Jig (32 page)

‘Sensational,' Zuboric said. He found an enormous Hawaiian shirt, which might have housed the entire Barnum and Bailey Circus. He examined the pattern, a nightmare of pineapples and Venus flytraps.

Pagan took off the overcoat. It wasn't grubby enough for St. Finbar's. He found a more likely garment on the next rack, an old raincoat with tattered epaulettes and faded stains tattooing the sleeves.

Frank Pagan tried on the raincoat. He wandered towards a cracked wall mirror at the far end of the store and stared at his own reflection. ‘The trouble with Ivor is he shapes the world to suit himself. It's a common trait among megalomaniacs.'

Zuboric lifted a red and black checked suit from a rack and held it up. He'd seen another side of Frank Pagan in the room at the Essex House. He'd caught the distinct vibrations of the man's capacity for anger. It was enjoyable to see the fault lines in Pagan's surface. ‘
Are
you on the same side, Frank?'

Frank Pagan turned away from his reflection and looked at Zuboric, wondering if the agent was trying to goad him. ‘The Irish problem turns up some strange companions,' he said. ‘Maybe McInnes and I have a common enemy. And maybe our goals overlap. But what McInnes loves is strife. He feeds on it. If there wasn't any trouble, he'd go out and manufacture some.'

‘He says he's writing a book –'

Pagan snorted. ‘McInnes spews out pamphlets that make
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
seem positively charitable. If you've ever got a few minutes to waste and you want some insight into Ivor's mind, I suggest you read the one entitled
The Roman Catholic Conspiracy in Northern Ireland
. In that priceless work he actually advocates sterilisation for the Roman Catholic women of Ulster after they've had two babies. So the idea of him writing a book is fucking laughable. Unless he's found a publisher who specialises in madness. Which isn't
altogether
an impossibility.'

Zuboric said, ‘So what's he doing here then?'

Pagan shrugged. ‘I wish I knew. The only thing I know for certain is I don't trust him. And I don't trust the coincidence of him being here. What you have to keep remembering about Ivor is that he's clever and he's cunning. You might disagree with the things he says, but you don't underestimate him. And there are thousands of people in Ulster who agree with his every word. That kind of support shouldn't be overlooked either.'

‘You said he was involved with the Free Ulster Volunteers. He denied that. What's the score there?'

‘We've had him watched and we've had him followed, and we've never been able to pin that connection on him directly. The chances are that he's behind the FUV, but he's very careful. If he ever makes contact with them, we don't know about it. I've got sources that say he meets with FUV members secretly, but when it comes down to documented proof, I can never get my hands on any. I work on the assumption that he's the leader, but I can't guarantee it.' Pagan paused a second, casting an eye round the store. ‘Ulster's filled with secrets. And Ivor knows a whole lot of them, but he isn't telling.'

Zuboric watched Pagan plunge into a mountain of old shoes now. There was footwear of every variety. Sandals, battered slippers, two-tone horrors, beat-up climbing boots. A sweaty odour arose from the heap. There was no way in the world he'd try on any of the shoes himself, but Pagan, who'd already removed his own casual leather jobs, was plucking a dilapidated pair of brown brogues from the heap. He sat on the floor and placed one of the shoes on his left foot. He suddenly reminded Zuboric of a kid getting dressed up for Halloween. He had this quality of enthusiasm.

‘Fine, don't you think?' Pagan asked.

‘Yeah. Terrific.'

‘Now I need a shirt and a pair of trousers.' Pagan wandered off to another pile of clothing and Zuboric followed. Pagan chose an antique flannel shirt that was missing several buttons. The cuffs were frayed. Pants next, a pair of crumpled old flannels with enormous fly buttons and broken belt loops. When he had his wardrobe assembled Pagan said, ‘It's a pity about that suntan of yours.'

Zuboric was unhappy with the notion of Pagan infiltrating St. Finbar's. At first, Artie had wanted to dress up the way Pagan was planning to do, and position himself inside the soup kitchen dressed as one of its clientele. But this notion had disintegrated as soon as he'd tried on an old tweed coat and looked at himself in the mirror. There was absolutely
no way
he could pass himself off as a derelict with a complexion as healthy as his. He looked too good to carry off a charade like the one Pagan was going to play. Instead, Zuboric planned to conceal himself in Tumulty's office while Pagan mingled with the deadbeats downstairs. There was a certain ironic symbolism in this arrangement that Zuboric enjoyed.

‘You should stay out of spas,' Pagan said. ‘And avoid suntan lamps in future. They're unnatural.'

‘And look as white as you? No thanks.'

‘Didn't I tell you, Artie? The way I look is all the rage in London this winter. Everybody's trying it.'

Pagan took his purchases to the desk where a frail old man with a face that resembled a spider's web operated an ancient cash register.

When they were outside on the street, Pagan said, ‘It's time to release Father Joe.'

Zuboric looked across the street at Pagan's big green Cadillac. There was a tiny knot in his stomach, a vague tension. He wanted a tidy conclusion to this whole murky business. He wanted to escort Frank Pagan to Kennedy Airport and watch him step aboard a flight to London, which would thankfully be the last of the guy. But first there was the uncertainty of Jig.

They crossed the street to the car. Pagan took the key out of his pocket, and as he was about to insert it into the door of the vehicle he saw a girl come out of a delicatessen half a block away, and his heart jumped as if electricity had coursed through his body.

Roxanne
.

He dropped the bag of secondhand clothes. His lungs were tight in his chest and his hands trembled.

‘Something wrong?' Zuboric asked.

Pagan said nothing. He watched the girl move along the sidewalk, her thick black hair floating behind her. The way she walked. The way her hair flew up from her neck and shoulders. He shut his eyes a moment, and when he opened them again the girl was already turning the corner at the end of the block.
Fool
. Deceived by resemblances. Misled by impressions. He felt weak. He had to lean against the side of the car.

‘Frank?' Zuboric asked.

‘It's nothing. I thought I saw somebody I used to know. That's all.'

Zuboric picked up the bag of clothing from the pavement and gave it to Pagan, who clutched it in an absentminded way against his chest. Pagan looked along the empty sidewalk. He had the depressing realisation that if he lived a million years, if he lived long enough to see the sun shrivel in the sky and the earth freeze and wither and the planets plunge into eternal darkness, he'd never see Roxanne again. He'd see resemblances in a hundred places, but never again the real person. It was quite a thought.

He opened the car door, his hand still trembling. He got in behind the wheel. What he needed was something desperately simple. He needed to fuck the spectre of Roxanne out of existence. It came down to that. But what were you supposed to do if that particular appetite had died? If all the women you ever saw didn't match the memory of a dead woman? If your heart was empty?

‘You're sure you're okay?' Zuboric asked.

Pagan smiled. ‘I'm in great shape.'

Roscommon, New York

Celestine Cairney listened to Harry's Irish music float out through the open door of his study. She paused on the threshold of the room, watching Harry and his son sit close together near the fire. A flask of brandy and two glasses stood on the coffee table. It was late afternoon and the sun had gone behind the trees, and the only light in the study was the glow of the log fire. Harry leaned towards his son and said something, and the young man laughed, perhaps a little too politely. It was the laughter of somebody who hadn't quite learned the language of mirth. An artificial sound.

Celestine leaned against the door jamb. The Irish music made her uneasy at times because it was the music of ghosts, the music of Harry's first marriage, with all its comfortable intimacies. She had mental pictures of Harry and his first wife sitting by the fire while this music wove through the air around them.

She moved very slightly. Neither man was aware of her presence. She liked the idea of observing people when they didn't know she was watching. She studied Patrick. He was a good-looking man in an intense way. He had serious eyes and a certain strength about him, but there was an aura of privacy, almost a force field, that one couldn't get through easily. She had the impression of somebody who lived in his own secret fortress. He wasn't like Harry at all, outgoing and gregarious with that facile Irish charm he could trot out whenever it suited him. These were the gifts of a politician. The necessary equipment.

Come back, Paddy Reilly, to Ballyjamesduff
,

Come home, Paddy Reilly, to me
.

All Harry's music was like this. It was all drenched with yearning. Now there was a break in the song and the thin notes of a fiddle filled the room.

Patrick Cairney had seen her. He rose from his chair. Harry smiled and stretched out a hand in her direction.

‘She's been spying on us,' he said.

Celestine moved into the room. ‘Why would I do that, Harry? You don't have any secrets from me, love.'

Harry stood up now too. ‘Want a brandy?' he asked.

‘I don't want to interrupt this reunion,' she said. ‘Besides, I was on my way to take a shower before dinner.'

She gazed at Patrick Cairney. She found his awkwardness in her presence a little touching. The way he'd reacted last night when she'd gone to his bedroom was amusing. He'd been like a kid who'd smuggled a girl inside his dormitory against all the school rules. He seemed now like a man who wished he were someplace else. She knew exactly what kind of effect she had on him. In her lifetime, she'd come to understand that her beauty often devastated people. Certain men didn't know how to react to her. She had had her share of flowers and lovers' poems and men who stuttered and fumbled around her. She considered her appearance a genetic accident, useful but finally transient. She never saw in the mirror what other people saw when they beheld her, almost as if her appearance were something apart from what she thought of as her inner self, her reality. Extreme good looks, such as her own, were often interpreted wrongly. Men looked at her and they couldn't get beyond her appearance and down into the place where she really lived. They couldn't begin to think their way beyond her surfaces.

Most men anyway.

‘You could never interrupt anything, my dear,' Harry said.

He had that look on his face. Total devotion. Utter bliss. There were moments when her husband's love made her feel uncomfortable. Harry gave it so wholeheartedly and without qualification that it was like a light he was forever shining into her eyes. Sometimes she felt blinded by it.

She warmed her hands in front of the fire. Patrick Cairney moved out of her way, but there was a second of contact between them, a tiny friction as her body touched his. She liked the connection. She liked the expression on Patrick's face, the effort he made to conceal his discomfort.

‘I was riding and I'm grubby,' she said. She spread her legs in front of the fire. ‘I can't sit down to dinner in this condition.'

Harry reached for her hand. His skin had the feel of rice paper. She took his fingers in her palm. They were cold with that unfathomable coldness of age. She took her hand away and walked back across the room to the door. What she frequently longed for was warmth – another climate altogether, where she wouldn't be confronted by the chills of a long winter. What was she doing in this big house located on this huge frozen estate? Why in the name of God had she ever agreed to come here to this place of isolation and snow and security guards who watched her lasciviously through their binoculars whenever she went outside?

She reached the doorway. She shivered slightly. ‘Dinner will be ready in about thirty minutes,' she said. ‘I'll meet you in the dining room.'

‘What are we having?' Harry asked.

‘The speciality of the house. Corned beef and cabbage. What else?' If there had been such a thing as Irish wine, a Cabernet Killarney or a Château Galway, say, she would have served that as well. She disliked the stodge of Irish food.

‘Ah,' Harry said, delighted. He was showing off his wife for the benefit of his son. ‘Didn't I tell you, Pat? Didn't I tell you she knows how to warm an old man's heart?'

Patrick nodded. He fiddled with the stopper of the crystal brandy flask. He wasn't looking at Celestine. She left the room and moved along the landing. She paused outside the door of Patrick's bedroom. What she remembered was how furtive he'd been last night about his canvas bag and the small wooden horse, which he'd practically seized from her hand and stuffed back inside the bag as if it were a souvenir too precious for anyone else to sully. Curious. She was tempted to sneak inside the room and explore it in his absence. Instead, she continued towards her own bedroom.

She went inside the bathroom and removed her clothes, catching glimpses of herself in the mirror. She had small breasts and a flat stomach. She thought her hips were probably a little too narrow, but otherwise it was a good body, firm and smooth and untouched as yet by age. She let her hair fall over her shoulders as she turned to the shower stall. The water was very hot, the way she liked it. Steam rose against her flesh, glistened in her hair, filled her nostrils. She took soap from the dish and made lather all over her body, smoothing the soap slowly over her breasts and across the surface of her stomach. She tilted her head back against the tiled wall, closing her eyes.