The Death of an Irish Tradition

by Bartholomew Gill

  Then Pegeen had begun braying, her raucous cries spreading out through the darkness and frightening a flock of mallards in the reeds. They rose, flapping and complaining, and with one motion Matthews was on his feet and had his hand on the chain of the lamp.

  Outside from the front where his office was he heard a curse and the slam of a car door and other footsteps, many of them running toward the buildings.

  The dogs in the kennels were alerted now and began the barking that Matthews had listened to so carefully so many times before; the din they sent up at night whenever somebody passed by on the road, the sound that had always brought him to the window, his hand groping in the darkness for the drawer and the weapon he kept in the desk close by.

  But it was too late for that. Something heavy struck the front door and glass showered the tiles in the reception room, striking the wall, the interior door, and skittering under it.

  He only just made the landing when the door was kicked open and the beam from the torch, a brilliant funnel of bluish light, flooded the hall.

  And then nothing for a moment, as the light flashed up the stairs, down the length of the passageway toward the back door, and then into the now-dark sitting room where the radio was still playing.

  From the backyard he heard a shot, and Pegeen’s braying stopped suddenly. He then heard her wheeze pitiably. Another shot. The dogs were quieting now, and low voices came to him from the kennels. The murmur of several men.

  The light moved into the sitting room, and Matthews eased himself along the wall toward the bedroom and its window that gave onto the roof of the kennels.

  How had they quieted the dogs and with what? Mince—it had to be. Could he drop down over them without setting them off again?

  Pegeen, he thought. The bastards. He’d had her for twenty-three years, off and on. She had come with him there from Leenane, after the farm had been taken from him and he had needed the new identity. She had been all that he’d had left from the other life, the sole thing that had tied him to his family and his past.

  He opened the drawer of the nightstand and slid out the silver automatic, thumbing off the safety and shoving it under his belt.

  It had been hot during the day and the window was open, and down in the yard he could see other lights being played around the verges of the marsh.

  And a flash in the doorway and feet on the stairs.

  He slid his leg out, eased his body under the window, and then tried to lower himself down, but the drop was farther than he had thought and his fingers couldn’t hold the sill. One hand slipped, then the other, a fingernail breaking and his fingers scraping down the masonry, catching at last on the hard stone of the house itself.

  The flash of light out the window above him was almost tangible, freighted and lethal and blinding, like the blast of a bomb.

  But he couldn’t hold on and he heard steps approaching and smelled the scorch of a cigar, rank and acrid and strong.

  In one motion he let go and grabbed for the weapon.

  His heels struck the roof of the kennel, which roared like a drum, and he jerked the barrel at the window and fired.

  The blast snapped back his arm, and he rolled over and skidded, face first, down the sheet-metal roof into the darkness, falling heavily onto a stack of turf.

  The dogs were roaring again, and he heard shouts from the sides of the house.

  And in the window a gun opened up—something big and quick, like a sten, cutting down into the darkness and through the overhang.

  Matthews scrambled to his feet and began running in a low crouch, using the side of the house to shield himself from the fire above.

  But lights splashed over the grass of the lawn and caught him halfway to the marsh, and the gun rapped out once more, spattering the ground around him.

  The bullet slammed into his lower back and hurled him into the reeds. And then something went wrong with his hand as well. Was he still holding the gun? He wasn’t, he didn’t think, but it didn’t matter, now.

  The tide was in and he was up to his neck in water. He pulled in a breath and went under, down to the mucky bottom where he thought he could feel the firm roots of the reeds. He tried to pull himself forward, out into the Boyne, but he couldn’t tell if he was moving. His entire back was a burning, searing center of pain, and below that he couldn’t feel anything. But he crawled on or thought he did, scratching and tearing at the muddy bottom, trying to keep himself down and moving forward. Until he began to feel himself fading and could no longer find reeds or make his arms move and he had to come up.

  Matthews broke into clear water beyond the reeds where a three-quarter moon made the river seem silver and as tranquil as any placid lake. And he was concealed from the shore. He could hear the dogs and the men, but only now and again did the lights wink at him through gaps in the reeds or pass overhead in shafts that were subsumed by the darkness.

  The water was cold there, out where the current flowed, and it seemed to soothe his back like two cooling hands. He tilted back his neck, the better to float. The sky was limpid and bright, stars stacked to eternity, it seemed, and whatever had driven him to flee from the house and into the water seemed to leave him. He no longer cared if he lived or died, and suddenly he was very tired. He seemed to be leaving his body—his arms and legs, even his face and head—and retreating to someplace as distant and small as the stars above him.

  He couldn’t remember how long he had remained like that, uncaring, inert, simply drifting with the incoming tide, but it had to have been several hours at least, for he remembered only the sky suddenly becoming black and his head and shoulders knocking up against something hard.

  The quayside or a pier. And his shoe was on something too. A footing. Slane. He had the right kind of friends there, ones who’d understand that he’d been wronged and what he’d have to do. If only he could recover.

  And now, there in the van with the night coming on, he had only his pain for company and his hate, and he cozened and saved every galling throb against the moment when he’d take his revenge. And it would be sweet and he wouldn’t care what happened to him after.

  The door opened, but he did not turn to it. “How is it now, Jimmy?” the other man asked, bending over him. “Will I call the doctor?”

  “Better, Mick,” he lied. “Much better. Let’s not bother him further. I’m beholden enough.”

  Horses—Murray thought, looking up from the computer’s printouts that were heaped on the desk in his study—they’d be the ruin of him yet. Not a person or a thing that he’d encountered in the venture had proved rewarding in any…well, that wasn’t exactly true. He tossed the pencil down on the stack and stood. But maybe about even that he was codding himself. It depended on how he handled it, especially now.

  He removed the cigar from his mouth and stepped closer to the window, peering through the gap in the heavy, velveteen drapes, out at the tree-shaded street and the yellow convertible that he’d heard pull up many minutes before.

  Maybe he’d wanted too much for Sean, and for himself too. Maybe there really was a born, a genetic aristocracy, people who were just naturally better and finer, and who knew and could handle, buy, sell, and enjoy things like horses and yachts, and who had that certain, sure touch with people that put them in their place.

  But no, look at the girl Mairead, the child of a simple country woman, and she had that ease of manner, taste and talent too. She was like those others—content in her abilities and her…inabilities as well, not always blundering off after this and that, trying to be something she was not. Like him and like Sean. Not knowing why but simply grasping, wanting what others had and for what? To show them. And what? That they weren’t common, when in fact the very effort marked them. Indelibly.

  But it didn’t help, thinking like that, given their—he glanced at the desk—situation.

  And the car door had opened, and Sean had stepped out.

  Fool of a father, Murray thought, fool of a son. But it was too la
te to change that now, and it was one thing to think those thoughts in the quiet of one’s study and quite another to act them out. How often had Murray told himself he’d be one way and found himself another and always the same—the man who hankered after success, had all the trappings but none of the appreciation of money and power. And there he’d only succeeded in passing the worst parts of his personality down to his son. And none of the strength that had…saved him.

  Quickly now he moved to the study door and out into the hall. From the front door he called to his son, who had been on the point of walking past the gate.

  And he had the sunglasses on again. And the stiff gait, all squared shoulders with his weight on his heels, like a drunk with a jag on who was trying to conceal it. Was that what he’d been doing alone in the car?

  Murray felt his gorge rising and his shoulder twitched involuntarily. “Where’re you off to?”

  “Thought I’d pop down to the pub.”

  “With the Show and your exams coming up?”

  “I don’t see you stinting yourself.”

  Murray heard a door open behind him on the landing and he glanced up.

  It was his wife, dressed in a vivid red dressing-gown and looking like a successful tout’s moll in a Grade B, British movie. She too tried hard, he reminded himself, but she had even less of an idea of how it was done. Small and squat, her hair dark and curly and as well cared for as a clipped hedge—what could he tell her, what could he say? Should he try to explain, apologize for all he had brought on both of them, for their lifetime of striving? No—it was better to say nothing. Not now. Not with what was facing them.

  “Could you step in here now for a moment, son? I’d like to have a word with you. Won’t take long, that’s a promise.”

  And that he had to pander to the boy, the pleading note in his voice, the conciliation—it showed him all the more how he had failed, had spoiled himself by giving in so completely to his ambitions, had spoiled the boy by the example.

  His wife started down the stairs, her step heavy, beefy, her seeming as out of place under the brilliant Georgian chandelier as she looked on a horse at a hunt. But then, Murray knew he himself appeared no better.

  Go to bed! Murray wanted to shout. But this was important and he couldn’t afford to lose his temper, to climb into the role he affected in his offices and…in the world. “Just a little money matter, Bridie,” he said in a soothing tone. “Expenses and the Show.”

  “Don’t go too hard on him now,” she said. “It won’t be long before he’s out on his own.” She turned and stepped back to her own study, her ankle still narrow even with her size. A good woman, Murray thought, and deserving of…better? No—different.

  His son brushed by him, hands in pockets, his hair flopping about his shoulders, the goon’s glasses still on his face.

  Murray was tempted to slam the door but he held off. And with the study door too.

  “Drink?”

  “No—why don’t you have mine for me? You probably could use it.”

  But still Murray kept it in.

  “They stop round to the garage?” the son asked in Trinity tones, nonchalantly, the final word sounding almost French. “Is that what this is all about?”

  “And isn’t it enough?” Murray was tempted to fill the brandy snifter but he held off. “You handled yourself rather poorly today.”

  “And you any better, drunk or whatever it was you were. Anyhow,” he sat in a cushioned chair and draped one leg over the arm, “how does it matter?”

  “Matter?” Murray asked in a quiet tone, turning to the boy. “Lying under oath doesn’t matter? Do you know that they’ve picked up the garage mechanic who is supposed to have worked on your car? They’ve got him down in the Castle; they’re grilling him right now.”

  The son only hunched his shoulders and looked away. “I thought you said he was dependable.”

  “And he is, as much as any man, but don’t you underestimate that culchie sonofabitch, O’Shaughnessy. He’d like nothing better than to hook us on this one, with me down there representing you and all.” It was getting out of hand now—his temper, his persona.

  Murray took a long drink from the snifter. “And don’t make any mistake about it. He’ll lean on that fellow, and there’s only so much—” he glanced at the desk and the computer records on it, “—input I can have in the matter. He’ll crack him, he will. And then where will you be?” He moved toward the son.

  “But you were representing me, and all,” he replied, making fun of Murray’s thick Dublin brogue. “I didn’t sign, did I? My—” he flicked his wrist, “—memory will suddenly return.”

  Christ, Murray thought, just what the hell was it he had taken that he didn’t appreciate the seriousness of his position? And Murray’s own. Something like this, a scandal, and everybody would start looking at him hard. “And what will your memory tell you, I’m after wanting to know?”

  The son jerked his head to him. His lower lip, which was protrusive, jumped toward his nose. Through his bottom teeth he said, “Are you after, are you after wanting—indeed?”

  Murray’s wrath rose up inside him. He felt the bitter sting in his stomach and chest. Sweat exuded from his forehead and upper lip, and his breathing was suddenly heavy. He glared down at his son, his only child, whose smile was supercilious and foppish, the sunglasses wrapping his eyes, like some guru on the cover of a rock album.

  He knew it was wrong—he told himself as his muscles tensed and his torso twisted, cocking his body—that, if anything, understanding was now called for, that he should listen and learn what the problem was and try to help him, but that silly, grinning face taunted him. “Can the truth be any worse than the lie?” he roared.

  The smile only spread across the face, crooked and loose, and Murray gave in suddenly, completely to his public self—the blusterer, the pompous bully, the man with money and power who wasn’t afraid to use either to get what he wanted.

  His hand lashed out and caught the son on the side of the face, more like a hard, crossing punch than a slap, and sent the glasses careering through the pewter mugs that lined the sideboard of the small bar.

  Murray stood over his son in a slight crouch, waiting for some small sign that he’d try to retaliate. He was puffing and felt the blood pounding in his ears, the delicious giddiness that venting his anger always brought. But more too—things were slightly grainy, and he didn’t hear the door open and couldn’t see his wife standing there until the son turned his head and looked up, challenging him, it seemed, with the blood that was trickling from his nose and the corner of his mouth and with those eyes.

  They staggered Murray.

  At first he didn’t know what he was seeing. They looked like the eyes of a fly but massive and popped and an agaty blue color with the merest pinpricks for pupils. And he was smiling—a dreadful, bloody, foolish smile.

  Murray roared. It came from deep within him, and he found himself with the son’s arms in his hands, having lifted him right out of the chair. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—what have you done to yourself?”

  But the son began flailing with his hands and elbows, catching his father in the face and chest and Murray let him go.

  Turning to his wife, he said, “We’ve got to help him, Bridie. He needs our help.”

  The son pushed by him and staggered, looking about wildly for the sunglasses, then thrashed out of the study and the house.

  Murray began to cry. Tears gushed from his eyes.

  The wife didn’t know what to do—to go after the son or to comfort her husband.

  Murray thought for a moment of calling the police, of turning the boy in, of their getting the best help they could for him, over in England where they knew of such things.

  Trinity—goddamn the place and goddamn the whim that had made him want to have his son go there. Ruined him, it did. Corrupted him. Made him into a bloody…degenerate.

  But then it occurred to Murray, and for the first time, that drugs
might not be all of Sean’s troubles.

  He straightened up. Blearily, through his tears, he could see his wife approaching him, her arms out.

  No—he clasped her to him—he remembered the agitation, the despair that had marked Sean when he had come to him saying he needed an excuse, an alibi, for the time during which the Caughey woman had been killed, that it was well known among his friends they had quarreled, that he’d been out “…just driving around” yesterday afternoon and in Ballsbridge. “Somebody might have seen the car. Would you know if they’ll check?”

  Murray had thought of McGarr, and he had known they’d check, that there were probably dozens of such cars in the country. He knew of another himself. “But where in Ballsbridge were you driving? On that street?” He had nodded. “Why?” “I was just seeing if Mairead would be about, but I didn’t stop. Honest.” And there had been something in the way he had said that that had told Murray he was lying. But not about murder—that had never crossed his mind. Still, he knew the son well enough and thought it best to come up with something definite that he’d been doing at the time.

  It was a mistake, he now knew. Better to have let the chips fall and be done with it. He was their son, but those things he took probably made him into somebody else entirely. Somebody violent and—.

  He himself was only after knocking back the son’s salary, thinking it would make him more aggressive. What if, by so doing, he had inadvertently driven—.

  Jesus! He rocked his wife back and forth—what had they gotten themselves into?

  When they parted, she said, “It’ll all blow over, you’ll…And look, you got a splotch of blood on one of your new shirts.”

  Murray tried to see the stain but couldn’t. He turned away. “I think he caught me on the chin—gave me a bit of a scratch.”

  McGarr awoke first.

  Noreen and he had taken lodgings in a small hotel in Leenane, and looking out the low, open window there on the second floor he could see the Eiriff River, nearly dry now with the warm weather, meandering down a stony beach to Killary Harbor. Beyond, steep treeless hills rose toward skies that patches of swift-moving clouds made seem very blue. There was a wind up and chop on the water, and McGarr was tempted to climb back into the toasty bed.