“I’ve never asked for much, but if it doesn’t screw with some inflexible Divine plan, could I please have this woman with me, could Paris be, indeed, A Moveable Feast?”
And, I don’t know, the candle flickered, went out.
An omen?
Maybe.
My drinking. She was aware of it, Jesus, how could she not? But seemed to think there was hope.
I abetted the illusion. No doubt, I’d fuck it up. Sure as the granite on the walls of Galway Cathedral. But if this were my one last day in the sun, then I intended to bask.
My odd times friend/accomplice/conscience was Stewart. A former drug dealer who’d reinvented himself as a Zen-spouting entrepreneur. He’d saved my life on more than one occasion. I was never sure if he actually liked me but I sure as fuck intrigued him. I could hear strains of Loreena McKennitt carried on the light breeze from somebody’s radio. Worked for me, till my mobile shrilled.
I answered, heard,
“Jack.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s Stewart.”
Before I could snap off some pithy rejoinder, he said,
“Malachy has been badly hurt.”
Father Malachy, bane of my life. Close confidant of my late mother, he despised me almost as much as I did myself. Stewart still clung to the notion I could be redeemed. Malachy believed I had no future and my present was pretty much fucked too. His ingrained hatred of me was fuelled by the fact I’d once saved his clerical arse. He could have been the poster boy for “No good deed goes unpunished.”
But I took no joy in him being hurt, unless I was the one who did the hurting. He was part of my shrinking history and I clung to the battered remnants like an early morning wino and his last drops of rotgut.
I asked,
“How?”
Pause.
Stewart was trying to phrase it as delicately as he could, gave up, said,
“He was mugged.”
I nearly went,
“But he’s a priest.”
The awful fact wasn’t that priests were mugged in our new shiny country, it was that more weren’t.
Stewart said that Malachy was in UCHG, the University Hospital, in intensive care. I said I’d get up there straightaway. He said, hesitantly,
“Ah Jack, go easy.”
Then a thought hit me.
Hard.
Steel in my voice, stiffening my question, I asked,
“You think I did it?”
“Of course not.”
I eased, said,
“Well, least you think I have some standards.”
He shot back,
“If you mugged him, he wouldn’t be in the hospital.”
“What?”
“He’d be in the morgue.”
And he clicked off.
Reluctantly, I left Eyre Square. Was it my imagination or was the sun already receding? The recession was in full bite. We’d buried the Celtic Tiger ages ago. The papers carried daily dire forebodings of worse to come. The specter of emigration was looming all over again.
And yet.
A huge new outlet for TK Maxx had just opened. “Designer clothes at affordable prices.” The Grand Opening a week before, people had queued for seven hours. The line of recession-proof people had stretched from the statue of Liam Mallow, our Republican hero, past Boyles Betting Shop (free coffee for punters!) along Cuba’s nightclub pink facade, and of course the inevitable off-license (ten cans of Bavarian Lager for ten euros) to the very doors of the new shopping mecca.
On the great day, a local had invoked St. Anthony’s Brief:
…flee you hostile powers….the lion of the tribe of Judah The root of David, hath conquered…Alleluia.
Saint Anthony wasn’t available that day, the only alleluias we were familiar with were mangled versions of Leonard Cohen’s classic by X Factor wannabes.
Recession my arse.
Swine flu continued to stalk, slow but deadly, across the land. The death toll higher than the government would admit. But hey, they had good news: we’d only a year to wait for the vaccine.
And just to add a kick in the balls, they said,
“It will be administered according to priorities.”
Meaning the likes of me, and such, weren’t on the top ten. I passed down by HMV, who were touting Season Three of Dexter, the serial killer who only kills the bad guys.
Maybe we could import him.
Then down past Abracadabra, the home of the drunkard’s beloved late-night kebab. I turned at what used to be Moon’s shop and is now the posh Brown Thomas, selling the latest Gucci handbag at the amazing price of only three thousand euros.
I doubt my late dad ever saw three thousand pounds his whole wretched life.
Passed Golden Discs, now closed (the lease had run out), and reached the Abbey Church. Recently renovated, it looked much the same except the price of a mass card had skyrocketed. I dipped my fingers in the holy water font, blessed myself and headed for St. Anthony’s altar. I lit a candle for Malachy and for my legion of dead and departed. The rate those I knew were dying, I could open my own private cemetery, issue loyalty cards, and, why not, air miles.
You want something from Saint Anthony, it’s real simple,
“Pay him.”
I did.
Shoved a large note in the slot and momentarily was lost for words,
So many dead.
The best and the brightest as always. I prayed for a little girl, Serena-May, who still tore the heart out of my chest.
Back when I’d been trying to find who killed Stewart’s sister, I spent a lot of hours with the Down syndrome child of my close friends Jeff and Cathie. The little girl filled me with wonder and yearning; I felt my life had some meaning. Her gurgle of delight when I read to her did what gallons of Jameson failed to do: it gave me ease. Her terrible death, literally in my presence, was a lament of such horrendous proportions that I had a complete breakdown and was in a mental hospital for months. Some things you never reconcile and Serena-May was my daily burden of love and care, crushed beyond all recognition.
I prayed for Cody, my surrogate son, dead because of me. Back in the time of the Tinkers, I’d taken on a young impressionable kid, one of those wannabe American young Irish who saw the world through a cinema lens. In the beginning, I’d given him literally errands to run but, over time, we’d developed a bond, so that I came to regard him as the son I’d never have. It was a time of richness, of joy, of fulfillment in my shattered life. And, what the Gods give….they sure as fuck take away.
Mercilessly.
He was cut down by a crazed sniper with a hard-on for me.
His loss was a cross I’d never climb down from.
Finally, I asked that I might find a modicum of peace.
It’s not what you read, or even study, it’s how you bend the material to shape and endorse your own dark designs.
– Caz, Romanian domiciled in Galway
The basement was lit by thirteen black candles. A flat slab of granite in the rough design of a headstone was supported by beer crates and acted as a table. Three ordinary kitchen chairs were placed thus:
Two on the right side.
One, almost forlorn, on the left.
Top of the table was an ornate throne, rescued from a theatrical shop-like most businesses, gone bust, and the throne had been dumped in the skip. It had been cleaned up and now was alight with velvet cushions and a decorative banner, proclaiming “The New Order.”
Behind, pinned on the wall were: A-a large swastika. B-a black-and-white reproduction of a school. C-a worn, battered T-shirt of one of the death metal groups.
On the right side of the table were two brothers, Jimmy and Sean Bennet. They could have passed as twins but Sean was actually three years older. They both had long black hair that they seemed to take turns in flicking out of their respective eyes. They came from one of the wealthiest, oldest Galway families and had inherited, aside from shitloads of cash: 1-Arrogance. 2-Entitlement. 3-Deep seething malignant resentment.
An Irish version of the Menendez brothers but it was unlikely they’d even heard of that infamous duo. They had a limited range of knowledge, like the product of all the wealthiest schools. They smoked continuously, Marlboro Red, and had identical Zippos, chunky ones with the logo: