The Brothers' Lot (22 page)

Furiously he mounted his bicycle and resumed pedaling into the wind. Through the misting rain he could make out the hulk of Howth Head away to his right across the gray waters of the bay.

What could have possessed him to cycle all the way out to Howth on a day like this? He could have taken the train or telephoned and arranged for Marcus Madden to visit him in the comfort of his office. Oh no, he had to get on his bicycle and drag all the way out to Howth Head!

Still, Father Sheehan had decided that the revision of
The Life of Venerable Saorseach O’Rahilly
should be done as speedily as possible, and Father Mulvey was not in the habit of arguing with his superior, particularly when he was showing a lot more enthusiasm for this case than any of Mulvey’s previous investigations.

After twenty yards of stiff ascent up Howth Head, Mulvey gave up and dismounted. He peered up the long winding road and began to push his bike. He noted with irony that the wind had died down now that he was no longer cycling. The rain fell in a gentle yet drenching mizzle. He consoled himself with the sweet smell of gorse that came to him from the gardens of the nearby houses.

He stopped outside a small ramshackle cottage distinguished from its tidy neighbors by its overgrown garden and rusted gate. He consulted his notebook: this was it. He pushed open the protesting gate and leaned his bicycle against the inside wall. Scraping his boots on the flagstone in front of the house, he knocked authoritatively yet respectfully on the low wooden door, a trick only Jesuits and a handful of Holy Ghost Fathers could pull off.

After a prolonged silence, Father Mulvey knocked on the door again, this time imbuing it with holy urgency, a feat beyond even the most gifted of Holy Ghost Fathers. He jiggled his keys and waited.

Next he moved to the small window in the front of the cottage and peered through its dirty glass. Inside he saw a small dining table covered in opened cans, dirty plates, and empty stout bottles, but no other signs of life. He pushed his way past the rambling rose that grew wild around the front and side of the cottage and peeked through another window. Now he saw a smaller room. The filthy desk was covered by more empty cans and the shards of a broken whiskey bottle. Opposite the window Mulvey could make out the fireplace, and in it a pile of ashes on which sat a couple of half-burned books and charred papers.

“Hopeless!” muttered Mulvey to himself, and stomped back to the front of the cottage.

“You’ll be there all night.”

Mulvey jumped at the harsh guttural voice and looked around. Above him, in the branches of the gnarled apple tree, sat a young boy. He looked no older than eight. Mulvey found it hard to believe that such a docker’s voice had emanated from this tiny frame, but so it seemed to be. The boy was calmly picking his nose and watching Mulvey with a mix of mild interest and barely concealed disdain. He left his nose alone and moved on to scratching at his scalp through his close-shorn red hair.

Reaching the conclusion that Mulvey was either hard of hearing or just plain thick, the boy restated his assessment of the situation: “I said you’ll be there all night. You’re looking for Madser Madden, right?”

Mulvey saw the boy speak and heard the voice but still could not get over the incongruity of the two. He drew himself up to his full height and put on his best imperious face: “And what precisely do you mean by that, young man?”

“Won’t be home for hours.”

“Is that so?”

“Down the boozer by now.”

“That is no way to speak of your elders, young man. You should show more respect before I take you down out of that tree and put manners on you!”

The boy fixed Mulvey in a sneering gaze as if defying him to make the first move. “I’m just saying it’s dole day and you’ll be here all night or you can go down to The Wharf and get him there. If and you wait it’ll be closing time and he’ll be footless when he gets home and he might shoot ye. It’s no skin off my nose.”

With that the boy scampered through the branches and dropped down on the other side of the wall and was off.

“Come back here, you young scamp!” shouted Mulvey hopelessly.

“Up yer arse!” countered the boy as he disappeared through the bushes toward the warren of lanes behind the cottages.

How bad can it be?
thought Father Mulvey to himself as he freewheeled down the hill toward the port.
I’ve been in public houses before.

By the time he found The Wharf, he was beginning to have second thoughts. While he was leaning his bicycle against a lamppost, the sudden exit of one on the clients, horizontally and at great speed through the air, made him even more apprehensive. He locked his bike.

Mulvey stepped over the stunned customer where he had landed, took a deep breath, and pushed open the door. A wall of unhealthy heat hit him. His eyes smarted immediately under the assault of tobacco smoke. The air was thin and used, thanks to the gaslights that begrudgingly lit the bar. An odor of stale beer, smoke, and wet overcoats presided over the place. The dismal murmur of conversation faded into a suspicious silence. Mulvey nodded to a couple of the patrons who were staring at him and moved toward the nearest empty spot at the bar. The patrons ignored his greeting and went back to nursing the pints of stout on the counter in front of them.

Behind the bar Tony Loftus casually slapped a length of lead pipe down on the counter with a loud whack. “Any more of that carry on and you’re out on yer ear too, Maher! I can see you.”

In the corner beside the rings board where Maher was threatening Tommy Grogan with a broken glass, it was as if the barman had suddenly frozen time. Maher took one look at Loftus and through the haze of his drunken rage he recognized real trouble when he saw it. He set down the broken glass and hugged Grogan warmly. “Ah, sure, I was only having a bit of fun here with Tommy, wasn’t I?” Grogan, glad to be relieved of a broken glass to the face, was only too happy to concur with this fabrication.

“Just watch your step, right?” barked Loftus, and replaced the pipe in easy reach under the bar. He took a cursory glance along the bar: all of the patrons who were still conscious had drinks in front of them.

“A small port, please,” said Mulvey to Loftus’s face when it turned to him.

The barman exhibited no reaction beyond making a big deal of taking a very dusty bottle of port down from a high shelf and searching under the bar for a suitable glass. He eyed Mulvey carefully. The last time a priest had set foot in The Wharf, it had been a temperance raid by the Redemptorist Fathers who were having a retreat in the town.

Father Mulvey carefully glanced from side to side along the length of the bar. Could that scruffy urchin be telling him the truth? Could Marcus Madden, B.A., official biographer of the Venerable Saorseach O’Rahilly, really be in here among these broken, defeated men?

Loftus carefully placed the port on the counter and took the money Mulvey had left. When he returned with the change Mulvey caught his eye and smiled winningly.

“I wonder if you could help me out. I’m looking for an old pal of mine.”

Loftus nodded solemnly.

“I’m looking for a chap by the name of Marcus Madden, B.A. Do you know him at all?”

Loftus’s face creased into an ugly chuckle: “If B.A. stands for Bullshit Artist, I know your man.”

Before Mulvey could react to this unexpected piece of vulgarity, there was a burst of shouting and glass-breaking from the back room.

“Get out to fuck, Madden! You’ve never bought me a drink in yer life, ye stingy bastard!” A beer-soaked Marcus Madden, B.A., was propelled backward into the bar by some unseen fist. He stood reeling in the middle of the room, oblivious to the blood that was running freely from his nose. His eyes darted around the room and eventually came to rest on the unfamiliar Mulvey, who was staring in disbelief at this disheveled wreck of a man who seemed to be Marcus Madden, B.A.

“Ah, be gob, a man of the cloth. Sure aren’t the clergy of Holy Mother Ireland awful charitable. Would ye stand me a drink there now, Father?”

“Mr. Madden? Marcus Madden?” inquired Mulvey timidly.

“Who’s asking?”

“Martin Mulvey, S.J., Dio—” Mulvey stopped himself short and decided that the term “Diocesan Investigator” was unlikely go down too well in these surroundings.

“Oh yeah?” said Madden defensively, licking distractedly at the blood on his top lip.

“Why don’t you pull up a stool here and I’ll buy you a drink,” suggested Mulvey in his most soothing tone.

Madden underwent a miraculous change of disposition and lurched toward the barstool beside Mulvey. He leaned over the bar: “A large bottle and a glass of Crested Ten and whatever the good Father is having,” he commanded, as if he were suddenly the one buying.

“You might want … You seem to have, uhm, a cut on your nose there,” said Mulvey, proffering his handkerchief.

Madden gallantly waved away the pristine cotton and rubbed his sleeve roughly over his mouth. “Be gob, would you look at that now! Isn’t that the strangest thing?” he remarked casually as he inspected the mass of blood and snot on his sleeve.

Loftus sullenly served the drinks and moved as far down the bar as he could. He did not like the feeling of Madden lording it over him under the auspices of some strange Jesuit priest, but was not entirely sure what he could do about it: taking a length of lead pipe to a man of the cloth, even one who drank port, did not present itself as an appropriate course of action.

Madden poured his stout down the side of the glass with great concentration. While it settled he took the large glass of whiskey and held it up to the gaslight appraisingly. “Good luck, Father,” he said brightly, and emptied the whiskey down his throat in one voracious gulp. He held the empty glass up to Mulvey and winked knowingly.

“Another whiskey for Mr. Madden, please, barman, when you have a moment,” called Mulvey resignedly.

“So what is it I can do you for?” asked Madden lightly, his humor buoyed by the warming fire of the whiskey hitting his stomach. He picked up the fresh whiskey from the bar and eyed it lovingly. Then he topped off his stout and took a long slow drink, the hops smoldering deliciously in his mouth with the peaty aftertaste of the whiskey.

“Well, Mr. Madden, I know you are a scholar of some renown and I have a little work I thought you might be able to help us with.” Mulvey listened carefully to his own voice, almost stunned by the multilevel incongruity of the conversation he was trying to conduct, the surroundings in which he was doing it, and his unlikely looking companion. “I am sure we could pay you a not unrespectable fee,” he found himself adding.

“Is that so? Now this is very interesting, I have to say, Father.” Madden wiped his mouth and smoothed his hair.

“Yes, I have been empowered to commission you to revise your biography of Venerable Saorseach O’—”

Madden recoiled violently. He stood up and jumped from foot to foot like a man scalded. “Don’t mention that name to me! Isn’t it enough to have that infernal book ruin my life once without having you come in here to dig it up again? What did I do to deserve this? Is there no end to that fucking book haunting me?”

Mulvey blanched under this violent tirade and was at a momentary loss for words. He lifted his glass of port and emptied it while signaling to Loftus for another round.

“A whiskey as well?” shouted Loftus from the other end of the bar.

Mulvey nodded and turned his attention back to Madden, who was running his hands agitatedly through his matted hair.

“I could have been someone! I could have had my picture on the back of a hundred books by now! I could be off in London sipping gin-and-tonics with the best of them! I could be running me hands all over gorgeous women in the backseats of Daimlers. But no! I had to go and write that stupid fucking book! Do you know how much they paid me? Do you? Do you? Go on! Guess! Just guess! Five pounds, eight and sixpence! Five pounds, eight and sixpence for a life! Ruined! They fucking ruined me! I’m marked for life. They damn near tried to make a saint out of me for writing that fucking book! Ruined my fucking life! Look! Take a look at that!”

Madden drew a crumpled page from his pocket and thrust it at Mulvey, who opened the sheet and read:

Dear Mr. Madden,

Thank you for sending us your manuscript of “The Glencullen Gang Take Stock.” Unfortunately, this work does not meet our current editorial needs. We regretfully return your manuscript and wish you every success in your literary endeavors. We trust you understand that ours is but one subjective opinion and that you will persist in your search for a suitable publisher. On a personal note, I would just like to add that despite being a devout Anglican, I was greatly moved by your ‘Life of Saorseach O’Rahilly.’

Kindest regards,

D.W. Thompson-Greene

“See? See? See what they did to me? The manuscript wasn’t even opened. I glued pages eleven and twelve together at the corners and they were still glued. The bastards! That O’Rahilly shite is the only thing anyone takes me seriously for. I have hundreds of letters like that. Not any of the Glencullen Gang books. Fifteen of them I’ve written. Not a single one published! When I submitted
Gold of Antrim
, they suggested that I should take up teaching! They even sent back
Muiris Fogarty and the Jungle of Fear
. Because of that fucking Saorseach O’fucking Rahilly, I live in a pigsty and the world will never know Stephen Brennan, Private Eye, or how Patsy Nugent helped the Blackfoot Indians at the Battle of Two-Rock Canyon, or
Tom Miley and the Martian Menace
! Nothing! I can publish nothing! I can never escape that bastarding book! Ruined me, it did!”

Madden paused for breath, leaned over, and, with surprising adroitness, grabbed the letter from Mulvey, downed his whiskey, and tucked the bottle of stout into his coat pocket before reeling toward the door in a flurry of shouts and incomprehensible curses.

Mulvey stood up and hastily exited after him just in time to see two urchins, one suspiciously like the boy he had encountered earlier and the other smaller and stockier, making off with his handlebars, pedals, and both wheels. Beside the naked frame of his bicycle lay the barely conscious figure of Madden, who was now drooling copiously onto the cobblestones beside his face.