‘Looking for me?’
He jumped, backed up against the wall. A man. Somewhere near. Where? He stayed still. Five seconds. Tried to quiet his breathing. Then a bulb turned on, a weak light, in the main hall. Still no one visible. To his right, big, hand-painted lettering stood out: DANGER! KEEP OUT, across a boarded-up staircase. Then came a continuous creaking, wheels grinding, and out of the far passageway a wheelchair emerged, a man, scraggy, coming toward him. It was him, he was sure. The face in all those photos. Older by a good bit. But definitely him.
‘Cyril?’ Tony called out.
‘I have one bed left, in the basement. Share with one other. No drugs, no alcohol, or you’ll be removed instantly by the police. You want it?’
‘Cyril?’
‘Do I know you?’
‘We need to talk.’
‘Who are you?’
‘About Lenny Quin.’
‘Lenny?!’ The man straightened in the chair. ‘God, not bad news?’
Tony delayed. ‘No. But you and I need to talk.’
The man exhaled loudly, flopped back. ‘Follow me, please.’ The chair reversed down the passageway until the grinding stopped. ‘Come in, please,’ he shouted before disappearing through a lit doorway. Tony edged forward.
At the doorway a shirtless man emerged, big, face menacing, arms out-stretched, blocking the entrance. The facts were processed instantly in Tony’s brain: size, stance, eyes, butchered nose, age, threat level.
The man jutted his face into confrontation. ‘DSF, drug squad fucker; DSF, drug squad fucker.’
‘Want to stay breathing, shithead?’ Tony’s stare didn’t waver nor his expression change.
The man’s eyebrows jumped, his face sneered. ‘Rat’s fuck, redneck, prick face. Y’want me, yeah?’
‘Fogarty!’ The roar came from inside the room. The man in the wheelchair arrived. ‘What did I tell you?! Well?! You want the police to take you? Now, this instant? Say the word. Do you?’
The shirtless man glared.
‘Or the morgue,’ Tony said. ‘Take your pick.’
The man skulked to the side. Tony passed him, fully cued.
‘Hey, Brit,’ the shirtless man plucked a parka off a nail, ‘I’m off to Moran’s for a few minutes, see Skinner and the lads.’
‘You’re doing nothing of the sort!’ the man in the wheelchair said. ‘You’re staying right here.’
‘Fucking nothing wrong with a few pints. Half hour I’ll be back.’
‘Inside! Now! Any more of this and the arrangement is off. Try me.’
The man fired his parka into the floor and slumped against the wall, arms locked across his bare, hairless chest.
‘Won’t be a jiffy,’ the man in the wheelchair said to Tony as he got to his feet and manoeuvred through a narrow inner door. Tony took in his surroundings. A huge, high-ceilinged room of stale air and worn-out upholstery, two bulbs dangling on long strings, stuffed plastic bags all about, plates piled with cigarette butts, trash at every turn. A cell. And from somewhere an operatic diva crying out.
He leaned over a large sink to wash the earth from his hands. The shirtless man’s eyes had still not left him. Just then the wheelchair returned, its occupant looking fresher, less dishevelled, silver hair tied back in a pony-tail.
‘Have a seat, please, please,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry about all this, you’ll have to excuse the state of the place. It’s impossible at times, you have no idea. Anyway, you were saying?’
‘You’re Aidan Harper?’
‘Was.’ The man paused. ‘Aidan Cyril Harper. What’s this about? Lenny is alright, isn’t she? I mean – ’
‘She’s fine.’
Aidan stalled again, then his tone and demeanour changed. ‘Well then, you’re the bearer of very welcome news. Which makes me feel almost well again. Is there anything I can get you? Cup of tea?’
‘Private talk.’
‘Mr Fogarty, take yourself down to the far end, please. You may take one bottle of Guinness from the box.’ Aidan fired a warning after his words. ‘One. Understand?’
The man grabbed an audio-cassette player and earphones and tramped to the barred window where he dropped into a sofa and wrung the cap off the beer.
‘No drugs, no booze?’ Tony said.
Aidan acknowledged, then spoke quietly. ‘Discretion being the better part of valour, that kind of thing.’ He leaned closer. ‘Courts waiting for a psychiatric assessment; doesn’t happen fast. Ordered to sign daily at police station. Homeless, reformed addict, he claims.’
‘What charge?’
‘Assault and battery, for now. They know he’s a supplier: crystal meth, crack, etcetera. And worse maybe.’
‘What?’
‘The story going around is that he killed a twenty-year-old man. Could be just talk. No body. Officially still missing. Might be two, the police think. Before that a sixteen-year-old boy, an addict, found with his neck broken; owed money to our friend here.’ Aidan glanced in the direction of the shirtless man and tapped his own upper arm. ‘Tattoo. Three scimitars. One for each victim is what a former confederate testified. Still just a suspect, though, as things stand. Habeas Corpus, you know, lack of sufficient evidence to convict. The way it works is I can have him locked up immediately if he breaks my rules.’
‘He will.’
‘Please. You’re not a crime investigator, I assume. Unless I’m totally out of touch with what a modern-day Sherlock Holmes looks like.’
Tony stifled his amusement, tried to stop himself liking any part of this man.
‘Anyway. Now. About Lenny. Your coming here is clearly important.’ He held up a bottle of Guinness. Tony declined. ‘A big surprise too, I must say. You’re a friend of Lenny’s?’
‘No.’
‘I’m sorry? Oh, I see. I beg your pardon. Husband. Forgive me. She’s happy then, Lenny, is she? Doing well, all going well?’
‘She’s fine, I told you. I didn’t come for a chat.’ He leaned forward. ‘Look, I know about you and Lenny. I came here because I want you to agree to something. It’s like this: I’m going to ask Lenny to marry me. She wants to, she told me so. And I don’t need trouble; know what I’m saying?’ He got to his feet, his focus still fixed on Aidan. ‘Put it this way: it’d be better for Lenny, and me, if you went back to England, do you work over there.’
‘What? England? That’s absurd. Out of the question. I would not consider such a thing. Does Lenny know about this? What you’re saying? She would know there’s nothing for me in England. Lenny would know that. I don’t believe – ’
‘What’s here for you? This shit house?’
‘People! Irish people. That’s what’s here. Whom I care for, counsel, defend, house, who need help every day. Enough?’
‘How I figured you. Your work’s your god. You can’t escape it.’
Both men fell quiet.
‘Do you know one single iota about the work I do here?’ Aidan asked, sounding less disturbed.
‘I know a lot. You run away. Africa, Iraq, doesn’t matter. You waste your life in deserts and barred-up kips like this, then all you can do is brag about how fucking great the war was, then, you, then you – ’
‘Then nothing. You seem to have it all worked out: why I run away, why I approve of this or that. A theory for everything. Life’s not that simple, I’m afraid.’
‘It is. It’s you, how you are. You pull others into your obsessions. You’re a misfit. End of story.’
‘Excuse me. A misfit, am I?’ Aidan hurried his wheelchair forward, came to a stop in front of Tony. ‘And you? What about you?’
Tony rounded the wheelchair.
Aidan’s stare followed him. ‘Mr high-and-mighty. Whatever your name is. You swagger in here like Bruce Lee, into this jungle, ready to fight a psychopath. And I’m the misfit? I’m listening, go ahead, tell me; what about you?’
Tony kept a stoic face, said nothing.
‘Let’s speculate, shall we? You’ve risked your l
ife for a cause, something you believed in? Battled against human suffering? Cared for people riven by disease and despair? Paid for your principles with something more precious than your life? You have, have you?’
From opposite points on a circle connecting them, their eyes met.
‘Maybe I have,’ Tony said with understated conviction. ‘Maybe more.’
‘Oh, I see. So your life is somehow superior to my misfit life?’
‘How could you know what goes on in ordinary people’s lives? You couldn’t. You only know famines and war zones and refugee camps.’
Aidan’s demeanour softened. ‘Sit down, please, we’re both quite upset. We can talk. You have another reason for coming here. Something else you want to tell me.’
‘Can you turn off that squealing?’
‘Of course. I’m sorry.’ Aidan reached under the table, clicked off the opera singer.
‘Tell me what happened in New York, to Lenny?’
‘We fell in love. That’s what happened. Within minutes of meeting. Sounds juvenile, I know; in love at forty-three. I’d never known it before, I don’t mind telling you. Wonderful good fortune, nothing short of, nothing short of miracul – ’
‘What I’m asking you is – ’
‘I know. I know what you’re asking. You want to know about her illness. She described to me some worrying symptoms she’d been having. I pressed her to consult a specialist, talk to a psychiatrist. She wouldn’t. It was obvious she was troubled, she needed someone close who would care for her. There was no one in New York. She was alone and she liked it that way, she told me. In those circumstances I felt any place was better for her than Manhattan. Apart from that, I knew, I was certain, despite having known her just days, that I’d never be the same man without her. That’s it in a nutshell. You’ve seen it in films, in novels, no doubt.’ He shifted forward, began pushing up out of the chair. ‘Perhaps you’ve been fortunate enough to experience it first-hand. I hadn’t.’
‘You can walk?’
‘With a cane. Good days, bad days. Last week I had a nasty bone fragment removed from my knee. The chair is just to help it heal.’
‘What if you’d never taken her to Iraq? Ever think of that?’
‘After the carnage of Amiriya, I never stop.’ He dropped back into the chair, interlaced his long knuckly fingers, set his eyes to the ground. ‘What was I to do? Think about it. Leave her behind in Manhattan, in crisis? Alone? Who would do that? It’s four years since then, the day we literally bumped into each other. Feels like much longer.’
‘Since you heroically rescued her.’
‘It would be fairer to say we helped each other.’ Aidan appeared to retreat, as though indulging what was alive in his mind. When he spoke again his tone had shed its culpability.
‘You must understand that she desperately needed to get out of there. She was ecstatic about the idea of doing relief work, ironically just when I thought I might be burning out. I didn’t pressure her in the slightest. Lord’s truth. Within the week, we landed in Baghdad. And Lenny Quin restored a missionary zeal in me.’ He paused, smiling. ‘Was she marvellous or what. You couldn’t count how many lives she saved, or all the people she brought hope to. Under the most God-awful conditions she had more energy, more imagination, more natural intelligence than I could ever lay claim to, even at my best. Sixteen-hour days, every day, day after day, she answered every call. She was indefatigable.’
‘That’s what I mean; if you weren’t on your way down you’d have had no room for Lenny, or any woman. You needed someone, someone who’d lift you up, prop you – ’
‘Stop. Please. This combative thing does no good. You and I are not enemies.’
Both men receded, Tony impassive, Aidan clearly disturbed.
A short time later, Aidan rose up out of his chair. ‘I wanted to care for her, for her. For who she is. I even asked her to marry me, which you might already have heard.’
‘She said no. I know.’
‘Not, No! She said she wasn’t a believer, had never wished for marriage. Everything for the joy of life, except marriage; that was her credo. Goes back to her childhood, her mother dying so young, maybe. I don’t know; I’m no psychologist. But that’s who she was then. Not now, from what you tell me, concerning marriage, I mean. For which I’m happy. Truly. We all change.’
‘Her answer was the right one. You couldn’t have been all that important to each other.’
Aidan smiled. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Anto.’
‘I’m afraid, Anto, you don’t quite understand. I don’t mean to be rude, but perhaps it’s best that way, in the circumstances.’
‘No, I do understand. You needed to drag her into your world for the relationship to work, and into a war; she didn’t want either and that was her way of telling you.’
‘I had a dream! You understand? To care for people. You’re young; you’ll learn what that means. Without a dream what do I have? What do you have? Fantasies, formless hopes, adolescent lusts. Without a dream, some kind of dream, we may as well not live. You and Lenny have that now. Or, Anto, you would not be here.’
‘I want what Lenny wants. It’s that simple. Ireland is her world, and it’s mine. I won’t be smuggling her off anywhere.’
‘You’re so right; she does belong here. I’m so relieved to hear you say that. This whole country is Lenny. The sky, the air, the rain; it’s all Lenny. How could I ever leave here? When I met her, Ireland became mine too. So many late nights in Iraq we talked about Ireland, how our new life would be. No flies, no burning heat, no land mines, no dysentery or dying children. Then one day, my malaria flared up. I shivered and sweated for five days and nights with no let-up. Only then I began to understand a woman’s love. The power of it. It was like God was tending to me, healing my spirit. She stayed at my side through every minute of that, twenty-four hours a day, even though she herself needed looking after.’
‘Lenny caught malaria?’
‘Oh, no, not malaria. The same problems she’d had in New York. A lot milder, though: not remembering for a few seconds who she was or where she was, brief delusions. Just two occasions, that I know of. The medics around us were used to trauma, the Médecines Sans Frontièrers guys especially – Doctors Without Borders, you’ve probably read about them. They didn’t offer a diagnosis, but they came up with medications that seemed to help. You have to understand, everyone adored her; people would go to the ends of the earth for her. Me, too. I couldn’t get enough of her – excuse me, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound insensitive.’
‘It’s all just history. Why are you telling me?’
‘I don’t know, Anto,’ Aidan said with obvious intrigue. ‘I never felt able to talk about it before. Who’d understand? Except you. Strange, isn’t it. Very strange. We’ve both loved something truly special. No matter what the future may hold, for you or for me, neither of us will ever go back to being the men we used to be. Quite extraordinary really.’
‘Hypocrite. You are, you know that? If you’d any fucking balls you’d have said fuck-off when they told you to go to Iraq. But you didn’t. You knew she had problems, and you went anyway, you dragged her with you. Maybe you could’ve gotten the life you say you wanted, but you didn’t fight for it, did you? You played big mister hero.’
‘Hero? It’s not that simple, my friend.’ Aidan’s eyes closed. ‘That order for Baghdad said: Mass suffering; innocent citizens dying; children sick, starving. The night we landed in Baghdad, we agreed we’d give it just six months. Then six had turned into eleven. It was then that war came. Unholy war. The night before the bombs hit our shelter – it was a Sunday, tenth of February 1991 – we made a new promise: we’d work on in Iraq for six more months. Not one week longer. We even set an exit date; we’d fly out, spend a week in England, and be back in Ireland by September 10th. We’d buy a small house, become the quintessential invisible couple. Just the two of us, for a while. Until we started having our own children; two, ma
ybe three, we said, who knows. We’d give them, all our, we said, all our, we’d give them all our – ’ Aidan’s face dropped into his hands. ‘What manner of god do I serve?! What manner of god?’
‘So you gave up; you just – ’
‘Amiyira!’ Aidan’s eyes searched up into a void stained by the soot of generations, and he went on as though talking to himself. ‘Sounds like a young girl’s name: Amiriya. Playing in a garden, being summoned to lunch. How many I summoned that day.’ A whistling hiss rose from him and climbed to crescendo: ‘Booooommmm! Booooommmm! One half minute apart. When the first one hit, I ran. Didn’t search for her, didn’t try to save her. I don’t picture it as much now, a picture of hell. I forbid myself even to think about it. Block it out every time, every time it comes back.’
‘Lenny told me.’
‘Charred humans. Ghosts. The serpent, turning living souls into puffs of smoke, melting young bodies. Four hundred innocents. Gone in seconds. Grey blood, like pools of mercury. Limbs, torsos, stuck onto walls. And the ones that crawled out, the corpses that went on living.’
‘So you came back to Ireland to die?’
Aidan braced himself erect, spoke softly, shaking his head. ‘Oh, no. Not to die. No. To be in the same country, treading the same soil, breathing the same air as her. Legs or no legs, I share this with her. Even now. She’s everywhere here. Even in this pig sty. In every Irish face, every street, every film – ’
‘Hey! Hey! I get the picture, loud and clear. Ever think of using the fucking telephone?’
‘I wrote letters to her. Several. Before this leg got bad I got on a train to Aranroe. September 10th 1991, the day we pledged we’d be back in Ireland beginning our new life, seven months after Amiriya. I made it up onto Mweelrea, the foothills. Even knelt down and prayed at the Druidic altar. After that I walked around the village. That’s when they told me she’d gotten married – ’
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