Cold Eye of Heaven, The (4 page)

Farley hangs back and hopes for the best as the green man hops up and begins to beep. The Hardimans waddle off. He lets three people go ahead of him and then dips in behind, trying to measure the distance – enough so as to keep out of their sight, but not so much that the lights turn red before he's crossed over. At the same time he has to be prepared to zip off in the opposite direction of whatever direction the Hardimans take. He almost gets away with it, but for the wife, at the last second, lifting her head, like a dog that senses someone behind her. When he gets to the far bank they are standing there waiting like a pair of talking immersion heaters – ‘O hello there' from one, and ‘There you are' from the other.

‘Ah!' Farley says.

‘We were awful sorry to hear the news,' Mrs Hardiman begins.

‘O, we were,' her husband confirms and for a second Farley doesn't know what they are talking about.

‘What happened him at all?' she asks. ‘Was he not well or what?'

‘Well, I—'

‘Did he slip in the snow maybe? Would that have been it? Because the way I heard, it happened in the street.'

Her face is bulged from the cold and there's a jellied, goitred look about her eyes that Farley finds distracting. He looks at the husband. If she wasn't here they could have a conversation. He could ask his opinion on the garden, how best to get it over the cold snap. And he could tell him too, about feeding the birds in the snow with the strawberries the drunken dealer had given him Christmas Eve in Meath Street. He could describe the various reactions; the way the thrush had milled into the strawberries and the blackbird, although a bit more cautious, had tucked in too. And how the one that probably needed it most, the little sparrow, wouldn't go near them: the strangeness of the fruit maybe or the seeds just wrong for its gullet. He could see what Hardiman had to say about that. Bring it up all casual like, so he wouldn't think him soft. If the wife wasn't there, gagging for information, that's what he'd do.

‘Well, I better be…' Farley says. ‘You know yourself—'

‘His heart – wasn't it?' the wife is saying now.

‘That's right,' Farley agrees, not that he knows for certain. But with Slowey it was always going to be the heart.

‘And the arrangements?' she asks.

‘Why, you thinking of going yourself?' Farley says, pleased to see that, although he hadn't intended it, the question has embarrassed her.

‘Well, I don't know really…' she falters. ‘I mean, we are neighbours, I suppose. At the same time, I wouldn't like to intrude. Although we didn't really. I mean, I might just go to the Mass, and that. It depends really, on the snow situation.'

The snow is gone, Farley feels like shouting in her face. Gone, gone, what is it about you oulones blaming everything on the snow?

‘Well, right so,' he says, turning away. She puts out her hand to stop him. ‘Will the son, the one who's abroad – will he be coming back? Where's this he is again?'

‘India, last I heard,' Farley says.

‘India!' she goes. ‘God, what would possess you to go to a place like that?' Then she puts her mittened hand over her mouth and lets out a horrified laugh.

‘I better be…' Farley takes a step backwards.

‘Of course,' Mr Hardiman says. ‘Anyway, our condolences.'

Farley wants to tell him that he neither wants nor needs his condolences, that any grieving he did for Slowey, he did ten years ago.

‘Thanks for that,' Frank says and turns to the wife. ‘Goodbye, Mrs Cardigan.'

He hears his own mistake, stands blinking at it for a moment, but doesn't seem to know how to correct it. Cardigan?

‘I mean, Mrs, Mrs…'

He sees husband and wife exchange a glance.

‘Are you going up to the house?' she asks

‘Eh no. Not yet. Later maybe. A Mass card and that; flowers.'

‘Still, it'll be nice for the family to have you there.'

‘What?'

‘I said it'll be nice—'

‘Yea. O yea,' Farley says, turning away into a spume of his own icy breath.

The owner of the dry-cleaner's calls him ‘a senior' – a title that always makes him feel like he's back in primary school. If she's serving someone else when he comes into the shop, she'll hurl over her shoulder, ‘There's a senior needs serving out here!' And the girl with the goat's eyes will come out from the back, with the separate book they keep for seniors snuggled between one floppy tit and a plump upper arm. In the senior book they don't write down your name; they give you a number instead.

Today, the owner is on the phone, fingers lightly tossing the top layer of hair the colour of margarine. Beside her, a pile of clothes waiting to be sorted: trousers, skirts, a red satin dress. Farley waits at the counter, staring into the stains of other people's Christmases. The owner puts down the phone and looks at him. ‘You know now that today is not a senior day – you are aware of that? And what that means now is that I'm going to have to charge you full price – is that alright with you? Because if you prefer like, you can come back next senior day which is Tuesday?'

She talks down her nose, voice like a bagpipe's drone. She speaks slowly and louder than necessary and he responds in a put-on telephone voice. Farley isn't quite sure why he does this, except that she's one of those culchies with notions about themselves who love looking down their noses on a Dublin accent.

‘I'm aware of that, yes, thank you, ma'am.'

‘Well, so long now as you know.'

‘I was wondering if I might possibly have it for this afternoon?'

‘Well now, you can forget
that
for a start!'

‘O.'

‘We're out the door here between the post-Christmas rush and I've two inside off with the so-called flu.'

‘Well, what about tomorrow morning then – if that would be con -venient?'

‘Are you joking me now or what?'

‘It's for a funeral,' he says and for some reason feels ashamed for mentioning it.

The phone rings and she reaches out for it, leaving one hand behind splayed on the counter. He cranes to see into the back room, wondering if the girl with the goat's eyes is in there. His sight is still a bit wobbly but he notices this is only when he lifts his eyes to the middle distance. Little bursts of minute crystals, rotating on the air. He peers under this display and his sight begins to clear again. There now, he can see her in the back, the rise and fall of her ample arm, pushing the presser on and off a stretch of steaming cloth. He feels a rush of warmth in his veins; his arms, his legs,
his groin. He doesn't know why he fancies her nor does he know how he possibly could. In fact, every time he sees her he gets a small shock at how, not so much ugly she is – he wouldn't like to say that exactly – but certainly, peculiar looking. And yet anything like the dirty dreams he has about her! By times he can barely look her in the face he's so ashamed of them. The dreams are always set here, in this shop; the pair of them hard at it – in the back room with steam pumping all around them; on the counter sliding and slipping off each other's sweat; even standing up against that big drying machine there gyrating in tune with the big drum inside it. Any and every way; backwards, forwards, sidewards, him well able for it, and she loving every minute. And really, the poor girl has nothing going for her at all, no figure, no face, certainly no personality – except maybe that in all the years she's been working here, she never seems to have aged. Skin like a pig's, if the truth is told – all the heat he supposes. Makes her lazy too; even the way she speaks, the effort it seems to cost, like she's talking with her mouth full of oats. And as for the mad-looking eyes. But for all that, he fancies the arse off her and has done so for years.

The owner's hand lifts from the counter, fingers click and begin to beckon the Clery's bag as if it has a mind of its own. He slides it across the counter to her. Farley looks at her; she thinks she's so posh, the state of her, with the fancy tailored suit as if she's running a big international company instead of a poxy little dry-cleaner's. And the face plastered in so much greasy brown shite you can hardly see her nose. And the skinny lips like a pink elastic band. She catches his eye, he gives her a nod and a small half-smile.

The heat is making him dozy, the churn of background machinery; the fumes and the tumble of clothes in the machine. The owner, still yapping, lifts her hand again; this time it begins pulling the suit out of the bag. The shoe comes along with it, toppling off the counter and onto the floor by her feet. She's looking at him, an irritated glint in her eye. She puts her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and goes, ‘I
said
, would it get away with a pressing – do you think?'

Farley looks at her, puzzled.

Her hand idly turns the jacket of his suit, turning the cuffs, lifting the sleeves. Then it starts on his trousers, passing up a leg, brushing an inner thigh, patting and pulling at the mickey area – ‘… right so, right, right, and the same to you, happy New Year – o, I'm sure, I'm sure. Goodbye to you so and best to herself.' She slams down the phone and looks at him. ‘Ah no, a pressing would be
useless
,' she says, as if it was all his idea, ‘'tis a good cleaning this lad needs.'

Farley tries to cover his embarrassment, wrapping it up in a joke. ‘When you get to my age, the only suit seems to get any wear is the black one. Probably I could do with a new one but like – is it worth the expense at this stage of the game, I ask myself?'

‘Indeed,' she says, the joke slipping by her.

She thinks it's his only suit, probably. He wants to put her right. To tell her about the other suits; five of them hanging up in his wardrobe, two still in cellophane, cleaned in this very shop. He wants to describe them; the navy pinstripe, Italian cloth. And the charcoal grey that he bought for business – a Savile Row label on the inside. And the summer linen he bought three summers ago and never wore once because he's still waiting on a decent summer's day to coincide with a worthy outing. And what about the tweed job that he's wearing this minute? He wants to open back his overcoat like a flasher and show it to her: ‘Here, take a look at that, missus!' And then there's his tux. Granted, he bought it years ago from the hire place at a reduction – but she doesn't need to know that.

‘Unless I start wearing me tux to funerals,' he says, with a half-wink so that this time she knows for sure that he's joking.

‘Ah now, I wouldn't go doing that if I were you,' the owner says, pulling the docket book to her, ‘there's fellas been locked away for less.'

She opens the book, then closes it again and looks into his eyes. Pity, he sees or an attempt at pity. Because for some reason he doesn't believe it's genuine.

‘Tell you what,' she says, ‘seeing as it's a funeral, we'll let you have the senior rate.' She roars back over her shoulder, ‘Will you bring the senior
book out here to me a minute?' Then she comes back to Farley pointing her pen at him. ‘Just this once, mind, and come here to me now, don't you go telling the other seniors. Or I'll have you hanged and quartered.' The owner looks satisfied, relieved even, to have got her good deed for the year out of the way.

The goat's eyes pass behind the owner, the senior book tucked into its enviable position. He remembers one time in the County Bar, years ago now; Slowey, himself, Conroy, Brophy. Slowey opening the paper to a photograph of Boris Yeltsin. ‘Jaysus,' he said, ‘wouldn't you think he was related to your woman in the cleaner's?'

‘O yea,' Conroy added, ‘if Yeltsin married a pig and they had a baby.'

He should have stuck up for her. He'd wanted to. But of course if he did, the rest of them would have sensed something; given him a slagging that he'd never hear the end of.

He speaks to the owner. ‘Well, thanks all the same but to be honest, I don't mind paying full whack, I don't mind in the least. So long as I can be certain of having the suit for tomorrow, you know?'

She looks at him again and the pity is gone. The pink elastic band tightens. ‘Suit yourself. But it'll have to be tomorrow
afternoon
, mind. That's the absolute best I can do for you now. Full price so.'

In the heat of the shop, Farley feels something gather inside him. The sound of the machinery, the heap of stained clothes, the hard blue eyes freed from their pity, the senior book with the numbers instead of names. And he feels an urge to click his heels and give her a Nazi salute. To call her a jumped-up fuckin Nazi bitch.

She hands the pen to the girl with the goat's eyes and flounces off into the back of the shop.

The girl lowers her voice to him across the counter and one by one the words crawl out. ‘Come back abou' half five and I'll have it for you.'

Farley looks into the back room. ‘What about the boss?'

‘Ah, don't worry about that oul fuck, she'll be gone for the afternoon.'

She gives a small sweet grunt as she bends to retrieve his shoe from the floor which she then hands to him, sole facing out, hole looking up at him.
She's put on even more weight over the Christmas, rolls of fat pressing against her lime green jumper, diddies floppier than ever, legs poured into those black trouser things that look more like tights. He wants to lean over the counter and lick her face, then ask her to marry him right on the spot. He nods and takes the shoe, turning for the door.

She calls after him, ‘Here?'

‘Yes?'

‘Your Clery's bag.'

She takes the shoe back from him, places it inside the bag and pushes it across the counter.

‘The wife,' he hears himself say then, ‘the wife, you see, wasn't that keen on Clery's.'

‘Yea?'

‘A dear hole, is what she called it.'