Then I turned to the profile pages of the Illuminar crew. The final entry on the page was titled “Visitors”, and sure enough, there he was – Richie’s familiar face grinning out at me, looking more like the guy I met that first day at the lunch – he was wearing a collar and tie in the photo with no sign of the double chin. In his profile it said: Irish Chronicle journalist Richard Blake will be on board the Illuminar for the first leg of our Southern Ocean expedition. He will be writing about life on the ship and the progress of the campaign to save the whales.
And just underneath his profile was his email address.
I looked at it for a few seconds.
Oh what the heck, I thought. This is all too much of a coincidence not to see where it takes me.
And before I could change my mind, I started tapping away at the keys.
Chapter 17
RICHARD
My initial desire for my time on board the Illuminar to pass as quickly as possible was soon replaced by a feeling of dread at what lay ahead of me. As dry land came closer, the anticipation on board grew more intense. The talk over breakfast on Tuesday morning was all about what everyone would do, or would buy, when they reached Auckland: Jules was planning to buy some fresh pineapple, Takumi wanted an espresso, Ray was going to get a haircut, and Sinéad was just looking forward to walking more than fifty metres in one direction.
Me, I was going home to bury my mother.
I sighed as I stared out at the unending horizon after breakfast. Then I turned away from the railing and started to walk around the perimeter of the ship’s deck. I’d found myself out on the deck of the Illuminar quite a lot over the few days since my mother’s death. I’d walk around, or just stand by the railings for hours staring at the waves below, my mind racing with thoughts and memories.
What is it about death that gives it licence to uncover all sorts of memories – good and bad?
The smells and sounds of the sea reminded me so much of my youth – hanging out with Ben at his family’s house in Clifden in the West of Ireland. If I closed my eyes I could even have been sitting up in the tree-house there, Ben beside me, looking out across the bay, chatting, laughing and knocking back a few contraband beers from his family’s hotel.
I smiled momentarily at the memory, but my smile quickly faded as the bad memories flooded back.
It happened about six months after we left school. We were all just beginning to settle into college life. I was in my first year of an arts degree at University College Dublin, studying three heavyweight subjects – Economics, English and Politics – so I had a big workload. I’d also started to play rugby for UCD, making the squad for the firsts with relatively little effort. There was a lot going on between my studies, rugby and a hectic social life, and I threw myself headfirst into it all.
Jonesy and Dec were with me at UCD, along with about ten or eleven old boys from our school. Ben had gone to Shannon in County Clare to study Hotel Management. I remember being surprised about that at the time – like me, Ben loved subjects like English and History in school. He always had his head stuck in a book, and was a brilliant debater. In fact I remember him saying several times that he was thinking of going on to study law, maybe take the Bar exams – he would have made an excellent barrister. He dropped the idea when we were in sixth year though, saying he was going to go into the family hotel business. I knew he wasn’t looking forward to catering college, but I guess he didn’t want to let his family down. That was Ben all over: a people-pleaser.
I didn’t see so much of him after we left Ashvale. He wasn’t able to come to Majorca in July – where twenty or so of us lads went for two weeks to recover from the Leaving Certificate exams. Ben had to stay at home for the summer to work at the family hotel in Clifden. He did come to Dublin a couple of times after we’d started college, staying in the flat the lads and I were renting. The last time I saw him was when he was up for a match in late November. He seemed to be in good form all weekend. I didn’t notice anything different about him. Nothing at all. I’ll never forget the last time I saw him.
“Superb weekend, Rich. Thanks for that,” he said pulling on his coat in the hallway of our flat. “Don’t forget to come down to Shannon soon, eh? Or maybe we can all hook up again here in Dublin for a few pints over Christmas?”
“Absolutely, my man, absolutely,” I said, opening the front door. “I’ll organise the lads for that.” Myself and Ed would be spending the holidays in London with my mother, but I was sure we’d get to meet up at some stage before or after that. “I’ll give you a buzz over the next week or so for sure.”
“Excellent. Chat then, Rich. Good luck in the exams. I’ll see you soon.”
I watched him walk off down the road into town to catch his bus back to Shannon.
I was busy cramming for end-of-term exams over the next couple of weeks, then I got caught up in the round of parties and nights out that followed. Ben left a couple of messages on the answering machine in the flat. I called him back after one, but missed him. He returned my call, but we didn’t manage to connect.
Then Ed and I went to London. It was a pretty dismal week. My mother was still withdrawn and morose after seeing my father and his new girlfriend Louisa together at Ashvale earlier that year. Ed was a bit subdued as a result – he spent most of the time playing guitar in his room, just filling in time until he could go back to Ashvale in January. I put up with it all as best I could, but I was in a big hurry to get back to Dublin. I was going out with Paula Hunt at the time. I’d met her at a rugby-club do in early November and had been trying in vain to get her into bed ever since. I was getting very frustrated with her unfailing ability to resist my charms, and was already considering ditching her for a girl of easier virtue. Before I did though, I’d decided to give it one last shot.
It was just after New Year and I was back in the flat in Dublin a few days earlier than normal having made up an excuse to my mother of having to get back for rugby training. None of the other lads were back so I had the flat to myself for the night. Paula was on her way over, having told her Dalkey folks that she was staying with her best friend for the night.
I was in good form as I put the finishing touches to the spaghetti bolognese dinner I was sure would be the final ingredient required to seduce Paula into bed. I tidied up a bit and cleared the sitting area by shoving discarded mucky rugby jerseys, empty beer cans and crisp packets under the sofa, or behind the curtains. When I was finished, I checked my watch and realised that Paula was over fifteen minutes late. Irritated, I turned on the television to watch the football.
When the phone rang I assumed it was Paula calling to let me know she was either cancelling or running late. I didn’t want her to think I was too bothered so I let it ring for a while, then turned up the volume on the television and answered it.
“Y’ello,” I said, as casually as I could.
“Rich? Is that you, man? I tried to get hold of you in London, but your mother said you were in Dublin for rugby training – I didn’t know we had training this week.”
It was Jonesy. He was talking so fast I could hardly make out what he was saying. I pressed the mute button on the television remote, and sat up straight.
“Hey, Jonesy. Slow down, man. What’s up?”
And then he told me.
He told me that Ben, our friend of seven years, was dead. He’d taken a massive overdose of painkillers that morning on his arrival back to his digs in Shannon after Christmas.
There was no note. Nobody seemed to know why he’d done it. He was just gone.
I went through the next few hours in a daze. Paula arrived at the flat to find me slumped on the sofa still holding the receiver, the television on mute in the background, burnt bolognese sauce and spaghetti stuck to the pots in the kitchen. She got me over to Sheila’s that night, but I don’t remember seeing much of her after that.
The lads all came to the funeral in Clifden, every last guy from our year, and most of their families too.
It was the first time we’d all been together in one place since leaving school, but not one of us had ever imagined we’d be meeting up again under those circumstances – to say goodbye to one of our own, to say goodbye to Ben.
The tall stone church on the hill overlooking Clifden town was overflowing with people, and many had to stand outside in the car park in the wind and rain to listen to the service on a loudspeaker. We all sat together a few rows behind the MacDonagh family at the front of the church. The lads were pretty cut up at the time. Most of them broke down at some stage during the funeral, or beforehand, or in the weeks that followed.
But I never cried.
I would look at Jonesy, who sobbed his big soft heart out in JC’s pub the night before the funeral and all through the service, at Dec who I could hear sniffing quietly behind me as we carried the coffin on our shoulders out of the church to the strains of “Be Not Afraid”, and at Jacko who stood supported on either side by his parents as he cried freely at the graveside.
And I would look at the MacDonaghs – at Ben’s parents, and at Lucy. Tears flowed down Mr Mac’s cheeks as Jangler threw a fist of clay on top of the coffin, and Mrs Mac had to lean on a pale-faced Lucy for support, their eyes bloodshot from days of tears. I almost envied them all. I wanted so badly to feel something too. I wanted to cry. I even tried to make myself do it by concentrating on Ben and the memories.
I tried to imagine the pain he must have been in to have taken his own life. It gutted me to think of him going through it all alone. I tortured myself regularly with ‘what-ifs’. What if I had noticed he was unhappy? What if I had called him more often? What if I had told him to forget about the family hotel business, and go study what he wanted? What if I had made the time to meet him the week before he died? It was a never-ending circle of criticism and accusation, with me standing as judge, jury and the accused. And in every case, in every scenario, the verdict was the same: Guilty as charged.
My parents both stayed in London through it all. Even though my mother knew the MacDonaghs well, Mrs Mac in particular, she didn’t come over for the funeral. She just about managed to call me the day after he died to see “how I was after poor Ben’s passing”. I said I was fine and told her not to worry. It was a strained conversation, though, and I didn’t hear from her again for weeks after that. My father tried to call me a couple of times too, but I avoided his calls – he was the absolute last person I wanted to speak to.
Sheila and Derek wanted me to come back and stay with them after the funeral, but the lads and I all agreed that we wanted to be together – back in the flat. Ed even came to stay with me there until he had to go back to school. It was good to have them all around but we didn’t really talk about Ben – we all just sat around, watched sport and videos, and drank too much cheap beer.
So as my best friend was buried at the premature age of nineteen, I tried to convince myself and everyone else that I was fine. I made jokes to disguise my dark thoughts and feelings, and even tried to cheer the other lads up when they were down in the weeks following the funeral. But despite the act that I put on, those weeks and months were very bad. When I was alone, I found myself engulfed in a dark place where all I could think of was Ben. I just wanted to turn back time, to go back six months to when everything was okay, when I knew I could turn around and see him just behind me on the pitch waiting to catch a pass.
As term went on, I drank more and more, and shagged about with more girls than names I could remember. I skipped most of my lectures and handed up assignments late, or not at all. I even started to miss rugby training, eventually getting myself kicked off the squad. I made out to the lads that I didn’t care, that training was just curtailing my social life, but I was slowly and surely losing my grip on reality. All the while I was living a double life – pretending to the outside world that there was nothing wrong, behaving like the big man about college, making out to the lads and to everyone that I was living the dream, having a ball, when in reality I was just trying to escape from the black cloud that was my constant companion. The drink, parties and casual sex helped me to forget momentarily but, when I was alone, and there was no one to pretend to, I sank down deep into the numbing darkness.
The crunch finally came that summer. I was in America with Dec and Jonesy on a student working visa for the few months. It was a good trip, and I was enjoying surfing and hanging out on the beach during breaks from our work as waiters in the local restaurants of The Hamptons. I was still drinking and partying hard, but I’d started to feel a bit better. That is, until I got my exam results.
I’d managed to scrape a pass in English and Politics with a lot of luck and the minimum of last-minute studying of borrowed notes, but I failed Economics. I was completely floored – I’d always been in the top five in my year in most subjects at Ashvale, and I usually sailed through exams. I had certainly never failed anything in my life before – least of all Economics.
I had to call my mother to tell her my results and she wasted no time in letting me know how disappointed she was in me. Ed was a bit more sympathetic, but even he said he wasn’t surprised, the way I’d been acting lately. He said that Dad had been on to him and was worried about me too. None of their intervention made any impact on me though, other than to make me feel worse, and to take me back into the dark place that I’d thought I’d been beginning to escape.
So I had to come home early from the States to repeat Economics. I wanted to go back to the flat in Dublin to study, but instead had to go and stay with Sheila and Derek. My mother insisted – she said I needed “some grounding and stability” and refused to pay the next year’s rent on the flat if I didn’t comply. I retaliated by staying in my room in Sheila and Derek’s house in protest. I was not one bit happy at being back in Ireland for the summer while the lads were still off having a ball in the States. I couldn’t summon up any enthusiasm to hit the books, and I would barely grunt to Sheila and Derek, despite their best efforts to shake me out of myself.
They must have called Jangler in desperation.
The first I knew he was coming over was when I was hauled down to the sitting room by Derek. Jangler had just returned from his own summer holiday visiting relatives in Boston, so he spent what seemed like forever regaling Sheila and Derek with his travel tales while I shuffled, bored and pissed-off, on the sofa opposite him.
After a time, Sheila and Derek left the room and Jangler turned his attention to me.
“So, Richard, I hear that things aren’t going so well for you in college at the moment?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Your aunt tells me you’ve failed some exams, and have stopped playing the rugby?”
I said nothing, just looked away from him out the window.
“How do you feel about that, Richard?” he asked.
I turned around. “Fine, Father, thanks.”
Jangler sighed. “I have to say I’m extremely disappointed to hear that, Richard. I had high hopes for you – both for your studies and for your rugby career.”
I looked down at my feet, and said nothing.
“I can’t say I’m surprised though. You’ve had a difficult time over the last few years since your parents split, haven’t you?” he said softly.
I shrugged again, still looking at my feet.
Jangler paused for a few seconds. “And, you know, a lot of your friends have been struggling to come to terms with Ben’s passing. They miss him a lot. We all do really. It was very unexpected, wasn’t it?”
I nodded slowly.
Jangler went on. “I question myself that I wasn’t there to help him, Richard. He was a fine young man.”
I glanced up at him. “He was, Father.”
“You two were very good friends, weren’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“I think he looked up to you, Richard – you know, being his team captain.”
I nodded again. It was probably true and I didn’t trust myself to say too much more.
Jangler sighed, then got up and walked over to the window. He stood staring out for some time. I knew I wasn’t helping him much and I felt bad about that because I liked Jangler, but right at that moment I just wanted to be left alone, to just go back up to my room.
After a few minutes of silence, he came over to sit beside me on the sofa. “So what do you imagine he’d think of you now then?”
I looked up at him. “Sorry, Father?”
“Sitting back here in Dublin feeling sorry for yourself, when you could still have been off having fun with your friends in America. I don’t think Ben would be too impressed if he were here today, would he?”
I glared at him. I couldn’t believe it – the nerve of him. Who was he to know what Ben would, or wouldn’t, have thought about anything – let alone what he would have thought of me? I was supposed to be his best friend, and even I didn’t know what he was thinking.
I sat up straight in my seat. “With the greatest of respect, Father, Ben’s not here. He’s like – dead, y’know? So it doesn’t matter a God-damn whether he’d be impressed or not. He’s not here to be anything.” I stood up. “So now if we’re finished here, I have to go and study.”
“No, Richard. We have not finished. You’ll get plenty of time to study, believe me. Sit down, please.”
I knew better than to mess with Jangler when he used the stern tone I recognised so well. So I sat back down, folded my arms and stared at the wall ahead.
He continued in a softer tone. “Yes. Sadly it is true: Ben is gone, and that’s very difficult to understand, and to accept. I know that, Richard, believe me I do. It’s a sad waste of a young life, and of a good young man. But I want to help you to try to understand what happened.”
He paused and I looked at him.
He had tears in his eyes. He wasn’t just spinning me a line.
Look into the Eye Page 16