The Dramatist (7 page)

“It will be about twenty minutes. How will the driver know you?”

“I’ll be in the coffee bar, I have a cane…”

And before I could continue, she roared,

“Five nine, pick up at the hospital, an old guy with a walking stick.”

Click.

Tried not to think about that, got a coffee and eased myself carefully into the chair, heard,

“Jack!”

Turned to see Ann Henderson approaching. My heart lurched. She was wearing cord boot-cut pants with a tight yellow sweater, the sleeves rolled back, showing a light tan. Her wedding band seemed to shine. She asked,

“May I sit?”

“Sure.”

As usual, the very sight of her brought a lump to my throat. I’d hung the handle of the cane on the rim of the table, and she glanced quickly at it. I said,

“I’ve just been described as an old guy.”

That hurt her and I felt a twinge of pleasure. Christ, I wanted to hurt her badly. She answered,

“I am so desperately sorry.”

“Why, because I’m old?”

Shook her head, vague annoyance for a moment, then,

“For what happened to you.”

“You didn’t do it.”

“I caused it. I told Tim about our meeting, and so he wrote the note to you out of jealousy.”

And then,

“But I didn’t know about the note until after you were hurt.”

I let that hang there. If she’d hoped for understanding, I was all out. I put the spoon in my coffee, stirred madly. She moved her hand to touch me and I snapped,

“Don’t you dare.”

She recoiled as if bitten. I said,

“He came to see me, your husband. Without grapes or even a hurley, but he did want to let bygones be bygones. What do you think, Ann? Should I let it go, maybe get a mass said, and every time I limp, I could like, offer it up for the souls in purgatory. Do you think that’s the way to go?”

Her face was contorted in pain, as every word I slowly uttered lashed her deeper. She took a deep breath, asked,

“Jack, could you…could you let it go?”

“No.”

She was wringing her hands, then,

“If you harm him, I’ll never see you again. You’ll be dead to me.”

A man walked up, asked,

“You called for a taxi?”

I nodded, stood and reached for my cane. She shot her hand out, touched mine, pleaded,

“I’m begging, Jack.”

I leant in close, her perfume causing a dance in my head, said,

“Give your husband a message, can you do that? Tell him his hurling days are over.”

I limped after the taxi driver, who asked,

“You need some help there, buddy?”

I shook my head. The help I needed only came with a Jameson seal. When I was settled in the back, he got the car in gear, swore at an ambulance and we moved. Eyed me in the mirror, asked,

“That your missus?”

“No, that’s my past.”

Digesting that, he turned the radio on. I recognised Lyric FM, the classical station. The announcer said,

“That of course was Arvo Part, ‘tabula rasa’, and later we’ll have ‘Festina Lente’.”

I muttered,

“I bet you bloody will.”

“But this was no ordinary AA group. The failed, the aberrant, the doubly addicted and the totally brain fried whose neuroses didn’t even have a name found their way to the ‘work the steps or die motherfucker meeting’.”

James Lee Burke,
Jolie Blon’s Bounce

Mrs Bailey made a huge fuss on seeing me, went
,

“Oh, by the holy, look at the state of you.”

She wanted to move me to a room on the ground floor because of my leg, but I was having none of that. I loved where I was, said,

“The exercise is good. I need to keep moving.”

Janet, the chambermaid, burst out crying, threw her arms round me, wailed,

“We thought you’d been killed.”

I went with the saying of my youth, the defence against emotion, said,

“Sure, you can’t kill a bad thing.”

I could feel her tears soak through my shirt and was more affected than I’d ever admit. Here, if fragmented, if ancient in years, was family.

She finally released me, said,

“And all the weight you’ve lost, you’re like a Biafran.”

To a certain generation in Ireland, despite the number of world famines since, Biafra remains the reference, maybe because for the first time we saw up close the ravages of another country. Famine is the wound that moulded our psyche. I finally got to my room and closed the door with a sigh of relief. Janet had placed a bouquet of flowers on my bookcase and a box of Dairy Milk.

Chocolates.

It made me smile. I’d have killed for a bottle of Jameson and she’d given me sweets.

The Sacred Heart calendar was still there, so I checked what nugget of wisdom was on offer, muttering,

“Better be awesome.”

“Lord, set my heart free.”

So it was true, God did have a sense of humour, even if his timing was off. I lit a cig and turned on the radio. Bush was saying he had to bomb Iraq for his daddy, and John Major was playing down the revelation of his four-year affair with Edwina Currie. Then the local news: a schoolgirl had been attacked on her way to school. She was eleven. In broad daylight, a man had dragged her into an alley. He was still at large but a massive hunt was underway. I went to make coffee and almost missed the next item. A female student had fallen down a flight of steps, been killed instantly. I froze, the coffee filter in my hand, said,

“What?”

There were no more details. The weather forecast predicted rain and the chance of thunder. My knee ached and I checked the medication I’d received from the hospital. Six painkillers. Jeez, I could have done three right then, hit the cloud of unknowing. Took one, washed it down with the coffee, got out my address book, found the number, dialled, heard,

“Hello?”

“Bríd?”

“Who is this?”

“Jack Taylor.”

She was not happy to hear my name, went,

“You called me by my Christian name. Usually it’s ‘Ridge’, knowing I hate the English form.”

She was going to put me through my paces, so I got my responses primed, said,

“OK, let’s start over, Nic an Iomaire. There, does that score any points?”

Long pause. I debated asking how Margaret, her “friend”, was, but felt it wouldn’t further my cause, so I waited till,

“Are you still in hospital?”

“I’m out you’ll be glad to hear, and if not good as new, at least I’m full of fire. Thanks for taking the time to visit. How did you know?”

I pictured her having the vexed look; I’d seen it often enough. She seemed for ever on the verge of punching me out and, God forgive me, I got a buzz out of needling her. She was such a what the Americans call “tight ass”. Now she went,

“A guard half kills an ex-guard, you think every guard in the country doesn’t know?”

My turn at vexation, asked,

“Then how come your colleagues who interviewed me appeared baffled?”

She didn’t hesitate,

“Wake up and smell the coffee.”

If it was meant to irritate, it worked. My teeth clenched and I counted to ten, then,

“I’ll bet you have wanted to say that for a long time.”

Now she was impatient.

“Did you want something? This is hardly a social call.”

“The student who fell down the steps, do you know any details?”

She was angry, her breath coming rapidly, asked,

“Are you trying to be a private eye again? Surely you’ve learnt your lesson by now?”

I didn’t want her usual lecture, cut in,

“I just need to know one detail, can you find that out?”

“Go on.”

“When the girl was found, was there anything under her body?”

I could hear her intake of breath and I pressed,

“There was, Jesus…wasn’t there?”

An age before she answered, then,

“It’s complicated.”

“I can do complicated, try me.”

“If this gets out…OK, I’m friendly with one of the uniforms who was first on the scene. He picked up a book…”

“The stupid fuck.”

I could hear her reeling it in, trying to regain her edge. I recognised it as it’s a place I inhabit a lot. The radio was still playing and I heard the DJ announce an Elvis Costello song, ‘I Want You’, from the album
Blood and Chocolate
. The track was nasty, mean, angry, but disguised as something lighter. What you’d expect from a late-forties, white, divorced male. It seemed to suck all the air out of the room. Ridge said,

“He knows he screwed up.”

“Get the book.”

“What?”

“Get the frigging book from him. Are you deaf?”

“Is that an order?”

“It’s absolutely vital.”

And I hung up.

I was half sorry I hadn’t mentioned the headline on
The Sentinel
:

Bishop Bans Gay Weddings

At St Nicholas’s, the Protestant church, a gay wedding had taken place. Their bishop was now stepping in. As children, so conditioned by Catholicism were we that we hurried past that church lest its tentacles reach out and grab us. Even now, when I pass there, I quicken my pace.

The room had closed in and I had to get out. An obsession for Jameson had lodged in my brain. I took the stairs down, and with the cane it was a slow, awkward business.

Mrs Bailey appeared perturbed, said,

“Shouldn’t you be resting?”

“Exercise is the best thing.”

She stabbed her finger at the newspaper before her. I knew it was the
Irish Independent
, as it had been all her life. It showed your political colours as clear as a banner. She said,

“The Nice Referendum, what does the government think? They can keep calling them till they get the result they want?”

Politics was the furthest thing from my mind, but I had to show some spunk, tried,

“I take it you’ll be voting no?”

As is the Irish way, she immediately avoided the issue with,

“Them Orange bastards have stitched up Sinn Féin, raided their offices in Stormont.”

I was taken aback, marvelling at her choice of words. She was over eighty, as old Galway as the Spanish Arch. I asked,

“Stitched up? Good Lord, where did you learn that?”

“I watch
The Bill
and
Eastenders
.”

“I thought you were a
Coronation Street
fan?”

“Not since Hilda Ogden left.”

That’s a conversation killer right there. I nodded and said,

“See you later.”

It was strange being out, back in public. Hospital has its own complete world, and I wasn’t sure it wasn’t more appealing.

A priest crossed the street, said,

“How are you?”

Jeez, I was up to me eyes in clergy. He looked vaguely familiar but I couldn’t place him. He asked,

“What happened to you?”

“A rugby accident.”

Stick it to him, he’d be GAA…they all were. He seemed confused, then put it together, said,

“Oh, I see. I actually was referring to mass, to your attendance. I haven’t seen you for a while.”

The word “attendance” was one of my triggers. Even in my days as a guard, I was poor at regulation. I asked,

“What, you’re marking my card?”

He was surprised and tried to rally.

“Good Lord, I put that badly. What I meant was we missed you.”

I wanted to grab him by the collar, shake him and scream “wake up”. I said,

“Sure you did.”

He did the religious bit of turning his cheek, ignored my tone and said,

“No doubt we’ll be seeing you this Sunday?”

“And pigs might fly.”

I turned on my heel and limped away.

“People I knew had turned out to be strange and savage. They had hung Mose and kicked and hit me and my father.”

Joe R. Lansdale,
The Bottoms

Near Eyre Square I saw the young blond guy, and no mistake, he
was staring at me. I decided to put an end to this and moved, but he turned and was gone before I could reach him. I swore that next time, one way or another, I was going to have a chat. I mean, what the hell, was he stalking me?

I got into Nestor’s, visions of whiskey before my eyes. The sentry was in place, said,

“Jaysus, look at the cut of him.”

This is not complimentary; it’s as bad as it gets. I shot him a look.

Jeff was stocking shelves, said,

“Welcome back, buddy.”

I took my usual chair, the hard one, my back to the wall. Felt tired, my knee aching; the damn painkiller wasn’t kicking in. The news was on: a bomb in Bali, 187 dead, three Irish missing. The newsreader was speculating on Al-Qaeda involvement. Jeff brought over a pot of coffee, two mugs. I felt a flash of anger, the presumption I wasn’t drinking made me want to roar. Jeff paused, asked,

“Coffee OK?”

“Sure, just what the doctor ordered. You’re joining me?”

“If you don’t mind, I need a word.”

I waved my hand, indicating the empty chair. He sat, poured two fills. Despite myself, I responded to the caffeine aroma. Maybe I’d drink later, live on the expectation.

The sentry asked,

“Want to get in the pool?”

“Pool?”

“Yeah, for five euro, pick a date that Bush will bomb Iraq. November fifth, fifteenth and twenty-fifth are gone.”

I gave it a bit of thought, said,

“November twentieth.”

The sentry made a note in a small red book, said,

“There’s a fair whack going to be in it; everybody wants to play.”

I got a five out of my wallet and left it on the table. Jeff asked,

“You heard about the schoolgirl?”

“Being attacked, you mean?”

He nodded. Now that he had a daughter, he’d be particularly sensitive to this. But as usual, I was wrong. I’d jumped yet again to the wrong conclusion. He said,

“There’s a guy I know, Pat Young, we’ve been friends…”

I put up my hand to shush him. The radio had kicked in and Jimmy Norman was playing Emmylou Harris, my favourite track from
Red Dirt Girl…
“Bang the Drum Slowly”. Kills me. Jeff waited till it was through and I asked,