The Irishman
e had been ten years in prison for killing a man and on the
fourth day they had cut a Union Jack into his chest and smeared it
with their waste and he had spent ten days in the hospital wanting
to die. He lifted his shirt and showed me the scar. It was a
ragged, purple, ugly thing and he told me that it healed that way
because of the shit that they rubbed in afterwards. They used two
razors with a match in between to cut him but it was the shit that
did it he said. Bastards.
It was eight o�clock and Cardiff smelt of damp and oil and wet stone. It had been raining all night and in the rain Wales can be a miserable place, sullen and without feature. I was heading by train to St. David�s and come morning I had left the small hotel on the Cathedral Road for the short walk into the city. I had hoped to take a last stroll about the gardens of the castle before I left, but with the rain still falling I made my way instead along the narrow concrete footpaths, my enthusiasm forgotten as I slapped flat footed and heavy amongst the puddles.
Traffic was heavier than usual, heavier still about the coach stops where the cars and the buses crawled shoulder to shoulder along the curb and by the time I reached the station my mood was as grey as the weather. I thought seriously about delaying my journey for another day. I was bored with the rain and took little comfort from the thought of travel. A month out of London and the unpredictability of the northern summer had reduced my journey to a succession of cheap hotels and crowded dorms where the best conversation was always that which promised me a better tomorrow. It was a time for instinct. There was a waitress in a cafe who knew I was leaving and as I stood amongst the panic on the steps of the station the thought of breakfast and coffee and cigarettes by the window was encouragement enough to stay my plans of travel, and for the moment at least I left that thought behind and headed for sanctuary amongst the maze of Victorian arcades that abound the city.
The cafes here are amongst the very best and the waitress was delighted to see me, preparing an enormous breakfast which she shared with a wonderful appetite that made delightful mockery of her size. We had come to know each other well during the week of my stay and after the first morning I had begun the habit of visiting her daily, sometimes twice, for I had found her to be an eager listener to my stories, finding romance even in the ordinary with the abundant enthusiasm of the untraveled.
She was from Glasgow, originally, and after breakfast when the cafe was quiet again we moved to a table by the window to talk and watch as the old English tourists wandered slowly amongst the shopfronts.
�They say the rain has settled� she said at length, �it is to be raining all along the coast as far as Tenby, maybe even further�.
�For how long?�
�One, Two, maybe three days, the radio said this morning maybe even a week�.
Her voice was warm and tinged with sadness, �You are still going then?�, she asked with a smile.
�I was thinking a little of staying�, I said, �Until the rain finishes�.
�You know you�re welcome� she told me. She kept her eyes fixed on the table and asked if I had a place to stay.
�No� I replied, �I left the Cathedral Road this morning, my room is likely to be gone by now�.
�Oh�.
I knew what she wanted to say, but instead of speaking she took the little order book from her pocket and scribbled in silence, then, blushing furiously tore out the page and presented me her address on the tiny scrap of paper.
�There�s plenty of room� she said, looking into my eyes to make sure that I understood. It was as much of an invitation as modesty would allow, and she watched shyly as I tucked the note safely away amongst the contents of my bag.
�If you miss your train�, she said with her smile. She stood to clean the last of our breakfast so the clatter of plates hid the sound of her voice. �And take care won�t you�.
There was nothing after that. I left her serving an old English couple from London, thinking of her all the way down the High Street which became St. Mary�s and on into the station where the people hung like dirty washing about the giant neon screen which told them in bright orange letters where they were and where they could expect to be sometime at the end of the day. I found myself a seat beside an old Welshwoman who spent ten minutes talking to herself about the weather. I kept thinking about the waitress. She expects you to come, I thought, as I read the address she had given me. It was for a flat in one of the inner suburbs and I knew that all I needed to do to go there was to walk again into the rain and head back along the street to the cafe.
The crowd in the station was shifting and the old lady beside me left, replaced in the seat by a woman who sat with her bag firmly beneath her, her feet upon it, reading from a book with such concentration that she seemed to me oblivious to the mortal world. The book was in French, a Hemingway, and every so often her lips would form the words as she read and she would smile to herself with simple pleasure at the story.
She was not much more than twenty, with eyes the colour of moss and skin smooth and dark from the sun. Her hair was black, falling straight with its weight about her shoulders and I thought her perhaps from one of the islands about the pacific, though it was impossible to guess at the one. �You are beautiful�, I said to myself, and I found myself wanting to talk to her, to ask her where she might be going, so I would have the chance to hear her voice, and maybe, if I was lucky, come to share her journey. It occurred to me then that I would leave as I had planned. �There is little use in staying� I told myself, and I knew in my mind that it was easiest to leave someone only the once and that today Cardiff and the rain would soon be left behind.
At nine-thirty I bought my ticket from the window, anonymous again amongst the mass of summer travelers struggling beneath their packs, already weary in their minds, tired before the day had even begun. It never once occurred to me that I was one of them and I made my way through their clutter to the periphery to wait my time with the real people amongst the bars and the cafeterias that coloured brightly the damp walls of the station.
It was here that old men stood alone or sat backed against the walls on cold wooden seats, their mouths working thinly from behind newspapers or magazines, ignorant of the words and thinking only of the younger sons that pressed rudely about them. Couples stood carefully apart while their children teased the beggars who gathered about the cafes and the foodstalls, deliberately avoiding the young men who loitered in sullen adolescent groups about the doorways watching boldly the teenage girls catwalking back and forth across the floor. In all that scrambling there was no place to sit so I made my way to the newstall to dally amongst the racks of papers, toing and froing along the aisles and amusing myself with the conversations of the station people. I bought a paper and a coffee from the Last Station cafe, drinking and reading slowly at the counter, imagining myself a hero to the world before leaving the crowd behind and following the stairs out onto the platform.
The rain had stopped when I saw him and for the first time in the day I felt the sun. He walked as a stranger, hesitant, as though he had been too long indoors and found the open foreign and not to his liking. He was the only other person on the platform and he carried in his hand a single bag of the type doctors use when visiting. He was tall and straight without being large, clean shaven, though his clothes were ill fitting with age and the brown leather of his shoes scuffed with black about the soles. He had about him the aura of a beaten fighter and I saw that his eyes were dark with circles and his face pale in the thin light of the sun.
I didn�t consider him as company and even when he took a seat beside me I thought closeness was just his way, as it is with some people. I had always believed it inherent in people to seek the companionship of others when even in their minds they desire solitude, even loneliness. I watched as he settled, reaching into his bag for a cigarette and, when I saw that he had no light, offered him my own. He smiled his thanks but it was a smile without warmth or humour and I felt content to leave him with his thoughts and to smoke alone in silence.
It was ten minutes before he spoke and when they came his words startled me. His voice was strong and clear, sweet with the musical lilt that is god�s gift to the Irish. He spoke into space, staring at the city through the breaks in the station wall even as he drank deep from the bottle wrapped tight in brown paper. His name was Liam but that, he said, should mean nothing to me, a name as common as the drink where he came from. They�d called him Paddy for ten years, and if I felt inclined I should call him the same, for that is what he was used to.
�You�re not a Welshman are you?�, he asked.
I shook my head.
�Nor English either�.
�Australian� I told him.
His smile flashed briefly in triumph.
�That�d be it then, do you know of Limerick�, he asked.
�Only of it�, I replied.
�Aye, I am knowin� of it too, but not for a while I�m sure�.
He offered the bottle and nodded for me to drink. In the cold chill of the morning the liquid was sweet and warm and when I had taken my turn he took the bottle carefully and raised it by the neck to his lips. I watched his throat pulse gently, noticing how the hardness of his jaw softened and the lines about his eyes smoothed a little as he drank.
�Ten years� he said when he had finished, �is a long time for a man to be without a drink�.
He was fond of the drink he said, and he told me how a Limerick man could laugh with the drink but never without it, that it was a curse, but what was there about it that a man could do.
�Ten years without a drop� he told me, �but not a day was there that I didn�t want for a glass�. He raised the bottle again and toasted himself with a laugh, �and thanks be to God for that�.
The words came quickly and I struggled a little to understand for I was not yet accustomed to the Irish way. He was young, and despite his appearance I guessed him no more than thirty, the lines of his face not those of age but of a man who had lost his compassion for others, or perhaps was on his way to doing so. I couldn�t help but wonder what there was for him for life to offer.
The rain had started again and along the stone back of the city the clouds sat low enough to hide the tops of the buildings from the people on the streets below. �If the world should come to an end� I said to myself, �I will die forever in the rain�. I could not help but smile at the irony of my imagined death. So in life do we make our choices, I thought, and I wondered if the waitress had left. If so I wondered still if she understood.
The people were coming now, stepping loudly onto the platform in one�s and two�s or in heavily laden groups with the trappings of their lives slung like anchors about their necks, waiting for their train safe beneath the woolen layers of overcoats and jackets, the mist of their breath rising soft and warm about their faces. The Irishman though took little notice of the commotion. It was only after the first bell that he stirred, turning in his seat to face me with a confused stare at the distraction. I watched his face as the thoughts gathered again behind his eyes. When he finally spoke his voice slipped to a whisper, and he held his mouth close so I could feel the wet spots of his breath about my face.
�Have you ever killed a man sir�, he asked.
I shook my head .
�Aye, a good thing that is too�. He rocked a little now as he spoke, leaning forward with his hand to steady himself on my arm.
�I was eighteen you know when I killed a man, no more than a boy. I was a boy with the drink in me and when they heard that they sent me across the water to teach the Irish a lesson. This is what happens to a Limerick man that kills an Englishman dead, this is what happens to the Irish who kill one of ours they said�. He sat back in the seat and drank hard with the memory. I could see the anger bright in the colour of his eyes and how his hands shook tight with their grip on the bottle.
�Eighteen� he said, leaning forward again. �And then they cut me for killing a man who took to a girl against her will and left the rotten taste of him on her breath forever. Ten years they said, but it should be longer. Ten years from my family and never were they to know would they see me alive again. Ten years. And when they let me out all they could do was smile and say we didn�t think you�d make it Irish, we hoped you wouldn�t make it. But I did, and now I�m going home�.
That was the last thing he would say, for when a group of children took their seats behind us he picked up his bag and found a seat further along the row to be alone. I pulled my jacket tighter and lit a cigarette. The sun that had shone so briefly had disappeared again, the shadows first lengthening then slipping away to leave the city colourless, distant and remote beneath the chill. I glanced at the big station clock with its face black from diesel smoke at the edges but the hands had long since forgotten the time. I wondered idly when someone would notice, and perhaps bother themselves to set it right. In the guard house the station master looked at his watch and at the second bell I knew that the train would be late and I could not help thinking that now was the wrong time for a man to be alone.
