Islandbridge (33 page)

“Oh you'll get plenty of craic,” said Minogue. “You're in the right place for that.”

“You're looking for a baddie, are you then, officer?”

It was the bleached one again. Cheeky from birth maybe.

“In a manner of speaking, yes.”

“Well, no-one here's like that, are we lads?”

“Not yet we're not,” said another. Laughter followed.

The urge to mischief came to Minogue quickly, along with his annoyance.

“Maybe you might know this person though?”

“Sure! Glad to be of assistance! Go ahead. Officer.”

“We're looking for two actually. They may be travelling together. I think they're from your part of the world, maybe?”

“Only too happy to oblige. Aren't we, lads?”

“Great. One is Jane Austen. Travels with another woman, let me think. Charlotte Brontë. They're getting on in years now – you'd notice them right away.”

Minogue saw that only one of them had doubts right away. It looked like the barman, a young fella, had twigged though.

“Can't say as I do,” the bleached one said. “How about it, lads?”

Minogue nodded at the one who was giving him a serious look now.

“I think he might know them,” he said. “They went missing from the Penguin Library a while back.”

He gave one of his cards to the barman. Malone was by the window outside now.

“Maria?” said the barman. “Marina?”

“Something like that. And there might be the big fella, the man. Goes under the name of George – an accent. A right big fella.”

The barman nodded. Minogue considered using Malone's line about George speaking with a Transylvanian accent. Instead he thanked the barman and headed for the street.

“See you around then, Shamus. Pip-pip, right?”

Minogue stopped and turned to the group.

“Shamus? Are you referring to me?”

Most of them had their faces well under control, but one gave way. The bleached one was not fazed. Minogue gave him a hard look.

Malone had come in now and he was holding the door.

“Can't take a joke? Dish it out but can't take it, right?”

Roigh
, Minogue repeated within. He continued to study the face. Puffy, designer stubble, bad eyes. Malone had read the situation, and had come over now.

“This would be a grand opportunity for you to say nothing further,” he said.

“It's a free country, isn't it?”

Innit
, Minogue heard, and he didn't resist the surge of anger. It must be in the genes, all those centuries: just the accent set him on edge, instantly.

“It's a chance you shouldn't pass up now, Nigel.”

“Who are you?” the bleached man asked Malone.

“I'm Bono,” Malone said. “Who are you? And what's your problem exactly?”

“Are you an officer of the law too, then?”

Minogue saw with some satisfaction that the smiles had faded. Malone held up his photocard. Bleached man made a thing about comparing it with the live specimen.

“Doesn't look like you though.”

“Seems to me you're under the influence there,” Malone said. “If you can't see something in front of your nose.”

“Are you going home in the near future?” Minogue asked. “Back to the motherland?”

“Since when do I need to answer any of your questions?”

“Since you fit the description of an alien. Have you registered yourself as a resident?”

“Don't be ridiculous. I'm here with me mates, for a couple of days. We're here for the craic, like I said. See, I know what craic is?”

“United fan, are you?” Malone asked.

“As a matter of fact, I am.”

“Curry and chips? Watch the telly, point a bittah? Oi, oi. Right?”

“What are you getting at?”

“I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt,” said Minogue. “And assume you have a return ticket to Great Britain.”

He looked around at the group.

“Safe home now.”

He eyed the barman.

“If Nigel here and his mates call for a Black and Tan, phone me. All right?”

“Still fighting the War of Independence,” Malone said outside. “Are you?”

A little ashamed now, Minogue resisted mentioning his granduncle who'd been shot, or some ancient Connole relations, from his mother's side, who'd been transported in 1848.

“Better go with you from now on,” Malone said. “If you're going to be like that.”

3
A curse on you, you fool.

Chapter 17

April 16, 1987

E
IMEAR
K
ELLY HAD
the painters in for a fortnight before she actually put the house up for sale. They made a fuss over Liam, and it was lovely to see. The boss, or foreman, Danny, wasn't fifty yet himself, but he already had grandchildren of his own. He let Liam watch them, and finally got a few words out of him. The very next day, he'd persuaded Liam to pick up a brush. The others followed suit, even the young fella who seemed to be hungover every day.

It was Danny, the chain-smoking, grizzle-headed Dubliner who always appeared in a boiler suit, it was he who persuaded her that her future was Dublin. He'd never know, she thought. What won her over was his bluntness: Missus, this house is new. You don't need to paint anything. You'd be wasting your money.

It was also the friendliness that evaporated all of the Dublin sarcasm she had grown inured to since she had started here. She'd never say that to Danny, of course, that he'd convinced her. He probably hadn't an iota of a clue what effect he'd had on her. And he had never once let on that he might know her circumstances, being as there was no man about the house. The nearest he got was a polite question about Declan's picture in the hall, as he was taking it down. My husband, was all she told him. She left it under the stairs afterwards.

On the last day of the job, Danny brought a cake. He also brought a present for Liam, a lorry that had things in it. They sat in the kitchen, the two of them, with Liam having a late snooze in his playpen, while the other workmen gathered stuff they'd stored in the garage and upstairs.

“A grand house,” said Danny. “It'll go like a flash.”

Around the house came the sounds of whistling, plastic sheets being put away or crushed, tins being hit.

“Where'll you go then?”

“I'm not sure,” she said.

“You can leave Liam with me. I'll put him on the team.”

As if hearing those words, Liam stirred in the playpen, groaned, and then went back to sleep.

“I'll paint the new place for you. How about that?”

She told him she'd take him up on it if only she knew where she'd be. He smiled and poured more tea.

“Your fella's not telling you, is it?”

She looked down toward where he had nodded, said nothing. The engagement ring: she had forgotten. His voice dropped when he spoke again.

“I know what happened,” he said.

She heard him sipping at his tea, and it reminded her of growing up, with her father in from the fields or the barn or the milking, mad for a cup of tea.

“Sorry if I'm butting in, now.”

“It's all right,” she said. “You've a good eye for things that men don't notice.”

He gave her a pirate's wink, and he sat back.

“Engagement rings are nothing to me,” he said. “I'm nearly allergic to them at this stage. Sure, I have three daughters.”

The sounds from the hall and the clumping upstairs had died down now.

“I hope you don't mind me saying that now.”

She shook her head.

“A person has to keep going, don't they?”

“They do,” she agreed.

“A nephew of mine, a terrible thing, a few years back. He was knocked down and killed by a car. His wife, sure she'll never be over it. I says to her a while ago, ‘Helen,' I says. ‘Helen, will you pay no heed to them what'd be telling you what you can or can't do. Find a fella, get married.' And tell them I sent you.”

“How did that go over?”

He sucked in his breath, and shook his head once.

“Oh I got a fair raking over the coals for that one. But I didn't care. That's the way I am, I speak my mind. And didn't she do it? A grand fella, very quiet and good living – but like I said, she'll never be over Gerry, the first one. The thing is, she doesn't have to get over anything. She figured it out, you see? You can't get over anything. You only carry things. Am I right?”

She nodded.

“It's asking too much, I'm telling you. But now, sure, Helen she has company and someone to carry her over the bad parts. So it gets easier. Things fall into place.”

He suddenly scratched the back of his head and gave a little snort.

“Declare to God, her new husband's quiet and decent, but he's a quick worker. They have two youngsters – already.”

A frown descended on his face then, taking away the smile. He blinked and looked away. He thinks he has said too much, Eimear believed.

“Well, I'm lucky,” he said. “Sheila tells me to mind me own business. She's right. Sometimes, only.”

She finished her own tea and watched Liam squirm and grimace as he began to surface from his sleep. His hair had come in even fairer than she'd expected.

She was aware that Danny was looking at her again. She looked back into his quizzical, half-smiling face.

“Watch for the quiet ones,” he said. “Like Helen's one. I'm telling you.”

“Oh he's far from quiet,” she said. “He's loud and he's big.”

“A Guard?”

She nodded.

That seemed to change something. Danny was soon up, putting the cups and saucers by the sink.

“Well good luck to you now, Eimear.”

“Thanks,” she said. “It won't be Eimear long.”

He smiled warily.

“I'm going to go with my middle name from now on. I actually prefer it.”

“Well good luck in the new job,” he said. “Before I forget.”

“Thanks,” she said. It was one of the few things she'd noticed, and it still disturbed her a bit since coming off the sedatives. Sometimes she wasn't sure if she had told someone something, or only thought she might tell them.

“Personnel, right? People? That's great. That's the future, no doubt – if this bloody country ever gets off its hind legs and there's jobs to be had. What are we now, nineteen and eighty-five? Sure the Common Market thing, that's been ten or fifteen years now. Another cod, I say. I just hope my ones don't end up taking the boat too.”

He called her Eimear again as they shook hands but she said nothing. One by one the other three shook hands with her. There was something solemn and too respectful in it, she reflected later. Danny must have told them of her troubles.

Liam was fierce cranky waking up. Maybe the fumes from the paints or wallpaper were getting to him. She changed him and cut up some banana and gave him warm milk in his Duck mug. Still he was clingy and hot. She looked at his gums again. She carried him around to show him the furniture back in the place and pictures hung, and then upstairs to look out the windows to see the birds in the shrubs opposite. Auntie Róisín would be coming for tea, she told him.

Below, in the driveway, was her car. The house was hers. The Guards union, the Representative Body, had pushed her case to the forefront, and the widows' pension would be getting an increment before the end of the year. Falling into place, that was the expression Danny the painter had used. But of course, not without help. So much she owed them: Róisín and her mother – her father, even, in spite of his quietly sly hints that she should move on, and away from this disgrace that Declan had gotten them into. Declan's family, yes, Breda . . . for all her crying.

But still she felt that peculiar weight on her, and that sense something was always following her around. Well, the psychiatrist wasn't going to be the one to put names on things for her – she'd found that out quick enough – but had coaxed, or goaded, her into thinking out loud, and trying to say things. Maybe it was all the what-could-have-beens following her around, or her own remorse at not giving Declan the chance to leave. Anger, of course, that Declan had bottled it all up, like men do, and then let it build up until that day. Shift work, the baby, she had decided, when she'd noticed his moods and sleeplessness.

She couldn't sit here and fall into brooding. She got up from the chair, hefted Liam on her hip again. He laid his cheek on her shoulder. She heard a little rasp somewhere in his breathing. She began to hum to him, and he tried to join her. Together they walked and swayed around the kitchen, out into the hall, and back.

She had her wits about her from early on, it had to be said. Was it just some survival thing, a new mother's instincts taking over? No, she had decided, and she had grown proud of how she had managed it all – them all – her mother and father, Róisín and Breda, the Guards, everyone – as they had swarmed around her in those first few terrible weeks. No, not a swarm: it was more like being in the middle of a stampede. Even in that half-waking, halfdreaming state the damned medication had left her, she had come through, kept herself in one piece.

Still, the hard part now was that she wanted to tell someone, just one person, what she wanted in the future, where she wanted to go. The only trouble was, she didn't have the words. Something had been stolen from her, left unfinished. There was a huge hole. It wasn't revenge she wanted, no.

“Wook!” said Liam, suddenly lifting his head.

There was Theresa Murphy working in her garden opposite.

“Do you want to go out in the garden?”

He began to buck in her arms, and then lay down on her shoulder again.

“Soon,” she said. “When you're really awake, right?”

She resumed her walk, through the sitting room, into the dining room, and back into the hall, listening to Liam's gurgled words. Theresa was going goodo with planting some shrubs, she saw, when they came back to the kitchen window.