by John Kelly
But now on this unexpectedly wet morning in my gargoyled house on Hibernia Road, my sub-duvet reverie at an end, I finally manoeuvred myself to the edge of the bed, gripped my thighs and pressed down hard, the pressure of it translating to push and the body yielding to forces and physics and, whatever the kinetics, whatever the systems and sequences of internal pulleys and cranks called upon so early in the day, my creaking self slowly loomed and my cool morning arse presented itself to the blue grain of the room. I’m up, says I. Another day another dolor – and I announced in the darkest voice of MacLiammóir, Comedia finita est. Then chuckling like a changeling in my white t-shirt and flabby boxers I lurched to the window, parted the curtains and peered into the light. Time to think straight now. Time to assess. Time to focus. To get, says you, to the point.
But again I stress that this is not about Richard King or his assassination. Nor is it about how, when they asked me where I was when it happened, the incident in question, that I was able to tell them that I was at home, at number 26, seated on my sofa, a Stoli in a highball, watching the rolling coverage just like everybody else. Or about the fact (and this is something I, of course, neglected to tell them) that I could barely breathe that night as I waited, waited, waited for that newsflash to come, for confirmation from the Castle that the bullet had flown and that ambition’s debt had finally been paid. No. Not at all. This is not about any of that. And it never once was. It’s more about me and where I live and what I do. And it’s also about those people in my care and who will enter soon. But for now this is just me, on my birthday, eighty-fourth, out of bed and at my bedroom window in my boxers and my vest.
And so what did I see? One of my foxes, soaked and muddy, was dragging a blue hula hoop across what used to be a flowerbed and I immediately pictured what I must have missed – the moonlit fox gyrating like a pole dancer and counting out the revolutions. The thought of it made me giggle and I decided that perhaps this really was a very good day in Dún Laoghaire. There hadn’t been rain in months and now here it was at last. Real dancing rain just like the glorious downpours of my childhood and I could smell within it some strange hint of the perpetual. Pandiculation followed. A temporary deafness. Then elbow pain and recovery. I placed my pistol in the drawer, closed it tight and then, and only then, I began to pad the bare boards to the bathroom. I take no chances now, ever since the time I found myself half asleep at the sink, putting toothpaste on the barrel, about to scrub my thirty-two teeth with a loaded weapon. I’m far from doddery but even so.
The electric is erratic these days, water even more so, and so I showered for the thirty-second legal max. Then I dried myself off, dressed quickly in a clean white t-shirt, shorts and sloggy bottoms and descended to make myself a camomile tea with honey substitute. Lots of men my age couldn’t manage these stairs at all but I’m as supple as I ever was, my joints constantly swimming in fake fish oil. Thanks to the good folks in Nippon my bones are fortified by every available mineral, vitamin, and dietary silicon smoothie, and once I’m up and about I have neither ache nor pain. Not physical pain at any rate. Jesus, Mary and Joseph where would we be without the synthetics? And without the Japanese? Dab hands the Japs and we’d be lost entirely without them. But fuck it I do miss the bees. I wish the Japanese would sort the bees. And the bee’s knees. For honey, substitute is no substitute. The signs were there for years and nobody lifted a fucking finger. It wouldn’t have happened in Japan. Only it did. World without bees. Amen.
From the kitchen window I watched the fox, still tossing the hoop, and although I always hate to spook such a scene, the instant I punched in the code, Vulpes vulpes shot off like a brushstroke and the hula hoop rolled, keeled and settled on the burning grass like a portal. Sorry Foxy Loxy, I muttered as I put on my trainers and stepped out into the air, raising my face briefly to the skies for the wet of the rain, the actual rain, and I walked briskly, swerving around my dripping barricade of dumped antiques, down to the tumbledown shed which, these days, leans drunkenly against the sycamore. I took my tea with me. The rain was warm and syrupy and it plashed with pleasure in the steaming mug.
There was a wood pigeon balled up in a beech (I have the eyes of a raptor) and a blue-tit was hanging on the giant echium – the selfseeding, tit-feeding echium growing about a foot a day like some slow-motion purple firework. There were wrens up until about fifteen years ago. Troglodytes troglodytes. And blackbirds too. And I used to see them run low across the lawn like infantry out of their trenches and I loved to listen to them sing, watching them snuggled in the holly bush, thinking themselves well defended in the jags. These new alien finches can be unexpected company at times, but it’s not the same. And the shrikes I can do without. Butcher birds. Cruel impalers. Cracticus something and there’s always one on the shed, eyeing me up, a shrew in its bill, or some supersized beetle which arrived in a suitcase from West Africa.
The shed (the dacha I call it) is warped and narrow and it houses century old, half-empty buckets of paint, an original mountain bike, an axe, bits of obsolete surveillance equipment and sheetweb spiders the size of kittens. I love it in there. Most especially in the rain. As a child, the sound of rain always soothed me and I used to hunker in this very same shed, watching the showers lash the cordylines in scenes which seemed tropical. For a moment, I felt like I was the same child again, sheltered in my hidey hole, enjoying the thrilling little shivers which enveloped me – Bleach and Ammonia back in the house arguing about the nap of the lawn or the pressure in the tap. Heavenly, I told myself, perfectly at peace and in the shed, and then with an almost overwhelming sense of liberation, I lowered the front of my sloggy bottoms and pissed with panache from the dacha porch. Breathing deeply like some ancient God I targeted the agapanthus with my jet.
On my first day as sole owner and occupier of number 26 Hibernia Road, flush with freedom and possession, the very first thing I did was relieve myself in this very garden. As the Gods made Orion. The second thing I did, and just as symbolic, was remove most of the contents and dump them outside. Bedsteads, mattresses, tables, chairs, sideboards, china cabinets, Ottomans, bedside lockers, standard lamps, carpets, rugs, mats, holy statues, vases and assorted prints by late 20th-century racketeers. These I piled on the flowerbeds before going back inside to lie on cushions on the floor and crank up the thumping Hi-Fi. Compact discs in those days. My preference then was for bands like New Order, Pere Ubu, Suicide, and The Fall. My father’s study, with its CDs of Bartók, Stravinsky and Stockhausen, I locked up and left alone. He was a vulpine man, my father. Vulpecular. But he liked his music, eschewing the wigs for the moderns and enjoying it in his own way. I liked it well enough too, but I was never in the mood for it. Not in those days anyway.
By four in the morning, I had begun to realize my actual discomfort and I returned to the barricade to strip it of essentials – one sofa, one rug, one kitchen table and one chair. These I reinstated in the house while everything else was left bewildered to the elements, where it lies to this day, piled up and creaking, providing shelter and security for generations of scraggy Dún Laoghaire foxes, all of them, including the one with the hula hoop, born and bred within its labyrinthine heap. Otherwise the place hasn’t been touched at all and number 26 has somehow distilled with natural precision to the point of being quite perfect for my purposes.
On two floors, front and back, the rooms full of boxes (cereal and shoe) stuffed with photographs, files, scribbles, cuttings and notes, now packed almost to the ceiling, decades of profiling stacked in dense little cities of leaning piles of paper and card. Priceless material all of it, of course, and a fire hazard beyond all imagining, but if it goes up, it goes up. It’s no use without me anyway. Without meaning. Like a web without a spider.
At the very top of the house, with a dormer window facing the street, is the actual HQ. On one side of the room, under the plunging slope of the ceiling, is a bank of monitors, permanently on, which links me to the city and beyond. The rest of the space is commanded b
y a high-back swivel chair of distressed black leather and a fold-out single bed covered in notebooks, orange peel, pencils and sharpenings – the never forgotten stench of desk – all laid out on a carpet so grey and so stained with decades of spilled coffee as to resemble, with some accuracy, a map of the surface of the moon. And this is where I do what I do. And I do it without cease. It takes sustained and careful husbandry but I’m able for it still. There’s divinity in it. And a modicum of love.
TWO
SCHROEDER is a name we all know. Anton James. Lived next door to me, adjacent to the right, and one of those I monitored. In fact I had been watching Anton Schroeder extremely closely, on an almost daily basis, for a very long time. This is all new information but I’m saying it now in as clear a manner as possible. From his very first days to his last I was a constant and, for the most part, unseen presence in that young man’s life – not a guardian angel as such, or a spirit guide, but more of a whisper, a benign and focussed energy willing him to move in this way or that.
For the purposes of these pages perhaps the best place to start is the break-in. It’s as crucial a junction as any and while it contains comedic elements, thanks to the pantomime policemen, this is no joke. What happened, for all its quirks of language, action and coincidence was serious stuff and I’m not making it up. Even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t have the skills.
Schroeder and Francesca had been drinking in Heffernan’s. Pints of Weiβbier in those days and Dunkelweiβen now and again, until herself was diagnosed as coeliac and they both took to the Stoli. They got back around midnight, the pair of them hammered, and Schroeder went straight to his office to make rapid notes on whatever he had been talking about earlier, still believing that one day he might transform such blootered insights into some miraculous art. And while he was up there scrawling in the margins of a vintage New Yorker, Francesca discovered that the envelope left out for the cleaner was no longer on the sideboard. The sound system was missing also, along with a Rickson’s flying jacket which had been an early present from Schroeder.
By this stage Schroeder too had realized that something had happened. The four shirt-boxes which contained the notebooks, diaries, drafts and discs he had tended since the age of nine had all vanished and he suddenly felt as if a circular saw was at work in his gut. All he could say to Francesca was fuck the sound system, fuck the Rickson’s and fuck the fucking cleaner, they’ve taken all my stuff. And then as he staggered around the house, massaging his own head like a bystander caught in a bomb, Francesca, for all the good it would do, rang the Guards. They told her that it sounded like junkies and then, a week later, they were on the doorstep with the very same baloney. A big Guard and a small Guard who seemed, as a result of some locker-room prank, to be wearing each other’s uniforms. And again I must stress. This is no comic interlude. And the following is exactly what was said. Verbatim.
– Good morning sir, says the big one. We’ve come about the break-in.
– More or less definitely junkies sir, says the small one. More or less.
Schroeder could see that this was all just a procedural matter. Just blame some anonymous druggie and forget about it. They weren’t even slightly interested. He hadn’t expected much else but even so.
– You can’t be up to them fellas, says the big one.
– What kind of junkie, Schroeder asks, steals notebooks and diaries?
The small Guard consults his notebook.
– It says here they took a sound system and a quantity of cash. And an item of clothing.
– They took the first drafts of three novels, says Schroeder. I’m asking you, who would steal the first drafts of three novels?
The small Guard pretends to perk up.
– Jaysus, this looks like a case for Sherlock Holmes.
The big Guard looks away, smiling to himself.
– A comedian as well as a Guard, says Schroeder.
The small Guard has cheeks like raw bacon and the only thing keeping his cap from falling down around his shoulders is his massive set of crimson ears. A country-cute hoor all the same and, pretending to be oblivious to Schroeder’s glare, he holds a smile like a First Communicant.
– Do you write much, Mr Schroeder? Books is it?
Then the big Guard’s shoulders begin to quiver and Schroeder strains to stay calm. He knows that while this pair may be attached to the more benign wing of the law and order system, they are, by blood, related to the nasties. He would therefore be wise to keep this in mind in whatever way he reacts.
– Well, he says finally, and in neutral. This is very important to me. My house has been broken into. Items have been stolen.
– Sir, sighs the big Guard, we have drug gangs, prostitution rackets, assaults, armed robberies and crack houses coming out of our arses. And that’s just in this street. If you understand me.
Schroeder snorts in defeat. With that tired outburst, the big Guard has revealed himself the typical quagga of jaded public servant – a wolphin, a jaglion or a mule – half man, half filing cabinet. He is someone who has all the information but cares little for any of it. And even though it’s first thing in the morning, he already sounds like someone very much finished for the day.
– Yes, of course, says Schroeder.
– You know what this week’s delight was? says the small Guard.
– Haven’t a clue, says Schroeder.
– Young Miss King out in Sandycove to see the Martello Tower. And it a fecking wreck. Had to seal the whole place off damn near as far as Wicklow. And half the fecking fleet in Dublin Bay.
– Suicide windsurfers maybe? says Schroeder.
– Anything is possible sir. This day and age. Quite the pain in the hole.
– Look, says Schroeder, I just know it wasn’t junkies. That’s all I’m saying.
Then the big Guard literally groans, giving the very clear signal that his next words are to be final.
– Now sir, there’s no point in getting paranoid. That’ll get you nowhere.
– No, says Schroeder. Thank you, gentlemen.
– Goodbye sir.
– Goodbye sir. And good luck with the book-writing.
The two Guards then take a synchronized step backwards and Schroeder gently closes the door and sits on the stairs.
– Culchie fucks, he mutters to himself. Stupid fucking culchie fucks.
And indeed they were culchies. Fitzpatrick and St Leger. A pair of Norman culchies wouldn’t you know, and I kept a close eye on the both of them after that. Fitzpatrick, a time-server straight from a Russian novel, retired soon afterwards on a full pension while young St Leger, he of the bacon face, was later killed outright when his car hit a bus shelter during a chase through Ballybrack. He had been expected to make sergeant at some stage. High hopes for him indeed. Played full forward for Westmeath. Engaged to a nurse in John of Gods.
A few days later I dishonoured my own strictest protocol and turned up at Schroeder’s front door. It took nerve but I felt so sorry for him that, having made several copies of everything in the boxes, I walked up the path and buzzed. I was, of course, very well aware that he had never liked the look of me, finding my presence dark and invasive, even from a distance, but he was so relieved to see someone standing on the doorstep holding the missing mother-lode that he actually invited me in. I hadn’t planned on this part at all but I remained focussed and took the opportunity to examine him close-up, in the flesh, for the very first time.
I recall that I noted the cragginess, the grey skin, the hair now thinning and barely disguising the ridges which ran like potato drills along his skull. He was wiry and lean, as I was myself on that grim approach to forty, but he seemed far too tired and shaky for a man of his age. No surprise, of course, given his permanent crises and his attempts to deal with them by way of booze, Mahler or both. Usually the Tenth. The first movement. The Adagio. Bernstein. Sometimes Rattle. The catastrophe chord at terrifying volume, over and over again, whether for purposes of self-torture o
r in hope of catharsis, not even I could tell.
– So where did you find everything? he asked, his voice fragile and only slightly Americanized. (That fucking uplift destroyed an entire generation.)
– In a skip, I replied, scoping the room.
– Well, thanks for bringing them back. You want a coffee or something? Tea?
– A coffee would be very nice. Thank you.
He immediately regretted the offer and put the back of his hand to his forehead.
– How do you take it? The coffee?
I saw my chance and took it. I knew that Schroeder was allergic to milk and that he wouldn’t have any in the house.
– A little milk, I said. Please.
– I’m not sure I …
– Just a drop. And sugar. Two. Please.
And so with Schroeder gone to the store to buy the milk, I photographed the bookshelves, memorized the contents of the medicine cabinet, and bugged the hall, stairs and landing. By the time he returned I had already left, astounded at his carelessness in leaving someone he had previously only grunted at unattended in his home. But then Schroeder is always a piece of cake and he always leaves traces of himself everywhere. Every kick is telegraphed, every swivel is flagged, and I take full advantage with the phantom powers of old age. Anton James Schroeder. My chosen subject. Ask me anything. I know all there is to know.
The early pages of his bio confirm that he crowned during the very last moments of the 20th century, the rest of him following at precisely one second past midnight on day one of the 21st. This landmark nativity, timed to the very second and confirmed by an independent panel of witnesses, marked him as the first crinkled sprog of a brand new Millennium. By all the medical and press reports it was a close-run thing – a sprint finish between the National Maternity and the Coombe (Biddy Mulligan, Pride of ) and at one point it was neck and neck. Literally. But in the end it was Baby Schroeder who slipped out first and the cheer went up in Holles Street and he was held aloft like a gurgling Messiah. The cable was cut and the boy child was bundled up in blue, his skullcap pulsing with compassion, his tiny body already leaking spring water and meconium. Everyone was charmed and before he had even mastered the nipple, little Schroeder was outstaring a barricade of cameras and attempting something like a smile for the old Raidió Teilifís Éireann. Kudos for the hospital and lots of free stuff for Mr and Mrs S.