I was enjoying the spin. It was a nice car. Had one of those proper heavy suspensions and a thing I’d not come across before, sound proofing. Sound-proofing is one of those things I’ve never thought about in cars but the good ones have it – I know that now. Keeps away the extraneous noise and makes for comfort. It was very comfortable on the way out.
He ignored me but I didn’t mind. Bosses do that. I stretched the legs and pushed my neck back into the head-rest. I let him do the driving. The seats were leather. Very nice. Had a soft feel, which surprised me. Leather has always struck me as being harsh. Must be school. But this leather was gentle, almost like suede but smoother. It was purple and a dark shade at that, nice against the woodwork on the dash. Woodwork in a car is very nice.
‘Some sort of Rolls is it, this?’ I asked and looked around, a bit wide-eyed probably.
The boss didn’t reply. He sighed and opened a little cabinet door that was to the left of the steering column, between us. He took out a long thin Henri Winterman’s, one of those ones with the white tips and lit it with the car lighter. He stared at the road ahead.
I reclined further. I relaxed and spread my hands along the arm rests. Each seat had its own pair with shiny wooden trim at the ends. My nails were dirty though, I did notice that. Ingrained dirt of the sort that comes from the spud-packing. Been at that for most of yesterday and today now. My assignment. On orders from Ellen. She runs the shop for the boss.
Never been a car in our family, except for a taxi once when the uncle died and we all had to troop down to Kerry to see him off. Da panicked and ordered a taxi, for fear he’d miss the occasion. And nearly died himself when he saw the bill. The novelty of a car just hasn’t worn off for me. Don’t know if it ever will. If it had been a banger that was taking me out to the dump, I’d have been happy. But this was an extra, a pure extra – and so posh.
We came up to Turner’s Cross. The traffic slowed. The boss looked at me and seemed suddenly interested in my repose. I was enjoying myself, maybe that was it. I was stretched out like the cat. It was comfortable. And a doss. In my books, doss time is double enjoyment. Being paid for this, I was thinking. Being paid for a lovely long spin in a lovely posh car.
The traffic crawled. He looked at me again.
‘Always like that here,’ I said indicating ahead.
‘Like what?’
‘Always jammed here. Turner’s Cross is murder like that. Always said it.’
He stared ahead. Barely moved a finger. Automatic transmission is useful in that way. Just his foot was on the pedal and we inched forward in line for the lights. Inched.
‘At least this is moving a bit,’ I added. ‘Should see it when the matches are on, when Cork City are playing. The traffic doesn’t move at all then.’
He didn’t respond. He rooted in a compartment under the steering column and pulled out a CD. Abba came on. Waterloo.
‘Where’s the usual guy?’
‘Jacked,’ I said.
The boss looked at me. I’m the only boy working in his fruit shop. The rest are girls. The girls don’t say a lot about the boss, other than bad things when Ellen isn’t there. Ellen is okay but the thing is, she’s in the family too – some cousin or other. Takes fruit and veg, and mutinous talk very serious. Though she is sympathetic, I hear – in a womanly sort of way. The girls, the last while, have been complaining that there aren’t any wash-up facilities at the shop. They don’t like leaving the place at the end of the day, dusty and unclean behind the ears. Me neither. I’ve been complaining as well but they said it didn’t matter as much for boys. Been a lot of talk about the need for proper wash facilities and the like at the fruit and veg shop, but everyone’s too afraid.
‘You know Billy?’ he asked.
‘Sort of.’
‘Expand.’
It was an order.
‘I know his younger brother, Liam – he told me about the job.’
The music was turned off. The boss kept one hand on the wheel and began to rub his face. He was rough at it. I noticed his skin squash and then pale. His hand was shaking as well. Maybe he needed another cigar.
‘Billy was a good worker,’ said the boss.
‘Is.’ The boss looked at me. ‘Is a good worker,’ I said. He continued to look at me. ‘He’s up at the Cash and Carry now,’ I added.
There was silence again after this. I listened to the sound-proofing. Turner’s Cross is improved by sound-proofing, I must say. It was silent. Lots of cars and people, and that fart by the church selling the newspaper, calling Echo, Echo – but you couldn’t hear any of it. Silence. Beautiful silence and just the soft purr of the engine. When we finally got through the lights, he accelerated quickly.
+ + +
The city dump was a sea of mud and rubbish and wind swept. Seagulls hovered as a JCB cleared a place over near the main roadway fence. We were directed there by an attendant in a yellow jacket who pointed and gesticulated madly until the boss manoeuvred the car and horse-box into the right place. The boss had trouble reversing because of the horse-box. When he was finally in position and cleared to unload, he looked at me. I looked at him and got out.
Suddenly I heard the racket of the seagulls and the grind of the JCB as it pushed mud and rubbish into a pile beside us. There was a rotting smell in the air like a dead animal. And it was cold. I waded over to the back of the horse-box and let off the latches. I wasn’t prepared. The inside was full from floor to ceiling with rotten fruit and veg. It was fermenting. Flies piled off the surface and around me. I held my nose and went over to the driver’s window. The boss had the newspaper open on his lap but he wasn’t reading. I knocked. He looked and let the window down a scratch.
‘Shovel?’
‘In the horse-box.’
I shook my head.
‘The boot then.’
The window closed and the boot popped. I went and had a look. There was an old edition of Horse and Hound, a pair of shoes and a riding crop. Not a single other thing. Fuck it. I went back over to the horse-box and looked in. Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it. A hundred times fuck it. No shovel.
I pulled out a few of the big boxes and broke them up. I made a paddle with the wads of cardboard and began to work on the rotting mass.
+ + +
I can describe a number of immediate effects, such as the smell and the temperature – the rotting mass was actually warm. But none of these bothered me or bothered me as much as the feel of the decay. The rotting potatoes were a mush of purple-black muck. Where the potato-muck had been over-laid with bruised peaches and a hundred or so frost damaged pears, a jelly-like material had formed. A dark red juice had begun to seep from this jelly and had gathered at the base: it stung, and had a rancid smell, and was probably poisonous. Even when I folded cardboard into a large thick wad and wrapped it in a Dunnes Stores plastic bag, it could not withstand the penetrative effect of the jelly; it quickly became sodden and useless. I found that my hand was the most effective implement for removing the rot, in part because the mass had recently been seeded with – relatively undamaged – baby cauliflower (the Irish Maid brand). The caulies had sunk under their own weight into the decaying mass but could be used as ‘handles’ for gripping sections of the jelly. I used newspaper to clean the floor.
+ + +
He did not say anything when I sat back in. The boss slowly folded his newspaper. I pulled the car door shut and the noise went. Immediately, I felt warmer. The dump had a different appearance from within. The chaos was more panoramic. I watched the seagulls swooping and trucks mowing through the muck and the dirt. The attendant in the yellow jacket seemed to be living dangerously through it all. JCBs swung by and before him. He was King Canute in this dump.
I waited. I looked at the stains on my jeans and jumper. My cuffs were wet and I rolled them back. I looked at the boss but his face was averted.
‘It’s done,’ I said to draw him back.
He looked at me, peering up and down and away again. ‘Notice anything?’ he said.
‘In particular, you mean?’
‘That’s right, in particular.’
‘I noticed a lot,’ I said, ‘a lot of smelly, rotten stuff. I did notice that.’
‘That I’m not talking about,’ he said belligerently. He continued to stare out the window. His hand was shaking again, very finely.
‘What then?’ I asked and thought of the rotting mass. Had there been something?
‘The rags,’ he said.
‘What rags?’
‘The rags with the blood on them.’
‘I didn’t see any rags.’
‘In the middle. I put them there myself.’ He took out another Winterman’s. ‘With almost every shipment now we get a box, a box of blood stained rags. They smell badly. Sometimes there’s hair too. It’s a problem… getting rid of them. That’s why I use the horse-box for the waste. No one can see into a horse-box.’
He held the cigar but didn’t light it. He added, ‘It began with the fruit.’
‘Odd,’ I said.
‘What is?’
‘Odd it would start with the fruit.’
‘Why would that be odd?’
‘It’s just that at the shop, I’ve been noticing how nicely the fruit is packaged. Compared with the spuds for instance. Or the carrots. The fruit from abroad has always got this lovely soft wrapping around it. And individual labelling. And nice proper boxes. That’s odd don’t you think?’
He put the Winterman’s down. He hadn’t lit it.
‘You’re not with it at all,’ he said.
‘Am I not?’
‘You’re not,’ he said and looked out the side window again.
I wondered if I had annoyed him. He certainly looked irate. As he sat there I watched his chest heave and rest, heave and rest. As if he had done the work.
I waited. Until a sudden crack on the roof of the car made me jump. He jumped too. A figure in a yellow jacket appeared on the driver-side. Another attendant, younger this time with a straggly goatee. Mad looking. The boss let down the window. ‘Move it if you’re done,’ the attendant barked and then shouted ‘Heeeyiiiii’ to an oncoming truck but in our window. It was salutary. Right then, immediately the boss switched on the engine and pressed his foot on the pedal. I heard a soft purr and we moved from the dump with ease and almost grace.
We had only gone a short distance out onto the main road and were travelling slowly – cars were horning us – when he pulled over abruptly and declared, ‘I’m just a business man. Why are they sending me rags?’
He closed his eyes and for a moment I wasn’t sure. Then he slumped back into the seat.
‘A few months ago there was a photograph …’ He looked at me. ‘In a shipment from Honduras. A youth, your age maybe, no more. He was bound hand and foot. He was wearing just a Tshirt and underpants. He was lying on the floor. There was a message on the photo, on the back: rogarle misericordia a alguien, it said. Do you know what that means?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘“We appeal to you for mercy.” They’re appealing to me. Me,’ he emphasised.
And looked away again. ‘I knew who it was, the company – the logo was in the background. They’re banana importers – an Irish concern. I phoned them, made an inquiry, discreetly. They assured me, not in so many words, they pay their workers well.’
‘That satisfied you,’ I said not as a question.
‘Oh yes. I even suspected a ruse then, that I had been set up, that it was a competitor maybe. Trying to un-nerve me. But then the rags started coming again. Very bloody rags this time.’
He waited for me to say something. I thought of the horse-box again, of the stench, of how wet it had been. And red. It had been very red.
‘Of course I couldn’t let that go.’
‘No,’ I said.
‘I made a further inquiry. A friend of mine at the hospital had the blood checked. It was human.’ He paused. ‘Since then I’ve been able to confirm that it’s a labour camp. It’s not called that of course, but it is.’ He looked at me. ‘Do you know what a labour camp is?’
‘I’ve read about them. I’ve never seen one, of course. There are none here in Cork.’ But I added, ‘I understand the principle.’
He said nothing after this. He looked at me though, in that way he had looked at me earlier – like I was bit strange.
‘You don’t believe me, is that it?’
‘It’s just that back there at the dump, there were no rags – that I could see anyway.’
‘They were there,’ he said.
‘Mind I was very bothered not having a shovel. That threw me a bit.’ I looked down at my clothes. There was a long red stain across the knee of my jeans – potato skin was stuck to the end.
‘I fell, you see.’
‘I realise that.’
‘It was mushier than I expected at one point and I slipped.’
There was a further long silence, then suddenly the boss put on the indicator and pulled out into the traffic almost causing an accident. He drove quickly. When we stopped at traffic lights or slowed, I noticed his hands were still shaking. I felt tense now, oddly afraid and when we reached the fruit and veg yard I jumped out immediately. I went to the rear to unhitch the horse-box. The boss got out too and came around. He watched me.
‘Wash it down,’ he said. ‘I want it clean, do you hear? Completely clean. Then put it over in the corner.’
‘Okay,’ I said.
‘And another thing.’ He came towards me now. He was a big man and quite overweight.
‘Yes?’ I said.
‘Look snappy about it.’
+ + +
The horse-box was heavy and difficult to move. Eventually I manoeuvred it over near the tap. I undid the latches and lowered the door once more. The stench inside was foul. I dragged a hose into place and immediately began to wash down the high sides. Detritus fell to the floor and was carried to the drain by a red-brown wash. Only then did I notice the picture: on the laminate that covered the back wall of the horse-box. It was a faded image, old and torn in places. It showed an old-fashioned hunt. Horses with riders galloped across a meadow. There were hounds too and in the far off distance a snow-capped mountain. Nothing else of course. There was no fox but he was there, I understood that, and he was running too.
