Bad Things Happen

by Tim Buckley

  I needed to escape from the studio for a little while, ideally in the company of someone who I didn’t think was judging me or trying to decide if I was telling the truth.

  “You’ve no idea! That’d be great.”

  We agreed the where and the when, and I tidied away the paraphernalia of my new trade.

  CHAPTER 26

  The Front Room was a new coffee shop near the church and had replaced the old café where we used to have breakfast after mass on Sunday mornings. It was a microcosm of all that Ireland had become in my absence. Gone were the homely old ladies who waited on tables, replaced by young girls from Eastern Europe with thick Slavic accents and a barely disguised ennui. Gone was the simple breakfast menu, replaced by a catalogue of Italian coffees and herbal infusions and pains au chocolat. Tables of middle-aged ladies draped in designer clothes and accessories chattered excitedly over pastries and the remains of long lunches, leaning across tables and into secrets with pursed lips and knowing nods. I listened in on conversations about holidays and the price of schools, the cost of houses and how you simply couldn’t live in Dublin these days without a four-by-four.

  And yet there was a nervousness in the air, an uncertainty and a sense that this might all have been an all too short-lived dream. The tone was almost one of loss, as though accepting that they would soon revert to the old lives that they had been able to dismiss with nostalgic mockery.

  Niamh walked in and, spotting me in the corner, smiled and waved. I stood up and leaned over to kiss her cheek.

  “Hiya,” she said. “Sorry I’m a bit late.”

  “No bother,” I replied. “What can I get you?”

  I ordered from a reluctant waitress whose career aspirations, I could only assume, lay far from the hospitality industry.

  Niamh looked at me intently.

  “Are you ok?” she asked, real concern in her voice. “I’m really sorry about the other morning. I never meant to upset you.”

  “I know, Niamh, and don’t worry.” I reached across the table and squeezed her hand, then pulled it away it little too sharply, remembering Oran’s stern advice. “I’m fine. I have to take my life back. I have to stop crumbling when I talk about her or when other people talk about her. I don’t know that I can, or how long it’ll take. But I think it must be time.”

  I nodded to confirm that I believed what I said.

  “And I should really be thanking you, Niamh. You wouldn’t think it maybe, but it was progress. It was better.”

  She smiled and looked around the café.

  “Do you remember coming here when we were kids?” she said.

  I nodded with a grin.

  “God, it was a bit of a dive, wasn’t it,” she went on, then leaned closer as though about to divulge a shocking secret. “And that oul’ one who did the cooking? I don’t think I ever once saw her washing her hands! It’s a wonder we weren’t all poisoned.”

  That Niamh’s abiding memory was of hygiene and not of under-aged hangovers or scandalous liaisons or misfired pranks was a glimpse into the soul she tried hard to hide. She was one of us and yet one apart.

  “Seems like two lifetimes ago,” I said. “And look at it now? Who’d have thought, eh?”

  The waitress delivered our order with a well-honed gruffness.

  “Thank you,” Niamh said to her back. “I know, big changes. But sure it’s like that all over Dublin, and it’s all going to change again, probably.”

  “An uncertain future?” I said.

  “Looks like it.” She raised her mug to me. “To the future. It can only get better, right?”

  “The future,” I smiled. “Let’s hope so.”

  “So what’s in your future, do you think?” she asked, over the top of her coffee.

  I exhaled long and hard, and raised my eyebrows.

  “Jesus, who knows. But,” I tried to find a way to express my cautious optimism without sounding twee or trite, “I think it’s about taking your life back. You know what I mean?”

  She nodded.

  “I do. I think that’s what I’ve tried to do,” she said, unusually animated. “I just got fed up accepting things, and I think I’ve tried to push back, to take back control.”

  “You know, the first night I was back I met the Master in McGrath’s. And that’s what he said. Take control. And he’s right, you know.”

  “Críostóir? He usually is,” she said, with a grin. “Or at least he usually thinks he is.”

  “Some things never change?”

  “Exactly!”

  The gaggle of lunching women rose as one to leave, and diners at the adjoining tables had to take evasive action to avoid swinging coats and scarves and handbags. Amid the overpowering fragrance of disturbed cosmetics and the crescendo of kissed cheeks and hollow compliments, they swept to the door and were gone.

  We smiled and shook our heads at the departing crowd.

  “He is right though,” I said, when their din had faded through the door. “You have to decide what you want and go get it. I’ve been too willing to sit back and absorb the pain. I don’t think it ever goes away, but you have to live your life and make the best of it. Otherwise, you might as well give up.”

  “I know what you mean,” she said, slowly, “but I’m not sure it’s that simple. I have to put Micheál and Ciara before anything else – not “have to”, I want to. They didn’t ask for this and it’s not their fault, but they’re the ones who stand to suffer most. And that can’t happen. I’d love to just follow a random dream, but I want always to be there for them.”

  I nodded.

  “Of course. I can’t really imagine the responsibility that children bring.”

  She smiled ruefully.

  “It’s a lot of pressure, that’s for sure. But sure that’s what you sign up for, isn’t it. No point in complaining about it.”

  I thought about Oran’s revelation that the whole world had known about Aoife. I wondered if Niamh was in that world. If it had passed anybody by, it would surely have been her.

  “Did you really know what you were signing up for?” I asked, with a grin.

  “God, no! Does anyone?” she laughed.

  “But you wanted children though?”

  She hesitated.

  “Yes, we did. I suppose we did. Brian wanted a son, someone to take to the football and go fishing with.” She paused, trying but not quite able to suppress the barb in her voice. “I don’t think he ever really thought about everything else that goes with it. And in the end it just got too much for him.”

  “And you? Did you want children? When you had Micheál?”

  “Me?” she seemed surprised by the question, as though I’d asked if she liked puppies or chocolate. “I suppose I always thought I’d have a family. But you can’t plan for these things, and it’s never the right time. So we had Micheál. I didn’t want him to grow up on his own, so we had Ciara after.”

  When it’s never the right time, it’s maybe not the right thing.

  “But I love them now more than anything else,” she went on quickly, afraid I would misconstrue, and I had no doubt that it was the truth. “Watching them grow up and get stronger and more confident and more capable, that’s been everything I could have hoped for. I’d never let anything happen to them, I swear to God I wouldn’t. And I’d do anything for them.”

  “But you can still take control, though, can’t you?” I said. “You have to. Or you get buffeted around by the world’s randomness. Everybody is scrambling to stay afloat, sometimes at your expense. Some are malevolent, some just don’t care. But if you spend your time just reacting to what other people do, I don’t think you can cope. You have to set a course that’s right for you – and for your kids – and fuck the rest of them.”

  “Sounds like a voice of experience?”

  I paused, then nodded
.

  “I suppose it is, Niamh. I’ve spent too long just trying to survive every day, surviving to live another unfulfilling day. I have to take charge. I want to have something to lose.”

  “You used to dream about being a painter, didn’t you? Like your father?”

  I think I blushed.

  “I did. God, I was a pretentious arse, wasn’t I? The great artist! Some chance!”

  “Well, you’re doing it now aren’t you?”

  I grimaced.

  “Hardly. One portrait for my father’s show. And he might not even take it? Hardly the impact I imagined making on the art world.” I looked at her. “What about you? What did you dream of?”

  She laughed, her turn to blush.

  “You’ll only laugh,” she protested. “But, I always dreamed of being a fashion designer.”

  “I never knew that,” I said, genuinely surprised. “But yeah, you used to make your own stuff didn’t you?”

  I remembered from somewhere deep in the archives of my mind that Niamh would turn up to a disco or a party in some of her own creations, to predictably catty jibes from some of our number but to nods of genuine approval from others.

  “You used to come up with some pretty funky stuff, didn’t you?”

  Her blush deepened.

  “I used to love making that stuff. And I’d love to have taken it further, but it wouldn’t have paid the mortgage!”

  She finished her coffee.

  “I’d have another one – you?” I said.

  She looked at her watch.

  “Yeah, that’d be grand. Thanks, Aengus.”

  I called to the waitress who took time out from the detailed fingernail inspection that had her so engrossed and motioned for two more of the same.

  “So what are you doing these days?” I asked.

  “I’m a part-time accountant for the hotel. Book-keeper really. But the hours are good and it means I can pick up the kids from school. And I can do a lot of it at home, so I don’t have to pay a fortune for childcare. I’m very lucky really.”

  Lucky, said the lion-tamer who lost only one leg to his beast.

  Where does it all go wrong? As we get old, so our dreams are diluted until they fizzle out unnoticed. As little children we dreamed of being astronauts and super-heroes. As teenagers it was footballers, artists and fashion designers. In our twenties it was to find a great job that would be our vehicle to make the world a better place and make ourselves famous or celebrated or just blissfully content. And we dreamed of things outside of that world – that our band would hit the big time or our team would win its league or we might win a medal or a cup or even a mention in the local newspaper. Then came our thirties, and it all came back to making the best of the job we’d found and maybe climbing the ladder doing something that we would have dismissed and mocked in our teens, but somehow now it’s comforting and it’s safe. There’s suddenly no time for the band or training or playing and without even noticing, we’ve stopped. In our forties, it will just be to keep paying the steadily rising bills, raising our children the best way we can and saving for the future that will never work out quite as we imagined – all the while snatching moments of joy and inspiration where we can and wondering when it was that we stopped wanting the things that we always wanted so badly. When did our vibrant dreams turn into grey aspirations? We’re not racked by regret and we’re not unhappy, but it’s all such a waste and we’ll never get the chance again.

  “Do you think you’ll ever go back to it, give it another try?” I asked her.

  “I’d love to, really I would. I make some of the kids’ things now, but it’s not really what I dreamed of doing.” She stopped. “Bit like you!” she realised, and she laughed.

  I raised my mug to her.

  “Well, here’s to us for at least keeping the dream alive. It’s flickering, but the candle is still burning.”

  She grinned and clinked my mug with hers.

  “To us,” she said.

  It was late afternoon when I got back to the studio. I sat down in front of the easel, and stared long at the picture. I had passed the point where a mistake would be an inconvenience. To err now in unforgiving acrylic would probably be irreversible – the best I could hope for would be to cloak it in some fudged cover. All that was left was to add some depth and colour to her face, bring out somehow the vulnerable warmth that was punctuated by those eyes.

  The noise of voices outside jerked me from my reverie, and they grew louder and more animated. I recognised Oran’s angry tones, but not the other voices, whose strong Dublin accents sounded ominously calm. I got up from my chair and went outside to see what was happening.

  Oran was standing by his car with two broad-shouldered men, shod in Doc Marten boots and clad from impossibly-thick neck to toe in black. They were the sort of men with whom you didn’t argue if they refused you entrance to a club, no matter how long you had been in the pub nor how affronted your male pride. It was unlikely to be a courtesy call.

  I walked over, trying to affect a nonchalance that might disguise the very real fear that made my legs shake. There is no reason why we should ever feel threatened in our own homes nor even on city streets, but it is a vile fact of our wretched race that, no matter how strong we are, we are always under threat of intimidation from the next strongest. And they had come as a pair.

  “Oran,” I said, fighting to keep a tremor from my voice, “can you give me a hand in the studio?”

  “Bit tied up,” he said, his eyes never leaving the closer of the two thugs. “Be in in a bit. See ya.”

  “Oh right,” I said. “Anything I can help you with.”

  The goon closest to me turned, and I could see his upper lip fixed in a snarl.

  “He said ‘See ya’,” he growled. “So we’ll see ya.”

  He cocked his head toward the gate to suggest where I should be headed.

  “Why?” I said, gaining courage from I don’t know where, “are you boys off?”

  He turned his body fully to face me.

  “Do yourself a favour, don’t be a fuckin’ smart-arse. Just fuck off and maybe I won’t rearrange your fuckin’ face.”

  “Don’t threaten me,” I said quietly, now genuinely and perilously offended by their presence. “This is my house, so why don’t you fuck off before I call the guards.”

  He loped toward me, stopping just short of me and leaning over so that his fetid mouth was half an inch from my face.

  “This has fuck all to do with you,” he said slowly, emphasising each word. “So get the fuck out of here while you still can.”

  If the formulaic delivery of b-movie clichés was intended to terrify then it had the desired effect on me. But still I stood in front of him, not trusting myself to speak and not, in any case, sure what to say. He stabbed a stubby, nicotine-stained finger into my chest and I took an involuntary step back. I was about to voice my indignation, when he looked toward the lane beyond the gate from where the sound of a car engine approached. A surge of relief coursed through me when I saw the blue Garda car amble quietly down the lane. It stopped at the gate, and two gardaí climbed out, donning their caps as they did.

  “How’s it goin’, lads,” said the older of the two in a thick country accent. “Everything ok?”

  “Grand thanks, guard,” said one of the goons slowly, in a voice that dripped with menace. “Everything’s grand. Good luck, so.”

  “Everything ok, Oran?” said the guard, ignoring him.

  “Actually, these lads were just off, guard,” I said, stepping forward. “Weren’t you, lads?”

  The bigger one stared straight into my eyes with a look that chilled me. But I smiled back, hoping the fear didn’t show. Still staring at me with a vice-like grip that wouldn’t let my eyes move, he spoke to the guard.

  “We were, guard. Just off.” He turn
ed to Oran. “But we’ll be back to finish that bit of business. We’ll be back alright.”

  He eventually turned for the gate. His accomplice followed him and they lumbered up the path. At the gate they turned, stared at Oran for a moment, then one of them opened the gate and they left.

  The guard watched them leave, and walked over to Oran.

  “You should maybe reconsider your choice of friends, Oran,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t say we were close, Pádraig,” Oran replied, with a watery smile.

  “But closer than you’d like all the same. Be careful, Oran. These lads have a way of getting the job done, you know that.”

  “I know. Thanks.”

  The front door opened and a wide-eyed Pauline emerged from the house.

  “Are they gone?” she said, eyes darting up and down the lane outside.

  “They are, Pauline,” said the garda. “Thanks for the call. You’ll be fine now.”

  He turned to Oran.

  “Well, we’ll see you so,” he said. He turned to Oran and lowered his voice. “Don’t do anything daft now, Oran, d’ya hear me? Give us a call if you need us, but you’ll have to sort this out. You know that.”

  “I do. Thanks, Pádraig.”

  The two gardaí raised their caps to Pauline and strode down the path and out the gate. The car pulled away, and Pauline looked over at Oran.

  “Who were they, Oran?” she asked, all wide-eyed disbelief. “What did they want?”

  “Nothing, Pauline,” he replied, “nothing. Thanks.”

  He nodded to her and headed for the Gallery.

  “Don’t worry, Pauline,” I said, when he was out or earshot. “It’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

  I squeezed her shoulder and walked after Oran to the Gallery.

  He was quietly and systematically venting his anger on a long plank of wood that he was sawing into pieces. He didn’t look up when I walked in.

  “They came for the car.” He sawed through the plank and another short piece fell off the end.

  “I guessed,” I replied, quietly. “Who do you owe the money to?”