The Sleepers of Erin (16 page)

‘Excuse us, Gerald,’ Shinny interrupted. ‘Lovejoy’s working out the route.’

‘On the map!’ He nodded like a pot Mandarin. ‘That’s a wise move, sure it is. I’d have brought my book of maps if I’d known we were going somewhere.’ He unfolded himself and gazed at the clearing sky. ‘First dry day since St Patrick banished the snakes! I’ll trot over the bog for an instant.’

I watched him stride out across the hillside. He travelled over the uneven rising round at a deceptively fast speed. He really did resemble an enormous malnourished scarecrow, his trousers flapping at half mast and his forearms protruding from his threadbare jacket. He was in a worse state than me.

Shinny was gazing fondly after him. ‘Isn’t he a darlin’! Always was the clever one of the family.’

‘I can’t make him out.’ I nicked the dregs from the flask. ‘Is he always like this?’

‘Sure who’d want to change him?’

‘Shinny.’ I wanted to get a few things straight. ‘Exactly what’s he doing with us?’

‘To help me protect you, Lovejoy,’ she said evenly. ‘Any other questions?’

Planning a trans-Ireland route isn’t easy without revealing the destination, especially when a co-planner sits close to you and links your arm and doesn’t pay much attention. We took some time. I must have become preoccupied because suddenly there was Gerald, theatrically distressed with hands spread on his chest.

‘Ah, isn’t it the bitter pill?’ he exclaimed melodramatically.

‘Eh?’

‘Pay no attention, Lovejoy.’ Shinny pointed at the yellow line of the N52 on the map. ‘If it’s Limerick you’re wanting, we should keep on through Mullingar and Tullamore.’

‘I turn me back and find you unfaithful! Marry me, Sinead. Get rid of Lovejoy! You’ll have to sooner or later. The banns can be called—’

‘
Gerald
!’ Shinny tried her bandsaw voice but didn’t quite make it. Gerald clearly had the knack of bringing out a bird’s dimples.

‘Very well!’ He put on a show of inexpressible grief and collapsed his limbs behind the wheel. The engine wheezed into life. He bawled, ‘Then, avaunt! I go!’ The van jerked away, sending Shinny and me tumbling aside. We’d been sitting on the running-board.

‘You silly—’ I cursed after the goon.

Shinny was helpless with laughter as we got up. ‘That Gerald!’ she said.

I looked after Gerald’s erratic hulk as it rocked on to the Dundalk road and headed back the way we had just come. An irritated saloon hooted at its sudden obstruction but Gerald’s long thin arm only emerged to give it and the world a royal wave.

‘I don’t believe this. What the hell do we do now?’ We had a dated map, now wet through from where it had fallen in a puddle, and an empty flask. I’d be surprised if that wasn’t broken.

Shinny was still laughing. ‘It’s just his way, darling. He’ll be wanting us to wait here.’

The recess was only thirty yards long. Another car swished by to Dundalk, and a container lorry pulled on southwards. It was a pretty lonely stretch of road. If we started walking we would be utterly exposed, caught in the open by any passing car. We were trapped.

‘I’d strangle the lunatic. If I could reach his larynx.’

Shinny was astonished. ‘Gerald? You
can’t
be annoyed at
Gerald
!’

‘He couldn’t have left us in a worse place.’

‘Can’t you see? He’s only looking after us!’

‘Bring the flask and that map.’

The roadside was bare of cover, but the ground dipped from the road on one side. I pulled Sinead’s hand. We climbed over on to rather spongy ground. From there the slope undulated soggily up to a line of moderate hills. Walking across these fells would be murder, though Gerald had made it look easy somehow. Apart from a plastic bag or two, nothing. Another car hummed past heading for Mullingar. Another was coming from the south. Asking for a lift would be risky. What if it turned out to be Kurak?

‘Here.’ With some effort I dragged a longish stone astraddle two others. As long as we sat there we could not be seen from the road. Shinny came beside me, her arm through mine. She was still enjoying herself. I said sourly, ‘Lunacy run in the family, does it?’

‘Silly!’

‘Is this bog?’ I nodded at the damp brown-green countryside. We were leaning back. I’d never seen such a smooth fellside in all my life.

‘Sure what else could it be, you stupid man!’

That surprised me. ‘I thought it was a joke.’

‘Some joke.’ She told me there were several sorts of bog. ‘I guess this is red bog. It came about 4,000 years
BC
. Just grew, so they say, covering everything. People are always studying it for interesting plants and digging up bones.’

‘Whose bones?’

‘The Giant Deer. Lived here, poor things, before they died out. Red bog’s ten yards deep.’

‘Down to what?’

‘Silly old stone, of course.’ She snapped the words and savagely turned on me. ‘Lovejoy. What
am
I doing here, wet through, talking about sphagnum moss when I could be warm and cosy miles away doing something useful? I must be off my head!’

Women get like this. I said helpfully, ‘If you like, Gerald can drop me off at Mullingar—’

‘
Lovejoy
.’ She managed the bandsaw voice this time without effort. ‘You think you can hide from everybody for ever. All your crazy tricks, all your pretending—’

There was more of this rubbish. On and on she went, yapping about my unnatural furtiveness and resentments of people’s perfectly human willingness to become involved. I sat meekly by, nodding attentively as if I really was listening.

While she talked, though, my eyes were roaming the countryside and my mind was on the real surface of Ireland, ten yards down.

I’d imagined hearing that familiar clattering engine a dozen times and almost given up hope when Gerald returned, an hour later.

‘Stay down, love,’ I told Shinny. We listened as the van creaked to a halt.

‘Repent, ye sinners!’ Gerald’s voice called. ‘Do not think that you can hide your fornication—’

‘It’s him!’ Shinny was delighted.

We climbed up sheepishly and got in. Gerald wagged a finger at us.

‘Before we proceed onwards,’ he intoned, ‘you’ll be pleased to know I forgive you both!’

‘For what?’ I growled.

‘Sinead for refusing to give me her wifely duty—’

‘Whist, you terrible man!’ Shinny was rolling in the aisles.

‘And you, Lovejoy, for lack of trust.’

I wasn’t having that. ‘You left us stranded.’

‘There’s a petrol strike at the garages,’ he announced inconsequentially. ‘We’re in terrible difficulty.’

The gauge had never moved off Empty since he had met us outside Trinity College. I was near to taking a swing at the silly berk. Sinead’s hand fell restrainingly on my arm.

‘Gerald,’ she said, ‘why did you go off like that?’

He looked suddenly shy and reamed an ear out with a little finger. Sinead reached for his hand.

‘Please, Gerald. Say. Lovejoy’s worried. He doesn’t understand.’

Sheepishly he cleared his throat. ‘While we were having coffee and a chat, thirty-five motors passed us. One passed us twice, an old black Talbot. The second time, it was going back to Dundalk.’ He jerked his head at the slope. ‘Up there you can see quite far. The Talbot was parked a mile off. They followed me back into Kells. They’re locked in a garage.’ I drew breath to ask how come but thought better of it. ‘To delay them,’ he ended.

‘There, Lovejoy!’ Shinny’s eyes were shining. She pulled herself forwards and kissed him. ‘Isn’t he clever?’

‘Then marry me, you stupid woman!’ Instantly the old Gerald was back, and Shinny had to fight herself clear of his frantic leching.

‘Get away with you!’

I was thinking, good old Lovejoy. Dim as a charity lamp. ‘Look,’ I said. ‘Gerald, mate. Sorry. I’m just a bit thicker than usual these days . . .’

‘Is apology needed between those who love the divinest poet—?’ He rolled the van out ahead of a demented two-tonner.

‘Er,’ I said, trying to make amends, ‘er, what sort of poetry do you write, Gerald?’

‘He hasn’t done any yet,’ Shinny explained.

‘Ah! But what lovely words they’ll be when they’re spoken!’ Gerald bawled, his limbs all on the go. ‘I’ve thought of first using an overly-simplistic sonnet format . . .’

I subsided, Shinny holding my hand in consolation.

At Mullingar I told him to follow the N52 straight ahead to Tullamore and Birr. He cried out that sure it was a darlin’ road, one to warm the cockles of your heart, and immediately swung us right on the N4 heading north-west for Longford. Shinny smiled at me. I swallowed, said not a word, smiled my best Sunday smile, and didn’t raise a finger.

That journey to Limerick was weird. It sticks in my mind. Partly of course because of Gerald’s demented driving, his endless yap about poetry and thinking up daft schemes to get Sinead to marry him, and partly because of the route we took. On the map the N52 road does it all, running slap into the N7 Dublin-Limerick trunk only a few miles out of Limerick’s safe haven. Instead, we travelled over 300 miles that lunatic day, all of it through bland, endless countryside. I never thought I’d long for the sight of a copse or a forest.

Gerald, spouting incomprehensible poetry, drove us all that day, through Longford and across the Shannon, to Roscommon where we might have turned safely south, on westward over the River Suck, then doubling back into Ballinasloe. There we had some fast grub and went to the loo, then clattering on south through Portumna and Scarriff into Limerick. It was getting dark by then, and we had to find a hotel with a restaurant. Even then Gerald couldn’t stay still a minute, fidgeting and standing up and walking about while Sinead and I ate. She saw nothing odd in his behaviour. (‘Oh, he’s a born glassbum, Lovejoy. Take no notice.’) Weirdest of all, nobody else in the hotel seemed to think him odd, either. They quite took to him, all prattling away over that black stout stuff.

‘Does he never stop talking?’ I asked.

‘Gerald?’ The question puzzled her. ‘Sure why would he want to stay silent, a man like him?’

I gave up, still perished from that crazy journey. Shinny had been cold in the van’s uncontrollable gales, but not spiritually like me. I felt like clinging to the stone walls of real houses, streets, shops. I knew from the map that luscious docks, post offices, libraries and churches abounded – an oasis of mankind in all those miles of rivers, flat green-brown turf and low hills.

‘Is it the chill in your soul you have, darling?’ she said softly. We were in a hotel dining room, me wading through the main course second time round.

‘Just hungry.’

She smiled. ‘Don’t think about those horrible people if it frightens you—’

‘Me? Scared?’ I emitted a harsh laugh. The twins had thought the same. Women really nark you, forever reckoning they understand how you’re feeling, the stupid berks. ‘Ice-cream was the third course at Henry the Fifth’s coronation banquet,’ I told her. ‘Eat it up and be quiet.’

‘Full, thanks. What happens tomorrow, Lovejoy?’

‘We do the sights. Misericords in St Mary’s Cathedral, antique shops.’ Her eyes narrowed disbelievingly at this innocence. ‘Is the Hunt collection still at that Education Institute? I’ve heard those Bronze Age gold torcs are local . . .’

I left Shinny and got through to Tinker in a phone booth a few minutes later. He was at the White Hart, and still only partly sloshed but delighted to hear me.

‘Tinker,’ I shouted into the hubbub of the taproom. ‘That furniture auction, Northampton, three years back. Remember? You, me and Margaret?’

‘Aye. That bloody escritoire.’

‘Tinker, that big bloke on his own. Bid for a lot of Regency silver and got none—’

‘You mean Big Joe Bassington? The sleeper man?’ Tinker’s emphysematous laugh ripped my eardrum. ‘Never bought a thing at an auction in his life, thieving Cockney bastard.’

‘Good lad, Tinker.’

‘First met him pulling the old sleeper game down in Bethnal Green with an early David Quare barometer—’

With a quick cheerio I hung up. Tinker’s endless reminiscences were famous and intolerable. Besides, I had what I wanted. Big Joe Bassington was the sleeper man. So why all this Kurak-the-Slav business?

After supper Gerald was still flitting about somewhere like a talkative cranefly so we left him and went for a stroll. There’s something about a town that no amount of picturesque rurality can convey, isn’t there, bustle and contact and human endeavour. They say the Irish love a good gossip, and as far as I’d seen it’s true, but Shinny told me that people living out in the remote countryside hardly ever spoke from one month’s end to the next. Anyway, all that rusticity was past. In the safe confines of Newton Pery – the posh commercial bit – we wandered and looked at the shops and peered at the other hotels. We went to the bus terminus and the railway station. I began to feel quite warm again. Near there was an antique shop where I bought a dumb violin for the price of a box of fags. Shinny thought me off my head.

‘What would we be wanting with that piece of rubbish?’ she demanded. ‘It’s not even got proper strings.’

‘We’ve just passed a music shop. Hurry, before they close.’

We made it with five minutes to spare, and I got a complete set of four new strings, including a good steel E.

I was delighted with it. ‘It’s a find, love. A really rare find.’

‘Is it something for the stage?’

Dumb violins were made for practice, mostly in Victorian or late Georgian days. They are completely solid, not soundboxed like proper ones. This had rather faded sound holes painted on its table, and its wooden bridge was tied round its fingerboard with a piece of old cord, thank God. The purfling was beautifully carved. Most exciting of all, the line between the bridge feet was a straight horizontal, not a modern curve. The bow had gone, but you can’t have everything.

‘No. Doesn’t play at all – well, a sound like a trapped gnat. Only the player can hear, so you can practise to your heart’s content. Even with other people living or sleeping in the same room.’

‘Would you credit that!’

‘When we’ve time I’ll put the strings on and give you a silent tune—’ I was quite serious, but she fell about.