‘It’s not silage cover.’
‘Or a few fucking bags of rubbish.’
‘It’s not rubbish.’
‘But it’s something stupid no doubt.’
‘Come out and have a look, it’ll save time guessing.’
So I followed him outside into the grey afternoon. Halloran opened the back door of the van and I saw the pile of folders lying in a heap. I flicked over a couple of pages, then threw them back.
‘Let me guess. Out on Shannamaragh bog.’
‘Yes.’
‘Beyond the handball alley?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s the third time in as many weeks.’
‘The third?’
‘That’s what I said. You took pictures?’
‘I’ll send them on.’
‘Okay. Grab one end, we’ll carry these in.’
Blood Horizon
So I got a call about a week later.
I was changing the sheets on her bed when the phone went off in my pocket; a text message with a name and policy number topping a connected list of dates and place names and other info.
‘Did someone call?’
Sarah stood teetering in the doorway wearing a fresh set of pyjamas, her hair damp from the shower. I put the phone in my jacket. ‘No, just a text from work, nothing that can’t wait.’
‘You can’t stay with me for ever.’
‘Just a few more days, you’re on the mend.’
‘You know that’s not true, there’s no sign of me getting better. Still puking and sweating myself into oblivion.’
‘Get into bed. I have a good feeling about the next few days.’
‘You live in a world of optimism.’
‘You have to have faith.’
Later that evening I looked up the insurance company. When I found the number I got into the car and drove twenty miles to the far side of Westport and pulled in on the side of the road. I took out a second phone I’d bought earlier that day, and with the other phone open in my hand I rang the insurance company. With a bit of stumbling and stammering I submitted the name and policy number and RSI number. Then the security questions: the mother’s maiden name was Reidy and the godchild’s name was Eoghan. And that’s it, I was through. Now I had complete access to a new medical insurance policy.
‘How can I help you, sir?’ the voice asked sweetly.
I had my retreat ready. ‘Actually I was just checking up on our insurance policy. We have moved house recently and all our documentation has got messed up in transit.’
‘And you want to change the address?’
‘No, that’s fine, the change of address is only for the next few months. All I wanted to do was to check that I remembered the codes and the passwords to it. But it’s fine now.’
‘Yes it is, sir.’
‘Okay so.’
‘Is there anything else, sir?’
‘No, that’s fine, thank you.’
So I said goodbye, and before I could finish the call properly I threw open the door of the car, leaned out and got sick.
Plasma Chorus I
A couple of nights later. Halloran on the high stool, five or six druids like himself along the bar, well down in their pints. The street lights beyond the window have come up and the village is asleep in its sodium glow; a quiet night in the middle of the week. Behind the bar, Shamie Thornton is standing with his back to the optics, his arms folded across his chest.
Halloran has the floor.
‘A big pile of summonses on the desk when I went into him. Stroking through them with the pen.’
‘You didn’t spot our name on any of them?’
‘I didn’t spot yours if that’s what you’re asking?’
‘If you’re so worried you can ask him yourself soon enough – he’ll be on Morrison’s corner with his flashlight in another hour if you want to know.’
‘That’s his haunt all right.’
‘In fairness to him he’s not the worst; he has a job to do like anyone else and he gets little enough thanks for doing it in a place like this.’
‘He’s smart too, the same lad; he didn’t make sergeant at twenty-eight for nothing.’
‘And he’ll square with you – but he’ll let you know he’s squaring with you. It’s not so long ago he served me with a summons – it was six o clock in the evening and I was sprawled out on the couch watching the news when this hand reached in the small window over me and dropped the envelope down on top of me. Only that I saw the gold button on the cuff of the jacket I would never have known who it was. He must have spotted me through the window.’
‘So were all these files named?’
‘They were all named from what I could see, no one I recognised. I just handed them over to him; he took the lot into the barracks with him.’
‘And he wasn’t pleased?’
‘According to him this is the third one in three weeks, the third load that’s been found on the bog.’
‘That’s hardly a coincidence.’
‘Hardly, there’s talk of someone attempting to discredit the Health Board, trying to make them look foolish.’
A swell of laughter runs along the bar. ‘By Jesus, they have their work cut out for themselves trying to make that crowd look foolish.’
‘They’d want to be up early in the morning all right.’
‘They need very little help to look bad and that’s a fact.’
Halloran is in his element. It is too early for a consensus like this to close out a night. There could be telling on it yet.
Plasma Chorus II
The following Sunday, Halloran standing on Morrison’s corner.
It’s coming up to half eleven but there’s still time for a fag before he goes down to Mass. He’ll wander down when he has this last one smoked – give the priest time to put on his vestments. Then he’ll stand at the back of the church with the rest of the true believers.
The last cars move down the street, parking along the Westport road, out past the grotto.
A few pints after Mass, he decides. He’s stayed away from it the last few days and he feels good about it. But you can have too much of that as well. It’s good to get out and meet people; it doesn’t do to get too cooped up in yourself.
A minute later he is joined by a man with whom he exchanges a few words. The opening topics are easily brushed aside; yes, the weather has taken up but not before time either, there’s been a solid month of rain but there’s a break promised later in the week . . . The man leans towards Halloran and lowers his voice.
‘Tell me, what’s the word on Emmett Coyne?’
‘The last I heard he wasn’t good.’
‘So I believe.’
‘I met Alison coming out of Durkan’s two days ago. She had the kids with her and she looked harassed; I hated stopping her but you couldn’t not ask either, I couldn’t let her pass.’
‘You could not.’
‘Seemingly he lost a lot of blood while he was lying there. A vein or an artery in his leg was severed and he was very lucky that he didn’t bleed out. But when he was transfused at the hospital he reacted very badly. Seemingly he picked up all sorts of infections with it – whatever the cause they don’t know. Anyway, they have him jacked up on antibiotics and that’s all I know. I didn’t want quizzing her too much with the kids and everything.’
‘I suppose no one’s allowed in to see him?’
‘No, he’s in Intensive Care. Alison was in a few times but he was out cold. The two kids haven’t been in to see him and she’s having an awful time trying to explain it to them.’
‘He was a lucky man. I saw the truck on Corcoran’s low-loader heading over Kilsallagh that evening. It was some sight – there wasn’t a panel that wasn’t buckled or twisted and two big holes torn in the tank.’
‘It slid down on its side when it left the road.’
‘About a hundred feet – Christ he was lucky.’
‘I’ll leave it so and call to the
house when he’s home.’
‘He’d do it himself if it was one of us.’
‘He would and nothing surer.’ Halloran dropped the butt and ground it with the sole of his shoe. ‘God willing he’ll pull through. Time to wander down,’ he said.
They set off together; down the quiet street lined with cars. At the church gate they stood for a moment to throw a few coins into the collection box for the Knights of Malta.
Plasma Chorus III
Halloran and the lads in the bar again. A Thursday night, generally one of the quietest in the week but word has spread. In a small community these things have to be talked out. So the lads have turned out and with Halloran’s arrival there is now a quorum, they can start the discussion. ‘In fairness, he’s been driving that truck for how long now – ten, twelve years . . .?’
‘It must be that anyway, it’s a good ten years since he took the job over from Joe Needham.’
‘Twelve years, I’d say.’
‘Driving those narrow roads and never spilling a drop or getting a scratch on her till today.’
‘And you could set your watch by him five mornings a week, going along the line at ten minutes past eight.’
‘I used to see him from the kitchen window.’
‘But it wasn’t a mechanical failure?’
‘No, it wasn’t a mechanical failure. I was talking to Mairtín who came upon him first, and he said you could see where the verge had given way under the wheels just as he came round the bend.’
‘This is the bend before Tully bridge?’
‘Yes, the bend before you rise up onto it – the whole margin gave way under the wheels.’
‘And once she started to tip at all.’
‘Straight over.’
‘Straight over.’
‘And that road as well, it’s deadly dangerous.’
‘It’s high and it’s narrow and it’s twisty.’
‘And it’s all potholes – once you leave the main road at Katney’s till you arrive above at the crossroads for the Killary there’s nothing but potholes, pure gravel underneath it and it was only a matter of time before someone took a spill off it.’
‘And with all the rain we’ve had this past month.’
‘It hasn’t stopped raining since Halloween.’
‘That’s what softened the margin, all that run-off down the incline towards the river.’
‘Well, they might do something with it now.’
‘They’ll have to do something with it, there’s a big bite gone out of the side of it, it’s sectioned off with tape and bollards.’
‘And is it still open, the road?’
‘It’s still open, it was open yesterday evening, it’s either keep it open or have cars do a ten-mile detour to take a three-mile spin into town.’
‘They were up there yesterday, a County Council crew going around with levelling rods and tapes – Marcus Conway was there.’
‘That’s Conway’s thing all right – bridges and roads and that kind of thing.’
‘They might do something with it so, not before time either.’
‘They’d want to do something or they better not go coming round here in the spring looking for votes in the Council elections. They’ll be told where to go.’
‘And the milk tank torn to shreds?’
‘Seemingly it slid down the incline and tore a big strip out of the side of it, a thousand gallons of milk then washing down into the river as far as the hatchery.’
‘Tore open like a bag of Tayto.’
And so it winds on. This is the news going through its village cycle. Nothing much added to it or clarified but men will bring it home to wives and families and this is how lives in a small village hold together.
Halloran looks at the watch. Twenty past eleven, not too bad. One more pint and he’ll head.
Blood Horizon
So all I needed now was a referral letter.
That’s why I was sitting across from a GP who had never seen me before but who was now gazing at the small pile of notes that lay on the desk between us. Twenty in all, totalling €1,000, a good price for the single page that would give Sarah access to the monoclonal treatment that the secondaries in her liver urgently needed.
It was clear to me the moment I had stepped into his office that I had miscalculated. I had come braced for an encounter with someone who carried himself with the same blunt belligerence as the man who had met me in the car park, someone fashioned to the same crude responses. This, in my short experience, was how I imagined criminals carried themselves. What I met instead was a broken man who offered nothing at all in the way of combat or belligerence. Whatever fear or dismay my presence may have caused him, it was well sunk beneath a fatalism that had him already reaching for a headed sheet of paper and filling out the first details before I had properly explained myself.
‘This will go out in the post tomorrow morning?’
‘That’s what you want?’
‘That’s what I want.’
We had nothing else to say to each other. I was halfway to the door when he called.
‘Watch this.’
In his left hand he held the sheaf of notes between thumb and forefinger; in his right, he held a cheap plastic lighter. He brought the lighter to the notes and ignited the flame. The flame caught, and he turned the notes so that the flame consumed them all the way up to his hand. Then two steps to the window and he dropped what remained of the flaming notes into the rubbish bin. He turned to me.
‘You saw that.’
The pleading look in his eyes left me in no doubt as to what he meant.
‘If I don’t get my letter I saw nothing.’
‘You’ll get your letter.’
I left him standing there in the smoky air. As I was getting into the car, the fire alarm went off.
Plasma Chorus IV
It’s into December now, Christmas only a few weeks away. Nevertheless, there are a few men along the bar. Shamie Thornton is glad that anyone at all is coming out for a pint – he knows well that there is nothing as lonely as an Advent barman.
Halloran is running late – the topic is up and running but he hasn’t missed much. He stands inside the door for a moment shrugging himself out of a bulky anorak: it’s rainy and blustery out tonight. He is quick to pick up the note of disbelief that drives tonight’s topic.
‘How the hell is it possible to give a man the wrong blood?’
‘In this day and age?’
‘You’d think that with everything they know it would be a simple thing to get that right?’
‘However it happened, it’s happened, and he’s on life support as of yesterday evening.’
‘I still can’t get over it, don’t they have records and files? Christ, it’s hardly a year since he was in with gallstones – surely to God they had a record of his blood group and whatever then?’
‘Was it a year ago?’
‘It was less than a year ago, about eleven months; I’ll tell you how I know. I was in Castlebar at the time because the tax was up on the car, and I was just coming out of the County Council offices when I remembered he was in – so I called in to see him, just a walk around the corner. Sitting on the side of the bed he was, reading the paper. His only worry was that he wouldn’t get the whole thing done before Christmas and that he’d have to come back again in the New Year.’
‘And that was a year ago?’
‘That was a year ago.’
‘And he went under the knife for that?’
‘He did go under the knife. They sent him home for the Christmas and brought him back in the New Year. They don’t do procedures like that in December because the hospital is clogged up with people signing themselves in for the Christmas.’
‘But that’s what I can’t understand; if he had surgery they surely had all his records on file?’
‘Seemingly there was some error in his file. Either that or his blood group had changed since the surgery.’
 
; ‘Your blood group can’t change, can it?’
‘How would I know?’
‘You’re asking the wrong man.’
‘Not in any way I know of.’
‘So he got the wrong blood and that was it.’
‘That was it – everything came to a halt.’
‘A total collapse?’
‘Total collapse.’
‘Jesus Christ.’
‘Just like you’d put diesel into a petrol engine. You’ll go a few miles of the road but that’s about it, you’ll soon pull over to the verge.’
‘I’d rather you put diesel into me than the wrong blood.’
‘You might get further on it, all right. It could hardly be more dangerous, a total organ collapse and now he is on life support. They are waiting for the rest of the family to come.’
‘Jimmy and Oliver and the sister in London?’
‘Agnes?’
‘Agnes, that’s her.’
‘That’s one phone call you wouldn’t want getting.’
‘You can say that again.’
The mood is set in gloom now. So much disbelief has exhausted it.
‘It’s not all bad news, though.’
‘How so?’
‘I was at the bottle bank the other evening and I met J.J. I asked him how Sarah was doing. Seemingly she’s getting on well, improving. Her first treatment didn’t go so well so he moved her to that private clinic in Galway. Apparently she is doing much better.’
‘I’m glad of that, Sarah was always nice. As for himself – it wouldn’t bother me if I never spoke to the cunt.’
‘Same as that, there’s no nature in him.’
‘Never was, the first day ever.’
‘But what were you doing at the bottle bank?’
‘What does anyone do at a bottle bank?’
‘You were throwing in a few jam jars, hardly anything more?’
‘Jam jars, my hole.’
‘That’s the first sign of a problem, you know?’
‘What, jam?’
‘Not jam, drinking at home like that. That’s how it starts.’