Islandbridge (2 page)

The chieftain thought for a long time before he looked to the wooer of his daughter again.

“Well,” he said at last. “If what you say is true, then she could cross that bridge one day, and return to the past to undo a mistake, could she not?”

“She could.”

“Such as her marriage vows?”

The Viking realized that he was caught, but he remembered that the Irish valued those who never stinted in their efforts, be it in horsemanship, battle, or argument.

“It is true,” he said, looking boldly into the chieftain's eyes. “But she will never regret those vows for one moment of her life, I promise you.”

The chieftain stared at him for several minutes.

“I think you have made your case,” he said finally. “Whether this island can hold time as you say it can, we shall see. But one thing is certain: she will not be bored for lack of storytelling.”

He leaned in over the table that divided the two men. The Viking did not know if a knife would suddenly spring into the chieftain's hand and he would be dispatched for his impertinence and casuistry.

“In telling the story itself, you yourself have held back time,” said the chieftain.

“Your wisdom is beyond me, sir,” said the Viking.

“What I am telling you is this,” said the chieftain, standing up as a signal that his visitor should depart. “In your desire, you have already made this island with its bridge, an island that is not an island at all – Islandbridge we shall call it – true.”

The Viking left, not knowing what the chieftain thought, or would decide.

Prologue

July 9, 1983

I
T WAS COMING UP to midnight and the club was going strong. There was an hour to go yet on Declan Kelly's shift, but the tiredness had left him. That no longer surprised him. It usually did toward the end of the night. He figured it happened like this because there was less of a serious performance needed from him now. But it wasn't good to get too relaxed. He still had to be wide awake and to look deadly serious when they'd be emptying the club at closing time.

Kelly had plenty of ways to while the time away until the end of his shift, and tonight for some reason, making up names of books and films had come to him.
The Life of a Bouncer
by Declan Kelly. The Famous Garda Declan Kelly, that would be, Off-duty Garda Declan Kelly. Saving Up For The Big Day Declan Kelly. How about: Never Going To Do A Crappy Job As A Bouncer In This Dump Again, Declan Kelly? “You've read the book, now see the film.” Who would he get to star in it, though? Clint Eastwood, with an Irish accent. That'd be something all right.

He watched a taxi approach in the dazzle of lights that flooded up from the oily, patched surface of Capel Street. It passed, and the street was empty again. There was the Liffey stink hanging in the air around here. It crept like poison gas all over the centre of Dublin, when the tide was out. There was always the smell of the Markets too, day and night. Somehow, the stray fragments and squashed pads of vegetables that lined the laneways here brought a quiet dismay to Garda Kelly. A farmer's son, they reminded him of the sure and certain fate of nature and its bounty, here in this city where he had once wished to be posted, but now was beginning to hate.

The thumping from the new speakers they'd put into the club last month gave way to tinnier noise and voices. He looked over and returned a wave from Mick, the inside man. Mick held the door open with his foot and raised his arm. He tapped on his watch face and gave Kelly the thumbs-up. He thought he saw Mick roll his eyes. The door closed slowly, swallowing back some of the noise.

Kelly had no idea how many were still in the club. It had been slow enough all evening and, after all, Wednesdays were not much better than Mondays here. He stared at the heavy galvanized plates that covered the door, and stifled a yawn. The doors were actually vibrating with the music: he was sure of it.

Mid-stretch, he thought about his fiancée. Eimear would be sound asleep in her flat over on South Circular Road. It was two weekends since her flatmate Breda had gone home to her folks in Longford, and left them to themselves. He wondered if one or the other of them had planned it like this. It seemed the most natural thing in the world when Eimear came out from her bath naked and then eased into bed beside him. Just like that, he'd said to himself over and over again for days afterwards. She had told him she'd heard his heart beating halfway across the room.

Breda had to have been in on it, he decided again. The same Breda was arranging most of the reception. “No backing out now, Declan,” she had said before she'd headed down for the train, “The hotel is booked.”

Well ha ha ha, Breda. Actually Breda was all right, most of the time. Lately he wondered if maybe, just maybe, she was a bit jealous.

The door to the club swung open again. Mick held it open for two girls to step out. They stumbled out arm in arm, and even above the music Kelly heard the clickety click of their heels. A cigarette from the one nearest the door caught in something and cascaded glowing pieces at their feet. These were right Dublin scrubbers, the pair of them. In his time in Dublin Declan Kelly had come to the conclusion early enough that there was and always would be an endless supply of these sneering, brassy, foulmouthed young ones.

One stopped just outside the door. She yanked her friend back, and said something to Mick. Kelly wondered why the doors had stayed open. Then he saw that Mick was still there holding the door for a fella – wait, two fellas – to leave. The second one was wavering a lot. When he made for the footpath outside with sideways, lurching steps and abrupt halts, Kelly eyed him trying to flick back his long hair from time to time, almost falling back in the effort. He began to sway now too as he headed down the footpath, something that reminded Declan Kelly of a sailor on board ship in a storm. The glimpse of face Kelly saw said nineteen maybe twenty, but with that stunned, slack expression of someone well into a stupor.

They hadn't noticed him, and that was just fine by him. One of the girls yanked the other around as she turned to shout something, but Mick had the door pulled closed already. The first man was trying to light a cigarette now. Kelly couldn't help but smile at the effort. Even standing with his legs braced against his rolling world, every match the fella lit was going out, or dropping, or breaking. Then he turned his head, but it fell back, and he took several sudden, tottering steps to regain some footing. No sooner had he done that than the swaying started again. Then he seemed to get suddenly very interested in the night sky. God knows what he saw up there above these wet Dublin streets of this July night – morning – year of Our Lord 1983. This thick was more than just drunk, Kelly decided, more than stoned, even.

The girls seemed to be arguing with one another now. One of them laughed, with a cackle that ended in a smoker's cough. They lurched on, half pushing and half tugging at one another. One of the girls' heels clipped something on the footpath, and she skittered a few steps with a yelp and fell then against a car. The fella with the unlit cigarette called out to her, while the other girl buckled with laughter. The girl against the car started to laugh herself. She stayed leaning against the back door and looked up and down the street. She had seen him now, Kelly believed. She took out a cigarette, trying to watch him all the while. The flare of her lighter jolted her. She batted at her hair a few times. The other girl, beside her now, erupted into laughter again.

Kelly looked away from them now. As Clune used to tell him when they started foot patrol first, you don't have to stare to notice things. The trick was to look away down the road, while at the same time you keep an eye on people. It was a bit like a dog you couldn't trust, according to Clune. If you make eye contact, it sends a signal.

The two men had caught up to the girls now. The wobbly stargazer with the long hair was like a hospital patient taking his first steps after an operation.

“Sure who'd ever want to be in that dump?”

It was the girl on the car who had made the half-hearted yell. Her accent was that lazy, mocking whine Kelly had come to despise.

She seemed happy enough against the car now, settling onto it, wet or not from the showers earlier.

He kept his gaze on the lights by Capel Street Bridge. She drew on the cigarette again, coughed, and pushed her hair back. Then she looked at her friend rummaging in her handbag.

Kelly thought of the money he was making tonight, mentally rearranging it into pound notes and fivers. Then he did division on how many pints of stout that'd buy, or how many gallons of petrol for his new Toyota Starlet. Mostly, he fought off the urge to look over.

There was no sign of them pushing off yet. Jesus, he muttered under his breath. He felt a twinge of remorse at taking the Holy Name. There was something about people who were drunk, he'd come to believe, something that gave them some weird power of knowing what you were thinking, or what you wanted. He turned his mind to mental calculations again. There were three more of these jobs before the end of the month. That was three hundred quid. Furniture for the new house, or extra for the honeymoon?

He caught the movement out of the corner of his eye. He had been right: drunk people were mind readers. She was headed his way. The bitch, he murmured.

Her sugary breath preceded her and wafted across to Kelly. It was soon joined by a stink of stale smoke and worn-out perfume that had baked into her clothes in the club.

“You like being a bouncer, do you?” she said. “Isn't it fierce boring, like?”

“Go on,” he said. “Your fellas are going on without you.”

She had to steady herself when she turned to look back. The two men were staggering in some kind of unison now. The other girl was wavering a bit herself while she searched in a small handbag.

“Don't mind them,” she said. “They're only gobshites. We can get other fellas.”

Her sudden yell startled him then.

“Yvonne!!”

“What?”

“We can get any fella we want, can't we Yvonne?”

Now the other woman began to make her way back. Kelly almost groaned aloud.

“Give us a fag,” the other girl called out. The first girl ignored her.

“You should put your uniform on,” she said to Kelly instead. “Why don't you?”

He looked down the street.

“Shouldn't he, Yvonne?”

He stole a quick glance at Yvonne's face. Her mascara had gone astray and her pale face and empty eyes told Kelly she could puke any moment, without warning. He took a step back and turned to look down the street in the wake of another taxi.

“Shouldn't he put on his uniform, Yvonne, this copper?”

Yvonne shivered and nodded.

“That's where the money is, I'm telling you,” said the first one.

“Where are the fags?” Yvonne asked through a shiver.

“Will you wait? Jesus, where are yours . . . !”

“You should buy some,” the girl said. “You iijit.”

“They'll be gone if you don't hurry up,” Kelly said.

The Yvonne one lurched as she reached for the packet. Kelly turned at the sound of her sole scraping the pavement.

“Do the routine, you know?” the first one said. “Peel it off. They throw their knickers up at them in the one in Finglas. They throw money too.”

Kelly returned to studying the far end of the street. The more sober, or less drunken, man had stopped now. He rested his mate against a car and drew on the cigarette he managed to light.

“Come on, will yous?” he shouted. Kelly didn't hear the rest of what he said, as the man reached over to right his tottering mate.

“You'll miss your lift home be late,” he said to the girls.

“Home? Ha ha. Home . . .?! We're only starting! Isn't that right, Yvonne?”

The Yvonne one drew long on her cigarette. She couldn't focus on him, he saw. Puke could go six feet, easy. She began to move off in the direction of the two men.

“Where are you going,” said the first one. She turned back to Kelly.

“Come here, I'll show you.”

He brushed her hand away.

“Enough.”

“What do you mean enough, here–”

“Bugger off home, you dirty scrubber.”

Her face gave way to a sneer.

“Want me to run you in?” he said, and glared at her. “You and your pals?”

He enjoyed knowing she couldn't find the words to snap back at him. Slowly he headed back to the doorway.

“Did you hear that?” she managed at last, and her voice gave out at the end. It turned into a ragged shout.

“Yvonne! Yvonne!”

Kelly spotted a car coasting slowly down the street toward the club, the reflected lights from the shops and the street lights sliding over the windscreen every few moments.

“Kev!” the girl was shrieking while she walked away. “Come here, will you?”

The car slowed even more, and Kelly saw an arm resting in the open window. There were two men in the front seats, and another sitting behind. The front passenger pointed at something.

The club door opened and that same, stupid tune they always played this time of night poured out, louder than ever. That was another thing driving him bonkers here, how they played the same thing over and over again. The Police, “I'll Be Watching You.” Ha, ha bloody ha. Not funny, never was.

The car accelerated and then suddenly braked, with a loud, hissing skid. The two women had noticed it. The driver leaned over to look out the passenger window. The women said something back, and they began scurrying awkwardly down the footpath.

“A spot of bother?”

“Almost,” said Kelly.

Kelly heard the skittering heels as they tried to hurry, and tracked the red, arcing glows of their cigarettes. The car kept pace. There was shouting.

He stepped into the street and looked down at the taillights. The girls were trying to run now. Then they just disappeared. The taillights bounced once as the driver took it up the curb, and headlights swept over a wall before the car itself vanished into the laneway. He waited to hear shouts but none came to him over the steady hum and thumping from the club behind him.