The Sleepers of Erin (11 page)

‘Go straight through . . . ?’ I prompted.

‘Go straight through . . . sir.’

The train was on time. Janet had made me some cheese and tomato butties, which lasted me almost till the station was out of sight. All I could think of was Pat Harvest, with annoyance. The British Museum Turner exhibition ‘doing the sublime bit’, indeed. That innocent exhibition of watercolours had suddenly informed everybody how important some ideas are – and promptly sent the price of first editions of Edmund Burke’s book on the
Origin of our Ideas on the Sublime and the Beautiful
soaring five hundred per cent in three days among dealers and provincial antiquarians. A mint copy cost a few bob in 1757. It makes you sick.

Still, a few things stay the same in this murderous antiques game. Dear Patricia’s idea of the sublime and the beautiful hadn’t changed since she was born. Money. And at least I’d tried to lay a false trail by repeating those different locations to anyone who cared to listen. Like Jason.

* * *

On the plane they gave us those plastic dinners. I always get confused by so many little pots and get fed up halfway through. The hostess was bonny but their uniforms look so sterile they put me off. I dozed, worried about the mess I was in.

My mind goes funny when I’m sleeping yet not sleeping. Joxer had done some quiet jobs for the Heindricks, so quiet indeed he had been compelled to work in the night hours. Night, when there would be none of Marcia’s amateur actors rehearsing on the greensward among the Priory ruins. Which meant stuff could be carried into Joxer’s workshed and worked on without the chance of some stray actor witnessing Joxer’s secret labours. I knew that Jimmy Day and Marcia and some of the others used Joxer’s little loo, and occasionally persuaded him to brew up for them on his bunsen burner. He was usually pretty tolerant and pleased with company, though dramatics folk can’t talk about anything else except drama.

As the plane banked, Joxer’s last words came to me:
Can’t you watch a minute with me?
Whether people ask for you to watch a minute or an hour with them, the answer’s always no from goons the likes of me. Aren’t people pathetic, I thought in my miserably fitful doze. And whatever I found in Kilfinney there’d be hell to pay when I zoomed home – Patrick would go berserk about being tricked out of my cottage, Lily would be demented about the money, the Heindricks would be decidedly upset when they found out I’d scarpered, and Kurak at having murdered Joxer for possibly nothing. But Jason was thick as thieves with Lena Heindrick, so Sinead said, and the bastard might have sussed me out at the station when I phoned Patricia Harvest. And Ledger distrusted everybody. I groaned inwardly, remembering I’d signed his bloody form the other night. Had its typescript included a promise not to leave the area without letting him know? What a mess.

The trouble is, I always feel like a chicken in a Western – under the pony’s hooves, desperately at risk from stray bullets, unpaid, and never getting the girl. It’s not much of a part.

The air hostess was shaking me then.

‘Dublin,’ she said, smiling nearly like Sinead. My heart turned over.

‘Do we get off now?’

‘Yes. Unless you want to go back.’

I thought a bit, then did what she said. Once a chicken, always a chicken.

When you go to a new place I always find you have to adjust, but the adjustment isn’t a matter of simple surprise or pleasure. You need a positive effort to rid yourself of preconceptions. Where the hell we get them from Heaven alone knows. If you’re like me, you spend a time being astonished that it isn’t at all like you’d somehow tricked yourself into thinking it would be. For a start, Dublin has no Tube. Why I’d ever assumed it would have, I’ve no idea. See what I mean? And Dublin’s trains are noisy little diesels pulling orange-and-black coaches, another mind-blower. And their lads and lassies seem to smoke continually, everywhere. Like everywhere else, Dublin was showing signs of making living impossible in the interests of greater efficiency. And the traffic was at least as dangerous as everywhere. But I liked the way cars halting at traffic lights waited airily in the very middle of the crossing.

That evening I plodded round the darkening city looking for a place to lay my weary head, finding still more astonishments. Why no dots on the letter ‘i’ in names of streets and stations? And Dublin seems to do without those great office blocks most cities find indispensible, which is pleasing. The day was falling into its ember sky by the time I found a nosh bar near the Abbey Theatre and slammed a couple of pasties down in a sludge of tea. Time was getting on then, so I started blundering about a bit faster, trudging my cardboard suitcase along likely streets.

The River Liffey when I found it turned out to be as black as your hat, again a new fantastic fact. Guidebooks say Dubliners call it ‘Anna’, but I suspect they use the nickname as often as cockneys call their river Old Father Thames. Anyhow, I crossed by the Halfpenny Bridge feeling a bit lost and downhearted, wondering what on earth did I think I was doing here, miles from home, in search of more trouble than I had even back in East Anglia. But at least I was among people, though the city centre didn’t have as many of those around as I’d have liked.

Dublin chimneypots are really great, genuine collectors’ items. It’s a wonder the whole lot haven’t been whipped years ago. Believe it or not, but in one narrow street behind that big bookshop on the Liffey side I saw a good set of clay-coloured Blashfield Hexagons, which are rare enough for those who collect London chimneypots, and a delectable group of eight Fareham Reds. Don’t laugh. I honestly do believe the Fareham Red’s pie-crust edging and its pretty white-painted rim band to be a work of art design. Anyway, why scorn a lovely piece of genuine eighteenth-century sculpture just because it’s been stuck on a roof and become a bit sooty? You don’t laugh at the Venetian crucifix on Giorgio Massari’s reconstructed Church of the Pieta, same age. And across the road there was a triplet of tulip-shaped serrated crowntops, though mostly you see these ‘Wee Macs’ round Burton-on-Trent.

A fine drizzle started then. In despair, and not having pockets big enough to carry nicked chimneypots, I walked on and settled for a small terrace house with steps and nice but rusting Victorian iron railings, scrapers and door furniture. It advertised
Vacancies
and was not too far from the well-lit centre where the cinemas and pubs were still booming and buses tried to run you down at least as fast as I was used to. Inside, the house was a bit faded and peeling. Mrs Johnson the landlady was homely and chatty, gave me a room for an advance and promised to wait up to let me back in. ‘You’ll be off for a drink, I expect,’ she said wisely. As I went forlornly off towards O’Connell Street I consoled myself that at least I was untraceable by practically everybody, friend or foe. Nobody knew I was here in Dublin, and tomorrow I could hire a car at first light and bomb off to Kilfinney. I’d still be ahead of the Heindricks’ game.

Next morning the car hire looked quite a grand firm. It turned out to be the most complicated one on earth, what with phone calls to check my licence, a bloody test drive if you please, and a long wait while they did something to the mileometer. And I’d never seen so many forms in my life. Finally they said it was ready. I thanked them, and walked out to where the car stood at the kerb. I had this odd feeling as I went to open the driver’s side door, telling myself not to get spooked in broad daylight.

‘Morning, Lovejoy.’

Lena Heindrick was sitting in the passenger seat, giving me one of those non-smiling hilarities women emit when they see men squirm. She was as elegant and stylish as ever, diamond-stud earrings, a tight scroll hairdo, and a smart Donegal tweed suit. I didn’t dare glance at her legs. The Edwardian silver-set sapphire brooch unnerved me enough as it was. She leaned across and gently pushed the door ajar. Her eyes were absurdly big.

I shrugged and sat. ‘So that’s why they took so long to hire me the car.’

‘I had Kurak contact every firm, Lovejoy.’ She smiled, her hand on my thigh.

‘Then you just waited by the phone?’

‘I did so want to . . . talk.’ She traced with her fingers. ‘It will be a great deal easier here, since Kurt has urgent manufacturing business to attend to in London.’

Finding somebody else, now Joxer was too dead to work for him?
I swallowed. ‘Where to?’

‘That’s better, Lovejoy. Drive out towards Sandymount. Don’t be nervous. I’ll direct.’

I always notice Daimlers, because they remind me of Daimler himself, who once prophesied that motor-cars hadn’t much of a future – because there were only 1,000 chauffeurs in the whole of Europe. A large black Daimler pulled out behind us as I drove away. Lena hadn’t come alone, it seemed.

The place at Sandymount was near a rugby ground. Over the flat sealands into which the duck-riddled river ran you could see the incongruous twin slender chimneys of the power station. It didn’t look much like a pigeon-house to me – another nickname gone wrong. The area was largely terrace houses with oddly pleasant wide-arched doorways, and narrow, shaggily unkempt gardens.

‘Left here, but park outside.’

The place was a walled garden surrounding a large house set back from the road. Nearby was a school noisy with playground squeals, and a little bridge over the river opposite. A couple of chatting women stirred their prams the way they do. Calm, quite nice really. Yet the feeling was tight in my throat. I switched off and met her eyes. I’d never known a woman smile as much as her.

‘I needn’t have come.’ My defiant reminder only made her luscious red mouth smile wider.

‘Of course you needn’t, darling,’ she said. ‘Tell your conscience you were kidnapped.’

Women get me really narked. They always assume you have no bloody will of your own. Furiously I started up, ‘Listen, you—’

She raised her hands to heaven in exasperation and broke in. ‘Lovejoy,’ she said wearily, ‘for heaven’s sake get me out of this car and up to Flat Five. Whatever you’re going to do to me’s not allowed in parked cars.’

There are some things you can be really proud of, like the times you help a person for nothing, or when you pull off a coup you never really expected. The trouble is, those events don’t come along so often, and if they do it’s accidental as far as I’m concerned. The rest of life is filled with occurrences you try to avoid remembering. Like Lena.

Lena’s one of those women like Helen, who want a smoke after. And oddly it’s then that they talk, when the man is dozing after that minor death which finally washes out the orgasmic rut of love. Women nark me like this. Sometimes they’re thick. Not everybody has to be talkative the way women are. I’m not. When I was a kid I went silent days at a time, sometimes for devilment, as my old gran used to call it, but often because I just felt like some useful silence.

‘Darling?’ Lena must have asked me God-knows-what. The ceiling was a bit cracked. Her head of hair was lovely on the pillow. She’s got that sheen into it which Margaret Dainty has. ‘I said are you all right?’

‘Ta.’ Why are women’s breasts always cold?

She half rolled and leant over me. ‘What do you think of, Lovejoy? You are always miles away. A woman doesn’t like to feel her man has slipped off into a world she doesn’t know.’

‘Brew up, chuckie.’

She stared in astonishment, then laughed and laughed. Her eyelashes were long and dark, her breasts full and smooth. Puzzled, I asked her what was up.

‘You’re impossible, Lovejoy!’ Shaking her head disbelievingly, she rose and went through the corridor, draping a bath towel round her waist. She had to step over our clothes which were scattered over the floor. It had been a right scramble into bed.

I shouted after her, ‘How did you know I’d gone to Dublin? Jason?’

‘Yes.’ She must have sensed me wondering about her and Jason. ‘He does try so, poor boy, but he’s hardly your rival, darling.’

There was a nasty sound of womanly permanence about all this. Better to keep it safely into matters of business, keep on playing dim. ‘Lena. Why Dublin?’

A pause, a rattle of cups. ‘You tell me.’

‘You said that about not needing a passport but foreign. And Joxer is – was – Irish.’

If ever a mature living woman stepped straight out of one of those voluptuous Victorian engravings, it was Lena Heindrick when she came to the bedroom door and stood looking.

‘The last time I waited on a man was ten years ago, Lovejoy.’

‘Then you’ve been bloody idle. Get a move on.’

The kettle shrilled. She went out, laughing. I suppose Lena Heindrick seethed with breeding, because I’d never known a woman so sure of herself, so unbelievably positive. Oh, I admit every woman has this knack of somehow turning sexual supplication into a royal command, but never before had I encountered a woman who best-guessed like her.

‘You brought your Slav gorilla over?’ I called through, wondering if it wasn’t overdoing the idiot bit.

‘Have I?’ she answered mischievously.

‘The Daimler.’

‘Well spotted. He was necessary – till now.’

Oho. I rose and padded about, looking for my trousers and my jacket. I could have sworn I’d shed them in the corridor between the living room and the bedroom, but maybe Lena, in an epidemic of homeliness, had tidied. Women do that.

‘Where are my clothes, love?’

‘You don’t need them yet, darling.’ Her voice was smiling.

The window overlooked a stone-rimmed courtyard. Kurak, all million tons of him, was sitting on a decorative stone. He was in a bad humour, and staring malevolently up at our net curtains. He was cracking his knuckles, straight out of a bad supporting feature. My soul chilled. I’d seen that horrid habit before, in . . . in a bloke exactly like Kurak, three years ago. In . . . in Northampton? At an antiques function, where . . . where . . .’

Lena returned carrying a tray with cups and all the gear, pleased with heself. There’s nothing prettier than a well-loved woman just that little dishevelled. By then I was in bed, trying not to look worried sick but restless as a cat on hot bricks. She came in beside me without shaking the house down or spilling everything, another female knack.