by Tim Buckley
And they nodded in knowing resignation, bonded by the afflictions of a common injustice.
On the neatly manicured lawn between me and the harbour’s edge, children played on brightly coloured swings and slides while mothers chatted and watched, drinking coffee from flasks and trading biscuits and home-made cakes before going home to make the dinner. Even in these enlightened times, it was an exclusively female club. One of them looked over at me and said something to the others, who stole surreptitious glances in my direction. I could hear their voices hushed in earnest debate. It was my cue to move on – the slight blonde with the twins looked vaguely familiar and I dared not risk a reunion with an old schoolmate or schoolmate’s sister. Anyway, I needed a drink.
McGrath’s pub was next to the station. Inside, a few early patrons were scattered around, some reading newspapers, some watching the horses on the television, some apparently just taking refuge from the day outside. The pub had been metamorphosised by interior designers and decorators, but it was the same place I had come to with my friends when we had turned eighteen and could legally, if coyly, order pints at the bar. It was where we had grown up, coming home from university and first jobs in the city to cling to what we knew was safe. And it was the place from where we had looked to the future and made big plans.
I’ve always felt that a pub outside normal drinking hours is a sacred place. I get a slight rush as I enter, the puerile thrill of the innocent misdemeanour. You should be somewhere else, somewhere productive, but you toss a scoff at convention and embrace the indulgence. The faint whiff of cleaning detergent over stale beer confirms that you are among the first. It’s your place, your domain. Later, the noisy, jostling crowds will invade and take it from you. But until then, it’s yours.
The barman looked up from his glass-polishing as I approached the bar. I thought I caught a flash of recognition in his eyes.
“What can I get for you?” he asked with a smile.
“Pint, please.” I nodded at the Guinness tap.
He started pulling the pint and looked up at me. My demeanour must have betrayed my mood.
“Tough day?” he asked, sympathetically.
I smiled a rueful, humourless smile.
“You could say that.”
“Four-fifty please.”
I handed him a note and he turned to get my change. In the mirror behind the bar I could see his face as he punched keys on the till. I racked my brain to remember his name… Pat, Paul, Pádraig? He must have been working here for, what… more than twenty years? In my youth he had commanded our respect, the guardian of a prize. He treated us with a certain aloofness, like a schoolteacher or a guard. He was never overtly rude, but he made sure we knew our place behind our elders and betters. Now he looked somehow smaller. The years had taken their toll, yes, but it was more than that – while I had grown up and gained experience and confidence and the scars of life’s tribulations, he had held his place. I remember when I used to see him outside of McGrath’s, on the street or in the newsagents or at Mass. He looked so out of place, so incongruous in jeans or a sweater instead of his barman’s white shirt and bow-tie. It had never occurred to me that he had a life outside McGrath’s, worries, passions and joys.
Turning back, he handed me my change and set about topping off my pint. He put the glass on the counter.
“There y’are now. That’ll take the edge off it for you.”
I picked my glass up from the counter, raised it slightly to him in thanks, and made my way into the corner. My head had stopped spinning and I could start to piece together the day’s events with something approaching coherence. I took a long draft from my pint, leaned back against the seat’s soft cushions and replayed the day in my head. For the months since I had set about searching for Aoife, I had lived by the premise that she was as consumed with her past as I was with bringing it to her. True, she had made no further contact since that first letter to the Agency, but I construed that as a function of the raging and unresolved debate in her head: coming to terms with her past versus disloyalty to the parents who had nurtured her. Now, for the first time, it occurred to me that perhaps there was no raging debate, no crisis of conscience. Perhaps she was living her life in peace, happy to be who she was and not at all desperate to find her other self. She had made only one effort at contact, and even that might have been on a teenage impulse, and not at all the pre-cursor to engagement that I had deemed it to be.
I had been a fool to pin such hopes to the address in Malahide, a folly cruelly made so clear by the French girl in the house. Maybe she had never intended to go there. Maybe she had gone on a whim to some more exotic destination. Maybe she had chosen instead to pursue her musical aspirations in Paris or London or New York. Whatever the truth, it was clear that Aoife was content in the present and not dwelling on the past.
The lounge-girl had wandered over and picked up my empty glass.
“Another one?” Her bright, wide eyes asked the question before it ever reached her lips.
“Sorry? Er… yes, please. And some crisps. Please. Cheese and onion.”
“Sure, no worries,” she said, in a broad antipodean accent.
She smiled and made her way to the bar. I watched her back as she walked away, languid and careless. Caitríona would have said she was pretty.
I heard his voice before I saw him, the urgent cadence of his Kerry brogue that had in equal part enchanted and terrorised my childhood. I looked up toward the bar and saw the Master talking to two other men, his back toward me. I was getting on for forty years old, and yet he would always be the Master, the headmaster from my old primary school. I would meet him from time to time when I was home from boarding school or during my university days, and I could never bring myself to address him even as Mr. O’Dwyer – or Mac Uí Dhuibhir as his Irish-speaking Gaeltacht heritage would demand – much less Críostóir. And though he and my father were good friends, and though he and I met regularly in a social context, he never invited me to.
Like Goldsmith’s village school-children, we had beheld his knowledge and wisdom with wonder. Like the village schoolmaster’s charges too, we sat ready with enthusiastic laughter for one of his jokes and shifted uncomfortably at our desks when his morning demeanour promised a stormy day ahead. His relationship with my family predated my schooldays and influenced our pupil-teacher relationship. My childhood memories are full of evenings with him sitting on our back patio with my father, the two of them drinking whiskey, watching the sea below and debating I knew not what. Although my father never included me in these sessions, the Master would often call me if I passed the patio door or played in the garden. I could sense my father’s impatience if I lingered too long or answered the Master’s enquiries in too much detail, and so I would politely make my excuses and wish them both goodnight. I was grateful for his efforts to include me and for his interest, and while my class-mates feared his wrath, I feared his disapproval, his disappointment. It was difficult for me to join in their play-time gibes at his expense, and I was often dismissed as his pet. He had known my mother before she and my father were married. A bachelor all his life, I wondered in later years if he had loved her, if losing out to my father had in some way determined the course of his life. And I wondered if that had somehow affected his relationship with me.
During our playtime breaks at school we would play football in the school yard. At the beginning of each week we would pick teams, and play for the glory of “winning the week”. In a close run week, we were rabid with excitement. In the last class before lunch on a decisive Friday, we could hardly pay attention, minds wandering to last minute winning goals or last-gasp tackles. When the Master finally let us out, we would burst through the door onto the makeshift and ragged asphalt football pitch behind our classroom, ready for the off.
One such day, a group of girls from our class, apparently indignant at being barred from this ritual, camped on
the halfway line, playing some inane hand-clapping game and crafting necklaces from daisies and buttercups. None of our best attempts at coaxing or cajoling them from the hallowed ground made any difference. Then, their ringleader, Gemma, grabbed the ball and made off with it. I gave chase and caught her, but she wouldn’t let go of her prize. We tussled and she fell over, cutting her knee between her school skirt and socks. Embarrassed and unsure of what to do, I turned back to the field of play, which the other girls had vacated to check on their commander. I put the ball down in the middle and our game kicked off again.
I thought no more of Gemma until lunch-break was over and the bell called us back to class. When we got back to our desks, the Master had still not returned to the room. We laughed and joked and debated the epic clash just finished until he appeared at the door, his face purple with fury. He stormed down to the back of the class where I sat, a trail of copybooks and the contents of pencil cases lying scattered on the floor in his wake. He reached over and grabbed hold of my ear, pulling me to my feet.
“You will never, ever hit a girl again, do you hear me?” he snarled. “No boy in my class will ever, ever hit a girl.”
He dragged me to the front of the class and pushed me outside the pre-fabricated building and into the yard.
“You’ll stand there until I decide you can come back in here. If I decide.”
Even at that age, I understood that hitting a girl was wrong, we all did. My face was blood red with the shame of having been dragged by the ear through the class, but also with the shame of having been accused of such a crime. Across the yard, another pre-fab housed a younger class, all of whom were peering at me through the window, intrigued by the unfolding drama. I glared back, and turned away.
“But I never hit her!” my mind screamed with indignation. “I was just trying to get our ball back and she fell over!”
But I said nothing. Said nothing because I knew it was a technicality that this court would never entertain.
An hour or so later, he opened the door and stepped back to his blackboard. He didn’t look at me as I came back into the room and took my seat. Head bowed, I lifted my eyes to peek at Gemma from under heavy eyelids. She caught my glance, and sent back a triumphant, mocking smirk.
I couldn’t reconcile his reaction with the nature of the playground misdemeanour. True, he was a guardian of chivalry. True, he believed that education was about development of the character as well as the intellect. But had my crime been so heinous? Slowly, I came to understand that any other deviant might have escaped such wrath. But he expected – demanded – more of me, and I had let him down. In the following days, his demeanour reassured me that I had been forgiven, but my shame lasted much longer and my lesson was well learned.
When the time came for me to leave primary school and move on to “the big school” as we called it with awe, it was my father’s wish that I go to his alma mater, a boarding school in County Tipperary, some hundred miles away. The Master coached me in preparation for the entrance exams, and assured me that my father was doing the right thing. A great academic institution, it would prepare me well for the world of university and work. I would enjoy it, he insisted. They played football and rugby, even hurling. I would have a great time.
But even my young mind could sense his misgivings. September came around too soon. My friends were all going to schools in Dublin. Some to Parnell Square or Drumcondra or Portmarnock, some venturing to the unknown lands of Blackrock or Dún Laoghaire. Some of the less studious had barely heard of Tipperary, much less of the small town to which the CIE bus would take me the next day. The Master came round to our house that evening as I packed, to share a drink with my father in the twilight. As I passed the patio doors, he called after me.
“Well now, gosso’n, big day tomorrow, ha? Listen, you work hard down there now, it’s a great chance you have so you make the most of it, d’ya hear me.”
I nodded.
“I will, Master.”
He pulled a book out of the plastic bag he was carrying.
“Listen now, some of the Irish they use down there is different to what you know. This might come in useful.”
Awkwardly, he pushed the bound Foclóir – the Irish dictionary – into my hands. He paused a fraction of a second, as though about to say something and then decided against it.
“Good luck now, gosso’n.”
He turned and walked back out to the patio before I could respond.
“Thanks, Master,” I mumbled to his retreating back.
My thoughts were interrupted by a guffaw of laughter from one of the Master’s drinking pals, amid much back-slapping and finger-prodding. Chuckling heartily, the Master turned to look around lest they were disturbing any of the other patrons with their raucous banter. His eyes scanned past me in the corner, then stopped, reversed. He looked at me uncertainly for a few seconds, cloaked as I was by the gloom of the corner. He hadn’t seen me for some five years but, standing over six feet tall and topped with a mop of unruly red hair, I was hard to mistake. He turned back to his friends, touched the elbow of one and whispered something. Then he turned back and walked over to me.
I stood up as he drew close. He squinted his eyes, and tilted his head slightly.
“Aengus? Is it you?”
“It is, Master,” I smiled weakly, and stood up to shake his hand.
“Yerra, gosso’n how are you? I didn’t know you were home, your father never mentioned you were coming?”
He pulled over a chair, took a seat beside me and set his glass down on the table.
He leaned towards me conspiratorially and said in a quiet voice, “You know, it’s my very good fortune to see you here – you’ve freed me from the clutches of that pair.” he smiled and nodded his head towards his two drinking pals, raising his eyes to heaven in mock exasperation. “They’ve been giving me nothing but abuse since Kerry took such an awful beating at the weekend! And I wouldn’t mind only that fella’s from Offaly – sure the last time that lot won anything, you weren’t long finished making trouble in my classroom.”
He smiled broadly and punched me playfully in the ribs. The Master was an avid fan of Kerry football, and his knowledge of the country’s most successful Gaelic football team was encyclopaedic.
“Yerra, it wasn’t a great game anyhow, there were maybe too many young lads playing. But sure with this new system, we’re still alive. And no team will sleep easy in their beds while Kerry are still alive.”
He took a sip from his whiskey, and spent a moment looking me up and down.
“You’re looking well. As well as can be expected I suppose?” he said quietly, as though arriving at an important conclusion. “It can’t have been easy on you these past months. How long has it been now? Nearly two years?”
“Nearly. It’ll be twenty-one months next week.”
“And you’re still working in London? Still living there?”
“I’m still in London, yes.”
“Great opportunities there, no doubt? And it’s a great city, a great city. And I suppose you must have plenty of Irishmen over there to keep you company?”
I smiled.
“Plenty. Too many, sometimes!”
He was quiet for a moment, pensive.
“And are you happy there? I suppose happy is maybe the wrong word?”
“Honestly, Master? I’m not sure.” I looked down at the floor, then raised my eyes again to his. “We were so settled there, it felt so much like home. But now?” I shrugged and shook my head. “Now I’m not so sure anymore.”
I hadn’t spoken to a single person about my increasing sense of dislocation, and I was a little surprised at how quickly I had dropped my guard. But, perhaps naively, I considered him a trustworthy confessor who would protect my confidence.
He called to the lounge girl.
“Ella, there’s a man here with
an empty glass. We can’t have that now, can we?”
The girl smiled.
“We certainly can’t, Mr. O’Dwyer,” she replied with a grin, a hand on his shoulder. “Another pint?” she asked, as she lifted my glass from the table.
“Yes, please.”
“And another whiskey, Mr. O’D?”
“Thank you, Ella, that would be grand.”
She breezed away to the bar.
I looked after her.
“In my day, we were all going off to Australia and England and America looking for work and adventure. Now they’re all coming here,” I remarked. “How times change.”
“You’ll find Dublin a very different place now, I suppose. We get used to it, the foreign accents and languages, the little ethnic shops, the black men driving our buses! I think some people find it a bit hard. But I think it’s good for us. Good for us to learn about them and good for them to learn about us. The world is a different place to when you were growing up – we Irish can’t just rely on our old friends if we want to flourish in the future. How many children in China and India and even Russia have ever even heard of Ireland? Why would they think of us in twenty or thirty years when they’ve grown into the next generation of industrial giants? We need new friends if we’re not to get left behind.”
He looked after Ella and raised his glass.
“And if they’re all as pretty as our Ella, sure isn’t that just a bonus!”
The Master had always had a passion for geography. From the small classroom in Howth, it seemed as though we had travelled the world. I remember as a child of ten or eleven years old, we had been tasked with a school project on Sweden. The walls of our classroom were festooned with blue and yellow flags, with maps painstakingly traced from atlases, with pictures of dense pine forests, barren snowscapes, and cityscapes of Stockholm and Gothenburg. To be honest, I can’t remember the principal industries or the highest mountain or the largest lake, but ever since, I’ve found myself with an unexplained wistfulness for the place. I would urge on their footballers in World Cups or European Championships. I would find my eye drawn to newspaper articles on Uppsala or Norrköping. I have never even visited the country, but I have always felt there is an invisible, unspoken bond between the Swedes and me, born in a little classroom in a little north Dublin schoolhouse.