by philip boyle
clothes, call home, call the kids, or at least talk to her mother and ask after
them. Meant to do all those things. Then she saw the prices, the cost of
things and she looked in her purple purse and wept at the paucity of what
was inside. Get a job, a real fucking job, she knew it, the volume of truth
was turned up full and almost burst her eardrums. And then she turned
down the easy road, the road oft travelled where her aging looks were still
flattered, where the magician could still turn tricks and bring a smile and a
groan. And easy, quick money would come her way.
Too kind, she’d said to the grey-suited businessman with the clean
face and the flattering manner, and the keys to a BMW clearly displayed.
Nice leather seats in nice warm autumnal bar that kept their faces in a
pleasant shadow. And then he told her the room number. So easy, pleasant
and the money already in her tattered purse. He bruised her body and kept
her face clean. He burned her skin with expensive cigarettes and brought
her out of the hotel through the kitchens, past the sweating surprised faces
of the chefs and cleaners. The unkindly man held her close and pretended
she was drunk or sick. Linda was still too stunned, embarrassed to speak.
The cold frosting air had hit her like a slap. She banged her head against the side of his car as he bundled her inside and then he sped away from the scene of the crime. She remembered his cruel apathy as he found the empty
desolate street where he could drop her like an empty wrapper. ‘Cheers,’ Manny grinned as a glass appeared in front of him. She looked around for something to cheer herself. She saw the phone
in the corner. She felt for the coins in her pocket. Her mobile had been
discarded along the way, probably buried in the snow, its secrets frozen. ‘Eddie. Did he say anything? About me?’
CHAPTER 39
Airport Everything was inconsequential now. There was neither matter nor substance in the wailing voice of the child carried on the back of the infinitely large woman in front of him. No importance in the muffled voices calling endless delays over the tannoy. He snacked on a wafer-thin chocolate bar and threw the wrapper in a metal bin. His head itched, still not used to the hairpiece sitting on top of it. How he had learned the lesson, how close he’d come, Go, how fucking fast his heart had beaten that day. Dublin airport the day before, hours it seemed in the queue to show your passport to some desperately bored man who had dreamt so much more about being in uniform. Finally, finally he had arrived at the counter and handed over his passport. At first the usual casual, apathetic glance, hardly even that, and Tommy was already starting to take it back and walk away when the man behind the glass suddenly woke up, looked at the photograph again, looked at Tommy, then continued as if the machine had stalled and was stuck on repeat.
This was surely it, thought Tommy. And he was glad, really quite relieved because when it came down to it, trying the carry the weight of everything he’d done had become almost impossible. And here was someone to finally lift it off his back. In a sharp white room with two men whose uniforms actually meant something. Tommy wondered whether he should say something first or let them work it out for themselves. They opened his suitcase and peeled back the layers like flailing skin. They’d soon connect it, piece the jigsaw of only a few pieces together and realize what they had in front of them. The aftermath of Dublin had not been what he expected. The lack of information, the lack of evident progress actually scared him more than if they’d shown his own picture on all the TV screens in all the world. Lack of information indicated that they knew everything. And why wouldn’t they? Crawling seconds dragged to minutes while they took every crumb from the bag. What were they doing, not looking at him, rifling through every stitch while he sat insignificant like a bug in the corner? His passport opened on the table beside the case. And that photograph inside it, taken in the booth at Waverley years ago, innocent hopeful years ago.
And then he saw it. It came out last as if it had been hiding. The hair, held up like an artificial limb, unwanted now because he was able to walk on one leg. The uniforms passed it between each other and laughed, and Tommy realized that he might get away after all. A lungful of air rushed from his mouth and he laughed himself. He then proceeded to further lampooning himself by explaining how, why, he had ditched the hair on his head and grown the messy hair on his face. They asked him to put it on and examined the passport photograph again. Then, before he knew it, he was out of there, he was on the plane, the rush of adrenalin heightened by the chased down vodka and being so high above the sole earth.
The baby wailed, his head screamed and the razor cut on his cheek ached. He gripped the passport in his hand and approached the caked smiling face of the girl at the check-in desk. He could have taken the train, but the reality was always so much worse than the thoughts of it. Cramped noisy cars and screaming, untended kids being fed a diet of sugar and caffeine by attendant mothers constantly on the edge of killing their young. Tommy searched the face of the girl handing him his boarding pass and wondered if she took the smile off when she made it home at night. Was Munch’s Scream hidden underneath that porcelain beauty? Did she sing a fragile tune as she washed the day off in the steaming shower? Such random, stupid thoughts that sprang from nowhere, that rushed in from all sides, unexpected, unwanted, like fragments of songs that popped into his head and rushed to his mouth in the form of a whistle or a hum. And the picture of a mouth, of ruby lips framing the words of a song the way they should be, and lush, beauteous melodies issuing forth.
Where now? Still more time and yet more time before they could get away. He could hear the roar of the planes outside, at least he hoped that’s what it was. He was hesitating going to the departure gates, anxious about passport control once again. He rubbed his clean, baby clear chin and realized he was himself again. Real Tommy with the fake hair and the pleasant face that covered a myriad of unspeakable crimes. He held back no longer, he went through the gates and there was hardly a flicker on the bland, waxen face that waved him through. Through to a throng of shops and cafes, unspeakably bright lights and he stopped for a second, feeling a little faint. Find a place to sit down, eat something, drink, calm down. After all, wasn’t everything inconsequential now?
He wasn’t looking, he was looking everywhere but where he was going and tripped over the outspread feet of the sleeping man in the chair. Tommy recovered himself before he could fall and was about to offer both a glare and apologetic word to the cause of this when his mind suddenly froze.
The sleeping, sloping man, only now starting to open his eyes, was Eddie Brogan. He woke from a terrible dream that he struggled to remember, knowing that it would never come back to him. Something had shook him awake, but whatever it was had passed by. He looked around and saw nothing but a hundred, a thousand other bored, waiting, impatient souls. They walked in that slow train of thought, leaving, returning, going home, going away, in the limbo of the departure lounge where the lights and the noise and the whisper of anxiety about the flight ahead shadowed their every step. Eddie stretched aching muscles, feeling the creaked neck immediately, knowing it would follow him for the next few hours. The coffee stall across the concourse was drowning in frustrated customers and even from where he sat, Eddie could see the dawning desperation on the poor girl working alone behind the counter. There were other such places he knew but the minute he moved his seat would be taken, so Eddie stayed where he was. If he had slept at all, it hadn’t been for long as boarding was still forty minutes away. No more planes he thought.
The smile of a chipped tooth under a Stetson hat a few feet away alerted Eddie to a leering drunk or a comic crazy. But this cowboy was none. He sat up straight as he realized Eddie had finally noticed him. He fixed his socks inside his tan patterned boots that only lacked spurs to complet
e the look. Then sat forward and cleared his throat to speak. Eddie prayed he was intent on talking to himself.
‘I saw you fight once.’ The accent was clearly American, it seemed real even to Eddie’s untrained ear. But properly dressed or not, the man’s reminiscence was not what Eddie wanted to hear now. He had always hated the moments of recognition, however infrequent they had been over the years. And mostly they had been reminders of defeat.
‘The National Stadium in Dublin. About five years ago. Eddie Brogan, right?’
Eddie refused to give the man the cheerful reply that he clearly wanted. He had no strength to dip back into that old, tired collection of fights that lay dusty and dark in the back room of his brain. But he couldn’t help trying to retrieve the night in question. He had fought, boxed, whatever you wanted to call it, many times in that old damp box they called the Stadium. The dripping corner of the ceiling that filled the bucket when it was only just a drizzle outside. So Eddie just nodded with the slightest hint of enthusiasm.
‘You lost me a fair amount of money. But then I never was much of a gambler. If it wasn’t the dogs or the horses it was something else I knew fuck all about. I saw you fight Terry Kelly, I think it was. He had a paunch the size of a nine-months pregnant woman, two left feet and a slouch to one eye. He should never have been let in the ring. Surely you were going to take him. Even you.’
Well, thought Eddie, at least he ain’t looking for an autograph. Maybe he’s looking for a fight, looked like he’d been in a few. But, that fight. The man was right, he should have won it. But that hadn’t been the plan that night. The Terry Kelly testimonial, that’s what they called it. No big thing. The undercard on the undercard, that’s how far down the list they were that night. First few souls were only taking their seats, probably thought the two old men in the ring was the warm-up comedy act. So Terry got his little piece of pension and Eddie got to practice that look into the mirror later on, that shrug, that look that pretended it was just the way the game was played. Everyone was a winner. Except the noble mythic spirit of the sport that died a little more every time a fight was fixed.
‘It was fixed,’ said Eddie, not willing to apologise to this nobody. It got the man’s attention by way of a resigned shake of the head.
‘Well, that was the story doing the rounds. But me, I liked the bitter odds, liked playing the unwise game and I lost. Still. I’m still here, still playing, keeping the head above water. Just slinking down to see my sister in London, haven’t seen her since before I saw you fight. What can you do, eh? And you, Eddie, what are you up to? Not still fighting, are you?’
The creak in his neck was sending tiny blades of discomfort down his spine. He tried to make himself more comfortable in the unwilling seat. Looked at the screen up above but his flight was still some time away. He hoped for a miracle, hoped the lonesome cowboy might have disappeared in the blink of an eye. What am I doing, Billy the Kid? You wouldn’t fucking believe it. Oh, I’m still fighting. But I’m way, way out of my weight class now. My eyes are bruised and bloodied, I can hardly see straight any more. Hands are sore and I’m wearing no gloves. And the ropes are an ocean away, my arms stretch out to hold them but they’re always a distance away. No bounce in my legs, can’t run to give myself a moment to catch a breath. And there’s no referee for this fight, no rules at all, no end to the fight until it’s over and the heart stops beating.
‘No, I’m not still fighting,’ was all he said and had no intention of saying anymore to this man. He leaned over to get his bag and cast a reluctant smile at the broken tooth and the tilting hat. And left him to his cowboy dreams.
He kept wanting to look behind him. As if he felt the sweet breath of memory at his ear. But there was nothing there. Nothing but random faces struggling to hide secrets. Tapping fingers on nervous knees, eyes looking ahead, eyes searching for the calming shimmer of the hostess, the nylon shiver of smooth sheen legs wafting safe perfume smells. Eddie looked forward again, the neck still paining him, getting worse. He looked at the back of the seat in front of him which shivered and shook with the restless movements of a passenger who couldn’t understand the notion that there were other people on the plane. He reached for the brochures in the pocket of the seat, scanned their glossy nothingness and exchanged them for the safety leaflet. He wanted to read it, he didn’t want to read it. He strained to watch the hostess do her own safety routine and pretended to himself that he wasn’t concerned.
He wanted to look back. More than anything he wanted to go back. Far enough to erase the necessity of his presence on this plane today. How far was far enough? Back to the night when his unkempt anger raised that fist above his hand and brought it down across her wet, laughing, drunken face? No, not far enough, it was before then, to the moment his eyes saw her across the street, closing the café for the night, when Edie was away, when his fidelity was out of reach. Maybe even that was not far enough. Back to the grey, cracked streets when none of it was his fault, when hands and feet and harsh words were raised at him for no good reason. The priestly ignorance of his own mother, the unknown chasms of hate that infected his non-paternal father.
Too late, too far to travel, too much to change. And even then. He had dreamed of love, perhaps undeservedly. They had lived apart more than together. Both unsure, both afraid of the kindness of each other, maybe too alike.
And he was going back.
To Brighton.
Where they first met.
CHAPTER 40
Brighton Brazen, raucous, incessant, grasping, hedonistic, tumult of nature. Brighton, in short. So wrote the graffiti poet on the low long wall of the abandoned school.
The Brighton barber hoves into view in his morning coat and top hat. Lays out his sign with millimetre certainty six inches from the road and barks out the services of the day. Not forgetting to doff his hat to Eddie passing by on the other side.
Some things never changed. Eddie couldn’t help but smile. At the man’s optimism, his brave theatrical show, his refusal to acknowledge and take careful warning from the closed shops around him, the sale signs that shook constantly in the ever present breeze. Down the Queen’s road from the station, everything moved downward to the ocean. Everything looked worn but not tired, a lot of peeling paint on the surfaces but all remained hard and solid underneath. He wished he had gloves, his hand holding the bag was frozen, the other at least had the comfort of the jacket pocket. And the breeze was now a wind, forcing the body to bow down slightly against it. There was a shorter way to the hotel but he had always liked approaching the sea this way. He loved that you could see it all the way down the meandering street. From the moment you emerged from the train you could smell it, it invaded the senses, it compelled and scared just a little. And from the gates you could see all the way to the heaving rolling waves that constantly threatened to spill out onto the street.
He was here. As he had been here before. Regret and sad memory held back the urgency of his hurried journey here. Down near the corner, at the cutting edge of the wind, he rested, stared in wonder again at the mountainous seas out there. They seemed beyond everything, the sheer size and force always overwhelmed him. He used to come down here every day, stand on the corner and hesitate before crossing the road and walk down to the water’s edge. When he was here. Before.
He laughed again to himself, struggling against the wind as he neared his seafront hotel. There was a moment when it literally stopped him in his tracks. He looked across the road and an elderly couple were hanging on to scratched blue railings.
Are you here for business or pleasure the blond girl asked in her beautiful broken exotic language. He always felt self-conscious when he met such women. As if their visages were so shatteringly bright that they reflected the viewer in all their stained, ugly clarity. Eddie hesitated in replying. He wasn’t really sure. It was neither business nor much pleasure unless he allowed himself to go back to a better time than this.
‘Just seeing some old friends,’ he s
aid to her.
‘You know Brighton?’
She spoke as if she was a native, born and bred, imbued with all the
spirit of a hundred generations.
‘I used to live here.’
‘Oh,’ she said and all business being completed the smile and the
interest and the conversation waned. She was already moving on to the next lucky customer. Despite what he’d said to her, she gave him a map of the city, highlighting all the many attractions. He took it without objection, because he wanted her to still like him, even just remember him.
There was a smell in the bland hotel room that forced him to open the window. The cold brought him back to himself, to the precise time, elevenfifteen in the morning, December, the wind whistled like a chained-up dog outside and in his mind he could see the waves, breaking the line, coming ever closer.
No mini-bar in the room, not even water, only coffee and tea and a tiny kettle. He settled down in the chair with his cup of Twinings and tried to let his body and mind rest. Now that he was here, he wondered where he would go. Where did he have to go? Was the journey itself the whole point? Was there nothing at the end, nothing but the realization that destination was just another word for death? He found a telephone book in one of the drawers and flicked through it, telling himself that there would be nothing to find in the names listed under Z, but still he looked. The man didn’t live here, probably wasn’t even here now. Eddie had come because Manny had told him. Manny, brain scrambled like an early morning breakfast, living on nothing but grain alcohol, still being punched because he was too weak to dodge them anymore.
He remembered Manny’s expensive shoes as he sat at the bar like a legendary gunslinger in the dark Cork bar. How he’d been there when Eddie walked in that day. As if he was there because of Eddie, waiting for Eddie, because Eddie was the point of it all. But he had been looking for Manny, he’d seen him outside his hotel. But that bar, why that bar? He didn’t know Manny would be there, he guessed. And there he was. Like he’d always been there. Manny would always be there, he’d still be there now until Eddie Brogan came in.