The Railway Station Man (19 page)

‘No,' said Jack.

‘I have been educated in the university of life,' said Manus, still laughing.

‘Ah.'

She continued with the stirring.

‘The Brothers slung me out at fifteen and said never darken our doors again. It was their loss.'

‘He's a joker,' said Jack.

‘So I gather. Will you have some soup, Manus? Jack, deal with the soup will you?'

‘What sort of soup?' asked Manus.

‘Well … vegetable mainly.'

‘No thanks. I only like tomato soup. Heinz.'

‘Oh! Do you want some, Jack?'

‘Ah … no thanks, mother. I'll just have eggs. Just eggs. We'll both just have eggs.'

‘Dear me,' she said.

She bent down and took two plates from the oven and scooped scrambled eggs on to both of them.

‘There you are. There's toast on the table. I'll leave you to yourselves. Have you plans for tomorrow?'

‘Don't worry about us, we'll …'

‘Yes,' said Manus. ‘We've plans'

‘Roger Hawthorne is coming to supper.'

‘Is that the man with the station?' Manus asked.

‘Yes.'

‘I've always had a great interest in the railways. Isn't that so, Jack?'

‘Absolutely.'

‘Ebsolutely,' mimicked Manus, somewhat unkindly.

Helen ran water into the scrambled-egg saucepan.

‘I'm going to bed. Just help yourselves to anything you want.'

‘Steam engines were before my time. I never cease to regret that fact. Before your time too, Jack. Isn't that a very regrettable fact?'

‘Eat your scrambled eggs and shut up.'

As Helen passed Jack on her way to the door, she put her hand on the top of his head. The corrugated texture of his hair reminded her for a startling moment of Don. She thrust her hand into her pocket and moved to the door. ‘If you want me in the morning I'll be in the shed. Otherwise just do whatever you want yourselves. Goodnight.'

Manus bowed politely towards her.

‘Goodnight, mother,' said Jack.

Jack was awakened the next morning by Manus moving round the room, the electric shaver in his hand, buzzing away at his face. His left hand followed the shaver down the contours of his face feeling for stubble.

‘Up, up,' he said as Jack turned over and looked at him. ‘No fucking mirror.'

‘You seem to be managing very well without one.'

‘Up. There's only one way to get out of bed painlessly … open the eyes and out. If you stop to think about it at all, you might stay there all day.' He took his finger off the starter and the buzzing stopped. He rubbed at his chin vigorously with his left hand.

‘Baby's bottom,' he said. He began to shave the other side of his face. Jack got out of bed and put on his slippers.

‘Breakfast,' he said.

‘Yeah,' said Manus. ‘Let's have a good breakfast. A slap-up feed … save us having lunch. Sense?'

‘Sense,' agreed Jack and went into the kitchen.

No mother.

Of course no mother.

Jack sighed and opened the fridge. He took out bacon and eggs and tomatoes. Manus came into the room, fully dressed and a slight touch of aftershave.

‘Does your man know we're coming?'

‘No.'

‘I hope we have no trouble with him. There's a cat wanting in the window.'

‘Let it in.'

‘I get asthma from cats.'

‘I've never known you to have asthma.'

‘Hay fever, eczema, spots. Let's make it quite clear we won't take any trouble from him.'

Jack was spooning fat over the eggs, watching the yolks turning from yellow to pale pink. The white frilled round the edges.

‘What do you mean by trouble?'

‘Watch those eggs. I hate mine burnt. Turn down that heat a little.'

‘It's a range.'

‘Well whatever it is, don't burn my fucking egg.'

Jack moved the pan to the edge of the ring.

‘Argument, prevarication, codology of any sort. I like it hard but not turned.'

‘Sit down and pour yourself a cup of tea for God's sake, you're making me nervous.'

Manus moved away.

‘Mother not cook breakfast?'

‘I think she must be across the yard working.'

‘Oh yes, you said she painted.'

He pulled out a chair and sat down. The cat stared unblinkingly through the glass at him.

‘Any good? Any money in it?'

‘I don't know. I've never seen any of her stuff. It's probably awful. She only took it up a couple of years ago. She studied art before she was married. I presume this is some sort of menopausal madness.'

Jack took a quick look at Manus as he said this. Manus always hated that sort of remark. He pursed his lips slightly in disapproval. Jack smiled internally.

‘Egg,' said Manus.

Jack scooped one of the eggs off the pan and onto a plate. Two slices of bacon, a tomato cut in quarters and a piece of fried bread. He put the feast down in front of Manus and then took his egg off the pan.

‘Do cats really give you all those things, or can I let him in?'

‘Let him in if you insist.'

As Jack went over to the window the cat jumped from the sill and walked away across the yard.

‘He seems to have some objection to you too,' said Jack. ‘I hope your egg's okay.'

‘We can manage without him. If he argues at all, that might be best. It'll be best not to tell him too much to begin with. He might not be secure.'

‘I doubt that.'

Manus cut himself a slice off the pan.

‘He might try to be clever.'

‘He wouldn't split. Maybe he won't co-operate, but he wouldn't split.'

‘We haven't the right to take chances. You mustn't let your bourgeois liberal attitudes colour your judgments.'

‘I don't have bourgeois liberal attitudes.'

Manus laughed and began to wipe the white bread round and round his plate, mopping up all the remaining juices and flavours.

‘If you could catch sight of yourself,' he said, shoving the bread into his mouth.

‘You'd win an Olympic Gold for speedy eating,' said Jack.

‘No point in letting good food get cold on your plate.' He stretched across the table for a piece of toast. ‘My mother always said feed the inner man.'

Butter.

‘I don't think that's got anything to do with eating,' said Jack.

Marmalade.

‘Sure it has. To her at any rate. The inner man is all those coils of intestines, seventeen miles of intestines. Did you know that we have seventeen miles of intestines?'

‘No,' said Jack.

‘Something like that anyway. That's what she means. It takes a lot of food to keep all that in full working order. A woman is never done cooking, she says … feeding the inner man.'

‘And woman?' suggested Jack.

‘That's good marmalade.' Manus took his first ever bite of Cooper's Oxford. ‘Better than Little Chip.'

Jack sighed. He preferred to think of Manus as a leader, a plan-maker, his mind and energy geared towards action, not the eternal talk that went on and on with all the rest. Reminders of his reality always unnerved Jack.

‘There's Doherty, Sweeney and Fehily in Dungloe.'

He pushed a corner of toast into his mouth as he spoke.

‘And Clancy. Where's Clancy?'

Jack shook his head. It was a rhetorical question. He wasn't supposed to know where Clancy was.

Manus stood up suddenly. His plate was polished clean, his cup was empty, a few scattered crumbs on the table and a drift of tea leaves up the side of his cup were the only evidence that someone had recently eaten.

‘We'll go and take a look at her pictures and then we'll have a quick look for your man. We won't waste too much time on him.'

‘I …' Jack wondered about his mother for a moment.

‘Come on,' said Manus impatiently.

They crossed the yard and opened the door of the shed. She was crouched on the floor dragging paint across a canvas with a rag. She was in her dressing gown and her hair was pulled tightly back from her eyes into an elastic band. The room smelt of turpentine and cigarette smoke.

Good heavens, thought Jack, she really does paint.

She seemed to drag her head up and around to look at them as they came in. Her eyes and mind took some time to focus on them.

‘Good Lord,' she said. ‘I'm sorry …'

Manus interrupted Jack.

‘I thought I'd like to see your pictures.' He walked over to where she was crouching. ‘He told me you made pictures.'

She put the rag down on the floor and then rubbed her fingers on the front of her dressing gown. She stood up slowly, stiffly. She smiled slightly as she moved and Jack thought for a moment she was going to make some awful joke. She didn't.

‘Yes, I make pictures. You're welcome to look at them.'

He frowned down at the canvas on the floor.

‘And you too, Jackson … you are also welcome.'

Irony in her voice.

‘Why do you paint on the floor? I thought …?'

Manus made a gesture in the air, indicating an easel.

‘I thought I'd better not get an easel before I knew whether I could paint or not. That would have seemed to be tempting providence. Now, I've got used to the floor. Mind you … I do get stiff, so perhaps I'll have to get an easel after all. An admission of old age and decrepitude rather than anything else. I'm only starting on that one. Laying down a sort of background.'

‘Don't you use a brush?'

‘Yes, but you don't have to only use brushes. It depends on the effect you want to get.'

‘I see.' His voice was polite but fairly uninterested.

She waved her arm.

‘Have a look. Be my guest.' She stooped and picked up the cat who was about to step onto the canvas. ‘I'm weeding out the sheep from the goats at the moment. I'm trying to put together enough paintings to bring up to Dublin. I hope perhaps that someone will take me on. Let me show you some of these little water colours. I need a framer badly. I thought that maybe …' she stopped abruptly and spread four of the watercolours out on the table … ‘I think I'll have to bring them to Dublin to be framed. It costs a lot you know to get a picture ready for sale.'

Manus nodded.

For a short while none of them moved. The cat rubbed his head against her shoulder.

Jack was staring at the man on the beach. The shadow lay long on the furrowed sand. God, he thought, it was right what I said to Manus … menopausal madness. Sad to think of your fifty-year-old mother fantasising about naked young men. The sun hung white and very cold above the young man's head. A searchlight, he thought.

‘They're nice so they are,' said Manus.

‘I'm working more with oil at the moment.'

Jack moved away from the painting, over to look at the watercolours on the table. Nicely painted, he had to give her that. Sheep, trees, safe pastoral subjects. I must ask her for a couple for my rooms in college, he thought, and then looked across the room once more at the man on the beach. For a moment it became Damian Sweeney. The shock of that gripped him inside his body. He felt himself blushing and turned quickly away. Jesus, he thought. Jesus. He looked again and saw only a lank figure, feet in a wisp of sea, black shadow marks.

‘We should be off,' he said.

‘I'm working on a series' She pointed towards the painting.' “Man on a Beach”.' She giggled. ‘Not what you might call a very original title. I'm working on number two at the moment.'

Manus stared in silence at the painting.

‘Who's the fella?' he asked at last.

‘No one in particular. Purely a figment.'

‘Not Jack?'

She burst out laughing.

‘Not Jack. I haven't seen Jack naked since he was about ten and I used to rush into the bathroom and scrub his filthy neck from time to time. He has always been the very essence of modesty … at least as far as I am concerned.'

Manus smiled.

‘The very essence of modesty,' he repeated. ‘I like that. That's good.'

‘We should be getting on.'

‘Now, who would buy a thing like that?' Manus nodded his head towards the painting.

‘Perhaps nobody,' she answered.

‘And yet you paint it … on spec so to speak.'

‘Yes.'

‘Would you say it was art?'

‘That's really for someone else to say, not me.'

He nodded.

‘Manus …' said Jack. ‘We should be getting on.'

‘Right you be. He's going to show me a bit of the countryside, Mrs Cuffe.'

‘If you're not back by half past eight we'll eat without you, and I'll be raging, Jack, really raging.'

‘Don't fuss,' said Jack.

‘No,' said Mrs Sweeney. She'd no idea at all where Damian was. Hadn't seen neither hide nor hair of him for the last two days. Never said a word nor left a message.

‘No,' she said. How could you tell when he'd be back if he hadn't even said he was going? It could be Galway. There was an uncle in Galway he visited from time to time. Didn't he work for the Englishman above at the station and wouldn't he likely be back on Monday morning?

‘Yes.' She'd say they'd called looking for him. That would be the sum total of the help she'd be able to give them.

Two red-haired children stood by her side, nodding as she spoke.

A silent dog ran beside the car for the best part of half a mile as Jack drove away.

Neither of them spoke.

In the few weeks Jack had been away the leaves had been blown from the hedges. Thorns and fuchsias were now bare. The first gap in the hedge was the track through the caravan park and up onto the dunes above the beach. Jack turned through it and they bumped across the grass and up the hill until they could go no further. Below them stretched the wide beach and the sea.