The Railway Station Man (12 page)

‘I'm buying your pictures. That I believe is a reasonable assessment of their worth. I also believe that you don't know whether it is or not.'

She shook her head. ‘I may of course be wrong. It's not very likely though.'

He took a gulp of coffee.

‘There's no need to look so darn miserable.'

‘I'm not miserable. I'm delighted. I really am.' She held the cheque out at arm's length and stared at it. ‘I'll frame it.'

‘I'd cash it first if I were you. I'll give it back to you when I get it from the bank. You can frame it then.'

‘Yes. I don't know what to say. Have another drink?' She pushed the bottle towards him. ‘Some more coffee? A slice of cold roast beef? Do have something.'

‘No.'

He stood up. ‘I'm going home. I find night driving a bit hairy. May I come back sometime?'

‘I'm always here. Somewhere about.'

‘I'll find you.'

‘Yes.'

‘I'd like to see what you're doing. Would you allow me …?'

‘Yes.'

He gave the door a sharp pull and the cat walked in, weaving through his legs.

‘A cat. Your cat?'

She nodded.

‘Well … really I'm his human being. You know what cats are like.'

‘I'm glad you have a cat. I have very good relationships with cats.'

‘Come or go,' she said. ‘I mean … well … don't just stand there with the door open. The heat …' She waved her hands. ‘Come back in. We could talk a while.'

‘No. Not tonight. I want to go home and play all those records and see how I feel. See what they bring back.'

‘Masochism.'

‘Possibly. Goodnight, Helen.'

‘Goodnight. I hope you won't be found drowned in a pool of melancholic tears.'

‘Unlikely.'

‘And thank you. Thank you so much.'

The door bumped, scraped, screeched a little and was shut.

She listened to his steps across the yard. She poured herself some cold coffee. A freak?

In 1944 I was fourteen.

He clicked the gate shut behind him.

September the tenth, just coming to the end of the summer holidays. Time for dentists, shopping for new school clothes, warm vests, those terrible green knickers that matched the gym tunics. Time for squeezing your feet again into sensible lace-up shoes, feet spread by summer freedom.

The car started …

He couldn't have been all that much older. Eighteen? Nineteen?

Drove away. The sound twisted along the road.

Only the wind then bruising the white walls.

In my whole life I have made two decisions. One was to marry Dan. I suppose that was a decision. I suppose at some stage I said yes. Pondered. Did I ponder? Or was I grasping at straws? I think for the record I will have to call it a decision. The second, of course, was coming here to this place, buying this house, throwing away all the detritus of the past.

I must be some sort of freak too.

She stabbed at one of the butts in the saucer with a match, impaling it finally like a cocktail sausage on a stick, then started on another.

The de-insulation programme has to begin.

The cat jumped up onto the table.

‘Do you hear me, cat? Hear. Understand? I have to say it aloud. I am making a decision. Get that into your yellow head, through your yellow eyes.'

The giant step.

What was that game we used to play?

Forget it. Just get on with this decision-making moment.

The cold coffee was foul.

I could leave the issue untouched. I could continue to dabble in paint. Express myself to myself or whatever crudity of that sort is in my mind. I could sell the odd picture, get that satisfaction. It could be for ever a pastime. Pass time. If I could stop time, hold it here in this room. You may not pass on, old time, until I give you leave.

Oh for God's sake, even if I were to give up smoking and live to be a hundred that only gives me fifty years of rapidly passing time.

She stood up and remembering the game for a moment took a giant step across the centre of the room.

Cynical yellow eyes drooped.

Forty-nine years. Forty-eight.

I will become.

She went upstairs to bed.

When she woke up the next morning and looked at the moving shadows on the ceiling, she was filled with a joy that she had never experienced before, and likely never would again. Everything seemed so simple, so right. She lay and looked at the shadows and understood the meaning of ecstasy. Quite, quite abnormal for a person who had never allowed herself to be shaken radically in any way by emotion. For a while, five minutes, an hour, a whole morning, it was impossible to remember later, she felt liberated from doubt, from her own special wriggling worm of fear. Of course it all drained away, nothing could stop that happening, and she was left the same as she had been before.

No rain on Wednesday. A fine sharp breeze blew the clouds across the sky. Like a race, she thought as she crossed the yard, a mug of tea in one hand, the cigarettes and matches safely clutched in the pocket of her dressing gown. Boats, spinnakers full of wind racing across the sea-blue sky. I will go to Dublin and buy myself a whole load of beautiful brushes. I won't blinking well stint myself on brushes ever again. I'll keep them clean, healthy. Build racks for them on the wall. Each one its allotted place. Fantasy of course. That sort of neatness was not in her nature. Anyway, she thought as she opened the door of the shed, the sky isn't sea-blue, so it isn't.

She had been working for about half an hour when the door opened. She looked up from the floor, startled.

‘Excuse me,' said Roger, as he came into the shed. ‘You said I could come and see your paintings. Forgive me if I take you by surprise.'

‘You certainly do. I haven't even combed my hair. I … I'm not …'

‘I can see you're not dressed.'

‘I'm not even in my right mind yet.'

He smiled slightly.

‘I thought if I came early I'd be sure to catch you in.'

‘I'm always in.'

They stared at each other in silence. She struggled up from the floor, straightening the creaking knees.

‘I'll go away if you prefer?'

‘No. That's all right. I'm sorry if I was rude. You're the first visitor I've ever had in here.'

‘Jack?'

‘Oh God no. He never comes over here. I think he's frightened he'll despise my work and won't know how to cope with that.' She rubbed at the paint on her right forefinger with the forefinger of her other hand. ‘He has his own way of looking at things you know … not a bit like mine at all.' She turned away and looked out of the small window at the end of the shed. In the distance a fishing boat moved against the rhythm of the sea, no smooth flow like the clouds, it butted against the sea and wind. Aggressive. Almost like I feel, she thought.

‘He doesn't have to be involved. I would hate dutiful respect from him. I think I've probably hurt him quite a lot. He never wanted to come here. I think he felt quite orphaned as he was growing up.'

‘It's impossible to protect other people all the time.'

She sighed and then she laughed suddenly.

‘I spend a lot of my time over here in my dressing gown. I'll have to change my ways if I'm going to have a constant stream of visitors.'

‘Why don't you go and organise yourself and I'll just stay here and …' He gestured around the room with his hand. ‘You wouldn't mind if I did that, would you?'

‘I suppose not.'

She walked over to the door.

‘I won't be long.'

‘Don't rush. I'll be quite happy poking around here. By the way, I told the boy he could sit in the kitchen. I hope you don't mind.'

‘What boy?'

‘Damian Sweeney. I didn't feel like driving this morning, so he brought me over. I've taught him to use the pedals in my car. Sometimes I feel lazy, disinclined. I left him in the kitchen.'

‘You do make yourself at home, don't you?'

He bowed.

She hadn't cleared the breakfast dishes, nor indeed the remains of her last night's supper. Time enough for all that when the light was gone, when her energy was low. Damian was sitting at the table with the cat on his knee.

‘Good morning, Mrs Cuffe.' He stood up politely as she came into the kitchen. The cat, at his first movement, stepped off his knee and onto the table.

‘Bloody cat, get off the table,' said Helen crossly. ‘Good morning. He eats the butter.'

‘I think he's eaten the butter.'

Damian pointed to an empty saucer that might once have had butter in it.

‘Bloody cat,' shouted Helen, clapping her hands. The cat jumped off the table and walked across the room past Helen and out into the hall.

‘You probably don't remember me …'

‘Yes, I remember you.' Her voice was brusque. ‘This place is in a mess …'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘What of it? What's a bit of a mess for God's sake? You couldn't remember me. We've never met I've seen you round the place, riding the bike and that, but we've never met.'

‘You hit Jack.'

‘That was years ago. We were only kids'

‘He came home in a terrible mess. It wasn't long after we came here and I thought, oh God, what have I let us in for. He was all covered in blood. Noses bleed such a lot. What a little bully that Damian Sweeney must be. A brat.'

‘My mother felt much the same way about Jack. I'll say I'm sorry now. Better late than never.'

He held out a hand towards her.

She nodded and touched his hand briefly, then she plunged her hand into her pocket and took out the cigarettes. She opened the box and held it out towards him.

‘Smoke?'

He was tempted. She could see that. He shook his head.

‘I'm giving them up. Trying to, anyway.'

‘Saint?'

She plucked one out of the packet and put it in her mouth.

‘No. It just suddenly seemed a silly way to kill yourself. I think I'd rather drink myself to death, it's more fun.'

She lit the cigarette and took a deep pull. ‘Do you see Jack at all? I never know who his friends are these days. He doesn't bring them home.'

‘I had a jar with him in the pub the other night.'

‘I hope …' she began and then stopped.

He waited for a moment. ‘You hope what?'

She made a hopeless gesture with her hands.

‘Would you make some tea? Can you make tea?'

‘I can make tea.'

‘I must get dressed. I really must. If you'd …'

‘Sure.'

‘Will you be able to find everything?'

‘Sure. Sure. Run along. I've been making tea since the age of five. I can open tins and fry eggs and gut fish and knit … I was ill once for quite a long time and Mammy taught me to knit. I knitted a navy scarf.' He laughed. ‘I used to hide it under the pillow when the others came home from school so they wouldn't see it. She was the only one knew …'

She paused by the door. ‘What did you do with it?'

‘I have it yet. I wear it in the winter. It's long.'

He wound an imaginary scarf several times around his neck. ‘You go on and put your clothes on. I'll make a great cup of tea. Three great cups of tea.'

She nodded and left him to it.

It was strange, she thought as she scrubbed her teeth, backwards and forwards, she had never been able to come to grips with the up and down strokes recommended by the dentist, to hear other people, total strangers when you came to think of it, taking control in your house. Down the short flight of stairs Damian clattered domestically. She bared her teeth, grimaced into the glass. Yellow horse's teeth. If I stopped smoking perhaps? Across the yard Roger poked around through her entire private life, her being. She bared them again. Sparkling Doris Day? Too late. Yellow horse's teeth were more suitable to her age and station. He would be really shocked at the state of her brushes. Oh God, those awful half-drunk cups of tea, the old milk shining on the surface. At least they're my own, she thought, for the time being. One day maybe, I will have a mouth full of shiny Doris Day choppers. Keep them in a glass of gin beside the bed. But, after all, Mother didn't have a false tooth in her head, buried with her own smile. Runs in the family that sort of thing. Fingers crossed. She gave an extra scrub for luck.

Rinsed water round her mouth and spat.

Damian ran water into the sink, pumped in mild green Fairy Liquid and began to wash the dishes.

He looks nice. I wonder if he's mixed up in all that business. I suppose you shouldn't believe everything you hear. Nicer looking than Jack … not so buttoned up, sullen. Would sullen be the word for Jack's face? If Dan were still alive I wonder … I wonder? My eyes were always too pale to sparkle. Washed blue stones. Jack's eyes too, unreceptive. Are you receiving me? One two three testing. Are you receiving me, son? Silence on the air waves. A clatter of sound from downstairs. What the hell is he doing?

She picked up her comb and began to pull the night's tangles out of her hair. Damian turned on the radio. He really was making himself at home. Tchaikovsky's little cygnets heavy-footed in the kitchen.

‘The tea's wet,' his voice called up the stairs.

‘Thanks. I'll be down in a minute.'

She heard him open the back door and call across the yard to Roger.

The cat liked to sleep like a human being, tucked into the bed with his head on the pillow. He lay there, yellow eyes half-closed, as she tucked the clothes around him.

‘If you sick up a quarter of a pound of butter on my bed …' she threatened. He wasn't receiving her either.

Damian had put cups and saucers on the table, milk in a jug, the fruit bowl centred neatly. No sign of debris.

‘You'll make someone a good husband,' she said.