The Railway Station Man (18 page)

‘What's fact or fantasy?' he said. ‘Madness or sanity? We all live our lives in our own way. It's only when we become confused, disturbed in our own mind about things, that we should start to worry. I am neither confused nor disturbed.'

‘I envy your conviction. I've flitted for so long from one half-thought out truth to another, I've had no convictions worth bothering anyone about. I'm not even sure why I started to paint again. It certainly wasn't a desire to say something important to the world.'

There was a long silence. Somewhere outside someone switched on a radio, something country and western plucked and moaned.

‘I don't have anything to say anyway … that isn't pitifully thin.'

‘Perhaps you're not the best judge.'

She ignored him.

‘It would be so much easier if I wanted to paint charming landscapes for tourists. You see them all round the place in gift shops. Fifty pounds a crack. Something to remind you of your holiday in dear old Donegal. Blue mountains, thatched cottages, a donkey or two. Efficient. All bloody efficient. Dan tried to persuade me to do that years ago.' She smiled. ‘We had quite a row about it. He simply could not understand why I wouldn't do it. We both said quite a lot of silly things to each other.'

Roger rattled his fingers on the table. Rhythmic beats.

‘We usually said nothing to each other.'

He stopped drumming for a moment and touched her hand. She didn't seem to notice.

‘I think I was a sore disappointment to him. I wonder why nobody ever tells us the truth?'

He was rattling again. The wine in their glasses trembled.

‘Truth? My dear girl, if they started to tell us the truth we'd all jump back into the womb again and refuse to come out … Anyway people need those lies to keep themselves going. The more often you repeat something the more likely it is to become true. I was meant for you …' he sang the words softly ‘… and you were meant for me …' The fingers beat out the rhythm after his voice had stopped.

‘Slow foxtrot,' he said. ‘Remember the slow foxtrot?'

‘There's one thing.' Her voice was low. He had to lean across the table to catch the words. He kept his fingers quiet. ‘For such a long time I've wanted to say this to someone … but the right person never seemed to be around. I have never had either a priest or a psychiatrist … or perhaps a friend. You know Dan was shot?' She looked across the table towards him. He nodded. ‘That in itself was terrible. That brutality. Unforgivable, really. I found it unforgivable. I still feel that, each time I read about another … snatching of a life … I feel that same unforgiveness rising inside me. I don't mean I want vengeance or anything like that. I just feel I'd like the … well, perpetrator to know that I will never forgive him. Or her.' She smiled slightly. ‘I don't suppose anyone would be too worried by the awfulness of that threat. It's terribly un-Christian though.'

She reached into her pocket and brought out the box of cigarettes. She stood the box on the table in front of her.

‘That's not really what I wanted to say. After the shock, the disbelief, the confusion I felt happy. I mean I never mourned his leaving my life, never missed him. I never cried in the night because he wasn't there any more. I felt happy. I haven't dared to say those words to anyone before.' She opened the box and snatched a cigarette and put it in her mouth. She sat there staring at him, with the cigarette dangling from the corner of her lips. He put his hand out again and touched hers. He ran his fingers over the bumps of her knuckles and the wrinkling skin. He traced the blue veins with his finger.

‘How do you feel now?' he asked.

She pondered for a moment.

‘Much the same as I did ten minutes ago.'

‘So much for confession.'

He took his hand away from hers and plucked the cigarette out of her mouth and put it back in the box.

‘We'll abandon the goat's piss,' he said. ‘Lets go to McFaddens in Gortahork and have a real bottle of wine and some food. A night out. Hey?'

‘I …' She looked down at her overall. ‘I …'

‘Yes or no? No rumbling and mumbling about clothes or washing. Yes or …?'

She laughed.

‘Yes.'

It was late, the sky alive with stars and a hard bright moon hanging just out of hand's reach. He stopped the car outside her door. The glass porch glittered and reflected moon and night brightness. She opened the car door and got out. Politely he did the same, or, she wondered, did he have some ulterior motive.

She looked up at the sky.

‘What is the stars, Joxer? What is the stars?'

‘I had a telescope once. Oh … a long time ago. I rather fancied myself as a star gazer when I was about fifteen. I used to spend hours wrapped in a blanket on the roof, searching for something new. A comet or something that no one had ever seen before. Hawthorne's Comet.'

‘No luck?'

‘No luck.'

‘It's been a lovely evening. Thank you.'

She moved round towards the gate.

‘I hope you didn't find the drive home too much of a strain.'

‘I never worried for a moment. That's drink for you. Had I been sober I would have been in a state of nerves the whole way home. Thank you, Helen.' He held his hand out towards her. She put her hand in his and he bent and kissed it. Then he stood quite formally by the gate as she took the six steps along the little path to the door. She turned the handle. She felt the warmth of the house touch her as the door opened.

‘Goodnight,' she said. ‘Come and have a meal on Saturday evening … and protect me from Jack and his friend.'

‘Yes. I'd like that. Goodnight.'

She moved into the porch.

‘Helen,' he called.

She turned back towards him. From where she stood she could only see the whole side of his face. Silver sculpture. He looks quite Roman, she thought, a bit grim, like Romans always seemed to look.

‘Yes?'

‘I've had women you know. I'm not …'

‘You don't have to tell me things like that,' she shouted at him. ‘I can't bear people who tell me things like that.'

He nodded. He reached into the car and took the keys from the dashboard. He shut the door carefully and walked off along the road towards the station. She watched him as far as the corner, body stiff and slightly stooped. Man in the moon, not a Roman, she thought. She closed the door quietly so as not to disturb his walking silence.

When she got up the next morning and looked out of the window the car had gone.

It was a long drive. Boring afternoon, boring dusk, boring darkness across the entire flatness of the country.

Jack remembered as they passed through Boyle that he hadn't telephoned to Helen to say they would be late. She'll be rabid, he thought, and rude.

What the hell?

Boring.

Manus had been asleep since they had left Dublin, or had seemed to be asleep. Not anyway wanting conversation. His head lolled down towards his chest, his hands clasped loosely on his knee as if he were, in fact, at prayer. Even asleep his face looked quite composed, his clothes as well as his face remained uncrumpled. Two pens and the metal-framed glasses tucked into the top pocket of his grey suit gave him the respectable air of a minor official … on the way up of course, definitely on the way up.

As they approached Sligo town Jack spoke.

‘Will we stop for a drink? I could do with a drink. How about you?'

There was no reply from Manus.

‘Manus?'

‘Uhhuh?'

One of his hands moved slightly.

‘Will we stop for a drink?'

‘Where are we?'

He didn't bother to open his eyes.

‘Sligo.'

‘To hell with Sligo.'

That sounded like no drink.

Jack sighed.

It was a long time before either of them spoke.

‘Under bare Ben Bulben's head

In Drumcliffe churchyard Yeats is laid.'

Manus stirred beside him. Raised a hand and rubbed at the side of his nose.

‘An ancestor was rector there

Long years ago, a church stands near.

By the road an ancient cross.'

‘To hell with Yeats.'

‘Cast a cold eye …'

‘All poets.'

On life, on death. Horseman …'

‘The Russians have it right.'

‘… pass by.'

‘Prison is the place for poets.'

‘That's the only piece of poetry I remember after all those years wasted at school, learning, learning.'

‘I don't mean the moon in June types. Let them rant on and on about love and cypress trees and sunsets as long as they like. There's nothing like a good piece of patriotic verse. Workers arise and shake off your chains. Highly commendable. It's when they step out of line. Interfere with the inside of people's heads. Prison.'

‘No one reads them. I mean for God's sake, who reads poetry? A few students and a handful of highfalutin' intellectuals.'

‘The most insidious form of subversion. The artist's role should be to enhance, encourage, not undermine. The people must speak with one voice. I believe it is possible to achieve the perfect society. Perhaps the artists may have to be sacrificed.'

‘I never know when you're pulling my leg.'

‘You have an easy leg to pull. Where are we?'

‘Bare Ben Bulben's head is on our right.'

‘I may have heard of Yeats, but I never learnt any geography. How much longer dismal driving?'

‘You've been asleep.'

‘On and off.'

‘Why did you never take up driving?'

‘I couldn't be bothered. There's always someone around to give you a lift. No point in heaping that sort of hard work on yourself.' He paused for a long time. ‘The old eyes aren't great, if you want the truth. No need to spread it round.'

‘About an hour,' said Jack. ‘A bit more perhaps. My mother may be angry. Don't mind her.'

‘No. I don't suppose I will.'

He closed his sore eyes and appeared to sleep again.

‘Horseman pass by,' said Jack with resignation.

It was after half past eleven when they arrived in the village. Three street lamps and the odd glow from behind tightly pulled private curtains, no dogs or even drunks were about. As Jack turned the corner and began the uphill drive Manus opened his eyes. His head turned slightly to the left, his eyes glistened for a moment in the light from one of the lamps.

‘I can't stand the country. I feel my life falling apart further out of town than the Phoenix Park, for God's sake. Are we nearly there?'

‘Two minutes.'

‘I hate silence. And darkness. And bloody culchies picking their noses.'

‘You're going to have a very painful couple of days.'

‘All for Ireland.'

They both laughed for a moment, and then the cottage was there, a light shining in the porch.

‘That's it,' said Jack. He pulled over to the side of the road and stopped the car.

Manus got out and stretched his arms above his head, wriggled his stiff shoulders, took the cottage into his eyes.

‘I've always been told that Protestants didn't live in cottages.'

Jack laughed. He opened the back door of the car and took out their bags.

‘It just shows how misinformed you've been all these years. Here.' He held Manus's bag out towards him. Manus took it. Jack opened the gate and they walked the few steps to the hall door.

‘Breathe that air,' said Jack. ‘That's great air.'

‘Give me petrol fumes and the smell of the gas works.'

Helen was in the sitting room watching the advertisements on the television.

She was in her dressing gown and bare feet with her hair still damp hanging down around her shoulders. Like as though she was still young, thought Jack. Not fifty, getting on.

She stood up when they came into the room and switched off the set.

‘Have you never heard of a telephone?' she said.

‘I'm sorry, mother.'

‘I was just about to have a last cigarette and go to bed. Waiting … waiting is so tiring.' She looked past Jack at Manus. ‘Hello.'

‘This is Manus.'

‘Hello, Manus.'

Manus nodded his head and mumbled something.

She went over to Jack and kissed him.

‘You're forgiven. I saw a tangled heap of metal on the road somewhere. I'm like that.'

‘All the telephones we tried were vandalised,' lied Jack.

She laughed. ‘Don't bother with that rubbish,' she said.

Manus spoke. ‘It was my fault, Mrs Cuffe, I held him up leaving Dublin. Slap me if you like.' He held his hand out towards her. She ignored the playful gesture.

‘You must be exhausted. Go and put your things in your room and I'll get you both a drink. I've put up the camp bed in your room, Jack, you can both argue about who sleeps where. I've only the two bedrooms,' she explained sideways to Manus.

Another myth shattered, thought Jack.

When they went into the kitchen, ten minutes later, she was stirring something in a saucepan on the stove.

‘Help yourselves to a drink. There's just soup and scrambled eggs. I hope that's okay?'

‘That's fine.'

Jack poured out two glasses of whisky and shoved the water jug towards Manus.

‘You? Mother?'

‘No thanks. I'm going to bed quite soon. I'm getting up early to work these days.'

Manus put a drop of water into his whisky and drank the lot in one large gulp. ‘God, I needed that.' He looked meaningfully at the bottle. Jack poured him another measure.

‘Thanks.' He clasped both hands around the glass as if he were afraid that someone might try to take it from him.

‘Are you in college with Jack?' asked Helen.

Manus laughed.

She turned from the scrambled egg to stare at him.