by John Brady
Truth_@_midnight didn’t hold back: Irish society had crucified Padraig Larkin.
Jackeen_redser: homelessness is the REAL crime. Thousands of empty houses in ghost estates all over the country – but this man had no roof over his head.
Dublin_Jen felt she had known Larkin. He was harmless. She never felt scared of him. Now that a valuable member of the community had been taken away from her, she realized that her relationship had been more important than she knew. Not long after relationship came the word that Minogue’s cynical side had immediately predicted: She felt…traumatized.
Kerryblue_fan was “totally outraged hearing people saying that Larkin was only ‘an old head case.’ Was there no justice? Was this the kind of a country we wanted? Billions for banks, neglect for outcasts?”
He stopped reading and looked around the kitchen. The pizza had cooled a little. Austrian beer, he thought, and Italian cuisine: Up The Republic! Everybody seemed to like Italy these days, or Tuscany, at any rate. Kathleen wanted to visit Rome, he didn’t. For him, Rome was the television Rome. The Vatican, with statues looking down everywhere. Cardinals in red robes, droves of priests and nuns, pilgrims of all colour. Had Immaculata ever been there? He let himself imagine her striding up basilica steps, shouldering aside those ridiculous Swiss Guards, and barging in on a conclave of cardinals. The august faces would turn to her, the white hair peeping out from under their caps, and she would lay down the law. What would it take, she’d demand, to dump this folderoldol here and roll up their sleeves in a village in Africa?
Hardly. But what were those vows that nuns took, when they ‘took the veil’? Chastity, poverty, obedience – and defer to the men of the church, of course. How many of them had been bad ones though, those ones in the laundries, or the orphanages? Had they been as cruel as the men of the cloth? Should cruelties be compared?
He let the rim of the beer can rest on his lip. Hadn’t there been a good Ireland, before this Tiger/Doom situation? A good-enough Ireland at least? The country he’d grown up in hadn’t been hell. Yes, he’d been beat around the ears by teachers, but so had the rest of the class. Had any of the bitter know-it-alls, the ones who lived for grudgery, and to tear down anything they could find, had they never met one decent person in a religious life? A Christian Brother who’d spent a life teaching? A parish priest who brought solace and comfort? A nun who had built clinics in Africa?
He heard Kathleen fold the paper again. A signal of impatience?
He let his eyes drift back to the screen. A username Mise_eire_my_eye? Ah, got it: Mise Éire, My Eye. As in: not taken in by Our Gallant Little Country. Padraig Larkin was an icon of today’s Darwinian Ireland. He was our Pièta.
Our Pietà?
Kathleen came in rubbing her forehead. She headed for the kettle.
“Facebook,” she muttered. “Since when are you interested in that?” “What of it.”
“Oh, it’s for… That’s creepy. For a man who’s dead?”
“Par for the course,” he said. “We have to keep up. ‘Every avenue’ et cetera.”
She leaned in to read the screen, and began reading aloud. “‘Anti-religion, materialistic society… Destined to implode now that the emperors had been shown to have no clothes.’ Very good. ‘Implode.’ Very well put.”
She made a little gasp and straightened up. She had moved on to the next posting.
“‘Jesus Christ was a homeless outsider,’” she said. “Technically true, I suppose.”
This homeless Jesus bit didn’t sit right with him. His Jesus was a figure of majesty, haloed, light-rays, heart aglow, looking down from glass and wall on the child Minogue. It wasn’t a marginalized Jesus who had struck terror into that Minogue. He scrolled down but soon let go the mouse.
“So you’re heading over to Pierce for your card game now, are you?” she said.
“I am.”
“Home the usual time?”
“That’s the plan anyway.”
She made a strange smile, one that he would remember later on…
“Say hello to Jim Kilmartin for me at least, will you.”
***
For Minogue as much as the others at the card session here in Pierce Condon’s, these few hours had never been much about cards. It was more a chance to gab and to take his time over a couple of tins of beer, and to listen in on the arguments. There was no shortage of grandstanding, or mockery. No session that Minogue could remember had gone by without someone barking, “Cut the cards, you leaping hoor!” Or “You reneged, you gobadán!” More often, “I might have known it’d be you’d have the knave, you useless fecker.”
The card games were always TwentyFive, the one game that Condon remembered. The games took place in the room that Condon called his playroom, the one fitted out for his wheelchair. Minogue had his usual perch next to Condon’s boyhood friend Dessie Smith. As a senior civil servant in Finance, Smith had come to be the target of much sly baiting. It didn’t seem to bother him. Kevin, eldest of the Condon children, with his mother’s light colouring and her turn on the nose, attended too but did not play. In between getting glasses, peanuts, cups of tea, biscuits – and then putting everything away before getting his Da to bed – he sat in the corner with a laptop.
Condon’s bent fingers clutched and released his cards with mechanical assurance, his head dipping slightly each time. He took the trick that Smith set up. Minogue tried to ignore the contortions that seized his face, and the snuffling sounds he made. He slid his tin of Gosser next to his small stack of change, and he felt for his cigarettes.
The porch light shone back dully from the pitted cement of the driveway. It was nearly cold enough for frost. Intonations – voices, but no words – came to him from the windows. He looked back at the Condon’s home, a semi built in the early Fifties on what was then a sleepy lane off the old Bray Road at Cornelscourt. Besieged by select homes now, it rusticated behind mad hedges and Pierce’s old botanical experiments run to seed.
He drew up the handle on the driveway gate and let the tip of the bolt rest on the cement. His Peugeot was still there behind Kilmartin’s heap-of-shite Golf. The hall door reopening made him turn. Kilmartin’s face revealed itself in the light. He was still in conversation with somebody.
“Why bother having a government at all,” he heard Kilmartin say. “That’s my point! Give it all to Brussels, or the fecking bankers in I-don’t-know-where…!”
He was humming – always a bad sign – when he pulled the hall door after him. He placed a cigar between his teeth and commenced his saunter down the drive.
“No shop talk here tonight now, you,” Minogue said, as he drew near.
“Did I even open my mouth?”
“I can read your mind.”
Annoyance flickered in Kilmartin’s eyes but he made a close-mouthed smile.
“What was I going to say to you then?”
“Well it’s not about the Nigerian woman who had four kids in four years so she could stay in Ireland. That one you already pitched inside.”
Kilmartin took his time lighting the cigarillo.
“My mistake then, isn’t it,” he murmured through a cloud of smoke. “For suggesting that the big noises in the civil service get out in the streets and see what’s really going on in the country. What was I thinking?”
The smoke hung in the air about him. He began batting it away.
“So much for your guess then,” he said, brightly.
“You were going to take some other poke at Tommy Malone.”
“Me-o-my, but you could be right. Silly me, wanting to keep you in the picture.”
“There’s no picture, Jamesy Boy. It’s fantasy.”
“You wish it were. But I hear things. On the QT, yes, but mock it at your peril.”
“Someone’s using Tommy Malone to make an iijit out of you.”
“Well look who’s into fantasy now. Who’d want to do something like that?”
“Who do you think? Anyone who wants to ta
ke digs at him, to ruin his career.” Kilmartin smiled wanly.
“He’s doing the work of that fine by himself, with his carry-on. Don’t you think?”
“And anyone who wants to make a gobshite of you too,” Minogue added. “People with sore ankles. People you rubbed the wrong way in the past. The Good Old Days?”
“Oh here we go: the grassy knoll stuff again. Where ignorance is bliss, it’s folly to be wise. I have my sources, that’s all I can say. But you can take them to the bank.”
“The bank? The banks are bust. Did nobody tell you that, on the QT?”
Kilmartin dismissed the sarcasm with a toss of his head. “Whatever you say, Matt. You’re always right. I forgot.” They smoked in silence for several moments.
“And Kathleen says hello. By the way. Before I give you a kick.”
“Ah you’re priceless. You may tell that lovely woman that she has my admiration, my deepest admiration. Where is she tonight, by the way?”
There was a large helping of guile in Kilmartin’s grin. “None of your business is my first answer. Why’re you asking me, is my second.”
“Just making polite conversation. Am I in the wrong country for that, is it? Are we gone fecking bankrupt in that too?”
Yet again in their long friendship, Minogue had to relent. Kilmartin had his own woes after all. The talk fell to holidays, not pay cuts; new diesel engines. Minogue soon began to wonder if there was not a new equanimity to Kilmartin.
They returned to the game together, just in time for Kevin to bring in tea. It was a signal to his father that tonight’s session would soon be ending. It was a signal to the others as well of course. They should be ready for Pierce’s agitation, an outburst maybe.
Minogue watched the cards fly out from Smith’s hand. He noted Condon’s frown as he picked up his cards. The man never asked for help, and often, his mood ran dark and he shook with anger. It had been like this since he had come out of the coma. There was talk of moving him in with Kevin and his family. But whatever else Condon had lost that night, his stubbornness had only been amplified. He was holding fast to the house they’d left that evening, four or so minutes before his wife was dead in the seat beside him.
Smith had picked up on his friend’s growing agitation, and he was warming up a diversion. He had latched on to Kilmartin’s remarks about rappers and their moves.
“Rappers,” he said. “I remember when people could actually dance.”
“That’s me,” said Kilmartin. “Twinkle-toes they called me, I was that good.”
“Not as good as Pierce and me. We were hounds entirely for the dances.”
“You were on your hole,” Kilmartin said, warmly.
“Says you. Many’s the rug I cut, and many’s the heart I broke on the dance floor.” Kilmartin’s cackle was full of dark mirth.
“Many’s the leg you broke, you mean. Where did all this take place, anyway?”
“Over at Dundrum, in actual fact. World famous. Full to the rafters every night.”
“Dundrum? My God man, a legend. The dance floor knee-deep in cowshite.” Smith winked at Minogue.
“Sorry Des,” Minogue said. “I’ve no dog in the race, I’m more a Lisdoon man.”
“You needn’t be one bit sorry,” said Kilmartin.
“Lisdoonvarna’s no great shakes, but you saved yourself a world of trouble by avoiding Dundrum. Sure if the dogs knew about Dundrum they’d go there to piss. No offence – there are parts of Tipp I like, really.”
Smith rolled his eyes, and finished the deal. Solemnly, he turned over the top card.
“God, that’s a dirty-looking card,” Kilmartin murmured.
“Plenty more of them,” said Smith.
Cards were laid with deliberation at first. Minogue felt that Smith was the one to watch. And so it was. Smith slid his five out last, just before Kilmartin’s precious king.
“By Jesus,” Kilmartin said. “More blackguarding.” It was Minogue’s deal now. Kevin was on the move now, discreetly clearing up.
“You like Macs, Kevin,” said Kilmartin, stifling his belch with sardonic courtesy.
“I was thinking of getting one. No crashes, I hear? And a bit of style too, of course.”
“Goes with that Jesus beard of yours,” said Smith. “Sandals and yoga next.”
“Plenty of them Macs out your way I’d say, Matt,” said Kilmartin. “Aren’t there? That’s where you’ll find all carry-on with yoga and spas, and lattes, and what have you.”
“Out in Kilmacud?” asked Smith. Kilmartin shook his head.
“No, no,” he said. “Work. Matt’s new gig. He moves around a bit.”
Minogue threw a glare at him. He got only a studied impudence back.
“New job,” Smith said. “News to me, Matt. Congratulations, I suppose.”
“A temporary thing,” Minogue said. “It’s in the nature of a pilot project.”
A card escaped Condon’s clenched fingers, hopped on its short edge and disappeared. Kilmartin leaned down to retrieve it, grunting.
“You saw my hand!”
“Da,” Kevin said. Kilmartin righted himself with a bashful half-smile.
Face twisted in anger, a bead of sweat had stalled by Condon’s hairline.
“And the one I dropped,” he went on. “You took a gawk at that one too!”
“Jaysus, Pierce,” said Smith. “How could Jim see your hand?”
“How? When he picked up the one I dropped, is how! You think I’m stupid?”
“It was only a four of clubs,” Smith said. “That’s why he didn’t keep it on you.”
Even Minogue laughed. Condon looked around uncertainly and then began laughing too. It was the same high-pitched, unnatural one that he’d developed.
The central heating pipes took advantage of the quiet then to make their digestive noises. Smith led a trump. Answering cards slid out on the table one by one. The sighs continued.
Minogue noticed that the stricken, distracted look had returned to Condon’s face, soon to set into the abstracted melancholy look that Minogue knew too well.
It was a mercy when the hand finally ended. Condon had sagged further in the chair, and was listing more to one side. His sporadic attempts to listen to the conversation made him toss and jerk his head upright, only to have it slump soon afterwards.
“Pierce,” Minogue said, gathering himself. “The bed is calling to me. And my pockets are picked empty after this chicanery here tonight.”
Condon smiled and blinked slowly, but said nothing. “Ask for a bail-out then,” Kilmartin said. “Pretend you’re a bank. Pierce there can help out, I imagine?”
Smith exchanged a look with Minogue before turning a wry eye on Kilmartin.
“Jimmy,” he said. “For a man so steeped in knowledge there, you must know that Matt is in the wrong postal code for getting any bail-outs.”
“Not to worry. Just write an address in Foxrock or someplace. Actually where you are now will do it, those new digs of yours in Dalkey—” “He’s not Dalkey!”
The shout reverberated overhead. Condon turned to Minogue.
“Why’s he saying ‘Dalkey’? You’re Kilmacud, Matt, Kilmacud! Tell him!”
“Don’t mind Jimmy,” Minogue said to Condon. “He’s lost the run of himself.”
The troubled look deepened. Condon seemed to be searching for something to say. Kilmartin’s voice had softened now.
“He’s working in Dalkey, Pierce. That’s what I meant to say.”
“No he’s not,” Condon retorted. “Neither are you. Stop trying to cod me here.”
“Ah we’re not, Pierce,” Minogue began.
“You’re in St. John’s Road,” Condon said, louder. “That’s Murder Squad HQ. Everybody knows that, for God’s sakes. Why are you saying Dalkey?”
Kilmartin let himself back in his chair.
“Would that we were over in St. John’s Road, Pierce,” he said. “But sure we moved on out of that. The rug was pulled from under the
Squad, a while back now.”
Condon seemed to weigh the information. His expression reminded Minogue of his children’s faces when they had awoken from a bad dream, awake but not really.
“So now it’s Dalkey for you?”
“Only me, Pierce.”
Smith rose from his chair with a soft, sighing groan.
“Oh now I get it!”
Condon’s laugh had sounded like a seal’s bark.
“Yes, Matt – they gave you the cushy number! Dalkey, yes – Dalkey’s the cushy number. ‘Nothing goes on in Dalkey.’ Right? I nearly forgot about that, yes!”