In the Forest (14 page)

‘Maybe he was . . . maybe she’ll fall for him . . . maybe she’ll take him off our hands.’

‘I doubt it,’ he says and slowly puts down the phone. He recalls the desperate look on the woman’s face and the Kinderschreck laughing so bad that his back teeth were showing. He knows that laugh. He and his wife and children have heard it and trembled to it in the nights that the Kinderschreck had slept in their hay shed and he had been too afraid to go out and order him off. The only traces of him in the morning being lavatory paper and empty biscuit packets.

They are standing arguing. O’Kane takes a round tin box from his pocket, a box that held floor polish once and he rattles it jubilantly. Maddie listens with his eyes, with his ears, with all of him as the lid is slowly turned. She jumps several paces back, staggers and gasps at the sight of the cluster of bullets, brass coated, their snouts close together. He picks up the rifle, takes out the magazine, puts the bullet in, closes it, then pushes the catch forward and holds it with his index finger, studying them.

‘Please . . . please don’t fire that gun . . . talk to me.’

‘Boom boom boom,’ he says and as he pulls the trigger, a sharp brittle clatter breaks the immense silence, the lead slug cutting through the tree tops, the leaves swirling in its aftermath and a burning smell.

‘Imagine if you were a child hearing that,’ she says.

‘Don’t touch them . . . don’t touch one of them, they’re mine,’ he is yelling, bent over Maddie who has crouched by the tray of bullets, studying them.

‘Leave him alone ... he doesn’t know what they are . . . he’s never seen one . . . he’s a child,’ she shouts.

‘You will behave yourself whilst here,’ he says and lifts Maddie by the collar of his jacket and she stands between them, daring him to strike her, brave cowboy that he is.

He seems amused by her flaring up - ‘Relax . .. Goatgirl.’

‘Look . . . listen . . . put yourself in our shoes . . . our . . . predicament.’

‘You know what your problem is?’

‘What?’

‘Your problem is you don’t trust.’

‘And what’s your problem?’

‘My fucking head isn’t right . . . my heart is right but they fucked my head up.’

‘All right then . . . let’s talk to your heart.’

‘Give us a snog.’

‘Don’t be cheeky.’

‘We’re not talking heart to heart are we . . . we’re talking shit . . . are you wired?’

‘Where are your family?’

‘Family . . . that’s funny. They killed my rna . . . the way they killed Cody’s rna.’

‘There must be somebody.’

‘Only my granny . . . and my sister.’

‘Where are they?’

‘Loughrea.’

‘I know Loughrea. I have friends there . . . why don’t we go and we can call on your granny?’

‘Too risky.’

‘What are you wanted for?’

‘Larceny, robbery, possession of firearms . . . devil’s work . . . bastards want to put lead in me.’

‘But it’s not fair to punish us . . . we’re not your enemy . . . we don’t want to put lead into you.’ ‘You’re the one,’ he says and takes a folded brown envelope from his pocket and hands it to her. Her name is scrawled in pencil inside a crude drawing of a pumpkin. ‘Read it.’ She looks down at the daubed ruled page, the laboured childish handwriting and recognises it from the note that was left on her car seat outside the caravan site. She reads rapidly:

I am asking you to go with me I know you might not understand what it means but I would like if you say yes please say yes do not show this letter to anybody or tell anybody because they would tease us don’t tell anyone please understand if your answer is yes we will start now please say yes don’t be embarrassed signed Michen.

‘It’s for you,’ he says as she hands it back.

‘It’s an old letter and it says Veronica, Dear Veronica.’

‘She fucking pulled back . . . she’s for it ... should’ve given her lead.’

‘I’m not Veronica . . . you know that.’

Furious now he snatches the letter back and shouts, ‘Giveusthephone giveusthephone giveusthephone.’ He bellows his orders into it - ‘Reported on sick parade . . . metal in Vomitus. Released from medical centre. Reunited with family at front gates. Energy level terrific. Chlorophyll feed. C and D not necessary. Proceeding north west as per coda. Over. Over.’ He is looking at them but not seeing them, arguing furiously with a host of voices, his answers clotted, indeterminate.

Mick Rafferty is bundling his wife and children into the car. Aoife, the youngest, is crying because the boogie man that slept in their hay shed is back. His father says that he is not in their hay shed now and never will be.

‘Are you sure it was the Kinderschreck,’ his wife Tilly asks.

‘I’m seventy per cent sure.’ ‘You were only sixty per cent sure an hour ago.’ ‘I’m sure for definite.’

‘Maybe you should go to the guards.’

‘If I go to the guards it’ll only bring him back on us . . . the guards are as afraid of him as you or me.’ ‘You said he was laughing.’

‘The girl wasn’t laughing. She looked scared . . . dead scared.’

‘Oh God grant someone will tie him up soon.’

They are walking again, Eily’s face caked with mud and scratched because twice she has tripped and fallen. At moments her eyes seem to go blurry. Endless line of trees, tree trunks, thin branches jutting out like spikes. Maddie keeps slipping down onto her hip and gently she hauls him back, trying to fold him in sleep, because asleep he is not crying, not fretting, he is dreaming, dreaming of home maybe, of Elmer and his blackthorn stick for thwacking the cows. At moments the needles and branches appear to her to have gone inside her mind and inside her mouth. Tiny insects crawl in the corners of her eyes and nest under her clothes. The air is stifling. ‘Hold on ... hold on tight,’ she whispers to Maddie each time he begins to slip. At moments she is weirdly calm, telling herself there is a particular place, a point they have to reach, for some bizarre reason, which will be the turning point and they will be going back home. She even asks herself why it had to be, why her, some lesson to be learnt, some truth, some indelible truth. Other moments she begins to hallucinate, sees the apple blossom blowing through their garden, sees Declan and Cassandra and Sven, all waving to her, holding up a burned kettle. She remembers the harried drive along the road, the gorse coming into bloom, the postmistress in her van, the tall man at the gate ignoring her. As for the time she has no idea. This is all time and no time. Her twenty odd years condensed into this lunatic present. So it is the next step and the next and the next half step and Maddie beginning to pee and taking him behind a tree, the steam, warm and sweet smelling, his face stark white but his cheeks red as tomatoes.

‘Mama.’ He has not called her by that name since he was tiny and it has come back to him in this extremity.

‘I’m here . . . I’m here,’ she says, smoothing his sweating hair.

‘Will Cass and Sven and Declan and everybody come?’

‘Yes they will.’

‘And tie the robber up.’

‘They will,’ she says holding him tight, tighter, willing him back into her, into safety. He looks so little, so helpless with his dungarees down around his ankles, both knowing and not knowing what is going on.

‘Up up up,’ she says hoisting him over her shoulder. She thinks that if they can come through the darkness and out into a clearing that the worst will have transpired. Not yet thinking the unthinkable. She stops all of a sudden, falters, then her legs buckle, refusing to carry her any further. Sunk to the ground and looking up at O’Kane, she pleads with him - ‘You wouldn’t put your granny or your sister through this.’

‘I would if I had to ... I nearly killed my granny. My voices were telling me, egging me on, “do her do her”.’

‘What voices?’

‘Big tall man with horns . .. over in England after I got out of jail I went to my cousin’s ... he wanted me to pick up a carving knife and cut my cousin Anthony up in bits . . .I went into the toilet to fool him ... I counted . . . I counted to a hundred.’

‘Come on ... that’s what we’ll do ... we’ll count to a hundred,’ she says standing again. She starts counting, as if she is on a stage, then Maddie joins in and so does he, a rousing trio, a choir of voices, ringing out in the emptiness of the vast, drowsing, unheeding, noonday wood. When they have reached several hundred they are panting and he stops and leans against a tree, a baleful look on his face. She knows she has broken through to him, to that human kernel in him and as she believes, in all mankind. Even his eyes seem less threatening, bewilderment in them. He is trembling and she thinks that the fear which had run in her blood and run in her thinking runs in him too and that it is a matter now of reaching to the child in him, the child cut off from the outraged youth.

‘I was in the fear zone back there,’ he says wiping the sweat from his face, from his palms, with a filthy handkerchief.

‘We were all in the fear zone back there . . . but we’re better now.’

‘I was seeing hazes, I was cracking up,’ he says and looking at the sky, laughs, says, ‘Doctor cunt rode his horse down the mountain in the snow, got a bag of messages and hung them on the side of the saddle . . . you don’t believe me, do you?’

‘I do believe you.’

‘He wanted attention. Do you want attention.’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Near thing with my cousin Anthony . . .’

‘You’re fine now,’ she says gently.

‘Send that kid tobogganing,’ he says, the toe of his boot squashing hers.

‘There’s nothing for him to toboggan on and anyhow he’s exhausted.’

He draws her towards him, an urgency in his voice: ‘We really didn’t know, did we, how good it could be . . . them times rolling around up here in the leaves and the muck . . . knackered . . . stuffing the food into my mouth like a mother . . . like a mother. I must admit I don’t often fall in love but you got under my skin . . . animal magnetism.’

‘Tell you what . . . let’s go back to the town and I’ll buy you a pint.’

‘What do you teach them kids in that school?’ ‘Games. Rhymes.’

‘Up came the blackbird and bit off her nose,’ he says. ‘One two three four five, once I caught a fish alive. Six seven eight nine ten, then I let it go again,’ Maddie pipes up to surpass him.

‘Bogger . . . behave yourself whilst here.’

‘Darling, tell him the poem you learnt ... go on,’ she says, coaxing Maddie, trying to mediate. Maddie mutters it and she repeats it with a studied calm.

I went out into the hazel wood

because a fire was in my head

and cut and peeled a hazel wand

and tied a berry to a thread.

‘I’d like to learn that . . . the teacher learnt us a story about a princess that pricked her finger on a spinning wheel and was put away and the prince had to come and beat down the brambles to rescue her.’

‘We have that story . . . we’ll loan it to you when we get back.’

‘Who says we’re going back?’

‘I do, because I’m the boss . . . I’m the mother.’

‘OK . . . free kick to you’ and he goes into peals of laughter and Maddie stares at him, quite still, still and white like a little snowman.

‘That Swedish cow in your school is after me ... said the name of the rowanberries in her lingo . . . ever tell you about my first kiss . . . she bought me a charm . . . raving slut . . . hope you’re not going to ask me to dance.’

‘Not on this rough ground, nobody could dance here.’

‘That’s one of the things I missed out on, dancing and scuba diving. You go through them jail gates and you’re gutted. They drill a hole in you. Take your balls. I bullshitted them. Couldn’t unmask me. Extremely attractive nurse on wing said I was malingering. My grimace was not the prodoma of genuine psychosis. They studied my laugh, my grimace. Jack Pallance came by, stole it for Shane . . . never paid me a penny.’

‘Do you get help now that you’re . . . free.’

‘Help. Horse shit. I was misdiagnosed ... I got my mind back second day after I was released.’

‘I worked with disabled children up in Dublin . . . maybe I could advise you as to where . . .’

‘Who the fuck is talking about disabled children. I’m a man. You wanna watch your language lady, you could be prodomaed for that.’

‘I thought we were friends . . .’

‘We are ... I have a picture of you on my wall . . . next to a picture of my gun.’

‘What’s all this fascination with guns?’

‘You want to hear a secret?’

‘OK.’

‘In the street the men watch you . . . want you . . . your honey pot.’

‘I’m a mother first and foremost . . . my little boy is closer to me than anyone in the world. He was born premature ... I was on a holiday with my sister Cassandra and the pains began and we thought it was indigestion . . . there we were walking along one of the canals in Amsterdam and I’m doubled over with pain and my sister starts waving a white handkerchief at the skipper of one of the ships and he stops and takes us in . . . my little boy came out in a big whoosh on the floor of a big ship, couldn’t wait to come into the world, could you?’ and she massages Maddie’s scalp under the mop of damp sweating hair.