Long Time, No See Read online

  Long Time, No See

  by the same author

  Short Stories

  BANISHED MISFORTUNE

  Fiction

  FIGHTING WITH SHADOWS

  A GOAT’S SONG

  SUDDEN TIMES

  Non-Fiction

  THE BEND FOR HOME

  Poetry

  THE BALLYCONNELL COLOURS

  WHAT THE HAMMER

  THE REED BED

  A FOOL’S ERRAND

  Long Time, No See

  DERMOT HEALY

  VIKING

  VIKING

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700,

  Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland

  (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell,

  Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park,

  New Delhi – 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632,

  New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue,

  Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First American edition

  Published in 2012 by Viking Penguin,

  a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Copyright © Dermot Healy, 2011

  All rights reserved

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Healy, Dermot, 1947-

  Long time, no see / Dermot Healy.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-58366-1

  1. Donegal (Ireland : County)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6058.E19L66 2012

  823’.914—dc23

  2011043897

  Printed in the United States of America

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  ALWAYS LEARNING

  PEARSON

  Acknowledgement

  Chapter Forty-Three and part of Chapter Forty-Five of this novel were first published in 2002, and displayed in the Chester Beatty Library in an exhibition by the Graphic Studio Dublin, titled The Holy Show: Irish Artists and the Old Testament.

  Table of Contents

  Book One: Bang!

  Chapter One: First Call

  Chapter Two: Malibu

  Chapter Three: The Rooster

  Chapter Four: The Shot

  Chapter Five: When Whack!

  Chapter Six: The Blackbird’s House

  Book Two: Visitors

  Chapter Seven: Fixing the Window

  Chapter Eight: The Fairy

  Chapter Nine: Visitors

  Chapter Ten: Hoof-cutting

  Chapter Eleven: Saturday Morning, the Mercedes

  Book Three: Sightseeing

  Chapter Twelve: Saturday, Playacting

  Chapter Thirteen: Saturday Night

  Chapter Fourteen: Sightseeing

  Chapter Fifteen: Sunday Dinner

  Chapter Sixteen: Working the Beach

  Chapter Seventeen: The Photographer

  Chapter Eighteen: The Stations

  Chapter Nineteen: Go in Peace

  Book Four: The First Fall

  Chapter Twenty: Waiting on a Lift

  Chapter Twenty-One: The Judge

  Chapter Twenty-Two: The First Fall

  Chapter Twenty-Three: There’ll be Another Day

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Sailors and Trees

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Hippies

  Book Five: The Curve

  Chapter Twenty-Six: The Watch Room

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Curve

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Tent

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Death of the Ass

  Chapter Thirty: Visiting the Bird

  Chapter Thirty-One: The Walk

  Chapter Thirty-Two: The Rifle

  Chapter Thirty-Three: Away with the Birds

  Book Six: The Protestant Earth

  Chapter Thirty-Four: The Dig

  Chapter Thirty-Five: Squaring the Circle

  Chapter Thirty-Six: Stepping into our Finery

  Chapter Thirty-Seven: Supper

  Chapter Thirty-Eight: My Story

  Book Seven: The Signs

  Chapter Thirty-Nine: Diamonds

  Chapter Forty: Three Black Ties

  Chapter Forty-One: Passing the Time

  Chapter Forty-Two: The Dark Saying

  Chapter Forty-Three: A Jacket and Shoes

  Chapter Forty-Four: The Cure

  Chapter Forty-Five: The Second Fall

  Chapter Forty-Six: The Search

  BOOK ONE

  Bang!

  Chapter One

  First Call

  I headed down the townland of Ballintra in a Force 8 to light the fire towards the beginning of August.

  Ah hah! said Joejoe, opening the door a fraction.

  She’s windy, I said.

  Oh it’s you, he said.

  It is Uncle Joejoe, I said. He was my granduncle but sometimes I called him just Uncle and some times Grandda.

  Hold her.

  I have it.

  Right now!

  OK.

  OK, go! Tar isteach, he shouted.

  I took the handle and slid through with a couple of newspapers under my arm. He stepped back as I stepped in, the table cloth rose, Timmy the dog done a turn and I swung the door shut. Joejoe studied me with his back against the shaking panels.

  I was expecting my dear neighbour Mister Blackbird.

  Sorry about that.

  And I said to myself that’s him.

  And it was me.

  It was you, but it was his knock, you see a knock can carry anyone’s signature on a day like that. I could have sworn. You know what it is son – memory is a stranger who comes to call less and less.

  Aye.

  And sometimes he’s not welcome, if you know what I mean.

  He could be anyone.

  But not you.

  He turned the key, let down the latch, pulled back the curtain on the window and looked out.

  Is it the north-west?

  It is.

  The worst! But not as bad as February ninth in eighty-seven, he said as he came back from the misty, drenched window to the table. I don’t like the look of it. The worst is at the filling-in of the moon, he said, handing me the leather-handled knife and then he put a plate of un-boiled bacon before me. You’re just in time. The Bird will not stir that day, I’ll warrant you, he’ll stop above in the bodience, that sorry auld bed of his.

  I began to saw off some of the raw fat and he threw the first slice to Timmy who nursed it up against the bedroom door, then Joejoe brought the remaind
er of the bacon joint into the kitchen and set it into a pot of boiling water filled with parsley and chives. He put the small slices of fat onto a saucer on the middle shelf of the dresser, out of the reach of Timmy, and alongside the Wayward Lad.

  They were for his rat trap that he would set last thing that night.

  Now, he said, how is the form Mister Psyche?

  Not so bad Grandda.

  Are you fit for dealing with a bad-tempered cratur like me?

  I am.

  He stood back and looked at the dresser, then lifted down one of his prayer books and handed it to me. Read mister, he said, from the Psalms. The Bible he always called the Psalms.

  I picked a page at random, and, as always, it fell open at one of the texts where he had turned down the corner of a page from past readings.

  And, behold, I said, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind.

  He was not, he said.

  And after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake; And after the earthquake a fire: but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a small voice.

  Amen, he said, quietly. We’re in this together, Mister Psyche.

  He blessed himself; prayed washing his teeth and studying the dresser, then he came to a decision and replaced the Psalms by the picture of the thrush, lifted the pink shoehorn and sat it on a green tin of Old Virginia. He stroked the copy of Moby Dick, shook the rusted bell from the drapers to summon the spirits and Timmy barked, rolled in a circle onto his back and bared his stomach. Then Joejoe sat next the window and began to clean the oil lamp. He cleaned the wick. The oil lamp was his main source of light despite the fact that he had electricity. This was done very carefully. The globe, he’d say, should be bright as day. Did you ever see a gypsy face, he asked me, in candlelight? No, I said. They have very fine features, he said, and he turned to watch me as we moved on from prayer to yesterday’s daily news. I read out the headlines, then rolled the sheets of newspaper into crisp tight logs and started to build the fire.

  I lit it every morning, that was my job ever since I left college, to read the prayers, then the news, and light the fire, and then go on wherever I was going.

  The newspapers I collected from all the houses where I had started doing jobs this summer. The timber came from trees felled in Dromod estate. The turf came from above on the mountain and up the Bog Road. And every day for the work I did, I got paid. This was my day-to-day life since college ended – cutting lawns, and hedges, driving tractors, digging gardens and building walls, and looking after Joejoe and taking in his lobsters from his pots out the rocks.

  I struck the match, she took.

  How is the beautiful Anna?

  She is fine.

  You’re a lucky man.

  All the news – the traffic congestion, business and financial affairs, houses for sale, wage and pension increases, obituaries, racing and soccer pages – shot up the chimney. We sat back and watched the flames, and then when the fire was at full tempo, he set the oil lamp on the window and studied the storm. He sang the song of the dog. Rain pounded the asbestos roof. We stepped out, slamming the door behind us, and he took the rusted spade to dig up some onions. The stalks were bent low and swinging in a frenzy of wind.

  Let me, I said.

  No. The one good thing is Mister, is that when there’s a storm coming a body gets a build-up of energy, he said. The man that sleeps in beyond a certain hour suffers. You get a pain just here – and he tapped his skull – and you can see it in their eye. Yes, indeed.

  He pulled a head of a blue cabbage and shook the earth from the roots. We stepped against the gable. The sea was leaping like a suicide over the lava rocks then scattering across fields of foam. A Mitsubishi Carisma drove by the gate, pulled in back of the beach, and a few souls went over the bank with cameras. Then a van, marked Sky TV, slowed to a stop, and the two men in the front sat eating sandwiches as they watched the waves. Lastly came the Mercedes, same as usual, with the little teddy bear, stuck fast to the back window.

  We waved to them.

  They did not acknowledge us, just a nod, but sat there watching the ocean; then seeing the height of the waves they drove away.

  Two girls on the pier stood looking out, one behind the other and we went back through the door and he trimmed the cabbage and I cut the onions. Then all of a sudden Joejoe stood up straight, and shot a hand round the back of his neck, leaned forward, and scratched ferociously. He squeezed his shoulders together, and blew out of his lips a sense of burning.

  What’s wrong?

  Nothing, he said. He looked at me a moment then he went over and leaned forward with his elbows on the window sill each side of the lamp.

  I often wonder is it possible to see the world through new eyes, he said, but l have my doubts. That’s the story. You go on, you do.

  You see, look out there, you see him, here comes the bollacks, look at the gimp of him, and he pointed, but I suppose you can’t be held to blame for the cut of your neighbours.

  Outside the Blackbird who lived just up the road, arrived in teeming salt on his bike, heeled it against the stone wall and humped up the path and straight into the house as I turned the key. Gather unto me, said the Blackbird. The Bird sometimes claimed he was a far distant cousin of my granduncle because we all shared the same name Feeney, but as Joejoe often said That man is no blood relation of mine. As he stepped in the wind swept through the kitchen, the dog grumbled, the trapdoor rose above in the ceiling and the polythene sheet in the attic shook. He heaved the door closed. Neither man spoke. He sat into the other armchair, lit up and sneezed. Then sneezed again and wrung a long lookey from his nose, and as he leaned forward a beautiful exotic smell – as always – reached me.

  Bless ya, I said.

  Mister Psyche?

  Yes.

  When do you get the results?

  Sometime soon.

  So what are you going to be?

  I don’t know. It depends on how I did in the Leaving.

  The Leaving is a sad word for an exam, said Joejoe.

  It is that, said the Bird, looking at me, and nodding.

  Now, said Joejoe, you know what you might do?

  What is that I wonder? I asked.

  He got carefully up and stood on Timmy’s chair and took an envelope out from behind the radio.

  There is a certain item needed.

  Right.

  You know what I mean?

  I do.

  A valuable item.

  OK.

  Cuckoo! said the Blackbird, with his mouth curved into an O, we are headed out to the Caribbean.

  On you go. Don’t get the small one; get the big one you hear me, never mind what the tulip says –

  – I hear you –

  – Here’s a twenty and a fiver. The last few euro is yours, so do what you will with it –

  – Thank you, sir –

  – Not at all –

  – Myself and Mister Blackbird will be waiting now.

  You’re right there, said the Blackbird and he tossed me a five-euro note.

  Patiently, added Joejoe.

  Good men, I said, facing the door.

  I headed up the road head-down. A bag of turnips, and a bag of turf, shorn in the middle, was dumped to the side of the road. A For Sale sign was down and bucketing outside Keating’s ruin. The spray was scattering over the meadows. Salt was raining and the bent grass was burnt black at the tips as if there had been frost overnight. Lyons cattle were eating from a trough with steam rising from them. The sun was high and squeezed into a blazing knot above the storm clouds on the horizon.

  I looked back and saw the pier was deserted except for a small Fiat that stood with its boot open. There were a few boxes of groceries sitting there beside it. The tide was huge. Mrs Tingle, who had a holiday home up the road, was standing, her hair in curlers, looking down over the end.
<
br />   She turned, saw me, and waved and waved me back, then drew me over with her forefingers.

  Could you give us a hand here, she asked.

  Sure.

  I’m sorry to have to ask you this, she said, but we have a wee problem, and it’s a big one, then she turned away, and pointed down.

  Her husband who was a Leeds soccer fanatic was standing in a blue anorak below in our trawler hanging onto the cabin. Their boat was tied alongside ours. On the far side was the Conans’ boat where Anna used come to read surrounded by all her old primary and secondary schoolbooks. There was a line of bags of groceries laid at intervals in both boats.

  You’re not thinking of going out?

  No, she said, thanks beta God. We packed the groceries on last night for a journey out to the island, went home and did not listen to the forecasts.

  It’s wild, I said.

  We were going to go out, but the journey is abandoned and we are taking everything back up again.

  It’s near the full moon.

  It is and to tell you the truth, she said, I can’t manage any more. Will you give us a hand?

  I will.

  Mister Psyche will get it, she shouted down.

  The bird watcher, with the binoculars round his neck, roared from below something up in the wind, but when I looked over the top he smiled and positioned himself at the bottom of the ladder. He lifted a bag in greeting. I said all right, and climbed over, swung out on the rope to the right over the edge to get my first foothold and started down. The choking wind tore at my chest. It must have been about fifteen feet down. I went rung by rung very carefully, holding on tight in between.

  He stood looking up at me with one hand raised in the rocking boat.

  I reached the bottom of the ladder, and he tapped my shoulder and handed me a bag of oranges. All right mate, he called. Up I went through the gusts and handed them to her. Thank you boy, she said. Then I shot back down for a transistor. No bird-watching today, he said, then up I went with a bag of cornflakes, and down for a bag of provisions. Towels, wine, her binoculars. Then we reached the last item I started up holding the black bag. He started to climb up behind me.

  It was a long climb. The bag said Blankets. Their boat said Gertie.

  Are you all right? came a shout from above.

  I’m with you, he shouted from below.