Claire Kilroy - The Devil I Know

‘Would that be the young master?’

‘Yes, Larney,’ I said, trying not to break my stride — I wasn’t able for his nonsense at that hour — but the dog planted itself in my path. I sidestepped but it relocated to block my passage, tackling me like a centre forward.

‘It’s been around for millions of years, but it’s no more than a month old. What is it?’

I looked up from the terrier. ‘Excuse me?’

Larney sidled closer, smiled harder. ‘It’s been around for millions of years, but it’s no more than a month old. What is it?’

‘Oh.’ It was one of his riddles. ‘I don’t know, Larney. What is it?’

‘The moon.’

‘I see. Very good. Larney, tell me: do you hear that noise too?’

This elicited a strangled silence from the man, during which the put-put-put seemed more pronounced than ever. Larney stared at me in shrinking and blinking alarm, so I pointed towards Claremont.

‘Down there. Do you hear it? That vibration.’ He turned his head to follow the direction of my finger, but my question had thrown him into a paroxysm of confusion. ‘It’s not a riddle, Larney. It’s a simple question. Do you hear that noise?’

His eyes darted back to mine. Uncertainty had distorted his smile, flipped it upside down, but then he brightened. ‘What goes round the castle and in the castle but never touches the castle?’

‘Larney, please listen to me for a moment. Can you hear that noise too: yes or no?’

He kept smiling. ‘The sun,’ he said.

‘Larney—’

‘What goes round the castle—’

‘ Larney . This is important. That chugging noise: can you hear it too? Or am I losing my mind?’

Immediately I saw the error I had made. Larney processed idioms literally, and I had asked him whether he thought I was going insane. ‘That’s not what I meant,’ I began, but there was no retracting it. Larney smiled in lockjawed panic as he backed away into the refuge of the shrubbery. ‘Forget it, Larney,’ I called after him, but it was too late. I’d already sentenced the poor soul to hours spent skipping over the same looped sequence like a scratched record, trying and failing to find the correct answer to the riddle I had posed. Is the young master losing his mind? He didn’t like to say. I clamped my hands to my ears to shut the chugging noise out. Maybe I was going insane.

Ireland’s Eye was a trim dun shape against the navy sea. The view my ancestors would have enjoyed was due to be bricked up again, by me. Hoarding had been erected along the boundary wall with various site notices attached. Danger. Concealed Exit. Hard Hat Area. Abandon Hope. The main road was plastered with fat tyre tracks of clay. I followed the trail to the heavy plant entrance.

Mounds of soil and rubble were heaped along the perimeter wall, waiting to be dispatched by the fleet of trucks that was parked up for the night. I stumbled in the direction of the chugging. Despite being flat, the going was heavy. Clods of clay adhered to the soles of my shoes like a snowball rolled in snow, building up only to break off again. Towards the harbour end of the site I discerned a hole, a vast one, as if a meteorite had struck. The chugging, which was now a clatter, was emanating from this crater.

I approached and peered over the lip. The earth crumbled away underfoot and I almost slithered in. It was a sharp drop. At the bottom of the pit was a whole civilisation. Machinery, lights, materials, tools. And men. There was a rake of them down there. Miniature men grubbing about in the dirt like the creatures exposed when you lifted a rock.

A man’s voice behind me penetrated the clamour. I turned around. Hickey in a yellow helmet, shouting.

‘I can’t hear you!’ I shouted back, but he couldn’t hear me. He gestured at me to come away from the edge.

‘Here,’ he said, throwing a hard hat on my head and an arm over my shoulder. Hickey had no personal boundaries, whereas I was nothing but personal boundaries, a prickling hotchpotch. He patted my helmet. ‘There y’are, Health and Safety. Good man. How do you like me hole?’ There was a smell of booze on his breath.

Enthusiastic responses have never been my forte. Weak smiles are more my thing. I took the helmet off and read the safety specification printed inside the crown. ‘I can’t sleep,’ I complained. ‘The noise.’

If it wasn’t in praise of his hole, Hickey didn’t want to hear it. He fished a Motorola out of his high-viz jacket and marched off barking instructions into it. Judging by the dark circles under his eyes he hadn’t slept much either, but for very different reasons. The man was in a fever of excitement, a child on Christmas morning.

I struggled after him but couldn’t keep up, for he seemed physically adapted to the muck in a way that I was not. The boom of the crane swung overhead and lowered a cauldron into the crater. Two men at the bottom competed for it like chicks in a nest. A third man with a walkie-talkie stood back and guided the cauldron into the men’s outstretched hands. ‘That’s it, keep her going, lads,’ Hickey coached them, though they were out of earshot.

The pendulum of the cauldron seemed perilous in relation to the two men grappling for it. It could have taken them out like a demolition ball. Hickey inclined his head to me when I drew up behind him. ‘The piles went in last week,’ he remarked, as if I might know or care what such a statement meant. We stared into the crater’s depths for a spell, seeing very different things. Everybody sees different things when looking into an abyss. I see more than most.

The men made contact with the cauldron and secured it. ‘He’s good,’ said Hickey, ‘yeah, that fella’s good.’ I wasn’t sure whether he meant the crane driver or the man with the walkie-talkie. The other two workers tilted the vat, which was still suspended from the crane by a chain, and a grey stream of concrete came spilling out. Or maybe it was cement. I never did learn the difference.

My phone vibrated in my pocket. Unknown . ‘Yes,’ I told M. Deauville. ‘Yes, I, ahm… Everything appears to be in order.’ Like I’d know. They could have been pouring foundations of cold porridge down there. ‘The foundations are going in,’ I offered, and raised my eyebrows at Hickey for confirmation, but he just folded his arms and glared at me, a study in belligerence. I turned my back.

How could I have confessed my gut feeling to M. Deauville? That Hickey was digging us into a big hole. That across the country people were digging themselves into big holes, that big holes were spreading across Ireland like the pox, eating away at the heart of the island. Nobody was interested in negative sentiments. People who engaged in cribbing and moaning from the sidelines should frankly go and commit suicide, the Taoiseach had told us. My doubts were the product of a depressive mind. It was a difficult period for me but I was managing to preserve my sobriety, one day at a time.

The sun had crested the island in a peach starburst when I got off the call. I put the phone in my pocket and Hickey put his hands on his hips. ‘Who was that ringing you?’

‘Nobody.’

I don’t know why I was being so secretive about M. Deauville. Hickey didn’t know either. ‘Nobody,’ he repeated caustically and took a metal hip flask from his pocket. Slowly and pointedly, he unscrewed the lid. In his hands, that flask became a grenade. ‘Why were you and this Nobody talking gobbledy-gook?’

I blinked at him. M. Deauville had addressed me in German, I realised. So I had responded in German. Which explained why Hickey hadn’t confirmed the information about the foundations but instead just stood there radiating agro. ‘That was German.’