Adrian McKinty - Dead I Well May Be

Mrs. Higgins was in her eighties and slightly scatterbrained and deaf, and it took me a minute or two to explain the nature of my call.

Mrs. Higgins, please, it’s Mike Forsythe, you remember Mikey, here calling from America. America. I wonder if you wouldn’t mind getting Nan for me, please, if she’s around.

Mrs. Higgins said that she was around, explaining that she could see her through the back window hanging out her washing. Mrs. Higgins said that at the moment Nan was talking to Mrs. Martin. I remembered Mrs. Martin: she was a frightening woman who had a soft spot for Nan, but who scared the crap out of me and most of the rest of the parish. Among a number of suspects, it might have been her that grassed me out to the DHSS about working that one bloody time.

She’s a bad woman, that Audrey Martin, a bad one, Mrs. Higgins was saying.

Yes, now please, would you mind at all, getting Nan for me, I asked with great patience.

I heard Mrs. Higgins put the phone down and shout across the garden. Mrs. Higgins was also about to do her washing, and before mentioning the long-distance phone call, I could hear her scold the other two for hanging out their washing with the rain about to come on. This was the wrong thing to say, since for the next several minutes they got into a heated discussion and talked with a professional eye about the prospect of foul weather. Mrs. Higgins’s and Mrs. Martin’s loud voices managed to enter the telephone receiver and carry all the way under the Atlantic to America. This was typical, and I knew the process of getting Nan would take some time. I cursed myself for calling. I put them all on the speakerphone. I put some oil in the frying pan and heated it and waited for Mrs. Higgins to get to the point in hand. Apparently, the Pentlands’ dog was barking, which could only mean hail, and the rotted cabbage leaves were still closed, so Nan reckoned the rain wouldn’t come until after lunch. Mrs. Martin divined signs in the movement of the birds and concurred with Nan’s prediction. Mrs. Higgins, however, had been watching TV. The BBC was claiming that it had been raining all night and, in fact, was raining right now in Belfast on top of all three of them and although the sky was overcast, it was dry, and she had to admit that there wasn’t much physical evidence to prove this extraordinary statement.

Mrs. Martin started yelling at children playing on the fence two houses down. Mrs. Martin’s voice was booming and loud and might just have carried across the Atlantic without any need for a cable. I shuddered. For reasons that never really came to light at trial, during a jumble sale in the Gospel Hall, Mrs. Martin had brained her husband with a fire iron. She’d gotten a suspended sentence at the district court in Newtonabbey, though it was agreed that had she not been so big and intimidating, and had not the magistrate come from just two streets over, she would have done six months. The weans must have keeked their whips when she yelled at them, and I managed to laugh a wee bit. There was the sound of panicked squeals and flight and then a brief discussion among the women about the youth of today.

The youth of today must have got the wheels turning, for finally Mrs. Higgins remembered about the phone call and told Nan to hurry because it was coming all the way from America.

I heard Nan come up the path and then come breathlessly on the phone, all excited.

Hello, Nan.

She caught her breath.

Michael, I might have thought you were dead. I’m very angry with you. I haven’t heard from you. Your drunken eejit of a da was over and when he asked about you and I said I hadn’t heard in months, I could see even he was worried.

I’m sorry, Nan, you know what it’s like.

I suppose you’re not coming home for Christmas?

No.

Aye. Audrey Martin said that now you wouldn’t be.

Mrs. Martin?

Aye.

I don’t trust her, Nan. I think she grassed me to the dole about that picture in the Belfast Telegraph .

Ach, Audrey Martin wouldn’t harm a fly, Nan said.

No, that’s true. The lower forms of life are safe from her wrath, but you must admit that the sentient creatures have much to fear, I said, trying to be jokey with her, but it didn’t really work. With Nan it never really worked. I started throwing bread and sausages in the frying pan. The conversation with Nan was going as I’d expected-not at all well.

You’ve a cold, she said. Do you go out without your scarf?

Nan, I lost that scarf ages ago.

See, that’s why you’ve a cold.

Nan, I believe in the germ theory of the transmission of disease.

Aye, you’ll see when you catch your death, germ theory up your arse, Nan replied in what for her was uncustomary coarseness. I guessed she was upset about something. Probably me blowing her off for so long.

Look, Nan, I’m sorry I haven’t called. Don’t be angry with me.

Ach, I’m not angry at all now, Michael. But you can’t do this again. Promise me that.

I promise.

Well…, she began and stopped.

There was silence now, and I waited for her to say her piece. I waited still as the bacon, egg, soda, and wheaten bread joined the other components of the Ulster fry sizzling in the big pan. I waited as the smell drifted up and filled the apartment and the sausages blackened and the black pudding crystallized. Finally, Nan came to it.

Michael, is everything ok? she asked.

I nodded and remembered to speak.

It’s fine. Nan, what is it? What’s wrong?

Listen, Michael. Mrs. Martin said you wouldn’t be back for Christmas because people are after you.

What?

She saw a couple of policemen come round the other day and they asked all these questions about you. I was out, it was late-night shopping in town, but they asked about you, asked her if she’d seen you. Well, she sent them off with a flea in their ear and no mistake. And for all your talk about her. But Michael, I was wondering if you were in any trouble. They haven’t been back, and I’ve said nothing.

I stopped cooking the Ulster fry and turned off the gas.

Nan, you’ll have to go get her. I’ll have to ask her about them myself, I said, seriously.

Nan put the phone down and went to get Mrs. Martin, a woman I’d hardly ever spoken to in my life because I’d always been too afeared. I heard them talk in whispers, and then she came on the line.

Hello, young man.

Hello, Mrs. Martin.

How are you in America?

I’m good.

I see…

Listen, uh, Mrs. Martin, I was wondering if you were sure the men who came looking for me were peelers.

I didn’t think they were policemen at all, Michael. Your nan said that they must have been, but they didn’t look at all like policemen. They had crew cuts and they were wearing jeans. They might have been your detectives, but I don’t think so.

What did they ask?

They asked if I’d seen you, and I said that as far as I knew you were in America, and they started asking all these other questions and I sent them off about their business. I’m sure if they were police they would have showed me a card or something.

Local accents?

I think so, of the most vulgar sort in any case, hardly police.

They weren’t police, I said. Listen, thank you. Please put Nan back on. Thank you.

Nan came back on and I told her to tell anyone who came looking for me that she hadn’t heard from me in a long time. I told her to tell Mrs. Martin and Mrs. Higgins the same thing, and Nan said she would do it. She didn’t ask me why and she must have sensed that I was in some kind of shit. She knew it, but she didn’t want to know. I stayed on for a while longer and made up some lies about having a new job and a new girlfriend. I was sure she didn’t believe them.