Turbulent Priests (Dan Starkey 3) (6 page)

I stepped up behind Charlie at the wheel. He nodded benignly as I joined him. ‘Lovely morning,’ I said.

‘Aye,’ he replied.

He had a finely cut beard, curiously at odds with his hair. ‘You been doing this run for long?’ I asked.

‘Aye,’ he said, ‘long enough.’

‘And how are things on the island?’

‘Aye, well, not bad.’

‘Good,’ I said. He was the sort that wouldn’t be fazed by the arrival of the Antichrist, let alone the Messiah. He’d say, ‘Aye, well, another plague today, but there yees are,’ and be more concerned about the boat leaving on time. I rejoined Patricia in the car.

‘What’s out of Captain Birdseye?’ she asked.

‘Nothing,’ I said.

The journey took little over an hour. As pleasant a sea trip as I had ever undertaken. The sea undulated gently, the wind remained light and elbow-cooling. Gulls shadowed us the whole way, fooled by the old trawler and the fishy smell emanating from Little Stevie’s nappy.

The harbour was awkward to approach, the currents forcing us wide. Half a dozen other trawlers were tied up on the quay. As Charlie ran the
Fitzpatrick
to the dock we left the car again and stood up front, picking out details ashore. The town itself – a village really – was tightly clustered around the harbour. Small whitewashed cottages faced the sea. Taller, more modern terraces, with ground floors speckled here and there with shops, ran back up a hill towards a crown dominated by a church glinting in the autumnal sun. It was a beautiful day. Patricia slipped her hand into mine. I squeezed it. She smiled up at me, then at the island. ‘Lovely,’ she said.

Charlie threw a rope ashore and a couple of young lads secured the vessel. Then he lowered the gate and I eased
the Fiesta up onto the dock. He waved. We waved back. Stevie managed a gurgle.

‘Welcome to paradise,’ I said and we both laughed.

We were still laughing two hundred yards further on when we came to the pub.

I’d done my research. There was one pub on the island. Jack McGettigan’s. He’d run it for thirty years. It was just a pub. He didn’t serve lunch. He didn’t have discos. There wasn’t even a dart board. He served pints and shorts and that was it, and that was all you needed. It was certainly all I needed. I’d idly fantasised about doing my thousand words in the morning in my lonely garret, contented wife and playful child notwithstanding, then sauntering down to the pub for a few drinks, then meandering home for a few hundred more words, a cuddle with the wife and a tickle with the child, then spending the evening talking it up with the locals and old Jack himself over a few more pints; maybe even sticking my head out the door every once in a while to see if there were any miracles taking place up on the hill.

I stopped the car.

‘What’s wrong?’ Patricia asked.

Suddenly I felt drained. Like Dracula had sucked me dry. ‘The pub,’ I said.

Patricia nodded. ‘What of it?’

‘It’s closed.’

‘It’s early yet.’

I shook my head and opened the door. ‘No, I mean, it’s
closed.’ I stood in the road. ‘It’s boarded up. It’s closed. Closed down. Look at it, Patricia.’

She looked at it.

‘The fucking pub is closed.’

‘So it is.’

‘Did you know this?’

‘Jesus, Dan, how would I know it?’

I left the door open and stepped up to the door. I pulled at it, but it was well secured. The windows too were boarded. ‘Jesus,’ I said.

The two young fellas who’d secured the
Fitzpatrick
appeared behind the car. One had a Royal Mail bag slung over his shoulder. There didn’t appear to be much in it. He wore an Aran jumper and had curly hair which owed nothing to a hairdresser.

‘What happened to the pub?’ I asked.

‘Shut,’ he said.

‘For good?’

‘Aye.’

‘Did Old Jack die?’

‘Nah, he’s around yet.’

They walked on. I got back in the car. ‘Fuck it,’ I said, and slapped the wheel. ‘Is it too late to go home?’

Patricia snorted.

‘This isn’t funny. I didn’t even bring a fucking carry-out.’

She squeezed my leg. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, without a trace of sympathy.

‘Imagine closing a pub. Who ever heard of it? I mean, what do the people do?’

‘Dan, they make their own. That’s what they do in places like this. Poteen.’

‘Bugger poteen. I want my Harp.’

‘Dan, there’s a boat in a couple of days. Go back and get some supplies then if you’re that desperate.’

‘That’s a year and a day away, for God’s sake. What am I supposed to do till then?’

‘Suffer.’

‘Thanks.’

I’d once tried to make poteen as a youth. It involved boiling a lot of potatoes and fermenting the residue. I didn’t manage to create anything even vaguely alcoholic, though I did get a nice stew out of it.

I sat silent behind the wheel for a moment and tried to think things through. It wasn’t that the beer was so important to me: knowing it was there and available would in reality have been sufficient; I didn’t
have
to have it; but knowing that it wasn’t there and it was a sea journey away, that was the killer. A real bloody killer. I slapped the wheel again.

‘There’s beer on this island somewhere,’ I said. ‘There must be.’

‘Forget the beer for a moment, love,’ Patricia said. ‘It’s time for milk.’ She nodded down at Little Stevie. He started to cry. They had plainly rehearsed it.

Then it was Patricia’s turn to grin.

We followed a winding road out along the coast for about
a mile, then when we came to a lighthouse we turned inland. Another half-mile further on we came to Snow Cottage. Home.

There was a bath lying on its side in the front garden. It was half filled with murky water. The cottage walls had once been whitewashed but were now damp and dark. The garden was wildly overgrown.

‘I don’t like this,’ Patricia said simply.

‘Now don’t jump to conclusions. It’s probably a little palace inside.’

‘Aye,’ she said.

‘You know,’ I said, ‘you can be very sarcastic when you try.’

‘That wasn’t even trying,’ she spat, ‘and if this place is a hole you’re a dead man.’

Of course it wasn’t a hole. It just wasn’t a palace.

The key was being kept warm under the doormat by a couple of thousand woodlice. I didn’t mention them to Patricia, they were probably just visiting. I stepped aside and made calming noises as she entered, Stevie in her arms, and began to storm from room to room, tutting. There was a fairly new bathroom suite, but the last bather had left a couple of layers of skin in it. There were dirty pans in the kitchen sink. A half-eaten bowl of Frosties sat on the kitchen table, the milk thick and stenchy.

‘It’s like the fucking
Mary Celeste
,’ said Patricia.

I nodded. ‘Could be worse,’ I said.

‘How, Dan?’ she demanded.

‘There could be pigs in the parlour.’

‘There have been pigs in this fucking kitchen, Dan. What am I supposed to do with this . . .?’ Her eyes darted suddenly with renewed intensity about the kitchen. ‘Where’s the microwave?’

‘What microwave?’

‘Dan, the microwave?’

‘What microwave? Plainly, I would say from the evidence before you, there is no microwave.’

‘But how am I supposed to cook?’

‘With the cooker. Look. There. That thing in the corner. That’s the cooker. It’s plugged in. That’s what real people cook on.’

‘But . . . but . . .’

‘Trish, it isn’t difficult.’

‘But I always use a microwave. I brought microwave meals.’

‘Trish, they probably don’t have microwaves here. They probably don’t even have demi-waves.’

‘I don’t like this place, Dan. It smells.’

‘It just needs to be cleaned up a bit, love.’

‘Aye. And who’s going to do that?’

‘We’ll both do it.’

‘It’s no place for a baby.’

‘It’ll be all right, love. It’ll just take us a while to find our feet. Then we’ll be laughing. Honestly.’

The bedroom was nice. A double bed. Made. No cot.

Patricia noticed first. She tutted. ‘You promised.’

‘The Cardinal promised.’

‘The Cardinal seems to have promised a lot. Just get on the bloody phone to him, Dan, and tell him what sort of a state this place is in. It’s a disgrace.’

She looked miserable. I pulled at my lower lip. ‘I hate to point this out, Trish . . .’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘What?’

‘This business about phoning the Cardinal.’

‘Yes?’

‘It would really require a phone.’

‘Dan . . .’

‘I’m sorry, but I told you it was an isolated cottage, there’s no . . .’

‘But how am I supposed to phone . . .?’ She stopped. Bit it back. Silence hung in the air, hung on the dust.

‘Tony?’ I suggested.

‘Dad, Dan.
Dad
. That’s not fair. He’ll be worried if I don’t call.’

‘So send him a pigeon.’ It came out a little harsher than I intended. She looked hurt. I shrugged. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘You spend your whole life apologising to me.’

‘I know. I’m sorry.’

The tears started to run down her cheeks. ‘I want to go home,’ she cried.

I went to her. The three of us nestled together. ‘It’ll be okay,’ I said, without a great deal of confidence.

Little Stevie went to sleep on our double bed.

We decided to clean the inside of the house before
unpacking our belongings. There were cleaning materials under the sink. Once we got stuck in it didn’t take long to get the kitchen, then the bathroom, into shape. Then we took a break. We looked in on Stevie; he slept soundly. We brought some of our supplies in from the car. Trish made a cup of tea. I had a can of Diet Pepsi. It was warm, but it was still Diet Pepsi.

‘It’s not so bad, is it, love?’

‘Mmmmm,’ she said. Her eyes glazed over for a moment and she looked like she was drawing up a mental list of the things that
were
so bad. The noise of a car engine snapped her out of it. We peered out of the window. A Land-Rover was just pulling into the driveway. When it stopped a tall man in a pair of mud-spattered blue dungarees got out. He went round to the back of the vehicle, reached inside and pulled out a cot.

‘Brilliant!’ Patricia exclaimed and made for the door.

7

‘I’m very sorry,’ the big man said, ‘I didn’t think youse were coming until next week. I got the shock of my life when they told me in the shop you’d arrived.’

He held the cot in two massive arms. I went to help him, but he shook his head. ‘Duncan Cairns,’ he said, wiggling a couple of fingers round the base of the cot. ‘I’m the school-teacher. I should have gotten this place ready ages ago . . . but you know how it is.’

‘Never worry,’ Patricia said, reaching out and tweaking his little finger. ‘It’s good of you to bring it.’

Duncan smiled bashfully and manoeuvred the cot sideways through the front door. I thought it best not to join in the tweaking until I had figured out his sexual orientation.

Patricia bustled in behind him. ‘It’s good of you to bring it,’ I mimicked behind her. ‘You’ve changed your tune.’

‘I’m only being polite,’ she whispered.

‘You could be polite to me,’ I said.

‘That’ll be the day,’ she hissed with enough venom to suggest a nodding acquaintance with the family
Viperidae
.

I shrugged and followed them in. It’s funny how marriage vows give you a licence to be mean to your loved ones but polite to strangers. I have always believed and practised that it should be the other way about. Indeed, that I was within my rights to tell Duncan Bloody Cairns to stick his cot up his hole, as Oscar Wilde had once famously not said. But I held off. He had the flushed face and red-rimmed eyes of someone who might know where the beer was kept.

Duncan set the cot down in the bedroom, then stood back and admired it for a moment. ‘It was mine when I was a kid,’ he said.

‘Aw,’ said Patricia.

He looked at Little Stevie, sleeping soundly on the bed. ‘Now there’s a picture,’ he said.

‘Aye,’ said Patricia.

I had done enough beating around the bush. I’d let him through my front door. I’d let him relax in his new surroundings and get to know us as friends. He’d crammed a lot into ten seconds. ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I’d offer you a drink, but there appears to be none on the island.’

‘Naw,’ he said with a slight shake of his head, ‘there’s not.’

‘How come?’ I asked. ‘I saw the pub’s shut on the way in.’

Patricia tutted. ‘You’ve got drink on the brain, Dan,’ she scolded. ‘Would you like a cup of tea, Duncan?’

‘If it’s no trouble . . .’

‘No trouble at all.’

She scooted off to the kitchen. ‘What’s with the lack of drink, then?’ I asked.

‘Aye, well, Old Jack McGettigan . . . he owned the pub . . . well, he kind of got religion and decided to close it down.’

‘That must have gone down well.’

‘Actually, it did, mostly. The Parish Council took a vote and decided to ban the stuff entirely.’

‘Jesus,’ I said.

‘Something like that.’

He held my eyes for a moment, then turned and walked into the kitchen.

They had tea. I had another Diet Pepsi. If I ever do write my novel I will have to put ‘with added Nutrasweet’ on the cover.

‘So who had the cottage before us?’ Patricia asked, elbows on the table, fists bunched loosely beneath her chin. ‘They left it in a bit of a mess.’

‘I know. I’m sorry – again. A couple of young bucks over from the mainland rented it out. They seemed decent enough, but . . . you know . . . they weren’t. They were asked to leave.’

‘They seemed to leave in a hurry,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he said. He nodded once, as if to signal that the subject was closed. He looked about the kitchen. So did I. It looked a good deal better since we’d worked at it. ‘So do you think
you’ll be comfortable here,’ he asked, ‘what with the baby ‘n’ all?’

‘Of course we will,’ Patricia said, and gave his arm a little squeeze.

He was pleasant. Chatty without being gossipy. Interested without delving. Informative but not revealing. He didn’t raise the subject of the child Messiah. Neither did I. It could wait. Even sitting, he was tall. He’d a shock of black curly hair. It was difficult to put an age on him, with his pale unlined face, but wind-hardened skin. He said he’d been a teacher in the school for six years. He was island born, bred and buttered. His parents were long dead and he now lived alone in a cottage at the rear of the school. The school itself wasn’t much more than a room in which he taught pupils from five up to pre-teen. After that they were shipped off to the mainland.