In Too Deep (8 page)

Maggie sipped her tea and smiled. ‘No,' she said, ‘he needs me and I need him. I can't give him up to strangers. And that's all there is to it.'

Time brought nothing but a kind of immunity. Maggie
came to accept her shows of wickedness and, in the same way, Paudie found some way of handling the pain. If conscience could become callused, then so too could resolve. Soon enough, Maggie found that she needed something more to sate her appetite for revenge than the little pinch-and-twist indulgences of snagging his flesh with her chewed nails as she dressed him, or forcing him to consume all the things he hated until he began to gag and vomit in response, or leaving him to sit sodden in his own urine for entire days until his groin and inner thighs shone with the bright pink of yet another angry rash. When such cruelties began to lose an element of their glow, she raised the stakes, freshened them all over again by taking time to announcing exactly what little savagery she planned to inflict on him next. First in whispers, her mouth almost lovingly close to his ear so that memories of when they had been newlyweds could not help but flash through his stubborn mind, and then, when even that began to lose its lustre, in a calm, terribly logical voice that had never been hers.

‘Time for your wash, my love. I do hope that the water won't be too hot for you this time.' Or: ‘I have a special dinner for you today, Paudie. Raw sausages. Good for the bowels, they say.' Mute apart from the small moaning cry that was the reaction to the very worst of his misery, there was nothing Paudie could do or say to help himself.

And life would have continued on for both of them in such a way, an endless game of cat and mouse, had death not interceded. Maggie awoke to a perfect July dawn with the sense that something irrevocable had occurred. Beside her in the bed, Paudie lay stiff as stone, but the atmosphere of the small bedroom felt unnaturally still and it took a moment for her to realise that the oddness was due to silence.

Since the stroke, Paudie's breathing had been a constant struggle, a cold nasal whistle straining in spurts through the sack of useless muscle and bone. It had become part of the noise of her day, and her night, an expected detail of her surround and a music so in tune with their lives that it required neither noticing nor recognition. She found herself waiting in the gossamer-thin half-light of the hour, huddled beneath the veil of a cotton sheet, her own breath a clot of terror in her throat. On the bedside locker the alarm clock pulsed to an impossibly slow time, a clack of seconds that had to be running slow, and she closed her eyes and gave in to her fear, letting the rush of melancholia wash over her like a blast of breeze.

He looked better in death than he had at any time since the stroke. All the neighbours said so. It was an ease to him, they said, their voices held low out of respect for the dead, an end to his suffering and to hers. Laid out on the bed, dressed in his best suit and with his hair swept back in a dignified way, he found again some of the physical dominance that had once made him such a distinctive figure. The stroke had scarred him, twisted his face, but they had been able to manipulate the relaxed muscles into a better shape. The years fell away and he looked almost young again.

The women carried trays of ham sandwiches and bracks already cut in slices and thickly buttered; the men brought bottles of stout. After the priest had been, someone produced a flagon of poteen and a glass was pressed into Maggie's hand, her fingers folded tight around it. ‘Medicinal,' they told her, and she sipped at it, tasting nothing. ‘It'll do you the world of good.
'
Perched on a hard-backed chair beside the unlit fire, she turned inward to find isolation from the pack. She was fortyish and old far beyond her time. Now she was also alone in the world, and not quite destitute perhaps, but hardly comfortable, either. Her mind refused to focus; every time someone asked a question of her, or every time she tried to set herself to a small chore, pouring some drinks, perhaps, or making another pot of tea, memories of Paudie stormed her mind, so completely that it became difficult to know for certain what was happening now and what was only remembered or imagined. There were details of him that she had somehow overlooked but saw with perfect clarity now: his diligence in and, appetite for, work; his self-belief; his handsomeness in a certain light. In her unconscious she supposed that she had always known these details, and that they had probably played a part in why she had fallen in love with him all those years before, why she had put up with so much misery and heartbreak during their time together. The sins lived on, some of them so terrible that she could never forgive them, but it wouldn't have done to ignore his qualities, not on this day, such a day for reflection. Qualities that, while not immediately obvious, even to her, were not insubstantial either.

She sat on her chair, taking the offers of condolence with a little bow of her head. The trembling that had been inside her for as long as she could recall finally made it obviously to the surface, and a cup of forgotten tea tumbled from her fingers to smash on the kerb of the fireplace.

Eventually the hour grew late and the party lost much of its enthusiasm, and in slow processions the neighbours said their so longs and drifted away, back to their own lives. When the last of them had gone, she stood and moved to the doorway of the bedroom. Empty, it seemed unfinished. She moved to the bed and perched on its edge, the thin mattress sagging beneath her. A feeling of desolation tugged at her mind, a throng of questions as to what she would do now, how she expected to survive, how she'd cope, a worn-to-ribbons forty-year-old, and all alone now, really for the very first time in her life. She felt the doubts dragging at her, wanting to bring her down, but with effort she shook them off. A smile turned the corners of her mouth and she yielded right of way. It was late now, moving on for midnight, but she had all the time in the world to sleep. There was some whiskey left and for now she felt like sitting a while at the fire. Maybe, she thought, feeling the first bubble of laughter tickle her mouth, she'd even raise her glass and drink a toast, to all the things she'd lost, and to life.

Perhaps he won't notice, the girl thought. After all, meat is meat, and he's an old man now, not as sharp as he once was. Not that she had ever known him to be especially sharp, but still, time had to count for something, didn't it? Time wore away mountains, they said. And meat is meat.

I have a mind for rabbit, he said. Fried in butter. A craving like you wouldn't believe. But he'd never know the difference, not in his state.

She'd take pleasure in this. Ever since she was a child, he'd been a cruel bastard. All for her own good, of course; that was how men like him always justified themselves. There are right ways to do things and wrong ways, he used to say, and the wrong ways will get your hands beaten blue. Better to learn that lesson now than later.

He used a switch to inflict the bruises, twenty slender inches of willow limb that he cut with ritualistic verve every Sunday afternoon while the echo of the priest's morning words still rang in his ears and his heart and blood still pounded with gospel piety. There was only so much beating to be had from a willow stick, and Sunday was the only suitable day for doing such holy duty. After ordering her to stand and watch from inside the crumbling backyard wall, he'd work his way across the rocky slope to where the willows grew. And once among them he'd take his time, his gnarled hands grasping and bending the low-hanging branches to test for the requisite give. A good switch needed to be at once strong and slender. There was no need for hurry and, depending on the time of year, he could take as long as ten or fifteen minutes before finally emerging again into the clearing. There he'd stand, in profile to his granddaughter's watching eyes, heedless of rain or wind, and he'd flay the air ten, twenty, thirty times with the newly-cut rod, this week's winner. The whining hiss produced by all that slashing made for a wicked song, but if so much as a single note failed to satisfy his critical ears, he'd toss the stick away and go back into the copse of trees to choose another, and another, until he found one to fit his towering standards.

In recent years he'd beaten her less, but that was due mainly to a combination of his growing old and her own heightened caution. She rarely spoke, except when to not speak would invoke his rage, and she hurried about the chores, the cooking, the cleaning and the many other small but necessary tasks that filled up her days. She read his constantly swinging moods and tried to step delicately around them. But back when she was just a child, he was more liberal with the stick, and more able. And Sunday nights were always the most dangerous time of the week for her, because he would be yearning to use the switch on flesh, and any excuse would suffice. Crying did no good; deaf to her desperate pleas, he'd announce the number of lashes that he adjudged to reasonably fit her latest misdemeanour: six for spilling the drinking water or for overcooking supper, ten for talking out of turn, a round dozen for whatever he would decide constituted a show of disobedience, and he'd keep on, tears or no tears, singing along to each scream of the switch in a deathly slow count-up until the sentence had been fully met and his own hungers sated.

She'd earned the right to hate him.

Now he was dying, and he wanted rabbit. The girl had known of his condition for weeks, ever since the racking cough had turned from a constant, tinny scraping sound into a pitiful bark that dripped wetly down into the white bristles of his chin. He'd felt something shifting far down inside, he said, and no drawn breath came easily after that. He was forced to spend much of his time in bed, his increasingly emaciated frame swaddled in four or five heavy grey blankets, so desperate was he to catch and hold on to even a modicum of elusive heat, but even in his brittle state he insisted on rising for an hour or two every day so that he might sit at his fireside and feel halfway like a man again. It was all that he had left to make him happy, he said, and while the fire blazed away at some kindling and a dried clod of turf, he'd sit in the half-light of the dying October days, smoking cheap cigars, consequences be damned, and reading and rereading his own grandfather's tattered copy of the Bible. Whenever he called out the girl's name, she put aside what she was doing to come and stand in the doorway and to listen while he unfurled whichever passage had set his imagination to flaming and now just had to be shared in a declaration as loud and glorious as any hosanna. His voice, though, was a worn nub, ravaged by time and lack of free use, and it tainted the words, even the beautiful words of Jesus, and words that might have been written with men like him very much in mind, those most in need of saving. The messages of the Gospels fell from his stub-toothed mouth with all their clemency chewed and gummed away, ruined of any good, to sound instead like condemnations and promises of hell. And after he was finished reading he held his granddaughter in a bloodshot gaze so that their recently reversed roles meant nothing and he was again the dominant force of the household. His body may have been withering steadily down to dust, but in his eyes the ferocity remained intact, and he stared, daring her to react, yearning for some small blanch that would require yet another lesson. The switch was gone, and the hands now were incapable of delivering even the least blow, but still the girl could not deny her terror. The smile warping her face, a gag that showed off a lower row of crooked yellow teeth, she held knuckles of breath high in her throat and waited for another coughing fit to bring him down, some stab of pain that would haul his stare away. Yes, he was dying, but some scars ran deep beneath the skin.

Set a snare, he said. Set a few, just to make certain. Will you, love?

He had to ask now, but he still wasn't asking. Not really.

She nodded that she would, of course she would, glad of this excuse to get outside. She knew of at least a couple of busy runs, the best of them down towards the bottom of the mountain, down where the ground held more soil and where great swathes of furze were able to thrive. And who knew, maybe she'd find him dead when she returned. Sometimes, thinking about that eventuality, she felt that she'd like to be there, to see the whole business through and to see the shadow of fear brushing across his face. But at other moments she found herself hoping that she'd be down in the village when it finally happened, or out gathering berries, or on the other side of the world. Because what if death really wasn't the end? What if it only took you out of one state and dropped you into another? She hurried through the house, gathering what she needed: the old man's pocket knife, a small pair of pliers, a coil of steel wire and a ball of strong twine.

There was still an hour of light left in the day. The stiff westerly breeze carried the cold, clean hint of approaching rain but, apart from some discomfort, it would make no real difference to the task at hand.

When she reached the low part of the mountain she paused to catch her breath and to properly survey the terrain. The furze dressed the land just above, the mesh of branches and spine-tipped leaves dark yet without their yellow blossoms, and it took less than a minute to identify the nicely flattened track that swept down to where the ground evened out and wandered through the long grass into a trim of briar and blackthorn. After just a little deliberation, she decided that the best place to lay her traps was just where the run narrowed before it led into the cover of the trees. Then she went to work at selecting and cutting branches to secure the snares, sinking their sharp edges deep into the pliant ground at varying intervals, cutting lengths of wire and twisting them into secure loops, setting up the taut nooses some five inches or so above the ground. This was a busy run and three snares would be enough. More than enough. Her hands built and laid the traps with the ease of long practice, and she finished just as the last glimmer of daylight drained out of the sky, leaving the mountain to strangle in a groggy dusk.

Back at the cottage, she found the old man asleep. In the darkness there was no sound at all but the breeze sifting through the eaves and the crackle of the soft rain against the glass, and then, after straining to catch it, the shallow, trickling whisper of breath. Beneath the pile of blankets, a small pile of skin and bones was putting up a frantic last stand. She watched for a while from the doorway, but there was little really to be seen.

Dawn broke late, given the rain. The girl left the house a little after six, and footing on the way down the mountain was difficult, especially in the darkness. But she found the snares easily.

The first of the three was empty, but the second held a medium-sized buck rabbit that would provide plenty of meat. He'd fought hard to get away and had eventually strangled himself in the snare, the wire cutting though the flesh of his throat almost to the bone. She wrestled him free and skinned and gutted him on the spot, tossing the waste and entrails into the long grass for the rats and crows to feast upon. Then she checked the third snare.

At first, she wasn't sure what she'd caught. The ground was badly rutted around the trap which indicated that the struggle to escape must have been immense. She gasped when she peeled back the torn mess of hair and flesh to identify a small tom cat. He must have wondered up here from the village in search of mice or small birds, or perhaps he was out looking for love. Either way, he'd picked the wrong night to stray.

It was then that the idea occurred to her. Without hesitating, she unfolded her grandfather's pocket knife and proceeded to skin the dead animal. After all, she thought, meat is meat. If the old man complained, she would tell him that all the snare had caught was a hare and that was probably why the food tasted a little off. Hares were a different kind of eating. Or she'd say that she used margarine in the frying because they were out of butter. She worked fast and ably, the blade of the knife carving through the brindled fur to peel the flesh away. The rats and crows would have one hell of a feast today, but it would be nothing compared to the treat her grandfather had in store. This wasn't like spitting in his food; this was a thousand times better.

Laughing from deep down in her chest, she separately packed the two parcels of meat, then started up the mountain-side again.