“No, they know that students will drink any old shit.”
I tried,
“You know they don’t pay any tax, Starbucks?”
She shrugged. Not easy when you’re maneuvering around the Headford road, said,
“Neither do you.”
I could have asked how she knew so much about my affairs but it opened up an area that was best left alone. I asked,
“Does your mum know we’re coming?”
She scoffed, mimicked,
“Mum... She’s a cunt.”
Killing the whole thread of that. I found the radio dial, and got Galway Bay FM, The Big Breakfast Show. He was playing the White Stripes. Listened to that for a bit then. We were coming up to Shop Street and my eyes spotted Whelans Pharmacy. I said,
“The owner of that pharmacy, Michael, sat beside me in school.”
She scoffed,
“And you? What, just decided to be a failure as your school friend made a career?”
Jesus.
So much for sharing.
I went another tack, tried,
“When you were... away... where exactly were you?”
She mused over that, then,
“I was amassing money.”
“For what?”
She waved her hand vaguely, said,
“Money isn’t always protection but it sure makes a basis for attack.”
Riddle me that.
We’d arrived at her mother’s house. Before, when I had visited, it had been a shroud of darkness, everything dying. Now it was renewal in neon. Brightly painted and, even I noticed, new curtains. It looked... welcoming?
Emily warned,
“Follow my lead, you hear?”
Jesus.
I asked,
“Like good cop bad cop?”
She gave me the look, sneered,
“Like in, you say fuck all.”
I could do that.
The door was opened by a woman who looked healthy and alive, no trace of the wretched drunk I had encountered last time. She gave a small smile and began to open her arms but Emily brushed her aside, saying,
“A hug? Really?”
Guess not.
I stood there, saying, you guessed it, fuck all. Her mother said,
“Would you like to come in, Mr....?”
“Jack, Jack Taylor.”
No memory of our previous time or the gallon of whiskey I had fed her. Inside, the house was a testament of OCD. Spotless and solitary. She offered,
“Some tea, coffee? I’m afraid we don’t have any... beverages.”
Emily laughed, an unpleasant sound, said,
“Being as you drank it all and more.”
We stood in the grim aftermath of that for a minute until Emily broke the tableau, said,
“You dragged us all the way out here. What’s the big deal?”
Her mother looked beseechingly at me and I moved to go outside but Emily shot me a look. Her mother said,
“I wanted to make amends to you.”
Emily laughed out loud, spat,
“How will you do that? Restore my virginity that Daddy took?”
Phew.
Fuck it. I got the hell out of there. I could hear shouting behind me and started to walk down the road. An articulated lorry came hugely along and more in desperation than seriousness I put out my thumb and
... he stopped.
With my bad leg took me a time to climb up there. Settled in the massive cab and said,
“Thanks a lot.”
The Polish driver said,
“Random acts of kindness.”
Alas, his good deed was fouled by a tape of Black Sabbath. You have not known damnation until you hurl along the motorway, Sabbath roaring in your ears, and a driver eating a thick bagel laden with dripping mayo and tomatoes.
It did save chat so there’s that. He dropped me off at Eyre Square. A wag I knew from Garavan’s watched me climb down, asked,
“New job, Taylor?”
I said,
“With the water charges, we all have to improvise.”
I sat on a bench until a guy approached and sold me a sheet of Xanax. Not exactly the stuff they dealt on The Wire but it does the job. He took the money, said,
“You ever need anything else, here’s my number.”
Might be my imagination but he looked a little like Ozzy Osbourne.
“Never judge a dog’s pedigree by the kind of books he does not chew.” (Irish logic)
The Grammarian
Oliver Parker Wilson. Now that’s a name. To conjure with. In Galway in the late ’50s, there had been two Protestant families. Two! Count ’em. The Hunters, who manufactured prams, and the Wilsons, who were in exports and simply rich. As Protestant they were, of course, apart and almost like suspicious royalty. Money and Protestant, rarities in a poor town. The Hunters were almost popular in that there was no ill feeling toward them and they did bring employment. The Wilsons were just aloof.
Oliver was the only son and sent to Eton. Where he was schooled in barbarism and grammar. Never fully recovered. He took a first at Cambridge and his first breakdown. He believed words were communicating some special meaning only to him. He was uncomfortable, not with being mad, just with people knowing it, so he began to disguise it with an icy politeness. Then softened that with an ironic wit.
Mostly, he felt an overwhelming anger and did what you do with that — he joined the army. Did well until he shot an NCO and, with family influence, was invalided out. And what to do with the lunatic? Trained as a teacher, always a fine route for madness. During a class for O-level English, grammar began to speak to him again, its rules and structures singing a dark song of transcendence. A pupil mangling intransitive verbs drove him to rage he could barely contain. Found that drowning the pupil brought an ease he’d never known.
And
The knowledge that secrecy was his ally. Cover your tracks. Oddly, he had a small circle of friends, ex-army, and fucked up in other ways. They saw his obsession with language as a hoot.
Indeed.
They called him Park. He began to see himself as Park, an eccentric fellow who was essentially harmless as long as you didn’t disrespect English. And well he may have continued in this low-level field of carnage, not calling attention to himself but dealing with barbarians discreetly.
Until
A colleague at work exclaimed,
“Texting may well replace common usage.”
The sacrilege.
And without due consideration, he had flown at the man. Lost his job and was lucky to escape jail. So, head home. Whoever said you can’t go home again didn’t come from money. You have money, you can go home any fucking time you like.
He did.
Just in time to bury his elderly parents and take over the large house at the back of the golf links. The city had moved on in his absence: had been rich then back to poor again. But being English was no longer a cachet or a problem. So many nationalities now that the St. Patrick’s Day parade was embroiled in rows as to what ethnic group should lead the damn thing. One thing sure: it wasn’t going to be anybody Irish.
Park was now aging, but insanity has its perks. A life without regret keeps you young. He had all his hair, his teeth, and a nervous system attuned to chaos that kept him slender. He dressed in the Anglo fashion of tweeds and Barbour. He would have kept dogs save they instinctively ran a mile from him.
Otherwise, he was pretty much the country gent temporarily in the city. Best of all, he played golf. You want to be accepted by the shakers, play golf. You don’t even have to be very good. Long as you aren’t caught cheating. He had once played with Superintendent Clancy, thus having a solid connection to law enforcement.
Clancy liked to think he was mixing with the aristocracy. If he could just get to meet Bill Clinton, hell, he could run for president.