Read Cold Eye of Heaven, The for Free Online

about the tweed job that he’s wearing this minute? He wants to open back his overcoat like a flasher and show it to her: ‘Here, take a look at that, missus!’ And then there’s his tux. Granted, he bought it years ago from the hire place at a reduction – but she doesn’t need to know that.
    â€˜Unless I start wearing me tux to funerals,’ he says, with a half-wink so that this time she knows for sure that he’s joking.
    â€˜Ah now, I wouldn’t go doing that if I were you,’ the owner says, pulling the docket book to her, ‘there’s fellas been locked away for less.’
    She opens the book, then closes it again and looks into his eyes. Pity, he sees or an attempt at pity. Because for some reason he doesn’t believe it’s genuine.
    â€˜Tell you what,’ she says, ‘seeing as it’s a funeral, we’ll let you have the senior rate.’ She roars back over her shoulder, ‘Will you bring the seniorbook out here to me a minute?’ Then she comes back to Farley pointing her pen at him. ‘Just this once, mind, and come here to me now, don’t you go telling the other seniors. Or I’ll have you hanged and quartered.’ The owner looks satisfied, relieved even, to have got her good deed for the year out of the way.
    The goat’s eyes pass behind the owner, the senior book tucked into its enviable position. He remembers one time in the County Bar, years ago now; Slowey, himself, Conroy, Brophy. Slowey opening the paper to a photograph of Boris Yeltsin. ‘Jaysus,’ he said, ‘wouldn’t you think he was related to your woman in the cleaner’s?’
    â€˜O yea,’ Conroy added, ‘if Yeltsin married a pig and they had a baby.’
    He should have stuck up for her. He’d wanted to. But of course if he did, the rest of them would have sensed something; given him a slagging that he’d never hear the end of.
    He speaks to the owner. ‘Well, thanks all the same but to be honest, I don’t mind paying full whack, I don’t mind in the least. So long as I can be certain of having the suit for tomorrow, you know?’
    She looks at him again and the pity is gone. The pink elastic band tightens. ‘Suit yourself. But it’ll have to be tomorrow
afternoon
, mind. That’s the absolute best I can do for you now. Full price so.’
    In the heat of the shop, Farley feels something gather inside him. The sound of the machinery, the heap of stained clothes, the hard blue eyes freed from their pity, the senior book with the numbers instead of names. And he feels an urge to click his heels and give her a Nazi salute. To call her a jumped-up fuckin Nazi bitch.
    She hands the pen to the girl with the goat’s eyes and flounces off into the back of the shop.
    The girl lowers her voice to him across the counter and one by one the words crawl out. ‘Come back abou’ half five and I’ll have it for you.’
    Farley looks into the back room. ‘What about the boss?’
    â€˜Ah, don’t worry about that oul fuck, she’ll be gone for the afternoon.’
    She gives a small sweet grunt as she bends to retrieve his shoe from the floor which she then hands to him, sole facing out, hole looking up at him.She’s put on even more weight over the Christmas, rolls of fat pressing against her lime green jumper, diddies floppier than ever, legs poured into those black trouser things that look more like tights. He wants to lean over the counter and lick her face, then ask her to marry him right on the spot. He nods and takes the shoe, turning for the door.
    She calls after him, ‘Here?’
    â€˜Yes?’
    â€˜Your Clery’s bag.’
    She takes the shoe back from him, places it inside the bag and pushes it across the counter.
    â€˜The wife,’ he hears himself say then, ‘the wife, you see, wasn’t that keen on