POWERS drove.
“This car,” Kiernan said bitterly, “will do the main road from Schull to Mizen Head and everything we can see from it. Half a dozen take the coast road. The rest do back beyond the main road.” He sat behind Powers.
Sorahan sat up beside Powers with little Barney behind him. Sorahan’s head was full of smiles at the cause of Kiernan’s bitterness. But he kept his smile inside his head.
“I don’t know,” Kiernan said broodingly for the fourth or fifth time. “I don’t bloody know. Nobody from Skibereen? That’s a bloody mystery.”
It wasn’t to Sorahan, and his smiles were harder to hold. He was doing well as a conspirator. But then, intrigue’s second nature to us, he told himself happily. We do it better than anybody.
“Thon Sheehy of Skibereen,” Kiernan said, “thons a sleekid man.” (Sleekid, Sorahan explained to little Barney, was a northern word meaning slippery, deceitful, devious, untrustworthy.)
“Very busy he is,” Barney said ambiguously.
Sheehy had been very busy. Sorahan phoned him at the end of the Bantry men’s meeting at the house of the priest and they met early that night in the back of O’Keeffe’s Bar in Schull. “I’ll tell you what it is, Tim, and I’ll ask you what you’ll do and I hope you’ll do nothing.”
Sheehy listened. “That’s the way of it?” he said at the end. “That’s the way of it.”
“Rape?”
“Rape.”
“Holy God.” Sheehy folded his hands defensively over his crotch. “That’s the fearful thing.”
“The worst.”
“There was no call for that.”
“No call at all.”
“There’ll be two killins here?”
“Two.”
“Jasus. I thought they’d take the boy back and do it up North.”
“No.”
“Here?”
“Here.”
“Jasus. Tis the wrong time o’year, Daniel. There’s the Ballydehob Annual Show, the Skibereen Gymkana, the Skibereen Festival, and the Drinagh Harvest-Time Festival. All at the same time. Two killins here would bugger the lot.”
“That’s the God’s truth. T’would leave a bad taste.”
“Very bad taste, Jasus, aye. Have you the time to follow me into Skibereen and we’ll knock doors and get the boys together?”
“I have all night, Tim.” They looked quickly into one another’s eyes and the look conveyed all the things they had left unspoken, and they smiled little glancing half-smiles as if them that weren’t meant to would hear whole ones and drove to Skibereen and knocked doors and went into conference with the men of Skibereen.
It was a long meeting. The light was brushing the sky before they went home for their breakfasts, having heard Sorahan recount in detail what Kiernan told him about McManus and Powers and Maureen McManus and Powers, and the dread word rape fell with cunning from his schoolmasterly lips onto their early-morning nerves. The word was not spoken again when he was done.
“Then there’s two killins at the time of the Ballydehob and the Festival and the Gymkana and the Harvest-Time ...” Sheehy said wisely and looked from face to face “... tis ruinous timin,” he said, and in their sidelong way they skirted their revulsion and renewed their loyalty to the Cause, containing each in separate compartments in the single and collective mind.
“Tis a busy old time,” a circular man said from the floor, “and the least we can do for being so busy is send the boys in the North an extra collection this week.” They went home to fried bacon or mackerel and sweet tea with their consciences as fresh as the new day’s air.
When they met Kiernan and Powers later in the morning, the two frustrated and impatient men from the North listened to a careful recital of the responsibilities, this week of all weeks in the year, borne by men who were in charge of the Irish dancing and horse-jumping and the fish-and-chip and fried-sausage van, and the flower shop and the country craft work . . . and how would they explain runnin round the country with the Ballydehob and Drinagh and Skibereen annual festivals fallin apart from want of them? They had to live here, it is.
Defeated and with nothing to get a grip on, Kiernan said bitterly, “By Jasus, youse boys carry a heavy load. All our boys in the North have to do is die.”
He could not hear Sheehy say in his head, “Well, God rest their souls but let them do it in the North.”
And who has heard a smile? Sorahan’s was behind his eyes. “Hunt two by two,” he told his young Bantry men, “and them that finds the boy, say nothin—just get him to hell out of West Cork. Let them find him somewhere else, but not here.” Death is less ghoulish out of sight and hearing and executioners are less of a bother in the North, or somewhere else far away from West Cork.... “And you, Barney,” he said, “if we find him, maybe you’d slip off and phone the Garda ... we’ll think about that.” That was the sour one. Sweet Christ, that was informing. That one would have to be thought about. But not yet; not now; “later” is the sweet refuge from bloody decision, thanks be to God.
Sorahan was pleased with his conspiracy and for all he knew when they reached the crossroads shop at seven in the evening, two of the Bantry boys could already have McManus on a bus, running him to Cork and comfort.
It was a simple country shop, smelling of potatoes and bacon and bread and Mr. Deasy was behind his counter, tall, scholarly, and bent like a question mark, ready to close for the day.
“What can I do for you gentlemen?” he said, and speculated on their source of life.
“Half a pound of bacon,” Kiernan said. The others stood back among the lemonade cases on the floor, ordered to keep their mouths shut and leave the talk to an angry and impatient little man.
“Sliced or wrapped?”
“What?”
“Do you want it cut off the side or out of the fridge in a packet?”
“Oh. Wrapped.”
Mr. Deasy went to the fridge by the door into his living quarters. “Nice old day.”
“Fine.”
“You’re not from these parts.”
“No. Do you happen t’know,” Kiernan said indifferently, “a young fellow by the name of McManus who could be stayin round here?”
Mr. Deasy looked thoughtful. “No. I don’t happen to know anybody by that name. Friend of yours?”
“I’m his uncle. Tryin to find him.”
“Is he a tall one?”
“That’s right. You’ve seen him?”
“No. Would he have a beard?”
“He has. Y’ve seen him.”
“No. A lot of young fellows have beards. Is he from the North?”
“He is. How would you happen to know that?”
“I don’t. You’re from the North. I suppose your nephew is too.”
“Jasus! Kiernan paid for his bacon and tried again. “He was walkin. W’a pack, you know.”
“They all are.”
“He might have had a girl with him.”
“Likes the flesh, aye?”
“Well, he’s young.”
“McManus?”
“Aye.”
“Haven’t set eyes on him.”
Kiernan turned and opened the door and rang the bell hanging from it.
“But I know where he is,” Mr. Deasy said, enjoying himself. There wasn’t much to entertain you here, and Mr. Deasy liked a little joke. What do you do here in the winter, Cleery had asked him. Well, there’s table tennis, Mr. Deasy said, and watched Cleery’s eyes with private pleasure. Now he watched the unfolding four-figure tableau fold back into position in front of the counter and among the lemonade bottles. He had said something magical, like pushing a button on television.
“Is that right now?” Very disciplined. Not eager. Kiernan told himself he was getting to know these West Cork foreigners.
“Likes the women?” Mr. Deasy said.
“That’s right. Has he picked himself one round here?”
“Picked a hot one.” Mr. Deasy wiped his counter with a cloth and then wiped the scale of his bacon-slicing machine with the same cloth. “She’s not all there. But she likes young ones. He’s her second.”
They’re talking about a man’s life, Sorahan thought, and waited, his hand on Barney’s arm.
“I was afearda that,” Kiernan said. “Near here?”
“Down behind.”
“Down behind what?”
“The hill behind the shop.”
“But you’ve never seen him?”
“Not yet.”
“Then how d’you know?”
“Three fellas that’s been round here told me. They spoke to him. They’ve been in the woman’s house. There’s only one bed in the house.” His sparkling eyes said, how’s that? and isn’t gossip the countryman’s live theater in the head and no excise tax on it?
“These fellas? Where’re they?”
“Left. They took off this mornin, early.”
“Who’s the woman?”
“Thomas Burke’s widow.”
“Who’s he?”
“He was from here. You never heard of him?” Mr. Deasy had a rack of paperbook books behind the lemonade. Tim Pat Coogan’s The IRA, J. Bowyer Bell’s The Secret Army, Donald S. Connery’s The Irish, Dan Breen’s My Fight for Irish Freedom, Bernadette Devlin’s The Price of My Soul, and a lot of old rubbish it is, he told his customers. But there was no Thomas Burke.
“Am I supposed t’have heard of him?”
“Ah, no. You’re more for business than readin up North. Why don’t you just shoot them old bombers and get on w’business?”
“How do you get to the woman’s house?” There are enemies wherever you turn. This stupid oul duff was one of them. The country’s full of them. Kiernan was no longer all that sure about Sorahan.
“She has a sister in Schull—that’s the doctor’s wife, that one. The one down here keeps them on the run, I’d say.” Don’t answer terminal questions till you have to. They end the play.
“The doctor’s wife?”
“Sullivan. Down the coast road.”
Everything Kiernan feared was being confirmed. He was in a nest of vipers. The Skibereen men were busy, for the love of God. Busy! And this doctor. Sullivan told them he hadn’t seen a soul. Nobody came near him for medicine, or treatment! Bloody liars. Worse, by God. “This doctor. Does he come to the sister’s ... the Burke woman’s house at a1l?”
“For a while, all the time. Every day for a while lately. The wife too. With him every day down here. Well,” he winked and nodded, “a doctor has to watch it, aye? With a horny sister-in-law like the Burke woman. . . . There’s always people that like a nice old gossip.”
“How do we get there?”
“He was here last night. Woke me up in the middle of the night. I got up and looked and his car was parked out front there. He woke me again in the small hours, roarin away like a motor racer....”
“Thanks.” Kiernan bustled them out of the shop. “Drive up the road,” he told Powers.
“Wait a minute. I need fags,” Sorahan shouted, and ran back into the shop, panic growing in his head. “Have you a phone here?” he asked Mr. Deasy, and then it was blind clear to him too late that all he needed to do was look for a lead-in wire from the telegraph poles. No need to create a situation. Christ! The things you had to remember.
“No. The only one round here’s in the post office a quarter-mile down the road. You wanted to phone?”
“Which way down the road?”
“I’ll show you.”
“No! No need. Just tell me.”
“No bother.” Mr. Deasy was coming round the counter.
“No need! Left or right?”
“No bother at all.” Mr. Deasy shoved Sorahan out through the door into Kiernan’s hearing. “Down there. There’s a dip in the road on a bend and the post office is in a private house on the right. You can’t see it for the trees and the hedge....”
“Thank you, thank you....” Sarah an stumbled into the car.
Mr. Deasy rested his hands on the door. “There’s one thing, though.”
“Thank you, thank you....”
“The postmaster’s over eighty. Very crusty. Won’t let anybody use the public phone after three, the poor old cripple. You’re over four hours late, mister.”
“Thank you, thank you....”
“Away on,” Kiernan said. “Along the road.” He leaned towards Sorahan. “What was all that about?”
Sorahan’s native talent for conspiracy was scrambling to save its face. “I was askin him about a phone. I have to call my wife when I get a chance,” he said, because he couldn’t think of anything else. His mind was spinning like a fly wheel and Kiernan looked very quiet. This necessity to lie in a hurry was the bad part.
“You went in for fags. You came out lookin for a phone,” Kiernan said gently.
“Yes. I just forgot the fags when I remembered my wife.”
“But the oul postmaster’s a cripple and won’t let you use the phone after three?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Then how’se you goin t’phone the wife?”
“I don’t know.” He knew nothing now.
Kiernan handed him an open packet of cigarettes. He hadn’t smoked a cigarette for fifteen years. “I never seen you with a cigarette, Mr. Sorahan.”
He lit it from Kiernan’s match. “I do, sometimes,” he said.
They stopped a short way up the road on a bend from which they could see The Hill. McManus was in reach. The end of the road was in sight, for McManus; for Powers.
Kiernan said to Powers, “Are’y ready?”
“Fuckin right, I’m ready.” He had been quiet, under restraint. His time had come. He could taste McManus. It gave him great pleasure.
Kiernan took binoculars from the dashboard pocket. “We’ll take a look from up that rock.”
They climbed The Hill and waded among the ferns and gorse and lay down on the crown. The little house lay white and quiet inside its fringe of fuchsia, like a cotton blouse. The white stone barn was at an angle to the gable of the house, on their left. It’s one glassless window gaped out like a blind eye.
Sorahan saw the place with dismay. It was a peaceful sight. It was a killing ground. What the grocer said about Thomas Burke’s widow didn’t matter much to him. Once, he had thought of Thomas Burke as a prophet; now he was no more than a dead novelist still in print in paperback. The wives of living novelists mean nothing to anybody but the novelists; their widows mean nothing to anybody. Sorahan lived eighteen miles from this one, and wife or widow, he’d never known she breathed.
The grocer would know some of what he pretended to know. For the rest, gossip was the fleshing out of lean lives. Malice salted talk. Sometime or other the woman in that house had cut Deasy. His sly winking twinkle as he slid his knife in was the decoration on a cultural cake—the stage business in a living live theater. The grocer would know who the woman was. He would know who came and went about the place and how many beds were in the house. Who slept where in it or with whom, he would decide by what he would like to do in McManus’s place. Maybe he’d tried for her himself and she’s laughed at his years? Whatever it was, he would draw from it malice and humor—and drama. Life on the fringes of the island fringe of Europe was personal, drama in the mind. Missing lines improvised on the spot.
Sorahan didn’t need to think about this. It was there, whole, in the mind. He was one of them.
His thoughts were of himself and his predicament. He had swung half-circle from his delight in the loved illusion of the native Irish genius for conspiracy and intrigue to alarm and despondency at his half-thought fecklessness. Conspiracy in the mind. It was part of the drama in the mind. Most literate Irishmen called it imagination. That’s what Sorahan called it the other day. Today on this rock hill he called it fantasy. What in the name of God made him think he could find a phone easily in this landscape where he knew phones were five miles apart? What made him think he could call the Garda down on these men? Wasn’t he, like more than half the nation, their passive but supporting bystander? What made him think he could inform? The gut instinct of the nation was against it. Fantasy. Wouldn’t little Barney have a catatonic seizure if he tried to lift the phone? Drama in the mind it was. Irishmen young and middle-aged and old glancing forever off the shoulder of reality, never meeting it head-on. Myths; the masturbating emotions of myths; saints made out of schoolmastering windbags; martyrs made out of psychotic killers ... heroic virtue pouring out of the barrel of a gun ... we’re a nation of political masturbators, he thought, and buried his sweating face in the ferns. That white quiet place down there is a killing ground and I’ve been playing with my political genitals like a thirteen-year-old but the real fuckers are here, beside me in this place, and when I see them open their political flies I’m sick at my stomach.
“What’s eatin’ you, Mr. Sorahan?” Kiernan asked him.
“I’m tired.” I’m an Irish fantasist, he wanted to say, and I’ve walked into a brick wall with my face stuck out in front of me.
“Aye.” It sounded contemptuous. “Not long now. It’ll be over after it’s dark and then y’can go away on home.” It was open disdain. Kiernan rolled on his back and looked into the sky. “Nice quiet place this.”
Powers was watching the house through the glasses. “I seen the woman,” he said. “She’s in the room w’the big window, lyin on the bed.” He raised his head, grinning. “In her skin.”
“Any sign of McManus?”
“Not yet. Why’s she lyin naked?”
“Y’can ask her when it’s dark.”
“The oul fella in the shop’s right. He’s been fuckin her.”
Barney lay apart like a staying retriever. Dirty jokes among his peers were funny and didn’t mean anything. Dirty talk from older men made him feel dirty. He shut off hearing and felt lost and thought about his mother and father and wanted to be at home with them. There was a man in there gain to be killed. Murdered, he tried to say in his head and his mind wouldn’t accept the word. He’s not much older than me, he said. Jasus, it was great lyin in the hills in the warm sun and the bees singin, thinkin about dyin for Ireland but, piteous Jasus, it never crossed your mind that that meant killin for Ireland. Softly, he moved farther away, as if that made him safer, less part of the event. He loved Mr. Sarah an surely and he’d let nothin happen Barney couldn’t face ... but what could Mr. Sorahan do? He was only a schoolmaster.
“You won’t be fuckin her,” Kiernan said distantly, with the sky in his eyes.
“What d’ye mean ... ?” Powers was up on one elbow.
“Get your stupid head down....”
“You said somethin, Kiernan. By God, you’d better explain it.” The man was gettin at him again. It was Maureen McManus he was talkin about. He’d forgotten Maureen McManus. What did Kiernan know? His mind darted fruitlessly. He didn’t understand this little weasel of a man....
“Explain what?” Waspishly, as if he wanted to explain it.
“About me not fu ...” But it was hard to say. Maureen McManus was in his throat, in his eyes, and if Kiernan knew ... the word shut off in his mouth. If it wasn’t said, it wouldn’t stay in Kiernan’s mind. Powers didn’t know what was in Kiernan’s mind. It was hard, not to know. Not knowing started a peculiar trembling in the gut.
Kiernan turned on his side to face Powers. “Were you thinkin of fuckin her, Mr. Powers?”
The way he said “Mr. Powers.” Mockin me. “I was not,” Powers said.
“Good,” Kiernan said meanly, and rolled on his back again. “When the light goes, go on down and scout the place. Then come back and we’ll see.”
“I know how to do it.”
“You’re great. You’re great.” Kiernan’s smiles were gone. Sorahan hadn’t seen one of them for twelve hours or more. Kiernan’s own moment was closer; he was sickening for it. He turned his head and looked at Powers. It was a covetous look. “Give Mr. Sorahan the glasses,” he said. He knew the mind. He smiled at Sorahan when he had them and said, “You watch and keep us posted.” Sorahan wished he hadn’t seen the smile for another twelve hours.
The light died to twilight. “She’s up,” Sorahan said.
“What’s she doin?”
“Putting on a dressing gown.”
“That all? No clothes?”
“No.”
“Any sign of McManus?”
“No.”
“Keep lookin.”
There wasn’t much to look at. He could see the woman as a shape, through the kitchen window. She was working at the counter beside the sink. What she was doing he couldn’t tell. Getting a meal?
He moved the glasses across the house to the right. Just beyond it a rock ridge rose about a hundred and fifty feet high. It must, he thought, overlook the front yard of the house, giving a line of sight over the fuchsia hedge. He searched the ridge idly as a welcome alternative to watching Mrs. Burke and saw the movement between two rocks. It was a man. He saw him shift a rifle from his left side to his right, and slide behind one of the rocks.
The glasses moved back to the kitchen window to think about the man on the ridge. A Garda? Had Dr. Sullivan reported their visit, knowing where McManus was? Was McManus there at all? Why was Mrs. Burke in sight and never McManus? Was he walking with these two men and little Barney into a police trap? What should he tell Kiernan? Nothing, he decided. Nothing. Not yet.
“What’s she doin?”
“Making food, I think.” There was no more sight of the man on the far ridge. The light died. The lights in the house went on. The yard light went on. The back door opened and Mrs. Burke came out, in her dressing gown, carrying a back pack and a jerry can.
She crossed the lawn slowly, her head down. “Gimme the glasses.” Kiernan fixed them on her. “That’ll be McManus’s pack,” he said. “Maybe he’s in the barn.” She went through the barn door.
“All them barns is the same,” Powers said greedily. “I can get him in there.”
“The way to do it,” Kiernan said coldly, “if he’s in there, is to get to the woman and make her call him out.”
Powers said doggedly, “I can get him in there.”
“And get shot.” Kiernan had an execution of his own. He was not to be robbed of it. “Go on down and scout the place.” He put down the glasses. “Go down this hill the way we come up it and circle the whole place—see, go round behind thon hump to the right of the house and check the place from the front. Then come back here.” He said firmly, “Powers. Do nothin till I tell you. All I want to know is—is McManus in thon house.”
“Aye.” It had an angry guttural sound.
Sorahan still said nothing about the man on “thon hump,” and Powers scrambled down the back of the hill.
The woman was a long time in the barn. When she came out she still had the pack, but it hung thinly from her hand. “He’s in there,” Kiernan said. “She took him somethin. Grub maybe.” She did not have the jerry can. “There was water in it. He’s in the barn.”
She went into the house and closed the door. The front yard light went on.
“I hope Powers isn’t buck stupid enough to walk into that light,” Kiernan said like a man afraid of being cheated.
Mrs. Burke walked into the light in her bedroom and dropped the dressing gown to the floor. Naked she lay down again on the bed. Like a vigil, Sorahan thought; like a nude virgin on the altar at a black mass. She lay on her back, her legs straight down, her hands folded on her belly, like a Pharaoh’s widow on a sarcophagus: nothing common, nothing mean; drama in the mind. McManus was in the barn. She took him food and water. He had been sick in there, raving and writhing in the hay. Dr. Sullivan had tended him there, in the hay. The poor woman had stayed his fever, cooled his brow. All this time he had been the hunted, his refuge among whatever dumb animals the woman had in there, with no soul to talk to but the woman ... and yes, the three men the grocer mentioned, who had seen him and spoken to him. No, they had gone, the grocer said, they had no connection with the man on the ridge. The police were hidden around, the man on the ridge was one of them: Powers and Kiernan and himself had gone to see the doctor, looking for transient patients, “calling himself McManus, or something else, beard, pack, a girl with him maybe ...” and the doctor knew the one they wanted, down there in his sister-in-law’s barn. He told the police. Good. Sorahan no longer needed to. Absolution. It was done, by a doctor. A humane act. And Powers was walking into a police trap. Good. Soon he and Barney could drift away in the darkness. The thing was all over bar the shouting.... Drama in the mind. He had it all worked out, comfortably.
Powers went far to the right from the bottom of the hill, then struck towards the sea. It was the wrong way to approach the house. He ought to have gone round the left side and come at the house under cover of the blind gable of the bam, because Kiernan told him to come at it from the right, round than hump. He got bad orders from the stupid jealous wee cunt, so he’d improve on them. He went down all the way to the sea and then came left over the rocks above the shore. The nesting gulls on the rock faces cried warning and anger, took flight from their ledges, settled on the sea, scolding like coarse-throated shrews. He came up from the shore, hurrying now, climbing through the pockets of soil among the rocks, through stabbing gorse and thistles, and the sheep coughed and sneezed and rose and ba-a-a-d and moved stupidly ahead of him in single file, along the crowns of the rock ridges, announcing him to the night. There was one ridge more, thon hump. He climbed down to the grassy hollow that passed it and let into the lane that ran to the gate in the front fuchsia hedge.
That hedge was almost the end of the road. Beyond it, McManus, the cause of every trouble. There’d be no mistakes here. His heartbeat was faster, not from the climbing. There was sound in his head, high sound, pleasant sound, and a kind of sweet pleasure ran through his frame and into his groin. His mind was on killing. The pleasure deepened, swelling him. The sweetness was intense behind the eyes, like an itch. He rubbed his eyes and the pleasure was rich. He muttered obscenities, greedy, hungry obscenities, and eagerness roared in his chest and his head and delight sang in his throat.
The black mass of thon hump was on his left. He walked faster tight against its base, his step almost silenced by the sheep-cropped grass, and when the side of the ridge no longer sheltered him, made a crouching run over the hundred feet to the hedge. Not the gate. Gates have unoiled hinges. Through the hedge, slowly, gently. The hunter. He stood in the hedge, holding fuchsia bushes apart and saw her through the small front window, lying naked on the bed.
Holy fuckin. Jasus! She’s a l-o-n-g one.
His eyes lapped her body from her feet to her head.
Christ, lyin there naked in her glasses.
The steel-rimmed glasses touched something. He had to get closer. He moved along the circle of the hedge to the left gable of the house and slid along the wall to the little window.
He was open, in the little lake of red-ringed light.
The woman’s eyes were closed. Sleepin. Them fuckin curtains on the big window were open. Kiernan would have the glasses on her, feedin his face. Jasus, she’s a one. He could feel her thighs round his rump. Them glasses. They made him drunk. He could hear the delight in his throat.
When he was done w’McManus ... McManus ... it was a struggle to move from the window. He passed the door and slid across the little window of Thomas Burke’s study. The light from the kitchen gave him all he needed. McManus was not there. The kitchen? He reached left-handed for the latch and knew it would be locked ... the kitchen window at the back ... his hand fell from the latch as he turned and heard the shot after the bullet spun him and came through the fleshy rump of his left shoulder and tore a hole in the door. He fell rolling, not hurting, his arm hanging numb from a thump, and heard three? four? more shots as be rolled at the hedge and felt bis foot jerk from another violent thump. Then he was through the hedge and out of the lake of light and scrambling low, one good arm keeping him from falling on his face, the other arm dangling and warm-wet. He was among the rocks and ridges again, trying to see a course in his mind, from memory, back to the car. But he was going in the wrong direction and the arm was alive and hurting more with every unbalanced stride, the pain mounting up into his neck. It was a jolting run, shattering his head. His foot was not hurting, but the heel of his boot was gone and small stones and spiked vegetation pierced the thin leather skin under his heel. He broke into the lane beside the grocer’s shop and knew where he was and made a limping run for the car. The arm was agony, burning hot, screaming in his head with every jarring stride, then he was in the car, fumbling, missing, ripping gears and away, half-blind with pain and nausea and bleeding. He whinnied in his nostrils, stifling screams.
“I told him not to,” Kiernan said with the first shot. “I told him not to!” He thumped the ferns with his little fists. “I told him ...” and four more quick shots rolled in the hollows and over the enclosed bay. “It was a rifle!” Then a sixth shot. Then the silence, and the after-shock of sea birds’ complaints and sheeps’ pitiful protests.
“It was a rifle,” Kiernan said in a tiny voice. “There was no talk of McManus havin a rifle.”
Little Barney slid farther down the back side of The Hill, dry in the mouth and weak in the legs.
Sorahan said nothing. He had been waiting for a voice, a challenge in the night. He had already fixed “Hands up” in his mind, a voice shouting, and it rhymed there. The shots stunned him.
“He got Powers,” Kiernan said. “Holy Christ Jasus.” He lay limp and still, robbed and puzzled. “He got Powers. That last one was a finisher.” He rose to his knees and crouched in the ferns. “But where is he?” he said, bewildered, peering down at the house. “Where is he?” The little man was frightened. He lay down again and hugged the ground. “We’ll wait and see,” he said prudently.
Sorahan took the glasses from his hand and parted the ferns. Mrs. Burke was off the bed. Her movements were unhurried. She put on the dressing gown. He watched her appear in the kitchen and disappear. The back door opened. The birds were settled, the sheep were settled, the night rustled, and Mrs. Burke walked across the lawn slowly, in eerie undisturbed composure. She went into the barn and came out immediately, carrying the jerry can she had earlier carried in. She took from her dressing-gown pocket something that looked like a long cloth, a shirt sleeve, a towel, and stuffed it into the mouth of the can. Then she carried the can back into the barn, was inside for a little while, and came out, closing the door behind her.
“It’s a fire-bomb, for Christ’s sake,” Kiernan said, and stood up. “She’s gonta burn the place.” The bullet fired from the blind eye of the barn took him in the chest. Mrs. Burke walked quickly into her house and closed the door.
The fire-bomb woofed like a howitzer.
They could hear the screaming hens as the barn door flew open and burning balls of bird were blown out and scattered like little scurrying campfires on the grass.
Kiernan fell across Sorahan as if he had been thrown. Sorahan thought he had thrown himself down. “That shot was from the barn,” he said, and Kiernan, deadweight, lay across him.
“Barney,” Sorahan yelled as a slight figure jumped from the barn window and landed heavily and tried desperately to get to his feet on a broken leg. Sorahan watched him drag himself on his belly, away from the flaming barn. The sea birds were scolding harshly, the sheep complaining, the barn roaring. “Barney!” Sorahan yelled again.
“I’m down here,” Barney called.
A man stood on the ridge to the right of the house, a black shape against the night sky. He leapt out of sight.
“Come up here and help me,” Sorahan yelled, and pushed Kiernan’s corpse away.
The man from the ridge came tearing around the left side of the barn, his rifle beating the air. He caught the crawling man by one arm and dragged him, running awkwardly, away from the fire, across the little field.
Like torment on torment the voice shrieked from the eyeless window.
“Kev-innnnnn.... ”
A man with a hat on fire and his coattails flaming stood up in the window, leaned out, and jumped like a thrown torch. He landed and rolled, tearing the hat away and tumbling in the grass, beating himself. The man in front dropped the one he was dragging, dropped his rifle, and tore off his jacket as he ran. He beat the burning man with his jacket, flailing in the weird light like the reaper, then dragged away the burning coat and the smoldering man. He slung his rifle, towing the two men along the grass. Sorahan watched him till they disappeared through a gap in the drystone wall and wondered from what black well the Irish obsession with fire as a weapon was drawn. He heard voices, like the baying of dogs.
“I’m here, Mr. Sorahan,” Barney said plaintively, his face against the ground. He lay, unawares, between Sorahan and Kiernan’s corpse.
“That woman’ll burn, Barney,” Soranhan said. “I’ll have to get her out. Stay here and stay down.”
“Let him go, Mr. Sorahan,” Barney whimpered.
“He’s dead.”
The boy crept back quickly from Kiernan’s corpse. “Oh Holy Jasus ... I want to go....”
“You’ve got nowhere to go. Stay there, boy.” Sorahan crawled forward and down the hill to the little field and rose and ran. He wasn’t thinking, he wasn’t afraid, he was merely running. The shooting began when he was halfway across the field. It was fast and vicious, flying vengeance. Sorahan wasn’t thinking. Explanations were ready-made in his mind and he opened his lungs as he ran and yelled, “Garda, Garda, Garda.” The lead sang ... six, seven, eight ... all he knew was that the stuff was pouring past him. He didn’t count. He ran, crying “Garda,” his coattails flying like wings on a crippled crow. The ninth bullet hit him in the left knee and he went feet over face and slammed the ground with his back and one leg stiff and another, slower, in separate movements, and dived into blackness.
And Barney, watching from the hill, held onto his slipping senses and said, “I’ll get the grocer, sur, I’ll get the grocer,” and in a dry and desperate terror slid down the back of the hill and ran, whimpering.
And Mrs. Burke stood still and in some distant place, in her kitchen, in her steel-rimmed eyeglasses and Thomas Burke’s old dressing gown and said to someone in the place where she was, “We were born to self-destruction, child.”
Powers drove the car straight at Dr. Sullivan’s wooden gate and took much of it on the twisted hood up to the doctor’s front door. He was swimming on the edge of consciousness. The front door had glass panels in its top half. He staggered to it and smashed the panels with the butt of his gun. Mrs. Sullivan rushed into the hall and into the pit.
“Open it.” His face was savage with pain.
She unlocked the door.
“Where is he?”
“Over the road at the hospital.” The gun wavered close to her face, almost purple with the pressure of fear.
“Call him back here.”
“He has patients, I don’t know....”
“I fuckin know, missus. This is my blood. Get him back.”
Fumbling and incompetent, she got her husband. Powers took the phone. “I’m bleedin to death, mister. I’ve got a gun in her back. No polis. Come back quick w’everythin y’need and fix a hole in me. No polis, mind.”
“I’m coming.”
Powers spilled blood in one of her best armchairs, propped his head up, his eyes open, and Mrs. Sullivan on the edge of the chair across the fireplace. The doctor took two minutes to reach him.
“Stop the blood and kill the pain,” Powers said to the two weaving images in his eyes, “and no polis.”
“No police.”
They humped him to the surgery at the side of the house before he fainted and his gun dropped to the floor. The doctor kicked it aside and went to work.
“Get the Garda now,” Mrs. Sullivan said, from panic, not courage.
“Christ, woman, I promised no police. Do you want to get shot?”
“He’s unconscious, for God’s sake.”
“Behind him there’s more. There’s always more. Just shut up and help me.”
“I’m calling the Garda.”
“Try it,” he said grimly. “We won’t bugger about with this lot. We’ll clean and patch him and he can go. Then we’ll keep our bloody mouths shut.”
“If he won’t go?”
“Then you’ll look after him and keep your mouth shut.”
It would have been simple to lift the phone. The house of the Garda was up at the town end of the street, by the Munster and Leinster bank. It would have been simple, but it was not easy. The thing would have been over. For the moment. Dr. Sullivan knew about punishments, jurymen knew about punishments, the wives of unarmed policemen knew about punishments, punishments hung over the minds of men like gray cheesecloth, inducing a mood of induced inattention. Dr. Sullivan cleaned and sewed and dressed with a professional mind professionally directed. This is a wound. This man is in pain and losing blood. I am doing my job. When it is done, I am minding my own business. This man can rest and go. Sew, dress, sling, bed down.
“Gunshot wounds are notifiable,” his wife said anxiously.
“Will you, please, for God’s sake, woman? This man never came here. Have you the wit to see that?”
“Yes, Seamus,” she said to the desperation in his voice, and understanding dawned.
They humped him to a bed and watched and waited with him, awed less by the bulk and strength of the man than by the invisible lines that ran out from him—long, mindless, silent, and relentless. To where? To Belfast, to Dublin, to the bank on the comer ... which clerk? ... to the bars in the village ... which bartender, which publican? ... to what grocer’s shop, to what fishing boat? Some were known and open, some were not ... the ones who were not, they were the ones who turned the blood gray and nourished the national mood of inattention, look there, look yonder. Do not look here.
“We’ll go to bed now,” the doctor said when Powers came to.
“You’ll stay where y’are. Where’s my gun?”
Sullivan got it for him and humbly handed it over. “My wife’s exhausted. Let her go and sleep.”
“Put her chair in than corner. She can sleep sittin up.”
Mrs. Sullivan was propped up in her chair in the corner like a disinherited relation at a wake.
“Feed me, missus,” Powers said, and she struggled to the kitchen.
He drank brandy and ate ham sandwiches. “You’ve no Guinness’s? This stuff’s poison.”
“No.”
Mrs. Sullivan took her place in the comer, her ankles crossed and her hands folded in her lap in a posture of rigid composure. The muscles in her neck ached, her face collapsed, and her eyes were wide with weariness.
Sullivan’s forearms were on his knees, his face in his hands.
“We come to see you, mister. We ast about McManus. We described him to you. Did he come to you for medicine, we ast you. Y’told us no.”
“Yes.” He didn’t look up. He had conspired against them. He couldn’t look up.
“All the time y’were lookin after him at the widow-woman’s house.”
“Yes.” The room was cold. Why in the name of God didn’t I take that boy to the hospital, no matter what that crazy woman wanted? It’s too late now and look where it’s got us. One of them, in the house. With a gun.
“You and her was hidin McManus.”
“No. He was sick. That’s all.”
“You said you didn’t know him at all when we ast you!”..
“He was sick. I’m a doctor.”
“You’re a liar.” Powers saw them sitting there, a new and terrible clearness in his head. With the first shot at the widow-woman’s, and the thump in his shoulder, his animal instinct suspended thought and he acted to live. Pain and instinct brought him here without thought. He knew the way, that was all. But now he could think. He had been shot at the house of the widow-woman. This man knew McManus was there. This man knew they were lookin for McManus. His mind hacked at the doctor and his wife like an ice pick. They stood out in his eye—ugly, hostile, treacherous, isolated images full of malignancy.
“You give McManus a rifle.”
“No. No. I have no rifle. No gun at all.”
“Y’were out there last night. The grocer saw you. Y’took McManus a gun.” Than two was the enemy. The cunta’ll pay for it. I can wait. I can rest. But they’ll pay. They’ll know. “McManus shot me. Waited for me. Knew I was comin. You knew I was comin. You told him I was comin. You gave him a rifle. The widow-woman kept up the blinds and lay on thon bed naked to draw me down into the light. He shot me. You shot me.” It was very quiet. They were there. They were helpless. Their helplessness gave him pleasure. He felt the pleasure in his head, in his chest, in his genitals. It was as if parts of him were warm, parts of him cold. His mind was cold. His head was warm. His tongue was cold. His cock was warm. He touched it with the barrel of his gun and smiled.
The doctor saw the action and the smile and his stomach soured. “McManus isn’t there,” he said. “I was out there, trying to get my sister-in-law to come in here. Not McManus. Not McManus,” he said as if he would betray Mcanus but not this man on the bed. Not that. “She wouldn’t come. He jumped behind the wheel of my car and drove us all the way to Cork Airport.” He said, with a sigh that promised absolution, “He’s in England.”
The room was very still. Powers sat, propped on pillows, the clothes cut away from his shoulders and chest, his left shoulder and part of his chest wrapped in bandages and tape. The fingers of his left hand were half-closed. The hand lay outside the tail of his sling; a ham. The fingers opened and closed slowly, like an experiment.
Sullivan felt some relief. He had told something. Not all. Shreds of self-respect clung about him. The three men at Kate’s house, the O’Connell man who said to McManus, “It’s Powers I want....” They shot this man. They would find him. Let them find him. Survive. Let this one go. Let them find him. Let them kill one another. What could ordinary people do against Ireland’s secret societies of secret killers who recognized no government, no courts, no parliaments, no rules but their own? What could ordinary people do? Cultivate a mood of inattention. That was all that was all that was all.
But nothing is simple. “Who shot me then, mister?”
Almighty God, I didn’t think of that. You can’t win. Desperately, Sullivan said, “Before God, I don’t know. McManus isn’t there. He took the plane.” Stick to your point. But you’re making it worse, for Jesus sake, and where’s the way out?
Powers looked long at Sullivan. He looked long at Mrs. Sullivan. Long enough to paralyze them both. The phone rang. Sullivan went to the next room, his system re-shocked by the sound. He was trembling. Powers came behind him, stood behind him. “Yes?”
“Doctor,” the nurse said, “there’s somethin fearful. Can you come quick?”
“What is it?”
“Deasy the grocer. Toormore. He just brought in Daniel Sorahan, the schoolmaster at Bantry. Can you hear me?”
“Go on.”
“Shot in the knee out at Mrs. Burke’s. He’s unconscious. Are you there?”
“Go on, girl.”
“He’s lost a lot of blood but the bleedin’s stopped. There’s more, doctor.”
“What is it, girl?”
“Deasy and a boy from Bantry brought a dead body with them—a little man shot in the chest. And Mrs. Burke....”
“No!”
“Her place is burned. Deasy said she wouldn’t leave and he had to drag her out by the hair. Are y’comin?”
“I’m coming.” He slammed the phone down. “Accident,” he said, “one dead, one dying. I have to go across the road.” Tell no more, tell no more. Hear more from Deasy. “I have to go,” he shouted.
“No polis. She’s stayin.”
“No police. God, man, I’m a doctor.”
“Away on. I have her. Mind that. No fuckin polis.”
“I said no police. I have to go.” He ran.
“What is it, Seamus?” Mrs. Sullivan came, shouting.
“Accident. Back,” Powers said, barring her way, “away in t’your perch.” He was not in control. Doubt and confusion needled at him. He sat on the bed, watching Mrs. Sullivan, walking to the window to peer at the hospital across the road, back to the bed. “Too fuckin long,” he said.
“You will not use those words,” she said, salving some dignity.
“I beg your pardon, missus.”
There were too many things at once, phones, people running out and in, questions, doubts: Who shot me? drifted away in the confusion. Where is McManus was his job. It stayed in his mind.
There was silence then for two hours. Powers rested, dozing and waking. Sullivan came back, gaunt, gray, worn to a thread. How much to tell, if he was pushed? What Deasy told him? What the frightened boy Barney told him? What Sorahan mumbled? Nothing, by God. The man knew nothing. Tell him nothing. A flame of pseudo-defiance flickered. Don’t tell him what he has no way of knowing! Get him to go, some way, any way.
“He’s dead,” he said.
“Who’s dead?”
“The man.” It explained the unknown.
“Where’s McManus in England?” That was the thing.
“I don’t know. He didn’t even speak to us on the way to Cork. He flew to England. That’s all we know.”
“Gon back in the bedroom.”
Sullivan went obediently in and sat in his appointed place. Powers sat on the arm of Mrs. Sullivan’s chair and laid the gun to her shoulder.
“You’ve heard tell of this,” he said to the doctor. “I’m goin t’ask you, Where’s McManus in England? Every time y’say I don’t know, I’m gonta shoot this woman in the arm, all the way down t’her hand. You’ve heard tella that?”
“Yes.”
“All right, then. You helped McManus. The widow-woman helped McManus. She was fuckin him, the grocer says....”
“He’s lying.” Even in extremis Mrs. Sullivan salvaged some family dignity.
“... and if y’helped him once between you, you’d help him twice. Where’s McManus in England?”
“My wife,” the doctor said, swallowing and watching the gun against his wife’s shoulder, “has a brother in England.” He looked to her eyes and quickly looked away. He had let McManus stay with her widowed sister, now he was sending this man to her brother in England. “McManus was alone with Mrs. Burke before he left the house. He had a letter ... it might have had to do with my brother-in-law. Before God, that’s all I can tell you....” He looked like a beaten dog at his wife who looked and sent back her compassion. It was many years since they had felt so close to one another.
“She might have sent him there,” Mrs. Sullivan said in support. Maybe the man would leave now? Go somewhere else?
“Write it down,” Powers said, and the doctor wrote it down in block capitals.
“I want a doctor’s bag n’food and drugs t’keep down the pain.” They got it for him.
“I want all the money y’have in the house.” They emptied their cash box and their pockets and purses. One hundred and twenty pounds in English ten-pound notes.
“I want another shot.” He got it. The man was preparing for a journey. In his anguish the doctor had no mind for his brother-in-law’s summer habits. He did not think of them. So he did not mention them. The man was going. Thanks be to God.
“Get your car out.” The doctor brought it to the front door.
“You’re drivin me to Cork Airport.”
“Have some compassion, man. I have patients. They need me.” There was Sorahan, who would be a cripple for life, dependent on the skill of a harassed country doctor. There was Mrs. Burke, sitting in Deasy’s house like the plague.
“I need you, mister. The two of you away on, in the front. I’m gonta sleep in the back. If you stop or change speed, I’ll wake up and beat the faces off you.”
And at Cork Airport, he said, “By Jasus, I’m tellin you, no polis if you want to live till next week. I’m tellin you.”
“No police.” There were weeks and months and years to be conserved beyond next week. The man was going. The nightmare that fell over the widow-woman’s half-door, half-dead, was going away.
He was flyin.
Soarin. L-e-a-p-in in the sky. The hound of fuckin heaven.
He sat very still, his head roaming. Disassociated. All that had been was not. They were not here they were there and he was not there therefore they were not. He was moving. Traveling. Away. Alone. He was the measure of all that was. His head roamed and sang and he closed his eyes and was feather-light. He could fly without this plane. He was smiling, not in the face, but inside his head. Seventy minutes of sweet levitation, Cork to Heathrow. His face and head full of sweet secrets. Ahhh, if you good people knew what I know ... who I am ... where I’m goin.
Courtesy on the ground, sweet courtesty, sweet syrup. I beg your pardon, m’am, my fault entirely. I’ll pick it up. Victoria Station, if you please, driver. Thank you, driver. That was the grand bloody ride. Lovely fuckin weather.
Day return to East Grinstead, sir. Thank you, sir. The platform on the far right? Thank you, sir, thank you!
Euphoria by the bellyful. Wackadoo, wackadoo, wackadoo. Won’t Mother England be surprised!
Judge Jeffreys’ house, lunches, teas, dinners. Can I have lashins of scrambled eggs? The arm, y’see. Fell offa bridge on a Saturday night.... Gimme a spoon and H.P. sauce, missus. Judge Jeffreys lived in this house, is that a fact? The Hangin Judge? They abolished him, didn’t they? Hangin Judge Quta Work!
Fuckin English bitch. Can’t take a joke, by Jasus. Would that be funny in Belfast? Snippity-snip!
Stoneleigh House? That’s one for the book—ask a bobby! Excuse me, officer, can you direct me to Stoneleigh House? First left past the parish church, the big house on the left on the edge of town? Thank you, officer. (Fuckers like you wouldn’t last long on the Falls.)
The gate was open. It hadn’t been closed for years. His euphoria sank into hardness. He stood in the gateway, looking up at the bend in the drive, looking at nothing, his mind settling to its work.
Then the hardness heated. The eyes warmed. McManus McManus McManus you Antrim Road cunt McManus McManus. He walked slowly up the drive and saw the house around the bend, a monument of stone, in a large open circle of gravel and grass. Aye, aye, it would be a place like this for you, boyo. High class. Like a Protestant fuckin squire. McManus McManus McManus. He was beginning to love the sound of it in his head. He went up the steps to the front door and put his gun in the sling.
The door was closed. In the column of the door frame, a small white button with PRESS on it. It was a wee bell for a big house. Nobody answered it. He tried again and again. He leaned on the button. He could hear the bell inside, like an alarm clock in an empty packin case. Nobody rose to it.
He came down the steps and wandered round the house, through a well-trimmed hedge arch into a rose garden and beyond it a vegetable garden. An old man said from behind a box hedge to his right, “Was there somepin?”
“I was ringin the bell. Nobody came.”
“Nobody’ll come. They’re away.”
“Away where?”
“Spain.”
“Spain?”
“Spain.”
“What for?”
“Howzat?”
“For how long?”
“All summer. Every summer. They’ll be back next month.”
“There’s nobody here?”
“Me.”
“Who’re you?”
“Gardener. You after a job?”
“I got a job. D’you live here?”
“I live a’tome.”
The doctor got rid of him, lied to him, made a fool of him. His head was full of black, blacker than darkness but like a bloody empty hole with nothing but black in it. He couldn’t see.
“Somepin wrong?” the old man asked him.
Powers didn’t hear. He walked blind round the house lifting his feet by instinct and was at the road again. A cricket match was in progress in a field across the road. Perhaps he saw it. He went across to the field, sat down at the foot of a grass bank, and stared at the players. They were like white spots before his eyes. The doctor’s face obstructed his vision, and the doctor’s wife sitting in her corner and the doctor’s wife’s sister lying naked on the bed. There were no words in his head, only intentions. When the pain came hurrying back sight came with it and the cricketers had gone. He groped in his bag, opened his shirt, and cried out when the needle went into his shoulder. The pain sank and he sank with it. Massive dejection took him over, he was drowning in it, crying self-pity to the green grass, till he looked across the road at Stoneleigh House and felt the spurs of resentment and soon, revenge, and mounted on the wings of taloned eagles.
He walked into the town, bought a heavy clasp knife and went down the main street and at Sainsbury’s bought four pounds of sliced ham, a pound of butter, a sliced loaf, a bunch of bananas, a packet of tea, and a bottle of milk. With his groceries in a paper shopping bag and his doctor’s bag clutched in the same hand, he went to the movies.
When he came out, it was almost dark. He went back to Stoneleigh, found a short ladder in a garden shed, shot the latch on the kitchen window, locked it again behind him, went out the back door, put the ladder back, and took his possessions inside.
The house had three floors. He went up to the top; a billiard room and quarters for two maids. He had a place to sleep. On the second floor, a drawing room and the family’s suite; four bedrooms, bathrooms, and a small kitchen for preparation of teas, snacks, and morning coffee. Handy for servants. Fuckin rich.
He scouted the ground floor for exits and the routes to them and went back upstairs. The small kitchen would do him. By candlelight he ate ham and bread and butter and drank tea, put his food in the fridge, cleaned his mess, and went to the attic and to bed.
He needed sleep.
In the mornin, back to that doctor, and his wife and thon fuckin widow-woman....
On his right side. God, I’m wore out.
Ahhhhh. A long stretch, feet against the end-board. Jasus, that’s lovely.
Then he drew his knees up to his belly. The fetal position. Sleep came at once.