Winterland

by Alan Glynn

  But he doesn’t seem to be listening anymore. She’s about to elaborate on her point when he suddenly stands up and shuffles out from behind the table.

  ‘Mark, please, listen –’

  He holds a hand up to silence her. There are tears in his eyes.

  He walks off.

  Gina swivels around and watches as he goes out the door of the café. He turns right, passes along by the window and quickly disappears from view.

  3

  Norton looks at his watch. It’s almost midday. He picks up the remote from his desk and flicks on the TV.

  Sky News.

  He leaves it on mute. Then he slumps back in his ergonomic swivel chair and glances around. He doesn’t like this office anymore. He has set aside an entire floor of the new building for Winterland Properties and can’t wait until it’s ready.

  That’s assuming, of course, that everything goes smoothly. Because there are plenty of people out there who’d love to see Norton fall flat on his face, people who said at the outset that the project wasn’t financially viable, that Richmond Plaza would lie vacant for years.

  Well, they don’t have much longer to wait.

  Norton reaches for the remote again and switches over to RTÉ. On the bulletin at midday there should be some mention of the press conference at the Carlton.

  As he waits, he goes over some paperwork relating to the agreement-for-lease of one of the smaller tenants moving into Richmond Plaza. There’s been some dispute over the net lettable area – which bits, exactly, they will or won’t be renting – and he needs to be on top of this before a meeting with their agent at two o’clock.

  After a while, he glances over and sees that the news bulletin is starting. He picks up the remote and turns on the sound. The press conference is the lead story.

  Norton shakes his head. Is there nothing else happening in the world? No earthquake or hostage crisis? No development in the Middle East? No further slump in the housing market or surge in inflation? Is there nothing to deflect attention from Larry fucking Bolger?

  Norton couldn’t believe the coverage in the papers yesterday. It was savage, with the rushed and giddy feel of a premature obituary. What he’s increasingly afraid of, however, is that if they push it and finish him off, Bolger mightn’t be the only one who gets buried.

  On screen, it cuts from the studio to the press conference. The minister is sitting at a table in front of a bank of microphones.

  ‘… and I want to reassure people,’ he’s saying, ‘that I have the full support, the full backing, of my family, my friends and my colleagues.’ He hunches forward. ‘But look, I want people to see this for what it is, which is a witch hunt, pure and simple … it’s a sinister attempt to undermine …’

  Norton’s mobile phone goes off. He whips it up and looks at the display. No number. He hesitates, then answers it. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Paddy, Ray Sullivan.’

  Closing his eyes, Norton emits a low groan. Then he says, ‘Ray, listen, can I put you on hold for a second?’

  ‘Er … sure.’

  Norton lowers his arm and dangles the phone by the side of his chair. He refocuses his attention on the press conference.

  ‘… and on the other hand accountability, so that I as a public representative, going forward, can get on with the job I was first elected to do as an ambitious young man more than twenty-five years ago.’

  Abruptly, the clip ends, and they cut back to the newsreader in the studio. Norton presses the Mute button on the remote. He raises his arm and puts the phone up to his ear again. ‘Ray?’

  He’s been dreading this call.

  ‘Paddy. What the hell is going on over there? I thought you might have gotten in touch by now.’

  Norton squirms. ‘I know, I know. I was just waiting to see if it’d blow over.’

  ‘But … it hasn’t.’

  ‘Not as yet.’

  ‘Not as yet.’ Sullivan clears his throat. ‘So let me ask, how’s your boy doing?’

  Norton is irritated by the phrasing. ‘He’s OK. He’s stonewalling. Which he’s pretty good at. He’s a politician.’

  ‘Fine, Paddy, but get this, the story has just come up on the old man’s radar screen, and I have to tell you, he’s pretty pissed. I wasn’t going to mention it to him, at least not yet, but it turns out he’s no stranger to the blogosphere.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yeah, I know, at his age.’ Sullivan clicks his tongue. ‘But anyway, the thing is, he feels let down. Oberon’s put a lot into this and let’s just say that Mr V. thinks any scandal or unpleasantness should have been flagged way in advance.’

  ‘Ray, believe me,’ Norton says, ‘this will blow over. It’s just … it’s part of the process. Larry’s getting himself into position and … the gloves are off. Don’t tell me shit like this doesn’t happen all the time up on the Hill.’

  ‘It does, but people get screwed, Paddy, they get indicted, they go to fucking prison.’

  Norton remains silent.

  ‘Here’s the thing, OK? Mr V. doesn’t want to shake this guy’s hand one week and then have to watch him doing a perp walk on TV the next.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘It’d look bad.’

  ‘Yeah. I know.’

  Norton chews on his lower lip.

  As a possible future prime minister of the only English-speaking country in the Eurozone, and with a six-month stint as EU Council President also in prospect, Larry Bolger would undoubtedly be useful to the Oberon Capital Group – he’d be a handy point man to have in terms of regulatory influence and the awarding of contracts.

  ‘And he liked him,’ Sullivan is saying. ‘He did. So let’s hope you’re right. Let’s hope it is going to blow over.’

  ‘It is, Ray, trust me.’

  ‘OK,’ Sullivan then says. ‘Where are we on naming rights?’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Norton says, thinking, sly move. ‘I’m glad you brought that up.’

  ‘So?’

  Naming rights is an inexact science if ever there was one, and very easy to get wrong. The future marketability of a building, for example, will often hinge on how its original name resonates. In this case, the Docklands Regeneration Commission has pretty much decided that the neutral-sounding, location-specific Richmond Plaza works best in the context of urban renewal. Ray Sullivan, on the other hand, has been arguing that Amcan, as anchor tenant, should have exclusive rights in the naming of its shiny new European headquarters.

  So … the Amcan Building.

  It’s not how Norton imagined it, and certainly the last thing he needs right now is another protracted tussle with the Docklands Regeneration Commission, but the smart move here is probably just to cave in to Sullivan’s demands and bring the negotiations to a head.

  Besides, given the current economic uncertainty, locking them in like this mightn’t be such a bad idea.

  ‘Very well,’ he says. ‘Let’s put some numbers together. And talk later.’

  ‘OK, Paddy, excellent.’

  After the call, Norton sits in silence, staring across at a weather update on the TV.

  He shakes his head. How and when – he wonders – did Larry Bolger become central to all of this? How and when did he go from being a sweetener, the icing on the cake, to a deal point?

  When ads come on, Norton flicks the TV off with the remote.

  So perhaps he should be maintaining a closer watch on Bolger. He seemed fairly composed at the press conference there, but he is under a lot of pressure, and anything could happen. Norton knows how that works after all – how the tipping point can just creep up on you.

  He picks his mobile phone up again. With his other hand he reaches into his jacket pocket, leans a little to the side and rummages around for his silver pillbox.

  4

  ‘Mark, you look dreadful. What’s … what’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  As he strides across the kitchen, Mark can see the alarm in Aunt Lilly’s ey
es. When he gets to where she’s standing, over by the sink, he doesn’t do what he usually does, which is bend down and peck her on the cheek.

  He just stands there.

  Driving out here from town Mark rehearsed what he was going to say. Out loud. These days, of course, you can do that and not have to worry about seeming deranged. You can be alone in your car, even stopped at traffic lights, and talk, shout, make hand gestures, wave your arms about – because for all the guy in the next car knows, you could be barking at your stockbroker or on a conference call to head office in Tokyo.

  Or blubbering to your analyst.

  But looking into his aunt Lilly’s eyes now, Mark feels the rage and indignation draining out of him. Suddenly, it doesn’t seem fair, or appropriate, to subject her to what would be, in effect, an interrogation.

  ‘What is it, Mark?’

  At the same time, he can’t let it go. He has to ask her something.

  ‘Aunt Lilly, did …er …’

  As he was flying out along the coast road, this was the one question that he held in reserve, that remained in his head, unrehearsed and unarticulated.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Did …Dad …’

  But he doesn’t get beyond that second syllable, which is not a syllable he has used – on its own, out loud – in as long as he can remember. Using it now finishes him off. His eyes well up again.

  ‘Oh Mark … Mark …’

  He turns away. Through the door leading into the living room he can see that the TV is on. As usual, the sound is either off or pitched so low that he can’t hear it.

  ‘Aunt Lilly,’ he says, ‘are we really …’ There is an ad on for mobile phones. He stares at it. ‘Are we really sure that Dad … that the accident was his fault?’

  He turns back and looks at her.

  She is ashen.

  Mark has never talked to Aunt Lilly about this before. When his uncle Des was alive, he never talked about it to him either. Any time Mark’s circumstances were alluded to over the years, which was usually for practical reasons, it was in a kind of code, it was hushed and hurried, as though mere contemplation of what had happened might be perilous to mental, even physical, health. Mark’s own understanding of what had happened derived mainly from conversations he overheard in the days and weeks following the crash. Some of these, even at that early stage, were hushed and hurried. Others – looking back on them now – were pretty careless, and really shouldn’t have been conducted in his presence. It was as though people thought that because Mark was so small he wouldn’t understand what they were saying, or take anything in, or remember.

  But he was five; he wasn’t stupid.

  He recalls, for instance – it was in a crowded sitting room or a kitchen – one man loudly whispering to another, ‘I hear poor Tony had drink taken.’ Now Mark may not have grasped the full import of these words at the time, but he certainly took them in and he certainly remembered them. In fact, he will never forget the day some years later – and it was seemingly out of the blue – when the phrase came into proper focus for him, when sufficient context had accrued around it for its meaning to light up suddenly and explode inside his head.

  Tony had drink taken.

  He recalls hearing the word Bolger, too – from the days right after the crash – hearing it repeatedly, incessantly, until it took on an obscure, elusive kind of significance for him. Much later, there was a moment when the context around that word clicked into place as well.

  The thing is, when Mark was growing up, his adoptive parents never told him anything about what was, up to that point, undeniably, the central event of his life, and he, in turn – assuming there was a good reason for their silence – never asked. He did feel that some attempt at a conversation about it was inevitable though, and as a confused, solipsistic kid he often tried to imagine this. It was something he looked forward to, craved even, but as he got into his teens, and as the silence deepened and thickened, it dawned on him that no such conversation was probably ever going to take place. Then, as he got older – and as his retrospective impressions coalesced into a kind of horrifying revelation – he started to dread that one still might, and he did all in his power to demonstrate to his aunt and uncle that he neither needed nor wanted one.

  Mark knew what had happened, he believed – and they knew – so what was there to say about it? Why subject themselves to the embarrassment and the shame?

  It was the perfect conspiracy of silence.

  Looking at his aunt Lilly now, at the confusion in her eyes, Mark sees the breadth and reach of that conspiracy, and is prepared to bet that she has nothing useful to tell him, not because she chooses not to remember, or because she doesn’t remember, but because she doesn’t know, not anymore.

  ‘Mark …I …’

  And perhaps she never did.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Mark says, turning away again, unable to face her. ‘I was just –’

  ‘We always meant, your uncle Des and I, we …’

  She trails off here, and Mark is relieved. The person he should probably be talking to, in any case, isn’t in the room. He’s been dead for six months.

  Standing in the doorway, Mark looks at the TV and sees that a news bulletin is starting up. He lowers his head and closes his eyes.

  But if Uncle Des were still alive, he wonders, and here in the room today, what questions would he put to him?

  Uncle Des … what really happened that night? Do you remember? Do you know? Were you told? Did you believe what you were told? Did it make sense to you? Did you ask questions? Did you get answers? Were you bullied? Were you coerced into silence? Did that silence last the rest of your life?

  He opens his eyes again.

  Was my father wrongly accused? Was he made into a scapegoat to protect someone else’s reputation?

  Uncle Des may be gone, Mark realises, but someone still needs to answer these questions.

  He raises his head. He looks at the TV.

  A man is sitting hunched forward at a table in front of some microphones.

  It takes Mark a second or two to recognise who it is.

  He goes over and grabs the remote from the arm of the sofa. He fumbles for the button and raises the volume.

  But all he catches are the final few words.

  ‘… the job I was first elected to do as an ambitious young man more than twenty-five years ago …’

  5

  After she leaves the café, Gina walks around for a while, aimlessly – down Grafton Street, along Wicklow Street. On the phone earlier Mark Griffin had asked if she was a journalist and she’d said no, of course not. But now she feels like one, feels like the worst tabloid hack – someone who thinks nothing of exploiting someone else’s grief for a story.

  She turns left onto Drury Street and then right at Claudio’s Wines. She walks through the old South City Markets and comes out onto George’s Street.

  She should have left him alone. It was unfair of her to plant a doubt in his mind like that and then have nothing to back it up. It was irresponsible and selfish.

  She has a knot in her stomach now, and a headache.

  She walks on a bit and stops at a corner. But when she looks across the street, the knot in her stomach tightens.

  Because the building directly opposite is where Noel used to work. It’s where BCM has its offices.

  She looks around her for a moment, and then back across the street. Gina has passed this building many times but has never been inside. On the rare occasions that Noel took her out to lunch, they met nearby, in the Long Hall or in Grogan’s.

  So what is she doing here now? It’s not as if she came this way deliberately. It wasn’t anything conscious.

  Seeing as how she is here, though …

  She crosses the street.

  Inside the building, the lobby is all granite and tinted glass, with leather banquettes and discreetly placed artworks. BCM is on the fourth floor.

  She goes up in the elevator.


  The receptionist, when she realises who Gina is, gets quite emotional, and Gina has to struggle to maintain her own composure. After a few moments, she asks to see a particular colleague of Noel’s, a Leo Spillane, someone she met at the funeral.

  ‘Oh my dear,’ the receptionist says, making it sound as if this might be the last straw for Gina, ‘I’m afraid he’s out sick today.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ Gina says. Then, not really knowing why she’s here but still feeling a need to explain herself, she adds, ‘I just wanted to talk to someone. You know. Someone who worked with Noel.’

  The receptionist nods her head vigorously and says, ‘I understand, I understand. I know there’s a meeting going on, but look, take a seat and I’ll check who’s back there.’

  Two or three minutes later a pale young man about Gina’s age, or maybe a bit older, emerges from a corridor to the right of the reception desk. He’s quite thin and is wearing a suit that looks at least a size too big for him. He approaches Gina with his hand extended.

  ‘Er, hello,’ he says. ‘Pleased to meet you. I’m … I’m Dermot Flynn.’

  He’s floating through this – and through everything these days really – as though in a dream, and of course this could be a dream, because it’s got all the elements of a dream: anxiety, tranquillity, perplexity, guilt, more anxiety, and now, bizarrely, Noel Rafferty’s kid sister …

  He sits down beside her in reception. He offers his condolences.

  ‘So tell me,’ she then says, ‘you worked with my brother, is that right?’

  The tranquillity part – due to the medication his doctor prescribed him last week – is already feeling a little diluted.

  ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘I worked under him. I was, am, a member of the team.’

  As he describes his job and his place in the company, Dermot Flynn looks closely at Gina. He sees the resemblance all right – Noel’s angular, drawn features reflected in this younger, fresher, more attractive face.