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– The people of your homeland today are called Arabs. Arabs are not white.
– Berbers were blond white people, with lovely blue eyes.
– All true Africans, notwithstanding the racial stew in that continent, are to some extent niggers. They are descendants of Noah’s son Ham.
– You must not overlook the African sun. I was a man that was very easily sunburnt.
– What does it feel like to be in heaven for all eternity?
– For all eternity? Do you then think there are fractional or temporary eternities?
– If I ask it, will you appear to me here tomorrow?
– I have no tomorrow. I am. I have only nowness.
– Then we shall wait. Thanks and goodbye.
– Goodbye. Mind the rocks. Go with God.
With clambering, Hackett in the lead, they soon found the water and made their way back to this world.
5 (#ulink_fb8ecff5-3499-5659-a293-915bd7a5b8a1)
The morning was still there, bland as they had left it. Teague McGettigan was slumped in charge of his pipe and newspaper and gave them only a glance when, having discarded their masks, they proceeded without thought to brisk towelling.
– Well, De Selby called to Mick, what did you think of that? Mentally, Mick felt numb, confused; and almost surprised by ordinary day.
– That was … an astonishing apparition, he stammered. And I heard every word. A very shrewd and argumentative man whoever he was.
De Selby froze in his half-naked stance, his mouth falling a bit open in dismay.
– Great crucified Lord, he cried, don’t tell me you didn’t recognize Augustine?
Mick stared back, still benumbed.
– I thought it was Santa Claus, Hackett remarked. Yet his voice lacked the usual intonation of jeer.
– I suppose, De Selby mused, beginning to dress, that I do you two some injustice. I should have warned you. A first encounter with a man from heaven can be unnerving.
– Several of the references were familiar enough, Mick said, but I couldn’t quite pinpoint the personality. My goodness, the Bishop of Hippo!
– Yes. When you think of it, he did not part with much information.
– If I may say so, Hackett interposed, he didn’t seem too happy in heaven. Where was the glorious resurrection we’ve all been promised? That character underground wouldn’t get a job handing out toys in a store at Christmas. He seemed depressed.
– I must say that the antics of his companions seemed strange, Mick agreed. I mean, according to his account of them
De Selby stopped reflectively combing his sparse hair.
– One must reserve judgement on all such manifestations, he said. I am proceeding all the time on a theory. We should remember that that might not have been the genuine Augustine at all.
– But who, then?
The wise master stared out to sea.
– It could be even Beelzebub himself, he murmured softly. Hackett sat down abruptly, working at his tie.
– Have any of you gentlemen got a match? Teague McGettigan asked, painfully standing up. Hackett handed him a box.
– The way I see it, Teague continued, there will come an almighty clump of rain and wind out of Wickla about twelve o’clock. Them mountains down there has us all destroyed.
– I’m not afraid of a shower, Hackett remarked coldly. At least you know what it is. There are worse things.
– Peaks of rock prod up into the clouds like fingers, Teague explained, until the clouds is bursted and the wind carries the wather down here on top of us. Poor buggers on a walking tour around Shankill would get soaked, hang-sangwiches in sodden flitters and maybe not the price of a pint between them to take shelter in Byrnes.
Their dressing, by reason of their rough rig, was finished. De Selby and Hackett were smoking, and the time was half nine. Then De Selby energetically rubbed his hands.
– Gentlemen, he said with some briskness, I presume that like me you have had no breakfast before this early swim. May I therefore invite you to have breakfast with me at Lawnmower. Mr McGettigan can drive us up to the gate.
– I’m afraid I can’t go, Hackett said.
– Well, it’s not that my horse Jimmy couldn’t pull you up, Teague said, spitting.
– Come now, De Selby said, we all need inner fortification after an arduous morning. I have peerless Limerick rashers and there will be no shortage of that apéritif.
Whether or not Hackett had another engagement Mick did not know but he immediately shared his instinct to get away, if only, indeed, to think, or try not to think. De Selby had not been deficient in the least in manners or honourable conduct but his continuing company seemed to confer uneasiness – perhaps vague, unformed fear.
– Mr De Selby, Mick said warmly, it is indeed kind of you to invite Hackett and me up for a meal but it happens that I did in fact have breakfast. I think we’d better part here.
– We’ll meet soon again, Hackett remarked, to talk over this morning’s goings-on.
De Selby shrugged and beckoned McGettigan to help him with his gear.
– As you will, gentlemen, he said politely enough. I certainly could do with a bite and perhaps I will have the pleasure of Teague’s company. I thought the weather, the elements, all the forces of the heavens made a breakfast-tide lecture seemly.
– Good luck to your honour but there’s nourishment in that bottle you have, Teague said brightly, taking away his pipe to say it loudly.
They separated like that and Hackett and Mick went on their brief stroll into Dalkey, Mick wheeling the bicycle with some distaste.
– Have you somewhere to go? he asked.
– No I haven’t. What did you make of that performance?
– I don’t know what to say. You heard the conversation, and I presume both of us heard the same thing.
– Do you believe … it all happened?
– I suppose I have to.
– I need a drink.
They fell silent. Thinking about the stance (if that ill-used word will serve) was futile though disturbing and yet it was impossible to shut such thoughts out of the head. Somehow Mick saw little benefit in any discussion with Hackett. Hackett’s mind was twisted in a knot identical with his own. They were as two tramps who had met in a trackless desert, each hopelessly asking the other the way.
– Well, Hackett said moodily at last, I haven’t thrown overboard my suspicions of yesterday about drugs, and even hypnotism I wouldn’t quite discount. But we have no means of checking whether or not all that stuff this morning was hallucination.
– Couldn’t we ask somebody? Get advice?
– Who? For a start, who would believe a word of the story?
– That’s true.
– Incidentally, those underwater breathing masks were genuine. I’ve worn gadgets like that before but they weren’t as smart as De Selby’s.
– How do we know there wasn’t a mixture of some brain-curdling gas in the air-tank?
– That’s true by God.
– I quite forgot I was wearing the thing.
They had paused undecided at a corner in the lonely little town. Mick said that he thought he’d better go home and get some breakfast. Hackett thought it was too early to think of food. Well Mick had to get rid of his damned bike. Couldn’t he leave it at the comic little police station in charge of Sergeant Fottrell? But what was the point of that? Wouldn’t he have the labour of collecting it another time? Hackett said that there had been no necessity to have used it at all in the first place, as there was such a thing as an early tram to accommodate eccentric people. Mick said no, not on Sunday, not from Booterstown.
– I know Mrs L would let me in, Hackett observed pettishly, except I know the big sow is still in bed snoring.
– Yes, it’s been a funny morning, Mick replied sympathetically. Here you are, frustrated from joining the company of a widow who keeps a boozer, yet it is not half an hour since you parted company with Saint Augustine.
– Yes.
Hackett laughed bitterly. Mick had in fact business of his own later in the day, he remembered, as on nearly every Sunday. At three-thirty he would meet Mary at Ballsbridge and very likely they would go off to loaf amorously and chatter in Herbert Park. The arrangement was threatening to take on the tedium of routine things. When eventually they were married, if they were at all, wouldn’t the sameness of life be worse?
– I’m going to rest my mind, he announced, and rest it in Herbert Park later today, avec ma femme, ma bonne amie.
– My own Asterisk lady abstains on Sundays, Hackett said listlessly, lighting a cigarette.
But suddenly he came to life.
– Consternation was caused this morning, he cried, by the setting off of a small charge of DMP. Here comes the DMP in person!
True enough. Wheeling a bicycle, Sergeant Fottrell was coming towards them from a side road. His approach was slow and grave. Here one beheld the majesty of the law – inevitable, procedural, sure.
It is not easy to outline his personal portrait. He was tall, lean, melancholy, clean-shaven, red in the face and of indeterminate age. Nobody, it was said, had ever seen him in uniform, yet he was far from being a plain-clothes man; his constabularity was unmistakable. Summer and winter he wore a light tweed overcoat of a brown colour; a trace of collar and tie could be discerned about the neck but in his nether person the trousers were clearly of police blue, and the large boots also surely of police issue. Dr Crewett claimed to have seen the sergeant once with his overcoat off when assisting with a broken-down car and no inner jacket of any kind was disclosed, only shirt. The sergeant was friendly, so to speak, to his friends. He drank whiskey freely when the opportunity offered but it did not seem to affect him at all. Hackett held that this was because the sergeant’s normal sober manner was identical with the intoxicated manner of other people. But what the sergeant believed, what he said and how he said it was known throughout all south County Dublin.
Now he had stopped and saluted at his cloth cap.
– That’s the great morning, lads, he said, gratuitously.
There was agreement that it was. The sergeant seemed to be maturing the air and the early street.
– I see you have been to the water, he remarked genially, for far-from-simple cavortings in the brine?
– Sergeant, Hackett said, you have no idea how far from simple.
– I recede portentously from the sea, the sergeant beamed, except for a fastidious little wade for the good of my spawgs. For the truth is that I’m destroyed with the corns. Our work is walking work if you understand my portent.
– True enough, Sergeant, Mick agreed, I have often seen you with that bicycle but never up on it.
– It is emergency machinery for feats of captaincy. But there are dangers of a mental nature inherent in the bicycle and that story I will relate to you coherently upon another day.
– Yes.
Hackett was meditating on something.
– Funny thing, he said, I left a little bottle behind me in the Colza last night by accident. Perigastric thiosulphate, you know. My damned stomach is full of ructions and eructations.
– Well by damn, the sergeant sighed sympathetically, that is an infertile bitching. I cry for any creature, man or woman, who is troublous in the stomach enpitments. Mrs Laverty would be in her bed now or mayhap awash in her private bath internally.
– Brandy is good for a sick stomach, Mick ventured with studied tactlessness.
– Brandy? Baugh! Hackett grimaced.
– Not brandy but Brannigan, the sergeant cried, striking his crossbar. Brannigan the chemist, and he’s an early-Mass man. He would now be shovelling gleefully at his stirabout, and supinely dietetic. Come down along here now.
Glumly Mick followed Hackett’s downcast back as the sergeant led the way down the street to a corner shop and smartly knocked on the residential door. The small meek Mr Brannigan had scarcely opened it when they were all crowded in the hallway. Mick felt annoyed at this improvised and silly tactic. What would passers-by think of two bicycles outside at such an hour, with the sergeant’s the most recognizable in the whole country? Hackett might be forced to swallow a dose of salts rather than disavow his lie about digestion trouble, and good enough for him.
– I have a man here, Mr Brannigan, avic, the sergeant announced cheerfully, that has a raging confusion in his craw, a stainless citizen and a martyr. Let us make our way sedulously to the shop.
Mr Brannigan with vague noises had produced keys and opened a door in the narrow hall; then they were all in the shop, with its gaudy goods and showcases. Under the high ceiling Mr Brannigan looked tiny (or perhaps his nearness to the sergeant was the real reason), the face quite round, round glasses in it and an air of being pleased.
– Which of the gentlemen, Sergeant, he asked quietly, is out of humour with himself?
The sergeant clapped a hand officially on Hackett’s shoulder.
– Mr Hackett is the patient inexorably, he said.
– Ah. Where is the seat of the trouble, Mr Hackett?
The patient made a clutching motion at his stomach.
– Here, he muttered, where nearly everybody’s damn trouble lies.
– Ah-ha. Have you been taking anything in particular for it?
– I have. But I can’t tell you what. Something from a prescription I haven’t got on me.
– Well well now. I would recommend a mix of acetic anhydride with carbonic acid. In solution. Excellent stuff in the right proportions. I won’t be a minute getting it.
– No, no, Hackett said in genuine remonstrance. I daren’t take drugs I’m not used to. Very nice of you and the Sergeant, Mr Brannigan, but I can wait.
– But we’ve any amount of proprietary things here, Mr Hackett. Even temporary relief, you know …
