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Chapter 008
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Inevitable Blind Man Chapter 009
Chapter 9: The Lies of Sleeping DogsThrough the little rivulets of water running off his umbrella, Liam Norris watched them lower his father's coffin into the damp Donegal earth. As the priest's muffled blessing came to an end, the pall-bearers, unhitching the ropes from the now invisible handles with just a fraction too much haste, started back up the hill towards the church, followed by the priest with his own large black umbrella, and the two rain-soaked altar-boys who hurried ahead with little pretense of reverence. The mourners, a group of seven or eight rather shabbily-dressed men of his father's generation, ambled over to Liam and Francie and solemnly shook Liam's hand one by one, looking him up and down curiously as they did so, telling him that they were "sorry for his trouble". Liam thanked each of them for coming and for his kind wishes, but in reality all that he felt towards them was a mild unease, mixed with guilt at his own lack of emotion throughout the entire ceremon
Inevitable Blind Man Chapter 010
Chapter 10: The Oracle at the AdelphiIt was only when Satan Coil died that any of us discovered that Satan hadn't been his real name. He died in 1956, the year that the Russian tanks rolled in to Budapest to crush the Hungarian Revolution. Of course the Hungarian Revolution was of no concern to me, I was nine years old and what I cared about was my new black Raleigh Junior bicycle, the TV set with the huge mahogany cabinet and the miniscule, blurry and often rolling black-and-white picture, and the Glenalough Adelphi, the local cinema that was owned and managed by Satan, where my friends and I spent every Saturday afternoon, transported to other lands, other times and other lives by the magic of the flickering screen.The idea of a cinema being owned and operated by Satan was one that must have appealed mightily to the local Roman Catholic hierarchy, it may even have been them who gave him the nick-name, but I suspect that it emerged more from his habit of running up and down the cin
Inevitable Blind Man Chapter 011
Chapter 11: Bottom FeedersIt had turned out to be as good a morning as the weather forecast had promised. Olaf's first glance through the porthole on wakening revealed a clear blue sky with barely a wisp of cloud, a sultry heat-mist already forming that made the distant shore ripple while the sea itself remained majestically still, with only the barely perceptible rough-patch marking the reef's closest approach to the surface. They had anchored not long after sunrise, and while Olaf and Henrietta had slept, the Spanish-speaking Captain and Olaf's young safety diver Morris had studied the echo-sonde traces, eaten a light breakfast, and assembled all the equipment neatly on the rear deck ready for the dive. Olaf's camera gear and lights were neatly laid out behind his BCD and wet-suit. By the time he appeared from his cabin, having kissed Henrietta good morning (but, with an effort of will, left it at that) there was nothing more to do but suit-up and explain to Morris exactly what he
Inevitable Blind Man Chapter 012
Chapter 12: Letting GoHenry knew who it was as soon as he saw the little figure in the distance between the slender boughs of the palm trees that leaned lazily across his field of view. He watched him as he turned off the dirt-track that twisted its way across the dry cactus-sprinkled scrub-land to walk up the rocky path towards his house. It was the way the man walked that gave him away: the purposefulness, the tightness of the gait, the disregard for the hazards of the bleached dusty stones that made up the path's surface. Henry had always imagined that he would be younger, somehow. An earnest young academic from some Polish university, dripping with anger and self-righteousness. This man wasn't all that much younger than himself - twenty years his junior, perhaps, a pale-skinned European in his mid-sixties, perversely dressed for the merciless heat of Thailand in a neat dark grey business suit, his figure long and gaunt, his silvering black hair thinning to near baldness beneath t
Inevitable Blind Man Chapter 013
Chapter 13: IMMACULATAImmaculata's sensible flat shoes clicked along the pavement as she hurried past the open iron gates of the school hall car park. Her slight and youthful figure was respectably covered by her ample grey overcoat and a plain blue scarf held her long dark hair tight against her head. Her monthly confraternity meeting at the church had run unusually late because of a talk given by a visiting missionary father with a high pitched voice and a slow delivery: it was quite dark now, and she could hear the repetitive mechanical bass line of an undistinguished dance record playing inside the hall. The end of term disco was clearly getting under way.The signs of the impending event barely registered in Immaculata's brain, it was not the kind of thing that interested her: for some reason she had never felt drawn to the activities of other girls of her age."Immaculata!"She stopped dead in her tracks. It was Billy Sullivan, the son of the local filling station proprietor, a
Inevitable Blind Man Chapter 014
Chapter 14: Services to the Community“Didn’t work out for you in Dublin, then?”She winced at the old man’s negativity. “Dublin was fine, Mr. Singer. Great. But I was there to train. To get my degree. I wasn’t there to work. You don’t just walk straight into a job on a national daily...” As you know better than I do, she almost added, but stopped herself in time.“Damn right you don’t. Thirty-eight years I’ve been in this profession, come April, and I’m still on the same paper I started on, even if I am the editor. So you’d like to come and slum it for a while, back in your old home town. Use The Eagle as a stepping stone to greater things.”“I didn’t say that, Mr. Singer. I don’t know where I’ll be in the future. I just know that I need a job in the industry right now.”He stopped fidgeting with the microphone of his ancient dictating machine and looked her straight in the eye. “You seem like a sensible enough girl. And young people aren’t exactly queuing up to work on The Eagle.”“
Inevitable Blind Man Chapter 015
Chapter 15: FLAT MATEBenny came in, hung up his wet plastic mack, and went at once to the wall mirror in the sitting room. He stood in front of it and looked at his reflection.“Raining outside?” his reflection asked.“Of course it’s raining. You’re not going to tell me that it isn’t raining on your side, are you?”His reflection paused. “No. You’re quite right. If it’s raining on your side it must be raining on my side too.”“Must? Is that a logical must? Are you trying to pretend that there’s some kind of sense to all this?”“You’re in a bad mood tonight. Why are you in a bad mood?”“You know perfectly well why. Stop pretending.”His reflection frowned. “So it didn’t go all that well with Sharon. You didn’t manage to press the right buttons.”Benny turned away from the mirror and sat down. He could still hear his reflection’s voice. There was no need to see him. “You were with her as well tonight. How did you get on with your Sharon?” He glanced towards the inhabitant of the mirror
Inevitable Blind Man Chapter 016
Chapter 16: SAM (PART 1)The first thing of which he was aware was a smell of disinfectant and the echoing voices of young women far away, chatting and laughing. His head seemed heavy on the pillow, his thoughts dull and sluggish . With an effort he opened his eyes. He could see a fire-extinguisher and some kind of transparent plastic tubing looped over a bracket on the wall. The effort of focusing was enormous so he gave up and allowed himself to drift back into a dreamless sleep.The second time he woke there were two nurses leaning over him, one in a grey uniform, the other a dark blue. Dark Blue addressed him in a kindly tone. “Hello Mr. Chenkov. You’re in hospital and there’s nothing to worry about. You’ve had an accident but you’re going to be fine. Can you hear me all right?”He found it easier to nod than to speak. He seemed totally devoid of energy. “Oh good,” Dark Blue replied in the kind of voice people use for children, “We’re pleased to have you back. Just get some sleep,
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