BOBBY WAS never able to see how he affected people. People always saw what they wanted to see in Bobby. He could never see the way people reacted to him. The adoration of the young lads, the respect of the builders, the misty-eyed devotion of the old codgers who roared themselves raw from the sidelines while he led a team of committed losers to the gates of glory. But still and all, songs and pints and backslapping nights of praise and speeches aside, some people will hate you for your goodness. They’ll revel in your undoing. They’ll rejoice at the news of your downfall. It felt to me as though that was the way everyone was this summer. I couldn’t see the good in anyone. I stood one day in the post office queue and Robert was wriggling and whining and I hadn’t showered and my roots were in shit and the story about Bobby having the affair was flapping around like a crow with a broken wing and I saw one of the Teapot Taliban staring at me with rapture on her face.
People say things like we shouldn’t complain lads, look at that poor girl whose child was stole. People say things like shouldn’t we be counting our blessing lads that we at least have our health? People say things like look at that poor girl of the Mahons, Bobby’s wife, and he after doing the dirty on her and killing his father and she still with him. Bobby Mahon done the dirt. He killed his father. The girl he done the dirt with is after having her child snatched. How many of them really cared about the little boy? He was only young Seanie Shanahan’s bastard. That lady is only a blow-in from town, a right-looking little rap. Everyone talked about him and looked all sad and serious in Mass when he was prayed for and joined in the search and made sandwiches and shook their heads mournfully and asked how in God’s name that girl was coping, but deep, deep down some of them were more worried about their pensions and medical cards and wages and profits and welfare payments and what they haven’t that their neighbours have and who’s claiming what and how many foreigners were allowed in to the country and the bottom line is the bottom line as far as I can see; if we were all in the black we’d all be in the pink. The air is thick with platitudes around here. We’ll all pull together. We’re a tight-knit community. We’ll all support each other. Oh really? Will we?
The Teapot Taliban fattened on their stories about Bobby and that girl. And she had the child for young Sean Shanahan, imagine! What a triangle! Or is it a square? Ha ha ha! When Frank was killed they must have nearly exploded with pleasure. Now! He is only an animal! Who’d have thought he’d stoop that low? Blood will out, the father was a desperate quare hawk too, God rest him! Jesus, the sweet scandal, it must have been almost too rich for their pill-thinned blood. It could have easily caused embolisms. Their eyes glistened with glee in the post office queue. They looked at me and tut-tutted and whispered and nodded and shook their heads and counted off blessings on their rosary beads. They wondered was Bobby the snatched child’s father. They wondered was it Bobby snatched the child. They wondered how was it they never knew he was a madman. Poor Triona, they said, and she stuck in the middle of all that. Poor Triona, they said, but secretly they were delighted for me, with my fine dormer bungalow on the lovely site Bobby got for a song off of the Burkes, swanning around the place in my big oh-eight car. My cough was after getting well and truly softened. The missing child didn’t put anything into perspective for anyone the way they were all saying it did, he was just tacked on to the end of the list of things that just showed you how terrible it all is and how the country is pure solid destroyed and there’s no end to the heartbreak and aren’t we a right show now with the television cameras and the place crawling with guards. God, I’m gone awful cross. People are scared, that’s all. I know that.
THE CHILD’S little body was covered in weird marks when he was found a few days ago: pentagrams and crosses and lines from poems and drawings of naked people, all in permanent marker, like tattoos drawn by a lunatic. He was wearing Spiderman pyjamas. His hair was all shaved off; he looked like a little refugee from a concentration camp. Mary Gildea had the whole story. The whole village had it inside an hour. It was her husband Jim who found the child. He spotted something in one of the guys who helped with the search. He couldn’t put his finger on it; he just had a feeling. And Timmy Hanrahan brought him some piece of evidence that confirmed his hunch. Our Timmy, imagine! Jim followed the guy until he led him to a flat inside in town. Jim called no one else in to help, only walked straight in the door behind that guy and there was little Dylan, sitting on a beanbag watching a DVD of Bob the Builder, and the fat Montessori teacher sitting beside him, feeding him a bowl of ice-cream. Jim picked him up in his arms and walked back out the door and the two freaks didn’t even try to stop him. He was fine except for the drawings all over him and the skinned head. They’ll wash off and his hair will grow back and he’ll forget all about the whole thing. May he always be fine and happy, the little darling.
WHEN I TOLD Bobby the child had been found safe and sound he said nothing. He stood looking out the back window at our little Robert, screaming for joy as he tried to catch a fat pigeon that was fluttering madly in the birdbath. Tears spilled down his face. I just said oh love; oh love, what matters now?
What matters only love?
Acknowledgments
THANKS: To Antony Farrell and everyone at the Lilliput Press, especially Sarah Davis-Goff and Daniel Caffrey; to Brian Langan, Eoin McHugh and all at Doubleday Ireland; to Marianne Gunn O’Connor; to my earliest readers: Frances Kelly, Dermot Dinan, Brian Treacy, Paul Fenton, Shauna Nugent, Conor McAllister, Brendan Ryan, Carmel O’Reilly, Helena Enright, Bríd Enright, Marie Cremin and Kathryn McDermott; to Conor Cremin and Garry Browne for their friendship and unflagging encouragement; to my parents, Anne and Donie Ryan, for everything; to my sister Mary, my first reader and most ardent promoter; to my brother John and nephew Christopher, of whom I’m endlessly proud; to my beautiful children, Thomas and Lucy, for giving me the heart to persevere; and to Anne Marie, the love of my life.
About the Author
DONAL RYAN was born in a village in north Tipperary, a stroll from the shores of Lough Derg. Donal wrote the first draft of The Spinning Heart in the long summer evenings of 2010, and has also completed a second novel. He lives with his wife Anne Marie and two children just outside Limerick City.