by Tim Buckley
“Guy in Clondalkin. You wouldn’t know him. I hope you never do.”
“What are you going to do? I’m guessing they’ll be back?”
“They will.” He stopped sawing, looked up at me and shrugged. “I’ll have to let them take it, what else can I do. It’d be hard finishing this place with a broken leg.” He sighed and shook his head. “Won’t be enough though. I still have to find the rest.”
He set to work on the plank again.
“How much?”
“I owe him five grand. Car’s only worth three. On a good day.”
Another block of wood fell from the work-bench and into the growing pile of sawdust. I tried to do some quick mental arithmetic based on what I could remember from my own chaotic financial situation.
“Listen, I can lend you the…”
He looked up and put up his hand to stop me.
“Aengus, just leave it. My mess, I’ll sort it out. Thanks, but don’t get involved, alright?”
“Oran, look…”
“I said leave it, Aengus.” He stood up straight and pointed at me with the saw. His tone brooked no further discussion.
I shook my head, but didn’t pursue the point. I turned and left the Gallery. At the door, I stopped and looked back.
“Pint later?”
“Yeah.”
I walked out into the golden light of the late-summer evening.
I should have gone to the Studio, but I was too distracted to risk putting brush to canvas. So I went up to my room, pulled on my running kit and headed out on the Head. The sea below was calm and gleamed in the evening sunshine through a sheet of soft haze. There was hardly a breath of wind and the hillsides were alight with vivacious gorse. The heather too was in bloom, covering the ground in its calming purples and blues. A car ferry ploughed silently out of Dublin port on its way to Liverpool or Holyhead, and sailing boats from the yacht club bobbed about out to sea.
What had become of the three of us, I thought as a I pounded the trail. Oran was such a talented chef. Niamh had had a flair for design even in her naïve, untrained youth. I had had my moments with a brush or a pencil. And yet here we were, dreams long forgotten, just trying to survive. Swimming frantically against the strengthening tide. And I resolved then that we would make it ashore. And we would rekindle those dreams.
I was meeting Oran in McGrath’s at seven o’clock, but I got there at half past six and settled into my favourite corner. I had picked up a copy of the Irish Times at the newsagent and turned straight to the crossword, pulling a biro from my pocket. The pub was quiet, no more than half the tables taken by a mellow crowd.
“Hey Aengus, how are you going?” Ella wiped the table clean with a cloth, and threw down a couple of new beer-mats.
“Good thanks, Ella. You?”
“Not bad actually, not bad.” She sounded almost surprised to find that her life was in order.
“Ella,” I said, suddenly, “do you have a dream? Something you’ve always promised to yourself?”
She looked at me as though I had asked her to quickly take her clothes off.
“Sorry,” I raised a hand and shook my head. “Sorry, that was rude, personal. Forget it.”
She smiled at me.
“You really do need a drink, don’t you? Pint?”
I smiled back.
“Please. Sorry.”
She looked at me again as though I were a little removed from the real world, smiled uncertainly, and walked back to the bar.
I turned back to my crossword, but I couldn’t concentrate. Words capered gleefully around the edges of my consciousness, teasing me from behind the pillars of my mind. I couldn’t shake off the image of Oran and his two nemeses standing by the car. Whatever the situation, I had never seen Oran subdued, never tame. And yet he was now so obviously out of his depth, not able even to rely on his own brand of devil-may-care brusqueness to save him.
Ella reappeared with my pint. She put it on the table, and to my surprise took a seat opposite me.
“You know what? I do,” she said. “I do have a dream.”
“Go on.”
“I want to open my own bar in Queenstown, on the south island. For people who want to ski and jump off cliffs and ride the white water.” She looked around, leaned forward to me and lowered her voice. “None of these suited assholes, you know what I mean?”
“Nice! Do you think you’ll ever do it?”
She paused and then nodded as though arriving at some dramatic conclusion.
“Yeah, you know what? I will. I haven’t really thought that much about it recently, but it’s why I’m here, working in a bar, trying to earn some cash. Probably won’t be able to do it for a few years, but maybe I will.”
“Good for you. Take a piece of advice from an old fart – don’t lose hold of it. Because you’ll wake up one morning in a house in Portmarnock or Auckland or London with the kids screaming, your husband moaning and your head throbbing and you’ll suddenly remember that you’re meant to be in Queenstown and it’ll be too late. Don’t ever let it get too late. Hold on to it like it’s gold.”
She said nothing, just looked at me for a moment. Then she nodded.
“I will.” And she got up to go back to work. As she started to walk away, she turned. “Maybe you’re not too late?” she smiled, nodding her head at me.
I smiled back. “Maybe.”
It was after half past seven when Oran walked in. I was struck that, far from angry and belligerent as I had expected, he looked tired and somehow at a loss. For the first time I could remember, he looked spent. He went to the bar, looked over to see if I needed a pint, and ordered one for himself. I watched him while he waited for his stout to settle. He leaned with his elbows on the bar, one foot upon the rail at its base, his forehead resting in the palm of his right hand. The barman topped off his pint and he wandered over to me.
“I think you could’ve had him,” I said, as he sat down.
He looked at me blankly.
“What?”
“The big fucker. I think you could’ve had him. And I could definitely have had the other one. No bother.”
He laughed a somehow relieved laugh, and let out a long, weary sigh.
“Fucking hell, Aengus, how did it get to this? How was I supposed to know, the night I opened the restaurant, that it would end here?”
He took a long drink from his glass and put it back on the table.
“Look, Oran, these bastards won’t stop until you’ve either paid up or you’re dead. You know they’ll keep coming back.”
“They won’t be back.”
I looked at him, waiting for the obvious to dawn on me so I could clasp my forehead in relief. I had no epiphany.
“What are you talking about?”
He sighed again, and looked at me.
“Your fucking mad father is what I’m talking about,” he said, unable to stop his lips curl in a smile that betrayed at once his incredulity and deep relief. “Pauline must have told him about them. Lochlann gave me the money. Insisted that I take it. I tell you, I’d have been more scared of what he’d have done if I’d refused than those two fuckin’ animals.”
Then I understood. I picked up my glass and raised it to him.
“To Lochlann,” I said.
“Lochlann,” he replied and clinked my glass.
We each drank, and he put the glass down and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“He’s a really good man, Aengus. I know you two have had your arguments, but he’s a good man. The best. I’d be fucked if he hadn’t taken me in. And now he’s saved me again.”
I felt like a child again, sitting in a pub or in the golf club being told by an earnest friend of my father’s that I was lucky to have such a great man to look out for me, and warning me with a wagging finger to m
ake sure I was good to him. And I was proud of him, I always had been, even when I was too young to fully understand what he was doing. I just wished he had been a little more proud of me, wished I could find what it was that would make him proud.
“I know, Oran,” I said, nodding. “I know he’s a good man.”
There was no more to say, no elaboration that would have clarified nor superlative that would have emphasised.
“Listen,” I said, looking at my watch. “Hélène’s band is playing in town. They’re on at nine or half nine. Do you fancy it?”
“Where?”
“The Arena.”
He laughed.
“It’d be the first time they ever let me in there!”
“Well then, if Hélène can’t get us in, we’ll never get in. Will we go so?”
“Yeah, why not.”
We finished our pints, waved goodbye to Ella and ran out to catch the next DART.
The Arena was not far from St Stephen’s Green and the small queue at the door was full of fashionable bright young things. I remembered our teenage selves and the self-conscious nervousness that accompanied us to clubs and venues. And yet these youngsters looked entirely at ease with themselves and their world. And this was their world, there could be no doubt.
It was a relatively quiet night, the holidays were as good as over throughout the city and Dublin had settled into its back-to-school routine. The queue moved steadily, and before too long we found ourselves in the dark atrium of the club. We went into a small bar just off the atrium, ordered a couple of pints from the barman and took them into the little auditorium where the stage was set up. It was a small venue – the smallest, I guessed, of the three that made up the Arena. The little dance floor in front of the stage was surrounded by tables. It wasn’t even close to full, although a steady trickle of newcomers slowly swelled the crowd.
A guitarist – whom I assumed to be Gerry – was playing with a foot pedal tuner and calmly tuning his guitar. An electric violin stood in its cradle beside a high stool, but Hélène was nowhere to be seen. Gerry left the stage. The piped music stopped, the lights went down and the crowd hushed. The short silence was broken by the plaintive strains of a lone violin. After a moment, the lights went up, the strong chords of a guitar and the beat of drum and bass joined the fiddle and the crowd roared its approval. A shiver ran through me and a smile danced onto my face.
Hélène was sitting on the high stool, one foot on the floor, the other on the stool’s footrest. She was staring at the floor, eyes sometimes open in intense concentration, sometimes closed in apparent reverie. Her arm and her fingers moved at impossible speed as she followed the drummer’s breakneck beat, and her whole body swayed and dipped and rose on the music’s wave.
They reached the end of the first song and the crowd again shouted out and whooped and screamed. The four musicians smiled nervously at each other, then the drummer tapped out one-two-three-four and the music started again. They played their own material, along with tracks from my student days by In Tua Nua and Stockton’s Wing and Christy Moore. Their early nervousness gradually disappeared and they clearly enjoyed the crowd’s enthusiastic response, whipped up by the fiddle’s frantic rhythm. Hélène too gained in confidence, standing up from her stool and walking around in front of the crowd. She looked lost in the music, carried away by it. The little venue filled with late-comers and the crowd grew louder and ever more excited, singing along enthusiastically to the songs they knew. The band kept up the momentum and we were all carried along on the heady wave of their rhythm.
Too soon, it was the last song of the evening’s set. The band took their bows, the noisy crowd bayed for more, and the stage lights went down. The house lights did not come on and the crowd didn’t move.
Then the stage lights came back up and Hélène was standing in front of the microphone, without her violin. The band started to play and I recognised the opening bars of Double Cross, the old Mary Coughlan song. Hélène began to sing, the words sounding eerily romantic and almost unbearably soft in her French accent. I was transfixed, standing stock still amid the gently swaying crowd. Her eyes were closed again, her two hands on the microphone in its stand, Gerry’s guitar weaving a trance. She repeated the chorus one last time, her voice rising, shedding its vulnerability and finishing with a powerful defiance. She stepped back from the microphone, took the faintest of bows to the cheers of a bewitched crowd and they left the stage again. The house lights came up and the show was over.
Oran looked at me and raised his eyes with a smile.
“Jesus, eh? She’s amazing. Never expected that, did you?”
I shook my head in undisguised wonder.
“No. No, I surely did not,” I grinned back at him, shaking my head again. Grinned because, for some reason, I was so proud of her.
We stood finishing our drinks while the crowd filtered out into the Dublin night. As we were about to leave, Gerry came back out on to the stage and began gathering up his equipment. I walked over to the stage.
“Gerry?” I called over to him.
He looked over, trying to place my face, but couldn’t.
“How’re ya,” he said.
“Great job,” I said, “you guys were fantastic.”
He smiled.
“Thanks very much.”
“Listen, could you tell Hélène that Aengus is here?”
He hesitated, then recognition flashed across his face.
“Oh right, Aengus is it?” he said, putting down the pile of cable he was rolling up. “I’ve heard all about you. I’ll tell her, hang on there.”
She bounded out from behind the stage, beaming. She came over to the edge and hopped down from the stage, throwing her arms around my neck. She was still sticky with the night’s sweat, and still high from their success.
“Aengus,” she squealed, “you didn’t tell me you were coming tonight?”
“I know,” I grinned at her excitement. “We made a late decision.” I pointed over at Oran, still standing by the dance floor’s edge.
“Oran too!” She ran over and hugged him. Not one for such physical public displays of affection, he was caught unawares and just smiled awkwardly, his huge hands hovering behind her back, not sure where to land.
“Thank you so much for coming,” she said, “I’m really glad you could be here. It means a lot to me.”
“I’m glad too,” I said. “You really were fantastic tonight.”
“Hélène?” Gerry called from the stage, “We need to get this stuff in the van.”
“OK, Gerry,” she called back. “I have to go,” she said, “But I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“Yeah, see you tomorrow,” I nodded. “And listen – well done, eh?”
She smiled an embarrassed little smile, waved and headed backstage.
Since I had met her, she had been so calm, never ruffled nor extreme. It was good to see this side of her – passionate, overcome. And it was good to witness her triumph. We turned for the door and walked out into the night’s late summer chill. I felt an inner glow and a warmth that the late night’s cold could not pierce. One dream at least was perhaps coming true.
CHAPTER 27
Did we ever have time to dream? Or did we just assume the dreams that the world told us we should have. I’m not sure we ever dreamed, not really. Aspired, perhaps. But every day was too full of the things we had to do so that we ran out of time and we always had to leave a task or two undone. Pay the television licence or entertain a dream? You can’t get a fine or a court summons for forgetting to dream, so that will have to wait for another day. But I think we were still guilty.
We were guilty of not squeezing every last drop out of our lives. Sure, we travelled and socialised and played, but we didn’t do the inspiring things, the things for which we had a real passion. We enjoyed the world that we had built for ourselv
es – maybe we enjoyed it especially because it had at one point in our lives looked so unlikely, so beyond our reach. But I worry that we aspired to and built a world that we felt expected to build, and then filled every moment of every day putting and keeping it together. We followed the rules but we never really challenged them. We never really dreamed.
Too often, we confuse aspirations with dreams. Actually, they come from two different worlds. The world of aspiration is the world we inhabit every day. We know and understand it, its rules are simple and we can recognise its pitfalls and its perils. We simply aspire to make our little world a better world or to make our place in it a better place. Dreams live in a world that doesn’t yet exist outside our imagination. It is ours to construct, based on our own passions and codes. The usual rules do not apply, and there are no parameters to guide us. And that makes it hard, too hard sometimes. It’s easier just to deal with what we know and to make it the best it can be. But a bigger house is just more of the same world. A faster car just allows you to navigate the same world more quickly. A luxurious holiday is just the same world by a different name in a different language. We refine everything and change nothing.
We are extras on a film set. We participate, contribute even, but never shape the performance nor feel the rush of adrenaline that comes with a well-delivered monologue or a great display of emotion. We should be the lead in our own film. Of course we can’t all star in big screen blockbusters, but we can find our own indie movies, we can aim for our own Sundance, and we can be the stars. We can shape the art and we can revel in the result.
You lived every day with people who dared to dream. You saw the pain and the hardship they brought on themselves and the people they loved, and I know you felt some of that pain. I know you ached for the people whose insatiable desire for justice led only to anguish. When you came home in the evening from work, and collapsed on the sofa under the weight of all the world’s troubles, you took refuge in the sanctuary of our home and our world. The simple, the everyday, the mundane – they were your escape. And so you couldn’t face the prospect of losing them.
I had no such excuse, but I was blinded by convention so that I couldn’t see beyond the boundaries of the world in which we lived. I couldn’t see past what had to be done to snatch a glimpse of what could be done, what was possible. My never-shrinking list of tasks and errands only maintained the status quo and I couldn’t see past them to the things I could do, the things that were within my compass and might open the way to a whole new reality.