Torn Water Read online

  James returns the salute in a more relaxed fashion, as if he is a general at arms dismissing a trusty aide.

  Chin Chin bows in Plug's direction, then turns and marches towards his car. When he reaches it, he stops for a second and turns back to the two boys. ‘Shannon's been looking for you.’

  He finds Shannon in Kerry's garden at the back of the house. Kerry leads him there, her chiffon dress billowing about her body, her sizeable breasts swathed in huge ruffs of cloth, a glass of punch gripped in her right hand. ‘Did anyone ever tell you that you have the look of a young Laurence Harvey?’

  ‘Er, no.’

  ‘Well, you do … You do.’ On the final coo of the word ‘do’ she gives him a long, lingering look, then runs her tongue along the upper rim of her lips. He can vaguely see the bulb-like silhouette of Shannon sitting on a garden bench. Before she goes Kerry thrusts her glass of punch into James's hand. ‘Here, this'll keep you warm.’

  He takes a seat beside his teacher, the smell of the punch rising to his nostrils, causing him to squint.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Shannon says.

  ‘Yes.’

  Silently they watch Kerry walk back up the garden, her chiffon dress billowing about her body like a loosened cargo of ghosts.

  They lapse into silence. It is this, the quieter man, whom James is most attracted to. The man who now sits beside him, an empty peace hanging over him like a half-remembered name. Suddenly Shannon's dainty hands make a light pan across his face, one after the other as if he is a large squirrel welcoming warmer months. He looks at James and stares at him for a moment.

  ‘How goes it, fair Lavery?’

  ‘Fine, sir.’

  ‘Good … good.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘What a sodding country …’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘There is something rotten in the state of the Six Counties, Lavery.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘”Now is the very witching time of night, when churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out contagion to this world” … Play?’

  ‘Hamlet, sir.’

  ‘It's all Hamlet, Lavery. Everything is fecking Hamlet’

  A tentative silence falls once more but, sensing it, Shannon rises quickly to his feet. ‘Up and at ‘em, Lavery, up and at ‘em.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Up and at ‘em.’

  ‘That's the stuff, young La very.’

  As they begin to walk back towards the house, James suddenly remembers the glass of punch that Kerry had given him, and runs back to get it. He raises it quickly to his lips. As the liquid hits his tongue, he wonders briefly at the rush of warmth that rears deep in the seat of his soul.

  Within the hour he is cajoled into performing one of his deaths. At first he resists, holding out his hands in front of him as if he is King Canute trying to force back a pressing tide. He is standing in Kerry's living room, people hemming him in on every side.

  ‘Go on, you big girl's jersey. Jarlath's just sung “The Four Green Fields”,’ he hears Cathal Murphy whisper.

  ‘Everyone does a turn – that's the law, baby,’ Kerry shouts, as she passes with a breakfast tray laden with drinks. ‘You next, my boy,’ she says to Plug, as she wafts by him.

  ‘I can't,’ James says.

  ‘Can,’ Shannon says unhelpfully.

  ‘I think it's bloody weird,’ Patricia O'Hare says, her lipstick smudged and smeared so that she looks as if she has a clown's mouth.

  ‘What is?’ Cathal asks her.

  ‘This death thing. It's weird,’ she blurts.

  ‘Oh, it's only a bit of fun.’

  ‘Well, I don't think it's funny. It's bloody weird.’

  ‘What's it to be, fair Lavery?’ Shannon shouts, raising his glass in a toast.

  ‘Hemlock, sir.’

  ‘Ah, King Hamlet.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Fast, Lavery, you are fast – I can't for the life of me work out whether you are a genius or a charlatan, Lavery.’

  ‘The latter, sir.’

  Hemlock in My Ear

  I love my garden. I love the peacefulness of it. I especially like it after a fall of rain when everything shines as if it has just been painted. I like nothing more than to lie here as I am doing now, in the late afternoon, and listen to the heavy hum of bees and watch flower petals float to the ground. I used to play with my son James here when he was younger. I used to chase him and tease him. Now, though, he is older and I am preparing him to take over the kingship of these Six Counties. He is a good boy, a little too sensitive for my liking but he means well.

  I love the smell of the garden. I love the beauty. I often dream I am flying and the garden is holding me as if I am on a magic carpet. I think that I am a good king. I've always tried to be fair, to be good. I have a wife. Queen Ann, who is younger than I, and I worry about her sometimes. I think she thinks that the world is only here for her pleasure, and that saddens me. It makes her selfish. I also have a brother, Prince Sully, but we have never got on, I find him oafish, aggressive, and very jealous of me.

  I have been having the strangest dreams recently. I dreamed that I had a problem with my right ear. It felt as if an earwig had crawled into it or some such thing and caused me great pain. In my dream Prince Sully and my queen are both peering into it – my ear, that is – and telling me that they can find nothing untoward. Then I go into horrible spasms and my garden lifts me up and carries me away, just as it has in many dreams many times before. And as I leave I see my brother and my queen below me kissing passionately on the hard earth where the garden used to be …

  15. Kerry and the Fox

  Hands explore him. He can feel the scramble of fingers across his skin and the sweep of a palm moving towards his groin. He blinks furiously, trying to remember. Lips meet his, thin, desperate lips nipping and digging. He feels a tongue against his. He feels sick. He tries to lift his head, but fails. He feels the hand break into the hairy part of his body. Disgust swirls in his gut. He arches his torso. He hears words of comfort come from the body that straddles his. He smells the odour of underarm and booze.

  The kissing stops. His eyes become more accustomed to the dark. He can make out the tousle of the person's hair, the limp dangle of her bra strap and the white spill of her breast. Slowly he sees Kerry's face begin to take shape in front of him.

  He can smell her sex. It frightens him. It smells like charcoal cinders in the rain. He watches as she pulls at his clothing, riding it up over his nipples, her hands flashing like daggers in the darkness. He hears her say, ‘Sweet.’ He puts his arms across his torso, and gingerly lifts his head. He hears the word ‘please’ leave his lips. Daylight is breaking. He can see a long tablet of light forming behind the curtains. He senses her lips descending to meet his again and tries to roll on to his side.

  He remembers the glass moving towards his lips, and the sudden thrust of anticipation in his throat. He sees Shannon strut towards Kerry's back door. As he rolls across the bed, away from Kerry's desperate hands, pieces of the previous few hours fall into place. He can remember lying in the middle of the living-room floor shortly after the first drink. He remembers feeling the hemlock enter his ear and his body lock as it began to spasm. Everyone had laughed as he had sat bolt upright and begun to gag, his hands clutching the side of his head in pain. He remembers calling his queen's name.

  Then he sees another glass placed before his lips; he sees the painted nails of the hand that holds it. This time the drink tastes harsher, and seems to scold the back of his throat. He can remember the slap of his vomit hitting the black soil of Kerry's garden and the stippled pattern it made on his plimsolls.

  He is now lying on his side facing away from her, his arms crossed, holding himself. He feels her hot breath on his neck as she plants kisses there. Her hands are now moving across his back. He feels one reach his buttock. He jumps to his feet, head spinning. He fumbles with the fly of his jeans, cursing.

  ‘What's the rush?’
she says.

  ‘Please …’

  ‘Sssh … There's nothing to be afraid of, darling.’

  The third drink had tasted of cough mixture. He was in Kerry's living room, and he remembers dropping the glass and hearing it smash what seemed like minutes later. Vaguely he recalls being led through a doorway into a small bedroom where coats hung, like the husks of bodies, from the corner of every cupboard and shelf. He remembers his body surrendering to the dense black power of the room.

  He remembers Kerry's palm on his brow, the soothing breaths she blew across his face. He remembers her hand creeping across his belly before she left, leaving him staring unsteadily into the darkness.

  He looks back at her. Her head is in her hands. ‘Er … I'm going.’

  ‘You sure, sweetheart?’

  He nods. He can see her more clearly now: her face looks thuggish; her hair hangs heavy and lank about her shoulders. She looks manly, he thinks. Almost comically her left breast still hangs free of her dress, like a fleshy escarpment, its pointed nipple pert and bullet-like.

  He fights his way clear of the room, stumbling against unfamiliar furniture. He hears her sigh. He doesn't look back but focuses on reaching the kitchen door. He wrenches it open and lurches through it, straight into a scrum of vomiting. Nothing comes, only small straggly threads of saliva. Eventually he stands up and walks in the direction of his home.

  Once or twice he throws a look back towards the house and imagines her lying in her rumpled bed, her exposed breast spilling across her upper body. He wonders how he can face everyone at the next rehearsal. He imagines their faces, their gossipy nods and their smirks. He thinks about his friend Plug. He feels a stabbing of guilt in his heart.

  He shakes his head, raises his hands to his face and looks up at the morning sky. Everything seems bled of colour, as if he is walking in an old newsreel. He thinks of his father and the photograph. He thinks of him sealed in its flat landscape, endlessly looking out at a world that didn't care. He thinks of the half-smile on his father's face, the soft smile of someone who loved all that life was showing him.

  He shudders, as if someone has quickly passed by him and stolen a look at the workings of his heart. He stops and looks around him, at the hedgerows and the tops of the trees. Then he feels foolish, ashamed of the panic in his glances. He tells himself that the presence he feels is only his heart regarding itself.

  He sees a fox break free of the shuck to his left, watches as it runs to the far line of grass where it stops suddenly and looks at him. For a moment their eyes lock. He envies the self-possessed gleam of its stare, the soft amber glow of wildness. He wonders what the fox sees when it looks at him. Did it feel sorrow for the two-footed beast that was caught at the threshold of two worlds?

  By the time he has reached his home and crept stealthily to bed he has told himself that no one need know about Kerry. He will tell Plug he passed out in her spare room, woke later that night and walked home. He goes to bed and sinks into a heavy sleep, dreaming of falling into a dark room that spins on the point of one of its corners, in which he scrambles frantically to stand upright.

  Then the dream changes. The spinning continues, but this time he is being spun in the deep cavern of Kerry's mouth, his thin, delicate body turning on the point of her tongue. Eventually he is spat out, like a torn morsel of food, and lies crumpled on the ground looking up at Kerry's giantess face and seeing with horror that she has the hunting eyes of a fox, in which desire beats with a soft amber glow.

  In the Mouth of a Fox

  I must pretend to be dead: that way I am safe. I can feel the large fox's presence. I must keep my eyes tightly closed and stop my small chest from moving up and down. My wing is broken. I caught it on a telegraph wire as I came down from the sky to grab a sip of water from the lake by the road. I don't know if I will ever fly again, but first things first: I must survive the next few moments. I think of my dear aunt Teezy, a fine fat swallow who has flown many miles, over many continents. I rely on my auntie Teezy: she looks after me. It was she who told me about my father, a very fine proud swallow, who had flown away years before.

  Teezy always told me that the main thing about a fox is that it likes to play with its prey and watch as it struggles to get away. On the other hand, if it has recently eaten it will pass by a dead bird. Maybe it is nothing more than an old swallow's tale, but I will soon find out. I must stay still. I will pretend I am not here. I am just a marking on the road. I don't exist, I'm telling myself. I have no history, no father, no mother, not even an aunt Teezy.

  It is smelling me, I can feel its wet nose rubbing against my tummy feathers, and I can hear its tongue licking and slurping. It hasn't eaten recently: it is going to eat me whole. I must get away. I struggle to my feet and, dragging my broken wing behind me, I try to flee. I know I look pathetic and ridiculous but, you see, my life depends on it.

  I don't get very far before I feel the mouth of the fox enclose me and its tongue run across my body. It is warmer in here than I thought it would be. I feel myself being spun round and round like a little acorn in the wind. It is making me giddy and I catch glimpses of the outside world through the fox's teeth.

  I am spat out, and now I lie on the ground all wet and soggy looking up at the big red face of the fox. It opens its jaws and this time I know it will not play with me but finish me off with one crunch of its large yellow teeth. As it bends its head towards me to kill me, I look deep into its eyes and know that they remind me of someone. Someone who flew away a long time ago.

  16. The Post-mortem

  The following Monday James misses rehearsal, preferring to sit in his bedroom locked in his thoughts, shaking the shame from his mind as he remembers his encounter with Kerry. The thought of her old hands on his skin fills him with revulsion. For the whole evening he sits and looks out of the window at the kingdoms of clouds that reel and twist through the sky. He stares at the spirals of mist and darkened sky, and wishes himself there, being turned this way and that in the sweet flavour of their air. He watches until it is dark, then waits until the stars come out and tries to guess which one is his father. After a while he gives up, closes the curtains, and drifts off into a dark starless sleep.

  At two thirty on Tuesday afternoon, on his way to religious studies, Mr Shannon comes up to him. He stops James by blocking his route, and by holding his briefcase level with his downward gaze so that James has no choice but to read the embossed initials of the teacher's name: A. G. S. Shannon.

  ‘Remember me?’

  He looks up into the fierce, playful gaze of the teacher's eyes. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Good, because for a moment I thought a new boy had enrolled in this estimable seat of learning, one with your questionable good looks but without the spirit. A doppelgänger, in fact.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Where are you off to?’

  ‘Religious studies, sir.’

  ‘And with whom do you have that dubious pleasure?’

  ‘Father Boyle, sir.’

  By now the other boys have gone, the two-thirty bell for class having cleared the corridors as if a plague has been declared. One boy hurtles along the corridor towards them.

  ‘Don't run, McCracken. Walk with dignity at all times.’

  McCracken slows to a stumbling walk, his legs almost wobbling in protest, his school tie hanging undone about his shoulders.

  ‘Do up your tie, McCracken, you look … forlorn.’

  He does up his tie and throws a quizzical look at James, then disappears round the corner. Shannon looks at James and winks as they hear McCracken's feet quicken, then resume their sprint.

  ‘Accompany me, La very.’

  ‘Where to, sir?’

  ‘The staff room.’

  ‘But, sir – ’

  ‘Don't fret yourself about Boyle – forgive me, Father Boyle – I will take care of it. Now, let's boogie.’

  They enter the staff room, which is deserted apart from Mr Hogben. He sits
in the far corner of the room surrounded by exercise books, his hair, as usual, tufted and dishevelled.

  ‘Mr Hogben.’

  ‘Mr Shannon.’

  Shannon slaps his briefcase down heavily on the large communal table that sits in the middle of the room. ‘Do you want a cup of tea or coffee, Lavery?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Which?’

  ‘Tea … sir.’

  Hogben looks up and said, ‘Two sugars, Master Lavery.’

  ‘Sorry, sir.’

  ‘I take two sugars in my tea – and milk. That's the boy.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Once the tea is made and Hogben has taken delivery of his, James sits opposite Shannon at the far end of the room to Hogben, the two of them throwing Hogben occasional glances of impatience. ‘Did you want one, sir?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tea or coffee, sir?’

  ‘No … thank you, La very.’

  He sips his tea, feeling uneasy in this teachers' den, the steam from his cup tickling the inside of his nose.

  ‘Where were you last night?’

  ‘I was at home, sir.’

  ‘You were due at rehearsal, or had it escaped your notice?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘No, sir, no, sir – what does that mean?’

  ‘No, sir, it hadn't escaped my notice.’

  ‘Where were you?’

  ‘At home, sir.’

  ‘Do I have to drag every tired response out of you, La very? The question I'm asking, in case you hadn't guessed, is why?’

  ‘Why what, sir?’

  ‘Is everything all right, Lavery?’

  ‘What do you mean, sir?’

  ‘At home. Is everything all right at home?’

  At that moment Hogben stands and begins to gather his notebooks. Shannon waits. Before Hogben leaves he comes and stands by them, his hand fiddling with a few straggles of his renegade hair. ‘Is he any good, then?’ he asks.

  ‘Who, Mr Hogben?’

  ‘This reprobate.’

  ‘He'll do, Mr Hogben, he'll do.’

  ‘I couldn't bloody do it, I tell you – you know, act.’