Cast a cold eye, p.7
Cast A Cold Eye, page 7
“Hello?”
She called again, this time from . . . over there. He started moving again, the circle of light shuddering in the pearly white glow at his feet. For a moment, he raised the flashlight, shone it straight out in front of him, but it revealed only the solid wall of silent fog. He could see nothing, only the patch of ground he stood on.
“Where are you? Yell again!”
She responded and he took heart, moving a little faster on the rocky, weedy slope, feeling stones slide out from beneath his feet, muddy ground betray his step. Her voice this time had almost the shape of words.
As he continued downhill, the fog around him grew thicker, became almost a solid element through which he silently moved, and he held out his empty left hand before him as if to feel for an opening in a wall. All around him, the mist drifted like smoke, clung to his legs, his arms, his hair.
The almost liquid pool of misty light at his feet revealed a rock. He stepped to the side to go around it. The rock moved and turned toward him.
Unthinking, he scrambled backward several steps, slipped, got his balance.
“Oh, sir!” the rock cried, and turned a haggard, stricken face to look up at him.
It was a woman, crouched with knees and elbows on the ground, wrapped in a dark gray cloak all muddy and in shreds. She looked up at him from hollow eyes, eyes sunk deep and lightless in a deathshead face. The fog drifted in smoky tendrils around her body and lingered in her stringy, greasy hair.
Not wanting to, Jack took another step backward, mouth open, eyes staring. His hand trembling, he aimed the beam of the flashlight at her crouching shape. She almost glowed in its light. Her bony face, even with the beam full on it, was all shadows and hollows: eyes, mouth, nostrils, sunken cheeks and temples.
“What’s happened?” Jack breathed. He knew he should do something but he could not move.
The woman lowered her head close to the ground and turned her face away. There was movement beneath the cloak, as if she gathered something into her arms. Then she lifted her head to him again, faced him, and clumsily rose to her knees, stretched her arms out—only bones, with empty, fleshless skin hanging from them in folds—and offered up toward him a filthy bundle.
It was a naked infant, a boy—Jack could see the tiny, shriveled point of the penis—and as bony and fleshless as the woman. The top of its skull and the ridge of its forehead seemed enlarged, so empty of flesh was the face.
The woman held it up in both hands, the infant stretched out on its back, limp and lifeless, the head lolling back on a boneless neck, the legs dangling loose.
The legs. Jack looked at the legs. Below the knee on each leg, from the knee to the foot, the skin was torn and bloody, shredded, tiny bits of flesh or skin hanging in tatters, the feet red with blood, torn like the legs, the toes missing, one of the feet still dripping blood.
Jack’s throat was tight, choked. “You . . .” he said.
“Oh, sir!” the woman whispered, and a mouthful of dark red blood welled over her lips and spilled down her chin.
He closed his eyes, opened them. He was alone in the silence, and the light showed him only the gray and the drifting fog.
As it came on to eleven o’clock that night, John MacMahon sat with the last of a pint of Guinness before him in the dark back corner of Nolan’s, the third pub of Doolin a little distance beyond the end of the one main street of the village. The light in that one back corner had burned out longer ago than any of the regulars recalled nowadays and had never been replaced. It was John MacMahon’s accustomed seat.
“Time,” Liam Nolan called out from behind the bar. “Last orders, please. Time.”
Patrick Mullen was among those who pushed their glasses forward on the bar to be refilled.
Without being asked, Nolan carried two brimming pint glasses back to John MacMahon and Brian Flynn. They’d all be there another hour at least. Why would a man be hurrying home to an empty house, Liam Nolan was always quick to say.
John MacMahon pressed his gnarly hand briefly across his stomach where the pain had come again. It was coming more often now, more often all the time. He pressed his hand harder, and waited, and after a bit, it passed.
He finished off the previous Guinness and contemplated the thick white head on its replacement. Brian Flynn did the same with his own.
“Almost October,” John MacMahon murmured, and raised the foamy pint to his lips. His hand trembled ever so slightly and he had to be careful with the heavy glass.
“It is that,” Brian Flynn said softly. “It is that, indeed, and no denying it.”
They drank together, sipping slowly at the hearty Guinness, and continued in their thoughtful silence in the dark back corner of the pub.
At about the same time, Father Malcolm Henning exhaled a long, sighing breath as he carefully lowered his knees onto the cushioned prie-dieu in the corner of his small bedroom. He joined his hands before him and murmured, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” In church, he always said “Holy Spirit” where the liturgy called for it, as the new custom—he still thought of it as new—dictated for the vernacular Mass, but in his private devotions, prayers at night and the daily reading of the holy office in the morning, he allowed himself the tiny luxury of saying “Holy Ghost,” the way he’d learned his prayers as a child and said them for all of his long life.
He prayed first for Ireland, that it might be a nation united once again, freed from its English oppressors who still occupied part of its land. He prayed for lasting peace in all the rest of the world. He prayed for the intentions of the Holy Father in Rome. He prayed for the village of Doolin and all the people in it, mentioning several by name, especially Peggy Mullen who had just recently buried her husband. He prayed that his own stiffening knees might not feel the cold and damp of winter quite so sharply as they had the year before. Then he added, as he had been adding each night for a while now, a prayer for the peace and protection of Jack Quinlan, newly come to Doolin.
“In the name of the Father,” he finished, making the sign of the cross, “and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
PART TWO
For mem’ry’s the only friend that grief can call its own.
—Sean O’Casey,
Juno and the Paycock
CHAPTER 6
The first time Jack had said, “I’m so glad you’re here,” Grainne had blushed and turned her face away at once. The second time, she’d lowered her head, but not before letting him see the smile that filled her face.
The sky had been gray all day long, the air wet with a penetrating chill, until three in the afternoon. Then, in the course of fifteen minutes, the sky had brightened, the rain slowed to a drizzle and then to nothing at all. An hour later, bright blue rents had appeared in the lowering cloud cover and sunshine struck the earth for the first time in several days, glinting on puddles and greening the hills and moss and grass. The ocean turned from white-capped slate to glistening blue. The wind blowing in from the water eased its pace, became softer, gentler, though the shredded clouds continued to scud rapidly inland overhead.
“You’ve brought the sun,” Jack said when he ran out to greet Grainne at the car.
They kissed once, out there beside the house, a kiss unpremeditated and a little startling, that lasted midway between a social greeting and the lingering touch of lovers.
Grainne had only one suitcase and a straw bag that was mostly filled with books. Jack took them from the back seat of the car and they walked together toward the house. He put the bags down just inside the open doorway.
“Let me give you the tour,” he said.
Grainne’s gaze took in the comfortable living room, the stone fireplace, and the sunny view from the windows down toward the sparkling ocean. “It’s grand,” she said.
Jack tried not to make too big a deal of showing her through the house. He was suddenly aware that they were both a little self-conscious, now that anticipation had become reality, and neither of them lingered when he showed her the bedroom. When they were done, Grainne smiled her approval of everything.
“You’ve even a fireplace,” she said. “And I saw the turf pile outside. That’ll be lovely for the evening. We have none of that in Clontrarf, you know. Dublin is entirely too sophisticated for turf fires.” Smiling, she put her hands on her hips, let her gaze sweep all around the living room, taking it all in again. “You’ve done well.”
Her bags were still on the floor near the door. Jack did not move to pick them up and carry them into the bedroom. Suddenly, he thought that doing so would represent a unilateral decision; if they were to sleep together—if they were to make love—he wanted it just to happen. Presumably, she hadn’t come here with the notion that one of them would sleep on the couch, but Jack found now, rather to his own surprise, that he wasn’t much interested in making any assumptions on that question. For the moment, he was just glad she was there.
“Did you eat?” he said. “Can I fix you something?”
Grainne turned from the window, where she’d been looking down the hill toward the ocean. “I’m starved,” she said. “I drove straight on without stopping.”
“I hope you like cheese sandwiches,” he said in the kitchen. “I was waiting until you got here to shop. I figured that way I’d get whatever you like.”
“Cheese sandwiches are fit for royalty,” Grainne said lightly, leaning back against a cupboard. “I hear the Queen of England eats them herself.”
Jack had meant to go shopping in the village before she arrived, but he’d been up most of the night, drinking tea and thinking about what he’d seen in the fog on the hill, and had slept through the morning until past midday.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have—”
“No,” Grainne said quickly, and touched his arm with her fingertips. “A sandwich’ll do me. That’s not what I meant. But I wonder, is it only sandwiches and cold food you’ve been eating yourself?”
“I get by,” he said. “But I did think maybe we’d eat out tonight. I hear there’s a place not far, in Roadford Doolin. Or we could drive someplace else.”
“That’d be nice. I’d like that. But only if we can go shopping, and then tomorrow I’ll fix a proper meal. I’ll not have you saying I left the famous writer to starve when he didn’t have to.”
“That’ll be perfect.”
They looked at each other, and Jack thought she was as aware as he of the easily achieved partnership. He moved and stood in front of her and took her hands in his.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” he said, and this time she came to him, laid her cheek against his shoulder, and her arms went around his body. He held her close and felt her feathery hair touch his lips. His arms slid across her slender back. He felt her breasts pressed hard and unembarrassed against his chest and, softly, with a degree of relief that nearly took his breath away, he whispered her name.
She was a gorgeous picture, out there in the warm golden light leading to sunset, with long shadows stretching away beside them as they walked toward the edge of the water. She’d wanted to see Doolin Point right away, didn’t want to wait till tomorrow, and he’d been happy to oblige. They’d taken the car and parked it at the end of the road and, hand in hand, where the broken rocky surface permitted, they made their way toward the point and the crashing surf. Grainne seemed made for this, one with the light and the shore and the salty tang of the wind and spray. Jack drank her in.
Her black hair whipped out behind her in the wind. Her milky skin took on a pinkish glow. Once, when the fissures in the rock separated them, she got ahead of Jack, and he stood where he was for a moment, just watching her. He admired her long legs, like a deer in jeans, he thought, and just as graceful. She was wearing only a flannel shirt and a heavy white Aran sweater, but the cold seemed to touch her not at all. The thick bulk of the sweater concealed her figure, but when she jumped from rock to rock, arms uplifted and stretched out for balance, her breasts were full and heavy, all the richer for the slender lightness of her waist and hips and back.
“Were you ogling me back there, Jack Quinlan?” she said when he caught up.
“You’re beautiful, Grainne.”
“Ah,” she said, “my mother warned me to beware the flattery of smiling Yanks.”
He took her hand again and they made their way over the great rough blocks of stone that tumbled forward toward the ocean. All around them, the air was loud with the roar of wind and waves and lashing water. The wind was strong here, laced with salty spray, and they squinted into its cold wetness. Ahead of them, mighty waves, driven by the unbridled wind from the North Atlantic, hurled themselves in a fury of foam at the unmoved rocks of the coast. Towering eruptions of water, white and flying green, shot high into the air, paused for an instant, and dropped with deadly solid weight onto rocks still wet from the previous attack. Foam boiled up between fissures in the rock, fell back, was caught on the racing swell of an incoming wave, and boiled up, foaming, higher still, seeking the still-dry surface of the highest rock.
They sat for ten minutes, as long as the cold wet wind would let them, and watched the waves crash in and the red sun sink beyond the sea.
Jack put his arm around her shoulders and Grainne leaned against him. He thought he was as happy this evening as he’d been unhappy the night before.
John MacMahon moved slowly, stiffly, leaning on his knobby cane, down the one main street of Doolin. His cap was pulled low on his forehead as if the rain still fell, although the sun of late afternoon cast a long, dark shadow ahead of him on the cobbles of the road. The collar of his jacket was turned up at the back of his neck. He kept his free hand tightly fisted against his chest, holding the jacket lapels close across his throat to keep out the killing cold and damp.
A few people greeted him in the street, women hurrying home with a last-minute item for the husband’s meal, or workmen, in their heavy boots, walking more slowly than the women.
To each of them, John MacMahon muttered, “Good day to ye,” without ever slowing or lifting his eyes from the uneven ground that threatened every step.
When he reached Father Henning’s house, a small stone cottage in a lane near the church, he stopped at the bottom of the path and leaned on the low stone wall for a moment to catch his breath. When his breathing was quieter and less strained, he continued up the path and used the head of his cane to rap sharply at the door.
The door was opened by Mrs. Corcoran, a stout and sturdy widow, with upper arms like hams, whose husband had been dead these last nine years. From two weeks after the husband was laid in the earth, Deirdre Corcoran had looked after the priest, who was just then beginning to have difficulty in keeping up both his pastoral duties and keeping himself and his house in order. Mrs. Corcoran took charge, kept the house, cooked most of his meals, and saw to it that he never went through the front door without his scarf pulled tightly in place. There was no saying no to Deirdre Corcoran.
She pulled the door back, planted her hands on her hips, and looked squarely at the old man leaning on his cane in the path.
“John MacMahon, is it?” she said. “Himself said you’d be along, although Lord only knows why he’d be wanting the likes of you in the house. Clean your shoes on the stone there before you come in. I’ve enough to be doing without you making unnecessary work. Come on. Come on. If you’re to catch your death of cold, it’ll not be from me keeping you out in the weather.”
John MacMahon waited until she was done, as he waited every Friday evening when he came to the priest’s house for supper, then carefully scraped the soles of his shoes on the edge of the concrete steps and came into the house.
Deirdre Corcoran put out her hand and John MacMahon handed her the cane. “It’s more for show, to be winning sympathy,” she’d used to tell him. Now he handed it over and she took it without a word.
“And the rest,” she said, her hand still extended.
John MacMahon removed his cap and gave it to her. That had been the longest part of the battle, lasting almost all of the first two years of Deirdre’s tenure in the house of the priest. “I don’t care that you went to school with himself,” she’d told him repeatedly then, “you’ll not wear a hat in his house. Wear it in the pub, if you want, and wear it in your own parlor, and wear it to your bed, for all that I care, but you’ll not be wearing it here, I can tell you that.” When she had unthinkingly said to him one of those Friday evenings near the end of her second year of service to the priest, “John MacMahon, you’ll not wear a hat inside my house,” he’d known for sure that he was beaten at last.
“That’s better,” she said. There was a small narrow closet near the front door and she put the cane and cap away.
“Good evening to ye,” John MacMahon said, now that all that business was settled between them.
“Good evening to you,” Deirdre said. “Come in and sit. I have my hands full getting your meal. He’ll be out in a minute.” She nodded toward the back of the house, where the bathroom was, then returned to the kitchen. The warm house was filled with the smell of roasting lamb.
“John,” Father Malcolm Henning said when he appeared in the doorway.
“Malcolm,” said John MacMahon, looking up from his place at the corner of the couch.
The priest settled himself in his chair and smiled at his old friend.
“So we have a bit of sun today, after all,” he said.
They talked for a while about the weather, about the unusual amount of rain in recent weeks, about the oncoming winter and the cold it would bring.
“I feel it more now, I do,” the priest said with a sigh, “but, God willing, I’ve a few more winters in me yet. If these old knees hold up.”
“I feel it in the knees meself,” said John MacMahon. “And I feel it elsewhere as well.” He looked up and his eyes met those of the priest.
“Do you?” Father Henning said quietly. “Is the pain coming on you, John?”
