Islandbridge (35 page)

“I had a kebab and something once.”

“But you prefer a burger.”

“I'll buy it for you. Jesus, you'd think I was trying to propose to you.”

“Fries,” said Minogue. “That's all I want for now.”

They went under the Central Bank and crossed Dame Street. The rush hour was started in earnest. He followed Malone along Andrew Street, watched how he took in everything. The faces that passed included two black women, laughing and carrying books. An Asian man of middle years was taking a call in the doorway next to a sports shop. One head-scarfed young woman, again with a schoolbag and an intent expression. A drunken pensioner was weaving about at the foot of Grafton Street where the traffic was locked in place indefinitely.

McDonald's was mad entirely. Minogue decided he wouldn't let on he was enjoying this. He was quick enough to nab two stools near the door, and hold them. He looked out at the river of people passing, hoped for a familiar face.

Malone delivered a Big Mac and a steamy smell of grease along with the fries.

“I know better than to even ask if you want coffee here, at least.”

Minogue didn't mind the fries. He'd keep that to himself though. He certainly didn't want to watch Malone wolfing down his burger. He wondered what Kathleen would have for her tea at home; if what's-his-name at her work had given her a lift. He kept his eyes on the crowds outside.

Malone found pieces of a newspaper. Minogue looked over.

“Your man, they found his family,” Malone said.

Minogue tried to read sideways but Malone turned the paper for him. The man who'd fallen to earth, the African Miracle, was from Chad. Some organization was saying they'd pay for his widow and kids to come and live in Ireland.

“What language do they speak–” was as far as Malone got before Minogue's mobile went off.

Chapter 19

September 6, 1993

S
HE'D NEVER FORGET THIS YEAR
. Too much happened. There was no reason, no logic in the wide world, as to why it should also be the hardest since the time after Declan's death. The hardest part wasn't that it was unfair, or undeserved, or even cruel. It was because it was so unexpected.

For weeks, she'd felt the signs. The old, cold dread had been leaking back into her, more each day. Things had started to lose their colour and often there was a foreign look to them too.

She'd fought back: she'd had no choice. Work was busy, busier each passing day, but that was supposed to be good. As if by some kind of weird magic, changing the name of “Personnel” to “Human Resources” seemed to result in a steady growth in the business. Even by the summer, people were saying that things seemed to be taking off in Ireland, but could it last? How little they'd known then.

That was the beginning of the crazy hours that descended on the office. Almost overnight, she found herself running an office with five recruiters, standing in a hurricane of paper, and calls, and interviews, and requests, and meetings, and travel that roared through the office. The agency started dealing with work permits coming in from the continent. It wasn't just the odd student working behind a bar in Dublin anymore – it was factories and hotels looking for staff. Soon there were people with accents showing up in the agency, almost all of them armed with their work permits, laboriously learned but hesitant English, and keen for work. In only a few weeks, it seemed in retrospect, her agency had become a place for a half-dozen employers to find cleaners, assemblers, and hotel staff.

She kept her eye on the home situation. It was the one thing she knew would be her undoing if things got worse. Liam got extra attention. She left the office early on many days. Jim noticed the changes in her, and he guessed why. His gentle side came out when they were together. Steady, a bit too watchful, but caring. Still, when she saw him in action with the other Guards, at a social especially, she wondered if he was the same man at all.

She had to put it down mostly to the anniversary, the tenyear mark for Declan. It was almost eight since she had remarried. She was glad that she had decided to drop the Eimear. The married name had been no big deal, but she had wondered if she should have stuck with her maiden name instead. Lots of people had done that.

Herlighy, the psychiatrist, wouldn't say right or wrong to it, of course. And when she got in touch with him again, he was the same as he had been a decade before. A bit stouter, a bit greyer, she could see, but it was as if the ten years had passed in a day. He told her after the first session this time that she'd been right to try a bit of therapy instead of asking for a prescription.

It was the summer then, and she had been going twice a week to see Herlighy. He talked to her about refocusing on her goals. Goals? At first she wanted to laugh, but it wasn't funny. This she tried, and it made a bit of sense. He brought in the lack of success with the fertility treatment, and how her husband was taking it. She'd spent much of that winter and spring attending courses on management and human resources.

Of course she knew her husband was proud of her. He was also relieved that she was coming out of something he didn't understand, but had begun to make him worry more and more. She loved him more for his puzzlement, not in a passionate way, but because he couldn't help showing her he needed her. The baby thing didn't really matter, he kept on telling her. She did not believe him, but she believed that he wanted to persuade her so that she'd get well again, and that seemed to have been a signal she allowed to get though. She began to surface again.

She found herself becoming more the foil for his bluster and high spirits when they had people over, or when they were out. As though to reward her for her trials, she made a friend whom she grew to like more and more. It was odd because she was the wife of another Guard, and she was from Dublin too. Yes, Kathleen was a Dubliner, and she was funny and tough, and well able to kick up her heels at a do. Her husband Maura didn't understand, and while she was leery of him, liked his company and the dry wit that came out every now and then. Jim said that he swore at Matt Minogue as much as swore by him.

They had been told earlier in the year that the fertility treatment should be stopped – wait:
discontinued
. Jim took it well, she thought, but one night she discovered he had been crying. Liam it would be then, it looked like.

She had new energy then, a restlessness that bordered on agitation. If she hadn't had Herlighy to tell her that she was okay, she might have gotten stuck there. But within a week she had quit Mitchell, and opened up her own agency and told Jim that it was time to move up. Up where, was his reply, caught between bafflement and suspicion. A different house, different area: didn't he feel the way things were going in Dublin now, all the money flooding in, the factories going up like mad, the dozens of calls she was getting each and every day, for staff?

And, of course, that was the year of the House Fiasco, what started the other thing. The house she wanted, she saw on a drive out by Foxrock. She knew it right away. She also predicted Jim digging in his heels when he found out the price. She bided her time, and she'd driven by on her own a half-dozen times during the week to see it. The place didn't sell. The owner was in no hurry. He had jumped the gun on what he thought the house would get, if things continued in Ireland the way there were. She found out that he was going to take it off the market. All this she told Jim, and then a plan to go to the man and offer him something a bit below the price.

Well. That was the worst row since their marriage. Liam had heard some of it too. She told her husband he was a stick-inthe-mud, a pessimist, for expecting things in Ireland to collapse again. That he had no real ambition, because he didn't see outside his bloody job. That he had a typical civil servant mentality.

There was a truce after a few days. The best they could come up with was, give it a year and see then. The auctioneer's sign was gone that same week. She continued to show Jim how house prices were going in the newspaper. He stuck to his guns and got fierce stubborn, something he was all together too good at, and insisted to her that they had an agreement to wait one year. She tried to tell him that waiting a year in this market was way too long.

She did not tell him that she had driven back to the house in Foxrock and knocked on the door. The owner of the house seemed surprised but she saw in him his belief that he had the edge, and was going to keep it. The price he told her was a quarter as much again as what it had been listed for. She wasn't sure if she had hidden her shock, or her anger. She thanked him, said she'd consider it.

That was a lie, but it was important to keep her cool. The truth was that she'd already considered it: they simply didn't have that kind of money – yet. They would, she felt certain, as soon as her own agency was up and running, but that wouldn't wash right now. She also understood that and she had made a decision that had nothing to do with the house in Foxrock, or the seller, but with her husband and her own hopes. It would never happen again that she would be thwarted like this. This house was lost, and even if she could have bought it over her husband's grumbling, it had been poisoned really. In fact, the mention of the place even would remind her of this time, and she couldn't see herself ever living there now. Well, Foxrock wasn't the only tony area. Killiney was up there too, and that is where she'd begin her search.

Still, it bothered her all that week, and for a long time afterwards. She snapped at everyone. Catherine, the new girl, actually cried. Maura took her aside and apologized, and meant it. Everyone was getting as stressed out as they were buoyant with the new money, she realized. Everybody sneaked that Celtic Tiger expression into conversation. She made or tried to make a joke with Catherine about being mauled by this tiger they were talking about.

It turned out that Catherine felt overstretched. That wasn't right, Maura told her, and she'd fix that right away. She went with Catherine through her files and, over Catherine's protests, began plucking some out. It almost became a joke, but still she kept the files. The atmosphere in the office eased. Every day of that first week back that New Year she brought in cake and wine and even Chinese food one day.

The files stayed in her desk drawer all week, unopened. On a Friday afternoon – and Maura remembered the time to the minute, the sight of the bus on the street below pouring out people – Catherine came by with a worried look.

It was a client, and he was annoyed. In fact he was a bit scary. He wanted to know what was keeping the agency from returning his call. He wouldn't be called back, no: he wanted the boss right now. Who was he, she asked Catherine, and Catherine bit her lip and nodded toward the drawer where she'd dropped the files she'd taken from her that day.

Much later, she'd remember everything so clearly: the oh-oh, the grin for Catherine's sake, the Hold button flashing. A bit of bad language, so watch out, was Catherine's almost apologetic warning when she shushed her out.

She took up the receiver and turned the same hand to let her little finger prod the Hold button. She decided in those few instants that this would be her first client she would tell to go to hell. Big contract, little contract, hectic or not, no-one would speak to her staff like that.

She gave her name and straightaway asked his. He didn't give it. Instead he told her it was about bloody time. And furthermore, what exactly were they doing that he had to wait all this time? Was this normal?

She cut him short and asked him his name again. She moved in closer to the desk, her free hand ready to swoop on the button that'd cut this fella off.

The name is on the bloody file, he told her. Didn't the other girl tell her? As though he sensed she was about to drop the call, he told her: Victory Meat Packers. Didn't they send in the papers a fortnight before Christmas? It was more a raw Dublin accent than the tone, more sarcastic than hostile. They'd been crying out for meat cutters for months, and they were still waiting for word.

She'd give him a chance. She heard him say something about Yugoslavia. Didn't he know there was some kind of war going on there, she wanted to say, but his humour had improved. She asked for a minute to get the file and he didn't have any rude comment.

Victory Meat Packers was near the top. She flicked through the correspondence. They wanted general labourers. “General labourers,” not packers or meat cutters? They had already taken several people on one-year permits from Eastern Europe – that must have been what he meant by the Yugoslavia remark.

She looked down for contact names and then she stopped. Next to her fingernail was the name Rynn.

She had difficulty lifting her arm. Whatever it was that passed through her then felt like it had run to the top of her head, like an electric shock. She had to remember to breathe, and breathe again, and from somewhere she knew she had to try to breathe slower and deeper if she was going to be able to do anything. Her eyes did not want to go to the phone and its dumbly flashing light, but it seemed to be even more the centre of her thoughts now.

She lifted the receiver off the desk and pushed the Hold button. He asked if everything in the agency took so long as this. Had she gone out for her dinner and forgotten him or something?

She asked whom she was speaking to. She had to repeat it. Was the name too hard to read, was his answer. Four letters, rhymes with “win”? And that's how the company was called Victory, did she get it? After a few seconds his voice bore in on here again: Hello? Was she after falling asleep or something? Anybody home? Like, was she still there?