The Railway Station Man (7 page)

‘I used to spend all my pocket money on records. They broke very easily. It's amazing there are so many left really.'

The gravelly voice battered around the yard. Quite incongruous.

‘We could dance.' She did a little experimental twirl. ‘Oh God, your father was a terrible dancer. He used to get all embarrassed when he danced and sort of seize up. The Ink Spots they were called. I suppose they must have been black. They sound black don't they?'

She twiddled the shutters again. The singer was talking now in a very black voice.

‘Charlie Kennedy was the great dancer. It was such fun dancing with him. He could do anything. He used to practise steps that he saw on the films. The others stood on your toes or counted to themselves. He was great though. I wonder what ever happened to Charlie?'

‘He changed his name and became Gene Kelly.'

‘He was a divinity student, I think. Yes. He's probably a bishop by now. A dancing bishop.'

Suddenly she leaned forward and took the needle off the record. The black disc whirled round in silence.

‘A dancing bishop in Matabeleland. Beautiful black girls with naked breasts and men beating drums. In the middle of them all Bishop Charlie Kennedy dancing away in his surplice.'

‘Matabeleland doesn't exist any more.'

She made a slight face and then pushed the switch on the gramophone. With a sigh the turntable slowed down and then stopped. She took the record off and put it back into the box. She closed down the lid of the machine.

‘How strange,' she said, ‘that I never played it down all those years. It's amazing really that it works after such neglect. Put it in the porch for me like an angel so it's ready and waiting for Mary when she comes to collect it. Don't drop it. I cherish it. I really cherish it.'

He did as he was told. There was a pile of his old clothes on the floor of the porch. He put down the gramophone and picked up his old school blazer which lay neatly folded on top of the pile. He ran back through the house and out into the yard. She was leaning against the low wall staring at the distant sea.

‘Look here,' he said, waving the blazer at her. ‘You can't give my blazer to a jumble sale.'

She looked round at him.

‘Why ever not?'

‘It's my school blazer.'

She laughed.

‘You can't let anyone go wandering round in an old St Columba's blazer.'

‘I wouldn't have thought that a thing like that would have worried you.'

‘Well it does.'

‘They can always cut the pocket off. It's hardly worn. Remember you did a terrible spurt of growing just after I bought it and I had to get you another one practically immediately.'

She put out a hand and touched the sleeve.

‘It's very good material. The moths'll eat it if we just leave it lying around.'

‘I'd rather you didn't sell my blazer.'

She shrugged. ‘Okay. Okay. Take it away. Feed it to the moths. Do what you like with it. I'm going to go and have a swim. My head is full of unresolved thoughts and I smell of your old musty clothes. Come and have a swim.'

He shook his head.

‘Do you good.'

‘Dashing in and out of icy water never did me good. It's some sort of fantasy notion of yours that it does.'

‘I'll bike,' she said, not listening to him. ‘If you're not coming I might as well bike. Then I'll be so healthy I'll be able to shut myself in the shed for days and days without thinking about exercise or fresh air or anything like that.'

‘What do you do over there for days and days?'

‘Paint.'

‘But why, mother?'

‘Why not? After all, a long long time ago I thought for a time that the one thing I wanted to be was a great painter.' She smiled. ‘That was a long time ago. I must have been about fifteen. Another fantasy notion.'

‘Why didn't you? What stopped you?'

‘I just didn't have the gumption. I didn't feel like suffering.'

She scraped at a piece of moss on the wall with her finger.

‘Why would you have had to suffer?'

‘I'd have had to uproot, learn how to be alone, wrestle with devils. So …' She looked at him. The phrase ‘wrestle with devils' had annoyed him, she could see that. He looked so like Dan at certain times, his mouth slightly pursed with displeasure.

‘So …' she continued. ‘Here I am. Here you are. Here we both are.'

It was downhill all the way to the shore, cutting across the village street between Harkin's Bar and Doherty's Spar shop. A hundred yards or so beyond the village the road became a track, pitted and hollowed by the wheels of cars and caravans. A gate in the high hedge of thorn and fuchsia led into one end of the caravan park, but the track itself meandered on between the hedges until it widened into a flat patch where day trippers parked their cars in the summer. The sea was hidden by hills of sand and only the low roar told you what to expect when you climbed through the bent and the neat piles of rabbit droppings to the top of the dunes.

The beach was long and straight, offering no shelter from the west wind that blew in from the ocean, whipping the sand into little eddies that scurried along above the ground stinging your legs and even sometimes whirling up into your eyes.

There was no one about. Wheel marks showed where a tractor had been down earlier in the day moving sand up to someone's farm. Crisscross bird tracks patterned the sand near the water's edge. The sun behind a streak of cloud was moving at speed towards the rim of the horizon and, strangely, the moon, like a pale shadow of the sun, floated also in the sky. Helen had never been able to grasp the movements of the moon, but she felt quite honoured to be there alone on the beach with the pair of them. She gave a little wave.

‘Here I am. Here you are. Here we all are.'

What a damn silly thing to have said to Jack.

How damn silly at the age of fifty or whatever to feel evasive, protective about the inside of your head.

She kicked her espadrilles off onto the sand. It had been so hot at times in the summer that to stand barefoot had been almost impossible; each grain of sand had seemed to scorch its way into the soles of your feet … Now the sand was cool and slightly damp. She unfastened her jeans and pulled them off. Jack's indifference was slightly less friendly than Dan's had been. There was that element of contempt that prickled her. She dropped her jeans beside her shoes and began to walk towards the sea. Goddammit, the disease of parenthood was terminal. No way out round it, no hope of re-assessment.

‘Nuts,' she said.

Five years before, five or six children had been drowned off this stretch of the beach. City children they had been, camping in the sand dunes. Sucked away into the innocent-looking sea by vicious undertow. She remembered the helpless sorrow they had all felt as each young body had been recovered. The county council had put notices along the beach after that, warning people of the danger, but now they had become weathered, illegible, vandalised. She unbuttoned her shirt and let it fall onto the wrinkled sand.

‘Why do you whisper green grass?'

The waves curled round her ankles. Not cold. For a few moments a million tiny stones, driven by the waves, beat into her legs and then the water became deep. You could feel the current pulling you as you lay upon the water. It wanted you to go towards the rocks at the southern end of the beach and then if you weren't careful away out into the ocean. The bodies had been washed in again about three miles down the coast, at the outermost point of the wide bay.

‘Why tell the trees what ain't so?'

She lay on her back and allowed herself to drift. She knew for how long she could indulge herself in that pleasure before turning over and swimming strongly back into the safety of the breaking waves.

‘Whispering grass, the trees don't need to know.'

The sun was quite indifferent as she sang, the moon as usual smiled.

‘Why tell them all your secrets … deedeedee long ago?'

She was half-way to the rocks. A seagull floated above her, quite relaxed on a current of air.

‘Whispering grass … oh no no no. The seagulls don't need to know.'

She turned over and swam back against the roll of the sea. After a couple of hundred yards she turned on her back once more and let the waves roll her in towards the shore.

‘Oh no no no. Whispering grass …'

Her bottom hit the sand.

She had judged it correctly, her shirt lay only a few yards away. She put it on and squeezed the water out of her hair.

‘Whispering grass, the trees don't need to know.'

Kelly's Bar was dark and smelt of beer and a century's cigarette smoke. As Jack came in through the door he was wrapped in the smell, it crept into his pockets and up his sleeves, a total embrace. He got the notion as he stood at the bar and peered through the darkness that if the building were to fall apart at that moment, a solid block of undispersable smell would remain by the street-side. In the darkest corner Damian sat alone at a small round table. He raised his hand. Jack nodded briefly and ordered a pint of Guinness. He took the drink and carried it over to the table, pulled up a chair and sat down.

‘I haven't had a smoke since I saw you last,' said Damian.

‘Big deal.'

‘Even my mother noticed. What's up with you, she said. No fag hanging out of your face.'

He laughed.

‘She'll give me a medal, she says, if I keep it up for twelve months. I suggested she should make it hard cash. What would I do with your medal I asked her … knowing the kind she always has in her mind, smiling Jesus pinned to my vest. Aren't medals for to assist in the saving of souls? What do I care about damnation? She gets so mad at me when I say things like that. Upset. I shouldn't do it. She thinks I'm the walking personification of the ten deadly sins. Praying for me occupies a large part of her time.'

‘Seven,' said Jack. ‘There are only seven.'

‘A Protestant point of view maybe …'

‘Ten commandments, seven deadly sins. Quite multi-denominational, I assure you.' Jack's voice was filled with humourless reproof.

Damian laughed again.

‘There you are. I am an ignorant renegade. A bastún. She's right. Why is it that mothers are always right?'

One finger flicked away some Guinness froth that had been clinging to the gingery moustache that drooped over his upper lip. His eyes were amused as he looked across the table at Jack.

‘I haven't noticed it,' said Jack.

‘You don't live at home. When you live at home you find out these things. Mothers are always right. The truth becomes irrelevant when mother is around. Keep your head down and say nothing, that's what I've learnt. The odd leg pull and the rest of the time say nothing. Ah, she could be worse. I've seen worse. I've seen your mother down on the beach drawing pictures. I wouldn't have thought there was much to draw, but she crouches down on the sand like …' he paused for a moment'… some sort of a mad creature. Lost to the world. If you were standing next to her she wouldn't notice you.'

‘She has bad eyes. Problems with her eyes'

‘It's not that. Lost is the word you'd use.'

Jack shrugged slightly.

‘You don't say much do you?'

‘You don't give anyone much chance.'

Damian stood up grinning. He picked up his empty glass and nodded towards the bar.

‘I'm having another. Will I get you one? It'll maybe loosen your tongue.'

‘I'm okay.'

‘Live dangerously.'

Jack watched as he walked across the room and stood, his two hands flat on the bar, leaning towards the barman. Neat in his gestures, economical with his physical movements. Unlike his gabble. Over-fond of the sound of his own voice. Look at him there now, gabbling again as the black liquid crept into the tilted glass. The boy behind the bar laughed at something he had said, mopped the bar around the glass with a white cloth and laughed again. A bit of an opinion of himself. I wonder why is he involved? Family background? Never heard that. Conviction? Boredom? No, no, no. Not this one. Hate? He doesn't look the hating type. He looks to me like someone who drifted in and hasn't bothered to drift out again. Dangerous. They are the dangerous ones. No blinding commitment.

‘There you are.'

Damian put the pint glass down on the table in front of Jack.

‘Bloody bastards fleece you now for the harmless pint.'

‘Thanks,' said Jack.

‘Slap another tax on pleasure every time the country gets a bit low in funds. Drinks, smokes, books, the pictures, football. Squeeze another few dollars out of the buggers. Squeeze.' He laughed. ‘There's one thing they forgot though.'

‘What's that?'

Damian drooped one of his eyes and said nothing.

Jack thought for a moment.

‘Oh. That.'

‘Aye, that. It's a good thought that no matter how hard they try neither Church nor State can stop people doing that.'

‘They do their best.'

‘I reckon if they put their minds to it they could come up with some system. A computer implanted under the skin of every growing boy. Monitoring bad thoughts, sinful acts. At the end of the year you get a bill from Dublin. Five pence for a bad thought. A pound for self-abuse and a couple of quid every time you go the whole way. The country would be solvent in five years. I don't really amuse you, do I?'

Jack looked down at the table.

‘Never mind,' said Damian, ‘I amuse myself. You can't do better than that. Be amused by your own codology.'

‘Manus …' began Jack.

Damian put his glass down on the table and frowned.

‘What of Manus? The great God Manus. I can see you're dazzled by his very name.'

‘You haven't a notion …'

‘And keep your voice down. Do you want everyone for miles round to know your business?'