All Names Have Been Changed (19 page)

I went back up to his door and knocked harder. ‘Giz,’
I called. No response. I pressed my ear to the door. Silence. I tried the handle. Locked. I put my eye to the keyhole. His armchair was directly in my line of vision, and his armchair was empty.

Daylight was a strained compound of nerves after the lurid night that was in it. I had shed a protective layer. Everything in me blinked and blenched, a colony of insects when their rock is lifted. So when I stumbled out squinting onto the street and registered in my peripheral vision the funeral wreath hanging from the front door of the house on Mountjoy Square, my initial reaction was to assume that it wasn’t actually there. It was another demon, the kind of thing Glynn saw in his cups, the kind of thing I saw in mine.

It was only when I slammed the door and heard something tinkle down the steps in my wake that I turned around to gape at the wreath. And then gaped at what had fallen out of the wreath. There by my feet, a hypodermic needle. I looked up. A star-shaped hole in Giz’s window. Evil had come to our door as we’d slept. Evil had left a calling card. I ran up the steps and plucked the card from its holder.
PUSHERS
OUT
, it read.

There was no dole queue trailing out the door of the labour exchange on Gardiner Street. That was the first bad sign. The roads were deserted, just the odd car here and there, as on Christmas Day. The local shops were shuttered. A grown man with a tricolour knotted around his neck planted himself in my path and vomited down his front. I stepped around him.

A cloud as faded and discoloured as an old military uniform was about to occlude the sun. I watched it loom over the Custom House with the stealth of a cut-throat.
The delirium of that last blast of sunlight before rain, the sun-shot world on the brink of condensing – Gardiner Street was fleetingly gilded with such beauty that I was overcome with sadness that it could not always be this way. The cloud dispatched its bright-yellow quarry briskly; there was no struggle. A tidal wave of shadow came racing along the pavement. My heart started to pound.

I gritted my teeth and kept going, kept going, kept staggering on regardless, with hardly a thought as to where I was off to, and in such a hurry too. The gulls were out in force, screaming their prophesies of doom as the first heavy raindrops spattered the pavement. The streets grew darker with every step I took, the city a coffin being lowered into a grave.

Very few cars on the quays either. I crossed Butt Bridge down the broken white line of the central traffic lane. The Liffey was an opaque limestone grey in the grainy light. Water that was not translucent was no longer just water, surely. That’s what ran through my mind as I hurried along. There was more to that river than it was letting on. A thunderous rain was unleashed on us then.

On the side lane connecting the quays to Poolbeg Street, I encountered a woman sitting amongst dustbins. Her dress had ridden up to her hips, and she wore no underwear. The sight of her pubic hair was a shocking obscenity. Her thighs were dappled mauve, like Glynn’s daughter. He’d have gotten a whole chapter out of the scene, but I averted my eyes. The woman tugged at the hem of her dress with fingers gone rubbery from booze or worse and shouted something after me that I didn’t catch, something lascivious, judging by the tone. She
was well pleased with the remark, such as it was, and threw back her head to laugh as best she could manage.

Crowd-control barriers had been erected along College Green. Teenaged boys had shinned up the lampposts. A lost child with a plastic flag was crying. A convoy of sodden floats and pipe bands trudged past in the rain, watched by people in anoraks. Jesus Christ, St Patrick’s Day. Empty bottles and cans littered the streets. I kicked through them like autumn leaves. The gates to Trinity were shut. The walled city had raised the drawbridge. Ambulances and squad cars nudged the crowd along like cattle. There was news of a stabbing on Stephen’s Green.

I crossed back over the Liffey to present my pounding hand to the Accident and Emergency in the Mater, thinking to get a head start on the crowd. I was too late. The crowd had a head start on me. The crowd had been there since time began. The casualties already outnumbered the staff a hundred to one. A fine big country nurse directed me to take a seat alongside the rest of the city’s drunken, drenched carnage and wait for my name to be called. We had a painful night ahead, the lot of us, during which time we were more than welcome to take a look at ourselves, take a good long hard look at ourselves in the cold light of day, tufts of wilted shamrock pinned to our scruffs, worse than any dunce hat.

It was my turn to read. I shuffled my sheaf of papers and cleared my throat:

‘The Professor’s forehead positively bulged with metaphors and imagery. Full to the rafters, so it was, worse than a pub on Holy Thursday. He hadn’t, of course, written a word in five years; not a publishable word, at least. Why let a minor detail like that impede you? Professor Flynn wasn’t remotely ashamed of the ludicrous figure he cut, having long ago lost sight of the fact that he was a preposterous personage. At times, it was possible to pity him. Mainly, though, it was not.

‘–Everybody hates me, he told the young girl.

‘–I don’t hate you, Professor Flynn, the young girl replied. She was beautiful beyond compare.

‘–Don’t you?

‘–No.

‘–You’re the only one. Oh, what would I do without you? Come here and sit on my knee. That’s it, good girl. Up a bit …
Ahhhhh
.

‘There were huffing, slobbering noises as the priapic Professor’s aged tongue explored the canal of the young girl’s ear, then he murmured her name, possibly to remind himself of it, what with his creaky memory (not getting any younger), or else as a ploy to distract the
innocent creature from the sly progress of his hand, which was creeping up her thigh, groping for the leg of her drawers.

‘Genevieve panicked at the prospect of Flynn clapping eyes on her tatty grey pants, purchased by her mother many years previously in Dunnes Stores, Better value beats them all. Instead of slapping the old man’s hand away, as any sensible girl might, she yanked off her knickers altogether and kicked them out of sight under his desk, so sweet and obliging was her nature.

‘A happy sigh from Flynn, followed by a grunt and lurch as he parted the young girl’s knees and took aim. There was some fumbling. Yes, an extended period of fumbling. The girl waited patiently, gazing over the Professor’s shoulder at the array of trophies displayed on his bookcase. She didn’t wish to rush him. He was a great man, after all.

‘–Well now, said Professor Flynn, glancing down and clearing his throat. Would you ever look at that?
Romantic
Ireland’s
dead
and
gone
.
It’s
with
O’Leary
in
the
grave
. He laughed hollowly as he tucked his lad back into his brown polyester trousers. The girl smiled weakly back. It was the most excruciating moment of her life. No wait, I am wrong. The most excruciating moment of the young girl’s life wasn’t to occur for another thirty seconds, when she had to crawl under Flynn’s desk to retrieve her tattered knickers, then step back into them one leg at a time while the mighty scribbler hungrily watched.

‘Professor Flynn burst into tears again. Fourth time already that night. It was a pre-emptive strike: the young girl was the one with cause for tears, but Glynn – I mean, Flynn – made sure to get the boot in first.

‘–Boo hoo hoo, he said, then swivelled an eye at Genevieve to check that it was working. Good stuff, the job was oxo. Was there no end to his crusade for pity? Flynn inhabited a world which, through his own mismanagement, had spiralled out of control. His wife had left him, his only child despised him, and it was just a matter of time before the college fathers turfed him out on his ear. Flynn was in service to nothing but his own capricious gift, which had abandoned him. And who could blame it? His voice had been described as inimitable in the past, but to Flynn it had become uninimitable. He couldn’t stop cogging himself. The descent into self-parody was complete.’

Of all my Chapter Ones – and there were more than a few – this was my favourite. It was the first thing I’d written that wasn’t tainted by despair, the only few pages of the past hundred or so to have afforded me any pleasure at all. I had turned an important corner in my writing life.

Glynn raised his glasses to his artist’s eye. ‘Be the hokey,’ says he, trading on that brand of Hiberno-English that had brought him so far, but only so far. Somewhere along the line, he had gotten it into his thick skull that the Irish were more charming than other nationalities, when the best that could be said of us was that we weren’t the worst. ‘Write that with your good hand, didya Dermot?’

‘Begob, I did not. I bet it out with this one, sir!’ says I, holding up my bad hand, wrapped like a parcel of meat. I’d as much a claim on that manic bog codology as he. We sat there grinning wildly at each other, the big Wicklow head on him, and the big Mayo head on me.
Odd as it sounds, I was delighted that we were all back together again, birds in a nest, snug as a gun, after the best part of a month’s break. A beautiful afternoon in April, it was, so perfect it couldn’t last.

My good cheer was inappropriate, which only served to reinforce it. My latest Chapter One hadn’t gone down too well with the ladies.

‘I find your abrupt adoption of the Continental style sheet pretentious,’ was the only comment it elicited, from Antonia, who else? ‘This business of prefacing lines of dialogue with em dashes – who on earth do you think you are? Joyce?’ The rest of them just stared at me, the female gaze. Which was like the male gaze, only more observant.

‘I like it, son,’ Glynn concluded, his glasses still perched on his forehead. ‘A terrible beauty is born. You’ve been falling the wrong side of earnest for too long.’

‘I have, right enough, Professor Glynn,’ I nodded. ‘I am in firm agreement with you there. Wait till ye see Chapter Two! No more Mister Nice Guy, what?’ I made a series of faces at him, the way we did as school children before we’d acquired vocabulary to equal our malice. My enmity towards glynn I mean Glynn outstripped my ability to express it.

He for his part grimaced back for all he was worth. ‘Oh ho, no more Mister Nice Guy, indeed!’ he winked, rolling up his sleeves. ‘Every story needs a good villain, isn’t that right, Dermot?’

I clenched my jaw and winked back. ‘That’s right, you fucking gee-bag.’

My notes on the workshop end at this juncture. What follows is drawn from memory and must accordingly be
treated as partisan, one-sided, hopelessly lovelorn, hammered thin by anguish and pain. Ignore it, ignore every word of it – it isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. I am only out for revenge, in so much as I can get it. A near-black trickle of blood shot out of Guinevere’s left nostril, fast as a darting minnow. Glynn jumped to his feet. Faye delved for a tissue. Guinevere touched her top lip in surprise, and slumped when she saw her scarlet fingertips. My chair screeched as I lunged for her. I caught her in my arms and felt like a man.

‘It’s nothing, it’s nothing,’ Guinevere insisted when she opened her eyes again. ‘Really, it’s fine,’ she kept telling us. Faye guided her to tilt back her head and pinch the bridge of her nose. Aisling wrapped her in her black coat. I sat rubbing her poor white hand. Antonia ran downstairs to brew strong tea. But Glynn, the bowsie, hadn’t jumped out of his chair to rush to her aid, but to get as far away as he was able from the blood.

‘Is she alright?’ he asked from a safe distance. Nobody answered him. We, who had hung on his every word for so long, now ignored him. That was the moment he became extraneous.
There
is
always
a
price
. ‘Is she alright?’ he asked again. Third-person singular.
Go
home
,
you’re
only
impeding
us
.

‘Dunno,’ I said to him. ‘Depends on what you’ve done to her.’ I was gleaming with animosity. My hurt polished me like a diamond; it changed the shape of my face. I was all sharp angles, hard edges, cutting remarks.

‘Leave it, Declan,’ Guinevere told me, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t know how to leave it.

Antonia returned from the kitchen empty-handed. ‘The milk was off,’ she said.

‘The milk was off!’ Glynn repeated with relish, as if it were a choice metaphor indeed. He felt an epiphany coming on. Maybe he’d beat a paragraph into his red notebook that very night, or lash out a limerick at least. Seemed more likely he’d traipse home after Guinevere, and mewl and pule at her door until she took pity and let him in again. The colour had returned to her face.

Glynn resumed his seat at the head of the table and threw my chapter back at me. He had underlined every use of the word ‘seemed’ and its synonyms. ‘As if’, ‘like’, ‘appeared to’, ‘as though’. I shook my head at him in disbelief. People in glasshouses. Pots calling kettles black. I didn’t lick it off the stones. If ever there was a writer who knew how to flog a simile to death, here he sat enthroned before us. The smell of death was on his breath that day, but perhaps this is memory speaking. The smell of death was on his breath every day, but until that day, it had smelt like books. It was Aisling’s turn to read. Glynn dropped his glasses back into position like a welding visor, and waved her on.

She was five hundred pages into that Promethean novel of hers. Never did manage to understand a word of it. Couldn’t make head nor tail out of a thing she wrote. All I ever deduced from Aisling’s work was its innate superiority over anything I could have produced and her innate right to be in that workshop over me. Not an ‘as if’ or a ‘like’ in sight. Different class.

The extract Aisling read that afternoon further upset the balance in House Eight for reasons which are too elusive to quantify without the evidence once more in front of us. Unfortunately the evidence is gone. Why didn’t I retain a copy? Why didn’t I take more care? There was an alarming aura about the piece, not just in
the content but also the form, its visual presence on the page, as if it were a composite of letters cut from magazines and pasted down, though it was typed, same as everyone else’s. Perhaps the first letters of every line combined to spell out a message, a cry for help. That would not surprise me in the least. We cannot say we were not warned. But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Faye chose that class to depart from her short, sweet elegiac meditations on human frailty to instead read a chapter from a novel about a battered wife. We sat there in horror listening to graphic descriptions of a drunken farmer kicking the living daylights out of his missus as she lay cowering on the bathroom floor.
You
know
her
husband
beats
her
,
don’t
you
?

‘She felt internal tissue tear,’ Faye read, ‘and muscle wall rupture as Kiernan’s boot pounded repeatedly into her soft belly. She closed her eyes and prayed to Our Lady. He never had much stamina. It would be over soon.’

Antonia was staring across the table at me with a tight-lipped smile that was no smile at all. Looking around the room while somebody read was transgressive, like opening your eyes during the Sacrament in Mass. ‘When he was finished, Kiernan turned away and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand,’ Faye continued, ‘thirsty from his labours. He would beg forgiveness in the morning, his wife knew, but morning was a long way off yet.’

Antonia’s expression was turning violent. The whites of her eyes had begun to bulge. She was the wild woman screaming abuse from the top of the stairs again. I looked down at Faye’s manuscript. One of us was trembling. ‘His wife’s blood had spoiled the new bathroom
mat. In her confusion, she couldn’t think where to hide it. Kiernan would go into another fury when he saw it.’ The words were swimming. The words had come to life.

‘Fucking hell,’ whispered Aisling when Faye’s reading was complete.

Antonia tossed her blonde hair. ‘Here, Declan,’ she said, reaching across. ‘You left this behind on my bedside table when you stayed the night.’ She deposited my watch on the desk in front of me, where it glinted in the sunlight. That was when my hatred for Antonia peaked.
You
stupid
bitch
.
Are
you
happy
now
?

‘Oh ho!’ said Glynn, rubbing his palms together in glee. ‘Oh now! Bedside table, is it! Janey Mack. Look at little Pope Innocent here. Now that calls for a pint.’

He stood up and indicated with a swimming stroke, the over-arm crawl, that the lot of us were to follow. He threw the workshop door open, and Aisling gasped, but I had seen it too this time, the demon that had been hanging like a bat behind the door all along. A blink of an eye, and it was gone.