“You can’t beat Willy.”
I left him pondering the mysteries of music and women. It felt good to be walking, and as I passed various pubs, I kept my eyes focused away. The lure of drink lay in wait at every hour of the day. Going over the Salmon Weir Bridge, I recognised a guy beside the Age Concern bin. He shouted,
“Yo, Jack!”
I’d known him all my life. At school he’d excelled in catechism and was equally fluent in Irish and English. He’d become a poacher or, as they were known locally, snatcher. I said,
“How’s it going, Mick?”
He gave a rueful smile, pointed to the water. A man, kitted out in expensive angling gear, with waders to his thighs, was casting a long line. Mick said,
“German bollix.”
“Yeah?”
“To fish for one day costs a bloody small ransom, plus handing over half the catch.”
A thought struck me and I asked,
“What happens if he only catches one?”
Mick gave a laugh of pure maliciousness, said,
“Then he’s fucked.”
Mick was probably the finest salmon snatcher west of the Shannon. There was a holdall at his feet, and he leaned down, took out a flask and a full French roll, extended them, asked,
“Want a bite?”
“No, I’m good.”
“Have a drink then. It’ll warm you up, get the blood dancing.”
I felt my heart accelerate, asked,
“What’s in it?”
“Chicken soup and poteen.”
Christ, I was tempted; just go for it. I shook my head, said,
“No, but thanks.”
He put the flask to his head, drank deep; then he lowered it, and I swear his eyes rolled back as he exclaimed,
“Fucking hell.”
I envied him the hit. What can compare to that shock of warmth as it hits your stomach? He said,
“I heard you were off it.”
I nodded miserably, and he reached again to the bag and asked,
“Want one of these?”
Handed me a calendar with the Sacred Heart on the front, said,
“It’s a half-yearly job, so you don’t lose six months.”
I’d already lost half my life. Flicked it open and there was a homily for each day. I traced my finger down, found that day’s date, read,
“True faith promotes justice.”
Not in my experience.
I started to hand it back and he refused, going,
“No…it’s my gift. I mean, you’re a mass-goer now, am I right? So this is perfect.”
I had an urge to punch him in the mouth. Galway was a city now, a multi-cultural, multi-racial one, but at its core was the small town mentality. They still knew what you were at. I shoved the calendar in my pocket, said,
“Be seeing you, Mick.”
He waited till I’d gone a distance then chanced,
“Say one for us, will ya?”
I noticed a young man with blond hair across the road; he seemed to be staring at me. I passed it off.
“When I was writing The Shadow of the Glen some years ago, I got more aid than any learning could have given me from a chink in the floor of the old Wicklow house where I was staying, that let me hear what was being said by the servant girls in the kitchen.”
J.M. Synge, Preface to
The Playboy of the Western World
I have no family, not in the real sense. My mother and I had been at war for years. A down-in-the-gutter, full-guns-blazing campaign till she had a stroke. To my amazement, I began to ease up on her. She was recovering slowly, and though we’d hardly become close, there had been a definite shift in perspective. I was due to visit her soon. Her minder-companion, Fr Malachy, was as firm as ever in his hatred of me.
Like I gave a shit.
When Jeff and Cathy had their baby, I felt the barrenness of my life was neon-lit. As godfather to the child, I tried to show more interest than I’d have imagined.
Back at Bailey’s, I hung the calendar on my wall. Janet, the chambermaid, would be heartened to see it. Time ago, when my drinking was way on the edge, she’d left me a leaflet about Matt Talbot. No doubt my current state she’d attribute to a miracle from Matt. I was definitely on the up. Had a minifridge in my room, stocked with yoghurt and Galway spring water. Opened a bottle now and stretched on the bed. Flicked the remote and caught the opening of Oz, the muscular Australian prison drama. Little did I know the serendipity at work here. If I’d known, would I have acted differently? Right then, my life was on track, as close to normal as it had ever been. Would I have opted to continue the road to citizenship or was I already straining at the leash?
Things were heating up on Oz. There’d been an execution, an inmate was dying from AIDS and another was ordered to kill a new arrival. To say it was heavy would be some understatement. I turned it off, then vaguely considered Six Feet Under, the HBO series about a family of undertakers. In the last episode, a corpse lost a foot and various mayhem followed involving a gay cop. Thomas Lynch should have sued. I decided to read instead; I’d enough black humour on the streets every day.
Had been dipping into the journals of Jean Rhys. Her sense of displacement always resonated. I’d once heard her described as a citizen of the dispossessed, following a trail of disaster across the dismal landscape of her mind. For a time, she’d lived above a pub in Maidstone…during the 1940s, a grim era. She wrote:
“I must write. If I stop writing my life will have been an abject failure. It is that already to other people. But it could be an abject failure to myself. I will not have earned death.”
This set off all sorts of bombs in my mind. The phone rang and I put the book aside with relief, went,
“Yeah?”
“Jack, it’s Cathy.”
“Hi, Cathy.”
Pause. I could almost hear her measure her words. Instinct shouted it was going to be heavy, then,
“I need a favour, Jack.”
“Sure, hon, if I can.”
“Stewart wants you to visit.”
“Who?”
A sigh, underlit by impatience.
“The drug dealer…your drug dealer.”
“Oh.”
She rushed now: get it out, get it down.
“He’s put you on the visitors’ list for Wednesday at 3 p.m.; you have to be on time or else it’s wait another week.”
My mind was running the numbers, but not very well, so I tried to stall.
“But he’s in Mountjoy, that’s Dublin.”
Her patience was gone.
“Unless they moved it.”
This was more like her old spark. The Cathy of the punk days, the ex-junkie I’d first met, with barbed wire in her mouth, tattoos along her arms. Truth is, I missed the old version. Since Jeff and the baby, she’d lost her edge, had mutated into a gombeen pseudo-Irish colleen.
Jesus.
Now she waited. I faltered, said,
“Cathy, I don’t know about this.”
She’d been expecting such, said,
“He’ll pay your expenses, booked you a room in the Royal Dublin. Wouldn’t want you inconvenienced at any stage, would we, Jack? Think of it as a holiday.”
I didn’t answer and she said,
“You owe, Jack.”
“Hey, Cathy, give me a break. I paid him for his services…he was a frigging drug dealer. How do I owe him?”
“Not him; you owe me.”
This was true. I tried to find some words to get off the hook but none came. I said,
“You’ve got me, I guess.”
If she was relieved, she wasn’t letting it show, said,
“I’ve left an envelope with Mrs Bailey. It’s got cash, train times and the hotel reservation.”
“You were pretty certain I’d agree.”
“Well, even you, Jack, have a sense of obligation.”
I felt this was a cheap shot. For Chrissakes, I was godfather to her child. I countered with,