The Tied Man (23 page)

‘Don’t come in…’  Finn began, but it was too late. 

‘Oh, good
grief
.’  I hadn’t seen a midden like it since my mother’s final decline.  A space only slightly larger than Henry’s pantry housed a mattress – with Finn and Bran huddled under a thin duvet – a haphazard pile of books, and a battered chest of drawers.  The floor was hidden from view by a collection of discarded clothes, lager cans, bottles, empty cigarette packets and an entire drift of supermarket carrier bags.  The drawers had disgorged most of their contents, and now existed as a platform for eight mugs, all of them containing enough mould to qualify as an intelligent life form, and at least a dozen empty temazepam blister packs.

‘Welcome to my world,’ Finn said, stoned as hell.

‘If I’d ‘ve known I was expecting company, would’ve tidied round a bit.’  I attempted a smile, but couldn’t quite get my face to work.  I hadn’t anticipated entertaining a guest when I’d emptied an entire strip of dope down my neck.

I lit another cigarette from the one that I was about to finish whilst Lilith just stood there for what might have been hours and stared at the bombsite that had passed for home for the last three years.  Lost for words like I had never seen her
before.

Then as I sat, stunned and mute, she began to tidy up with a vengeance.

Random, accumulated crap was scooped up by the armful and thrown into a selection of stray carrier bags.   In one furious session, everything from cans to crumpled and empty sweet packets disappeared into one bag, clothes into another.  This latter collection included a great deal more discarded underwear than I was comfortable with, but the expression on Lilith’s face suggested that it was unwise to interrupt.

Finally, Lilith slumped onto the end of my mattress.  ‘What the hell
is
this place?’ she finally asked.  ‘It looks like a bloody prison cell.’

‘That’s because it is. Seventeenth century prison cell, to be accurate – one of the more modern additions.  Cromwell’s lot used it as a base in the Civil War, and built a gaol down here.  But hey, at least I get an ensuite.’

Lilith ran her palm across the frigid, whitewashed stone.  ‘She can lock you in.’

‘Only when I play up.  Believe me, you haven’t lived until you’ve had to shit in a bucket for a couple of nights.’  I lay back and pulled my duvet over my head.  It felt like a day for hiding.  Bran grumbled at the disturbance, but soon settled onto my chest.

‘So,’ Lilith asked, ‘on a scale of one to ten, just how fucked would you say we were?’

‘Eleven,’ I replied, my voice muffled by an inch of polyester filling. ‘Um, I don’t mean to be rude or anything,’ I said, ‘but you’re actually scaring me now.  This to do with her?’

I heard Lilith kick a bag full of dead clothes to one side so that she could close the door behind her.  ‘Yeah,’ she finally said, in a quiet, dangerous voice.  ‘You could say it was something to do with her.’

‘And?’

‘It seems my sweet, pliable stepmother’s finally seen sense and fucked off without warning.  Taken Daniel out of
Blaine
’s grip.’

I emerged from the duvet and frowned, trying to equate the good news with the expression on her face.  ‘But that’s good.  Isn’t it?’

‘Oh, yes.  Amazing.  And only marginally less likely than the second coming.’

‘And..?’

‘And now you’re ‘it’, Finn.  My – what should I call it?  My motivation?  My
raison d’être
?  My shiny, new and improved grounds for staying put and keeping my mouth shut and doing whatever that twisted bitch wants me to do.  Your ability to walk unaided depends on my good behaviour.’

‘Oh shit, no, you’ve
got
to be kidding me.’ 

‘Yeah, this is my special comedy face, Finn. Well spotted.’  Lilith leaned against the door and buried her head in her hands.  I wondered if she was about to cry, and wondered what the hell I would do if she did.

I held Bran tight to me so that her heart quivered against my chest as I searched for the right thing to say.  I felt the words carefully with my tongue before I allowed them to escape. ‘This is it, Lili.  Your chance.  Just get Henry to take you across the lake, and that’s it.  You’re gone.’

Lilith just kept to her hands to her face like a mask.  I kept going. ‘Lili?  Are you listening to me?  I don’t matter!  You’ve known me, what? Two months?  I’m
nothing
, Lili – you’ve got a life out there waiting for you and all you need to do is step into that boat!’

Silence.

‘
Please
go.’

‘I can’t.’

And that was it.  For reasons she did not want to give, and I most certainly didn’t want to hear, Lilith’s freedom had been snatched away from her before she even knew it was there. 

I heard her release her breath, let out in a long sigh that could have been anger or exhaustion.  Probably both.  ‘Bloody hell Finn, I don’t
do
this!  I don’t keep fucking
goldfish
on the grounds they’re high fucking maintenance!’

‘I know.  I know, I know and I’m sorry.’ 

‘What the fuck are
you
sorry for?’  Lilith asked.

‘How about dumping on your entire life, as a starter?’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’ Lilith rubbed wearily at her shoulder.  ‘You’ve never really had a choice in any of this, have you?  Even back in
Dublin
.  You got yourself trapped years ago.’

I risked pulling the duvet down so that just my eyes appeared.  ‘She been telling you stuff?’

‘Showing me ‘stuff’, to be accurate.  A picture of you.  From back then.’

‘What, the one of me toutin’ for business?’

‘Aha.’

‘I look about twelve, huh?’

‘If that.’

‘January it was, and fucking freezing.  Day after that was taken, I was done over by a punter – a real vicious bastard.  Liked it rough.  Dragged me into a public lav, fucked me like an animal, then legged it with a day’s takings and my wrap of smack.  Next thing, this posh cow got me in her car, stuck a glass of whiskey in my hand and told me she could take me away from it all.  I was a sucker for a cliché.’

‘She arranged the whole thing,’ Lilith stated, seeing through the bullshit in a way that I had failed to.

‘See, you’re way smarter than me.  The entire time she was talking, she was playing with this poly bag with half a gram of pharmaceutical grade smack in it.  By the time she shoved a contract under my nose, I was slavering like a mad dog.’  I shook my head at my stupidity. ‘Let’s just say she got a damn good deal.’

‘What were the terms?’

It hurt to remember.  ‘One-off payment of twenty thousand Euros.  For future services rendered.’

‘And that was, what? Ten to each sister?’

I groaned.  ‘Hell.  She told you.’

‘There’s nothing else that could really keep you here, is there?’  Lilith was suddenly gentle.  ‘I mean, it wasn’t just your habit – you can pick that shit up anywhere.  And this is her speciality, after all.  Threatening the people we... well, we care about.’

There was no longer any point in keeping this, the last of my big secrets.  Suddenly I wanted her to know everything.  ‘Niamh.  She’ll be nineteen now.  And Sinéad.  Fourteen.  God, the pair of them are beautiful.  All three of us named in a blaze of pissed-up nationalistic splendour, and none of us with the same da.’ I couldn’t remember the last time I had spoken their names out loud.  ‘Couple of months after I tried to do the runner – the do with the police helicopter, yeah? – I’d had enough.  Wanted out, whatever it took.  Rattled until I’d saved up enough to do the job.  Felt like it was the easiest thing in the world.’

‘But?’

‘Ha.  Always that ‘but’.  I woke up in here with a tube down my throat and Doctor Parnell draining my stomach into a bucket.’ 

Bran whined in protest at the close embrace and I let her go.  She padded over to Lilith, who reached a hand out to pet her.  ‘What did she do?’

‘Two newspaper clippings from
Dublin
waiting for me once I’d slept it off.  Both on page bloody thirteen, or something – pikeys don’t make front page unless we’re the ones causing the trouble.  Unconnected incidents on the same estate.  An eleven-year old kid assaulted on her way home from school, and a fire in a block of flats.  Sixteen-year old girl treated for smoke inhalation.  Less than twenty four hours after I’d swallowed the last tablet.’

I was grateful for Lilith’s composure.  Any sympathy would have cut like a knife right then.  She just gave a nod and asked, ‘How?’

‘The O’Halloran family.  Well, one in particular.  Coyle’s identical twin – Ciaran.  He would have done both jobs for free.  Actually, he’s the kind of guy who would have
paid
, just for the sport.  Makes Coyle look like the Dalai Lama.’  I dug a nail into the skin by my left thumbnail for reassurance and pulled until a tiny sphere of blood appeared.  ‘So anyway, Coyle, and Ciaran, and Blaine – they still know where the girls live.
They
know and
I don’t. Not anymore.  I’ve done my best to be a good boy ever since.  So there you have it.’

Lilith sat back, one hand still rhythmically stroking Bran’s ears, and considered everything I’d told her.  She looked completely spent.  ‘Thank you.  Thank you for your honesty.  It’s... refreshing.  Around here, I mean.’ 

‘Any time.  So. What now?’

‘Me?  I’m going for a run.’ 

‘That’s not...’

‘I know.  Truth is,  I can’t think about it, Finn.  Not now. So I’m going to do a few hundred more circuits around the same bloody island.  By my calculations, if I’d have been running in a straight line, I’d be in
Kazakhstan
by now.’

‘It’s meant to be nice this time of year.’

‘Yeah?  Might try it.  Better than fucking Northumberland.’  She released Bran so that she came trotting back to me.  ‘And you?’ 

‘Sleep, if it’ll come.  If not, I’ll read.  Nothing heavy.  I’ve got one of Henry’s poof style magazines lurking somewhere, if you didn’t shovel it up in your blitz.’  I looked around the transformed space for the first time.  ‘Wow.  Would you look at that?  I have a floor.  Nice to know something good came out of all this.’

Lilith stood to leave.  ‘Yup.  We’re both screwed all to hell, but at least you’ve got a nice tidy room.’ 

‘Silver linings and all that.’

‘Yeah, silver linings.’  Lilith scratched Bran behind the ears, and my dog gave a soft grunt of pleasure.  ‘Try and get some rest, huh?’  She picked up the bags of rubbish and left.  I covered my head with a pillow and knew that sleep was beyond me.

Following
Blaine
’s latest twist of the knife, we had weeks of warped normality to lull me into complacency.  The summer reached its late peak and I hid in my studio and engrossed myself in the portrait that I was now treating as a technical drawing until something resembling inspiration ever felt like turning up.

At least I had begun to apply paint to canvas, and
Blaine
’s daily sittings became a once-a-week ordeal as I worked more and more from memory.  According to Henry, she was caught up in the organisation of some charity fundraiser or other – her Lady Bountiful mask that she wore to the rest of the world – and that suited me just fine.

On the hottest day of the year, the smell of linseed oil hung heavy in the humid air, seeping into my clothes and lingering on my skin.  The familiar scent taunted me with memories and I had to stop and check myself before homesickness dealt its sucker punch.  I continued to tell myself that each brush-stroke took me one step nearer Santa Marita, but even this was sullied.  Every image that I constructed was immediately polluted by what  I would leave behind.

*****

After twelve hours of standing at the easel, I reluctantly conceded defeat.  The best of the light had faded over an hour before, and I fell into the armchair and closed my stinging eyes.  When I reopened them minutes later,
Blaine
was standing in front of me with an amused look on her face.  I wondered how long she had been there watching me doze.

  ‘Lilith?   I hate to disturb your contemplation, but would you care to come downstairs?  There’s someone I’m dying for you to meet.’

I sighed with frustration.  The only thing I really cared for at that moment was a hot bath, but the request was a direct order.  ‘Give me a moment.’ I slid my feet into a pair of jewelled Moroccan slippers and grabbed a denim shirt that doubled as my smock.  ‘Excuse me if I’m not dressed for company.’

*****

‘Ah, here’s my artist,’
Blaine
announced as I padded down the corridor and into the vast, formal drawing room.  She was immaculate in a floor-length black silk skirt and teal velvet smoking jacket, and stood with a solid, ruddily handsome man in a black tie and tuxedo who reminded me of a ‘Best in Show’ bull.  ‘Alasdair Dalziell, may I introduce Lilith Bresson?’ she asked.