Winterland

by Alan Glynn

  ‘There are different kinds of pain, Miriam.’

  ‘Oh for goodness’ sake.’

  ‘Yeah, well.’ He pauses, regroups. ‘Anyway, look who’s talking.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Oh come on, the sleeping pills? You’ve been taking those for as long as I’ve known you. So don’t talk to me about –’

  ‘That’s entirely different. They’re for a diagnosed, clinical condition.’

  ‘Hhnm.’

  They drive in silence for a while along the Dual Carriageway.

  ‘Look,’ Miriam says, ‘do you want me to stop off at Dr Walsh’s?’

  ‘No. I’m fine. I’m just a bit stressed at the moment.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘All I need is some peace and quiet.’

  ‘Yes, but –’

  ‘Oh for fuck’s sake, Miriam –’

  There is a pause.

  ‘Don’t you dare speak to me like that. I don’t care how you feel, there’s no call for language.’

  She reaches down and aggressively flicks on the CD player. Lush sounds fill the car. Adagios to Die For, Volume 3.

  Norton sits back and exhales.

  What is he going to do? Should he call Fitz? Should he wait? He has to do something. He’s too deep into this to let it unravel now. But what does Gina want? Is she going to blackmail him? Is she linking what she knows – or thinks she knows – with her brother’s death? Is she as much of a threat as he was?

  Norton closes his eyes. He sees drizzle falling in a beer garden and a young man slumped over a wooden table. He sees an SUV skidding off the road and hurtling down a ravine. He sees a Merc and a Toyota, one concertinaed into a tree, the other merged with an old brick wall. Through a pervasive rain-drenched orange glow, he sees speckles of red – everywhere – and a continuous rotating blue light. He sees carnage, one body in the Merc, three in the Toyota, mangled, misshapen. He sees a little boy, his face streaked with blood, eyes vacant, but walking somehow – walking across shattered glass and strips of metal towards the flashing blue light and his own mangled, misshapen future. He sees a catalogue of panic, of fuck-ups, of near misses – and he’s tired of it, tired of having to piece together in his mind what he was never there to see, tired of having to confront these dark shards of imagining, these little glimpses into hell.

  The Narolet has been building steadily, and now, like the music coming from the speakers – aching strings, sweet, swirling woodwinds – it reaches a crescendo, rises up in a tide of emotion and washes over him.

  As it ebbs away, he opens his eyes – drained, spent. He glances to the right.

  It takes him a moment to refocus.

  He has always liked the way Miriam drives – fast, but very controlled. She really concentrates. She changes gears with the determination of a Formula One driver.

  He’s such a fool.

  ‘I’m sorry, darling.’

  They’re speeding down through the underpass.

  ‘When we get home, you should go to bed,’ Miriam says, after an appropriate pause. ‘Or at least,’ she goes on, more tenderly, ‘at a decent hour. For once.’

  ‘You’re right. I will.’

  They remain silent for a while. The sound of a single violin, lonely and resonant, carries them forward.

  Fifty yards ahead, the traffic light turns and they come gliding to a halt.

  ‘Who was that girl you were talking to?’

  ‘Gina Rafferty. One of the sisters.’

  ‘She seems young.’

  ‘Yeah. Big family apparently. She must be the youngest. She was quite upset, of course. She wanted to talk about her brother.’ He stares at the dashboard. ‘About what he did, and the building and stuff.’

  ‘Poor thing.’

  ‘I’ve asked her to come and see me at the office.’

  The light turns green and they surge forward – as does Norton’s stomach. He detects a slight chemical shift, somewhere deep inside the dense, woolly fug of the Narolet.

  ‘You should take her to see it,’ Miriam says. ‘If she’s so interested.’

  ‘See what?’

  ‘The building. Give her a tour. Bring her up to the top. Show her the view.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Norton says, feeling a bit queasy now. ‘Maybe.’ He closes his eyes, and a rapid sequence of images flashes by, like frames of celluloid spooling to the end of a reel: the top floor of Richmond Plaza … howling winds, tarpaulin sheets flapping, sunlight flickering through the grid of interlocking steel girders. The scene is spectacular, with the city spread out below – Liberty Hall, the Central Bank, the spire of Christ Church Cathedral, and then, farther out, the parks and greenbelt areas, the housing estates that look like electronic circuit-boards, the gigantic shopping centres, the new ring roads and motorway extensions, languid and serpentine, laid out in every direction …

  The new city.

  His city.

  ‘Yes.’ He nods, opening his eyes again and placing a firm, steadying hand on his stomach. ‘Maybe that’s what I’ll do.’

  Four

  1

  As Mark is letting himself in the front door, he calls out his aunt’s name. He does this so that she won’t get a fright when he suddenly appears in the kitchen or the living room. She isn’t used to being alone yet and the least thing seems to spook her. Of course, it’s been only six months since Uncle Des died, which is nothing, Mark supposes – especially if you’ve been married to someone for more than forty years.

  He takes a few steps along the hallway and calls her name out again. ‘Aunt Lilly?’

  From behind the kitchen door, he hears a sharp, panicky intake of breath.

  Shit.

  ‘It’s only me, Aunt Lilly. It’s Mark.’

  ‘Oh. Oh.’ Then, ‘I’m in here.’

  Mark opens the door and walks into the kitchen. His aunt is sitting at the table. There are piles of documents spread out in front of her. Through a door on the left he can see into the living room. The TV is on, but the sound is down.

  His aunt looks up at him and smiles nervously.

  ‘Thanks for coming, Mark. I don’t know what I’d do without you.’

  ‘Oh, you’d be fine, Aunt Lilly, believe me.’

  He goes over and kisses her on the forehead. He then pulls out a chair next to hers. He sits on the edge of the chair and leans forward, hands together, like a doctor about to begin a consultation. He even says, ‘Now, what seems to be the problem?’

  Aunt Lilly is in her late sixties but looks older. Her hair is grey and she is small and bony. Mark can see that the last few months have taken a lot out of her.

  ‘It’s these Eircom bills,’ she says, pointing to the pile directly in front of her. ‘I don’t understand them, and they seem so high.’

  ‘I barely understand mine, Aunt Lilly. I think you’d need a degree in accountancy to understand the average Eircom bill.’

  He takes a page from the top of the pile and examines it. After his uncle Des died, it quickly became apparent that Aunt Lilly had no idea about money or bills – ‘that was always his department,’ she said – so Mark ended up dealing with the solicitors and processing all of the necessary paperwork. He’s been helping her out ever since, with little things: setting up standing orders at the bank, cancelling subscriptions to magazines and, not least, interpreting the runic complexities of her utility bills.

  ‘That’s a lovely suit,’ Aunt Lilly says, reaching over and stroking the sleeve of his jacket.

  ‘Yeah, it’s Italian,’ he says, not looking up from the Eircom bill. ‘Surprise, surprise.’

  ‘And the shoes?’

  ‘Yeah. You have to make an impression. That’s what it’s all about these days.’

  ‘La bella figura.’

  ‘Well, they invented it.’

  Mark half suspects that these emergency calls of his aunt’s are as much about the company as anything else – which is fine. It’s a bit like having the TV on, unwatched, in
another room. He does see her regularly, at least once a week, but if she needs an extra visit now and again, he’s more than willing to oblige. She’s certainly done enough for him.

  ‘Erm, did Uncle Des have broadband?’

  Aunt Lilly looks slightly pained, as though he’s just asked her to explain the general theory of relativity. ‘Broad – ?’

  ‘Broadband. On his computer. There’s a monthly charge here for it.’

  ‘He did use the computer quite a bit.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure that’s it then. I’ll get them to cancel it. Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of everything.’

  He replaces the Eircom bill.

  From where he’s sitting Mark can see the TV flickering in the next room. He shifts his chair slightly so that the TV is no longer in his direct line of vision.

  ‘You’re very good,’ Aunt Lilly says. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

  Mark looks at his watch. It’s just after nine. He’s meeting that builder again in town, but not until eleven.

  ‘Yeah, why not? Thanks.’

  It was a more convoluted process than he’d imagined, but he’s pretty confident now about securing the contract.

  Aunt Lilly gets up and busies herself with the kettle.

  Mark flicks a tiny piece of lint from his trouser leg.

  Then he turns his attention to the documents spread out on the table. Besides the pile of Eircom bills, there are ESB bills, NTL bills, bank statements, share certificates, tax-relief certificates, P60 forms. They go back over what must be years, and in some cases possibly even decades.

  He feels a sudden ripple of anxiety.

  ‘Aunt Lilly?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Why do you keep all of this stuff?’

  She’s standing at the counter, and turns around. He sees that she’s slicing what looks like a Madeira cake.

  ‘I … don’t know. Des was very conscientious about paperwork and things like that. Why?’

  ‘It isn’t necessary, that’s all. Going back a few years maybe, but this seems a bit extreme. I mean, these days, with identity theft and all, you can’t be too careful.’

  The second he says that he wishes he’d kept his mouth shut.

  ‘Identity what?’

  He explains briefly, doing his best to make it sound as innocuous as possible. She is, nevertheless, appalled.

  He knows that his aunt is trying to keep herself busy here, organising all of this paperwork, but he resolves to bring a small office shredder with him the next time he comes, and with her permission he’ll destroy most of it.

  She arrives carrying a tray. Mark makes some space on the table by picking up a thick wad of old bank statements, and as Aunt Lilly settles the tray and starts fussing with the tea things, he idly flicks through them.

  Some of these statements are more than twenty years old.

  Uncle Des …

  Mark gives a little shake of his head.

  The man was so fastidious, so hardworking, so morally upstanding. OK, he was also introspective and moody, and seemed, on a permanent basis, to be angry about something – but he managed to keep that to himself. He never took it out on anyone. He never lost his temper.

  He was a good man, a good father, and Mark misses him.

  He rests the wad of bank statements in his lap.

  This isn’t easy. Mark has only the vaguest memories of his natural father – his parents died when he was five – but whenever he does think of him, of Tony, he gets this weird feeling in his head, or maybe it’s in his heart … a plunging, plummeting rush of confusion, of longing, and of course – Jesus – of guilt. It’s intangible and unquantifiable, but the feeling is as real to him as a migraine headache, or a malignant tumour.

  With his uncle, on the other hand, things were always a good deal simpler. Despite the moodiness, Des was a father figure who didn’t come with any real baggage.

  Looking around the room now, at all the documents on the table, up at Aunt Lilly, Mark wonders – and quite possibly for the first time – what it was that his uncle ever had to be so angry about. He also wonders – and most definitely for the first time – if any of it had to do with him, if any of it might somehow have been his fault …

  2

  When she gets up, Gina has a splitting headache. She did have a few glasses of wine last night, finally – but this isn’t a hangover. She hopes that taking a shower will ease the pounding in her head. When it doesn’t, she takes two Panadol. She puts on coffee and goes to the bedroom to get dressed.

  She’s glad the weekend is over. As it was happening, it felt endless, and desolate, and empty. Now that it’s Monday morning, though, she’s not sure how much any of that is going to change.

  After the funeral on Friday, there was a big catered thing back at the house on Clyde Road. With her three sisters there, and various relatives, and old friends from Dolanstown – all of them clearly uncomfortable – Gina came to appreciate for the first time the divide that existed in Noel’s life between where he came from and where he ended up. Later on, out in Yvonne’s house, there was a lot of reminiscing, vodka-fuelled for the most part, and sitting there listening to it Gina also came to realise that there was a good twenty years of Noel’s life – the first twenty – that she had no knowledge or memory of at all.

  Saturday was spent mainly at Catherine’s. Various people stopped by, but there was no real structure to it anymore. The formal side of things was over, and as the day progressed there was an awful sense of not wanting to let go – coupled with a growing realisation that everyone else, the rest of the world, already had. On Sunday morning, lying in bed, Gina thought obsessively about the previous weekend. She was tormented by its innocence and abandon, by its blind ignorance of what lay ahead. She spent most of the day alone, curled up on the sofa, unable to face any of the usual Sunday stuff – the papers, the eggs, the laundry.

  She managed to rouse herself from this torpor towards evening time. Then at around seven, P.J. phoned, and she agreed to meet him for a drink. They met in Kehoe’s and had a fairly depressing conversation about the future of Lucius Software. They skirted around it but eventually had to admit that with no production date in sight, and the economy heading into recession, the chances of a second round of VC funding were looking increasingly slim.

  Sitting at her kitchen table now, Gina sips coffee, unconcerned about the location of keys, mobile phone, earrings, her Monday morning drained of its urgency.

  She’ll go into the office all right – there’s plenty to do – but not until later. In the meantime, she has that appointment in Baggot Street at ten o’clock.

  As Gina leaves her building, walks along the quays and makes her way over to Pearse Street, she thinks about Paddy Norton and what she’s going to say to him. She also thinks about her sisters, none of whom seems to share her concerns about the way their brother died. When she brought it up on Saturday, for the second or third time, Michelle even snapped at her and told her to stop it.

  Which, in fairness, she did.

  Gina’s concerns are real, but she also knows that people grieve in different ways, and that maybe this is just her way. If so, she doesn’t want to impose that on anyone else – at least not for the moment.

  Halfway along Baggot Street, Gina takes Norton’s business card out of her bag and looks at it.

  After another few minutes, she finds the address.

  It’s a modern office building, an International Style glass box, but at only six storeys a little odd-looking – like a skyscraper in miniature, something squeezed down in scale to fit into its more elegant, Georgian surroundings. Put up sometime in the late seventies, she guesses, or early eighties, the building is quite ugly, and already appears dilapidated, streaked on the outside, as if it’s been dipped in some sort of corrosive chemical.

  Gina goes into the lobby and glances around. Straight ahead, there is an unoccupied marble reception desk. Hanging above it there is a huge frameless painting – thick
yellow stripes against a grainy bluish background. Next to this there is a directory, which Gina consults. She sees that Winterland Properties is on the third floor.

  She takes the elevator up, and Norton’s secretary shows her into his office. Gina is surprised by the decor. Like the fittings and corporate artwork in the lobby, it has quite a dated feel to it. Norton’s desk is a huge mahogany affair, and in front of it there are two red leather sofas with a glass coffee table between them. The table is scattered with magazines. On the wall facing the desk, there is a mahogany cabinet with a large TV set in the middle of it.

  ‘Gina … Gina.’

  Norton comes out from behind his desk and extends his hand. He’s wearing a grey suit with a powder-blue shirt and a slightly darker blue tie. Gina steps forward.

  ‘Hi, Mr Norton.’

  ‘Paddy. Jesus. Call me Paddy.’

  They shake hands.

  ‘OK … Paddy, thanks.’

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m all right. You know.’ The face Gina makes here – half pained, half resigned – is meant to express a keen desire to move on. But before she can say anything more, Norton claps his hands together.

  ‘Gina,’ he says, ‘I was going to propose something to you this morning. I was going to ask if you’d like to come and have a look at Richmond Plaza, let me give you a tour, show you the view from the top.’

  Gina stares at him for a moment in surprise, as though he has just spoken to her in Chinese.

  ‘In Noel’s honour sort of thing.’ He pauses. ‘I mean, we both know how dedicated he was to the project, right?’

  Gina certainly wasn’t expecting this, but after a pause she nods her head and says, ‘Yes, yes, I’d really like that.’

  ‘Good,’ Norton says, ‘good.’

  There is a coat draped on one of the leather sofas. He reaches over and picks it up. He puts it on and holds a hand out, indicating the door. ‘OK then,’ he says, ‘let’s go.’

  In the mid-morning traffic, it takes them about twenty minutes to get to Richmond Dock. Norton’s car is spacious and very comfortable, but with its sickly beige leather upholstery and pine air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror, Gina ends up feeling a little queasy and doesn’t say much. Norton, in any case, talks non-stop and goes into a level of technical detail about the project that she quickly finds incomprehensible.