The Misremembered Man (29 page)

Rose stopped, overcome by what sounded like a sneeze.

“God bless you,” said Lydia.

“Thank you, Lydeea. God bliss me indeed. Now where was I? Oh yes, men and the cleanin’ and the like. Y’know what these men are like when there isn’t a woman about, to be liftin’ after them. And them that doesn’t make their own bed can lie to dinner time and have breakfast in the bedroom and sleep in the kitchen, if truth be told.”

Lydia thought it wiser to allow Rose’s talk to run its course.

“I had an uncle once who could make his breakfast from the bed, would you believe, didn’t have to get up atall, atall. I came in on him one day, and there he had the gas stove and the pan and all, splutterin’ away like the divil at his elbow and him still half asleep at the fryin’ of it.”

It occurred to Lydia that this gave a whole new meaning to the concept of “breakfast in bed.” She couldn’t quite follow the logic of Rose’s speech but got the impression that Mrs. McFadden disapproved of James’s domestic arrangements, and for this reason was inviting her to meet with him in her home.

“But ye know, Lydeea—”

“I understand completely,” Lydia said. “Just give me directions and I’ll be with you within the hour.”

At half-past six the sun was sending amber flares across the sky. Jamie stood in the barn entrance, his face glowing in the golden light. This would be his last glimpse of a world that had been less than kind.

He gazed about him, his eyes lighting on the commonplace, the simplicity of things, for a moment holding some kind of sacred reverence. A reverence that only could be appreciated through the certainty of his imminent death.

His eyes moved over the green half-door, the garden gate, the pecking hens, his bicycle propped against the gable, the disused machinery in the yard—and never before had these mundane images held such meaning, and never before had he, Jamie, felt so “right.”

A steady buzzing near his elbow caused him to glance down. A fat bumblebee was just settling down to feed on a bloom of pink wisteria that climbed and fell about the barn door. Jamie studied the bee closely as it supped on the flower, realizing that it would be his final glimpse of such a creature. He marveled at the furry throbbing back and little wings a-tremble. He had the urge to stretch out a finger and stroke its little striped jersey, but knew that such a move would scare the bee away. The sight of small, solitary creatures always moved him. He felt an affinity with them, a certain kinship.

Suddenly the bee flew off and Jamie took it as a sign.

Then, like a night worker whose immense exhaustion is pulling him toward sleep, he surrendered himself fully to the irresistible call of the afterlife.

He turned and entered the barn.

Once inside, he began to prepare the ground for his final act. There would be no slip-ups. He was going to join the only people who had loved him: Mick and Alice—and Lily of course. Yes, wee Lily. Since learning her name he’d thought of little else. The desire to see her was getting stronger as each hour passed. Would she be a baby still or would she have grown up? Did a baby grow up in heaven? He misremembered now. But no matter. He would soon find out.

He was happy, and set about each action with an unwavering zeal.

The baler twine was coiled on a nail behind the door. With his penknife he expertly snapped off a six-foot length, tied a running knot at one end and fed the remaining tail rope through it. He climbed up on the bales and secured the rope to a rafter. Mick’s rafter—the last one he’d worked on. The barn roof creaked and cried under the pressure, and when he looked up through the gaps in the skeletal roof he saw a halo of wood pigeons circling in perfect accord. Jamie took it as a sign from heaven. The angels were calling him home.

“I’ll be up there soon, so a will!” he declared to the sky.

Just then he heard a low whimper below him and, as he clambered down off the bales, saw Shep standing forlornly, his tail drooping, his sad eyes looking from the noose to his master’s face. For an instant, Jamie’s resolve—up to that moment as taut as an archer’s bowstring—slackened, and he stooped down to comfort the animal.

“Now now, wee Shep, you’ll be all right. Paddy’ll take care of you.” He ruffled the dog’s coat, went straight to the far corner of the shed, and found the bag of buns and the whiskey.

He settled himself in a comfortable place amid the hay and, using a bale as a table, laid out his final feast. The bottle of whiskey first. He uncapped it and took a long swig before biting in his cream slice. The dog lay down beside him and rested his head in his lap.

There was just one final duty he had to perform: his farewell note to Rose and Paddy. It would also serve as his last will and testament.

He sat in a shaft of light from the broken roof, pen in hand like a scribe in the Old Testament, and opened his pad of Basildon Bond. He would write his last letter on the pad he’d used for Lydia.

So many doors in Jamie’s mind kept opening and closing as he tried to write. The past and present were showing him so many different versions of himself, but all he knew for certain then was the feel of the pen upon the page and the presence of the noose above his head that would end his plight. He took another bun from the bag, the crumbs dusting the page as he labored on.

Jamie took another swig of the whiskey and slowly read over the letter. He hoped he hadn’t made any mistakes, because it was hard enough to write and he didn’t want to be doing it all again. He laid his hand on the dog’s head as he read.

But presently Shep sat up with ears cocked. Jamie stared at him. He knew that a dog could hear thunder from a great distance, and wondered what might have alerted him. He patted Shep’s head. There was no time left to ponder such things.

He was pleased with the letter and folded it in two as the dog bounded out of the barn. He placed it carefully in an envelope and sealed it. Shep was barking now and he thought it good that the dog had gone. All he wanted to do was shut the door and get on with it.

He snapped the letter beneath the string of a high bale and went to shut the door.

Rose proudly ushered Lydia into her only-frequented-on-special-occasions parlor.

“Sit yourself down there, Lydeea.”

Lydia settled herself in a plump armchair, which, like its twin on the opposite side of a fake-coal fire and the matching sofa before it, was swollen with scatter cushions and crocheted throws, the armrests fattened with embroidered covers.

The room was small and intensely crowded, with examples of Rose’s handiwork serving as a backdrop for a mob of cherished but often ill-considered impulse buys.

Many of the objects that populated the mantelshelf, the china cabinet, and the sideboard had been purchased in a hurry at various seaside resorts throughout Ireland; purchased, wrapped and paid for, more often than not whilst the exasperated bus driver sat revving his engine, blasting his horn and threatening to roar off if his excursion ladies didn’t get “a bloody move on!” Mrs. Paddy McFadden was usually the last to board the bus, red-faced and breathless, “God-blisses-an-save-us,” clutching that must-have souvenir.

Lydia’s eyes took in a troupe of plaster fairies dancing in a plaster field, a luminous holy-water font fashioned roughly after a cast of Dürer’s praying hands, an image of a glossy Virgin Mary being assumed into heaven on a plastic cloud, a line of somersaulting dwarfs pursuing a fleeing Snow White down a wooden path.

She could not have guessed, however, that the pair of hearth-bound frogs (wearing knitted tricolor scarves and matching bootees) who sat staring up at her from big ceramic eyes, had very nearly resulted in Rose being left stranded in a shop on the west coast of Mutton Head Horn Bay one August evening of the previous year, as the heavens opened and darkness fell.

“What a beautiful room!” Lydia enthused.

“Thank you very much, Lydeea, but you know me and my Paddy don’t use this room very often, because you know a woman needs to keep one room in her house kinda nice and proper for guests and the like.”

“I completely agree, Rose.”

“God-blisses-an-save-us, Lydeea, but James will be very happy to see you.” Rose stood in front of the simulated fire on the cabbage-green Berber rug. She had swapped the sheep-flocked apron for a housecoat of buttercup yellow. As a point of gaudy interest, over the left breast pocket, she’d appliquéd a velvet sun of crimson above a patch of corduroy clouds.

“Y’know,” she continued, “as I sez on the phone to you, he was very disappointed, so he was. Because y’know, Lydeea, he’s a kinda soft creatur is James, if you unnerstand me. Now me mother, God rest her soul, was the same. Couldn’t look at the crucified Christ in the chapel without startin’ to blubber.” Rose crossed herself quickly at the thought of her weeping mother and Lydia seized on the precious pause.

“Gosh, Rose, what I have to tell James will make him very happy. I’m certain of it.”

Rose beamed, bursting with curiosity. In her head she was already stitching a satin wedding outfit and positioning a lace-rimmed collar, was already beating together the ingredients for a three-tiered wedding cake.

“I unnerstand you completely, Lydeea,” she said, “James’s ears are the first ears that should hear great news like that.” Rose clasped her hands together, hardly able to contain her joy. “Now, Lydeea, a wee drop o’ tea an’ a bun while we’re waitin’? My Paddy’s just away there, so him and James should be arrivin’ any minute.”

At three minutes to seven Paddy’s Morris Minor shuddered to a halt by Jamie’s front gate. He sounded the horn as usual, but it could not be heard above the racket Shep was making as he circled the car, yelping frantically.

Across the yard, behind the closed door of the barn, Jamie was draining the last of his Black Bush whiskey, mopping up the last of the cake crumbs with a moist finger from the torn paper bag.

Paddy heaved himself out of the car seat. “Now now, wee Shep,” he said, bending down to stroke the dog. “God, you’re terrible excited this evening, and so will Jamie be when he hears who’s waitin’ for him at our house.”

He secured the door of the Minor with the length of baler twine, as was his custom. He slowly wound it around the trunk handle. On this occasion, however, he exerted more pressure than was necessary.

The twine broke.

In the barn, Jamie smiled and climbed up onto a high bale.

An annoyed Paddy opened the trunk. He had another hank somewhere—but where now, that was the thing?

“Wait tae we see now,” he muttered to himself, then began rummaging through the disorder of the cluttered trunk.

A helpless Shep bounded toward the barn door, barking and moaning. He raced back to Paddy, jumping up and whimpering, but Paddy shooed him away and continued with his search.

In the McFadden farmhouse, Lydia accepted from Rose what was to be the first of many cups of tea. In the trunk of the car, Paddy finally found what he’d been looking for. And behind the timbered door of the barn, James Kevin Barry Michael McCloone placed a noose about his neck.