Higney stepped lightly into the hallway of Connolly Mansions and stood for a moment listening to the early morning sounds filtering through closed doors. His small bright eyes missed nothing as they darted from the pile of empties outside number three to the big shabby pram blocking half the passage, with its bag of refuse already punctured by the claws of some early cat.
He mounted the stairs with cautious ease, one hand against the wall. At the sound of voices higher up he slipped into the lavatory and bolted the door. The familiar acid smell assaulted his nostrils as he stood at the bowl. Someone had cut a newspaper into squares and hung them from a nail in the wall. He jerked down a sheet and noted that a man was being charged with the murder of a sixteen-year-old girl with whom it was alleged he had first had relations. Later, he’d cut up the body and tried to burn it in a furnace. Hanging was too good for them, Higney thought, ripping off more sheets until only the loop of string remained. Damn foreigners! Coming in and trying to take over the country. In Merrion Square a big brazen coloured man had taken a woman Higney had put his eye on. He’d stood there and raised his finger and the woman had turned away from Higney just as he was getting her down to his price and the two of them had walked off without a backward glance. Someone rattled the handle impatiently, seeking entry. Unhurriedly Higney buttoned his fly. He reached up and pulled at the length of chain. Water flushed noisily into the brown-flecked bowl and subsided gradually, the cistern gurgling and sighing. The door handle shook once more and there was the sound of feet jiggling urgently on bare boards. Casually Higney pushed back the bolt and emerged on to the landing. A figure darted past mouthing obscenities and the door banged shut. Unconcerned, Higney mounted the stairs until he could go no further.
The door sloped inwards on one hinge. She had lifted it the night before into place but someone had come by in the early hours and now it drooped top heavily inwards almost oppressing her as she lay there. On the landing below, the cistern gushed noisily, a door banged and the stairs creaked rhythmically under the pressure of ascending feet. Someone paused outside her door. Peg felt eyes watching her over the sloping edge and raised herself with difficulty to peer defiantly into the surrounding greyness.
‘Get away,’ she tried to shout but was betrayed by her phlegm-roughened throat. The boards creaked as weight shifted. A wheezing cough, instantly checked, reached her straining ears. It was Mick Higney, she knew it. ‘I know yeh’re there, Mick,’ she screeched. The words sang in her mind as the silence stretched. Through the floor she heard the Molloys stirring. Children’s voices thin and intermittent becoming shrill and strident as hunger gained the upper hand on sleep. Footsteps on the stairs to empty slops and far below the distant banging of the street door as, flushed out by the house’s stirring, Higney lost himself in the awakening streets. She lay and drifted. The walls telescoped, compressing her between ceiling and floor. Breathlessly suspended, forehead all but crushed, she hung there, a sickness behind the eyes, until the distant toning of the mass bell brought release. Ash Wednesday with its earthly reminders; no compromise.
Upright at last, dressing merely the addition of one more tattered layer, feet thrust into balding suede and over all the plastic mac. A last examination of some treasure stowed deep in the orange box, evidence of its bright cargo still adhering in strips to the rough surfaces. Java – an eternity away. Fingers made insensate by Rinso and Vim suddenly tender stroking the smooth plaster. Two shillings long ago at the Jesuit Mission at the Mansion House; half a day’s pay. The screws in the remaining hinge wobbled when touched. A screwdriver was what she needed and would get at Mrs Breen’s. She had seen a fine big one in a box under the stairs beside the hoover they would never let her use. At the same time she would ask Mrs Breen to ask her husband about her position in the house. He would know whether they could put her out on the street after eighteen years. Mrs Breen had assured her as she washed the step one day if ever she wanted advice Mr Breen would be happy to give it. For after all it was free and did not cost him anything. He was a big man not saying much ever except to forbid her use the hoover, but then he was a busy man with a responsible job in the Corporation. Every Wednesday, wet or fine, she went to their house in Iona Gardens, not far from the Bishop’s Palace. Last time Mrs Breen had remarked it was too much for her, meaning Peg, but might have meant herself. Every second week would be enough, she’d said, while giving her the few shillings at the door. But Peg looked forward to her visit to the Breen’s house, now the only house she could go to anymore. And when her work (was that the name for it?) was done Mrs Breen would give her a bowl of soup. Good soup in the art of which she excelled, made from a stockpot she kept bubbling noxiously on the stove day in, day out. The girls were big now Mrs Breen had suggested and should be encouraged to keep their own room tidy and the youngest, a lad of ten, was over the troublesome stage.
She tied a plastic rainhat over her black beret once the property of Mr Breen and went onto the landing. The door trembled against the lintel as, supporting it, she edged her way around. Something moved far below in the well of the staircase. Was it him lurking down there waiting to catch her as she emerged with his Fine morning, Miss Dinnegan and his Blessings of God on yeh and Ah, but yehr looking great, accompanied by his wide smile and ready wink. Do yeh think will it rain, he asked her on the step one day. It won’t catch you unawares anyway, he’d said, eyeing her closely. Aren’t you well prepared for the rainy day, smiling as at some private joke. He had mounted his bicycle heavily and pushed off, the children running before and behind, mindless of his warnings. She had not put any great meaning on his words but now she wondered if after all he was speaking of something other than the weather.
A door closed quietly at the back of the hall as Peg dealt with the clutter of prams in her way. Someone had left their garbage in an empty go-car and over it a cat crouched, ripping the plastic malevolently with its hindlegs.
Outside the air was crisp, causing her to sink her chin deeper into her hand as, shoulders hunched, she crept along close to the railings. An airline bag, the markings faded and almost obliterated by long usage, hung from her other hand, a relic of her cleaning days with Mrs Daly whose daughter once worked in a ticket office in O’Connell Street. As she turned into Sherrard Street a man passed her on a bicycle, the smudge on his skin still visible beneath his cap. Children played hopscotch by the gates of the church. Were they the same as those forever trailing in her wake chanting Ould Miss Dinnegan has a pimple on her chinegan? Was that the ringleader now with her bold face at the head of the gang scattering at her approach?
‘Go home to your Mammy,’ she told them, sinking her hand in the font and dabbing at her face with holy water. They stared after her and silently resumed play when she had passed on out of sight.
The queue to the altar rails grew smaller as she trudged up a side aisle. Submitting to the swift dab at the temples, reminder of the fallibility of earthly expectations, she returned the way she’d come. The church emptied and only the regulars remained. On the altar the sacristan genuflected deeply and transferred the heavy missal from one side to the other. Kneeling, she was conscious of a hunger unrelated to food as she waited avidly for the ritual of the mass to begin. Ahead of her old Carney beat the bench with her rosary and called out. In slow motion the elderly re-enacted, as in some eternal charade, the stations of the cross, grouping, retreating, endlessly.
Staring into the winking candle flames on the many tiered stands her eyes were at first dazzled by the reflecting glimmers of gold. The fiery haze shimmered and shifted and she closed her eyes, retaining on her retina a myriad of leaping silhouetted tongues of flame. And when she looked again she seemed no longer distant from the blaze but to be a part of that white heat and then she was the light itself and from her extended long spears of dazzling blinding truth.
I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will have eternal life.
She knew and in her slack-jawed wonder wished to impart that knowledge to the world. The tinkle of the bell announced the priest’s approach, recalling her with a sense of exaltation to herself. Stiffly she levered herself to her knees, white flecks occupying the space before her face, one hand on the bench. Facing the people the priest intoned his opening lines. Her lips moved, her prayer still that of childhood.
Introibo ad altare Dei – to the God of my joy and my youth.
She took her beads and let them dribble between her fingers. Old Carney stood on, beating her chest – a sinner – shaggy white mop thrown back, eyes rolling heavenwards. A man with the look of a child glanced around smiling and grimacing. A dog trotted steadily between the kneeling congregation, tail swaying always just out of reach. Near the doors a man went down on one knee, cap in hand, as the priest raised high the host.
‘Now let us offer each other the sign of peace.’
At once began the extension of hands reaching forward and behind. Brown spotted crepe engulfing and engulfed. Eyes averted, cold tips brushing aloofly, a duty done. Half-hearted dabs and tenacious graspings like drowning men, the only contact left in a life filled no longer with the holding and caring of happier days. Gradually a settling back into the closed circuit of daily existence, prisoners of self, until the next releasing words were spoken.
Outside the church the dog followed hopefully at her heels, nosing at her bag. She stopped and turned her head. Uncertain of his welcome he stayed where he was.
‘Here, Major,’ she called, and threw him a piece of stale bread rummaged up from the depths of the travelight. To her all dogs were Major. He sniffed at the bread but no more than that, tail faintly wagging. She moved on. A car horn hooted as, head down, she crossed the street.
It wouldn’t take much to get the door off its hinges, Higney decided. He picked at a loose screw until it wobbled out into his hand. The door sagged lower. He eased it upright and slipped into the room. His foot trod on something soft and he recoiled before realising it was the edge of the blanket trailing the floor. He stooped before the plywood crate and carelessly tipped it over. No earthly treasures met his eye; no wad of dirty banknotes or scattered sovereigns to gladden his heart, only a jumble of scapulars and rosaries, a few statues; all the flotsam and jetsam of Christianity.
A spider ran up the wall and in disgust he let the mattress flop back. It was not as he believed. But could be, he told himself. He surveyed the room, then paced it out, his black boots eating up the inches. There was room enough for a cheap divan and a two-ring gas cooker. In Woolworth’s he could purchase a print of a woodland scene to hang over the bed. He saw himself knocking a few nails into the wall, maybe fixing a yale lock on the door. It was a room a bachelor living alone would be glad of or, perhaps, a couple of young ones fresh out of school. Either way there as profit to be made.
The gate to the Breen’s house was open. She trod the path more swiftly now, if a snail can be said to be swift. She let the heavy knocker fall repeatedly but no one came. Passively she stood. If you have faith all things can be accomplished. Her head sunk on her chest, her arms hanging loosely from their sockets, the airline bag an extension of her wrist, Peg waited. Having come so far in the certain hope of a bowl of Mrs Breen’s life-giving soup she was prepared to wait for ever, if necessary, to achieve her desire.
Against the orange and green frosted glass Mrs Breen saw her outline and retreated hurriedly on tip-toe. With infinite caution she edged around the scullery door and, safely off-target, relaxed. Lucky she had chanced to be in the front room and seen the familiar figure coming in the gate. A few moments more and she would have had her hat and coat on, descending the step. Now as Mrs. Breen waited for Peg to give up and go away, she reflected on the incongruity of her position, mistress of the house, cowering backstairs like any housebreaker avoiding detection. But the alternative did not bear contemplation. It was just that the work was beyond Peg. Had she ever been up to it? There only remained to pass on the message, Mrs Breen had decided, tiring at last of cleaning everything twice over and of Mr Breen’s constant complaints about the state of the broom cupboard; his particular bugbear being dirt and fluff in the opened polish tins. He’d laid a ban on the use of the hoover and his daughters refused to allow Peg in their bedroom. Mrs. Breen had to admit they had cause. She still remembered the occasion she had been marched upstairs to view their unmade beds, on which was gathered like the start of some bird’s nest, heaps of fluff and dirty tissues, under-the-bed residue, fished for and then forgotten. Or rather abandoned in favour of a more rewarding mission; that of replacing with holy pictures torn from religious monthlies the sunkissed bodies of their chosen idols.
If Mrs Breen could have given Peg the few shillings at the door and barred her entrance to the house it would have solved matters but Mrs Breen believed in the dignity of human persons. Or so she told herself. Was not Fr Lynch always preaching about helping others to help themselves? How much better, he said, to give a person work to do for which you recompensed him than to give him charity which, unearned, eventually wears away his self-respect. In theory it was all very fine. Mrs Breen agreed wholeheartedly with her pastor but when applied to real life she would have gladly risked undermining the char’s self-respect in the cause of improved domestic relations.
For some time there had been no sound from the porch. Mrs Breen peered hopefully around the scullery door and was rewarded by unshadowed glass. Encouraged she stepped out, but with caution, to the front room where unobserved she could from behind the lace curtain review the outer scene. But she had reckoned without a betrayer in the camp. From the top of the stairs her name was called loudly and repetitiously. ‘Mammy ... Mammy, when are you coming up?’ She had forgotten young Brian recovering from measles in an upper room. As though on cue the shadow loomed behind the glass and the knocker rattled triumphantly. Mrs Breen had no course but to open the door.
Peg trudged down the hall and pushed her way into the scullery. Mrs Breen, promising to run up to her child as soon as the opportunity presented itself, followed even more slowly. ‘There’s not a lot today, Peg,’ she offered hesitantly, as the woman silently tackled the fastenings on her plastic coat. She stood shoulders stooped, the black beret pulled low over her forehead, the grey hair straggling from under it in greasy wisps. Geronimo or was it Witch of Endor? Mrs Breen took in a deep breath and tried to control, but without much hope, the situation. ‘Why don’t you...’ she began, trying and failing to envisage some job that would not necessitate too much clearing up afterwards. ‘Brush down the stairs ... and when you finish I’ll have some hot soup ready.’ Like hot tea, the panacea for all ills. Even to her own ears the words placated. Peg would not be fooled by the task set her and might not even obey.
Disconcerted, Mrs Breen watched her rummage in the broom cupboard and come out bearing a tin of Vim and cleaning rags. She started to speak but saw no point. Peg would do what she wanted and always had. She felt a sense of hopelessness as the tattered lisle and split boots creaked away over the polished wood and began slowly to mount the stairs.
Higney fiddled with the remaining screw and caught the door as it fell. He propped it against the wall and wiped his face on his sleeve. In the gloom of the landing below, Mrs Molloy strained upwards in a listening attitude. ‘Are yeh up there, Miss Dinnegan?’
Higney quickly slipped the screwdriver out of sight and stepped back into the room. He heard the flapping of Mrs Molloy’s slippers on the bare boards as she came from below.
‘Are youse alright?’ Curiously she peered into the room, her expression changing at the sight of him. ‘Oh, it’s you. I heard sounds,’ she said, by way of explanation.
Higney shook his head sorrowfully. ‘Isn’t it a terrible thing,’ he sighed, ‘no respect for people’s property.’
At first Mrs. Molloy did not take his meaning; to her the room looked very much as it always had but then her gaze encompassed the doorless hinges and travelled downwards to the orange box with its vandalised contents. ‘My Gawd! Who done it,’ she demanded, stroking her neck repeatedly while all the time staring fixedly at Higney as though he might at any moment surprise her with the answer.
‘Who knows?’ With a shrug Higney stepped around her. ‘There’s a lot of it these days.’ He leant towards her insinuatingly. ‘Yeh wouldn’t want to go leaving your door ajar, Missus, not if yeh’ve left your purse lying about.’
He watched smiling as she scurried back to her landing, a slipper coming loose in her flight, and stood motionless until he heard her door slam shut.
A tin of Vim stood on the top step of the stairs, a danger to the unwary. Peg sat on the child’s bed and fashioned a rabbit out of a handkerchief taken from Mr Breen’s drawer.
‘When will Mammy be back,’ Brian asked fretfully, for how could you make a rabbit out of a hanky.
‘She’ll be back any minute... hasn’t she to get the few messages.’ Peg eased herself deeper into the bed, gnarled fingers twisting and poking the piece of cloth.
Mrs Breen, against her better judgement, had slipped out to the shops. Calling from the front door she had promised to be as quick as she could and to bring with her some books or comics on her return. As Peg made the rabbit, she repeated what Father Burke had said only the day before from the pulpit about the evils of drink. Men were spending their wages in the public houses every Friday and leaving their wives and families to go short. He’d asked them all to make a special effort to cut down on intoxicating liquor during the six weeks of Lent.
‘It’s a disgrace, that’s what it is,’ Peg said. ‘They should be puttin’ shoes on their childer and bread on the table. Alcoholics the lot of them.’
He stared at the seamed puckering of flesh on the underside of her chin and wondered what an alcoholic was. The skin of the old woman’s angular face was of a hard grained texture bringing to mind a walnut or similar piece of wood. She had once told him she never used anything on herself but sunlight soap. It was good for everything, she had confided, even your teeth. All the others were a waste of money.
‘Look, he’s jumpin’.’ She jerked the rabbit forward over the curve of her arm and laughed, showing toothless gums, at his alarm. He fingered the handkerchief petulantly.
‘That’s not a rabbit. Where’s Mammy... why isn’t she back?’ He shifted restlessly, troubled by a strange unidentifiable and disturbing odour. She sat on, pinching and stroking the cloth, talking quietly about her devotion to this saint or that.
‘St Martin’s a good one but the best of them is St Jude. He’s a great man for the bad cases. If yeh’re desperate pray to him... and there’s another... he’s not a saint... not yet but he will be. Mark my words, Matt Talbot will be canonised, you’ll see. I can ask Matt anything and he gets it for me.’
He wondered at the way she spoke as though the saints were people she met and talked with every day (and weren’t they in a way?). It seemed as though she’d only to mention something to them and they would get it for her as easily as his mother was at that moment getting his comics. His interest aroused, he asked. ‘Would they get me a bike if I asked them?’
‘You can try,’ was all she said, before going on to speak of the sales of work she often frequented. ‘There do be great bargains. Do yeh ever get going yourself?’
‘No,’ he answered shortly, feeling she’d led him on about the saints. But he wasn’t being strictly truthful for he had on occasion gone to the bazaars run by the nuns at his sisters’ school.
‘Yeh should ask your Mammy. Next time I’m going I’ll bring yeh.’
Appalled at the thought of going anywhere with the ‘witch’ – the Breen sisters name for her – he gladly leapt from the bed at the sound of the front door opening.
Mrs Breen opened her bag and handed her son a bundle of comics. Within minutes he was back up the stairs and into bed, oblivious even of her his mother’s existence as he avidly read of Wilson of the Wizard and the adventures of Desperate Dan.
Mrs Breen had hurried back from the shops, unable to rid her mind of a fear that Peg, no longer under supervision, might take it upon herself to hoover the house. As she had waited impatiently at the checkout of the local supermarket she had seen as clearly, as though she were present, the woman pushing the hoover over large, indissoluble objects until, choked with debris, it inevitable gagged and died. So great was her apprehension that she had hurried away without her change and been recalled by a young packer hastily following on her heels. On re-entering the house she was relieved to find the hoover still intact in its shrine, and sagged thankful that Mr Breen’s homecoming need not be marred by any distressing disclosures. She unpacked her shopping bag and, almost happy, placed the chops for the next day’s dinner on a plate in the scullery. Going upstairs, her foot kicked against an object she found to be a tin of Vim. Of Peg there was no sign. Downstairs once more Mrs. Breen was surprised to see the woman coming up the garden. Through the scullery window she observed her bending and scrabbling in a flowerbed. Well, she would get up to less harm out there compared to within, she thought, as she went to put the chops in the meat safe. But she was wrong, she realised, in the disillusioning discovery that the plate was empty.
Higney dismounted and propped his bicycle at the kerb. In a chemist’s shop he stood at the counter waiting to be served. An assistant in a white coat climbed on to a chair to take a box from off a high shelf, showing an expanse of snowy thigh in the act. Higney wondered if she had anything on under the coat and in his mind unbuttoned it slowly. He saw her standing before him in her underclothes and imagined her taking them swiftly from her body.
‘Can I get you something?’ She stood, regarding him expectantly.
He fingered a bar of fancy soap, still a prey to his thoughts. ‘Outrageous!’ he said on learning the price. ‘Ah, I think I’ll stick to the auld Sunlight. Doesn’t it do the job and at only a quarter the cost.’ He laughed, inviting her to share his amusement. She stood stolidly without expression. Stuck up little bitch, he thought, who does she think she is. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘give us a bottle of disinfectant, Miss.’
She reached behind her and removed a bottle from the shelves. He cleared his throat. ‘A small one,’ he said, and watched her make the exchange. She placed it in a bag marked with the name of the chemist and rang up the amount on the till. Higney took out a handful of silver. He extended his hand, palm upwards, inviting her to take what she needed. As she selected the coins he leaned on the counter and said quietly, ‘You look like you have a fine pair under your jumper. Will we go for a drink later on. What do you say?’
A red flush spread over her face and neck as Higney took the package and walked smiling towards the door. He threw a leg over the crossbar and glanced back through the plate glass door before pushing off. He saw her standing next to the chemist talking animatedly and was pleased. A good humping was what that one wanted. Wasn’t it what they were all after. He pedalled strongly up the hill and turned into a street at the back of Mountjoy Square. Parking against the side wall of a house he rested his foot on the step and removed his bicycle clips. Then untying a bundle of rods from the crossbar he carried them to the porch and rang the bell.
Mr Breen came home at lunch hour each day. It was a time he liked especially. He looked forward to it as an oasis in a turbulent time-stretch in which he had to deal efficiently with the problems of inoperative street lighting or striking binmen. As soon as he put his key in the door he detected signs of the char’s presence and knew it would not be the most tranquil of midday breaks. Frowning, he took out his handkerchief and, spitting discreetly into it, rubbed at the cream-coloured smears beside the letterbox. As he hung his raincoat on the hallstand his eye fell upon an open polish tin, on the surface of which sprouted like a fungus a dark matting of fluff. Another hallmark of that woman. Quickly he strode to the broom cupboard and looked in. The hoover appeared untouched, the flex looped in even coils the way he had ordained it should be. He closed the door and thought, not for the first time, how he must put a lock on it. While he sat beside the fire, listening with half an ear to the lunch-time serial, he wondered what his wife would put before him. He fancied a bit of brown stew or maybe a tasty chop with a rasher or two.
‘What’s this?’ He pulled back from the table and stared down at his plate. ‘Where’s my dinner?’
Mrs Breen turned from adding a shovelful of coal to the fire. ‘That’s it,’ she said, ‘a nice bit of cod.’
‘Have you no meat? I fancied a bit somehow.’
Mrs Breen stared at him, the shovel hanging loosely from her hand. ‘Meat!’ Her tone was scandalised. ‘On Ash Wednesday!’
Mr Breen was unaware or had forgotten the day it was. The smudge on his wife’s pale skin had passed unnoticed, his wife too if the truth were known. Feeling hard done by, he tackled without enthusiasm the white mess before him. Mrs Breen, used to his ways, took a seat opposite and in a lowered voice told him he’d be lucky if he got meat the following day since the chops she’d purchased for his dinner had mysteriously found their way into the dustbin.
His hunger in no way assuaged Mr Breen irritably poked a wad of bread into his mouth and spoke over it, ‘Is there any pudding?’
Momentarily deflected, Mrs Breen fetched a dish of prunes and custard from the kitchen and would have left him to get on with it had he not stayed her with his hand.
‘Who did it?’ he enquired, spitting prune stones into his cupped hand and dropping them on the bread plate.
Eagerly Mrs Breen resumed her seat. ‘That’s what I have been telling you. It was her... Peg... all along.’
‘Is the woman mad?’ Mr Breen dropped his spoon into the dish with a clatter. ‘I always held it she was touched.’
His wife cast a glance towards the door in case of an eavesdropper and went on to relay how Peg, incensed at the sight of meat blatantly displayed in the house on the firs day of Lent, had taken it upon herself to remove the impediments to the Breens’ salvation.
Mr Breen stood up abruptly. ‘The woman’s a menace.’
He had not forgotten the time his magazines for men had suffered a similar fate. He wiped his mouth on his handkerchief and grimaced at the taste of Brasso. ‘Don’t have her here again.’
Mrs Breen, aware that she had confided too much or perhaps seeing her chance of sanctification receding, wavered. ‘At, now, Paddy, don’t let us be hasty. God help her... the poor creature... she’s really a bit of a saint, if one was to know.’
Of his own mind Mr Breen smoothed his hair before the scullery mirror. He had little to do with saints but knew enough to know they were uncomfortable people to have truck with. ‘Give her some money and tell her not to come again,’ he advised.
Sorry she had let herself be betrayed into an unequivocal position with regard to the saintly one, Mrs Breen helped him on with his coat and watched him walk away. A glint of silver caught her eye and she bent to lift from the step a milk foil cap, so missing his farewell wave had he made it.
‘Five pounds to clear the drain!’ At the woman’s incredulous tone Higney paused half-way in the door. He laid his rods against the wall and put his hands on the backs of his hips.
‘A terrible price,’ he agreed.
She stared at him suspiciously. ‘The last fellah charged thirty bob.’
‘Is that a fact, and when might that have been?’ He waited, noting her sudden look of uncertainty. She was a well made woman he thought, wide hips and good strong-looking legs. She’d be good on a bicycle. He saw her in a pair of black shorts, her calves bulging as her legs strongly turned the pedals.
She shrugged. ‘What does it matter... some time ago... he was a lot cheaper, that I do remember.’
‘And now it’s blocked again?’ Higney said, intimating that in certain circumstances he might be prepared to settle for a lot less. ‘You look like a woman of the world,’ he suggested. ‘You know how it is.’
The woman stared at him in disbelief. ‘I’m a married woman,’ she said.
Higney kept his eyes steadily upon her. He believed these things went on, he said, and no one was any the wiser. So long as the woman was willing. ‘No one misses a slice or two off a cut loaf. D’ye get my meaning?’
To his surprise the woman became suddenly violent and threatened to call the police. Before he could stop her she had caught up his rods and thrown them out of the door with such force that several broke on striking the pavement.
‘You get outa here and don’t come back,’ she shouted, lifting a plaster statue off a table and holding it up high.
Higney stared at her, alarmed. He moved quickly over the threshold. The woman was mad, demented, he told himself. He was lucky to get away unharmed.
At the door, Mrs Breen, her conscience troubling, changed the coins for a note. It would make it up to Peg, she thought, or rather hoped, as she put her on the long finger. ‘Won’t be needing any work done in the house for a while... maybe going away... better leave it till after Easter.’
Had she heard? The rainhat quivered. Was it in reproach? At the gate Peg stumbled and would have fallen but for her outflung hand. Behind the front room curtain Mrs Breen doubtfully stood. Was it a sign? She felt the shadow of Fr Lynch and trembled.
Along Dorset Street children straggled from school. Close to the Palace wall Peg moved, shoulders hunched, the bag heavier now with Mrs Breen’s sop to conscience: ageing seed cake and yesterday’s tea scones. Her plastic mac and tie-on rain hat, donned like an additional skin, tempted the elements but perversely no rain fell. Towards Gardiner Street like a homing pigeon her feet strayed, hungry for the odours of incense and candlewax and the corridor confessionals of the Jesuit Fathers.
Higney went into the Big Tree and sat near the counter, nursing a whisky. Despite various setbacks he was pleased with his day. Coming away from the house of the woman who had taken exception to his proposal, his rods once more firmly tied to crossbar of his bicycle, he had been called to another house requiring the unblocking of drains. This time he’d been careful to keep any mention of cash out of the conversation until the job was done. Before closing the mantrap he’d requested a bucket of water to which he’d added a few drops of disinfectant before slopping it ceremoniously about the area. This was the difference, he’d explained to the mystified housewife, between chancers you’d get willing to do the job for a quid or two and someone like himself trained in the profession. He’d likened his work to that of a doctor, describing at length how the maze of underground pipes, invisible to laypersons like herself, could be compared with the human body. ‘Have you heard of cholesterol, Missus,’ he’d interrupted himself to ask. When the woman started to speak he’d hurried on, keeping a wary eye for plaster statues or other objects of defence. ‘It’s a terrible thing. Clogs the arteries and builds up a fatty wall about the heart. Now your drains are not dissimilar... abuse you drains, Missus, and they’ll act up in the selfsame way. You wouldn’t object to paying a doctor if yeh were stretched, amn’t I right now?’ In the end he’d settled for half and was glad he hadn’t wasted more than a few drops of the Dettol.
‘Bedad, yeh drive a hard bargain, Missus,’ he’d said as he wheeled his bike away.
Now, in the light from the bar he examined a small object taken from his pocket.
‘Would yeh say it’s valuable,’ he asked the barman as the man was removing a pile of bottles and glasses from a nearby table, holding it up for his inspection.
The barman glanced at it briefly. ‘Couldn’t rightly say. What is it... brass?’
Higney polished it on his sleeve and held it out for a closer look. ‘Paid ten quid for it,’ he said, staring hard at the barman, ‘this afternoon.’
The barman ran a wet rag over the table and turned to go. ‘You were robbed.’
Higney caught hold of his sleeve. ‘Wait... take another look. It’s an antique. D’ye know what it is, if I was to sell it now I’d double my money.’
‘Why don’t you then?’ The barman moved away to serve a customer and Higney replaced the object in his pocket. Perhaps a tenner was a bit steep, he thought. Next time he’d do better to suggest half and work up to it more slowly.
In the church the aisles were filled to capacity. Coming from the confessional she found a space and burrowed in. Light after darkness. Ten Hail Mary’s lengthily explored. I am the light of the world, says the Lord. Anyone who follows me will have the light of life.
‘Do not come back so soon. There isn’t need,’ the priest had said, head drooping wearily forward, an image just discernible beyond the mesh of wire. Then silence. Was he asleep? But no, a frail hand upraised in benediction. ‘Do your best. No more is asked of any of us.’ One more approach sealed off with the clicking shut of the little wooden door. Do not come back so soon! One more contact with living breathing humanity severed, or at least discouraged.
All about the congregation stood close pressed raising their voices to mingle with the leader.
Have mercy on us, O Lord, for we have sinned.
Youthful applicant at the lectern confessing to offences only barely guessed at. What is evil in your sight I have done.
Oh, Lord, have mercy.
Higney finished his whisky and went to the counter for another. A man propped himself on his elbow staring into his glass. Higney paid for his drink and stood beside him. He spoke quietly, asking if he wanted a room. He knew where one could be had, he said. Not cheap but not expensive either. He’d only to indicate, and for a little extra company could be had there too without further ado. The man seemed not to hear. Higney laid a hand on his arm. It only needed a coat of paint, he promised, and it would be a palace.
‘Would you like to go and see it,’ he persisted. ‘It’s not far from here.’
The man knocked away Higney’s hand and expressed himself succinctly in a few sharp sentences. Higney drew back abruptly. ‘Here, there’s no call for that,’ he said angrily. ‘I was only trying to do you a favour.’ The man turned his back on him. Aggrieved, Higney withdrew to his seat.
She struck her chest, aware of her concentration wavering, her breath laborious. Deprived of her share of oxygen by the too close proximity of the faithful she experienced a strange though not unfamiliar disembodiment. She might have been a saint of old in the act of levitating. That her only warning, and she was in it. Back arched, head flung sideways, strange sounds emitting from the larynx, she jerked and swayed. Was it ecstasy? The roof, how far away it seemed. How unyielding the tiles beneath the plastic rainhat. The implement of speech grown suddenly unwieldy, slipping and gagging in an agony of involuntary movement. Restraining hands and hushed faces curiously bore down on one who strived to communicate or perhaps resist.
Give her air. With the approach of one in authority the situation, fast deteriorating, gained not before time a sense of direction. Loosen her clothing.
The commands distantly heard set up an echo in the void of her consciousness. Eager to participate, the faithful moved in on her. But where to begin, the plastic mac a fortress around whose perimeter access vainly sought, deterred all but the most valiant. At last, Chinese fashion, each layer peeled away to reveal yet another until the prize was reached, surprisingly pale and young after a lifetime of hibernation.
Leaving the premises of the Big Tree Higney pushed his bicycle along the North Circular road. He’d like to have mounted but he wasn’t sure he could keep his balance. After he’d had words with the man at the counter he’d gone back for another whisky. ‘Make it a double,’ he’d said as the barman stuck a fresh glass under the Powers Gold label. ‘Sure why not... isn’t the evening young.’ When he’d sat back in his seat he’d found himself going over in his mind what the man had said to him. There was no call for it that he could see. He’d spoken to him civil enough. What right had he to suggest that Higney was a pimp or, worse still, a gigolo? All he’d done was to offer him the chance of renting a room. ‘Bloody cheek,’ he’d said out loud and the barman glanced over, at once scenting trouble. ‘Off you go now,’ he’d urged, catching Higney’s arm and pressing him towards the door. ‘Time to go while you still can.’
At the intersection Higney waited for the flow of traffic to ease. Seizing his chance he swung his leg over the saddle and pedalled along Sherrard Street. A horn blared close to his rear wheel causing him to wobble dangerously.
‘Get out of it, he shouted. Drawing level he rested his hand on the back window and peered intimidatingly in at the occupants. The car moved forward, landing Higney in the roadway. Surprised, he remained where he was until a fresh blasting of horns spurred him to his feet.
Shaken, he wheeled his bicycle around the corner and slowly made his way along the path. An ambulance stood at the kerb and from the lighted doorway of the church white-coated men carried a recumbent figure. Higney halted to allow them pass and something about the shape caused him to draw closer. Surely there was only one made in that mould? For a brief moment his eyes rested on the apparition, then it was slotted into place and the doors of the van slammed shut. Siren moaning, it sped away to Jervis Street with its aged captive; one more casualty not yet dust.
Within, the doxology continued, unaware of any drama other than that on the altar; transubstantiation. Without, her only other witness, the dog Major, nosing at fallen seed cake, the product of Mrs Breen fashioned in another age.