In terms of publicity, however, the alternative scenario doesn’t even bear thinking about. He’d get caught up in it personally. He’d be fodder for the tabloids and for the radio talk shows. They’d run an identifying clip of him on the TV news, and repeat it night after night as they spun the story to death – maybe a shot of him walking along a street, looking shifty, or struggling to get out of a car.
The idea horrifies him.
Exposure like that, of course, would be the least of his worries – because there’d also be protracted litigation, followed, almost certainly, by bankruptcy, disgrace, ruin.
Norton straightens his jacket and runs a hand across his hair.
Definitely, on reflection, he did the right thing.
He goes through the bedroom and out onto the landing. He looks at his watch: 4.45.
‘Miriam!’
‘Yes, yes, I’m coming.’
Miriam appears from her bedroom. She is wearing a navy suit, navy shoes and a navy pillbox hat. She looks elegant and appropriately sombre.
‘Which church is it?’ she says, adjusting one of her earrings.
‘Donnybrook.’
Miriam stands in front of the full-length mirror on the landing and repositions her hat. ‘Do you think there’ll be many people there?’
‘I’d say so, yeah,’ Norton replies. ‘Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s packed to the rafters.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. He was very popular.’
‘How well did you know him?’
‘Not very. I had dealings with him the odd time.’
Most recently, of course – Norton thinks – in the last week or so. And given what he soon found himself contemplating, that fact had naturally raised something of a red flag in his mind. But then he also remembered reading about Rafferty’s nephew in the paper, in a report about local gangs and DVD piracy.
‘Come on, Mo. There’ll be traffic.’
‘I’m coming.’
She finishes at the mirror and they both head downstairs.
It had seemed like a good plan – a few words in the back of his car with Fitz and that should have been more or less the size of it, at least as far as his own involvement was concerned.
But then look what happened.
They leave the house and get in the car. As he drives slowly across the gravel to the gates, Norton runs it through his mind once again. Monday night, the panic, the sleeplessness, the hours of waiting – how close he came to self-destructing. Then, on Tuesday morning, the phone call. It took him a long time to calm down after that, but as the day progressed, and he spoke to different people, the story did gel into place. He nevertheless found it hard to shake his sense of unease. It had been a very close thing.
Now though, on Thursday afternoon, as he drives to the church for the removal – where he will sit and pray in front of Noel Rafferty’s earthly remains – Norton feels calm again, and secure.
The panic is gone. The threat has been lifted.
It’s almost five o’clock and Larry Bolger is on the plinth outside Leinster House. He is looking over at Buswell’s. He has just left the chamber after a debate on stamp-duty reform and is waiting for his car. He knows that a group of four or five backbenchers is meeting in the hotel to discuss what are euphemistically called ‘developments’ and he wonders how they’re getting on.
The weirdest thing about this stage of a leadership challenge is that all you are required to do is behave as if it isn’t happening. Other people do the important stuff for you – the mobilising, the lobbying, the whispering.
‘Er… Larry, can I have a word?’
Bolger looks around and releases a low groan. ‘A word? There’s no such thing, Ken, not where you’re concerned, so no -’
‘Yeah, but this is -’
‘Look, I’ve no time at the moment.’ Miraculously, the car pulls up. ‘I’m on my way to a removal. Tomorrow maybe, or when I get back from the States.’
Bolger hurries down the steps and opens the back door of the car.
‘Larry, you’re going to want to hear this, believe me, because it’s -’
‘Some other time, OK? I’m busy.’
He gets in the car and bangs the door shut behind him.
The driver knows enough not to delay. ‘Good evening, Minister,’ he says, pulling away. ‘Where are we off to?’
Bolger takes a deep breath.
‘Er… Donnybrook, Billy. The church there on the corner. Thanks.’
Billy nods. They go out the main gates and turn left onto Kildare Street.
Bolger then leans back in his seat and exhales. Is he alone in finding the chief political correspondent of the Irish Independent an epic pain in the arse? Like one or two of the other hacks in the press gallery, Ken Murphy is never off the radio talk shows and seems to claim ownership of practically every story that makes it into the news.
But at the same time, if this leadership bid is to succeed, Bolger realises – be it a messy heave, or a bloodless coup – he is going to have to be… well, a little more accommodating, and play the game.
He closes his eyes, luxuriating in a kind of steely clear-headedness – something he associates these days with not drinking.
The choreography of the next few months is going to be crucial, of course. The Paloma announcement the other day, his upcoming trade mission to the States, the opening of Richmond Plaza in the new year… each of these, incrementally, will ratchet up his profile – in the party, with the media, with the public at large.
Bolger opens his eyes again. They’re almost at Leeson Street Bridge.
It’s certainly been a long time coming. He entered politics in the mid-eighties – though as far as he remembers, and it’s all a bit vague now, standing for election hadn’t even been his idea. Frank, his brother, had held the seat originally but died, and then somehow Larry was persuaded to come back from Boston and contest it in the ensuing by-election. With plenty of backing from within the party, and much to his own surprise, he won the seat. What followed was a blur that has lasted two and a half decades, a blur of clinics, funerals, functions, branch meetings, Oireachtas committees and, every few years or so, like a recurring anxiety dream, the curious sensation of being raised shoulder-high by screaming mobs of your own supporters at a count centre. Eventually, a junior ministry materialised, along with a little national exposure – on Morning Ireland, on Questions and Answers, on Tonight with Vincent Browne. Other junior portfolios came along, and then, at last, his first full seat at the cabinet table.
After that it was all very serious and grown-up – access, privilege, power.
Compromise.
He opens his eyes. They’re on Morehampton Road now, passing the old Sach’s Hotel.
But all of a sudden, for some reason, his mood has shifted. He feels anxious. He feels that familiar jumping in the pit of his stomach.
Then, as the car approaches the gates of the church, and he sees a big silver BMW pulling in just ahead of them, he realises why.
It’s because no matter how he looks at it, no matter from what angle, there is one constant in all of this, in his career, in his life, stretching right back to that surprise by-election of nineteen eighty whenever-it-was, and stretching right into his future, too, inescapable, looming like an Atlantic weather front. And that constant – over there now, struggling to climb out of his BMW – is, of course, Paddy Norton.
3
Despite her exhaustion (she didn’t get any sleep last night, and young Noel’s funeral was this morning), Gina immediately registers the contrast between yesterday’s removal in Dolanstown and the one today here in Donnybrook. Passing through the gates on the way in, she can’t help noticing all the BMWs, Mercs, Saabs and Jags. The church is smaller, too, but the crowd seems to be bigger. As she and Jennifer and her sisters (except for Catherine, who is at home, in bed, unconscious) get out of the funeral car and follow the coffin into the church and up the aisle towards the altar, Gina glances left and right at this congregation of what appear to be well-groomed middle-aged men and their brittle, pampered wives. There isn’t a hoodie or a tracksuit in sight. Instead, she sees silk suits, cashmere overcoats, fur coats – and hats, dozens of them (how many women yesterday were wearing hats?). And is it her imagination or is there something in the air, a certain pungency – a subtle fusion, perhaps, of incense, cologne and expensive perfume?