In the Forest (5 page)

‘Someone said you’d be interested . .. hope it’s not cheeky. Bog oak . . . very ancient, over five thousand years old, petrified I think they call it. It’s how coal is made . . . what d’you think missus?’

‘They’re lovely.’

‘Say hello to them. This is Druid at Dawn, this is Morrigan the Bloodthirsty, and that’s Diarmuid and Grainne, lovers that died together.’

‘And who is this?’ Eily asks, picking out a figure whose hands are folded chastely across her chest.

‘Ah now . . . she’s my favourite . . . little Lena. She must be the loneliest child that ever lived. Came from a bog five thousand years old. You don’t mind that I brought them to meet you.’

‘Not in the least. What’s your name?’

‘Declan . . . but I changed it to Shiva after I went to

India,’ and he winks and fiddles with an assortment of silver earrings in his left ear.

‘What was India like?’

‘Most intense experience of my whole life . . . great soul . . . great dignity . . . and the dancers, Jesus, their whole personality dances.’

‘Well, we’ll have to do a bit of dancing up on the roof, Declan.’

‘Jaysus the roof, the roof. I’ll tell you what missus, miss, I went up there yesterday evening. I got the loan of a ladder, and I tell you there are piles of slates missing. That’s not the worst bit, it’s the joists . . . they’re like pulp, sawdust. You could puff them away in your hand.’

‘Oh no.’

‘It’s an old house, you’ve got to remember that. Empty for years . . . rotting.’

‘I can’t have a whole new roof, not this year anyhow.’

‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll patch it up, we’ll put tarpaulin inside and we’ll paint it with pitch and we’ll get some new slates and tuck them in under the old slates, seal them with a bit of lead for the time being.’

‘Will that keep the rain out?’

‘Well there’s always buckets, I’ll bring a good supply of buckets. One question . . . what made you settle here?’

‘Back to nature,’ she says with a hoot of laughter.

‘Mystical . . . gorgeous.’ He grips her hand, apologises for the dirt but says it’s on account of being a carpenter, a stonemason, a barman, a sculptor, and a small time farmer.

‘A barman!’

‘I do weddings . . . me and my friend. We bring the barrels and we draw pints all night. I love weddings . . .

I’m mad for them. Great craic, great singing ... so if you’re thinking of tying the knot, give us a shout.’ ‘Have you a girlfriend, Declan?’

‘Not exactly. There is a girl that kind of showed interest . . . Muriel.’

As they are talking Maddie comes whizzing in, puts down his big stick and stands and stoops like an old farmer, one elbow on the table, looking at his visitor, sizing him up.

‘So what do you do?’ Declan says.

‘I’m kept going ... I make walls, I make lakes, I dig drains, I’m run off my feet,’ Maddie says, affecting a worn voice.

‘That’s terrible altogether,’ Declan says.

‘But wait till I tell you ... I met a man up at the ash tree and I’m after buying a tractor from him. I gave him ten pounds for it. I sat up on it and I drove it home.’ ‘Go away.’

‘Yep. I have it up by the crossroads. D’you want to see it?’

‘I’ll see it in a minute . . . I’ll have my tay first. Why don’t you have a cup.’

‘No time ... I have to get my potatoes in ... I’m always first with the spuds . . . June the twenty-ninth,’ and he goes out running, shouting, ‘Duncan, Duncan.’ ‘Who’s Duncan?’ Declan asks.

‘Someone he’s made up ... they have battles.’ ‘Great little lad.’

‘He’s dying to be five . . . that’s his big agenda.’ ‘What’s your big agenda missus?’

‘To cut this bloody hair, to shave it all off. The plumbing here . . . well, it’s primitive, a tap outside in the yard.’

‘That’s kinda exotic though . . .’

‘When will you be able to start the roof Declan?’ ‘It’s like this . . . I’m freelance. I work for a fecker over in the mills and he’s a right bastard, but the long evenings are coming in and I’ll be home while it’s bright and I’ll be down here . . . Mr Fixit. Do me a favour, don’t cut that hair.’

Dusk, and the figure on the roadside barely visible. He is thumbing. What with the baby and being late, Moira Tuohey thinks not to stop, but suddenly O’Kane throws himself in front of the car and she has to pull on the brakes so as not to run him over. ‘God almighty, I could have killed you,’ she says through the window. He is a young fellow in a bomber jacket with a rucksack and he is holding an apple and an orange in either hand.

‘Let me in,’ he says in a tough voice.

‘I’m only going a mile down the road.’

"Twill do.’

She feels nervous but realises she has no choice. She has to get out on account of it being a two-door car and the baby is strapped in the front seat. As he jumps in the back she notices a wooden handle jutting from inside his jacket.

‘I hope you’re not going to hit me with that,’ she says.

‘Hardly ... a nice lady like you.’ Something about his speech along with his stare unnerves her. His speech is too slow, too clumsy, like he has not spoken to anybody in a long time.

‘I’m only going to the next town,’ she says, determined to be breezy, businesslike.

‘Is that baby teething?’ he says and leans forward and tickles the baby under the chin.

‘Don’t wake him, he’s only just gone off.’

She notices how fidgety the passenger is, tapping on the back of the seat, looking out one window, then another, continuously wiping the mist off them and muttering to himself.

‘What’s worrying you?’

‘The guards are after me,’ he says quite flatly.

‘For what?’

‘Robbery ... I have to find somewhere to live. Do you have a sofa?’

‘Oh I don’t live around here at all, I’m just back for a visit. Tell you what . . . there’s a caravan site about two miles from here. It’s supposed to be very nice, very clean.’

‘I’m a loner.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘O’Kane, Mich.’

‘Ah. My mother knew your mother,’ she says, determined now to get on friendly terms.

‘Bastards. They said my mother was treated for depression . . . she was never depressed. She loved me, she knit me a jumper.’

‘You’ve been, away?’

‘I was in jail in England . . . they wire you . . . they put wires on you and then they prod you the way they prod cattle.’

‘That’s terrible.’

‘That’s why my fucking head is not good . . . they wanted my brain for experiments.'

‘Are you on your way home?’

‘Pigs. It makes me mad the things they say around here about my mother.’

‘Don’t mind them . . . they gossip. That’s why I moved . . . my husband and I we have a little business further west.’

‘Do you sell helmets?’

‘No.’

‘Pity. A helmet is good cover for the face. I’m thinking of going to France for the summer . . . after I’ve done a few people.’

Her driving is reckless because all she wants is to get to the town and stop outside the chemist and pretend she has to get medicines urgently for the child. She has already rehearsed exactly what she will say, rehearsed unstrapping the harness, and in her mind has lifted the child out and run to safety. She won’t even put up a fight if he insists on taking the keys. It’s an old car and Jason will understand when she describes the look in the man’s eyes, the fidgeting, the crazy talk.

‘I’ll get out here, it’s the cow walk,’ he says suddenly and pounds her shoulder. The car comes to a screech and she places her hand across the child’s chest to protect it. As he goes to get out he drops the orange into the child’s lap.

‘No, you keep it yourself, you’ll need it . . .’

‘He’ll need it ... he’s teething,’ he says.

As she stands to let him out he gives her an unbearable look of reproach. ‘You were afraid of me . . . that hurt me ... I wanted so little ... I asked so little.’

‘What’s in the cow walk?’ she says, as a kind of apology.

‘The true answer,’ he says, and looks up into the rainy distance with something like longing.

As she drives away he is standing under a cover of young trees, motionless, half hidden, as if he is planning something spiteful.

O’Kane sits on a tree stump behind a high ornamental wall with crenellations along the top. Three men are filling potholes on a stretch of road at the outskirts of the town. His father is one of them. His father sweeps the dirt out of the hole with a yardstick, rooting and poking until every bit of dirt is nosed out, lifts it and scatters the debris into the kerb. Then he scoops the stone chips into the potholes, packs them down with a shovel while a second man sprays tar over them from a hose affixed to a tanker on the lorry. When his father has flattened the stones with the paddle of the shovel, patted them in, he adds a second heap which in turn are tarred and so on, in silent, sweating, unbroken tedium.

‘I’m nearer than he thinks . . . I’m within striking distance of him,’ O’Kane thinks as he watches through a chink in the wall, sees his father, the black sleeve, the braced arm, the thick hand holding the shovel, the face determined and gruff like it always was. The lorry trundles on as the next hole is filled and the next and the patches of tar are like black flowers, splashed on a blue road.

O’Kane decides to give his father a bit of a turn and lets out a hoot, half man, half donkey, his prison hoot and his father looks around sharp, baffled and then
runs his hand down his neck as if flies have landed on it. He’d got fatter. The devil’s work. The devil done that.

At lunchtime the lorry is driven onto a by-road and the three men go up the street to Nellie’s Cafe for their grub. O’Kane leaps the wall and begins to take shovel loads of chips and throw them willy nilly onto the road and onto passing cars shouting ‘Fucking provos . . . fucking provos.’

Walking her dog, Mrs Vaughan sees this and runs back into her house to hide. She draws her blind, drags a gas cylinder and puts it against the hall door and goes upstairs to peer through a window, to wait for him to move on.

His task done he decides to call on the parish priest. Going up the short drive towards the pink two storey house with its green shutters he recalled things he had nicked there - altar wine, nail scissors, money and hair gel. He recalls His Holiness like a big white owl in his fleece long johns, gagging for it.

‘Oh Enda . . . nice to see you,’ the priest says in as level a voice as he can muster.

‘Not Enda . . .’

‘Of course. Michen. I heard you were home . . . still on the road, day and night . . . always on the road ... it will be time for you to settle down . . . nothing in those woods for anyone . . . there aren’t even birds up there . . . I was talking to Cian Logan the other day, he’s retiring, he’s done his three score and ten and I said to him,
“Cian, tell me what was wonderful about being a forester”
and I had to laugh at his reply:
“Damn all
...
midges eating you alive in the summer and rain water drenching you in the winter every time you sawed off a branch
.”’

‘You had me there,’ O’Kane says, standing by a low
bed with a red cover and a white linen antimacassar over the pillow.

‘Yes, everyone thinks his or her own calling the most taxing,’ the priest says, pretending not to be unnerved.

‘I want money.’

‘Now why would I give you money?’

‘Because I could have you disgraced ... I could go to the bishops.’

‘It’s you yourself that might be disgraced . . . nevertheless I will give you money if it means a hot meal or a decent pullover,’ the priest says and looks towards the hall, reluctant to leave him alone in the kitchen and disguising his fears by muttering to himself, wondering where his overcoat could be.

‘Shitting your pants?’ O’Kane says with a grin.

‘England has done you no good.’

‘Plenty of fist fucking in the English lavs.’

‘No good whatsoever.’

The priest returns, separating the new clean notes with his dampened thumb - ‘Today was my day for visiting the poor.’ He counts them studiously then hands them over.

‘Dirty money,’ O’Kane says and pockets it.

‘You should go on down home and make peace with your father.’

‘I’m not wanted there.’

‘Where are you wanted?’

‘Nowhere,’ he says and sits down at the end of the table as if he is about to be given food, staring out, his eyes like holes filled with vistas of nowhere. ‘I might go to the Low countries . . . they have lots of woods there and caves,’ he says with a sudden spurt of excitement.

‘Well, please God you’ll find your niche,’ the priest says and holds the door open for him to go out, then lifts his hand in some baleful mimicry of a farewell blessing. He stands dismayed for a long while.

A curse on the man who puts his trust in man, Who relies on things of the flesh,