Ashes In the Wind

by Christopher Bland

  At Ardsheelan, Michael was the man of the house. A tall, strong boy, from the age of ten he cut turf, dug drains, rebuilt stone walls, hung gates. Mass every Sunday in Drimnamore with Annie and a match in the afternoon during the Gaelic football season were the fixed points in the Sullivan calendar. Annie plastered the cuts and put ointment on the bruises he brought back from every game. ‘It’s a miracle you’ve nothing broken,’ she said to him.

  Only on rare occasions could Annie Sullivan bring herself to watch Michael play, although she knew that football was a good way to get ahead. The Gaelic Athletic Association, the County Council, Fianna Fáil and the Catholic Church were the four corners of power in County Kerry. And while it was known Tomas Sullivan had supported the Treaty and had been Michael Collins’s ADC, that was easily forgotten in the light of his son’s footballing skills.

  ‘Come to me when you leave school and I’ll fix you up with a job,’ said Gerry Murphy, a successful local builder, after seeing Drimnamore trounce Cahirciveen 3–8 to 1–4.

  Michael took him up on the offer the moment he was old enough to leave school. He was a competent, hard-working bricklayer; more importantly to Murphy Construction, he was picked for Kerry when he was nineteen and captained the side when they beat their great rivals, Cork, in the All-Ireland final at Croke Park two years later.

  Annie had been persuaded to make her first and last trip to Dublin for the match.

  ‘Don’t let it go to your head,’ she said to Michael on the long, triumphant train journey back. ‘You’ll be the big man in Drimnamore from now on.’

  Michael, tired, flushed with success and Guinness after months of abstinence, pulled away from his singing supporters, hugged his grandmother and laughed.

  ‘Drimnamore? The Kingdom of Kerry is mine for the asking,’ he said, and was swallowed up in the crowd of happy, celebrating Kerry men.

  ‘It’s an amateur game, you can’t make a living out of Gaelic football,’ said Michael years later to James Burke in Drimnamore. ‘Most players barely cover their expenses. But it was the religion, particularly in the South-East and South-West. Rugby didn’t have the hold in Cork that it has now. In those days, if you were caught playing rugby or Association football, the Ascendancy games, you were banned by the GAA.

  ‘Anyhow, after we won the All-Ireland I was back to bricklaying on the Tuesday morning; Gerry gave me Monday off. That brought me down to earth all right. Then they tried to persuade me a month later to run for the County Council. “You’ll walk it,” they said. “I’m not even a member of Fianna Fáil,” I said. “We’ll soon fix that,” they said.

  ‘Thank God I was smart enough to know it wasn’t for me. I played for a few more years, we made one more All-Ireland final, then I broke a leg and called it a day. I still go to matches when I can, used to give the Drimnamore and Kerry clubs money in the days when I had plenty, and we always employed a few likely lads in the business.

  ‘It’s a great game, plenty of scoring. None of your nil–nil soccer draws. I’ll take you to a game one day, open your eyes.’

  Michael started courting Aisling; she had bright eyes, long black hair, a good figure and a strong character. She was Gerry Murphy’s daughter and Michael wasn’t sure how that would go.

  ‘I’m only a brickie, when all’s said and done,’ he confided to Annie one evening at Ardsheelan.

  ‘You’re a brickie who captained Kerry, won the All-Ireland. Don’t sell yourself short. Is she good enough for you?’ said Annie.

  ‘That’s a grandmother talking,’ said Michael. ‘We’ll see what happens. She’s a great girl, sure enough.’

  One morning Gerry Murphy called Michael into his caravan on a housing project outside Waterville.

  ‘You’ve been seeing a lot of my daughter. It’s time you two did something more than dance.’

  ‘I’ve not got much to offer. Ardsheelan, six acres and a cottage when my gran dies. It’s not enough for Aisling after what she’s used to.’

  ‘I started out as a plumber, I was a tradesman for fifteen years. But that’s not the point. I’m getting on, she’s my only child, it’s yours for the asking. If she’ll have you, that is.’

  ‘I’m a bricklayer, not a businessman.’

  ‘You know as much as I did when I started the business. You’re a worker, with great contacts – I never captained Kerry. Talk to Aisling, but you’d better be quick. She was Miss Rose of Tralee, there’s plenty out there after her.’

  Gerry, four inches taller than Michael and twenty pounds heavier, stood up and this brought the conversation to an end.

  Aisling laughed when he told her about the conversation.

  ‘You’re as good a man as he is,’ she said. ‘But you haven’t said you love me.’

  ‘I do, you know I do,’ said Michael. ‘I’m just not sure about marrying the boss’s daughter.’

  ‘That’s not who I am. I’m Aisling – look at me, for God’s sake.’

  Michael held her face between his hands, kissed her, and they were married three months later. Gerry started Michael off as a site foreman, then brought him into the office and taught him about the accounts.

  ‘Listen, it’s simple enough. Is more cash coming in than going out? Have you enough in the bank to pay the men, pay the suppliers? Have you kept back enough for the tax man? That’s it. Forget what the accountants tell you about accruals and deferrals, and provisions, and reserves. I’ll show you my reserves.’ Gerry opened the wall safe to reveal stacks of tightly bundled ten-pound notes. ‘There’s twenty thousand pounds in there,’ he said, closing the door with a solid clunk and spinning the combination lock. ‘I’ll tell you the six numbers when you’re ready, but you’ll be in trouble if you have to go to the safe. I’ve used it once in twenty years.’

  When Michael took over the business, he knew house-building from the bottom to the top. Sullivan Construction (‘Change the name. You’re better known in Kerry than I ever was, and Aisling’s a Sullivan now,’ Gerry had said) built thirty or forty houses every year for the County Council or small developers who had secured planning permission for a few acres.

  Declan O’Donnell was a sharp dresser, a fast talker, drove a brand-new BMW. A bit of a stroke merchant, they called him; in Cork property circles this was a compliment. Not every construction company would deal with him, as he had a reputation for whittling away the final price, but he persuaded Michael Sullivan to build twenty-five houses on a re-zoned site outside Kenmare by sheer persistence and by putting up twenty-five per cent of the construction cost up-front.

  ‘Never done this before,’ Declan said to Michael. ‘But I know your reputation for doing a decent job and finishing on time.’

  Sullivan Construction finished the twenty houses four days early. Declan’s quantity surveyor, whom he used as a battering ram to beat the final price down, was unable to fault the work.

  ‘We’ll use you again,’ Declan said. ‘How much did you clear?’

  Michael’s first instinct was to say ‘None of your business,’ but instead replied, ‘Five thousand euros.’

  ‘Not enough.’

  ‘Per house.’

  ‘That’s more like it. A hundred thousand euros isn’t to be sniffed at down here. I’ve got a big project coming up in Cork that might interest you.’

  ‘Twenty houses is the most we’ve ever built in one go.’

  ‘You need to think bigger. You’re Bacon Roll Man; you pitch up at some Spar counter every morning, order a bacon roll and a sausage if they’ve got one, twenty John Player Blue, the Daily Star, a bottle of Lucozade and a Mars Bar. And you’re happy driving...’ he looked out of the window ‘...last year’s Rover 400. You don’t have to settle for that.’

  Michael was stung into looking at the Cork project, a massive development on the edge of the city, two hundred houses, a hotel and a supermarket. A new GAA stadium (‘We’ll build that last’) clinched the planning approval.

  ‘I can’t finance my share of something that big.’r />
  ‘You can, sure. Fifty per cent of the equity will cost you four hundred thousand euros, which you’ve got in the bank. (Michael’s ‘How did you know that?’ went unanswered.) The Anglo-Irish Bank will lend us eight million and the income from Phase One will fund the rest.’

  It worked out exactly as Declan had forecast, except that the prices realized for the houses were twenty per cent higher than the original budget.

  ‘It’s all about the marketing,’ explained Declan. ‘Ardcullen Heights is a great name, fifteen minutes’ drive from the centre of Cork, a beautiful show home, three “Sold” signs as you look out the sales office window, and it’s all over bar the shouting. Anglo-Irish are eager to lend one hundred per cent of the purchase price to anyone who’s breathing, and they bundle the mortgages up and trade them on to the Yanks. When we tell the punters the price will be twenty per cent higher in a year, they can’t get their pens out fast enough. And the way property is moving in Ireland at the minute they’ll double their money soon enough.’

  A few years later, visiting cousins in Cork, Michael decided to show Ardcullen Heights to Aisling.

  ‘You know something,’ he said to Aisling as they walked around. ‘I’m proud of this place. I know it’s a sunny day, and that helps, but we laid it out like a village, not on a grid, the houses aren’t identical boxes and we built them well. All lived in, mostly first-time owners from rough flats and houses in Cork.’

  They went into the supermarket, busy with shoppers from the city. Michael bought twenty John Player Blue, the Daily Star, a bottle of Lucozade and a Mars Bar; Aisling looked at his basket in disbelief.

  ‘What are you doing? You don’t smoke any more. And you should put that Mars Bar back, you’re not as slim as you were.’

  ‘It’s a private joke,’ said Michael and didn’t elaborate. ‘Let’s go and look at the stadium. I had to bully Declan into building it. He said it was only ever an aspiration – I said we’d promised it to the planners and it wouldn’t make a good headline: “Kerry football star breaks word to Cork GAA”.’

  Stadium was a grand description for the arena, which had seats for two thousand spectators.

  ‘They’ll fill it for a big club game, especially one against a Kerry side,’ said Michael as they walked onto the pitch, where a group of young players were being coached at one end.

  A ball was kicked towards them; it seemed about to float well over Michael’s head until he jumped up and caught it cleanly with his fingertips. He jogged towards the young man coming to retrieve the ball, quickened up, faked with his right shoulder and went left, bounced the ball off his foot back into his hands, then kicked it long and high to sail through the goalposts thirty yards away. There was a little round of applause from the players as Michael jogged back, smiling, to Aisling.

  ‘One point to Kerry – but I’ll feel it in the morning.’

  Declan and Michael had made ten times their money from Ardcullen Heights in two years; Michael’s share was four million euros. They used Section 23 to avoid most of the tax.

  ‘Onwards and upwards,’ said Declan. ‘I’m looking at a great site down on the Quays. We’re going to build Ireland’s tallest building there.’

  ‘You’ll never get planning permission for that.’

  ‘In Cork they’d build on your big toe at the minute. We’ll have an architectural competition, get in the big names, Richard Rogers, Norman Foster, then choose an Irish architect who understands about costs and will design something we can build.’

  Michael and Aisling met the movers and shakers of Ireland, to whom Michael’s sporting record was as important as his recent share of the Ardcullen Heights development. They went to the Fianna Fáil tent at Galway Races (‘It’ll cost us ten thousand euros each to watch the politicos lorrying into the wine,’ said Declan), they saw the Ryder Cup as the guests of the Anglo-Irish Bank, they went to the Chelsea Flower Show with their estate agents, and Michael bought a villa in Portugal and a new Mercedes. Aisling, who had put on a few pounds after their marriage, lost them and more in order to fit into the smart clothes she now ordered from Dublin and London.

  There was a curious mixture at these functions. Most of the men and women were well dressed, confident, talking in loud voices about private jets, Spanish villas and ‘blades’, which Michael learned from Declan meant helicopters. But there were always two or three couples who looked out of place, the men in brown suits and heavy brogues, the women clearly unaware about the latest trends in fashion.

  ‘Don’t be fooled,’ said Michael to Aisling. ‘That one over there, looks like a Letterkenny cattle dealer, makes half the cement in Ireland and owns six Dublin hotels and the big golf club in Kildare.’ He pointed to a large, red-faced man of about sixty, having an awkward conversation with a young banker. ‘They say he’s worth a billion euros and he looks like he’d need to borrow the price of his next dinner.’

  Michael was always sought out for his view about the likely finalists in the next All-Ireland, while Declan worked the room and glad-handed the politicians and the bankers.

  ‘We’re on the inside track,’ said Declan. ‘We’re being shown things by the bank not just in Ireland but worldwide.’

  They were having dinner in a Dublin restaurant with two Michelin stars; in the previous nine months they had invested together in waste disposal in Holland, hotels in Serbia, a chain of cinemas in Spain, an oilfield in the Niger Delta and a casino in Macao.

  ‘This is heady stuff for a bricklayer from Drimnamore,’ said Michael.

  ‘You’re not a brickie any more, you’ll be in the Irish Rich List next year. You’re a hero in The Kerryman already; you’ll be in the Dublin papers when we pull off the Big One.’

  The Big One was the Millennium Tower in Cork, twenty storeys high, three hundred flats, penthouses for three million euros, single-bedroom apartments for three hundred thousand. ‘A Landmark Building for a Landmark City,’ the marketing brochure said.

  ‘A hundred million to build it. We each put up four million, the bank lends us the rest and rolls up the interest until we start selling. We’ll clear twenty-five million each when we’re done.’

  ‘It’ll take all my cash,’ said Michael.

  ‘And mine. But Anglo-Irish have offered us a chance to make a quick two million euros each through taking some of their shares at a friendly price. They need our support, and it gets us the loan for the Millennium deal. We can do it through CFDs, so we only put up ten per cent of the money, and they’ll lend us that anyhow.’

  ‘What’s a CFD?’

  ‘Contract for Difference. Gives you tremendous gearing when the shares go up.’

  ‘And if they go down?’

  ‘Down? Anglo-Irish shares haven’t been this low for years. This stroke will push them up, and we’re in good company. All the big men are in.’

  Declan and Michael went in alongside the big men. Then the financial world imploded and the Irish property market collapsed. Shares in the Anglo-Irish Bank, which had once been valued at thirteen billion euros, were worthless. The Cork Millennium Tower was never built; the government agency that took over all the bust banks’ liabilities sold the site three years later for one and a half million euros, a tenth of the fifteen million Declan and Michael had paid. The twenty thousand in cash that Aisling’s father had put away in the safe was long gone.

  39

  BACK AT DONHEAD, James reminds himself that he is still paying rent for the Allenmouth flat. He decides to make a final visit to end his lease and sort out the furniture; he makes himself a promise not to see Anna again.

  Allenmouth and his flat are as he had left them; the weather is overcast and damp. He talks to George, gives him three months’ rent in lieu of notice, and resells him the furniture at a substantial loss.

  ‘The difference is my profit margin,’ says George cheerfully. ‘But I’ll leave it all up there. It’ll be very easy to let now. And you can always come back as a tenant.’

  James borrows a po
t of white emulsion and blots out the words of Socrates that he had so carefully written on the wall. They hadn’t done him much good. He keeps only the Wemyss beehive mug to remind him of Allenmouth.

  He thinks about saying goodbye to Jack Pearson, decides against it, and has a last drink in the Allen Arms. It is a Saturday evening, and the bar is crowded with holidaymakers, the regulars absent or banished to the smaller snug. He is about to leave when a man comes in with a couple of friends, orders a lemonade and starts talking to Sally behind the bar. When the man turns and looks directly at James, he realizes this is Zach; close to, he understands why Anna loved him. And may love him now. He is tall, with golden skin, tight curly hair, a broad smile. And it dawns on James it was Zach dancing with the group in the Scout hut, Zach who’d tried to pull him in, Zach who had looked hurt when James had turned away. He finishes his drink quickly and goes back to the flat.

  He is packing the next morning when he hears footsteps on the outside staircase. His heart starts pounding as the door opens. It is Zach, not Anna.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I won’t stay long. I want to ask you to leave Anna alone.’

  ‘I’m not sure you have the right to ask that question. It’s up to Anna; she doesn’t belong to you.’

  ‘Look at you, man. You’re old enough to be her bloody father. How can you make her happy?’

  ‘That’s for Anna to decide.’

  ‘I’m in love with Anna. And she loves me.’

  ‘Beating her up is a funny way to prove it. And she didn’t love you enough to keep...’ James, shocked at himself, doesn’t finish the sentence.

  ‘The baby? She told you that?’ Zach takes a step forward and punches James hard, knocking him over. ‘Keep away from her. Find a woman your own age.’

  James, whose nose is broken, stays where he is on the floor and fumbles for a handkerchief; Zach stands over him for a moment, thinks about hitting James again, and then leaves. James gets up slowly and sits in his chair for half an hour, bleeding into a handkerchief, his head still reeling from the blow.