by John Brady
“I must have incolu – intoc – inoculated them ag’in it,” he muttered. “I do go over the top a bit by times, you know. Wait – I tell a lie. I go waaay over the top by times.”
Minogue kept his eye on the next red traffic light. He knew from Brophy’s voice that he had been smiling a little when he’d said that about going over the top. And he did remember a night of some uproar a few years back, a night when Seán Brophy had loosened the bolts with a mad version of ‘When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.’ A fundraiser thing for those two Guards heading over to Africa, to do a UN thing? Right: money for digging wells, it was.
Seán Brophy had made the money jingle that night all right. “All in a good cause,” he managed. “As I recall?” Brophy dismissed the compliment with a soft chuckle. His head bobbed as he tried to observe the passing sights. He spoke clearly then, just as Minogue was about to turn on the radio.
“I tell you, Matt, it’s hard to rise any giggle around my house these days.”
“Times are tough all around, Seán. It’s backwards we’re going, some days.”
Brophy grunted. It seemed to Minogue that he had lost heart completely.
“That thing,” he muttered. “Rhiannon…? Christ. Like I said to Jim. Unlucky?”
“Rough, Seán. Very rough. My heart goes out to your young one. Rhiannon.”
“‘If only you were running the show,’ I says to Jim. You too, Matt. Sure the world and his mother knew it was you carried a lot of hard cases for Kilmartin.”
Minogue watched as brake lights began to come on ahead. Brophy sat up.
“The Squad,” he said, warmly. “‘Thank God, here’s the Squad!’ Remember?”
“Them was the days all right, Seán. Them was the days.” He regretted the sarcasm a little, but like much of what he had said so far, Brophy seemed not to have noticed it anyway.
“I used to see him too,” said Brophy, his voice dropping again. “And so did Rhiannon. Everyone did, really. Tell me, did you see him about the place?” “Who, now, Seán?”
“That poor divil, Larkin. The down-and-out – did you know what he was called?” Minogue shook his head.
“‘The High King’ – honest to God. Or ‘The King of Ireland.’ Not as an insult, now. It was more pity, I suppose.”
Minogue braced himself for next few minutes. Poor Brophy would be squeezing in as much as he could into the few minutes left before they got to his road.
“I’d never have imagined what a thing like that’d do. To Rhiannon, I mean.”
“It must be terrible. But time heals all things, Seán, don’t they say?”
“Me and her, well we’re closer than the others. You know what I’m saying?” “I do, I think.”
“Now Kevin,” said Brophy, pausing to finish a slow, boozy yawn, “Kev, he’s more like his mother. Very cut and dried. And as for little Madeleine, sure she’s a soccer freak. Leaping about, the whole day long. Happy as anything. But Rhiannon….” Minogue let down the back window a little.
“Oh, I love them all dearly,” Brophy went on. “But you know how it is.”
The cross light had changed. Minogue considered a diversion, a Spar by the petrol station ahead: bread, milk, or something. Anything to interrupt this slide.
“I was artsy-fartsy myself, Matt. Bet you didn’t know that, did you?”
“Well the State only hires well-rounded lads for the Lab.” Brophy made a bleak smile. Minogue made brisk gear shifts away from the lights.
“Music isn’t as artsy as you’d think. It’s next door to Maths. Did you know that?”
All Minogue felt safe to do now was to nod. Math and music indeed, he thought, and glimpses of his uncle Jackie, the long departed ‘American Jack,’ came to his mind. Jack, a Maths teacher, had such high standards in everything that his not-so-secret nickname was The Ayatollah. America had long been his whipping boy for all the ills of the world, particularly for the decline of Decency. Minogue kept an old photo of Jackie the freshly minted teacher, all business, posing by a staged collection of Maths books.
A tee-totalling, cross-grained bachelor, Jackie had occasioned much sly amusement by taking up the fiddle late in life. He made no acknowledgement of the fact that he was losing his sight, not even when blindness had finally settled on him. He merely carried on learning new tunes and playing them ever badly, and worse, over and over again until that warm, Spring day when in a sudden toppling from the chair set out for him, he passed from the earth, his fiddle crushed and silenced beneath him.
Brophy’s tapping fingers drew Minogue’s eye. The tapping had started on his knee, but now his fingers rose up to frame chords on an imagined guitar. The traffic lights began to oblige; they were soon passing the Goat Inn. Minogue’s hopes revived.
Then, with a yawn that ended in sigh, Brophy relaxed his hand.
“On the right,” he said.
Minogue went by the driveway, and pulled in to the curb. Brophy’s head dipped as the car came to a stop. Minogue heard the sniff, just as he caught sight of Brophy’s hand going to his face.
Brophy shook gently as he cried. His breath came in tense, torn-off gulps that gave way to wheezes. Minogue squirmed and pushed the window down a little more.
After a while, Brophy shuddered, and a long, sighing gasp escaped him. He fumbled in his pocket until he drew out a crushed packet of paper hankies. His voice came in a hoarse whisper.
“Sorry about that. Came out of nowhere. Jesus.”
“No bother, Seán. You’re grand. Nothing to be sorry about at all. Not a thing.”
Brophy darted him a look, and then half-heartedly blew his nose.
“This is, you know, just between us,” he said afterwards. “Right?”
“To be sure it is, Seán. To be sure.”
“And look,” he heard himself adding before Brophy could start again.
“We’ll have the Christmas now soon enough, and we can down tools. Just the ticket, I say.”
Brophy sniffed, and swallowed.
“I suppose, yes. The Christmas, yes. But like I say, sorry about that.”
Minogue made a short dismissing gesture with his hand. “The drink no doubt,” said Brophy, against the breath he drew in. “Let myself slide a bit tonight. Didn’t expect that, I can tell you.”
“The drink can turn Turk on you, here’s no doubt.” Brophy stared at the cars parked further down the road. “You relax a bit for the first time in ages and, well, that’s what happens.”
Minogue moved the gear stick over and back across the gate again.
“And the stupid music,” Brophy sniffed. “Reminding me.” Minogue dared a look over.
“Have you someone inside, Seán? You know, to chat with, maybe?”
Brophy came up with a worn-looking smile. He rubbed the hankie at his nose with slow, decisive strokes. Something curled up tighter in Minogue’s chest.
“It was like she was hit by a train,” Brophy murmured. “Rhiannon, I’m talking about. You hear that expression, but that’s what it is. It really is.” Minogue too stared down the road.
“But she has her years ahead of her, hasn’t she, Seán.”
“It’s like looking through a window, and you can do nothing.”
Minogue waited, but Brophy made no move to leave.
“Seán.”
“She goes to a shrink,” said Brophy, breaking his stare at the roadway.
“Good move. They know a lot nowadays, so they do. To help, I mean.”
“Oh I wonder,” said Brophy. The new vigour in his voice deepened Minogue’s unease. “I said it to her shrink. Post-Traumatic Stress, I said. They don’t like you putting your oar in, do they. But later on she sort of agreed with me, the shrink.” A car went by. Minogue let the window down a bit more. “Look, Matt, you know me. I’m a scientist. So I want solutions. Things fixed. Over and done with. ASAP, ha ha. Remember that?”
Minogue was a little late to the humour. Kilmartin used to barrack the Lab to get results quicker. ASAP: Any Shaggi
ng Answer, Pronto.
“‘If only I knew,’ says she to me one night. If only she knew the people were caught, she meant. Bowled me over to hear it. And the missus, she’s at her wit’s end too.”
“Seán…?”
“Jimmy told me about your new job. I don’t think he meant to. Did he?”
“Damned if I know. There’s no reforming that bullock out of Mayo.”
“Ah now,” said Brophy. “Jim’s a decent old skin, behind that…that façade.” Minogue bit back a comment.
“I’m not criticizing the Guards, Matt. God, no! But when I phone the station there down in Dalkey – that’s where the case is run – I get the feeling that they’re not keen to hear from me. Not the bum’s rush, now, oh no – very polite. But still, zero.”
Minogue was tempted to ask if he had been sober when he’d phoned the station.
“I told them how she was,” Brophy went on. “How Rhiannon was. And I used the word ‘suffering.’ I had to. Because that’s what it is.”
He broke off at that and he sighed. The quiet lasted longer than Minogue expected. Then Brophy seemed to get a fit of resolve. He put his hand on the door latch.
“Ah you’re great to put up with me, Matt.”
“Nothing to it. And I have great amnesia. All us married men have it.”
Brophy fixed him with a knowing look. His smile was lopsided.
“Can’t help thinking though – can’t help actually saying it,
Matt: this effort would have been cleared right quick if, well, you know what I’m driving at. So I won’t say it.”
“Look, Seán,” Minogue managed. “Things aren’t that straightforward.”
Brophy affected an air of sobriety, but the solemnity he reached for only reminded Minogue of Mr. Bean.
“Fair enough, I hear you. I’m no daw. But how can they be that busy?”
“Gangs, Seán,” Minogue said. “Drugs, turf wars. You see it every day in the paper.”
“I’m telling you,” he added, watching Brophy’s slow, disbelieving nods. He put an edge to his voice. “It’s all hands on deck, Seán, especially in Dublin. Guns everywhere, money: big, big money. We’re scrambling, the Guards I mean.”
The passenger door was opening, and cold air across his legs came as a relief. Brophy clutched and clumped his way out onto the footpath. His heavier breathing gave new life to the smell of whiskey in the car.
“Don’t be too hard on Jim,” he said. “Like I said, a heart of gold.”
“A neck of brass, you mean.”
Brophy began to chortle, but coughed instead.
“He said you’d do what you can,” he wheezed. “That’s more than enough for us.”
Minogue waited until he was out on the Lower Kilmacud Road before he put the boot to his Peugeot. He took it hard through second gear, issuing his curses slowly and dispassionately and then louder as the inrushing air went from a hiss to a roar. He left the windows down all the way, and grimly welcomed the harsh, damp air rampaging around him, yanking at his scalp, scouring his knuckles and the tip of his nose.
***
The curtains on the Minogue sitting room window flickered and glowed with the light from the telly. He drew the car up tight to the garage, and let go of his last curses. A pseudo-secret smoke by the side of the house beckoned, and there by the hedge he lighted up. The first few drags made him dizzy. He ignored the damp air seeping in under his arms and listened instead to the breeze raising a hiss from the ornamental grasses. His mind lurched more. He was soon rehearsing tomorrow – The Big Day. Put in an appearance at Liaison early, pick up any messages. Double-check paperwork on the Donegal arrests, ‘The Nike Lorry’ that had caused so much slagging. Sign off on it. Go to all the regulars, thank them. Then – out the door and head to that cubbyhole in Harcourt Terrace that they’d given him for the duration. Grand entirely.
And Malone? He’d fall in line. It might take a few days, but so what. The main thing was, he’d had made it through GSOC and come out the far end in one piece. Those rumours about him would die off. In all the talk he’d heard, there was actually no real criticism of Malone. There was even sneaking admiration. And what about the knife the Kelly guy pulled on Malone on that roof? His prints all over it?
The last of his cigarette was bitter. He used one of the stones to kill it, watching the sparks twist away in the breeze. He had two peppermints left. He took them both.
Kathleen, his wife, was actually home. The gas fireplace was on, and there was still a smell of tea. She was reading.
“Well, gorgeous.”
She eyed him, and did her Mona Lisa thing for several moments. He spied some measuring-up hint to that look, as though she were applying some theory from the book.
“So how’d it go?” she asked.
He studied the mantelpiece a moment. It hadn’t changed from yesterday.
“As you’d imagine. A pack of Guards in a pub. Old jokes. Bullshit by the ton.”
“Ah but Tommy must be relieved. The poor devil. But it’s like I said to Tony at work there, things are gone so bad, it’s Guards being put in the dock.”
She put down the book, and picked up another.
“Here’s something you really have to read. You just have to.”
Minogue eyed the title. Second something…: Second Tide?
“It’s great. It’s about the crisis.”
“What crisis – which crisis, I mean.”
“Now, now. It’s what’s behind ‘the crisis.’ Not just the financial meltdown thing. It’s what led to it. Do you get it?”
Minogue remembered the cans of beer by the power-saw in the garage.
“Greed, of course,” she said. He knew from her tone that a recitation was imminent. “Losing our moral bearings. Loss of faith – in ourselves, as well as in God.”
He shook his head.
“What,” she said, and she waved the book. “It’s all there. We have to rethink everything. We need a sea-change. Don’t you love that word, ‘sea-change’?”
In a moment he was back at the beach again, but this time watching the sea take its pounding runs at the beach. Mad sea-anglers, of course. Throw in a collie fighting with the foam too for good measure, and demented seagulls hovering just overhead.
“Not ‘the government,’” she went on. “Not ‘the banks.’ Not even ‘society.’”
“What’s left we can blame? The drink?”
“Us,” she said. “We need to take a long, hard look at ourselves. Every one of us.”
She waited for some reaction. The numbness spreading in his mind wasn’t it.
“So refreshing isn’t it,” she said. “Worlds away from the usual doom-and-gloom.”
He considered telling her the truth, that doom-and-gloom was exactly what he preferred. Hard times were a relief from the wracking changes that had turned the country inside-out. He felt sure he wasn’t alone in this apostasy. “What are you staring at?”
He raised an eyebrow, and gave her his own long, appraising look. He was all too aware that this look had a spotty record as regards effectiveness. But something caught fire in her eyes, and she smiled, and then she laughed. Her slow steps on the stairs behind him only boosted the charge running riot through him.
Afterwards, she picked up the book up again. He had a third of the Gösser still on the bedside cabinet.
“Are you listening,” she said. “All I’m asking is that you look it over. It explains so much. It’s how we’ve forgotten what made us who we are.”
He ran his hand over her breast again. She elbowed him.
“Irish,” she said. “Remember? We’re Irish. We have our fundamentals.”
“A great little country we are, to be sure.”
“Stop that. Loan the book to Jim too when you have it read. Will you?”
“I’ll give that man nothing. Except maybe a kick-up in the arse.”
“Oh grow up. Jim’s one man who’d appreciate the book.” He leaned over to look at her. That lo
ng, deep fold down from her neck stopped at the sheet she’d drawn up over her breasts.
“If he promised not to talk to me about it after he read it, I’d give it to him.”
“At least he’s trying, Jim is. And this book is right up his alley.”
“Don’t mind a book, some days I’d take him up an alley.”
“Oh give over. It’s how to rebuild, how to recover old ways – the good ones only. How we used to be real Irish people. Before this Celtic Tiger nonsense.”