Читать книгу Hand in the Fire - Hugo Hamilton - Страница 13

As the date of the trial began to come closer, Kevin called me over to his mother’s house to discuss a bigger job. Something quite substantial. His mother had been complaining for years that the floorboards in the front room were running in the wrong direction. She wanted them turned around so they would run lengthways, towards the front window rather than laterally across the room towards the fireplace. The original builder had made a right mess of things. It made the house feel small and claustrophobic.

I was the first to agree with them for aesthetic reasons, but I knew immediately that it was not worth correcting at this point, purely on financial grounds. I told them so, but the cost was not really seen as a barrier any more. Apparently she had inherited money lately from a relative in the USA, so they felt it was the right time to get it done.

I was thrilled to get back into serious carpentry again, especially a big job like this where I could really prove myself. But I was not sure it made sense. The thought crossed my mind that I was possibly being re-employed each time because of the imminent court proceedings. He was utterly calm about the outcome, but he needed my absolute allegiance to the family. He knew the Garda would never come after him at this point, unless I lost faith and brought the whole story out into the open in the witness stand. He needed me to be completely on his side, and maybe this was a kind of payment in advance for the favour I was doing him.

He reminded me from time to time not to say a word to anyone. And maybe he needed to isolate me a little from the threat of new friends who might start asking questions. He explained things to me about this country, how friendship often masqueraded as curiosity. He tried to teach me the art of answering a question with another question. He told me there was a secret language here, not the old, Irish language or the English language, but something in between the lines, like a code.

‘This is an island,’ he pointed out to me once. ‘You can never completely trust what you hear. You have to forecast what’s behind the words. You have to be able to read people’s inner thoughts. You have to be able to think on your feet and keep ahead of them.’

Perhaps he was speaking as much to himself as he was counselling me. I listened to his advice eagerly. But you can’t learn all that street-wise acumen like a faculty. You can’t pick it up like chess or tennis. So he felt it was his duty to protect me and look out for me.

His mother must have known nothing about the case, otherwise she would not have wanted me in the house. She had her arms folded as we stood in the front room looking around. Kevin half sitting on one of the radiators, allowing the full force of her tenacity to work on me.