Donal Ryan: A Slanting of the Sun

A CURTAIN OF homebound crows draws itself west to east across the sky. Stragglers flap and reel, caw-cawing madly, heavy with corn. Winging I’ll bet to that unseen churchyard where they’ll roost in trees that hulk darkly, layers of them top to bottom in ancient evergreens, a ranked parliament. Crows everywhere act the same. I wish they’d dip down to me here and pluck the lean corners of me in their black beaks, and carry me skyward. Some sight that would be for the flabby shade, a wing-beaten procession eclipsing his evening.

I’m looking forward to my rest. Thirty-seven years of country lanes behind me; dead weights dragged up soaked and rocky hillsides; slow dissolution of flesh and bones in stinking bubbling limepits; numberless shovelfuls of stony clay dug from sodden wind-wailing moors. I’m crooked from it. Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales. France once. Cursed we are with health, my family, stout unfailing hearts, years to go till death for me. I had a grand-uncle saw a hundred and three. Fell in his garden and the dunt he got killed him. Pink with life till his very last day on earth, rotten with it.

I MADE A GRAB for a little girl a week and a bit ago. Had two small children with her at the entrance to an estate of detached houses. She was brownish, elegant, hair thick and dark. Au pair, I’d say. I had a van with a side-sliding door gaped open, idling obediently, waiting to receive her. Got it from a pavee in Carthy’s Cross, plates off a scrapper. She drew back her leg as I dragged her and kicked me full force into the shinbone. The sudden starburst of pain loosened the hold I had on her. The children screeched and shrieked with laughter at the game and ran pell-mell around. She squared up to me, teeth bared. I retreated sharpish, shocked, burnt the van in a woody lane. Standing watching the yellow flames and black smoke swallow it, I decided it was time to finish up. Bested by a slinky girl, my first fail, sore and sorry. I’ll do one more or maybe two, I thought, and retire to a concrete box, warm in winter, cool in summer. Three squares and two collations, an hour a day of open air. On my back alone: smoking, thinking, remembering. Desk, paper, biro, books. A television I’ll never use. Solitarily confined, the only way to go. Five star.

I bussed it a few days around routes old and new, looping lazily west. I met a girl on a lonely road lined with overlooking trees, a young woman I suppose, walking. Salt in the air, a misty stinging rain blown from the ocean. I looked at her enquiringly and she smiled and stopped to see could she help. Out pounding the roads, minding her shape for her husband. Oh, the lightness in her eyes, the heart-fluttering goodness of her. Softness, shampoo smell, soap and sweat, blonde. I folded her into a ditch after, and sliced a dainty keepsake from her. It’s mouldering now in my lightless holdall. Tempted to land it up onto that cop-shop counter and be done. I prefer the wait, though, all considered, the gradual unfolding. To stay still, let circumstances circle me in a fast-decaying orbit till impact. Then a bit of a shemozzle, and I’ll rest. Sleep, write a book maybe. An instruction manual. Things will take their course. I hardly hid her at all. She’s surely found by now, out in the open, my secret love.

HERE HE COMES at last, hoofing it. Squad’s probably gone for the night. Nuisance. I was looking forward to being helped into a soft seat, stretching my legs out before me. Oh, what odds. Sidling towards me now head back, squinting, lips pursed. Just by the way, like, all casual. Finishing out his shift, cleansing his conscience. He couldn’t leave me unspoken to, just in case. No preamble. I like his style. No breath wasted.

What are you at there?

Having my fucking retirement do.

Are you now begod. What’s the name?

Jack the Ripper.

Is that right, now. What’s in the bag?

Have a look for yourself.

I toe it slowly forward. It grits across the path towards him. He lays a level stare on me, tuts, bends grunting and unzips my muddied holdall with sausage fingers, surprisingly deft. He roots for a few seconds through my tools and bits of clothes and stops suddenly dead, looks sickly, slowly up at me, white-yellow moocow eyes bulging. Her slender hand, cleaved cleanly at the wrist, tumbles indecorously from my bag’s gaping mouth and plops palm down on the unyielding concrete. Ah go easy, I tell him, not unkindly. Her solitaire splits the evening light into tiny rainbows. Her wedding band of naked gold looks forlorn and unburnished below it.

He straightens, moaning softly, and stumbles backwards off the shallow kerb, clawing wildly behind himself for balance at the empty air. He lands on his arse with a whump. I turn one-eighty from him calmly, smiling, and stand straight and still, arms obligingly behind, wrists crossed neatly. He’ll need a moment or two to regain his feet and his composure. My breath as I speak sways the fronds gently of my weeping willow. A stifled yawn softens my words.

Take me away, and look after me. I’m tired.

I ALWAYS SEE something on my half-two fag break. It’s the way I have a view out the archway and onto the street. I got a hop there when my eye landed on her, walking in along with her new fella. My hands have pins and needles and I know from them that my heart skipped a beat. I don’t know exactly how new the new fella is, but he’s newer than me, that’s for sure. My oul fella said he spotted her in town during the week all right but I thought he was raving. They’re holding hands. The last time she seen me I’d have had a bit more hair and a smaller belly but definitely she would recognize me if I stood out in their path. I’ll step back a bit, and let the open door shield me. The new fella looks like a right langer. One of them lads that’s all gym muscles, never lifted a block or a keg nor done a proper day’s work. She has a summery-looking frock on her, shortish. She always used think she had flaking legs. She had in her hole. They were all right, like. Ah fuck it, they were perfect. They still are.

I seen her cousin a small while ago all right, mooching around in Reception. A big fat yoke she was one time, and she fallen away to nothing. I got a right hop when I recognized her. She’s not looking too bad, all the same, tightened up the finest, nothing flapping that I could see anyway. Some of them ones that go right skinny after being mud fat for years do have a fierce sad and sorry look about them. Lonesome after the grub, I suppose. And bits hanging that used to bounce lovely. All the life gone from them. They’re waiting now at the front corner near the brasserie side door, her and the fella she’s going with a fair old time that won’t marry her because he can’t decide is he definitely not queer and wants to keep his options open till the very crunch.

They’re after clocking each other. I may as well have been a fuckin flowerpot. Squealing and kissing and holding one another out at arm’s length like you would a child with a shitty nappy, sizing one another up and letting on they’re so fuckin happy to see one another they’re having a fuckin orgasm apiece. Every cunt’s getting told who’s who. The formerly fat cousin’s fella is standing with his hands in his pockets, probably keeping a good hold of his langer. No awareness of protocol. Shake the new cunt’s hand, you mope. You never seen him before. Ye have been thrown together by the gods of riding. Make the fuckin most of it, you miserable prick. That’s all any of us can do.

I hope they don’t come into the bar once they’ve their faces filled. They probably fuckin will, though. She’ll be mad for a nose, to see to know am I still here, after all these years. Well, all seven of these years. That’s a tenth of a life, or an eleventh, anyway. A twelfth for some long-living cunts. Who’d want to? Looking at telly, dribbling. Thank fuck oul Mossy Bradley got me a grand rectangular badge, solid-golden, with MANAGER wrote across it. I fuckin insisted. Tight prick would have let me write it across my shirt in marker otherwise. I’m going to go handy now with my fag. See can the black lad inside go more than five minutes without making a hames of something.