They sat Jimmy down and pulled the tape off his mouth. Mongi sat down beside him and began to talk to him in a very polite tone.
Put yourself in my shoes, Mongi said. Don’t you think I’ve been very patient?
Jimmy gave no response. Mongi’s helper also remained quiet and the skipper was up on deck in the wheelhouse.
You’re not listening, Mongi said, disappointed. I’m trying to enter into meaningful dialogue with you, for fucksake.
Hum! Jimmy looked up at Mongi. His ankle was beginning to swell up with referred pain. As though he was already suffering future injuries.
OK, let me give you an example, Mongi said. We’ve got plenty of time. I’ll make it easy for you. What would you do if somebody robbed your dinner off you?
Jimmy looked helpless.
Just say you’re in McDonald’s, Mongi continued, and somebody comes up and swipes your Big Mac right off you. And it’s your last money and you could be facing starvation. Snatches it out of your hand when you’re just about to bite into it. How would you feel?
I don’t know, Jimmy said. I hate McDonald’s.
Abrakebabra then, or whatever?
That’s worse.
OK. Bad example. What kind of grub do you like?
Italian.
Gimme a dish! Mongi clicked his fingers. Spaghetti or what?
Risotto.
Right, Mongi started once more, sitting back, not looking at Jimmy at all. You’ve got a bowl of risotto in front of you, and you stick your fork in. Then some fucking dickhead comes up and takes the fork off you, and the dish, and starts eating it up himself. And it’s the last can of risotto left. What would you say?
I don’t know, Jimmy said.
The boat was moving up and down on the swell. The engine was rumbling and sending deep vibrations through the boat: everything that wasn’t fixed down was jumping with epileptic madness. Mongi’s shoelace was swinging rhythmically, doing a lasso imitation on its own. A key hanging on a hook along the wall was dancing around in a frenzy and a newspaper opened on the sports pages was shivering.
Mongi sighed. I’m asking you a simple question, Jimmy. I want you to dignify me with an answer. I bet you’d be a little bit upset, wouldn’t you?
I suppose.
I’m trying to do a quid pro quo with you, like. You’re not helping me.
I suppose I’d be upset all right.
Bloody right you would. You’d be fucking going apeshit, man. Throwing a tantrum like a bawling baby. Mongi felt he had been very understanding. He had acted like a gentleman. That’s what this is all about, Mongi said philosophically. It’s about taking food out of somebody else’s mouth.
Mongi decided to proceed to the amusements, as he called them. We can do this the easy way or the hard way, he said. If Jimmy told him where the money was, right now, then they would go back in to the harbour and everything would be cool. Mongi would be very lenient and let him off with a battering. But if Jimmy did not make a full disclosure straight away, Mongi would be forced to go the extra mile. Jimmy thought of giving the money back, but it was too late for that now. His father had it.
Amusements! Mongi shouted.
Coyne decided to walk along the pier. The anglers were out, standing at the edge with their fishing rods, cigarettes and sandwiches. At their feet, some stained newspapers with live lugworm; one or two plaice already caught. From a small radio a crackled and distant news-on-the-hour dispersed in the open air.
The pier was thronged with people. Some sat in the seats by the wall – brown rust marks of bolts and metal supports bleeding across the flaky blue wood like a crucifixion. The stigmata of seaside benches where people paused for a momentary review of life. Greatest moments. Worst disasters. End of century millennial self-analysis with the sunset over Dublin city leaving behind a sky of candy-floss streaks. Atomic dust particles turning the night over Dublin into a curtain of darkening pink and orange. The red glow on the granite rocks slowly faded and a white moon was already out on the far side of the wall, along with one or two bright stars. The wind gauge was not spinning like a propeller, for a change. Everything was calm. The Superferry slipped out with a moan of its siren echoing through the suburbs. And the lighthouse started casting an elliptical ring around the bay, whipping a long red finger across the black water, while the banjo player was playing the sad theme from Doctor Zhivago, warping the notes with added pathos.
Coyne saw the trawler making its way out through the harbour mouth but by the time he got to the top of the pier it was too far away to make out the name. The banjo player had moved on to other tunes – mazurkas, a waltz, ballads and polkas – all of which he covered in a blanket of trills and grace notes. Maybe it was all grace notes, in fact.
Coyne stood below the lighthouse and leaned against the wall facing out to sea. He was taking his time now. Things had become less rushed. Perhaps he should start letting things go a little more, become a tolerant man. A man without subtext. Perhaps he should do something useless. What a brilliant notion, he thought. It could be the great new catchphrase of our time: do something useless. There was far too much purpose in the world. It was all too productive and good and esteemed and valued. Why not something less viable.
Do something useless, he repeated out loud. He liked the sound of it.
He stared out to sea and listened to the music coming and going on the breeze. It was not quite summer yet and people were treating the good weather with great suspicion as usual. There was warmth left in the air, and a kind of afterglow in the rocks. As he leaned against the wall he felt it in his stomach, the latent heat of the sun stored in the granite. He was surprised by this sensation and it struck him almost like human warmth, pressing against his body. He had experienced nothing like it in such a long time. Bolg le bolg! Belly to belly! As though he was holding Carmel. Slow dancing with her to the music on the pier. The human warmth of the rocks.
Everybody was packed into the Anchor Bar that night when it opened its doors to the public again. Free pints for the first hour. All the familiar faces were there. Red-eye McCurtain was in early. And the poet. Free drink was all that mattered now.
The whole pub had been changed beyond recognition. There was no need for a snug any more. The curtains on the windows were also gone, allowing people to look right inside. It was an open society now. Nobody was hiding anything any more and the basic need for anonymity had gone. People wanted to be seen drinking. Young people sat in the window seats with bottles of foreign beer saying: look at us, drinking and having fun. We are well-adjusted people, able to speak up for ourselves.
They had changed the name from the Anchor Bar to the Anchor Café. Gone too were the little partitions and the nautical artefacts. The interior architects had gone for transparency. Accountability! Generous open space and judiciously placed art objects. The Irish bar had evolved as a communal living room, allowing people to meet on neutral ground – a place of anonymity and fantasy. Now the Irish drinker was coming out at last. Spending more and drinking less.
Some of the local people were a bit put out by the price of the pint. Some complained about the music, said they couldn’t hear themselves think. The poet was already lamenting the snug of Europe and said he was boycotting the pub, once the free beer ran out. The management was confident that the whole café idea would take off. There was an atmosphere of celebration and anyway they didn’t give a shite whether they had a poet in the bar or not. Everybody was a poet as long as they had money.
The plaque to Tommy Nolan was unveiled quietly by Marlene Nolan. I’m still rolling along…
It was a Celtic disco pub. But already the little contradictions had crept back into the Anchor Café. Like the weekly golf tournament. And the weekly pub lottery. And the cliques and local gossip columnists. McCurtain had donated his Playboy calendar, which the barman quickly pinned up on the side of the fridge door. Otherwise
, it was a controlled environment, with a CD blasting out over the new sound system.
Martin Davis reluctantly steered the Lolita out into the Irish Sea. There was another altercation on board when the skipper told Mongi that he was meant to be in the Anchor Bar. He was meant to unveil a plaque.
Time for the amusements, Mongi said. Spectaculars!
Leave him alone, the skipper said from the wheelhouse. It’s not worth it.
You do as you’re told, Davis. Shut your jaw or I’ll give you the mackerel.
Poll circe, the skipper muttered through his beard. If I woulda-hada-known there was this much violence involved, I woulda-never-hada-got into this.
Mongi had tied Jimmy to the railings on deck and had put him on a diet of stale fish. Just as he had done with the immigrants, he was shouting: Fresh fish! Despite the fact that Jimmy now had limp mackerel stuck in his oesophagus, coughing and gagging, with his eyes bulging out through his purple face, the force-feeding programme was not working any more.
It was counterproductive, Mongi decided. He took the mackerel out of Jimmy’s mouth, like a stopper, and threw it to the seagulls. Then he lashed a long rope over the bow of the boat, working quietly in darkness with only the instrument panel lighting up the skipper’s face in the wheelhouse and everybody’s lips trembling with the shudder of the engine.
Did you ever see Mutiny on the Bounty? Mongi asked.
Martin Davis looked up. No, you can’t do that, Mongi, he said.
Just a little dip. A little trip round the underworld.
Jesus, you’ll kill him.
We’ll be there on the other side when you come up, Mongi said to Jimmy. We’ll be there to hear your confession.
But even as Mongi and his friend tied Jimmy’s feet and hands and began to lower him down the side of the boat, with the utter darkness of the sea beneath him, Jimmy held fast to his ideals. Because that’s all he had. He was blindly holding on to his faith. He could have given the money back. It would have been simple. But he went down into the inky black sea vowing to fight to the death. No Surrender.
Carmel had tried Coyne’s flat once before that afternoon without success. Now she stood at the door again ringing the bell, with the engine of the car left running.
A man from the ground-floor flat came out and spoke to her. Coyne had not been in all day, as far as this man knew. So she decided to leave a note.
We need to talk, she wrote. Perhaps Coyne would read some subtext into this. So she wrote out a fresh note: Please contact me immediately regarding Jimmy. Then she posted the note through a crack under Coyne’s door. Pushed it as far as she could with the pen, and left.
The darkness beneath the trawler made it seem like the underworld to Jimmy. There was darkness in his lungs too and he was coughing up an awful lot of water when he was pulled back up on deck again, retching grey spurts of brine and producing all kinds of sea debris. There was a cut over his eye. They sat him on a winch and gave him a minute to recover.
OK, Mongi said, slapping him on the back to help him breathe. Let me ask you one last time. If somebody took food away from you, what would you say?
Jimmy could not face the black water again and spoke up. Looked Mongi in the eye with great sincerity.
We’re all in the vestibule, he said at last.
What’s that?
You’re in the vestibule, me and you.
Mongi turned his back on Jimmy in anger. His fists were balled as he looked towards the land and the string of lights along the coast. The sky above the city was reddish and inflamed.
You’re making me do this, he said, turning back to face his victim.
They lifted him and brought him back to the side of the boat, Jimmy violently coughing up more in protest and the skipper standing by, pleading with Mongi to stop. For Jesus sake, Mongi. He’s not going to last.
He has a choice! Mongi shouted. It’s not as though we didn’t give him a chance.
Carmel walked straight into the Anchor Café amid all the celebration and commemoration. Just when Coyne was lifting up his pint and examining it at eye level in a moment of eucharistic admiration, she suddenly appeared, standing right behind him and calling out his name over the music. There was a worried look on her face, though she tried to smile back politely at all the local people who greeted her.
Great, Coyne thought. Jesus, things were looking up. If this is what the café idea was intended to achieve, then he was all for it. More openness! More reconciliation! The only thing he regretted was that he didn’t have a gin and tonic ready and waiting for her. The one day she decided to walk into the Anchor Café, he was not prepared.
I’m not staying, she said.
Ah, Carmel. Just have one, while you’re here.
No way. She shook her head. And even when Coyne ordered a gin and tonic, she refused to touch it. We need to talk, she said.
Of course Coyne got it all wrong, thinking that she was trying to get back together with him at last. He was all flushed and emotional. He ran around looking for a barstool she could sit on.
Jesus, Carmel. I’ve been waiting for this moment.
What moment?
You know! Us, Coyne said. Us getting back together.
Jesus, Pat, she sighed. You’ve got this all wrong as usual. She quickly explained why she had come to the pub – the attack, the threat, the bandaged index finger. She hadn’t come all the way down to the Anchor Café for her health.
Coyne was taken aback, not only by the blunt way in which she expressed her mind, but at the thought of her vulnerability. There was a little frown on her forehead that he had rarely seen before. He had always thought of her as being rock solid and could not imagine her unable to cope. Now he realised that she had come for help. She had not entered the Anchor Café of her own free will. She was calling on him as a protector of the home.
I should have gone straight to the police, she said.
I’ll look after you, he said, still trying to salvage his pride.
It’s Jimmy, she said. He’s involved in something. This man says Jimmy owes him money. Big money.
I’m not a cop any more, Carmel, Coyne said at last, hurt.
You’re his father.
She said none of the things he would have expected to hear. And he could say nothing to reassure her. It was the wrong place for intimacy and Coyne was suddenly raging at the music. Called one of the barmen over and told him to switch it down. How could anyone talk while REM were howling and wailing their self-important, self-obsessed dirges all night? Shiny, happy people holding hands! For Jaysus sake!
Coyne and Carmel looked at each other, like they both agreed silently that this was a big disaster. There were things to be said but they were entirely out of context in this meeting. She was standing with her arms folded, a fortress of resentment and anger.
You’re his father and you don’t even know where he is, Carmel said, and then she started crying. With McCurtain looking on. And the poet. And the barman. It was a true sign of transparency when customers in the new café began to show their feelings in public. Crying openly without shame.
Carmel turned and left. Coyne ran out after her and caught up with her just as she reached the car. He took the keys from her hand, opened the passenger door and ushered her inside. Got in and drove her home. Stopped short of the house and took out the Identikit drawing from his pocket.
Is this him? he asked.
Yes! How come? she said, looking up at Coyne as he stared out through the windscreen.
I’m going to look after this, he said, putting the drawing away again. Leave it to me.
Then he got out and brought her into the house. She was overwhelmed by the sudden conviction with which he assumed he could open the hall door, as in the old days, and lead her inside.
Everything will be OK, he said. I might need to use your car for a d
ay or two.
He was a father again. He was the man of the house. Pat and Carmel Coyne on the doorstep looking at each other for a moment through a blaze of confused emotion. He did something instinctive, something audacious that he would not have done if had thought about it. He threw his arms around her and gave her a hug: an awkward embrace that surprised him as much as it surprised her. It lasted only ten seconds and was over before they knew it. Before either of them could respond in words or work out what it was meant to signify. A gesture that was deep and lighthearted at the same time. It was over within seconds, but it lasted long enough for Coyne to feel the warmth of her body against his stomach, the latent heat of the sun, the slow dance with granite. The sensation that he had experienced on the pier earlier that evening. Human warmth.
Coyne drove back to his flat for the money. He left the engine running and ran inside to pick up the bag. On his way out he saw Carmel’s stone on the mantelpiece and put it in his pocket. Then he bounded down the stairs and out to the car, only to find Sergeant Corrigan waiting for him.
Corrigan was always going to be one step behind, like a transmuting virus piggy-backing on small details of information. At times he tried to get one step ahead of the action, but he found himself shifting back as though he was dealing with a relativity principle in which he was constantly catching up with crime, his time-travelling twin brother. One day he would arrive before something happened.
Sergeant Corrigan stepped forward out of the shadows, whistling, just as Coyne was getting into the car. Where is he? Corrigan demanded.
Coyne looked around and saw two other officers sitting in an unmarked Garda car. They were so obvious. For Christsake. You give yourselves away. It’s like you have a big sign on the roof of the car saying: we are watching you! What kind of surveillance is this, he thought, when you can spot them a mile off. Corrigan should have brought his hurling stick so he could whack the ball and his two greyhound colleagues could go and run after it.
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