by John Brady
“A Guard?”
Minogue kept up his smile. “I am. Matt’s my name.”
“Are you meant to be here if you’re a Guard?”
“I hope so. Are Guards not allowed in here?”
“Sister, you have to ask Sister. She’s the one.”
“I don’t mind waiting for her outside.”
She frowned deeply, and her jaw went slowly from side to side.
“I didn’t catch your name,” he said.
“Emer. That’s me, Emer.”
“Hello, Emer. It looks like you are a busy person here this morning.”
“I don’t know,” she said, her voice dropping. “I don’t know about this at all, no.”
He re-ran the smile, put a bit more friendliness into it. “Is Davey here, Emer? Davey McArdle?” She adjusted the apron and folded her arms. “You can’t be in here. Sister wouldn’t like it.” He noticed now that a line ran along just inside one of her eyebrows. Another scar, fainter but longer, and with the same light gleam, ran next to her ear.
“I was here yesterday too,” he said. “And I’m only visiting.” She shook her head. Her stubborn earnestness reminded him of a child.
“No,” she said, apparently more certain of herself now. “You can’t.”
The blue-eyed one got to his feet, and headed their way. “Who said my name? Did you say my name?” The look of a jockey indeed, Minogue thought, shrunken somehow, and bandylegged. His widow’s peak was being resisted by longer, ragged strands of hair to the side, most of them tucked behind his ears. A cold sore edged out of one corner of his mouth. No more the full round of the clock than his current interlocutor?
“I did. You’re Davey McArdle?”
“Are you a social worker? A new one?”
Minogue shook his head. Close up, McArdle’s face looked scoured by the elements more than seasoned. His eyelashes were so fair they were hard to spot at all.
“I’m not. I’m here to see Sister Immaculata.”
“Well I never saw you before.”
“Likewise.”
“What?”
“I never saw you either.”
His partner made his move at the draughts game, and then turned to look. His hand changed from raking his beard to tracing a fresh Elastoplast over his eyebrow.
“Your turn,” he said. “What are you doing over there? Hurry up!”
McArdle blinked, but he kept his eye on Minogue.
“How do you know my name?”
“Sister Immaculata told me.”
“Can’t wait all day, you stupid bastard. Come on!”
McArdle spun around. “Shut up,” he hissed. “You’re a bastard, not me.”
The woman stepped back. She seemed to want to say something.
“AIDS man,” said the heavy-set one, his voice rising. “Queer!”
Minogue found himself stepping forward.
“Lads, lads! Come on: enough. Are you Seánie Walshe?”
“It was you wanted to play, you dirty queer. So play! Play the game!”
“No need for that kind of talk,” said Minogue. “We’re just having a chat.”
The heavy-set one shifted his glare to Minogue. He let it slide back on McArdle.
“Social worker day is tomorrow,” he said. “You don’t even know what day it is. That brain of yours turned to shite from Chinaman wine. And AIDS eating away at it.”
McArdle turned to look at Minogue. A definite lack of symmetry there, Minogue saw, the eyes that seemed mismatched under a wide, flat forehead.
“He’s mental,” he said. “Doesn’t take his meds and then he goes off of his head.”
“AIDS is all you’re good for! AIDS!”
Minogue scanned the room. Most of the men were pretending to ignore the racket. A few had remained deep in thought, one rocking slowly and delicately. A man in his early twenties hovered half-risen from a chair, his face set in a dazed look.
“Tone it down,” he said. “Back to your game. I didn’t mean to get in the way.”
“He only cheats,” the heavy-set one growled. “He cheats and he lies, and he robs. And he wants us all to get AIDS, just like he has.”
McArdle turned to catch Minogue’s eye again. Was that a smile beginning, some ritual they went through routinely here, these two?
“I don’t have AIDS,” he said. “He’s always saying that. But I don’t. I don’t.”
“Go on back to your game,” Minogue said. “Really. Please.”
“Cheater, AIDS pusher. Queer.”
“Shut up, Seánie,” a man called out half-heartedly from near the television.
“You shut up yourself. I see things, I know what’s going on. You don’t.”
Walshe stood, bringing draughts skittering and rolling on the floor.
“Whoa,” Minogue called out. “Easy does it there now – enough is enough.”
Some of the men were rising from chairs and heading for the back of the room. “Who are you?”
“I’m just visiting. I’m here to see Sister Immaculata.”
“You’re a Guard,” said Walshe. “You think I’m stupid or something?”
“You’re mental,” said McArdle. “Stupid and mental.” The sound that came from Walshe then was a growl and a shout in one.
“Go back now, Seánie,” Minogue said. “Let’s get that game going again.”
McArdle edged closer to him.
“They should lock you up again,” he went on. “Because you’re mental.”
“Just shut up a minute here, will you?”
“Look at him, going mental. Look, mental…” Walshe clenched and released his fists, and began a slow trudge toward them.
“Sister’s little pet,” he growled. “Got everybody codded, haven’t you?”
“Stay back now,” Minogue tried. “Seánie, isn’t it? Stay back. Just calm down, and everything will be grand. We’ll sort it out. Right, Seánie?”
Walshe continued his slow procession, his stare fixed on McArdle, patches of sheen on his coat glistening dully and then fading as he passed the fluorescents overhead.
“You think she doesn’t know what you are,” he said, his voice rising. “Her little angel, with his AIDS, up there in some graveyard?”
The fraying cloth in Walshe’s right hand was the end of a cast, Minogue now saw, and his heart sank: that thing could hurt.
“Stop it,” he warned. “Seánie? This man’s your friend. You were playing draughts nicely, the both of you. I saw you.”
“I’m not his friend,” he heard McArdle say. “I just keep him quiet here, like Sister asked me to. So he doesn’t take a fit and go spare all the time.”
Minogue shifted his stance. He tried to smile but his muscles wouldn’t oblige.
“Let’s just carry on with the draughts. Tell you what, I’ll play you a game—”
Walshe lunged without warning.
He was soft everywhere, but heavy, and he had a long reach – but now he was on the wrong foot. Clamping his lips tight, Minogue went for the reaching arm. He felt the solid, ungiving cast that ran to the elbow, and he pulled on it. He closed on him, got his arm up his back, and finished the hold. Now he couldn’t help drawing in a breath through his nose. A moment passed before the brew crashed into his brain. The oily smell from Walshe’s hair carried with it a burned-wood tang, but through it all came the sour stench of sweat long-turned to grease. Minogue gasped.
“You little queer,” Walshe grunted. “I’m going to kill you, so I am.”
Minogue got him turned toward the table, and he tugged the arm slightly. Over went Walshe, wheezing and drawing breaths through his teeth, his cheek pressing draughts onto the tabletop.
Nausea clutched hard at Minogue and held. He was ready to panic. He saw himself moments from now giving Walshe a hard shove and then walking – running! – the hell out of here and racing home to stand in the shower.
“We can’t have this,” he managed. “No fights. You hear?”
It was M
cArdle’s mocking voice he heard next, however.
“That’s right, Seánie, listen to the man. Yeah, Seánie, don’t go mental here.”
“You,” said Minogue, glancing over and taking in the smirk. “Shut the hell up!”
His yell turned hoarse at the end. He heard a yelp then, something between a shriek and a cry of anger. A woman’s voice. “Davey, Davey? What’s going on? Davey? Who is that?” By then Minogue had spotted its owner, Sister Immaculata. He registered the pained expression, her hands paddling and kneading the air. Great, he almost said aloud: now he had to worry that she’d get a heart attack or something over this.
“What’s this, what’s happening? What are you doing to Seánie there?”
“Trying to stop a row, is what.”
He turned, eyed McArdle. The blue eyes were hooded now. He seemed happy with the results here.
“With this fella here,” Minogue added. “McArdle, is it?” Hearing no reply, he looked over at her. Her expression was frozen in place. Seeing her look rattled satisfied him in a strange way. McArdle began to move away.
“Don’t be going anywhere,” Minogue called out. “I need to talk to you.” Walshe stirred.
“He’ll give everybody AIDS,” he wheezed. His words seemed to waken Immaculata. She began making her way over.
“Seánie,” she said. “Don’t say those things.”
“I’m going to kill him,” Walshe said. “Someone should have killed him already!”
“Seánie!”
“That’s an arrest coming up,” Minogue said, more to Immaculata than to anyone else. “He has to get a grip on himself here, or I’m going to have to take him in.” She leaned in close, drawing a soapy, citrusy scent with her. “His meds don’t always work the way they should,” she whispered.
“Just get across to him what could happen if he keeps carrying on like this.”
He saw something that looked like resentment in her glance, but then she made her way around the corner of the table and leaned over Walshe.
“Seánie, listen? This man, he can take you to jail for that. Do you understand?”
“Take him to jail – Davey! Not me! He’s a cheater, and he says things, and.…” “Now, Seánie.”
Her voice wasn’t loud; it wasn’t even stern. It cut through the rising talk from men at the back of the room. More nun-power in action for damn sure, Minogue decided. It was reaching back into some quiet, unchanging recess of Walshe’s mind.
“We’re going to say a prayer now, Seánie. That’s what we’re going to do.”
“Our peace prayer,” she said then after a pause. Her voice had dropped to a murmur. “The prayer we made up together, yours and mine, Seánie. Our prayer.”
She looked at Minogue. He met her eyes, but couldn’t be sure she’d noticed him. “Are you ready, Seánie?” Minogue felt Walshe slacken more.
“I don’t want AIDS,” he said.
“Now Seánie, I said to stop that.”
Walshe grunted something, too low and too hurried for Minogue to make out.
“He’s going to let you go now Seánie,” she went on. “And after we say our prayer, you’re going to sit over there by the wall. In your favourite chair. You can pick the station on the telly too. Are you listening, Seánie.”
It wasn’t a question. They weren’t even having a conversation.
“After a count of five. We’ll go step by step. Five…four … three…”
Minogue plotted out what he’d do if Walshe made a run for it. Immaculata caught his eye. He released Walshe’s arm and then he stepped away.
“O Jesus, my brother,” Immaculata declared. Slowly, Walshe stood upright, rubbing at his throat
“O Jesus, my brother, You know my life, and my pain, and my loneliness.”
Walshe’s voice was too low for Minogue to hear. “…You are my friend and my brother...” Immaculata said, closing her eyes.
Walshe had joined his hands. His head was bobbing slightly. Minogue saw scabs under matted hair near his crown. He took a deep breath and released it with a shudder.
“…You forgive me when I do bad. And you don’t forget me, Jesus...”
Glancing down, he was not pleased to see that he too had joined his hands.
“Good, Seánie,” Immaculata said. “Say the ending of it. I’ll say it with you.”
“…If that is Your will. Amen.”
Her face had gone slack. She turned to find McArdle still hanging around.
“Davey,” said Immaculata. “Don’t you be going anywhere, I want a word.”
“But I didn’t do anything. I was being nice.”
“No you weren’t,” Minogue whispered. “You were being a bollocks.”
Chapter 16
“Seánie acts for an audience. He sees one, and away he goes.”
Immaculata was still keeping an eye on the Emer one. She was handing out sandwiches like they were unexploded bombs. He remembered the soft shine that came from those scars on her forehead. She had come by her contrariness honestly enough. Her husband’s attack had left her near death. Immaculata’s way of summing up the situation had stayed in his head: ‘There were some things they couldn’t fix.’
“I was his audience, was I?”
“You were that. But can you see behind what he says, what he does?”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Mental illness isn’t a choice, you know. Did you think it was?”
He hesitated long enough to be sure she was getting his cue. “I feel a lecture coming on,” he said.
“Well I don’t mean to. But is this your first time meeting troubled people?”
“No. Not really, I mean. There were insane rulings to cases I worked on. Where the defendant was ruled not responsible, I mean. Not the other meaning.”
She gave no sign she appreciated his wit, much less twigged to it.
“So you know about Portrane and so forth?”
“I know of it. One man I knew, a convicted man, he killed himself there.”
She winced. He wondered how well she knew the psychiatric hospital there.
“But you’ve been a Guard a good long time. So you know how things can go when you’re dealing with fragile minds.”
Fragile, Minogue thought. If only she’d seen the inside of the kitchen where that Mitchell fella, the suicide, had slaughtered his girlfriend.
“So what they say can’t be taken at face value,” she said. He waited several moments.
“It’s a bit early for you to start plea bargaining for Walshe, I’m thinking.”
That registered with her. He felt he should divert a little after.
“You won’t mind me saying this now, I hope,” he said. “But you’re about the wildest nun I have come across.”
“Wild,” she said. “Me?”
“I can’t think of a more diplomatic word for it right now.”
She picked at her cuff, as though to pluck away a piece of lint.
“There’s nothing to be diplomatic about,” she said. “You thought I was hypnotizing poor Seánie or something, I suppose. Did you?”
“Maybe. Or something like it, yes. Nun powers.”
Her quick, cautious smile told him that he still had her off balance here.
“Prayer,” she said. “The power of prayer. People forget how powerful.”
She lifted her chin, and with a delicate shrug, she drew her shoulders back.
“I learned a lot on the missions, I can tell you,” she said.
“Africa, I’m talking about, sorry. But I had plenty already, growing up. My father, God rest him, was a healer, a bone-setter. A combination of vet, and physiotherapist, and maybe even a psychologist too, I suppose you’d call it. It’s in the family.” “Well it shows,” he said. “You had me praying, nearly.”
“Nearly? What would it take?” He eyed her.
“Remember you asked me, did I ever get a kick off a horse?” Her smile turned to a short, throaty laugh. Emer saw, or heard it, a
nd looked over. Immaculata made a soothing gesture that reminded Minogue of a conductor.