Cold Eye of Heaven, The by Christine Dwyer Hickey

worse than that. His mother used to have a coat she called nigger brown. And a barman in the Four Courts Inn had a dog one time called Nig-nog. You could call that racist alright. Or what about that Spencer and his mates, giving out stink about ‘them blackies stealing our jobs’?
    â€˜What jobs?’ Farley had said to him. ‘Sure you haven’t worked since you were twenty.’ Spencer, not a bit pleased, had kept a coolness between them ever since.
    He glances at the driver; skin like a soft black chamois leather,beautiful really. All the different faces you’d see now around the place: Asian, Chinese, African – like this chap. Takes the pasty look off the general popu lation. Foley now was probably a coalman. Someone is watching him. Farley tightens himself up, pulling his coat in closer to his chest so he can feel his pension book and wallet, tucking the bag further under his arm, turning his body towards the driver. He feels a tap on the arm. It’s a man with a face he knows from the Thomas House pub, also waiting to get off the bus. But he doesn’t know his name. This doesn’t bother him because he knows he never knew his name in the first place. He’s just one of those blokes who presume a friendship.
    â€˜Just on the way back from the hospital,’ the man says.
    â€˜Is that right?’
    He takes out his tablets and starts to show Farley. ‘This is for the water-works, this is for the blood pressure, them yellow there’s for the arthuritis, and these here, you see, is for
before
all the rest of them, to protect the stomach – are you with me now?’
    Farley nods politely at each brown plastic bottle. ‘Would you know if there’s a shoemaker’s near abouts?’ he asks.
    â€˜Nah.’ The man shakes his head. ‘No shoemaker’s, no bootmender’s, no any kind of shops in the Liberties any more except those all-night jobs selling overpriced rubbish, rubbish, rubbish. That’s Baker’s pub gone – remember Baker’s? Yea gone. And Roger’s, that was a grand pub, for a quiet pint like when you’d wouldn’t want to run into anyone. And of course Frawley’s. Did we ever think we’d see
that
day? And what are we left with now – kips like that one across the road.’ The man ducks to look at a pub on the far side of the street and Farley follows his example. ‘A venue – it’s called. Or so I was told when I went in to chance a pint there. Do you know what that is – a venue?’
    â€˜Emm?’ Farley says.
    â€˜Well, I’ll tell you. It’s where you go to listen to people singing who can’t sing and eejits tell jokes that aren’t funny and for fools that’ll pay to hear them doing it. And as for them three yokes on the path out the front of it – would you mind telling me now what they are?’ He says this with atone of accusation. Farley frowns out the window at three big multi-coloured sculptures.
    â€˜Would they be puppets, maybe?’ he finally suggests.
    The man’s eyes open wider: ‘
Puppets
– is that what you call them now? I see. Is that it now?’
    The man’s voice is raised; angry. Farley looks away in case people think he’s responsible for the puppets. He looks at his watch, then pretends to root for something in his bag. The man takes a step nearer to him, lowering his voice and tapping him on the arm, speaking confidentially. ‘Your best bet now would be stay on the bus right into town and be the back of Clery’s shop near Cassidy’s pub – if that’s still there of course. You’ll find a little place’ll do the job for you.’
    â€˜The job for me?’
    â€˜On your shoes like.’
    Farley gets off in Westmoreland Street; dank, cold and greasy. Junkies to the left and right of him, slithering off the bus, slipping around corners, melting into the inner shadows of