Leaving Ardglass

  Then, the morning before I leave, as if nothing had happened, I can hear him making phone calls while I shave. The radio is playing in the background. And like the men who climb into the lorries at Cricklewood Broadway, deadlines come to his rescue.

  ‘We’re survivors, Tommy. Survivors,’ he says with a sigh, and then as usual, the wad of notes appears on the kitchen table and is stuffed into my side pocket. It is futile to protest. ‘Take it,’ he insists, ‘and you’ll say the Mass for poor Margot in Dublin.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Now I want you to do something for me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Hear my confession.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes. Now, Tommy.’

  ‘But, could you not wait, and go to one of the priests around here? And anyway, I’m your brother, and I don’t know….’

  ‘You’re a priest aren’t you?’

  True to form, he won’t hear of a refusal, even in this most intimate of rituals. He kneels beside my chair and confesses his sins. No mention of dead men or hard rock, or bribing borough officials – just women. Women he had met on business up in Manchester, or on visits to Dublin. I raise a hand in absolution over his wavy hair, now turned to silver.

  He holds a reception at the Berkeley Court after the Month’s Mind Mass. I sit with Jody in the lounge beneath the sparkle of chandeliers, while important-looking waiters weave their way around groups of agents and engineers: family members, a few of Margot’s friends from Oxford, and people from the building trade. In a suit that looks too big for him, Seery is standing at the bar with M.J. and Donaghy.

  ‘Christy has done alright for himself,’ I remark while I study a bald version of the cocky young man who had held whispering conferences with English blokes smoking cheroots, and was given bulky envelopes at The Stag’s Head. ‘His own accountancy firm in a select part of town.’

  Jody gives a discreet look towards the bar; the little man is rocking on his heels while he talks. ‘The bagman,’ he chuckles. ‘He’s your man if you want land rezoned, so long as you grease his paw. Offshore accounts are his speciality. And, by the way, he’s not Christy any more. Chris now.’

  Even though he had pumped my hand when we met earlier, Seery comes over to top up his condolences. ‘You’ve an ally in heaven, Tommy. Lovely girl. Too good for this world.’ He then takes a Mass card from his pocket. ‘This is for your dear niece. I didn’t want to bother you that day at the funeral.’ He removes the card from the envelope. ‘I didn’t manage to get it signed. Will you do the needful?’

  ‘Certainly, Chris.’

  ‘That’s grand.’ And he makes to reach into his back pocket. ‘What’s the damage, Tommy?’

  ‘Ah, don’t bother about that.’

  ‘But I’d like to give you some offering.’

  ‘I wouldn’t hear of it, Chris.’

  While I’m raising my hand in protest, he is already putting away his wallet. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Good of you to come, Chris.’

  He spots a waitress with a tray of drinks passing by and calls her: ‘I’ll have one of them, girl. Might put a bit of life back into me.’ He gives her a leering look, but she ignores him.

  Just back from Spain with his family, staying in one of M.J.’s apartments – the one in Marbella, Seery boasts that he had lived on Galtee cheese and sliced loaves for a week. Hardly spent anything.

  ‘That’s great.’

  ‘I learned how to keep my head above water, Tommy, had to, from an early age. Thirteen of us, head to toe in the beds; oul empty sacks for quilts down on us in the winter.’

  ‘You’re all the better for it.’

  ‘Did I ever tell you about the gabardine coat?’ He did, but he tells me again. Six of them in succession had taken the Princess Maud with the cattle down in the hold; all had shared the one gabardine. ‘Send back the coat when you get paid,’ had been the final instruction at the railway station; several times the gabardine crossed the Irish Sea until it was in tatters.

  ‘Ah, too soft they have it now,’ he says, but he has exhausted the poor childhood, so he changes gear. ‘You play a tidy hand of cards if my memory of Kilburn serves me right.’

  ‘We gave him every educational advantage you could think of,’ says M.J., who had left the others at the bar and had come to sit with us: a strong smell of drink from his breath.

  ‘Great,’ says Seery. ‘He can join us some night.’ He turns to me. ‘Give you a break from them serious books. Why don’t you set it up, M.J.?’

  ‘I will.’

  Though limping after another attack of gout, M.J. does a round of hand-shaking, as the gathering begins to file away. His eyes are red-rimmed, and the intense ruddy colour of his cheeks and the broken veins on his nose suggest someone who could do with a check-up. When they have gone, he sits opposite me; worry lines have worked their way into his forehead.

  ‘Grace had to go early: she’s visiting Matt in Downside.’ He has a glass of mineral water resting on the arm of his chair.

  ‘I see.’

  ‘He’s doing some play with the students,’ is spoken with tired resignation. ‘Ah, I don’t know.’ He begins to tap the armrest. ‘Things aren’t working out between herself and myself. More so since poor Margot’s death.’

  ‘Sorry to hear that.’

  ‘Haven’t been for a long time. You might hear rumours. I’m sure ’tis all wrong in your books, but I didn’t bargain for marrying some sort of a nun. I go my way, she goes hers. She says she should’ve married that doctor fellow. Blames me for it. Blames me for everything.’ He releases a heavy sigh, and takes a sip from the mineral water. ‘You never saw the like of all this washing and cleaning. Door handles, bathrooms. Off to the dry cleaners after one wear of a dress. The housekeeper has to change the bedclothes twice a week.’ He shakes his head. ‘Not healthy. And the way she’s turned to religion. Confession every Saturday.’

  ‘All that can’t be easy for you.’

  ‘Women – I’ll never understand them.’ He goes through a noisy clearing of his throat. ‘Your crowd are right to keep them away from the controls.’

  The poker sessions are only a disguise for the main agenda. Donaghy and Seery and a couple of the party hacks arrive late and fill the room with loud laughter and the smell of drink; they make references to a meeting they had had earlier with county councillors in a pub off out in Raheny.

  A well-known mimic in the bar at Leinster House, Donaghy adds to the high spirits with his hilarious take-off of a woman deputy and her posh accent. ‘I know what she wants and she’s not getting it.’ He raises his glass: ‘Anyway, here’s to a man who cleaned up half of London after Hitler, and who is now changing the face of this city.’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ say the party hacks. We all turn to M.J., who shakes his head and waves us away in mock protest.

  While we play, the conversation gets back to land development and planning proposals. Whenever there is a doubt, Seery has the answer. The grandfather clock in the hallway strikes eleven and M.J. begins to stretch and yawn in an overdone way: ‘Right, lads,’ he says, ‘a last hand, and may the devil take the hindmost.’

  We leave the table and the pall of blue smoke hovering beneath the light shade. ‘A bit of a shark we have here, Chris,’ says Donaghy, gesturing at me and winking.

  ‘Ah, they learn more than their prayers in the seminary, Sylvester.’ Seery is bitten by the loss of a few pounds.

  ‘Our daily prepared these for us. Now dig in, lads,’ says M.J., bringing a tray of sandwiches and chicken limbs from the kitchen.

  ‘Up to her usual standard, I trust, M.J.,’ says Seery.

  ‘Give us this day our daily bread,’ one of the hacks says, reaching for a sandwich.

  Through the open door of the kitchen, I can hear M.J. scalding the teapot.

  While we are eating, Seery, with a magician’s flourish, whips up a leather briefcase, clicks open the metal locks and takes out a folded map. ‘Gentlemen,’
he declares as he lays the map on the card table, ‘come over and take a gander at the city of the future.’ He rocks on his heels. ‘This,’ he says, standing aside, ‘is an outline sketch of the plans for the next ten years.’

  M.J. traces a line across the north suburbs and comes to rest around Swords. ‘That’s all for agricultural use, I’m told.’

  Seery removes his glasses and peers at the map; then he straightens, and throws cunning looks around the room: ‘M.J., you know by now, my contacts in the department are open to – shall we say – my power of persuasion. Amn’t I right, Minister?’

  Munching a sandwich, Donaghy puts down his cup and clears his throat: ‘Sure, M.J., Chris has the damn planning department by the short and curlies.’ When he laughs, particles of food splutter from his mouth and come to rest on the map. The party hacks join in the laughter. Seery, whose lips are pursed, casts a cold eye on each man’s reaction.

  ‘Didn’t I swing the Rathfarnham site for you, M.J.?’

  ‘Fair play to you, Christy, you did so, boy.’

  We return to our seats and chat. Seery turns to me and drops his voice, as if he is imparting a secret. ‘The city needs houses; young couples want their own place. They can afford it now. And an expanding economy means more government offices.’

  ‘Right,’ says Donaghy, finishing his tea, ‘can’t keep the little woman waiting all night, hah, lads. You know yourselves.’ Before he leaves, he comes over and shakes my hand: ‘You’ll have to join us again, Tommy. Give us a chance to win back our money.’

  When Donaghy and his henchmen have left, I help to clean up. Seery hooks his thumbs inside his braces and paces the room. ‘You know,’ he grins at me behind M.J.’s back, ‘poor boys like me who got a buckshee education from the Brothers will rule this country before long.’

  ‘And what about poor boys like me, Christy, who never saw the inside of a Brothers’ school? Two years in the Tech and then finishing school in John Bull.’

  ‘Ah,’ Seery taps his forehead, ‘you have it up here. You’re a cute Kerry hoor.’ He goes over to the table, folds the maps and puts on his jacket. ‘When those old English dames put up for sale in Cabinteely, I’ll be on to you first thing.’

  ‘Will they sell?’ M.J. asks.

  ‘They’ll sell. They need the money. Living in squalor in one room of that mansion. Freeze their arses off in the winter.’

  ‘You’ll be able to swing it?’

  ‘Did I ever fail? A gold mine there. Eighty acres. My man in the planning department never let me down yet. He’ll expect the usual, of course – mad for the readies. And you can count on Donaghy to swing it.’

  ‘I know that.’

  While M.J. is seeing Seery to the door, I clear away the rest of the glasses, put the bottles of whiskey and brandy back in the cabinet and empty the ashtrays. Then, spotting one of Seery’s maps on the table, I rush to catch him, and reach the hall just as M.J. is putting a package into his outstretched hand. They stop dead: two boys caught stealing apples in a neighbour’s orchard.

  ‘Your map, Chris. You left it on the table.’

  For a moment both are thrown off guard; M.J. is the first to recover: ‘Ah, the first signs of old age, Christy. You’d want to watch it from now on, boy.’

  The eyes dance in Seery’s head: ‘Now, where would any self-respecting servant of the people be without his map, Tommy, I ask you?’

  ‘We’ll go over the accounts next week,’ says M.J., one hand on the door lock.

  ‘We’ll do that. And have no worries. Cabinteely is in the bag. You have my word.’

  After he has left, I leaf through the newspaper, aware of M.J.’s fidgety movements: one minute he is tapping on the armrest; the next he is pacing the floor, a glass of wine in hand, then back to the armchair. Watching his movements out of the corner of my eye, for a moment I’m back in the days of dead men, hard rock and borough council officials on freebie holidays in Killarney. He stops tapping: ‘The next fellow will do it if I don’t.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oil Seery’s palm. Someone else will. People need houses. Easy for them journalists to talk. Oul blather.’

  ‘You have a point there.’

  No fight now; instead, a shared understanding that this is the reality of building houses for young couples looking for their own place, and old ladies with freezing arses in winter who need ready money. And M.J. gets the ‘oul thrill’ out of it all.

  He drains his glass. ‘You know how it was in London, Tommy. Same here. Same everywhere. In saecula saeculorum. I’m going to my bed.’

  As we speak in front of his house the following morning, the orange and rust of autumn from the maples and beeches set off the redbrick avenue. A light mist covers the roof of my car. ‘Don’t be a stranger,’ he says. ‘You need a break from all that trouble ye’er having with them court cases. I’ll get tickets for the All-Ireland. Bring Lucy.’

  ‘I’m afraid Lucy and I have gone our separate ways.’

  ‘I see. Ah, well, more fish in the sea, Tommy. God bless.’

  ‘God bless.’

  He holds open the gates, and the tyres crunch the gravel driveway before I join the morning traffic.

  My ticket for the final is only a few rows behind the president, who sits with her husband and the head of the GAA. As he does nearly every year, M.J. brings with him some of the London crowd – those who had served the company for years – gangers and quantity surveyors; Jody also, who is now running a haulage business in Watford. Whenever there’s a break – when the ball goes wide or a player is down with cramp – the president’s free-and-easy northern tones rise above the excitement of the crowd; at half-time she works her chatty way through the hospitality room. There we run into Donaghy and his poker players: I make promises to play cards again.

  Wearing linen suits and holding glasses that sparkle in the harvest sun, politicians and their wives stand around talking. At a corner of the bar, a member of Dáil Éireann, towers above his circle of admirers and dominates the conversation; his loud laugh can be heard above the tinkle of glasses, the Tff monitors and the backslapping. With mouse-coloured dye reaching his hairline, he holds his golfing umbrella in front of him with both hands and scans the room, looking for notice. When he comes over, the circle around him moves as one like a bonded mass. After introductions and jokes, and brief comments about the standard of play, he quickly falls into conversation with M.J., Donaghy and the hacks about Dublin Bay developments. Then, after assuring us that Kerry will be no match for Mayo in the second half, he turns as he moves off, and shouts over his shoulder: ‘Maurice Fitz is past his sell-by, M.J.’ Gold fillings show when he laughs.

  I saunter down by the dining area and see a team of dark-skinned waiters serving drinks at the tables; Jody is standing on his own outside one of the glass panels smoking, and squinting at the sun-washed chimney stacks of Drumcondra. ‘Linen napkins and bottles of wine in Croke Park, Jody,’ I say, indicating the dining-room.

  ‘The Tiger,’ he draws on a cigarette. ‘No more wedges of bacon, and bottles of milk straight from the cow for Paddy.’

  ‘Nor the ghost train from Dingle.’

  ‘And the misfortunate blokes who sent home their postal orders every week are now riddled with arthritis, and are trying to hobble up and down Cricklewood Broadway.’

  ‘D’you think Mick O’Connell was the greatest ever, Jody?’

  He looks at me and chuckles: ‘The poor bastards. Hard to believe how they beat the living daylights out of each other over Seán Purcell and Mick O’Connell.’

  Seeing him again quickens my curiosity about London. He has an update: Garryowen fell and hit his head against a door frame one winter’s night in Richmond Street, and was frozen to death when he was found the following morning.

  ‘All night. My God, the poor man.’ Images flood my mind. The books in his bed-sitting-room, the way he fell to his knees beside the dying Deano, and recited the Act of Contrition, he who boasted after pints in The Hig
hway that he was a Marxist and didn’t believe in heaven or hell. Dan McGrew.

  ‘They say he willed whatever few bob he had left to one of the ladies in Richmond Street,’ Jody adds.

  ‘He was right. Sure, he got the only bit of comfort … anyway, the poor man. God rest him.’

  We fall silent, looking out over the chimney stacks.

  ‘How’s Bonnie?’ I ask after a while. ‘She didn’t turn up at Margot’s funeral. I send her a card every Christmas, but for years now I’ve got no reply. Has she moved?’

  He draws on the cigarette and looks at me.

  ‘Is she still at The Victoria, Jody?’

  ‘You haven’t heard?’

  ‘Heard what? I told you. No word for donkey’s years.’

  ‘I don’t think you’d like to know.’

  ‘Is she all right?’

  ‘Bonnie … I’m afraid. Well, Bonnie has slipped, Tommy.’

  ‘Slipped?’

  ‘She’s in around Kennsington – good hotels: she’s been at it for a long time now. Started off in the usual way: businessmen away from their wives, but now, just lonely old jossers. They can pay well for the comforts of the night – so I’m told. And Bonnie’s no spring chicken anyway.’ He sees the look on my face. ‘She’s not the only Irish girl to go like that.’

  The lounge has grown silent. Through the glass panels, I can see the staff clearing off the tables and calling to each other in their own tongue, and am half-aware of the referee’s piercing whistle for the second half.

  ‘A few of the Athenry crowd she used to hang around with in the Galty tried to do something. They even asked Father John to talk to her – that’s before himself and Mary rode off into the sunset.’ He throws his cigarette butt on the concrete and crushes it with his heel. ‘We’d better be going back in. I’ll talk to you after the match.’

  ‘Which hotels, Jody?’