Gavin Corbett - Green Glowing Skull

So if he just talked to Quicklime, anyone, a professional. Veronica. Someone who would listen. Veronica had been a good listener, though the running-away-to-America business was the closest Jean Dotsy had ever come to telling her anything that mattered. My God though, she used to come out with it. Veronica was not a bright girl, thinking back. She used to tell Jean these very stupid things. Details of unspecified successes. Or successes Jean never paid any attention to the details of. And then the words of reassurance. ‘I feel certain it will happen for you! I think it happens for everybody, at some time! The way it has happened for me, I can’t imagine my life having turned out any other way! Now doesn’t that sound silly! But nobody’s life is truly bad! It just looks like some people’s lives are bad! It’s an illusion! It looks that way to give us balance! But all those people whose lives look bad are living completely different lives to the ones we think they’re living! The lives that those people live are actually happy and successful, or will be soon!’ This with the ring of white gold on her finger, and the rock on it.

But, she didn’t mind. He just didn’t have the energy to laugh about it now. But no, Jean didn’t mind, he didn’t think. She was happy just to listen to Veronica’s voice, whatever she came out with. They used to go to a tearoom on the Terenure Road for their lunch. They used to go there and Jean just liked to listen to her voice, the sound of it, and to stare in her eyes and for Veronica to hold her hands in hers, and they rolled their eyes at the same time when the radio in the tearoom announced ‘ Pleasant Hour , sponsored by Eir-Lite’, feeling there could be no escape from work. And Jean rolled her hands over the tops of Veronica’s so as to capture them again when they became loose. Just the sound of her voice, with that music. Sometimes Jean’s attention drifted to all those strange arrangements and the gusto or the leadenness or the pum-pum-pum of the singer and the strange words about beautiful Ireland with its fallen-away forts and shattered cathedrals, and the air that was very … blue, in that tearoom. And other times her attention went back to Veronica. Veronica’s speaking voice was like her own. Soft and mellow and serious, people said. People said she was like Marilyn Monroe, and that Jean was like Jennifer Jones.

***

The card had a picture of hills on it, three ranks of them, each of the back two receding from the one in front in a lighter shade of green. His eyes hovered about the gilt lettering:

BRING OUR BOYS BACK HOME

He rang the number. It was a New York number.

Aidan Brown — ‘Quicklime,’ he insisted again — was able to see him the following afternoon. They met at a coffee shop on Third Avenue, close to Clive’s apartment in Stuyvesant Town.

‘I’m ready to go home, Mister Quicklime. And what I would ask for is that you arrange a soft landing, so that I’m not going back to penury and damp and hardship, so that I might see out my last years in comfort and maybe in the company of others.’

‘Oh, you’ll be marvellously looked after. But you’re young yet. Only in your mid seventies. You’ve many years of good use left in you. That’s what we’re about in this organisation. We’ll say to the community: “Look at this man. He is an elder, he is a wise man. Learn from him. Learn from him!”’

‘No, no. I don’t want any bother like that. Or perhaps that is a condition of your service?’

‘There are no conditions. No contracts. Whatever it is you want from us we’ll do it, one hundred per cent. Tailored your way.’

‘And you’ll look after all the administrative hassle, you say? Tie up all the loose and frayed ends on this side?’

‘Loose ends will be tied. Frayed ends will be burnt. You should have no worries about any of that. We will do everything, from arranging shipping of your goods to physically boxing your goods. And the legals. It’s all part of the service, and all absolutely gratis.’

‘I have a lot of stuff in that apartment. I … I don’t want to be getting in anybody’s way …’

‘You’ll be getting in nobody’s way. The day of departure, you just leave your apartment as you would on any normal day and we’ll take care of the rest. You’ll be safely on the boat, steaming ahead for Ireland, before a single item is moved.’

‘Boat?’

‘Yes, we use our own transport. But it’s a very comfortable boat, with stabilisers, a jacuzzi and television. And plenty of space to move about in.’

‘And that’s free too?’

‘It’s all free. We’re sponsored by the President of Ireland. Just leave it with me, and I’ll get back to you with a departure date, which pier to go to, etcetera. Should be sorted out in the next few days.’

The waitress tidied the counter in front of them, and Quicklime paid for both their lunches, and ordered two teas and whatever cookies they had in the house. He stretched himself, puffing his chest forward, and looked at himself in the strip of mirror facing them. He was wearing the mould-blue sweater he’d had on the first day their paths had intersected.

‘I realise,’ said Clive, ‘that I’m not in much of a position to make extra demands, it being a free service —’

‘Clive, Clive. It’s all on the state. You tell me what you need and I’ll ensure you get it, no questions asked.’

‘— but there is one thing, one thing that I’ll need to know, straight up, that you can provide, otherwise I won’t be able to go ahead with any of this. I’ll need some security. Protection. I’ll need the strongest men you can find. They’ll need to be armed. And I’ll need a cleric. A priest. And someone versed in the dark arts. A witch, or an augur, or whoever you can get.’

The waitress put two cups in front of the men, and the pot of tea.

‘And milk too, ma’am,’ said Quicklime.

He poured Clive’s cup, then his own. He tipped the spilt tea from his saucer back into his cup. Then he poured in his milk, and stirred it slowly with his spoon. Clive could see his taxed expression in the mirror.

‘None of that, of course, will be any problem,’ he said. ‘We’ll have all of them to meet you off the boat, or be on the boat with you to escort you to land, and to stay with you at all other times.’

‘It’s all to do, you see, with, you know — this thing I tried to tell you about the last time.’

Quicklime chuckled. ‘All this transgender business? Don’t you worry now, we’ll get you some very beefy fellows to look after you!’

‘Oh no, Mister Quicklime. No, no, it’s, it’s … You’ll remember I mentioned the fairies the last time …?’

But now his companion appeared distracted, his attention directed towards the front window, as if something passing had caught his eye. He got up from his seat and stood at the window, looking down the street.

‘Mister Quicklime, please, if you wouldn’t mind hearing me out, now that I have you here —’

‘Can you hold it a moment? Just one moment,’ he said, bustling back across the floor. ‘I’m just going to the loo.’ He grabbed his rolled-up trench coat from his seat. ‘If anyone comes in and asks after my whereabouts, don’t tell them where I am. I get embarrassed. I have a bowel condition. Best tell them nothing. None of their business.’

After twenty minutes, Quicklime had still not emerged from the bathroom. The only people to have come into the coffee shop in all that time were a couple of Hispanic construction workers.

Clive followed the sign to the conveniences. It took him into the kitchen. The door to the loo cubicle was ajar.

‘Did you see a man come in and out of here in the last twenty minutes?’ he said to a man flipping French toast in a pan. ‘A little shorter than me, pudgy, bald on top, with light ginger hair? He has a bowel condition.’