D is for Death (Chapter 4)

4



Finn played his piano in the evenings and brooded over his humiliation.
He was expecting Grania to come and turn the pages for him, and was
winded every night she didn't come, and he played for the ghosts of
lost lovers, whose taffeta dresses he heard brushing on the floor as
they waltzed. Finn often ate with Grania's parents, and they treated
his search party with appreciation as well as some alarm. At home he
thought of what he wanted to do to Diarmuid. There was no doubt about
it, he wanted him dead. Grania ran through his mind all day and at
night he imagined she was one step ahead of him in the forest, he saw
her red jacket flitting through the trees, and he eventually caught up
with her. He pinned her to the ground and she scratched his face and
turned her head away as he pulled up her skirt. He shuddered and
collapsed. He saw her eyes crack, and her body underneath was made of
eggshells that were broken into the ground. Then he chased her around a
kitchen with marzipan and rolled her up to eat, and ate her from her
toes to her face while she gasped with pleasure.
He ordered his men to find the lovers, and he began putting pins in
maps. His laughter had aquired a lunatic edge and he began to enjoy the
game. His love of beautiful things became an obsession, and he started
hankering after new toys to entertain him while he waited for the day
that Grania would arrive. A particular painting caught his eye. It was
Sakamoto's The Cherry Tree, whose first owner, Mr Felix Lopez, had
died, aged 121, with a smile on his face and time to say goodbye to all
of his 29 mistresses. Finn thought the miracle painting would look good
opposite his desk. He was getting older, and his legs were giving him
trouble. The painting would give him the life he needed until the day
Grania arrived. It was going on auction at Sotheby's.
"Lets see who has the balls, shall we?"
Finn's men tore apart their victims as if they were feather pillows.
But now they sat behind desks in Monkstown and looked at the floor. All
of them had seen Diarmuid once or twice and let him out of their
sights. They knew he was a decent guy, and Finn had lost the plot. They
engineered near misses, ignored his terrible taste in ginger
hair-wear.
"I'm sure you'll all agree its a wonderful game." Said Finn. "Now, if
you are fighters, you will go and collect the painting. If not
Diarmuid's head, then I will have this. It's quite simple. I will see
who is really working, and who deserves a reward, and who deserves
punishment." He laughed. "Any questions? Thank you so much" he said,
and left the room.


The auction of the famous painting took place on a Wednesday
afternoon. When it was over, the auctioneer, Henry Fordham stepped off
the podium stage, took out a red and white spotted handkerchief from
his breastpocket, and wiped the sweat from his brow. The painting had
gone for a record. Two bidders had battled it out, until the room was
gasping as the price went back and forth, climbing a teetering ladder,
until
"Gone, at eleven million, to the gentleman in the second row." He
slammed down his gavel and the room broke into applause.
"Tremendous, Henry."
Henry Fordham wore red braces, had brown curly hair, laughed a lot,
stood at 6'7 and had a presence so commanding that when he shouted
"Thief!" the entire room fell silent. For, on the stage, in The Cherry
Tree's frame, there was, quite unmistakably, a picture, of an arse. In
black biro. A moment of silence, and then shrieking chaos everyone
turned, and pinstriped men shouted and fought the ushers with their
umbrellas to get out, as the alarms screamed and blue lights flashed
and metal doors juddered down over the exits. But in three minutes it
was over.
"Its in the canteen, over the sink. Bloody marvellous joke sir!"
Henry was shaking. In the kitchens, he examined the painting and found,
despite the smell of onion rings, curry chips and coleslaw, with mayo
on the side, the painting was unharmed.
"Madmen." He held it in his hands. "Right, lets get it upstairs
quickly."
He walked along the corridors to his office in silence with a waitress
who held the painting on a plastic lunch tray.
"Just in here."
His phone rang.
"Its been found."
"Yes, I'm with it now."
"No, sir, The Cherry Tree has been recovered in the lift. In the arms
of a blow up doll"
"I'm not in the humour-
"Its intact"
"Goodbye." He put down the phone.
"Idiot. Sorry, just leave it there. That's all."
Three minutes later there were a line of people outside his
office.
"Are you the police? Then I'm sorry, this isn't the time." He slammed
the door, and looked at the painting on his desk. But after ten minutes
the noise was even outside louder. Finally he gave in. He flung open
the door.
"Look, you'll have to clear off, there's nothing to see."
And then he saw a strange thing. Ten, maybe twenty people were standing
there, and at least half of them were holding The Cherry Tree.



"Well, Mr Fordham, said Dr Jarre, "we must be as little
children, eh?"
Henry twitched. In front of him, thirteen identical paintings sat on
his desk.
"By my most excellent eye, they are all original. And that is absurd.
That is what I am telling to myself, and yet," he held up his
magnifying glass, "There is no flaw."


He locked his doors, he quit his job, and it was said at his
inquest, six months later, that the Director of Sothebys had gone mad
and begun to taste the Sakamotos with his breakfast, to see if a
miracle would occur, by which he could identify the one true painting.
For by now all the experts had failed to find a difference between
them, and because they could not all be real, they were all deemed
worthless. Henry needed the miracle, since he had got thin and his hair
had almost all fallen out. And his wife lounged on the sofa, eaten up
by an undiagnosed illness. The fortunes of Sotheby's slumped. His last
straw was his morning fry up, with bacon, eggs, black pudding, and a
square of art on toast. The paintings grew gradually smaller around the
edges. He ate in secret. He knew he was mad. But, it was at one
breakfast that what had flummoxed all the art traders, became clear. If
he hacked away at the paint, when it finally came away, it instantly
re-formed. Each painting was like a re-lighting candle. He went to the
sink, and came back with the iron wool. He looked at the paintings for
a moment. Then he began to scrub at them. He scrubbed furiously. Within
seconds, the cherry tree appeared again. He made his hands red and sore
as he woreout the repainting spell, and was finally left with a blank
A4 piece of paper, with the doodle and the words "Ambrosia". He double
locked the door, and attacked the other paintings. "Aubergine" said
one, and then "Two lean chicken breasts" and then "Captain Boggy toilet
roll' He was on his knees in the kitchen. He looked at the mess of
paint all over the floor. And the tree shaped shadows that had appeared
all over the kitchen. The final painting, he realised, with a lurch,
was an ordinary piece of canvas. And when he saw it, he realised that
in his confusion, he must have destroyed the real miracle painting. He
looked up and saw dark cherry trees looming over him, and passed
out.


On Friday night we were celebrating our victory over Finn.
He had got his supposed art find, at our spells, and would let his
spies off the hook for a while. It was a coup. We had friends round and
started the drinks, and the party was going well until I started being
hounded by this friend of Grania's called Anita. She was wired, and she
shrieked at me for about an hour when I said I had to take my new kite
out. The excuse seemed to convince her anyway, and I slipped out, and
thought I'd take the kite with me, and give it a test run. It was still
half light. I ran up the hill with my new kite, made of Tesco's bags
and sellotape and sticks.The puddles on the pavement were full of
clouds, and I splashed through them. Then up Primrose Hill. I passed
the wonky lamppost that was buzzing. A few dog walkers, and I got to
the top of the hill. A white van with NeatSweep written on the side sat
at the top. I turned round and looked at the London evening sky and
listened to the birds and traffic. There might be enough wind. I
started to unwind the string, when I fell flat on my face. Feck. I had
banjaxed my knee. I staggered up again, and I needed to be home. I
started running down the hill, skidding in the mud. Birds flew up in
front of me as I skidded down, crossed the road, nearly ran into a
woman in a raincoat with two dogs. Shite. Along the pavement I heard
sirens. Then down to the canal path. I kept running but where was the
boat? Here, at last, I passed the willow and got to our little boat.
The lights were on, it was noisy inside, the door was shut. I was
trembling, and suddenly felt sick. Grania and the children were inside,
but I couldn't go in. Then I looked down at my feet, and at the trail
of footsteps that led up to me. I started running back up the hill. I
staggered back up to the top of the hill, and when I got there
ambulance men were jumping out of an ambulance, rushing to where a
woman held a stranger in her arms.


The party was going well, everyone even ate Grania's burnt
sausage rolls. She sat sipping Vodka and letting Anita talk.
"And then it was the bones, and then it was the s?ances, and now its
going to be this - a nightclub. You won't believe how irresponsible
they are"
"Your boss."
"Its quite unbelievable, and I've been telling Dan. Actually, I meant
to say, I met an artist the other day, he would so love to meet Dan. I
mean he's exquisite, a wonderful man, quite mad, and - anyway, Dan
would love to meet him - yes I must go and speak to him, where is
he?"
The phone rang, and Grania found it under a plate of Doritos. In the
next few seconds the room seemed to go quiet. She had her hand twisted
round the wire and only barely reply yes as the voice said:
"Police. Name of Daniel Kelly. Next of Kin?"



The boats processed slowly up the canal. They were covered in white
and yellow and red flowers, and some boats were orange and white and
green. Then there was Xanadu decked in a rainbow of flowers, and
finally, there was John Dormer, a coffin lying on the top covered in
lilies, and Grania standing in black. At little Venice the coffin was
hoisted onto the canal path, and Phil and the other bearers took
Diarmuid up onto the rainy streets. Diarmuid's parents walked behind
it.
Seasons came and went. Ice cracked in the canal. In the spring the
willow wept. The car rusted, and Grania's hair went white. It plagued
her, Grania, what a crazy wonderful dad her children could have had,
who would have dangled them upside down over the canal, and taken them
on adventures to mountains and rainforests just round the corner. And
shown them hideous beasts and played them songs. Diarmuid's mum came
each week with the groceries and cleaned out the fridge, and took the
children to see the monkeys at the zoo.
One day she was hauling a sack of peat from the pavement, when she
looked up, and saw Finn. She dropped the peat and turned white, but she
invited him in. They drank tea, he offered his sincere condolences, and
a cheque. "A kind of truce" he said. She left it by the teapot where
the corners curled for six months. After that he left money in
envelopes in piles of letters on the doormat, or under the watering can
or in the azalea on the deck.
In January, 90 of Diarmuid's friends and relatives, were herded into
an old school hall where they were addressed by Chief Inspector Mark
Heath.


"We will not rest, we will not rest, until everyone has been
spoken to, every lead has been followed, until the offender is
found."


Grania sat in a circle of Diarmuid's friends who discussed
Diarmuid.
"Anyone that might have threatened him?" asked the detective, and they
wrote their answers on postit notes. Most of Diarmuid's friends had no
idea of his real name, let alone that there was a toothless man in
South Dublin who demanded his death on a daily basis. But Finn was
checked out, and he had been in Enniskerry that day with friends.
"The whereabouts of the deceased on Friday, the 29th of
November?"
Right next to you, Grania thought. Because he surrounded her. She
succumbed to fever at night. She wanted him more than she ever had
while he was alive. Her body was burning with fever, crackling away
until it was a dead match. At breakfast Diarmuid sat next to her, asked
for the jam, put on an Elvis Costello CD, cooed at the mites. Sat in
the corner making a new kite and sticking his fingers together with the
tape. He cooked an awful dinner, endured her even worse lunch, burnt
cheese on toast drowned in Worcester sauce.
The grief tunnelled to her heart. She hadn't noticed he was gone that
night. Then there was disbelief, she expected a note on the kitchen
table: I'm back. It was a spell. It went wrong, but I can
explain?
Why hadn't magic saved Diarmuid?
Nightly she dropped postcards into the canal. I miss you, the night is
stretched long without you. The children need you. Please come home.
She watched them drop into its algaed depths, with wellies and syringes
and other lost rubbish. At night the children cried and she wept til
she was gasping and empty. Howling with desire and digging her nails
into the mattress.
Two years later, she accepted Finn. It was as simple as a chequebook
and she just had to sign. A future for her children, and a house away
from a canal full of memories and ghosts.
Finn lay upstairs in bed was surrounded by nurses who loved the old
dear with his teeth in a glass by the sink, his endless high spirits
and winks. The young nurses stroked his wallet. He paid to send the
children away to school. He bought them toy planes from Innovations
catalogues, and ruffled their hair. He directed red and yellow remote
control cars from his bed, down the corridor, around the rooms and on
the pavement outside. He laughed and laughed all day. But at night he
began to have bad dreams. What is worse than discovering the person you
love is only a mirage? Grania was a bitter disappointment to him. The
day she accepted, he couldn't believe. He was so happy, he couldn't
imagine how it would be. But Grania was a grief sticken mother of three
who burst into tears making the tea and took long drives and who
couldn't hear for the violin in her head, making it difficult to put
one foot in front of the other. Her children grew up in a cold house
made of bones where she cried for Diarmuid's ghost who wouldn't leave
her or come back. She lived in limbo. With his disappointment, Finn's
deteriorated. He was Finn was hooked up to a box of wires. His heart
rate was monitored, and he was on morphine for the pain in his legs. It
must have been that that gave him the vision. Every night he'd have it.
He was walking on the moon. It was dark, but after a while he could see
that the ground was covered with grey pigeons. As his eyes adjusted to
the light he could see some of them take off. As he walked he saw the
silhouette of a large oblong shape. He walked up to it. As he got
closer, he saw that it was a bed, with a white sheet over it, and two
feet poking up under the sheet at the end. He walked up the side of the
bed and saw what had once been a face lying on its side. Its eyes were
open. It was alive, whatever it was. He looked at the scars under its
eyes. The more he looked, the more he was drawn in. Then the eyes
flicked up at him, and he started back. The eyes looked into his and
seemed to go into him. He stepped back, and started walking away.
Water, he must get what for this man. But as he walked he realised that
he was not going to get water, he was running away from those terrible
eyes. He ran until silence filled his ears and when he saw the bed
again there was a white rose laid on the man's chest and he was dead.



One night Grania woke up with him shouting and thought she
would die of shock. Not from his dream, but from her own. If he hadn't
shouted out, she would never have remembered the dream she had woken
from. There was a gardening fork in the back of a truck where two men
sat in fluorescent yellow jackets. There was a phone on the dashboard.
"Ring it", one says. It sat there. "Ring it, for fuck's sake." The man
with his hands on the driver's wheel stared ahead. "Oh for fuck's-" and
the second man tried to grab it, but the driver wrenched it from him
"You little bastard" He grabbed the phone, then started the van and it
screeched down the hill. On the ground was a man with pleading eyes and
a black stain spreading across his shirt. His muscles were gripped by
an inward winter wind that thundered down his veins to his heart. She
always had that dream, but just at that moment she woke up, and
remembered the drivers face.
Finn died in hospital. The painting over his bed did him no good, and
he sang The Drunken Sailor through the green curtains. He was on
morphine and died under a gas mask and a blue sheet with just the
plastic name band round his wrist.