by Tim Buckley
“I wasn’t sure how he would react, to be honest,” I said with a shrug. “But he said I was doing the right thing and offered to help, even. In Lochlann’s lexicon, that is strong support indeed.”
“He told me as well about Oran,” the Master said with a rueful shake of the head. “That lad seems to have no luck at all, God help him.”
“He’s lucky to have Lochlann,” I said.
“He is and no mistake. But Lochlann can’t keep him out of jail, and that’s where he’s headed, unless there’s a miracle.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Aengus, in full public view he hit a man without provocation – or at least none that a judge will recognise, although we all know the bugger had it coming. The judge he’s been assigned, Tobin his name is, he’s a hard old hawk.” He threw up his hands in desperation. “Look, I would normally support Tobin entirely, Dublin needs some discipline and he’s got that in spades. But he won’t see the Oran that we see. He’ll just see some lout who needs to be taught a lesson. It won’t be long – he’ll take account of character references and the like – but he’s going to spend a wee while cooling off.” He shook his head again and let out a long, defeated sigh.
“What about his solicitor?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“He’s doing what he can, I suppose,” he said, “but he’s not a fool. He’s just concentrating on limiting the damage.”
The thought that crept into my mind was impossibly grotesque, so I chased it out and slammed the door behind it. But back it came, peering in through a window in my head, pleading to be heard. It was the right thing to do, and I wanted to help in any way I could. But there was a limit, wasn’t there? Was there?
“You’ve gone very quiet,” the Master said, plucking me from the depths of my thoughts. “What’s on your mind?”
I had to try.
“Caitríona has this friend, a colleague from her office in London, who moved home to Ireland to practise. He specialised in criminal defence for people who, in his view, had a claim to lenient treatment on account of some incitement or provocation.” I paused, but it was too late to go back. “Like Oran. I could try to give him a call, see what he thinks. He’s the best, supposedly, and well-respected. He might add some weight to Oran’s case.”
The Master perked up at Oran’s potential salvation.
“Lord God, Aengus, if it has a chance at all it’d surely be worth a try.” Then he recognised the reticence in my voice and identified its source. He tempered his enthusiasm. “But it would be a hard thing for you to do, wouldn’t it? Hard for you to go back there?”
I shrugged.
“I have to try, don’t I?”
He nodded silently, then spoke.
“Yes,” he said, quietly, “I think you do.”
His name was Pearse Turner, part of a prominent Waterford family steeped in legal tradition and with connections across Ireland’s political spectrum. Any address books or journals of Caitríona’s that I had kept were in London, and so I had none of his contact details nor the name of his firm. But it was for eventualities such as these that the internet was created and so, later that evening, with a belly-full of Pauline’s stew inside me and a glass of red wine at my hand, I put my tenuous grasp of technology to work and set about tracking him down on the computer in Lochlann’s study.
The search proved easier than I had expected, such was his celebrity in his field. He was based near the city’s new financial services centre, and his stern features gazed out from his firm’s website. I scribbled down his contact details and folded the piece of paper into my wallet. Then I shut down the computer and sat back in Lochlann’s big leather swivel chair, swilling a mouthful of red wine and mulling the strangely circular nature of the world that drives us along ever-intersecting paths. Before I met Caitríona, I knew little of the law nor of those who practised it. When I met Pearse Turner, he was no more than a shadow on my consciousness from a world I never expected to visit. And when Caitríona left me, I expected never to see nor hear from him again, once the obligatory message of condolence had been acknowledged. And yet here I was, about to call him on behalf of my oldest friend. A part of me berated the mischievous spirits who mocked me. And a part of me thanked whatever power had given me, and Oran, this faint chance.
I called his office early the next morning. I dialled the number on my phone and then stared at it for what must have been five or ten minutes before summoning the courage and the fortitude to press the call button. I was put through to a fraught woman who had little time and no desire to talk to me. He was very, very busy she told me two or three times, wasn’t there anybody else who could help me? And so I left a message with little confidence that it would ever find its way to his desk nor that he would recognise or remember the name even if it did. I went into the kitchen to make some coffee, and Pauline was busy folding sheets and bedclothes that she had ironed to flat, hard-creased perfection.
“You’re up and about early today,” she said, smoothing out a rogue flaw in a pillow-case with a silent tut. “Do you want a coffee?”
“I’ll make it, Pauline. You’ll have one? Or a cup of tea, maybe?”
“Oh, Aengus I’d murder a cup of tea, there’s a love.”
I put on the kettle and set the coffee machine into action, then sat back against the counter-top and we talked about the shortening of the evenings and the sharpening of the air.
“Lochlann tells me you’re finished your painting?” she said, handing me back her cup of tea. “You wouldn’t put just a drop more milk in that, would you.”
“I am,” I said, taking the milk from the fridge. “He warned me about trying to make it too perfect, so I think I’m going to leave it be and hope that it’s ok.”
“Oh now, from what he was telling me it’s more than ok, Aengus,” she said, dismissing my concerns with a careless swat of her hand. “He’s proud as punch, I’m telling you.”
I smiled.
“I hope so, Pauline.”
“I know so,” she said, firmly.
She was quiet for a moment, before asking:
“But you won’t be heading off, will you? Just because you’re finished?”
I shook my head.
“No, Pauline, I’ll stay for the exhibition anyway. After that, don’t really know what I’m going to do, or where I’m going. Bit sad for a fella my age, eh?” I snorted an ironic laugh.
She was thoughtful for a moment, then shook her head.
“I don’t know why you don’t just come home, Aengus. This is your home, where you belong. Oh, you might not want to live in this house, you’d want your space I’m sure. But Howth – or Dublin at least – that’s where you should be. I’m only saying, now.”
“I know, Pauline, and I’ve been surprised how quickly it’s started feeling like home again, I really have. But I have a whole life in London and I can’t just walk away from that.”
I didn’t tell her that that life had already started to disintegrate and that there wasn’t much left to walk away from.
We were interrupted by the ringing of my phone, which still chimed with the irritating tone that I had not yet discovered how to change.
“Hello, this is Aengus,” I answered it.
There was a second’s delay and a click on the line as the caller picked up the receiver having dialled from the speaker-phone.
“Aengus? Hi, Pearse Turner. How are you?”
I gestured to Pauline that I’d take the call in Lochlann’s office and I closed the door behind me.
“Fine, Pearse, thanks, fine. And thanks for getting back to me so quickly. How have you been?”
“Oh you know, busy, busy. Lots of people doing things they shouldn’t be doing, luckily for us!”
He was silent for a brief moment.
“And how have you been, Aengus?” H
e paused, and his voice softened. “Tough times, I’m sure?”
The only times I had met Pearse or spoken to him, she was at my side. At a function or Christmas party or drinks after work. He and I had shared a slightly irreverent sense of humour and she would stand with us and chuckle at our jokes, hushing us with one hand and egging us on with the other. And it was with that helpless, almost girlish giggling that I associated Pearse Turner, and the sound of his voice ripped at my gut. I had come a long way, perhaps, in the days just gone, but not that far.
“Aengus?” he said, to my silence. “Are you there?”
I fought the urge to hang up.
“Yes, Pearse, sorry,” I croaked. “Tough times. Yes.”
“Are you still in London?”
“Yes. Actually, I’m back in Dublin at the moment, but still based in London, yes.”
“Really? Look, I understand that it might be hard for you and I’ll take no offence if you say no, but maybe we could meet up, for a pint or something, while you’re home?”
“Actually, Pearse,” I spoke slowly and deliberately, afraid that my voice would fail me. “I was calling to ask a favour. I have a friend…”
I explained Oran’s predicament to him, the circumstances that preceded it, our long history and how both Lochlann and Críostóir had taken him under his wing. I talked about the work he was doing in preparation for the exhibition, even the visit from the two thugs who came for his car.
“He knows he did wrong,” I said, in conclusion. “And he knows he was a fool, but this guy destroyed what Oran had taken so long to build, and then goaded him for it. He deserves better than a spell in jail.”
There was silence from the other end of the line, and I could hear the scratching of pen on paper.
“Would you say, in confidence of course, that he is a headstrong character then?”
“Yes.”
“It seems likely then that a prison environment might encourage his darker side,” he said, more to himself than to me. “And your father and the schoolmaster would provide strong character references? Testify to that effect?”
“Yes, they would.”
“Times have been good here, Aengus, lots of people have made lots of money. There is a certain sympathy for those who have made honest efforts to make an honest living, and a certain distaste for a new element of Irish society that has taken their good fortune as justification for some very unpleasant behaviour. Tobin is an old sparring partner of mine, but our relationship is amicable at least. And despite his reputation, he’s got his priorities in the right place.”
“Oran hasn’t a lot of disposable income right now, Pearse,” I said, “but I’ll speak to Lochlann and see if we can figure something out about fees. If you’ll agree to take it on, I mean?”
“Caitríona would take it on, I think, and she would haul me over the coals me if I turned it down.” His voice was even, candid. “I’m no sentimentalist, Aengus, so know that when I say I’ll do it because she would, I’m doing it out of genuine affection for her.”
His respect for her brought a smile to my face and filled me with a warm pride.
“Thanks, Pearse. On both counts.”
We agreed that I would talk to Oran – no foregone conclusion in itself – and that we would meet to discuss tactics a couple of days later. He waved away my efforts to discuss fees, but I made a note to myself to talk to Lochlann lest the bill be beyond Oran’s and my budget.
I drew a sigh of relief after I hung up the phone, as much that I had managed to get through the conversation as that Pearse had agreed to help Oran. That his references to her had substance, based in a mutual respect, and were not the vague clichéd sympathy of those who didn’t have anything else to say about her, had given me strength, I think. It made her feel a little closer, as though she was at my shoulder as she had been every time before.
She would have pestered and bedevilled him to take a case like this, I had no doubt, but I had no doubt also that she would have scolded me for even putting off the call to Pearse, whatever the grounds. And particularly where those grounds were based on sentimentality. I was glad that the Master had been on hand, and a little embarrassed that I had needed him, to gently steer me in the right direction. I don’t know if I would otherwise have had the strength of will.
In my halcyon vision of a past I didn’t know, I imagine that neighbours gathered around their own in times of hardship. The meitheal mentality symbolised a sense of community and maybe people’s lives were less congested so that they had time for each other. We don’t. We have no time and too many choices, and how often, then, do we leave a neighbour to his struggle – not from apathy nor from callousness, but from just not knowing how to go about helping. It’s a skill we have lost. We recognise his pain and we speak about him in muted sympathetic tones and wish there was some way we could help – we just don’t know how. But there is always a way.
I went back to the kitchen to get more coffee, and took it with me to the studio. Oran and the workmen were feverishly hammering nails into a wooden frame that would form the archway into one of the rooms. Others of them were painting plasterboard partitions or laying carpet tiles or securing the boards on which the paintings would hang. The Gallery was taking shape.
To my surprise, Hélène was already in the Studio.
“Good morning,” I said. “I didn’t expect to see you here this morning?”
“I know,” she replied. “I wasn’t sure, so I thought I better come. I didn’t know if you still had some things to finish.”
“I talked to Lochlann, and he warned me about over-doing the finishing touches. He said I should increase the contrast here and bring out the texture more here –” I pointed out the window frame and the walls on the canvas board “– but that I should resist the temptation to do what cannot be undone. So I’ve locked my brushes away and I am, for now, resisting temptation.”
She nodded her assent.
“He is right, of course. And I think it’s perfect!” She beamed her approval.
“He is a good man, your father,” she said, her tone becoming serious and her eyes searching mine for their unspoken response. “I don’t know him, of course, but he seems to me like he is a good man.”
“You know, I’ve spent my whole life hearing that, Hélène,” I said, smiling and shaking my head with a frustration that I had become used to, “from people desperate to point out to me that I don’t appreciate him or that I underestimate him. But what nobody seems to realise is that I know. I know he’s a good man. I’ve always known it. He just hasn’t always seemed to like me, and that’s what’s made it hard. I…”
I stopped the juggernaut of my rant – this girl was still a stranger, it wasn’t right to air family quarrels. Not fair to her and not to Lochlann.
“I know he’s a good man.”
“That’s alright then,” she said, with a sly smile. “Aoife will like him, I think. And I think he will like her.”
I looked at her, thrown slightly by her change of tack.
“Why do say that?”
She shrugged.
“Aoife does not suffer fools. I think neither does he. They will be friends, maybe.”
I nodded.
“I hope so, Hélène, I really hope so. There’s so much that I want to show her, so much that I want her to know. Because it’s a part of who she is. And I worry that she might not be interested, or that she might just hate it all. I don’t think Lochlann ever really understood what I did, never really forgave me. I want to give them both that chance.”
I stood up, looked out the window for a moment.
“I never knew my mother, but my father took me to see my grandparents often and they told me about her and how she grew up and what she was like and how much I looked like her. It was hard for him, I know that now, but he did it. And of course the truth was embellished and
of course any unpleasantness carefully avoided, but I knew that and I didn’t care. I want to give Aoife that history. What she does with it, well, that’s entirely her choice.”
I shook my head.
“These last few weeks, I’ve had to admit that belonging brings a comfort that I had been denying for so long. I thought it would be claustrophobic and cloying. But in your self-centred state, you forget that everybody has a life and problems and things they want to do and they can’t spend all of every day pandering to your desolation. And when you realise that, having got over the fact that they’re not going to be all about you all day, it’s a relief. You can get on with healing. It’s been quite a revelation. And I want to make sure that she has that, that she has that somewhere to go.”
I looked at her, hoping that what I was saying made some sense, because Hélène might be my mouthpiece to Aoife and I had to get it right.
“I’m not so arrogant as to think I could replace her family,” I said, conscious suddenly that I might sound as though, after all this time and betrayal, I expected to return to tears of joyful welcome. “I have no right to and I don’t want to. But I want to share some of this with her and give her a place to go in case she ever needs it. Pauline and Lochlann and Críostóir and Oran – they’ve given me that. She deserves at least the same from me.”
CHAPTER 30
We used to have music on in the house every Saturday morning, as we pottered around doing all the things we hadn’t had time to do during the week. Blaring out of the living room, the sound distorted through our old speakers, because we were adults now and we could. And we tunelessly sang along as we went about our chores, occasionally cranking up the volume to hum along to a chorus or a guitar riff or a drum solo, bedecked with the rock star’s gurning face.
And we’d rush to the stereo at the CD’s end, and fight in giggling determination for the right to make the next choice. And you’d always win and we’d always have a dose of whining Dylan. And I would mock and raise my eyebrows while you despaired of “philistine young lads like me with their Rick Astley’s and their Duran Duran’s!”, like some sage old-timer from a golden musical age.