Cast a cold eye, p.5
Cast A Cold Eye, page 5
Now, with the coffin buried and the prayers said over it—and with the chilling rain coming harder and faster—the party moved more quickly away from the cemetery. In less than five minutes—while Jack tried to memorize the details for the scene he was going to write—they were gone and the hillside was quiet except for the patter of rain.
Jack was soaked already—buy a tweed cap, he added to his mental list—but, as long as he’d seen this much, he thought he’d take in the whole sight and be done with it. Funerals and graveyards hadn’t changed much in a century and a half, especially in rural Ireland, and this whole event he’d witnessed was like a scene from the book. He knew just where it took place in the story. He shivered, pressed his teeth tightly together to keep them from chattering—get another Irish wool sweater, he added to the list—and took a step out from the trees. And drew back instantly out of sight.
Four elderly men had appeared from the trees and rocks on the uphill side of the grave.
They stood in a tight cluster, as if conferring, heads bent and looking down at the freshly turned earth of the grave, even now turning to mud as the rain struck it. One of them, the tallest, appeared to be the leader—the others seemed to be clustered about him—and Jack saw him turn his head and speak to his companions. His heart beating fast with surprise and curiosity, Jack strained to hear what the old fellow was saying, but the wind was at his back now and the only voices he heard were those of wind and rain.
He stepped back, hoping the scrawny wind-blown trees would conceal him, and watched.
The tall old man, the one who seemed to be in charge, struggled for a moment to pull some thick, heavy object from the pocket of his jacket. When he finally got it free, Jack thought it looked like a bottle. My God, he thought, don’t tell me they’ve come here to a gravesite to drink in the rain. The old man pulled a stopper from the bottle—the three others watched him closely—and then leaned forward over the mounded dirt of the grave. Stretching out a hand, he slowly poured the contents of the bottle into the dirt, moving the bottle back and forth over the length of the grave so the liquid touched it all. Then the old fellow stoppered the bottle again—Jack couldn’t be sure but he thought the whitish bottle might have been stone—and pressed it back into his pocket. Then the four old men, three of them helping the eldest, came around the grave and, without once looking back at it, made their way down the rough path, toward the break in the wall, and continued till they were out of sight.
“I am a stranger in a strange land,” Jack whispered out loud as the old men disappeared from view. “There are stranger things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. And so on and so forth.”
His jacket and sweater were completely soaked through now—he hadn’t brought the slicker because he hadn’t expected to be getting out of the car—and he hurried, as best he could, back to the road.
It occurred to him as he started the engine that the mourners as well as the four old men might have seen the car and wondered who it belonged to—or knew; this, after all, was a small town and news always traveled fast. But there was nothing he could do about it now.
He sat in the car for a minute, waiting for the heater to take effect, enjoying the spurious comfort of a cigarette, and wiping the rain from his face. By the time he reached the bottom of the hill and the rain-gray town of Doolin, the mourners, and the four strange old men, had disappeared, as if they had blended with the rain and the mist.
“Henning,” the priest said. “Father Malcolm Henning. Come in out of the wet.”
Jack stepped inside and the priest closed the door solidly behind him. “Jack Quinlan.”
“This way,” the priest said, leading Jack into a small sitting room at the front of the house. “We’ll have you dry in a jiffy. Can I get you a hot cup of tea or something?”
“No, thanks, Father,” Jack said. He pulled off the coat and the new cap he’d just bought on his way here to the priest’s house. While the older man was putting the coat away, Jack’s curious eye took in the details of the room: heavy overstuffed furniture that looked as if it might have been there since the turn of the century, used by eight or nine decades’ worth of village priests, a sofa that was clearly intended for callers to the house, and, facing it, a large old wing-back armchair that was just as clearly reserved to the exclusive use of the priest himself. Both sofa and chair were done up with fine lace antimacassars on the back and arms.
“Are you sure you’ll have nothing?” the priest said as he returned to the room.
“Really,” Jack said. “Thanks, Father, but no. I just came by to say hello.”
“And to ask a favor, no doubt,” the priest said as he settled back into his chair.
Jack couldn’t help smiling. “Well, yes, I did want to ask a favor.”
“I’m not surprised,” Father Henning said, his tone light and pleasant, easing the directness of his words. Jack studied the priest’s face and thought he must have been a hearty and handsome fellow in his youth. Even the crisscrossed wrinkles that marked it now could not disguise the strong line of the jaw and the bright, intelligent eyes. “Indeed,” the priest went on, “you’ll no doubt be wanting more favors than one. I’ll be glad to do what I can for you. I’m not what you might call a travel agent, but I know a thing or two about Doolin.”
Jack decided he was going to like this man. It had been a wise move coming to him first. He sat back in the sofa and crossed his legs comfortably. “You seem to know all about me,” he said.
“Well, let me see,” Father Henning said, and joined his large-jointed fingers lightly together. If this was a friendly game they were playing, the priest was obviously enjoying it. “I know that you arrived on Tuesday. I know the house you’ve hired. People come and go in it, you know, but it’s been empty this long while now. Painter, last time. Pretty good, too. He used to be showing me all his pictures, and they were lovely, lovely, I can tell you that. Rocks and hills and the sea, oh, and the waves coming in at Doolin Point. And the Burren, of course, they all want to be painting the Burren.” He waved one long-fingered hand. “The Burren, that’s the hard one to catch. You’re not a painter, now, are you?”
“I’m a writer. A novelist.”
“A writer, is it? Well, that’s good. We’re honored to have you among us. Writers and such are held in high esteem, you know, in Ireland.”
Jack grinned. “They don’t pay any taxes.”
“They don’t, that’s true. It’s not so different, you know, from the old times, the ancient times of the kings and the bards, when a poet would travel about the land, singing his songs and telling his tales, and find a warm welcome at every castle he came to, and a roof over his head at every inn along the road and a meal on his plate. Things don’t be changing too terrible much in Ireland.” He looked over the tops of his glasses at Jack. “You may have noticed that.”
“I have. It makes it very attractive.”
“Have you people here? In Ireland, I mean?”
“No, I’m afraid not. My family was small and just sort of lost track of relatives over here through the years. There probably are some—cousins, I guess—but I haven’t a notion who or where they are.”
“Ah, that’s a shame. But then, it’s so hard to be keeping up at such a great distance as the years go by. Is that why you’re come here? To find them?”
“Well, no. I’m here to do research for a book. On-the-spot research, you might say. Atmosphere, daily life, local color, that sort of thing.”
“Well. I should think you’d find us very quaint and backward here in the west of Ireland. Or is that what you’re after?”
Jack saw that Father Henning was watching him closely now, despite the friendly look on his face. “Well, Father, if you mean, have I come here the way a person might go to a museum, to gawk at the strange people and ways, I’d have to tell you that’s not really it. I have come, though, to learn as much as I can about . . . well, to learn what it’s like to live here. I want to know the details, yes—and I need to know them—but it’s because I want them to be right in the book. I want the whole thing to look and feel and sound right. I can’t do that sitting in an apartment in New York.”
“That’s a good answer,” the priest said, “a very good answer. So it’s New York you’re from, is it?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve been there.”
“Have you?”
“I have. I was there three times. I was there in nineteen hundred and forty-nine, nineteen hundred and fifty-eight, and in nineteen hundred and seventy-eight.”
“Well,” Jack said. “Did you like it?”
“I hated it!”
They laughed together, as if, Jack thought, they had just been testing each other with lines from an old Abbott-and-Costello routine and found that each of them knew it by heart.
“I had two cousins there but they’re both dead now, may God have mercy on them. It was only for them that I went at all. I wonder did you know one of them, John Mulcahy, he was pastor of St. Mary’s, in Riverdale, until he passed away.”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“No, well, of course, you wouldn’t, I guess. Are you Catholic?”
“Mostly.”
“Ah.”
Jack saw that the priest had clearly decided not to pursue that, and he admired him for it.
“Father,” he said, “I don’t want to be taking too much of your time. I—”
“You wanted a favor.”
“Just information, and I thought you’d be the one to ask. I’d like to hire a housekeeper, if there’s someone available. Housekeeper and cook, actually.”
“Ah hah,” the priest said. “Housekeeper and cook. Well, now, let me think.”
“I’ll be glad to pay whatever the going rate is, and be generous besides.”
“Ah hah. Yes, I know the very person. A good woman who just lost her husband, we just buried him this morning. I’m certain she’d welcome a little extra coming in. How long did you say you’re taking the house for?”
“I’ll be here for three months,” Jack said, then added quickly, “at least.”
“Three months,” Father Henning said, then, looking over the tops of his glasses again, added, “at least. Ah hah. Well, I think it will all work out for the best. I’ll say a word to her, if you’d like.”
“I’d appreciate it, Father.”
“Of course. But you’ll have to potter through as best you can for a few days or a week, you know, until she grows accustomed to the loss of her husband. Peggy Mullen’s her name.”
“Peggy Mullen. Yes, of course.”
“Well, then,” the priest said.
“Well, thanks very much, Father. I appreciate your help.”
Father Henning was already unfolding himself from the chair. Jack stood with him, and they walked together to the door. The priest insisted on holding his damp jacket for him.
Jack couldn’t resist one more question. “How long are you here, Father? I mean, in Doolin.”
The priest laughed and the lines crinkled deeply around his eyes. “Oh,” he said, “on a cold, wet, nasty day like this, I feel it’s been all the ages. The damp gets into old bones something terrible. On a day as wet as this one, I feel as old as the Burren itself.”
I’ll get nothing from him, Jack thought as he drove away. The old priest had learned a great deal about him but told almost nothing himself, not even the length of time he’d served the village. It would take a long time to warm up that old fellow. And it would be an even longer time than that before Jack could ask questions about anything as odd as what he’d witnessed that morning at the grave.
Doolin, apparently, had its little secrets, and, just as apparently, meant to keep them.
Jack called Grainne that night, as he’d promised himself he would. She was out. It was, he assumed, her mother who answered the telephone. He wasn’t certain if Grainne had mentioned his name to her parents—and why in hell did he feel like he was sixteen again as soon as he heard the woman’s voice?—so he told her his whole name, resisting the automatic impulse to spell it—you didn’t have to spell Quinlan here, the way you often did in New York—and said he’d appreciate her telling Grainne he’d called and that he’d call again.
When he was off the phone, he sat for several minutes at the kitchen table, telling himself firmly that it was absolutely ridiculous for him to be wondering where she was or what she was doing or who she was with.
He spent the rest of the evening reading. Trying to read.
After a while, he went out to the kitchen and added “radio” to his growing list of things he needed to buy.
At about one o’clock that night, as he was reading in bed and just beginning to think he’d turn the light off and try to get to sleep, he heard a man’s voice groaning somewhere outside the house.
Jack froze, the book still clutched tightly in his hand, and listened. He heard it again: a long, deep moan, hinting at shapeless words and agonizing pain.
Shivering, Jack tossed the book aside on the bed, pushed the covers back, and grabbed for his clothes from the back of a chair. Still pulling a jacket on over his half-buttoned flannel shirt, he hurried through the living room to the front door of the house. He pulled the door open and stood there, breathing heavily, listening.
There was no sound, only the wind from the ocean beating against nettle and thistle and burdock and weeds and striking hard upon the rocks of the hill. It pushed his jeans tight against his legs, flapped his jacket out behind him, whistled in his ears and tossed his hair against his forehead. Nothing human.
He must have imagined it. He waited a little longer, still listening, trying to hear past the rush of the wind.
It came again, from the direction of the road that wound up the hillside and past the house: a voice, a man’s voice, groaning in pain and fear.
He must have been hit by a car, Jack thought. He dashed back toward the kitchen to get the flashlight he’d bought the day before. Behind him, through the door he’d left open, the loud wind rushed into the house.
The flashlight wasn’t where he thought he’d left it and he had to rummage around, pulling doors open, in order to find it.
He couldn’t have been hit by a car. There are no cars here. And when one does go by, you can hear it coming for ten minutes before it passes. Maybe he had a heart attack or something.
Flashlight in hand, its beam dancing before him, he ran out of the house. He had only put on his slippers, not bothering with shoes in his rush to get dressed, and now he felt every stone of the weedy gravel between the house and the road.
The night was clear, the wind from the ocean having blown away the mist, and the hill was bathed in moonlight. The sky was black and a three-quarter moon shone white and cold. The green-black vegetation of the hill whipped in a frenzy before the salty wind.
Jack stood panting at the edge of the road, looking uphill and down, but seeing nothing, no body, no person. There was no way to tell from which direction the voice had—
—from which direction the voice had come. But how had he heard it in the first place? He couldn’t possibly have heard a voice from outside the house, not with the wind howling like this and all the windows closed tight, and a voice that was only a moan to begin with. He must have imagined it. Had to.
“Shit,” he said at the night, breath panting in his chest. He snapped his head to the right, looked down the hill, to the left, looking up.
The voice came again from his right, downhill, on—he thought—the far side of the road.
Goosebumps prickled at the back of his neck, the result of fright and darkness and chilly wind conspiring against him, and he sprinted toward the sound.
The man lay on his stomach at the side of the road, the upper half of his body hanging down into the weed-filled ditch at the edge. His face was turned to the left, away from Jack. His head was bare, he was almost bald, and he seemed to be wearing a long black coat that Jack saw at once was in tatters. Jack crouched beside him, scanning the man quickly for obvious injuries, and saw that his feet were bare. They were so black that he’d missed that point at first.
He put a hand on the man’s shoulder and instantly felt the knobby bone beneath the cloth.
“Can you hear me? Can you hear me?”
The man moaned a little but did not move.
Jack knelt quickly beside him and reached over the man’s back to grasp his left arm. At first he thought the sleeve was empty, the arm itself missing, so slack was the cloth. Then he felt the bone inside and, shivering, grasped it, and tugged the man over onto his back.
“Okay! Okay!” Jack said, as much to himself as to the sick or injured—dying?—man before him. “It’ll be okay!”
He took him by the shoulders, feeling the fleshless bones again, and slid him up out of the ditch until he lay flat on his back in the road. The movement unleashed a cloud of stinking stale sweat and the sour stench of putrescent disease. When the man’s left hand struck the road, Jack saw that he was clutching something . . . a tangled bunch of weeds?
“Can you hear me?”
The man’s head moved a little from side to side, his lips opened, but no sounds came out.
He was as pale as a corpse in the windy moonlight, his head and face little more than a skull: eyes now hollow sockets, bony ridge of forehead protruding, parchment cheeks empty of flesh, white teeth exposed by withered lips. The lips and chin were stained and a dark saliva dribbled from one corner of his mouth and ran down onto his neck. Green, Jack thought, and leaned closer over the man’s face to see better. The stains on the man’s mouth and chin were green and the bubbling saliva on his lips was green. He’d been eating what? The weeds? He’d been eating the weeds?
“I’ll get help!” he said loudly to the man. The man did not respond. “I’ll get help! You’ll be okay!”
He stood, turned, ran three long steps toward the house, stopped, thought: cover him up first. Already pulling off his jacket to throw over him for warmth, he turned back to the man, took a step, stopped again.
