by Sarah Harte
‘What sort of a plan?’ he’d asked, raising himself up on one elbow and looking as if I’d asked him to reveal the meaning of life.
‘A plan as to what you’re going to do with yourself. Job-wise, I mean.’
He hadn’t got an answer for me so I’d told him to let me know once he’d formulated a plan. And to make it sooner rather than later.
‘Not the worst thing,’ Frank remarked now. ‘I wasn’t very gone on Biba.’
‘Me neither,’ I admitted, ‘but he liked her. He’s mooning around the place.’
‘No sign of a job?’ Frank asked lightly.
I shook my head.
‘He could maybe work with me. I might be able to find him something to do.’ There was humour in his eyes.
‘He could,’ I said, surrendering to a meagre smile, ‘but I don’t think that would be a very good idea, do you?’
It was strange. We spoke more easily now that we were separated. There was a truce of sorts. I no longer shouted at him. I felt more detached. I had moved through the various stages of grief to some sort of acceptance of what had happened. It was Frank who seemed to be driving much of our communication.
‘Dad is like a bad smell,’ Ella had said. ‘He won’t go away. We see him more now that he doesn’t live here. He made a decision to choose her,’ she’d added, with the absolute conviction and certainty of youth, ‘so he should move on.’
‘Dylan won’t talk to me,’ Frank said. He looked sad and deflated. Old. ‘I didn’t have much of a relationship with my old fella growing up.’
I nodded.
‘He was a quiet sort of a man. He worked in the local distillery until the year I was born.’
‘I never knew that.’
‘After that he was more of an odd-jobs man. A gobán saor, he used to call himself. Bottom line, he worked about half the time and then at half tilt. There was no fight between us as such but we never had two words to say to each other. I never got him and he never got me.’
There was a pause. Then he said, ‘He was just happy to scrape by. I hated the way we had no car so that you’d have to hitch a lift in and out of the town, hoping that one of the neighbours would take pity on you and slow down when they saw you struggling along with the messages. I couldn’t understand why my father never seemed to mind. Maybe that’s what drove me all these years.’
This was as reflective as I’d ever heard Frank get. He didn’t do navel-gazing. Action, not talk, was the answer to every problem. ‘Just get the finger out’ and it’d be fine.
‘I’ve often worried that Dylan’s a bit like him. That he inherited a genetic lack of drive. I had so many goals when I was his age. I had hunger in my belly,’ he said, touching the mound of his stomach. ‘Fuck it, I worked picking fruit, bumping up and down drills until my back was aching and my paws were stained pink from the effin’ strawberries. I’d have shovelled shit from one side of the road to the other if I’d have made a few bob out of it. I wasn’t too proud. I did that so my son wouldn’t have to. You were a schoolboy, then you were a man. There was none of this faffing about trying to find yourself. You could find yourself at work.’
I gave a weary sigh. When I put my hand up, like a garda halting traffic, Frank took the hint. ‘I’ve heard it all before, Frank,’ I couldn’t help adding.
He looked hurt. After a short pause, he said, ‘I don’t understand Dylan.’
‘You have to let him be his own man, Frank. You can’t force people to be what they’re not.’
He gave a fretful shrug. ‘I just want the best for my son.’
‘I know,’ I said, thinking I didn’t have the energy for this man. I’d often thought that Frank sort of plugged into you, sucked you dry and then moved off. To be successful you had to be utterly focused – you had to be dead selfish. Frank was good at that.
‘He won’t take my calls,’ Frank added.
‘Give him time. You look like shit, Frank.’ I hadn’t planned on saying that. It just sort of slipped out. Old habits died hard.
He gave a bark of a laugh. ‘I’m tired. We’re like lepers now.’
I looked at him questioningly.
‘Developers,’ he clarified. He named a well-known politician. ‘I met him in the street the other day and he was looking over his shoulder, afraid that he might be seen with me. The same fucking boyo was leapin’ over tables to have his picture taken with me in the tent at the Galway races not two years ago.’
I remembered. The man in question was a smirking sleeveen who stood for nothing except staying in power. There was a whole tribe of them who had re-zoned land for developers, drunk with the bankers, awarded contracts and carved up the spoils for those who were in the inner circle.
Frank gave a derisive little hiss. ‘Hypocritical little fucker.’ His forehead cleared. He formed a deliberate smile as if to say that this was no big deal.
I felt the urge to needle him. ‘From hero to zero,’ I said.
His smile melted away.
‘That was uncalled-for,’ I said, feeling mildly regretful.
‘I deserved it,’ he said, a little pompously. ‘Of course Eamon’s worrying like an old woman that we won’t get the planning.’
That was Frank’s indirect way of admitting he was anxious. Show no fear. Admit to no emotion. That was the Lawlor way. Kathleen Lawlor had done some job on her sons.
‘You must be worried yourself,’ I said, unwilling to let it go.
He didn’t answer. Then, deflecting as only Frank could, ‘If only I’d known that the whole world was going to go tits up.’
This seemed to suggest that he had been the hapless victim of circumstance. I wasn’t letting him off the hook like that. His property gamble could not be laid at the door of larger forces outside his control. ‘It was a big punt you took all the same,’ I responded. I would not add that, according to Dylan, his stockbroking firm had devalued Frank’s Wexford site by as much as seventy per cent.
Frank didn’t seem to take the point. Instead he said, ‘It was some fucking ride, what?’ He shook his head. ‘Watching the likes of me going over to London and buying the place up. We were riding the crest of a wave,’ he said, clapping his hands together.
‘Save it, Frank.’
‘If only we’d known that the sub-prime crisis in America was floating towards us all the time like a silent iceberg.’
I didn’t want to get pulled further into the conversation. But I couldn’t let that bull go unchecked. ‘Some might say, Frank, that you went on the roulette wheel with other people’s money. Money,’ I said, heat rising in my face, ‘that Paul Hogan and his bank lent you so that now the taxpayer has to bail out the banks and pick up the tab for the recklessness of developers like you … and the greedy, incompetent bank officials. Lots of ordinary people will have to pay higher taxes and will probably lose their jobs.’
Frank looked surprised, then bitter. I was taken aback, too, by the volley of words that had poured out of my mouth.
‘Christ,’ he said, sounding riled, ‘say what you think, why don’t you?’ Two sharp discs of red had appeared on his cheeks. ‘And I’m to blame for all that, am I?’ he asked stiffly.
‘No,’ I said, folding my arms across my chest, ‘but don’t try and blame America for everything.’
We stared at each other.
‘You and your cronies have played your part. Paul Hogan writing loan cheques for you and Ultan Mohally and the Deegans and Jimmy …’ I drew myself up. ‘What the hell got into us, Frank?’
‘Jesus, Anita,’ Frank said, giving a tight smile. ‘Is this some sort of Pauline conversion on the road to Damascus? You certainly knew how to spend it when the notion took you.’
The chilly evening jabbed at my face. ‘I know,’ I said, my voice quick and edgy, ‘that I went along with you for the ride, happy to burn through the cash and to take helicopters when we could have driven cars and buy so many clothes tha
t I could do with an aircraft hangar to house them. But there’s no point in being delusional any more,’ I said. ‘That’s what not drinking does to you. It brings things into clearer focus.’
‘It’s good you’re not drinking,’ he said.
‘Why did you never say anything much about my drinking?’
Frank gave a harsh laugh. ‘Are you going to lay that at my door too?’
I shook my head. ‘Of course not. I just wondered if it ever worried you – if you even noticed.’
‘I noticed, I suppose,’ he said slowly. ‘A lot of the time I just thought you were having a bit of craic. And lots of us were drinking too much, maybe, having too much of the auld craic.’
That much was true. Looking back now, it seemed as if there was a time when popping champagne corks was the soundtrack to our lives.
‘Do you think you have a problem?’ he asked.
I shrugged.
He returned to safer ground – the state of the country. He’d always been good at talking about himself or things that interested him. ‘If the banks had stopped lending five years earlier they would have stopped the Celtic Tiger in its tracks and there would have been a mini revolution. Greed got us a lot of things we didn’t have before. Irish people were sick of having no arse to the seat of their trousers.’ He was on a roll now. ‘I just wanted to build a classy development,’ he said, ‘a high-end group of buildings using world-class design, giving people proper luxury. I have every crank this side of the western world criticizing my development. It’s just pure fucking snobbery. The likes of them, they get all fucking exercised by the starving children in Africa but they can’t stand a fella like me from Offaly doing well.’
I pantomimed a yawn and Frank looked a little startled. I didn’t care. When he veered into self-pity, it was boring. And I wasn’t indulging it. ‘Anyway, on the original subject of Dylan,’ I said, ‘I think he planned on working with Jamie Deegan but that hasn’t come to pass. Jamie doesn’t have anything for him to do – or, at least, nothing Dylan is willing to do. I have a feeling Jamie offered him bar work, which Dylan said no to. It was something Ella said.’
I paused. ‘You shouldn’t give him any more money, though. If he’s broke it will focus his mind.’
‘Fine,’ Frank said, eyeing me strangely.
‘He has to get over this idea of starting at the top of everything. He needs just to get an ordinary job and lower his expectations.’
Frank stuck out his bottom lip. ‘I’m not sure lowering his expectations is what I’d advise my son to do.’
I gave a short bark of a laugh. ‘That’s exactly what we all have to do, Dylan included. It’s time to recalibrate. It’s back to Planet Earth.’
Dylan seemed worryingly convinced he was destined for great things without any evidence to back it up. Like I said, it was bad that our generation had been afraid of our shadow by comparison, but with Dylan the pendulum seemed to have swung the other way a bit too far. My son seemed to have caught the American bug of self-belief to the point of lunacy.
‘You certainly seem very fired up,’ Frank remarked, still studying me.
‘Yeah, well …’ I petered out mid-sentence, unwilling to explain myself further. ‘By the by, I think Ella may be seeing Jamie Deegan – but, for God’s sake, don’t say anything.’
Frank frowned. ‘I always thought Jamie was a bit of a smart Alec.’ He made a regretful clucking sound. ‘I quite liked that guy Christopher.’ Waves of suspicion radiated from him.
‘Frank, you’re warming up to Christopher because he’s gone. You always liked Jamie when he was Dylan’s friend.’
‘Sure Jamie’s a talented kid, he has gumption, but there’s something sort of …’ He searched for the word but didn’t find it. ‘There’s something about him. I can’t put my finger on it.’
‘It won’t last,’ I said, amused.
I had seen Ella and Jamie at the door, laughing and clowning around. It had been in the early hours and their shushed giggling had woken me. I had peered down at them briefly. Ella had pushed him away, laughing coquettishly. He had pulled her towards him then, and I had moved away from the window.
Another day I’d been trundling down Georges Street on the bus – ‘very woman-of-the-people’ had been Karen’s comment – and I’d seen them walking along hand in hand. Ella was talking and Jamie was listening with a look on his face that told me she was delivering the lecture and he was the audience.
Ella had said nothing about Jamie so I was keeping my beak shut. We were getting on far too well.
‘There are still rumours hanging around Ted Deegan,’ Frank said. ‘There’s talk that he used some of the insurance deposits to buy shares. I doubt it myself. Ted is too fucking smart for that.’ Frank had always secretly admired Ted Deegan, in so far as he looked up to anyone.
‘Who knows?’ I said. ‘At this point anything seems possible. I’m going inside.’ I turned away from him.
And just like that he dropped a bomb.
‘Fiona lost the baby yesterday,’ he said, to my retreating back.
I stopped in my tracks. It took me a moment or two to digest the words. ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I said, pivoting around and trying not to show that I was rattled.
His face was unreadable.
‘Should you not be with her,’ I asked, my voice neutral, ‘instead of here cleaning drains?’
‘She’s gone home to Limerick to her parents,’ he said tonelessly. ‘That’s what she wanted.’ His mouth sagged downwards. ‘She had to have a dry labour.’
‘That must have been very hard on her,’ I said.
He nodded.
I visualized Fiona Keane with her magnificent hair and cocky young face and found that I felt a little sorry for her. And for the baby.
‘Why don’t you loathe her, Mum?’ Ella had asked me. ‘I don’t get it.’
It had taken me a while to frame the answer. ‘Because,’ I had said eventually, ‘I need to conserve my energy for myself.’
‘I’m sorry, Frank,’ I said, my tone briskly sympathetic.
‘I’m not sure that I am,’ Frank said, running his hand across his face. ‘God forgive me,’ he said, blessing himself.
The comment hung in the air. Frank compressed his lips. ‘Why should you be sorry?’ he asked.
‘I wouldn’t wish away a human life,’ I said, pushing my hands into my pockets.
We stared at each other.
‘I feel bad for her,’ he said, ‘but she’s young. And I didn’t want another family.’
We were straying into dangerous ground.
‘I had one,’ he said, rounding off.
The moment stretched out.
‘Anita, I don’t know how the fuck we got here. I don’t know how I’m living in a flat the size of a shoebox with a girl young enough to be my daughter who I don’t love.’
I gave a harsh laugh. ‘I have a fair idea.’
‘Fiona took my number for business reasons. She sent me a couple of texts, some stupid joke about developers. Then I texted back. It was nothing major, just a harmless bit of flirtation.’
My voice was cool but my face was anything but impassive. ‘You were always a lousy judge of character.’
He ran his hand across his face. ‘One afternoon I was in a meeting, bored senseless listening to Eamon go on about some judicial review, and she texted me.’
‘Why are you telling me this now?’
‘I want to explain to you.’
‘I don’t care, Frank,’ I said, which wasn’t strictly true. The masochistic part of me wanted to hear how it had come about. ‘It’s water under the bridge.’
‘I texted back and asked her on the spur if she’d like to meet for a beer. She said she didn’t drink beer, she only liked Chablis. I was bored. My nuts were in a vice with the planning. She made me feel good about myself.’
I snorted.
‘So then I fired one off about how we could share a bottle of Chablis in her place.’
‘And then you had to sleep with her,’ I snapped.
‘Seemed the next thing I knew she’d met me at the airport to tell me I was going to be a daddy and I’d left my wife, the only woman I’ve ever loved.’
‘You’re a hard case, Frank,’ I said, feeling my throat tighten.
‘I don’t love her. I don’t even fucking fancy her.’
‘Don’t,’ I said, averting my face. I folded my arms across my chest in a defensive gesture.
‘I’m so sorry, Anita.’
I ignored this. He was not drawing me into his shit, putting me under his Frank spell. ‘See you later,’ I said, in an artificially sprightly winding-up voice.
‘Anita,’ he begged.
I turned – and I shouldn’t have. Through the gloom I could see that his eyes had misted over. His shoulders were hunched. There was a droop to his head and he looked hollow-eyed and hollowed out. And although I tried not to, I softened. The spectre of Frank and Anita could not be so easily banished. I’d been with this man almost all of my adult life. Was that what happened when you married so young? You failed to envisage a universe without some version of you as a couple? No, I thought, with renewed energy. We had gone too far for that. I would not be sucked in again.
The children would most likely be there, I thought, looking towards the house. I was fairly certain I’d seen a tuft of Dylan’s hair popping out from behind the drawing-room shutters. They wouldn’t be happy to see Frank. I didn’t want to be caught in the middle of their silent war. Frank had made his bed.
The exchange had caused a picture of a glass of wine to worm its way into my head. Frank had acted like a total prick. He had betrayed me and I would never forget it. But I had this constant back and forth about how I should treat him, and he was still the father of my children. A man who, in some respects, had been a good father and husband. He had bankrolled us all for years. Whether he could continue to do so was seriously debatable.
Karen had been like a dog with a bone. ‘You either talk to Frank about his finances or you go to that little runt of a solicitor Eamon or I – so help me God – will go to both of them. I’m blue in the face from telling you, you have to get the finger out and face the reality of what’s coming down the tracks. You’ve had enough time to adjust to the separation.’