The Dramatist (5 page)

She said in a Beavis/Butthead accent,

“Shit, I need some coffee, like yesterday.”

She probably hadn’t studied
Clueless
but she’d definitely taken lessons from
Popular
.

I was staring at the foot of the stairs, where Sarah had died.

Peg said,

“Let’s park it in the kitchen.”

Now she was Susan Sarandon. I followed. The room was like it had been hit by a careless bomb. Clothes, books, CDs, empty Chinese cartons (least I hoped they were empty), tights, bras, wine bottles with stubs of candles and discarded roach papers.

Mary was making coffee, asked,

“Get you some?”

“No, I’m good.”

I perched on a hard chair, got my notebook out, said,

“Just a few questions and I’m…like gone.”

See how Peg liked the echo treatment. It didn’t register. She gave me a coy look above the rim of her cup, said,

“You look like a guard.”

I gave her my shy smile, as if I was secretly pleased. I wasn’t entirely sure how to smile like a guy in insurance, but predatory had to be a good start. I asked,

“Was Sarah clumsy? I mean, would falling down be something she might be likely to do?”

Peg glanced at Mary and I tried to read it but failed. Peg rooted for a cigarette in a pile of crushed boxes, found one, lit it from the cooker, said to Mary,

“He’s asking if she was pissed, if she was a drinker…isn’t that what you’re asking? Then he puts that in his report and hey…no money.”

I reassessed Peg, the hard stare, the fuck-you body language, and figured I could play. Said,

“So was she? Fond of it I mean? Being a student, it’s part of the deal, best days of your life and all that.”

She dropped the cig in her cup, swirled the contents, the fizzle making a noise like rumour. She said,

“You’re a prick, you know that?”

I was warming to Peg, no doubt about it. Mary picked up a book, deciding I no longer mattered, asked Peg,

“You get to read this yet?”

I saw the title,
The Lovely Bones
, by Alice Sebold. It begins:

“My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered.”

Peg gave a dramatic shrug, went,

“I don’t do saccharine shit.”

Mary turned to me, explained,

“Susie, in the book, she was murdered. Our Sarah died in a freak accident, so pay the fucking money.”

Before I could gear up, Peg went,

“Didn’t I read an interview in the
Guardian
with Alice Sebold?”

Mary gave a smile of sheer malevolence. She’d been waiting for a male audience to run this by.

Here I was.

She didn’t rub her hands in glee but it was there, in the neighbourhood. She began,

“Alice was eighteen, a student, and on her way home she was raped. Her attacker raped her with his fist and his penis, he beat her up and urinated on her face. When she got home that night, her father asked if she’d like something to eat.”

Mary paused, so I knew this was going to be rough. She continued,

“Alice replied, ‘That would be nice, considering the only thing I’ve had in my mouth in the last twenty-four hours is a cracker and a penis.’”

For once in my dumb life, I did the smart thing: I did nothing. They stared with expectation and I stared back.

Then Peg said,

“If there’s nothing else…Mr?…we’d like to get on with other stuff, like our lives.”

I stood up. God knows I’d been dismissed by experts. I had certainly been dissed. I asked,

“Might I see a copy of the book?”

Mary, suspicious, went,

“Alice Sebold?”

I watched their faces, said,

“A copy of a book by Synge, lying beneath the body.”

Peg shrugged, began to build another coffee. I was wondering how wired she was going to get.

She said,

“It’s in the bookcase…like…’cause…it’s where we keep…books.”

She enunciated this slowly like you would to a very slow child, but hey, I can do the tolerance rap. I asked,

“Might I see it?”

Mary stormed out, leaving me with the caffeined fiend. A few moments later she was back, held out the volume, asked,

“I give you this, are you gone?”

“Like the Midlands’ wind.”

I put it in my pocket, said,

“You’ve been most generous with your time.”

Peg brushed past me, not quite shouldering me but the intention was clear, and she said,

“Wanker.”

On that note, I was out of there.

I held off examining the volume till later, took a long walk out to the bay, bought a burger, large Coke and sat on the rocks. I refused to think about Ann Henderson, wished I had brought my Walkman. I hadn’t yet moved along to Discmans and, like some dinosaur, was still using cassettes. There is one benefit: they slide on your belt like a smooth untruth.

Then and there I’d have listened to Bruce and
Empty Sky
. That he’d finally released a new album should have been great news. Here’s the madness—and admitting it doesn’t dilute the insanity—

“You need booze, dope for music.”

Sorry, I need them. It’s the illusion. A bottle of Jack, six pack of Lone Star and then…you’re ready to rock. A cup of tea doesn’t do it. Johnny Duhan, the soundtrack to my life, also had a new album, and I’d heard ‘Inviolate’, the best song on grief ever. Forget Iris de Ment with the song on her dad or Peter Gabriel’s ‘I Grieve’…here is THE SONG. It didn’t lash me; it plain out lacerated.

I lit a cig and dwelt for a moment on a time with my father. We’d stand on these very rocks and cast for mackerel. Those times, the whole town was strung out along the bay, the fish literally surrendering. We took home eight and my mother threw them in the garbage.

Paulo Coelho in
Warriors of Light
writes,

“The warrior of light sometimes wonders why he’s encountering the same set of problems over and over—then realises that he has never progressed past them, which is why the lesson keeps returning to teach him what he does not wish to learn.”

I did not then, and probably not even now, want to know what drove my mother. I suspect it was rage, but as to where that came from or why, I didn’t want to know.

Since her stroke, she’d had a live-in nurse. Then a kidney infection landed her in the hospital. At my last visit, strained as usual, her speech had greatly improved, a catheter had been inserted, and I tried not to stare. She said,

“I was able to use the commode by myself.”

Heartbreaking, right?

To hear a tough-spirited woman boast of being able to use the toilet.

Wrong.

I thought,

“Tough shit!”

No pun intended and I rarely do irony, least not sober.

I took a last gulp of the bay and turned towards town, the final
line of Padraig Pearse’s poem…sorrowful. Stopped at Grattan Road and felt a melancholy as deep as false memory. Remember the massive hit Foreigner had with ‘I Want to Know What Love Is’? On a rock nostalgia programme, I caught the version with the gospel choir singing shotgun. Man, that rocked. I was humming it all the way through the Claddagh.

Evening was in and at the hotel I nodded at Mrs Bailey.

She said,

“My, you look healthy, a glow in your cheeks.”

Windburn.

She handed me an envelope, said,

“I don’t know who left it. I wasn’t at the desk when it came.”

On the front was “Jack Taylor”. Typed. I opened it, read,

“Jack, can you meet me at 9 p.m. at the Fair Green?”

“Look at him and you’re peering down a hole that needs to be filled but never will be.”

Andrew Pyper,
The Trade Mission

Upstairs, I read the note more fully:

Jack
,

Can you meet me at 9 p.m. in the Fair Green? I’ll be waiting where the City Link coaches park
.

Ann

My heart was pounding, sweat breaking out on my brow. I’d have massacred a double Jameson. Had told myself a thousand times, “You’re so over her.”…Sometimes, I’d even believed it. Once to Jeff, I said,

“I’m over Ann.”

He’d been stocking the bar, paused, asked,

“You give her the acid test?”

“What?”

“That’s when you see her with a guy, he’s got his arm round her, she’s smiling up at him and you watch them, feel OK. That happens, you’re over her.”

I’d made some smart-ass reply. Course, I’d never seen her thus and prayed I never would. Obviously, I’d have failed. Tests were never my strong point, especially if they involved character.

I showered, shaved and laid out a pair of Farah, marvelling at the crease. Then figured, go for broke and wear a sports jacket. Had bought it in Age Concern. It was a lightweight navy wool job and fit like a metaphor. Transferring my keys, change, wallet from the other jacket, I found the book. Shit, I’d completely forgotten it. It was
The Collected Plays and Poems
, and I could tell it had almost never been opened. The title page had two words written in black ink:

The Dramatist

I flipped through the pages. Typed on a label stuck onto the last page was: “Maura can at last look forward to the great rest.” I could safely say I knew nothing about the plays or the poems, and precious little about Synge. Save that he lived a long time on the Aran Islands and convinced the world that stage Irish was a reality. I put it on top of the bookcase, and maybe I’d even read it, but not any time soon. Got dressed and checked myself in the mirror. Looking sharp. Asked aloud,

“Hot date, fellah?”

You bet.

Before I left the room, from nowhere, a vivid memory resurfaced
.
I loved my father, admired, hero-worshipped; all of the textbook stuff.

I still do.

He taught me how to play snooker, hurling. He was a father of the old school. He did the unheard-of thing: he gave me his time, not in a hurried or impatient way but as if he loved to do so. My first hurley, he made it, cut from the ash tree. He honed, polished, tested it for weeks on end.

In our new era of prosperity, when fatherhood consists of McDonald’s, PlayStations and shitpiles of cash, he taught me the virtue of patience. Only once did I ever see him “lose it”. With my mother he’d have been justified in a daily tirade, but he never reacted to her continuous verbal onslaught. Sad to say, but I’d have broken her back with the hurley.

I was maybe ten and our terrace house bore witness to constant street activity. My father was home from work, had taken off his boots, and a group of lads were horseplaying at the window. As many as fifteen, what would constitute a crowd fuck today.

One of them began hitting the window with his elbow. My mother, exasperated, said,

“For heaven’s sake.”

And went out, asked them to move it along. Normally, that would be it, done deal. But the elbow one answered,

“Fuck off, you oul’ bitch.”

My father straightened in his chair. He glanced briefly at me, a look of such sadness in his eyes. I’d been expecting rage.

My mother came storming in.

“Did you hear what that pup called me?”

My father stood, in his stockinged feet, then went up the stairs.

My mother called,

“What kind of man are you?”

I knew he was gone to get his shoes. She, as usual, knew him not at all. A few moments later, he came down, his face set in stone, opened the door, closed it quietly. Through the window, we watched him wade through them, approach the elbow one, ask,

“What did you say to my wife?”

The fellah repeated it, bravado lighting up his face. I saw my father sigh, may even have heard it. Then, his whole body tensed, the strength compressing into the length of his right arm, and wallop, he dropped the guy like a stunned cow. He stared at the crumpled boy at his feet, seemed to make a tormented decision, then turned away.

The gang of lads, silent, moved out of his way. He strode into the kitchen, turned on the cold tap. As the water poured over the raw bleeding knuckles, he looked at me, his face in deep anguish, said,

“Jack, that was a response but it is never a solution.”

I didn’t agree with him then and I don’t agree with him now. More wallops and we’d need less therapy.

Niall O’Shea was the lad with the smart mouth. My father had fractured his jaw. There were no repercussions, at least not of the legal kind. Unless you count my mother’s comment,

“What sort of carry-on is that?”

Or the personal cost to my father. Over the next few years, I’d often meet Niall and he’d give me a sheepish smile. When I was a young guard, pulling night duty in Portumna, I was given four days’ leave and ended up drinking in Hughes’ in Woodquay. I met Niall in the crowded saloon and he bought me a pint. He was in the building game and making money, all on the “lump”, he said,

“Did you know my jaw was wired for six months?”

I had a feed of drink but not enough to feel real comfortable with this conversation, went,

“Oh.”

He was nodding, animated,

“Had to eat through a straw and, man, the frigging pain of it.”

I gave a noncommittal shrug and he shouted a fresh round, said,

“Your old man, he sure packed a punch.”

Fitting epitaph.

It was the last time I saw Niall O’Shea. What I remember most is a very bad singer, murdering Johnny McEvoy’s “Mursheen Durkin”. It’s an awful song anyway and needs no help with the cringe factor. Overlooking Galway docks, there’s a massive crane that has blighted the landscape for a long time. Visible from any location in the city, it says everything you need to say about “urban renewal”. A few years after our meeting, Niall O’Shea scaled that crane and jumped. He judged the position poorly as he missed the water and hit the concrete. Not even a straw was needed to scoop up what remained. I can never listen to Johnny McEvoy since, and I’m not blaming him. This is Irish logic; it never adds up.