Departures (8 page)

Instantly the boy became solicitous.

“Why didn't you say so? Where is the bastard?”

“No, no, it's nothing like that. He's just a man lying there on the ground.”

“What, in the foyer?”

“No, outside on the step. My step, actually. He's been there for twenty minutes at least. I just wondered if anyone was doing anything about it.”

The boy looked puzzled. “What, like ring the peelers?”

“Well, no, not exactly. I don't really know what one ought to do under the circumstances. Frankly I was thinking of going in through the back way and leaving it at that.” She grinned sheepishly, hoping he'd sympathise with that approach. “Perhaps the police are the best bet, though. I really don't know.”

Her indecision had not impressed him. She could sense his interest in her story flagging and the return of his desire for whatever awaited him in his own flat upstairs. “It's alright,” she said, suddenly weary, “it doesn't matter. I'm sorry to have troubled you.”

Again the boy nodded, his eyes scanning her face and figure as if he were only just then taking them in. “Alright then?” he asked dismissively, resuming his climb.

“Yes, thanks,” Eileen answered, though she knew he wasn't listening. “I'll just get in through the back.”

“There's a phone out the front,” the boy said aggressively on the first floor landing, “but it only takes five p's.”

“Thank you,” Eileen said again. The boy went inside and the door swung shut behind him. Eileen leaned heavily against the banister and dug her keys out again, then went down the darkened corridor, lit only by the luminous glow of the exit sign and the coloured lights of the electricity panel beside the lift, till she reached her own flat.

Once inside, she pulled all the curtains and double-locked the inside door. When the place was secure she
stood for a moment in the dark, listening. Then, moving swiftly, she switched on the lights, the radio, and the TV, and both electric fires. Then she showered, changed, and filled the kettle. It was only then that she allowed herself to think about the man.

She couldn't just leave him there, she saw that now. Still, it would be foolish to bring him into the flat, however harmless he might have seemed. It didn't seem fair to ring the police; they weren't likely to treat him gently, and after all he hadn't really done anything to warrant a complaint. She stood up with a sudden clarity of vision and found the cardboard box with everything she'd salvaged from her parents' house before the place was sold. There at the bottom were the old blankets and pillows they had used on camping trips when she was a child. She brought the items into the kitchen and made two mugs of strong, milky tea, extra sweet, covering his with a saucer to keep it warm. She'd place the cup beside his head, she decided, where the scent and the steam would be sure to wake him, and she'd put the blankets over him and leave a pillow by his arm rather than disturb him while he slept. Perhaps she could even sleep in the sitting room, on the settee, to be nearer to him in case he needed anything in the night.

The front door was heavy and swung inwards; she'd need both hands to get it open. Leaving the light in the entry off so as not to disturb him, she set the cup, the pillow, and the blankets on the shelf above the mains and slowly, very carefully, eased the door open so he wouldn't tumble in. It took her more than a minute to open the door that way; by then he was gone. The garden was empty, the step was bare, and though she scanned the car park and called out for him repeatedly, he was nowhere to be seen.

Touched

This is William Emmons ringing, he said. He thought the animal might be dangerous and could my father come right away. It was late so I'd answered, recording the details in the notebook we'd bought in Belfast the day before. You see? my father said when I woke him. I told you it was worth holding on to that phone. It wasn't until we were halfway there that he remembered, and then he nearly stopped the car and turned around. But we have no rabies here, he told me. There are no rabies in Ireland.

The Emmonses were an elderly couple who lived on their own outside of town; they weren't the type, my father reasoned, to be involved in pranks. We'd had a number of hoaxes in preceding months, usually clear as such from the start but not always. They'd sent a child once, a six year old with curls and dimples, who'd told my father that her mam was suffering from delusions, that she'd even tried to cut her own throat. She's in the kitchen now, mister, the child had said, and she's got my daddy's gun. When we got there the woman was preparing supper, bent over a pot with a ladle in her hand. A crowd of boys had gathered to watch us, but they were afraid of my father and what he might do to them, and they'd run off as soon as we left the house.

The old man and his wife were waiting by the road for us when we arrived. He stood up and came over as my father stopped the car.

You alright? he asked, and the old man nodded. Well let's get to it, then. Which way?

Emmons's wife stood behind him, grey and illusive against the darker, oleaginous black of the night. Her husband turned to her and they spoke briefly; then together they stepped into the crossed beams of our headlights, becoming for a moment a pair of pale trousers in unlaced work boots, a dark skirt in bedroom slippers, nothing more. They lifted the latch from the cattle guard and stepped forward, pushing the gate in front of them like a plough. We left the car where the gravel drive ended and followed the soft crunch of their footsteps along a dirt path which led to the barn.

It was an ancient, ruinous structure, about two hundred yards from the house. The animal, Emmons said, whatever it was, had been in there for hours. Around midnight he'd heard noises, the sound of glass breaking, what could have been buckets and tools overturned, and he'd gone to investigate. Something had hissed at him and seemed to lunge forward; he'd heard fangs coming at him so he'd bolted the door and run back to the house. An hour or so later when he'd listened for movement he'd heard snarling and foaming and agony instead. It was his wife who'd remembered my father's name, who'd found the number and had him phone us.

Beneath us the path was lit up like a runway by potholes and wheel ruts filled with rainwater, each one reflecting a trembling white stain of the moon. Emmons stopped outside the barn.

Just open it? he asked.

Yes, I think so, my father said. But let me go first.

The air was cooler inside, and damp. Fine grains of dust twisted like slow falling stars in the shaft of light from the single window, settling amid shapes of stacked crates and
equipment which blunted the far edges of the room. Crumbling bird nests clung to the rafters and the floor was cobbled with guano and down. My father glanced around quickly.

Is there a light switch?

The man and his wife looked at each other in confusion. No, the man said, I'm sorry, no.

Anything will do, my father said quietly. A torch if you have one, even a candle.

Again the old man looked at his wife. After a moment she nodded, turned, and headed back towards the house.

Should I stay, Mr Leary? Emmons asked. But my father was walking forward again, his eyes fixed on a point beneath the stairs that led up to the loft. Even from the doorway I'd seen it too, the brief, incandescent, lighthouse flashes shining green, then amber. Gradually, as my own eyes adjusted, I distinguished the outline of a long, slender muzzle, large ears upright and inquisitive, the sound of swift breathing, the occasional glimmer of something wet. My father put his palms on his knees and bent down.

There; there now, he said softly. It's alright.

We waited that way for Emmons's wife. Soon I could hear the slap of her shoes on the pathway, then the light from the storm lamp she carried seeped under the door like milk around my feet. My father stood up slowly.

That's fine, he said. If you'll just leave it right there.

Anything else, Mr Leary? Emmons said. Is there anything else you need?

Just look after the child, my father said. See she doesn't catch cold.

Poor motherless orphan, the old woman said, you poor wee thing. So tightly did her skin cover her that every knob and protrusion of her skull was visible, hard-edged and jagged, revealing her teeth in a rigorous grin. Her
hair was so white as to be transparent in the glow of the lamp her husband held behind her, her face sunk in shadow, her eye sockets cavernous. The bulbous joints of her fingers were level with my face as she clutched at her shawl, and I thought of tight sacks of marbles and the four iron feet supporting our porcelain bath at home.

It's going to be alright now, my father was saying. Don't be afraid.

Can you see what it is, Mr Leary?

It looks like a fox, yes, my father answered. A frightened wee fox, not rabid at all.

The old man shook his head. Imagine that, he said. Just a wee fox causing all this trouble.

My father was speaking more softly now, shifting his balance from his thighs to his fingers, gradually adding the stalk of his forearm, then his shoulder's bulk, allowing the strain to collapse his knuckles, rolling forward on the slow, heavy wheel of his weight. At the same time the animal's breathing had become less laborious, and the shrill, anxious wheezing I'd heard when we first entered had all but disappeared.

Emmons set the lamp down on a barrel and leaned in for a better look. The old woman's claw was on my shoulder, I could feel her press me forward, could almost taste the yellow smell of her in the air. My father stretched his hand towards the fox with the palm opened outward, and I watched its rich, russet pelt glow warmly copper, rust mixed with cinnamon, threaded with bronze.

God Almighty, Emmons said. He too had seen the thin crust of dried spittle on the fox's dark lips, the brown, matted mark of drool on its chest.

The old woman grunted. Your father saved that girl, she said, he made that young man see. I was there. I saw him do it.

I'd been there, too. At least eighty people had been in attendance, and the aisles had been so crowded with wheelchairs that had there been a fire we all would have burned. He'd hired a hall in Randalstown, or rather, someone else had hired it for him, had charged ten pounds for general admission and presented my father with fifty in cash. This was after he'd seen Our Lady crying, her blood-bright tears travelling lazily over scratched plaster cheeks. She'd raised her eyes from the fallen Jesus and looked right at him; two days later he'd seen her hand move. Other mourners had been on their knees beside him; they'd been the ones to tell the priest. Only the local papers had been interested until someone remembered his talent for healing, how he set broken limbs, could lance an abscess, how he'd eased my mother's pain a little, before she died.

There now, my father said. He'd been holding his hand in front of the fox, offering his odour to its quivering snout. Now he slowly withdrew it, rotating his wrist as he did so, presenting the broad back of his hand with its five outstretched fingers, waiting to pass muster before carrying on.

Alright now, alright, he said. There's nothing to be frightened of. We're almost finished, we're almost there.

I tried to see your father in Ballymena, the old woman said, but we couldn't get in. Then all that trouble after. . . . She shook her head. Don't you listen to them, wee girl. They're a jealous lot. One religion or another, it makes no difference to the Lord. Your father made that child well again, he drove those evil spirits out. That's the way I heard it, anyway. No one can blame him for the Devil being strong.

The child had been epileptic. His father produced him in the middle of a seizure, bore him straight to the stage
as he kicked and shook and laid him down, saying, Drive this demon out. The crowd went quiet while my father cried and pressed his fists to his temples, saying, Ah Jesus help me. But he'd placed his hands on the child's brow, put his fingers inside the red wet mouth and held the slippery tongue down, saying, Hush, hush now, holding the boy so tightly that the trembling had ceased and the boy had grown calm, the wild drumming of his heels on the floor had stopped, the frantic fish-flapping of his hands had died away, and his father had clasped my father's hand, saying, Thank you, Jesus, for my only son. Then the meeting went on for another three hours while they brought my father their cancers to touch, their sores and their rashes and their open wounds; and for a moment even he believed he could cure them by placing his hands on their swollen fingers and twisted spines. But then the boy had had another seizure and they'd driven my father from the hall, crying, Charlatan! Swindler! Bastard! Taig! Boys outside had broken our car windows and we barely managed to get away.

Buried in fox fur, the foreshortened fingers robbed his hand of its usual grace. My father's caress was barely perceptible, stirring only the long, stiff bristles on the animal's shoulder, not even touching the skin. Behind me the old woman was muttering softly, and I heard the abrupt resumption of her husband's breath.

The fox's lips parted. I watched them rise, furling back heavily like curtains lifting from a stage. Then the wall of white teeth split open, I could see the dark tongue beginning to writhe, the animal's head was rushing forward, its eyes had locked onto my father's and its teeth were sinking into his arm.

And then the old woman was screaming and her husband was lunging for a pitchfork or a hoe while the light
from the storm lamp careened over the walls of the barn and sank into the hay. I could see my father grasping his bicep like a tourniquet, his arm bent at the elbow and the fox resisting his pull, its forelegs stiff out in front of it, its haunches dug in, its eyes never leaving my father's, even now, worrying the wound slowly, deliberately, like a man who smiles as he shakes his head, No.

Outtake

The bus left him off near the post office in the centre of town. From there he walked through to Cornmarket, then down Ann Street to the club. He'd been there before but never on his own, and not for some months. The last time he'd come he'd been with Gibbons and Fitz; there'd been no chance of getting a girl with the two of them around. The best bloody pickup joint in Belfast, Jimmy, Gibbons had called it—then gone and picked up everything there was to find. Wherever they went it was always the same: what Gib didn't want Fitzy would get, leaving Jim on his own for most of the night. The last time they'd been out together Gibbons and Fitz had walked out with a redhead each. Jim'd bought a few drinks for a ginger-haired girl who he'd thought had seemed interested, but in the end he'd gone home alone.