, on edge, day and night on the lookout.

"Do you worry about ... about reprisals?" she asked.

"I'd be worried for others," he said, and looked at her with such concern, such tenderness, across the reaches of the wide table, the flames from the stout candle guttering in the breeze from the open window.

"Do you think you'll go back to—"

"The fight isn't over .. .isn't done," he said, grimly.

She didn't ask anything further. There were always distances between them, a part of him cut off from her and from everyone. How different the two hims, the young invincible buccaneer and the man sitting opposite her, aging and dredged, everything locked inside him.

"It's all right," she said, not even sure of what she was saying.

"It is," he answered, also unsure.

The poached salmon was a sturdy lump from which the head and tail had been cursorily lopped. The skin, hanging in a long shred, looked like flypaper, and though the outside was cooked nicely, the inside was rawish and around the bone the juices were a pale blood color. Wynne hacked it jubilantly with an old carving knife and conveyed pieces onto Shane's plate with bravado. She then picked up the hot boiled potatoes with her bare hands and filled his plate in her desire to please him. Mona asked for a smaller portion as Shane apologized for the mound he had been given.

"There'll be jelly and custard, so leave a gap," Wynne said, and went off proudly, humming.

Very soon after, he listened as if he had heard something that was no longer the bleating lambs, because in the fading light they had gone quieter.

"What?" Mona asked.

"Car."

The car drove in at a hectic speed, lights fully on, and then drove off again, with a vengeance.

"Ah, youngsters, hoping there was a disco," Wynne said, having come back in with the white sauce for the salmon. But he was not listening to her, he was only listening now to his own thoughts and his appetite had gone. He drank a few more swigs of the wine and jumped up.

"Toilet," he said and reached out and touched her sleeve. She watched him go, something so wounded about him, his clothes clinging to his thin body, his sleeves rolled up as he tugged at the loose doorknob. Then, peculiarly, he ran back and took his jacket off the back of the chair.

Since he was away for quite a while, Wynne, who had been coming in and out, brought an old dented cloche to put over his dinner, as both of them watched through the open door into the dark passageway. The two dogs, so inert a short while previous, raised an ongoing terrible howl, as if catastrophe was about to befall the house. Wynne said it portended thunder, as they never yelped at visitors, not even at tradesmen, but the onset of thunder always sent them crazy. She predicted that presently there would be flashes of lightning, the grounds and the meadow intermittently lit up. They waited, but the summer lightning did not come.

"I wonder what's keeping him," Wynne said.

"He's not used to drink," Mona said quietly.

"Lovely man ...lovely smile," Wynne said, and again looked, expecting him to appear, in that quick, stealthlike way of his.

At length, Wynne said, "Do you think I should get Jack to go and investigate?"

They had left the dining room and were in the hallway facing the door that said Gents, with the metal G askew on a loose rusted nail. Mona thought how awful if he had passed out and how ashamed he would be. Jack was summoned from where he was stationed, close up to the television screen, and rising he muttered something, then went into the Gents and closed the door behind him. Soon Wynne pushed it in so that they could be of assistance.

"He's not here," Jack called.

"Where is he then?" Wynne shouted.

"He went out ... he got change for the pay phone," Jack said, and instantly she guessed that he had gone to phone one of his comrades to come for her, as he would have to disappear.

The dogs were already on the avenue, running back and forth in a froth, and ready to tear anyone to pieces.

Both women ran and Jack followed behind, calling after them.

People stood on the far side of the gate, muted and in shock. Shane lay half in and half out of the telephone kiosk, his eyes, his tobacco-colored eyes, still open, staring up at the sky with its few isolated stars. He was gasping to say something, but the strength had almost left him. He could not say what he most wanted to say. The onlookers stood in a huddle, baffled, not knowing who they were looking at, or why he had been slain while simply making a telephone call. The guards had already been called, and one woman, who had been first on the scene, said she had heard him repeatedly utter, "Oh Jesus, oh Mary," but her companion stoutly contradicted that. Mona wanted to kneel by him and shut his eyes, but she was too afraid to stir. If only someone would shut his eyes, but she dared not, for fear of them. He looked so desolate and so unbefriended, the breath just ebbing away, and the instant it left him, she let out a terrible cry. He was dead. Dead for a cause that others did not believe in, and as if on cue a youth who had been going by stopped, dismounted his black brutish motorcycle, threw down his helmet, and crossed with the officiousness of a pallbearer. Looking down at the corpse, he recognized Shane and repeated his name with evident outrage and disgust. He seemed almost ready to kick him. The group recoiled, stricken, not only with fear, but with revulsion. The brief spate of pity had turned ugly. Wynne shrieked at Mona— "A murderer ... you brought a murderer under my roof where my grandchildren slept," and then lunged fiercely, as Jack caught her, repeating the same phrase over and over again, "It's all right ... it's all right ... he's history now ... he can't harm us anymore."

The police cars had arrived, and big burly men, in a lather of curiosity and vindication, hurried to look at

the assassin, in whose bloodied death they rejoiced. "What goes around comes around," one said repeatedly.

Those that had been first on the scene were told to drive to the police station in the town, while Jack, Wynne, and Mona were ordered back to the hotel for interrogation.

Jack and Wynne hurried on, as the dopey girl and a boy came out to meet them, clinging to each other for protection. Mona lagged behind, dreading their questions and their abhorrence of her. It had begun to drizzle. A brooding quiet filled the entire landscape and the trees drank in the moisture. There would be another death to undo his and still another and another in the long grim chain of reprisals. Hard to think that in the valleys murder lurked, as from the meadow there came not even a murmur, the lambs in their fetal sleep, innocent of slaughter.

ONE MORNING WE wakened to find that there was no border —we had been annexed to the fatherland. Of course we did not hear of it straightaway as we live in the wilds, but a workman who comes to gather wood and fallen boughs told us that soldiers had swarmed the town and occupied the one hotel. He said they drank there, got paralytic, demanded lavish suppers, and terrorized the maids. The townspeople hid, not knowing which to fear most, the rampaging soldiers or their huge dogs that ran loose without muzzles. He said they had a device for examining the underneath of cars—a mirror on wheels to save themselves the inconvenience of stooping. They were lazy bastards.

The morning we sighted one of them by the broken wall in the back avenue we had reason to shudder. His camouflage was perfect, green and khaki and brown, the very colors of this mucky landscape. Why they should come to these parts baffled us, and we were sure that very soon they would scoot it. Our mother herded us all into one bedroom, believing we would be safer that way—there would be no danger of one of us straying and we could keep turns at the watch. As luck had it, only the week before we had gathered nuts and apples and stored them on wooden trays for the winter. Our mother worried about our cow, said that by not being milked her poor udder would be pierced with pain, said the milk would drip all over the grass. We could have used that cow's milk. Our father was not here, our father had disappeared long before.

On the third morning they came and shouted our mother's name—Rosanna. It sounded different, pronounced in their tongue, and we wondered how they knew it. They were utter hooligans. Two of them roughed her out, and the elder tugged on the long plait of her hair.

Our mother embraced each of us and said she would be back presently. She was not. We waited, and after a fearful interval we tiptoed downstairs but could not gain entry to the kitchen because the door between it and the hall was barricaded with stacked chairs. Eventually we forced our way through, and the sight was grisly. Her apron, her clothes, and her underclothes were strewn all over the floor, and so were hairpins and her two side combs. An old motorcar seat was raised onto a wooden trough in which long ago she used to put the feed for hens and chickens. We looked in vain through the window, thinking we might see her in the back avenue or better still coming up the path, shattered, but restored to us. There was one soldier down there, his rifle cocked. Where was she? What had they done to her? When would she be back? The strange thing is that none of us cried and none of us broke down. With a bit of effort we carried the stinking car seat out and threw it down the three steps that led from the back door. It was all we could do to defy our enemies. Then we went up to the room and waited. Our cow had stopped moaning, and we realized that she too had been taken and most likely slaughtered. The empty field was ghostlike, despite the crows and jackdaws making their usual commotion at evening time. We could guess the hours roughly by the changing light and changing sky. Later the placid moon looked in on us. We thought, if only the workman would come back and give us news. The sound of his chain saw used to jar on us, but now we would have welcomed it as it meant a return to the old times, the safe times, before our mother and our cow were taken. Our brother's wooden flute lay in the fire grate, as he had not the heart to play a tune, even though we begged for it.

On the fifth morning we found some reason to jubilate. The sentry was gone from his post, and no one came to stand behind that bit of broken wall. We read this as deliverance. Our mother would come back. We spoke of things that we would do for her. We got her clean clothes out of the wardrobe and lay them neatly on the bed. Her lisle stockings hanging down, shimmered pink in a shaft of sunlight, and we could imagine her legs inside them. We told each other that the worst was over. We bit on apples and pelted each other with the butts for fun. Our teeth cracked with a vengeance on the hazelnuts and the walnuts, and picking out the tasty, fleshy particles, we shared them with one another like true friends, like true family. Our brother played a tune. It was about the sun setting on a place called Boulevouge.

Our buoyancy was short-lived. By evening we heard gunshot again, and a soldier had returned to the broken bit of wall, a shadowy presence. Sleep was impossible and so we watched and we prayed. We did that for two whole days and nights, and what with not eating and not sleeping, our nerves got the better of us and, becoming hysterical, we had to slap each other's faces, slap them smartly, to bring common sense into that room.