Islandbridge (21 page)

“From a cow?”

“Macau.”

“How very not interesting,” said Kilmartin. “Anyway. My advice to Malone was to go and learn some Chinese, even a few words. That'd get the Chinaman off his back.”

“Tommy can barely speak English, Jim. You said so yourself.”

“Ha ha ha ha! Good one. That's the style.”

Then Kilmartin's face turned serious.

“All I'm saying is, watch where you put your feet. Condon was an eye-opener entirely, but that's the way things are going to go. I mean, the money in crime is gone astronomical. You get the public hearing about coppers on the take – or whatever, I'm not accusing anyone, I'm just saying – and you're in big, big trouble.”

The barman asked if they wanted another pint. Certainly not, Kilmartin declared, anymore than they wanted another baguette. He asked the barman if they'd be getting sandwiches back on the menu, proper ones.

Minogue caught a glance from the barman as he picked up the change that Kilmartin was assembling on the counter. He finished the last of his lager, and looked away. For a few moments, his mind turned to a body frozen stiff and falling from a plane that was carrying hungover, sunburned Irish people home from a holiday.

Kilmartin was standing already.

“Baguettes,” he muttered. “What's the point of that, I ask you.”

Chapter 7

K
ATHLEEN
M
INOGUE
took the ice cream out of the fr stopped by the sink to get a clean spoon. Then she stood still, listening. Now Minogue too heard the little cry.

“Iseult's awake,” she said. “Thank God she had that little nap, I say.”

Iseult's footsteps sounded in the room upstairs. Soon they were on the stairs, pausing every few steps.

Iseult stuck her head in the doorway. She looked very pasty-faced.

“I must have nodded off,” she said in a husky, sleep-clotted voice.

Minogue briefly eyed his daughter's new hair-do, or rather her hair-crop. To him it was still a stark and even brutal helmet of hair dropped on her by a cruel modernist architect. Her hands ran to her swollen stomach and she arched her back a little.

“Sit down here,” he said. “Will you eat a bit?”

“Later,” she said. “Thanks.”

Minogue returned the look of concern from Kathleen.

“Will you consider taking the night off, love?”

Iseult shook her head and rubbed at her eyes.

“Put the feet up, slap Jude Law or one of them hunks up on the DVD maybe?”

She opened her eyes. The evening light caught the faint lines that ran from her eyes down toward the freckles still plentiful on her cheekbones. Remember not to mention Pat, he told himself yet again.

Pat the Brain had taken a small apartment in Limerick. The official version was that the commute to his lectures there from their flat in Dublin had been too much. A nice lad, always liked him, were the words that kept coming to the surface in Minogue's mind, stupidly, in the early mornings while he lay there waiting for the first light. It wasn't worry that was waking him up, he tried to persuade himself. It was more trying to figure out what he had missed, the signs that surely must have been more obvious that Iseult's marriage was not doing well at all.

“No thanks,” said Iseult. “I have to get it finished.”

Minogue noticed Kathleen's eye dart to his again.

“Taxi it home here afterwards, will you?”

“Ma, I'll be grand. I get my best work done at this time.”

“I'm only saying, love,” Kathleen said. “You'll get a better sleep here.”

Minogue counted the days backward. Seven months pregnant. Iseult was unyielding about getting the welded bits on her effort before tomorrow. She had sent them some snaps of the installation she was being paid to make for a Dutch merchant bank in the Financial Centre. “HyBrasil” was her title for it. Try as he might, Minogue couldn't divine in that tangle of metal any trace of the mythical island to the west.

“Who's going to be there with you?” he asked.

“Robbie, the Eskimo.”

“He's not really an Eskimo, come on.”

“Of course he's not. He's from Edmonton. It has something to do with a sports team. He's being ironic.”

“Do you have to pay him some of the commission?”

“No, I don't. I offered, but he won't take anything.”

Minogue had yet to meet the man. Iseult's version of how he'd gotten involved was that he had seen her messing around with a blowtorch, and offered to help. He'd said it was only so she wouldn't burn the place down.”

“And what does he do,” Kathleen said. “This man Robbie, what else, like?”

Iseult rolled her eyes.

“He's an artist, Ma,” she said. “There is no ‘else.'”

Minogue took the ice cream and cut off a piece, and put it on a clean plate in front of her. She gave him a weak smile. He caught himself before the words came out, the worries he and Kathleen had about fumes and so forth, for the baby.

She picked at it, and took bigger spoonfuls. It was soon gone. She turned the spoon over before placing it in the bowl.

“Ready when you are,” she said, and made an effort to smile. “I'll just take a walk up the garden to get my head back, okay?”

Gathering the dishes, Minogue caught a glimpse of Iseult before she got beyond the apple trees.

“This is her last night at it, she says,” Kathleen said. “God, I hope so.”

Kathleen washed, he dried, and like so many times in these past few months since they'd realized that their daughter's marriage was disintegrating, they worried separately and silently.

Soon, Iseult reappeared in the garden. Minogue did not want to be seen staring at her.

“She looks so lonely out there, Matt,” said Kathleen. “So preoccupied.”

He could think of nothing to say to his wife that might console her. But he, did he want to say outright that he agreed either. He draped the dishtowel over the pots, and gave her a squeeze.

Iseult was packed already. She would not let Minogue lift her carry-all.

“You have your mobile?” Kathleen asked.

“Yes, Ma.”

“Be sure and switch it on, or plug it in, you hear me?”

Minogue was sure there was something strident in Kathleen's voice. She stood on the footpath until he had driven out of sight.

He slipped the Citroën easily into the traffic on the Kilmacud Road. The Citroën still floated on its pneumatic suspension as hypnotically as it did when he'd been captivated by it on a test drive all those years ago.

“Ma is such a worrier,” Iseult said.

“She's not alone,” he said.

“Don't guilt me, Da. I have to get it done. It's very important to me right now.”

Minogue found himself whistling low.

“I know what it means,” she said. “When you whistle. Bite your tongue, right?”

“No, I don't know that tune. It's ‘The Wind That Shakes the Barley' actually.”

He saw that this got a smile out of her.

She began talking about the material she'd found on the HyBrasil legend just the other day. Minogue listened, but he imagined Iseult's words being drawn out the little gap in the back window into the twilight air. The Citroën seemed to tunnel its way farther through the greying streets, occasionally lightening with the lemon sky that glowed in the gaps between the buildings.

“Any word from Daithi lately?”

“No,” he said. “Divil a bit.”

“God,” she said. “It's the Y chromosome. All he has to do is lift the phone.”

Minogue felt the urge to defend his son to his daughter. A very stupid notion.

“I was thinking of getting him to get in touch with Jim Kilmartin's young lad there. Get him to phone Jim and Maura Kilmartin. He might get the hint himself, then.”

“Is he the same way, can't lift a phone or bang out an email?”

“Yes,” said Minogue. “Liam, the son and heir. And I think he'll probably stay over there in the States.”

“Huh. Not like our one – you're hoping.”

He looked over, and he saw immediately she regretted the remark.

“Hope springs infernal,” he said. “But it's harder for Jim. An only child.”

“Huh,” she said, not ready to give up entirely. “I got one email at Easter from Daithi. I'll bet it was Cathy made him send it.”

“Come on now.”

“It's Cathy should move here, I'm telling you. The men, sure . . .”

Minogue sped up a little, and whistled louder.

She rummaged in her bag and took out her mobile.

“Use mine,” he said, and drew his out. “Do, and save your minutes. The pay-as-you-go is a killer.”

“Are you sure?”

“You'd be doing me a favour, so you would.”

She took it with some reluctance.

“Why don't you have it on,” she said. “It doesn't cost you.”

“You've nowhere to hide if it's on.”

Minogue got a good run with the traffic lights coming down Georges Street. He tried, unsuccessfully, not to eavesdrop on Iseult's conversation with her friend Orla, about Orla's efforts to get an exhibition going in a new gallery near Mountjoy Square.

Soon Minogue was turning up Dame Street, and taking the turn into the Temple Bar near the quays. Iseult's studio was shared, and it had a strange schedule with a half-dozen other artists. It was in rough shape, with the owner holding out to get the permission he wanted for replacing it with apartments and a restaurant. The entrance was just before the street turned pedestrian only.

Minogue wanted to say something hopeful, to see his daughter restored to her buoyant, haughty self of old.

“Thanks,” she said. “You have four messages you have. Did you know that?”

“Ah turn it off, I'll get them later.”

“Honestly,” she said. “Ma's right. You just refuse to move on here. It's just a
thing
, Da. It saves you time. It's just being in touch.”

“I've had enough of work today, let me tell you.”

“Here's two text messages from – your pal Malone. Sorry:
Garda
Malone. Will I read them out?”

She heard his intake of breath.

“Are they confidential? I forgot.”

“No,” he said. “Might as well now.”

“First says ‘phone me.' That was only a half an hour ago. Got that?”

“I did.”

“Phone me – again. Ten minutes ago is the time for that, and . . . oh dear. Guards using bad language?”

“What?”

“Can I say it? It starts with a b and ends in t. There's a male cow in it.”

“Go ahead.”

“‘Condon bullshit,' it says. Did I say it right? And it says urgent. Is it urgent? Bullshit? Urgent bullshit? What's Condon?”

“Enough,” he said. “Thanks.”

He watched while she undid the locks on the galvanized door.

“It's all right, Da. There's no one here.”

“That's what I'm concerned about. I wish there were someone.”

“There will be – I'll have my Canadian conceptual artist welder here in a while.”

She undid the last lock. He looked up and down the laneway. There was always the reek of urine here from the boozers who came through from the Temple Bar. He looked in the darker shadows by the doorways for a glint from a syringe.

“Are you sure you have enough minutes on your phone?”

“Yes, I do. Really. Now go on, will you?”

“You'll get a few hours of a nap, won't you? That old couch thing . . . ?”

He gave her a hug, and slid the two fifty-euro notes into her cloth shoulder bag from Peru. She had spotted the move.

“No,” he said. “Don't be fighting me. Order a pizza or something.”

He suspected he heard a sob from her, but he didn't want to find out. She waved, but said nothing, and he saw her hand go to her face afterwards. He wanted to stop then, right in the middle of the street, and rush back and carry her off back to the home she had grown up in. He was angrier than he expected now, and he continued to swear calmly and methodically as he piloted the car over the cobblestones and toward the quays. The sharp trill from his phone stopped him. He picked it up from the seat where she had left it, and saw that it was Malone.

He braked and stopped by the curb. For a moment he considered leaping out of the car and running to the quays, and flinging the phone as far as he could, and watching it splash and sink like a stone into the greasy swell of the River Liffey.

Chapter 8

M
ALONE HAD A SPOT
near the door to the restaurant kitchen. He had a bottle of Chinese beer going. Minogue suspected it wasn't his first. Mr. Chang was working the cash mostly. His spare words and slow way of moving reminded Minogue of a reptile, but of course he could never say it.

Never effusive, seldom with sentences, Chang seemed to have registered Minogue as respectable. Malone was a different matter of course, and Chang managed with nods and quiet, sparing words. No quitter, Malone continued to patronize the restaurant at least once a week. He had told Minogue that he was working on wearing Chang down, just by enjoying the food. Sooner or later, Sonia Chang's old man would see that he should change his mind about Thomas Malone, and give his blessing to Malone's engagement to Sonia. Malone turned up at the restaurant whether Sonia was working there or not, as she still did, fitting in her obligations along with night courses.

“How are you,” said Malone. “Want one of these?”

Minogue eyed him.

“No thanks.”

“I'm ordering a take-out. Want some of that then?”

Minogue shook his head.

“First thing is this,” he said. “Are you going to pass on this tip you told me about on the phone, the way you should?”

“Wait and we'll see. It's not a tip yet. It's only a hunch.”