The Cold Eye of Heaven

Christine Dwyer Hickey

• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Year: 2011
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9780857894168
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

Winner of the 2012 Kerry Group Irish Novel Award The Cold Eye of Heaven: the stunning new novel from Christine Dwyer Hickey, bestselling author of Last Train from Liguria. Farley is an elderly Irishman, frail in body but sharp as a tack. Waking in the middle of the night he finds himself lying paralyzed on the cold bathroom floor. And so his mind begins to move backwards, taking us with him into his past. As Farley unravels the warp and weft of his life, he relives the loves, losses and betrayals with the darkly comic wit of a true Dubliner. For this is also Dublin's story, the city Farley has seen through poverty and prosperity, boom and bust - each the other's constant companion throughout his seventy-five years. Epic in scope, rich in detail, and shot through with black humour, The Cold Eye of Heaven is a bitter-sweet paean to Dublin and a unique meditation on the life of one of its citizens.

The Party

April 2000

FARLEY HANGS HIS COAT on the rack, smoothes down his suit, settles the bag of presents he’s bought by the wall. First to arrive. It occurs to him that this could well be the first time he’s ever been completely alone, if not in the office, then certainly in this building. Even those times when he’d worked into the night or come back after the pub had closed because he couldn’t bear the thoughts of going home – there’d always been someone. In a room somewhere. The sisters in the top-floor flat. The mad tailor. The parrot. Or that time with young Slowey.

He feels a bit spooked. The silent, dusky house around him. The long hallway. A sense of something or other prowling the empty rooms of the flat upstairs. He half expects to see Jane’s painted face rise like a Venetian mask over the bannister: ‘O there you are, Mister Slowey, I wonder if I might inveigle upon you…?’ No insult that she called him Slowey – whether fixing a plug or shifting a piece of furniture – they were all Mister Sloweys to Jane. He thinks now of the day she retired – how old she’d seemed to him then – a drama teacher in a secondary school. Her two elder sisters already dead and Chrissy in a home down in Meath. The loneliness of Jane after. You could see it trailing up the stairs behind her, hear it in the way she pounced on the phone the minute it rang. For a while she’d taken to giving elocution classes to kids after school. The bored chant on winter afternoons through the floorboards: ub awb eeb; how now brown cow.

He opens his jacket and snuffles each armpit, worried now that it may have been a mistake to walk into work, what with the long day ahead, the retirement party after – by which time he could be stinking. But he’d enjoyed these past few days, walking into work, even though he’d never have done it but for the bus strike. And he’d enjoyed too the fact that he was fit enough to do it; fitter than most of them in here, young Slowey included. And the further fact, that after all the giving out about the carry-on of the taxi men on New Year’s Eve, all the swearing to give the greedy bastards no more business, he’d been the one, the only one, to stick to his guns. All that aside. Walking the route he had so mindlessly made, first by car, later by bus, for near on to forty years, it had been sort of like doing it all in a slow-motion rewind, so that he’d remembered all sorts of odd things, like the names of shops that used to be, or the colour of doors on houses that once stood on this or that pile of rubble. People too; the old man in the dust coat who used sit on the bench at Wolfe Tone Park shooting at birds with his invisible rifle. Or the youngfella in the bright yellow sou’wester who used to sell newspapers at Sarah’s Bridge – whatever happened to him? What he’d liked best though was the moment he came onto the quays and the first sight of the river, sturdy and dirty and looking at it, really looking at it, the way he used to do when he was a boy; noticing things. Like the blind-eyed river heads or the loose scabs of algae hanging off the walls. And the feeling then as he got further along, of being pulled into the machine of a city just as it was about to take off. Footsteps and purpose all around him. And the skyline all the way down to the sea where skeletons of cranes and half-constructed buildings rose up, reminding him of an exhibition in the Natural History Museum.

He stands in the doorway of the main office, looking through. The cleaners have been – wax polish over the dry, musted aroma of paper. Above all that a taint of lavender. The lavender not real of course, but from one of Noreen’s plug-in contraptions: Ocean Breeze, Highland Heather, Malaysian Mist or some such. She’ll often make him guess and he’ll play along to please her – although they all stink the same to him. He likes this vantage point – one room blending into the next; the feeling of space and possibility. The opposite to his own little house – like living in a snackbox, as he overheard some snide bitch say the day of Martina’s funeral. It appeals to him too, the sense of past lives that have been lived in here; first as reception room for a family of merchants. Later a tenement flat for God knows how many. Later again a series of come-and-go offices before Slowey & Co., Legal & Town Agents, finally came to roost here. Chrissy once told him that these two rooms were a ballet school in the twenties and that she could remember, when she was a child, the girls doing their bar exercises along the walls and the walls themselves lined with mirrors so that just a few could make it look like a full company of ballerinas. He had just loved the idea of that. Slowey, of course, had knocked it on the head: ‘Do you not think now, there’d be traces, the mark of a nail, a Rawl-plug – something?’ he’d asked, stroking a large dismissive hand over the walls. And he’d been sorry after that he’d mentioned it at all.

He comes into the office and stops in the centre. He could happily live here in these two rooms. Not now maybe, but a couple of years down the road. After he came back from his big trip, gotten used to his new life, his new money. Money made anything possible. What he’d do now is this – turn the back office into his bedroom, maybe knock a door in the side wall to give direct access to the kitchen, the jacks too of course, stick in a shower while he’s at it; something decent like you’d see in a hotel. The front room here meanwhile could be his living area – sofa by that wall near the window, desk (he’d have to keep the desk) at an angle over there. And the two fireplaces of course; Italian marble. He’d have them opened up. In winter he could light a fire in the bedroom – the luxury of that! Lying in bed watching firelight pat up the walls. And to be living right in the centre of town – it could open up your whole life. Better than walking the streets of a housing estate day after day like some bewildered oulone, up and down to the shops, stopping at gossipy corners. Or else fluting around in the front garden, hoping someone would drop an hello over the railing. The suburbs is no place for a man. Not unless he’s a dedicated drinker. Nothing to inspire, nowhere to go. Where do they go? A few of the retired men on his road joined the gym in the new hotel up near the Naas Road. He’d considered it, for about half a minute. The thoughts of the changing rooms had put him off; oulfellas standing around in the nip, hands on hips, waggling their nudgers at each other, while they pontificated on the issues of the day; issues that were really no longer any of their business. A city would be different but. A city could make you feel part of itself. He could join something; a film society, a chess club. Learn how to play chess first of course. He could go to the theatre, broaden his range, start reading the Guardian maybe, like Jackie – give himself something to talk about. You’d never see Jackie short of a topic. He could make new friends, invite them round for a drink. ‘You know,’ he’d say, resting a careless arm across the back of his new leather sofa, ‘in the twenties this used to be a ballet school.’

He passes through the front office, into the back. The rack is filled with job sheets hanging like bunting, corner to corner; jobs for today, jobs for tomorrow, jobs for next week. He is leaving the business in good fettle; it both pleases and saddens him to know this. In the middle of the room, a big square table is topped with telephones. On one wall pigeonholes climb towards the ceiling. A counter runs the length of the other two walls. The fax machine, the photocopier over to the side. In between, the nap of the carpet worn down like footpaths in grass. The turn and return of clerical footsteps. How many have worked in this room? Must be near to a hundred clerks clocked up by now. Unusual names may drift into his head now and then: Titley, Wheatley, Carabini, Quirke. Or faces maybe of some who, for one reason or another, left a mark. That Easton bloke that he’d had to sack one time. Or the ginger messenger boy from Longford who threw all the deliveries in the Liffey and pretended he’d been robbed. But the truth is, once gone, usually forgotten. Alright in ones or twos, for a drink at the bar or a bit of company walking up to the courts, but an annoying bunch of fuckers, by and large – much as he was himself at that age. The stupid jokes and young man’s swagger; Monday morning farts and the stink of cheap aftershave; the countless umbrages and senseless cruelties; the know-alls and the know-fuck-alls – will he miss any of that? he wonders.

Farley comes back to his own office and stands at the window. Outside on the quay, a shoal of passers-by. Across the road, a foreign-looking youngfella is huddled by the river wall, begging. It used only be the tinkers you’d see; Paddy the knacker, women with children shawled into tartan rugs – a little some-hin for the babbee, God’ll give you great luck – he will in his bollix, he often felt like saying. But you only ever see foreigners begging now. He doesn’t know why this should make him feel proud, but it does.

Noreen, he will miss. He’d interviewed her himself, God knows how many years ago. A smiley little thing in a pink fluffy jumper, scratching her forearm. Just out of secretarial college and O so eager to please. Slowey had slagged him at the time about keeping his hands to himself. ‘Youngones love a bit tragedy,’ he had said, referring to the fact that he was a young widower, ‘so you keep your eyes and your hands on the job.’ But he’d known she’d be no distraction – not with the woman he had on his mind then, filling every inch and corner of it. A silent screeching siren, only he could hear.

He looks down at Noreen’s desk, adorned with the toys of a middle-aged clerical typist: baubles and dangly toys, pictures. A framed photo of Clinton with her own face superimposed on it, so that it looks like her head is lying on his shoulder. A holiday postcard from her mother, now dead. A photo of her husband before he went gaga, a pitch-and-putt trophy in his hand. And hanging overhead the birdcage of course, a planted pot standing in place of the tailor’s parrot. Back in the hallway he throws a glance up the stairs. The tailor topped himself up there, on the second-floor landing. A Saturday afternoon, some time in the seventies. Summertime, because he can remember the sisters were away on holiday, and down here in the office they’d been getting the accounts in order for an audit; Slowey, Noreen, himself. It was the squawks of the parrot brought them upstairs. Slowey had cut the tailor down. Noreen rang for the police. It had been clear from the room that the tailor had been living there. A filthy sleeping bag rolled into the corner. Scraps of cloth on a long table; fractions of unsewn suits all over the floor; a small primus stove on the window ledge; a bottle of curdled milk. When the guards left they went over to the Abbey Mooney for a drink; somewhere quiet, Slowey had said, where they wouldn’t run into anyone and have to make conversation. Best keep this to ourselves, they’d agreed, huddled together in a corner like abandoned children.

The violence of the death had been what really upset Noreen. The fact that he should choose to die that way when he’d left no one behind him. ‘Why didn’t he just slip quietly away,’ she had said, ‘take sleeping tablets or something – you know? It’s like he was trying to punish someone. But who?’

‘Himself maybe?’ Farley had suggested. And Noreen had covered her face in her hands.

‘Or the parrot?’ Slowey said. And Noreen had taken her hands away. They’d looked at each other, shocked for a second and then suddenly they couldn’t seem to stop laughing.

Farley looks across the hallway; two doors to two offices. The one on the right belongs to Frank. The other one was, at one time, intended for Farley. They had taken over the two rooms after the dress-hire woman had packed it in, leaving a right bang behind her – old perfume and dead women’s sweat – that no amount of airing or Noreen’s Highland Heather could subdue. For a few years they’d used the space for storage, then, when Farley became a partner, it had been decided to turn them into offices. One for Frank, the other for himself. About which time young Tony Slowey decided to honour the company with his presence. And so Farley had let him have the office. Partly because he knew that the others wouldn’t work well for Tony out in the main room, and partly because Frank, without quite asking, had asked.

He turns the doorknob of Tony’s office – locked, of course. The cute bastard, no doubt has something to hide.

The door to Frank’s office opens with a tell-tale-tattler’s whine; the neatness inside betrays the fact that Frank hasn’t so much as stuck his nose in for the past few weeks. Because between one thing and another and Cheltenham included, he’s been sticking ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Praise for Christine Dwyer Hickey:
• Tak, tak. Zaden, zaden.
• The Suit
• The Party
• The Summons Server
• Hunger
• Father Rat
• Rain
• A Night of Perfect Seeing
• The Fly-fisher