Authors: Ken Bruen
I’d hoped for a denial and maybe I’d have gone along. I asked,
“How did you find him?”
He gave me a surprised look, then,
“I run a pub, everybody talks. A few extra shots of Scotch, on the house, you learn all you need.”
Then he leaned against the bike, weariness on his face, asked,
“You going to turn me in?”
I was going to say, that’s what your wife does, but turned to leave, said,
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.”
He waited a moment then,
“He deserved it.”
I had no reply.
“Not even the great weather could hide the disorder and deep sorrow here, as the pastoral degenerated into unplanned urban sprawl. I could almost smell the bitter energies of change and failure
.
I seemed to be in some sort of downhill tumble myself, going from bad to worse as I stumbled through the transition from a semi-employed private eye to a solid citizen and back down again.”
James Crumley,
The Final Country
Four weeks went by in a blur of pain, guilt, remorse, confusion. I
couldn’t get past the way my mother had died. Alone, abandoned and afraid. I didn’t drink or dope or nicotine. The three lethal addictions preyed constantly, but I don’t know why I didn’t succumb. I once heard if you want to change your life, your attitude, you begin by altering your behaviour. Do the opposite to what you used to do and change will come down the pike. So instead of embracing my usual destruction, I stayed busy. Re-interviewing the students, friends, acquaintances of the dead girls. Even did coffee with Ronan Wall, to see what might shake loose.
Nothing did.
I read Synge, read him twice. The near breakthrough I had before my mother’s death remained elusive, tantalisingly out of reach. Ronan Wall continued to tease and carefully provoke. He knew I wanted him for the frame but it wasn’t happening. I took Margaret out regularly but it was eroding. I thought I was covering well, acting almost normal, till she eventually asked,
“Where are you, Jack?”
We’d been to see the Brazilian
City of God
, of which I recall nothing. After, we’d gone to Brennan’s Yard, got a late supper. Thick brown crusted sandwiches, pot of tea. I ate without taste. To her question, I said,
“I was thinking about Baghdad, the intense horrific pictures I’ve seen on CNN.”
I wasn’t.
She shook her head, said,
“No, you weren’t.”
It was far too late and too blatant a lie to give the answer women most hope for…“I was thinking of you, dear.” Truth to tell, I was nowhere, in the place of white noise, grey visions. She said, taking my hand,
“You’re in a dead place.”
I knew the truth of that. The day before, I’d watched Ireland beat Georgia and only briefly engaged when a knife was thrown, hitting Kilbane on the ear. Sunday, I sat through the Six Nations, Ireland vs England, in a veritable trance. Played in Lansdowne Road, it was a huge national event, and I felt removed.
I took my hand away from Margaret’s, muttered,
“I’ll snap out if it.”
No escape. She whispered sadly,
“I sure hope so, Jack.”
Then, pushing the sandwiches away, she asked,
“Are you talking to anyone?”
“To Cathy…and Jeff.”
Vaguely true.
I was still babysitting for them. Jeff was cool, kept our conversation to the minimum. Cathy, more animated, was happy at how I’d bonded with her child.
And bonded I had.
I continued to read to her, and her face lit up as I produced a fresh book. I don’t know how much she understood, but her eyes danced with knowledge. Three years of age with a button nose, brown eyes, mischievous mouth, I could have stared at her for hours. She intrigued me. Here was a child, with Down’s syndrome, deemed by the world as damaged, less than handicapped. Yet, she had a vitality that energised even my cynical spirit. During those frozen weeks after my mother’s death, the times with Serena May were the only brightness I experienced. She had a smile to die for, as innocent in life as I was guilty. That would be our undoing. Per custom, we used the room above the pub and a large window looked out over Forster Street. By craning our necks, Serena in my arms, we could see Eyre Square. I’d tell her of Pádraic Ó Conaire’s statue at the top and the metal cannons flanking him. I skipped over the winos huddled at the fountain. Then I’d put her down and she’d zoom around the room with joy. It could only be a short time till she walked. Cathy took it very hard that other children walked at a year or even ten months. Here was her daughter, over three and still scrambling on all fours. The sentry had once remarked,
“That child, she’s an old soul.”
I was so surprised that I went,
“What?”
“She’s been here before.”
And returned to contemplating his half full glass of porter. I wanted to ask if he believed in reincarnation but he was all done. Cathy seemed to appreciate the amount of time I gave to Serena, said,
“Jack, this is such a help.”
“No big thing.”
It wasn’t.
I went to visit Ted Buckley. He was encased in plaster, pulleys
holding an arm and leg suspended. His eyes were open and they hardened as I approached. I said
“How you doing there, Ted?”
He tried to act like I was a stranger, but immobile in a bed, how many ways can you fake it?
“I know you?”
“Jack Taylor.”
The nicotine teeth locked down, and I didn’t think agitation was going to do his condition much good.
“That supposed to mean something?”
I pulled up a chair, straddled it. If Superintendent Clancy could do it, then hell, why not?
“Ah, does this mean I can’t join you, not be a vigilante?”
He tried to shift his head as if seeking help, then said,
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I let that hang for a bit, then,
“You killed a guard.”
Spittle lit the corners of his lips. The frustration of being immobile was eating him hard. He said,
“Prove it.”
I stood up, said,
“Heard you had a fire.”
He managed to move the leg in traction but it was a feeble gesture. He said,
“You were in my home?”
I shrugged, turned to go, added,
“Not me, pal. I’d say vigilantes.”
My limp seemed to have worsened, but I blamed the hospital vibe. A doctor in his fifties approached, asked,
“You were visiting Mr Buckley?”
“I was.”
He had a chart—don’t they always?—peered at it and made medical noises, then,
“It’s very sad, but I don’t think Mr Buckley will walk again.”
I nodded, my face grave. He asked,
“Will you be visiting regularly?”
“Absolutely, to be sure your prognosis is right.”
His head came up, a challenge in his eyes, said,
“I can tell you, Mr…? I didn’t get your name.”
“I didn’t give it.”
“Ah, well, I can assure you it’s very unlikely the patient will ever be mobile again.”
I stared at him, made some medical noises of my own, then,
“I’m going to take that as a promise.”
Downstairs, the main hall was hectic with activity. The last time
I’d been here, I had the disastrous meeting with Ann Henderson. I went to the café and saw they were advertising every type of designer coffee. I ordered a cappuccino without the chocolate sprinkle. The girl said,
“You mean latte?”
“If I wanted latte, you think I wouldn’t have ordered that?”
She gave me the look. After Buckley, I could take it and she backed off, got the coffee and, to coin a vigilante phrase, “charged me an arm and a leg”. I found a free table, sat down. The radio was playing Keith Finnegan fielding a discussion on the use of Shannon Airport by the American troops. Then he said listeners had requested a song by the Dixie Chicks from their new album
Home
, a track about Vietnam but just as relevant to Iraq. I was listening to that when a porter approached, launched,
“I hope you’re not even considering smoking?”
He’d taken me completely by surprise and I went,
“What?”
“This whole area is a no smoking zone.”
He was fired up, ready to rock ‘n’ roll. I recognised him but couldn’t find a name. I said,
“I don’t smoke.”
How odd that sounded. He wasn’t buying, snapped,
“I remember you, in the corridors, smoking in the alcove.”
I let out my breath, asked,
“Do me a favour, pal?”
“Favour, what favour?”
“Fuck off.”
He did.
The Dixie Chicks lingered in my head as I walked down by NUI. Students were milling round the canal, and I thought of the dead girls. It didn’t seem like I was ever going to solve that. At the church, I paused, stared at the stained glass windows. They didn’t provide any inspiration. I muttered,
“Windows. Just coloured glass.”
I returned to the hotel. Mrs Bailey, looking frail, almost delicate
,
was near swamped in paperwork. Though I wanted to be alone, to go into myself and basically sulk, I stopped, asked,
“Are you OK, Mrs B?”
She raised her head and it pained me to glimpse her skull through the thinning hair. That grieved me so. I noticed the profusion of liver spots on her hands and could only hazard a guess at her age. Someone had attempted to perm her hair and made a shocking mess, as if half way through they decided,
“Fuck this, it’s a shambles.”
And it was.
She said,
“I don’t want to burden you, Mr Taylor, what with your recent loss.”
I wanted to agree, slip away to my room, but I stayed, asked,
“How about I buy you a drink, a big fat warm whiskey, with cloves, sugar…hell, we’ll shoot the works.”
She smiled like a young girl for a moment, almost flirtatious, and I realised how much she meant to me. Course, my mother’s death had left me vulnerable, but this woman had stood by me through all manner of shit storms. Each time I got sober or clean then crashed, she never judged me. Kept a room always available. When I fucked off to London, to Hidden Valley, and came literally limping back, she welcomed me.
Top that.
She asked,
“Who’ll mind the desk?”
I indicated the paperwork, said,
“With some luck, it will be stolen.”
She was sold.
Came out from behind the desk and, lo and behold, linked my arm. No one links you like a Galway woman. I felt…gallant? How often are you going to see that description? I moved towards the door and she protested, went,
“Oh no, I don’t go out any more.”
“What?”
“It’s too dangerous.”
I couldn’t argue with that; it was bloody lethal out there, I had the limp to prove it. She added,
“Anyway, if I’m going to have a drink, I’d prefer to give the custom to myself.”
Despite the length of time I’d been at the hotel, I think I’d only ever once been in the bar. The don’t-shit-on-your-own-doorstep syndrome. My kind of pub though: dark, smoky, old, lived in. Serious drinkers had drunk very seriously here. You could feel the vibe, the one that whispered,
“If you want fancy drinks, fuck off.”
This was your pint of plain and a ball of malt, and if you needed that translated, you were definitely in the wrong place.
“While the grave was being opened the women sat down among the flat tombstones, bordered with a pale fringe of early bracken, and began the wild keen, or crying for the dead. Each old woman, as she took her turn in the leading recitative, seemed possessed for the moment with a profound ecstasy of grief, swaying to and fro, and bending her forehead to the stone before her, while she called out to the dead with a perpetually recurring chant of sobs.”
J.M. Synge,
The Aran Islands
There was no one tending the bar. In Ireland, you find the
strangest items in pubs, but an unmanned counter isn’t one of them. I looked at Mrs Bailey and she said,
“I’ll do it.”
I had to ask,
“Doesn’t anyone actually work it?”
She gave a deep sigh, said,
“We have a fellah, but he tends to be his own best customer. We don’t have much business, so I usually do it myself.”
I marched her to a table, sat her down, bowed, asked,
“What would Madam care to imbibe?”
She was delighted, went,
“Something sweet.”
I glanced back at the dusty but well-stocked shelves. I said,
“Might I suggest a schooner of sherry?”
She shook her head, said,
“That’s an old woman’s drink. I don’t want to be old for a minute.”
And who could blame her? I said,
“Crème de menthe?”
She clapped her hands, said,
“Perfect.”
I went behind the bar and stood transfixed, an alcoholic in front of the guns. All the lethal boyos were up there, optics in place: Jameson, Paddy, Black Bush. In jig time, I could have a double up, gone and walloped. I looked at Mrs Bailey. She wasn’t clocking me. From a ream of newspapers on the table before her, she’d selected the
Galway Advertiser
and was flicking through it. I poured her a large, got a Galway sparkling water for myself and left twenty euro on the till. No free drinks this day. Went over and sat opposite her, raised my glass and we clinked. I said,
“Sláinte amach.”
“Leat féin.”
She took a delicate sip, said,
“That’s great stuff.”
We savoured a moment of silence, not uncomfortable, then I asked,
“What’s troubling you, Mrs B?”
She folded her hands in her lap, then,
“They’re squeezing me out. Developers, creditors, a whole crowd of them. I’m sinking and I’m afraid I’ll have to sell.”
One more Galway institution to be drowned beneath progress, everything decent and fine and, yes, old was being demolished. She asked,