‘Do you think?’ says Eneas. He’s shocked to find it so. The gap of years seems less to him. But of course, when you’re traipsing the backroads and the hillroads of Bexhill through all the four seasons, maybe a year is a longer affair.
‘I’ll tell you, Eneas, I always had a great gra for you, and I often worried you didn’t know that, and so kept away thinking I wasn’t much to you, but…’
‘Ah, but, girl, I always did know that. Certainly.’
Round and round the cheerful sun, like so many dolphins turning in the bluest ocean, the deepest, the bluest.
‘Well,’ says Teasy, ‘it’s been a time of it. And I expect I’ve been thinking and thinking. More than I would normally.’
‘Why, Teasy, dear?’
‘Arra, man — have a gander at this.’
And she hoists her black skirts up her girlish-looking legs, past the stop of her black stockings and on to her bare thigh. Then a peculiar thing happens. Some cloud wedges in between the sun and the lonely earth and the light alters in the room and to his surprise the same yellow colour of the sun remains on his sister’s pleasing face. She’s yellow as the beak of a blackbird.
‘What, Teasy?’ he says, in the grip of the moment, his sister’s chaste thighs revealed to him, for all the world like a merry harlot’s in some other place entirely, which stills him, still as an alerted mouse, and his heart is banging, banging in his chest, banging.
‘The lump there,’ says Teasy.
And her right thigh indeed is adorned you might say with a swelling, sitting there maybe on the bone itself, hard-looking, distressing, annoying, wrongful, out of place on his mighty sister.
Touch it,’ she says, ‘touch it, brother.’
Harcourt’s form of address to him! Brother. Sister, sister, sister.
‘No need,’ he says softly. ‘Is it a bad thing?’
‘It’s a rotten thing, says the doctor,’ says Teasy. ‘It’s a thing to do a woman in. What can you do?’
‘I don’t know,’ he says truthfully.
‘No one can save me — I mean, Eneas, there’s no help for it. But, sure you have to be — courageous, you know. There’s no fear for the likes of me. Bride of Christ. Arra, you know. Useless.’
Back comes the sun and dresses his sister in warm, rich yellow. If there’s a ditch of years between, no matter, he thinks. In his foolish suit he gets up, and she gets up, like a couple about to dance. And indeed their status is rigorously single.
The best mendicant nun in all of Bexhill,’ he says, and tenderly tenderly gets his arms about her and holds the long sack of bones against his breast and holds her there.
Dry as a tree tortured by drought she cries in there in the cave of her brother.
‘Rescue, rescue,’ she whispers, and he doesn’t know what she means and doesn’t dare ask.
19
Longitude and latitude
are written in his bones, he’s a globe in a classroom, you could spin him and find your path to Antarctica with a childish finger. As a traveller of stature and a sorrowing man he decides to have a try out of an aeroplane. He has a yen now for the high clouds he’s heard about, where the sunlight is perpetual and nothing can live but the big silver cigar of the aeroplane. People in armchairs as high as kites like a crazy sitting-room. Oh, he fancies being unmoored from sea and land, and visiting God’s own quarters.
He sits in the soothing seat with his own number written on a card, in his magnificent suit. The book of life, the book of life … The air rushes past like molten sparrows and the propellers boiling the flat air tear the aeroplane from the earthly runway. London lies below him in a bountiful arrangement of shining districts, Parliament, Palace and Cathedral, he is pierced back in his seat by its singing beauty. The song of London is deep, orchestral, like the sea herself. Immaculate women bring him a drink of tea, all is starch and pinned smiles. He’s the emperor of the plastic ashtray, the extraordinary cone of air that blows at him from above. Well, he might be on a speeding bicycle, taking the highest hill known to mankind, with a savage whoop.
As the round window shows him a new Ireland, her coveted fields, the heavy stone of Ireland’s Eye, the casual arm of Dollymount strand lying in the sea as easy as a lover’s, he weeps mightily. He sits in his chains of memory and weeps mightily. He’s surprised by this love, his country shown to him in a vision of pouring light and evident peace, childhood, childhood singing in him, but also other matters, dark matters, mysteries, the tiny rivers of his blood mirroring the streams and embered lakes below’ in very paradise. Away beneath his aeroplane he can see the familiar gulls, their whiteness struck by sunlight, careering and scattering like very souls. Pappy, Mam, sister, brother, brother, Viv, Harcourt, Roseanne … He puts his hard palms to his hard face and weeps, for Teasy no doubt especially, for mere time passing, for the brief soft downturn of a wing that seems to be a life.
Collinstown airport is a little kingdom of white concrete, with a watchtower as fabled as a castle. Out on the edge of the runway are set neat and elegant tables, where fine dames sit with scarves blowing off their delicate shoulders, drinking little drinks in the heady lake of fumes and flashing aluminium. The curve of the airport building absorbs the wave of perfume and flight, like the Great South Wall itself he has marvelled at in the sea near Ringsend, with the bright poppy of Poolbeg Lighthouse at the end, whose old engineers knew the heavy gold in the waves, and made their wall in long curves and angles accordingly. Everything in Collinstown is just so, the little fingers stuck out from the brittle cocktail glasses, the wind funnels betraying the passage of the wind, the very starch and aplomb of the man guiding in the suddenly leaden aeroplane. Eneas’s mind rackets with perfection and precision, angles, plastics, successful magic, confident science. The skirts of the women and the flounce of the building are secretly dancing. He’s an old father of another time, of ships and dark houses, but this new time conquers him.
He stands looking out through the enormous windows of the airport, for a last view of the extravagant matrons, the little breezes of the planes, the perfected fields. He rests his nose and face against the glass, sighing like an old dog.
‘Eneas,’ says a voice behind him, ‘Eneas McNulty, is that yourself?’
He turns about and looks into the face of a man he does not know. It is a thin long face with a buckle in it that time has fastened there, a sort of twisted, intentful mouth. The dome of the head is hairless and full of surprising bumps, and mottled like the bonnet of a car in autumn, as if small wet leaves have fallen there in the peace of a long night. Eneas shakes his own head at the voice, at least familiar in its Sligo music, the mucky tune of Sligo.
‘Ah, boy, you don’t know me, you divil, and I know you. There’s friendship for you.’
The man is spick and span, edged like a spanner, a screw-turner of a creature. Eneas stares politely, waiting for a declaration.
‘You’ve changed, boy, but you’ve not changed much. You’re still recognizable. I was watching you on the flight, you know. Remembering, remembering.’ The man holds out a hand. ‘Jonno Lynch, boy, Jonno Lynch.’
It is Jonno Lynch, Eneas thinks, the person that removed him from the book of life. Irish life anyhow. It is Jonno Lynch, standing here, old, fit, friendly, destructive. A silk tie nestles in the lapels of the Crombie coat like a snake. The chin is shaved as a stone. Jonno Lynch. His father’s old garden and a thousand years.
‘Will you not take my hand, Eneas?’
Eneas shakes the bony hand in silence. He doesn’t smile or frown. All men are equal under God’s stars. Worthy of greeting.
‘You’re surprised to see me. Of course you are. Aren’t you dandy now in your modern suit. A suit like that is the latest thing, I know. London town. Fellas on scooters with wild girls wear such suits, boy. It suits you, that suit.’
Eneas has no clue as to what Jonno means.
‘How are you getting on, Jonno?’ he says, slowly.
‘Mighty, mighty. Oh, mighty. Booming. I was years and years in the Land Commission, great work, great work, breaking up the lands, you know, for the farmers, for the farmers. And latterly, beef, boy, beef, the coming thing. Me and O’Dowd. We never touch a bullock, but we’re in the beef business. Paperwork. Mighty.’
Well, if Eneas understood him, he would answer him to the point. But it’s all dark. O’Dowd, beef, Jonno.
‘You remember O’Dowd, surely?’
‘Oh, yeh.’
‘And what line are you in yourself, Eneas? It’s not policework has you so — so mighty. We thought maybe you’d gone out to Hong Kong maybe, to join the force there, or some such. Far away and no bother to anybody.’
‘Is that what you thought?’
‘Well, boy, that was the theory anyhow. Sure how are you, Eneas? Are you well? My God, boy. Think of the times we had in the old days. The orchards we robbed, the foxes we boxed. Holy Jesus.’ ‘Aye.’
‘And here you are in Collinstown, be the hokey. What do you know? Christ.’
‘Tell us, Jonno …’
‘What, Eneas, what?’
‘Do you remember the time you came to see me, in my Pappy’s garden, long ago?’
‘Oh. I do, yeh. A terrible business. Terrible. Oh, dark days. Oh, yes, Eneas, I remember it perfectly. Written on my soul it is. In letters of fire.’
‘Is that right?’
‘Oh, yes, Eneas. Certainly.’
‘And are things, Jonno, are they different in Sligo now, could that sort of thing happen now, do you think, could it happen now?’
‘How so?’
‘Are things long ago, I mean, are things left back in the long ago, would you say?’
‘Yourself, do you mean, Eneas?’
‘Well, you’re coming up to me, and orchards you’re talking about, and friendly of course, and indeed, in the long ago we were friends, a person could say, but equally Jonno, a person could say other things, remember other things …’ ‘Now, look, Eneas, let bygones be bygones, dark days, and troubled times, I’m only saying hello to you, for old times’ sake.’
‘But, Jonno, what are old times? What are old times if they contain not just dark days but dark words, words to break any friendship, words of death, words of whatever, poxy dark words of death-sentence and time to go, Jonno?’ Eneas allows himself to tap the chest of Jonno’s coat ever so softly with a finger. It’s like touching outrage, a little tumble of outrage in a Crombie coat.
‘You speak of my suit, you speak of watching me, Jonno. You say a lot of things except the last thing you said to me in my father’s garden. Does that still stand, Jonno, does that still stand? And shouldn’t I take you by the throat now, Jonno, here in this bright place, just for the sake of the years of my life, and for all the times, Jonno, that your name and the name of O’Dowd brought demons into my sleep? The earth is a long and scattered kingdom, with cities, towns and roads, and on many a spot of that earth I’ve found your name in my dreams.’
‘Well, fuck me, Eneas, if I know what the fuck you’re saying. Gobbledygook. But maybe I get the gist. Maybe I do. It’s not my hand you want to shake, it’s my throat. You want to kill me. You want to kill Jonno Lynch. Is that it?’
‘I want not to see you, I want not to see you.’ The strength goes out of his voice, out of his bones. ‘Does it still stand, Jonno, does it still stand?’
‘What, Eneas? Does what still stand?’
‘Sentence of death.’
Jonno Lynch looks at him with an open face. You could give him that much. Fearless. Old, and fearless. The mortal passengers pass up the corridor raising no dust, because there is no dust, only the polish of the linoleum, as if a thousand nuns had waxed it on their knees, to make a blessed convent of it.
‘Well, you’re talking, boy, you’re asking. And I’ll tell you. It does, Eneas, it does still stand.’ And then hasn’t anything to say, but in good Jonno fashion says it anyway. ‘But, good to see you, boy, good to see you.’
And off with him incongruously in his coat, magnificent as a bookie crying out his prices atop a racecourse barrel.
When he reaches the old bungalow in Sligo, the garden shrugging in the dark, the heat of the late spring day slugging about among the overgrown roses, he finds his Mam and Pappy have turned the tables, have disappeared on him. For they are not there, and the rags and papers of neglect blown in against the porch tell him they are gone a good while. He traipses around the house and peers in the back window as of old, as if Jack and his daughter might still be there, but all is glimmers and shadows.
For good measure he walks out to the old walled garden under Midleton’s famished woods, along the heavy ruckus of the old river, and succeeding memories of school walls and dandy houses. But the gates of the garden are shut off with corrugated iron and even in the troubled light of the moon he can see, through the heavy lace of rusted cracks, that the place has sunk into brambles, nettles and seedy grass. It behoves him to go back into the river-damp town and ask questions in the public bars. But one bar and one question finds Old Tom McNulty’s address. Apparently it’s a house the far side of the granite bridge they’re in. He has to pass the Gaiety cinema on his way down the hill and over the river. Well, some things never change — the ladies of Sligo, differently dressed, maybe the daughters of the daughters of his youth, come out after being at the picture into the ordinary street with the blaze of something in their eyes, whoever are the stars of these days, he doesn’t know. They fasten their coats firmly, set their breasts firmly against the walk home, content, elevated, beautiful. He doesn’t know them but he knows the frisk of romance and California and honey in their paces.
‘There was no one going out any more to the old place in Strandhill,’ says his mother, ‘so we sold the bungalow for safety’s sake and took ourselves here. It’s just another iron shack by the sea now, that lovely dance-hall. To think of it. The salt air going through like a circus act of knives. There was no one going out there to dance and God knows it was far enough for Old Tom to travel for nothing. At eighty-odd years, I suppose he was no draw for the dancers of Sligo. And Young Tom has the place bought now in Bundoran, mighty nice place on the cliffs, with a hotel and a ballroom, and lights galore that spill down the grassy cliff and onto that famous beach. And who would blame him? Oh, Old Tom is full of talk, and bitter talk it is, but I’m tired telling him the brass tacks of things. He thinks if he can still ride his bicycle, he can still have his orchestra. But sure who’ll listen to that old music they used to play with the daft music going now? Even Young Tom has his work cut out to keep up with the times. It’s not polkas and foxtrots now but country ballads and your man with the twisty hips, Elvis Presley.’ And sitting in her damask chair she seems to want to give him an idea of those hips, and swivels her own without rising, and laughs, as if the dog Tam was still alive. And she was dancing to burst on the ancient hearthstone.
‘It’s queer times, right enough,’ says Eneas. His mother looks as hard as an old thorn tree stuck out in the middle of a field and left alone against wind and rain. She wears a little dress as enveloping and black as one of Queen Victoria’s, when she was in eternal mourning for Albert. Beside her is a high pile of her scrapbooks, as she calls them, where for years and years it seems she has pasted all the loose and likely items of a life. He doesn’t remember her keeping scrapbooks, but the earliest ones date back to the time of his boyhood. She shows him old school reports of his and Jack’s and Tom’s, and Teasy with her mighty marks for everything from the nuns. He is vaguely confused that he doesn’t remember the scrapbooks. At any rate now it’s just her, the chair, the dark room, and the pile of dead history. His mother’s a dancer no more.
T saw Teasy,’ he says, ‘on my way over.’
‘She told you?’ she says.
‘Aye.’
‘The pity of it. Aye.’
‘And Tom’s wife?’ he says, quietly.
‘She’s with him in Bundoran of course.’
‘With him in the hotel? Roseanne?’
‘What? No. No, his wife, his real wife.’
‘Oh.’
That night he sleeps deeper than dreams and in the morning his father makes a breakfast for him.
‘Jaysus, that’s a good rasher, Pappy.’
‘And the bread’s grand, hah?’
‘First class.’
‘And you should know, who has seen the whole world. What a mighty thing that is. To have seen the whole blessed stretch of the world. The blue countries, and the red ones, and the yella.’
‘How’s that? Ah, on the atlas, do you mean, Pappy?’ ‘Yes, I look up the countries in the atlas, down the library, to see where my sons are, exactly.’
‘The writing hand is a rusty hand, that’s true.’
‘Ah, yes. Surely. And do you have money, Eneas, for a suit like that?’ And feels the cloth between thumb and index finger. ‘That’s no charity cloth beyond redemption, that I had to deal with above in the asylum. This is — classy, classy stuff.’