‘I’d say they’d be lucky with whatever they get.’
Carl turned the pages of the RTÉ Guide, a publication that had never held much appeal for him before, but was currently indispensable.
‘Although, who knows if they’ll be getting anything.’
Mrs Brennan hadn’t forgotten any of it: the time John Paul had raided her freezer, the night he’d smashed her windows, the cheek of his grandmother, not setting foot in their pharmacy when it had been open, acting as if the Doyles were better than the Brennans. They’d got their just deserts, Mrs Brennan thought, wishing that Carl would provide some echo of her thoughts, even a nod would have sufficed, but instead he stood up and walked into the sitting room, leaving Mrs Brennan with her thoughts and the table to clear. An awful thing, how a house could be too big and too small at the same time.
1 Dunluce Crescent
‘What happened?’ Kathleen Fay asked, her eyes roving over the hedge to the empty porch of 7 Dunluce Crescent.
Helen Fay caught her breath and clung to her mother’s arm, the tables turning for a second as she was the one needing support. It startled Helen, these flashes of lucidity in her mother, when the fog cleared across her forehead, when her eyes attempted to focus again, when there was a chance that she would remember who she was. But no, the moment passed like clouds, and Mrs Fay smiled serenely and tottered down the street, no more perturbed by the sign than she was when Helen had told her again, that lunchtime, that she was moving to a new home, that Daddy wouldn’t be coming with her, because he was dead, they’d visited the grave only that weekend. Helen brushed a tear away; her mother was asking her again about when they were going to the strand, mistaking her for Kitty, her aunt, who was also dead, like almost everybody her mother knew, so it was no wonder she didn’t want to know what happened to the Doyles. Easier for herself too, Helen acknowledged, supporting her mother as they walked down Dunluce Crescent for what might be the last time, unless she drove her out from the home, but what would be the point, when it was already vanishing for Mrs Fay, bricks and memories losing their solidity, the shape of the street changing for Helen too, no longer possible to play hopscotch in the road the way she had with Clare Nugent, no big hedge in number 9 to hide behind any more, nothing left in 1 Dunluce Crescent, only bits in boxes; to forget was to survive.
10
Drawing of Snowbear (2009)
Rosie rushed over the threshold into the glass porch, no time for ceremony with the amount of snow outside. A snowpocalypse, Mrs Nugent might have pronounced with glee, waiting for the disdain of Mrs McGinty, who would be sure to point out that snow had always fallen in the country without so much fuss, in a different time, when the folding chairs of 7 Dunluce Crescent’s porch bounced with the arrival of fresh gossip and no weeds tapped against the glass. Rosie fumbled for the keys; it was too cold for ghosts. She opened the front door slowly, worried that the past might jack-in-the-box towards her. The hallway of 7 Dunluce Crescent was empty, of course, the grubbiness of the wallpaper unfairly exposed with no other objects to shield it. It would be stripped, the triplets’ childhood scribblings painted over. The garden would be paved, one of the few in Dunluce Crescent not to allow for a car. The porch would be knocked down.
Rosie heaved inside two bin-bags full of cardboard, mostly shoeboxes, all she had until reinforcements arrived. Pathetic. In his heyday John Paul would have hired somebody to clear the house – he probably would have founded a company to tackle such tasks – but he wasn’t likely to do so now. Damien would have made a schedule and a spreadsheet – he was a great disciple of Excel – and approached the emptying of the house with the attitude he adopted to cleaning a fridge, top to bottom the only way that made sense. Peg would have been the ideal candidate for the task, archival boxes brought to store items adequately, faded photographs placed in protective sleeves, figures identified on the back in pencil.
Rosie sat on the stairs and rolled a cigarette. She might not be the ideal Doyle for the job, but she was the one who was here. What did it matter if she got distracted and started to peel back wallpaper, years of measurements and her thoughts about Bananarama waiting to be rediscovered on bare wall? Nobody was left to shout at her. Rosie exhaled and felt a rush of pleasure at this transgression. The house seemed smaller, suddenly. The details of the hallway remained the same – holy water font, coat hooks that nobody used, beige-and-blue-flower carpeting up the stairs – but she felt the dizzying gap between memory and perception, as if she were an adult returning to her primary school, shocked at the paltry size of a yard that had seemed as huge as a universe.
She would come up with a plan, once she’d searched her bag for a biro that worked. Or perhaps there were still some spares in the second drawer in the kitchen; perhaps everything would be as she had left it. No, she would not become sentimental. This was a house she had longed to leave. Rosie would not hesitate in the donation of radios to charities. She would not pause before consigning an armchair to a hard rubbish collection. Such was the cycle of life: most lives were sized so that their essential contents could ultimately squeeze into a shoebox. The more ruthless she was, the better. She would not succumb to nostalgia. She would take a trip upstairs if necessary: there would be the statue of the Sacred Heart, there the room Granny Doyle had stripped.
Though she had come to know a different side of Granny Doyle, Rosie had to acknowledge that, even if she struggled to do the arithmetic: could two years really outweigh a lifetime of neglect? Granny Doyle had come to Clougheally a few times, staying with Rosie and Ciarán, not that she had a choice; the flats that John Paul had planned remained stuck in mid-construction, a monument to a different time. She couldn’t credit the sight of Shell’s giant Solitaire ship in Erris, stopping tiny fishing boats from catching crabs, all so that they could lay down a pipe that would pump money to a foreign country. So she banged pots on the beach, shouting at the navy who were escorting the Shell ship as they removed small fishermen from the sea. Rage, she had that in her, plenty of it, a lifetime’s worth. Kindness too, this was the surprise to Rosie; she scrubbed Ciarán’s surfboard, a ridiculous action, but if he was going to be out getting in the path of the construction diggers in the water, then she wanted to make sure his surfboard was presentable, especially with the news watching. (Rosie’s kayak she didn’t bother with.) She could be flexible, telling Ciarán that she would have the drop of honey in her tea (though she still greeted Rosie’s soy milk with suspicion, ‘an insult to cows, so it is’). She remained a difficult woman and Rosie had no illusions about her politics (Shell got in her way so they earned her rage; other issues were not to be discussed) but finally, despite herself, Rosie could regard her with something close to affection.
So, to work. Rosie went upstairs, ignoring the box room, still painted purple. She’d start in Granny Doyle’s room, where dust was already gathering, even though she’d only been in hospital for a couple of weeks. Rosie stared at the neatly made bed, the corners tucked in the way Granny Doyle insisted upon. John Paul should be doing this. He was responsible for the stroke, as clear a cause as any. Fiannix had collapsed, alongside his marriage, the property development in Clougheally, and even the Irish Pope, not popular in such times. The bank was after 7 Dunluce Crescent, too; that was what had broken her. Granny Doyle had taken out a second mortgage for him years ago (he’d kept that quiet) and so that was in trouble too, but he’d sort it out, John Paul had promised, he’d fix everything: no bank would throw an old lady out on the streets in the snow! But then she’d had a stroke and they were selling the house and she’d never sleep in this bed again, let alone make it carefully.
Rosie tackled the wardrobe. What to do with the coats and the carefully dry-cleaned skirts and the stack of summer clothes that she’d probably never need? She’d be in her hospital gown for the next while, the stroke severe enough that the nurses didn’t think she’d be leaving. Hospital had shrunk her: one side already paralysed by the stroke, she had thinned as well, veins push
ing against skin. Her hair had lost its curls, hung limply by her side, the same off-white shade as the pillow it rested upon. It was difficult for her to talk; strange sounds came out instead. All this made her eyes appear more alive than ever, pushing out against the carapace of a body they were trapped inside, boring into whoever hovered over them. She might last a few months, the nurses said, but she wouldn’t be getting on a surfboard, the way she’d joked with Ciarán, and she wouldn’t be banging another pot on the side of the road, and she wouldn’t ever be telling Rosie what it was like to have grown up on Clougheally strand and it was too much: just when they’d started to talk, the words had been stolen out of her.
Rosie focused on the boxes of random documents and old photos, not the most efficient choice, but she was the one here, she could do it as she pleased. There had to be a photo of the Big Snow, she was sure somebody would have snapped them: the lot of them in their winter coats, the largest snow-creature ever assembled triumphant in the garden. She wanted to hold it up against the window and compare the levels, sure that the news had it wrong; the snow in 1982 had definitely been higher.
The only evidence preserved was Rosie’s drawing of the Snowbear, an early masterpiece.
‘You can’t use white crayon on white paper,’ Peg had said.
‘I can’t see anything,’ Damien had said.
‘Ah, you’ll be an abstract genius, won’t you love? A budding Picasso!’ Danny Doyle had said.
‘Where am I?’ John Paul had said.
‘Don’t be wasting paper; I’ve the messages to write out,’ Granny Doyle had said.
Yet, she had kept it, Granny Doyle. Here it was, pressed between John Paul’s school reports; she had kept it over the years. A mystery. She should throw it out, Rosie thought, extinguishing her fag on one of John Paul’s reports (his ‘well-developed sense of self’ hadn’t worked out so well for them all, had it?). There was far too much stuff to be dealing with, no space for it in her rented house in Erris. A lot of junk: dead-eyed Furbys and tea-stained mugs and rusted pans and pieces of Lego that had once made a Millennium Falcon. Rosie had the wrong attitude, thinking that she could salvage things, shoebox by shoebox. It was unhealthy to be too attached to material things. She’d get Damien to rent a skip; John Paul or the bloody bank or the government – somebody who was at fault – could pay for it. She should throw it out, Rosie thought, carefully folding the drawing and placing it inside a shoebox.
Rosie sat down on the bed and sighed. She’d have a quick nap, she decided, necessary if she was going to make much headway. Her head flopped onto the pillow and she conked out and so that’s where she was when John Paul broke into the garden.
11
Hopenhagen Poster (2009)
I have no choice but to resign …
Damien hesitated. It would be very easy to click ‘send’; this, certainly, was what the voices outside Leinster House were clamouring for. Mark would be there, surely, taunting the Green traitors who had bailed out the banks and sold out their principles. Damien rubbed his temples and longed for a glass – a bottle – of red wine. It would be easy to press ‘send’. He could walk away from the mess. He wouldn’t have to listen to abuse on the phone or duck the path of pelted eggs or waste another day responding to crises, leaping from frying pan to fire and back again until his arse was hotter than J-Lo’s, a joke that Mark might have made, if he were talking to Damien.
Damien walked over to the window and looked out at the crowd of protesters and cameras. It was hard to make out faces in the dark. Mark was surely there, I told you sos held back with great nobility, making Damien want to hug him or punch him, if they ever got close enough again. Mark had been right about Copenhagen too. If Damien were honest, Copenhagen was the real reason that he wanted to quit. He’d gone to the United Nations Climate Change Conference high on Obama’s promise of climate action. Hopenhagen, the posters declared! Yes, we can take action, he allowed himself to hope, a binding international treaty on carbon emissions the only Christmas present he asked for. It had not happened. Damien had stared at his lanyard in the huge conference hall, aware of his insignificance. Ireland was a tiny piece in the climate puzzle; whether or not the Greens managed to pass a climate change bill was irrelevant if meaningful international cooperation was not achieved. Damien stared at his lanyard and wondered what was the point of a Green Party or renewable energy initiatives or allowing same-sex partnerships if humans were incapable of doing anything to stop their imminent destruction. Damien believed in democracy and international treaties and friendly marches that would compel governments to act but then, there he was, staring at a plastic rectangle in an almost empty conference hall, hope as disposable as the coffee cups and abandoned folders that weary cleaners binned up.
Damien had started to write the email then, on the plane back from Copenhagen, though here he was a week later, the words awaiting the final click. I quit. I refuse to be part of this charade. I understand that the Green Party’s legacy will now be irrevocably tarnished. I can no longer be part of a government where our only role is to play the conscience of Fianna Fáil. I see little to no hope that any of our bills will make it through to legislation in this charged political environment. I quit.
Damien sighed as he sat back in front of his desk, ‘send’ still impossible to click. That little in the little to no hope was what had them clinging on. There was still the chance that the Greens could push through some of their legislation, if they survived another few months. Including a bill regulating property development, Damien said to the protesters, when he wanted to prove that the Greens had nothing to do with this mess, had instead been Cassandraing against the property boom for years. Not to mention the civil partnership bill. The climate change bill. This would be a legacy worth holding out for; eggs splatting onto a suit nothing if a carbon tax could be passed.
Damien’s finger moved to the backspace key. His impassioned arguments disappeared until all that was left of his resignation was a lonely I beside the flashing rectangle of the cursor.
The phone rang immediately, as if on cue.
Damien longed to pick up his coat and leave; it was too late to be dealing with another angry voice.
He answered the phone all the same.
‘Hello?’
‘Is that Damien Doyle?’
Damien clenched at the sound of an elderly lady; it was not too late to feign technological problems.
‘It is.’
‘It’s Maureen McGinty.’
Damien pictured dark wine tumbling into an empty glass.
‘Oh, hello. Mrs McGinty, I’m afraid that I’m about to head out the door so if you wanted to call about a government matter—’
‘It isn’t that …’
Unusual for Mrs McGinty to have any hesitation: Damien sensed the crisis in her pause.
‘I wasn’t sure if I should call the police …’
‘What is it?’
Damien knew what words were coming before she sounded them.
‘It’s John Paul.’
12
Box of Matches (2009)
The trick was to keep moving. Don’t dwell. Look to the future. Let the past go up in flames.
This was the brilliant idea, John Paul thought, breaking into the shed. His eyes rushed over the collection of mildewed books and gadgets he’d bought for Granny Doyle that she’d never managed to switch on. He would not dwell on the past. There was only one item John Paul was after and there it was by the rusted lawnmower that he hadn’t used in years: the can of petrol. Enough in it to do the job.
John Paul lit a match and stared at the flame. He thrust his mouth towards it, cigarette reddening in time, match tossed out the shed door into the snow. Plenty of time for fireworks later, he thought, his knees knocking together, head buzzed from the coke. First, he’d have a fag and gather his thoughts; the box of matches slipped into his hoodie pocket as he slumped onto the floor. The plan was clear in his head. He’d pour the petrol over the armcha
irs and then he’d light the match and the pure fire would rip through the house and cleanse everything. The living room would disappear and with it, the last conversation he’d had with Granny Doyle, when he’d told her that the house was being seized and he finally did it, the thing to shatter all her delusions. He had recognized her shocked face; he’d seen her direct it to his father before, whose voice he heard in his own excuses, don’t worry and don’t cry and I’ll work something out. He cried that day, messy, racking sobs that took the breath out of him, brought him red-faced to his knees as he gripped the living-room armchair and asked, with all his body, for a grandmother to hold him, as she walked past him and stood with her hands on the sink waiting for the kettle to boil. For the first time, John Paul had felt the full force of Granny Doyle’s back, immobile as he tried to talk to her before he left, his father’s voice in his mouth, making him want to shove a penknife through his throat and slash out such a tongue.
He would not do that; he would fix things. He might have lost everything else – Popehood; Clodagh; the chance of Clo ever letting him see their daughter – but 7 Dunluce Crescent he could fix. Or burn. Or both. Burn the past to light up the future, a motto for his smartphone, were he still keeping track. He’d pour the petrol, light the match, leave. Ring the guards before it spread; much as they might deserve it, he wouldn’t see the Donnellys cindered. Although maybe he shouldn’t pour the petrol: there was a chance that a match on its own would do the trick, certainly enough shite inside to catch a flame. The petrol might be incriminating – he hadn’t watched enough television to know if forensics could sniff it out and this was another thing to regret, the hours lost to Jackass and Punk’d when he could have been swotting up on CSI. John Paul felt his brilliant plan disintegrating, which was inconvenient as he’d come all the way and already ripped his jeans hopping over the back wall. He picked up the petrol can and stood with as much resolution as his traitorous legs, those wibbly wobblers, allowed; the trick was to keep moving. Don’t dwell. Let the past go up in flames.
Future Popes of Ireland Page 30