the last book I ever read (Cal: A Novel by Bernard MacLeverty, excerpt seven)

from Cal: A Novel by Bernard MacLeverty:

‘Did you ever read any of the books I gave you?’

‘No, but I started one. I wasn’t enjoying it so I stopped.’ He felt he was hurting her by satying i.

‘That’s fair enough. Which one?’ Cal tried to recall. He felt a flutter of examination nerves and said,

‘It was something about a deaf-mute bloke in America.’

‘Carson McCullers?’

‘Aye, him, I think.’

‘Her. And you didn’t like it?’

‘It was odd. Maybe I’ll try again.’

the last book I ever read (Cal: A Novel by Bernard MacLeverty, excerpt six)

from Cal: A Novel by Bernard MacLeverty:

In the bathroom Cal trimmed round his black beard with Dermot’s razor. It was probably the first time in weeks he had seen a mirror and he was surprised at himself. He thought the beard suited him. People had always said that he was a good-looking boy and now, seeing himself, he could almost believe them. He must take after his mother because Shamie was no oil painting.

the last book I ever read (Cal: A Novel by Bernard MacLeverty, excerpt five)

from Cal: A Novel by Bernard MacLeverty:

An hour later he decided to go to bed, partly to enjoy the luxury of a mattress and pillows and partly because he had no cigarettes left. Not long after he fell asleep he had another terrible nightmare. They were becoming more frequent and more vivid. Now that he felt safe from the world outside he was being attacked from within his own head.

He dreamt that he was in a railway station in Rome and was waiting for someone to come off the train. All the people moving about on the platform were dressed as if they were in the school production of Julius Caesar. Only gradually did Cal notice that they had no eyes but instead domed seamless lids like Roman statues, yet they appeared to know where they were going. He looked across to the other side of the platform and saw Marcella dressed the same way. She had eyes that saw him, and she inclined her head to let him know that she recognized him. She was looking down into the tracks and Cal followed her gaze. There was a man in a blue boiler suit lying between the lines face downwards in the shape of a crucifix, his body pointing in the same direction as the track. His wrists lay limply over each shining rail. The train was approaching slowly, the driver hanging far out from the cab. Cal signalled frantically to Marcella but she didn’t seem interested in the plight of the man. She smiled. Cal had to turn away as the train inched forward. Although he did not look, he experienced himself the flange of the wheel and the hawser-straight track catching the gristle of the wrists between them. Blood fountained and gushed from the wounds and shot high into the ceiling of the station. The black steel girders, the curved Victorian glass roof dropped blood-drops like the start of a thunderstorm. They japed and streaked the white togas of the crowd with slashes of red. But the crowd did not seem to mind. Cal yelled at them, he screamed and screamed until he woke. He didn’t know where he was until the barking of one of the dogs reminded him. He was too scared to attempt to sleep again so he sat up and ached for a cigarette.

the last book I ever read (Cal: A Novel by Bernard MacLeverty, excerpt four)

from Cal: A Novel by Bernard MacLeverty:

On the Monday morning Cal started work on the farm. He was embarrassed at his lack of knowledge about almost everything. Although he had lived all his life in a country town he had had no contact with the kind of work which kept it going, except his brief week in the abattoir, where he was too busy trying not to throw up to learn anything. He seemed to stand about all that first morning with his hands in his pockets and his feet aching as Dunlop showed him round. Dunlop knew everything inside and out but was a poor teacher. He raced through the instructions for cleaning the milk filters at such a speed that Cal was afraid to interrupt him. At the end he had no idea how to dismantle one, never mind put it back together. He heard words he had never heard in his life before. Brown stomach, lungworm, black scour, bankrupt worm. He knew that Dunlop was showing off but he had no way of countering it.

the last book I ever read (Cal: A Novel by Bernard MacLeverty, excerpt three)

from Cal: A Novel by Bernard MacLeverty:

‘My husband was badly injured that time. One got him in the larynx and the other here in the lungs.’ She pointed to her chest and neck to indicate precisely where. She spoke to Cal as if he knew all about it and he found that unnerving. He nodded sympathetically, pausing long enough to put on his boots but not to tie them, and left. By the time he reached the tailboard of the van the laces were gritty with mud and soaking wet. Tying them up left black welts all over his hands.

the last book I ever read (Cal: A Novel by Bernard MacLeverty, excerpt two)

from Cal: A Novel by Bernard MacLeverty:

She went to mass and communion every morning and each night she made them say the family rosary before the table was cleared. She had a missal which bulged with memoriam cards, novenas and special prayers, and if people borrowed it they inevitably scattered the lot over the church floor. The little coloured strings for marking the place were worn past the point where they should have hung out at the bottom of the page.

He wondered if the reason he loved her so much was because she had died before he had reached adolescence. He could not remember ever fighting with her or being beaten by her. From the age of fourteen onwards he had been constantly at war with his father. Everything from the way he chewed his food to the number of cigarettes he smoked was the subject for a shouting match. And yet there were areas where Shamie was at a loss for words. Not long after Gracie’s death Shamie had found a purple bruise mark in the crook of Cal’s elbow. At night he gave himself love-bites, sucking until he tasted the coppery blood coming through the skin. His father asked him what had happened. Not knowing why, Cal said that he had hurt his arm in school – in a fight with another boy. His father just said that he sometimes wished Cal’s mother were alive still. She would have told him about it. At the mention of his mother Cal cried and his father left the room.

the last book I ever read (Cal: A Novel by Bernard MacLeverty, excerpt one)

from Cal: A Novel by Bernard MacLeverty:

He saw the Preacher standing waiting with his glass. It was the local doctor’s prescription for any anaemic with a strong stomach. The Preacher was tall and thin with the Adam’s apple of a vulture and skin that was made even paler, if that was possible, by the light reflected from the white tiles. He cycled the countryside on his breadcart of a bicycle with a small ladder strapped to the bar and a clutter of tools in the saddle-bag, nailgin tracts made from tin lids to trees and telegraph-poles. The Wages of Sin is Death. Romans 8:5’ was on a sycamore tree on the Magherafelt road; and further out ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life. John 11:25’.