“So, Theo. You want to argue Neville’s case. You don’t think he grassed me up? Fair enough. To be brutally honest with you, I’m not that interested if he did or he didn’t.”
Theo didn’t know what to say but he’d the feeling Gerrity didn’t expect him to say much anyway. The guy was always on a soapbox. No conversations for him, just monologues. There was an arrogance there that was equal parts breathtaking and ordained.
Gerrity smiled and sat down behind the desk. Theo felt like a naughty student about to get ripped into by the world’s most dangerous headmaster. Like every pupil ever anywhere, he shuffled nervously from foot to foot but just about managed to resist the urge to drop his head.
“I like you, Theo. I told you that the first time we met. But there’s things you don’t understand. So let me tell you.” Gerrity leaned back, crossed his stubby legs at the ankle. “You’re a survivor so I think you’ll get me. You told me you’re from Rwanda. We all know what went on there. Awful stuff, dreadful. But you escaped and you’re here. Now, you know as well as I do that for you to survive, you had to have something, something that made you different from the others, the ones that died, God rest their souls. You had to have a drive, a hunger to go on. Am I right, lad?”
You haven’t a bleedin’ clue, thought Theo. He nodded. He wasn’t here to explain the world to this eejit. All he wanted was to get Neville and get out.
“So, you should get me more than the others. I need to survive. And make no mistake, Theo, this is a dog-eat-dog world I’m in. I can’t afford to go easy on people who cross me.” Gerrity smiled, eyes crinkling, lips pulled back. “A lot of people don’t get this city, Theo. There’s too much myth, too much legend, making us all misty-eyed. But I get this city. I get what makes Dubliners tick. Ah, yeah, they’re great craic, they’re the life and soul of the party, they love a drink, love a laugh. But underneath, they’re a bunch of rebels. Always looking for the main chance, the opportunity to put one over on the system. And I’m part of the system now. I earn more than most government departments and that includes the tax office; I employ more people than some parts of the civil service; I am more deeply embedded in people’s lives than the state. The state is so busy sorting out the financial apocalypse caused by its own rebels that it might as well not be here. So I’m the one they want to get one over on.”
Theo dared to look out the window. A white van had driven in and parked by the Merc. A tall, dark-haired man got out, lit a cigarette and stood smoking. He looked familiar but Theo couldn’t place him. He was dragging on his fag like his life depended on it.
Gerrity hadn’t stopped. Reluctantly, Theo tuned back in.
“So if I’m the state, I need to have the same instruments at my disposal. I collect taxes, I make rules and if you break those rules, I need to deal out appropriate punishments. I wanted to make sure you understood that, Theo. I wanted you to see this from my point of view too. You’re valuable to me and I don’t want us to fall out about this.”
“Look, I appreciate the learning an’ all.” Theo tried to keep the sarcasm out of his voice but Gerrity’s lips tightened. “But I just want to get Neville and get out of your way. You’re talking about punishment but if you’re the state, like you’re saying, then where’s your justice? Neville never grassed and whoever told you he did is lying to you.”
“I don’t think you’ve been listening, Theo. It doesn’t matter whether Neville snitched or not. What matters is that people think he did. And I can’t have that. I’m only as strong as the fear I create. There’s a line as long as your arm of wannabes itching to take my place and the same again who’d shop me to the cops tomorrow. So for me to stay on top, I can’t let people think I’m going soft. Can I?”
Theo said nothing, but his heart was racing now.
“Anyway, enough talking. I’ve things to do and I’m sure you do too.”
Now, he was the one layering on the sarcasm. Gerrity rose and walked to the door. He didn’t say anything else so Theo just followed him, hating this role of supplicant. They went outside into the yard. The smoker was still there. He nodded at Gerrity and opened the back door of the Merc. Theo saw a young lad in a faded denim jacket in the driver’s seat. Gerrity got in and the other man – who Theo now knew he had seen before but where? – got into the van and drove out the back gate. What the fuck was going on?
He grabbed the door before Gerrity could pull it shut. To give him his due, Gerrity didn’t even flinch.
“I came for Neville, not for a speech, Gerrity. So where the fuck is he?”
Gerrity had the gall to smile and that sick teeth-baring smirk would haunt Theo.
“You’re a good friend, I’ll say that for you. He’s waiting for you – that’s part of the reason you’re here. Go back out the front, turn right onto the main road, then second right. There’s a small park there in front of the church. He’s there. I’m sure he’ll be only delighted to see you.”
He pulled on the door, yanking it out of Theo’s hand.
“Don’t call me again, Theo. That number won’t work and I’ll make damn sure to impress on young Michael there that I don’t want him giving you any more numbers.”
Theo didn’t wait to see him leave. He sped through the garage, back onto the main road, and broke into a run. By the time he got to the park, his face was dripping with sweat and somewhere deep inside, beneath the thumping of his heart and the blood rushing in his ears, he felt that nameless dread that seemed to rise from his feet whenever he ran. Even today.
He stopped in front of the church, swivelling his head frantically, taking in the flat green space, the handful of stunted trees. There was a bench in the far corner and a figure was slumped on it. Theo broke into a run again but when he was nearly there, he found himself slowing down. Because he’d seen Neville’s camouflage Converse under the seat and now he heard the low moaning. It wasn’t sobbing, it wasn’t crying, it was just a low one-note lament. I can’t do this, he thought. I can’t see any more broken people.
A memory swam to the surface but just as it was about to break the water, it fell away. It was the sound, he’d heard that sound before. Was it Shema? It didn’t sound like Shema, it sounded like his father but it couldn’t have been. More tricks.
He rounded the bench slowly.
He couldn’t see his friend’s face. His head was buried in his jacket and sunk into his chest. But he could see his hand, held palm upwards on his knees. Theo retched. Neville’s right hand had been reduced to mush – battered, broken. They must’ve used a hammer and in the middle of the palm, there was a red, gaping hole.
“Jesus.”
He sat gingerly on the bench. He didn’t know what to do. Neville didn’t even seem to know he was there. Theo touched his shoulder.
“Alright, Nev?”
Finally, Neville raised his head. His right eye was swollen shut, there were round burn marks on his broad forehead and on his cheeks, and his nose was bloodied and broken. Through his swollen lips came that awful sound. It was endless. It filled the world.
Theo realised what the sound reminded him of. Neville was moaning the low ochón of the professional grief-singers of old Ireland. Keening from caoineadh, the Irish for ‘to cry’. It was meant to help mourners grieve at a time when life was slow enough to stop the clocks when someone died. Máistear Burke had played them an old example, saying the tradition had died out in the 1950s. But here on this bench, more than half a century later, it’d been resurrected.
“Ah fuck, Neville.”
There was nothing else to say. Tears ran down Theo’s cheeks and he put an arm around Neville’s shivering shoulders. With the other hand, he pulled out his mobile. He called a cab.
“We’re going to the hospital. They’ll fix you up, Neville. They’ll… you’ll be alright, now.”
Neville, locked in his pain, didn’t react. But Theo knew that if his friend could speak, he would tell him he was talking shite. Nothing would be alright now. How could it be?
r /> CHAPTER TEN
Deirdre’s phone bleeped.
“Who’s that?”
Fergal was sprawled on the sofa, watching the news. He’d barely said a word since he came in this afternoon, racing the van into the drive so fast it made her fear the worst. But he hadn’t been drinking. He stormed past her without a word and went straight upstairs. She heard the shower start and then he must’ve had a nap because he didn’t come down again until they were having their tea after she got back from Theo’s shift. She’d been let go early – Des said good weather was always bad for business, although in his typically glum way, he’d said rain was no picnic either.
She hadn’t dared ask Fergal where he’d been all morning. She picked her phone from the coffee table.
Got him he’s bad at the hospital.
She blanked the screen, pressed the mute button and put the phone down carefully.
“Just Dad. Asking how we are.”
“Are ye not going to answer him, then? Or is that too difficult a question for ye?”
Deirdre ignored the sarcasm. No job but listen to the mouth on him.
“Nah, I might call him in a while. You goin’ out tonight?”
“With what?”
Fergal spat the words at her. Then he sighed like a man who has seen his own future and his hand reached towards her across the sofa. She was huddled in the corner, knees drawn up. She could well imagine what the body language gurus would say. And they wouldn’t be wrong. She looked at the hand, lying there, fingers outstretched towards her. It was the same hand that hit her so why did it make her feel this way?
“Sorry, love. I’m not meself. I’ve a lot on my mind,” he breathed.
Deirdre stretched her hand out to meet his or rather it felt like her hand did it off its own bat. Their fingers laced together easily, as they had been doing for years and she automatically began to stroke the base of his thumb with her own thumb, as she had always done. Maybe there was still something to hold onto. I’m like a teenager, she thought, shy and scared. Like I was when we met, but Jesus, the reasons have changed.
Fergal sighed again. He had closed his eyes, head thrown back. It’d been a while since she had looked at him straight on, instead of furtively squinting so as not to catch his eye. Since the night he pounded her, she had avoided looking directly at him, as though he was a too-bright sun. He apologised the next day, of course. He’d come into the sitting room where Grace had tucked her in, begging her to forgive him and blaming stress. She wanted to scream: “Stress, you animal? We’re all bloody stressed. We’re all shit-scared because you, you, lost your job and then you come in here and beat me like a dog.”
But the scream stayed at the back of her throat. And when he knelt by her side as she lay still curled on the couch and put his head by hers, she reached up and stroked his hair. She couldn’t help herself.
“Please, Fergal. You can’t do this. The kids… They can’t see this. It’ll wreck their heads. Grace is raging but scared too, and the boys… they’re frightened too now but what if they grow up to think this is normal? D’you want that? Is that what we wanted when we said we’d start a family?”
His shoulders started to shake.
“I’m sorry. I love ye, I love the kids. It’s just… I feel so angry, so fuckin’ useless. What’s the point, ye know? I worked hard, I was doing well, and then it’s all just taken away. How am I supposed to stay on the right path when someone has a gun to me head? I ask you.”
He’d always been a bit soft, Deirdre thought even as she whispered comfort. He’d always thought the world owed him something. That gave him confidence when he was younger, provided him with the swagger that had attracted her, but the chip on his shoulder hadn’t aged well. It made him sound pathetic.
“What’m I supposed to do, Dee? And, I know, I know, I should go easy on the drink. It makes everything worse. Makes me do things I don’t mean to.”
“You’d no drink taken last night, Fergal.”
He didn’t say anything to that, just buried his face further into the sofa. She pitied him and she despised him and she loved him all at once. And how could you hold all that in your heart without it bursting at the seams?
After that day, he did make an effort. He couldn’t totally shut off whatever rage was eating him up though. He still roared so that Kevin stayed late in his room in the mornings, only edging nervously down the stairs once he was sure the van had gone. Conor was barely ever at home, coming back only to sleep and rarely crossing paths with his dad. Grace was busy with her exams, and after that dreadful two weeks of doors slamming, tears and sullen regrets, she got a job at the Liffey Valley shopping centre, as she’d promised. She also spent a lot of time with Neville, though God knows where. Deirdre couldn’t fathom why her daughter was so taken with that boy but she supposed he must’ve something special because Grace wasn’t stupid. Then again, she’d not thought herself stupid as a girl either and look how that had turned out.
These days, the house was so tense – doors solidly closed, faces averted, silence like treacle – that Deirdre was glad to get out and go to the restaurant, even though the work was getting harder and the hours longer as the summer rush began.
After he was laid off, Fergal had crashed into a kind of depression, sometimes sleeping for hours during the day. But he’d mostly kept his fists to himself. He went to the pub less but returned more pissed than before so when he did go after her, he only managed a few weak slaps before collapsing onto the sofa, or the floor. Nothing she couldn’t handle.
Then he’d started going out most days around midday, returning around tea-time or later. She’d no idea where he was, and she wasn’t about to ask. Eventually, last week, he’d said he got some casual work driving for some big import company. He didn’t tell her the name and she didn’t care. At least he was earning again, though money was still tight. He didn’t have to work every day though, so sometimes he stayed in bed or slouched on the sofa, watching Formula One or football. On those days, he was like a rain-cloud pissing on their lives. Or like her dad had been just after her mam died. It must be true then, she’d thought: women really do marry their fathers. We’re our own worst enemies in the end.
When Fergal was late coming home, she made herself scarce, sometimes racing up the stairs as soon as she heard the van on the gravel. She’d already be in her pyjamas so all she had to do was jump under the covers and fake sleep. If he didn’t find her downstairs, he rarely came looking, instead switching on the telly and slumping onto the sofa, where she’d find him in the morning. Sometimes, he’d be mad then.
“You couldn’t have got me a blanket? I’m shaggin’ freezing.”
She would apologise and bring him tea. Grace watched warily from the corners, a silent lady justice.
Deirdre dared a crooked glance at her phone. There were no other messages.
“Right, I’m going to go up and lie down.” Fergal heaved himself off the sofa. “I’m absolutely knackered.”
He left, running his hand along her arm as he passed. Deirdre closed her eyes for a moment as the door shut behind him. He was knackered? She was absolutely wiped. How long could she keep swinging between tenderness and hate? Was this it? Was she going to be held hostage by these feelings for the rest of her life? That’s what Grace didn’t get. Deirdre had no other future. Everyone only had the one, in the end. It might not be as simple as making your bed and then sleeping in it, but mostly there were no other bleedin’ beds.
She took her phone and walked quietly to the kitchen. She stopped at the bottom of the stairs. She could just see the door of their bedroom. It was shut. He’d be asleep or playing that bloody Angry Birds on his phone. She’d snorted the other day when he told her what he was doing. It was, given everything, hilarious, but he didn’t get it, and that made it even funnier so that she left him scowling over the jingle-jangle of his game while she giggled herself down the stairs. She went through to the kitchen and out the back door into the tiny garden, just
a single row of paving stones and a handkerchief of yellowing grass. She went to the very edge by the paint-streaked fence and dialled Theo.
No answer but after she hung up a text lit up the screen.
Can’t talk in here. Call u back.
It was still warm though the colours were beginning to fade as dusk cast her veil over the shabby gardens and crowded houses. Deirdre always liked the end of the day. There was a soft beauty in it, a kind of forgiveness of light. Swallows darted above her head. She could hear some kids out on the grass in the middle of the estate, playing football. That’d be where Kevin was. Conor was probably down at the slots with his friends and Grace was working. She’d be back soon. Unless Theo had told her. He might’ve done if Neville was being kept in for whatever they’d done to the poor lad. She shivered. If the last few days had taught her anything, it was that you never really knew what the bloody kids were up to. She wondered if all the mothers and fathers in all the houses around her were thinking the same, wondering where the children were or feeling that slight unease that started as soon as they were able to leave the house alone and that lasted, she supposed, until you drew your last breath. Maybe all those other parents were also in their gardens, making sneaky phone calls. She couldn’t see over the hedge around her little patch to know.
Her phone rang.
“Theo, how is he?”
“He’s stable now. I’m having to make myself fairly scarce cos I think the doctor is suspicious. He might even call the Gardaí. I told him it was an accident on a building site but he doesn’t believe me. It’s a crap story, I know, but I couldn’t think of anything else on the spot, like. There’s a nurse – she’s a right sharp one. She’s already had a go at me, telling me to cop on and give up the guys that did it. But sure, I don’t know who exactly it was.”
Rain Falls on Everyone Page 14