by Tim Buckley
I sighed a deep sigh of… what? Of relief? Of resignation? Of defeat?
“So I understand how you feel,” I said. “I’m past being angry and tired of being at loggerheads. I wish things could be different, but I can’t change what’s done.”
It had started to rain outside and the gathering, buffeting breeze threw the drops against the windows of the Gallery like children throwing handfuls of pebbles. He was silent and motionless, only the glint of wetness in his eye gave the slightest clue that he had heard and had understood and had been moved. But moved by what? By disappointment or by remorse or by the cruel truth that I was never going to be what he had wanted me to be, what he and Claire had dreamed I would be? I cursed the wine or the occasion or the adrenaline that had freed my tongue. I cursed the Master. I cursed myself.
“You don’t, Aengus,” he said. “You don’t understand how I feel.”
He spoke so quietly that I could hardly make out the words.
“I am, and have always been, proud of the boy you were and of the man you have become. But you’re right, I have not always been proud of the things you have done. Those are decisions you have had to make and with which you have had to live. I hope – I believe – that you made them for the right reasons, even if, privately, I wished you had chosen a different way. I had no right to presume nor did I expect that you would follow my path, but I hoped always that you would make your choices with the purest motives at heart. I might not have seen the good in everything you have done, but I can say that I have never seen the deliberately malign.”
The wrong deeds but at least for the right reasons. The lesser treason, the faintest praise. And yet, when I looked back later on his words – and I did dissect them over and over and over again – I took comfort from the fact that at least he liked the melody even if he didn’t agree with the words. It was my actions that had disappointed him, not the person I was. The reverse would have been far more difficult to remedy.
“But when I was a boy, before I had the chance or cause to make my own decisions, even as a child I could see that we were not like the other fathers and sons, that you kept a distance between us. I wanted you to be proud of me. I tried to be what I thought a father wanted a son to be, I wanted everyone to see that I was your son and that you loved me – but I don’t think that’s ever what they saw. It’s not what I saw.”
He sighed a deep sigh and rubbed his eyes, his head lowered. Then he looked up and at me again.
“When Claire died, Aengus, I could simply see no way to raise you as my son. I don’t claim to understand the psychology of it and in those days Dublin was not awash with support groups and counsellors – not, I suppose, that I would have engaged them anyway. And so I undertook to provide for you, and to fend for you, and to protect you, and to give you every opportunity to grow and thrive. But I could not see you as my son because that was something I wanted so badly to share with Claire, and she was no longer here. I didn’t blame you, but I could not be your father, only your guardian.”
Lochlann was not the kind of man to make an apology just to fill the space, just to make the line scan and the metre complete. In his mind, he had done the right thing and all that he could and no expression of regret or remorse was necessary.
He raised his eyebrows, and let out a long breath that framed a mystery.
“But then you came back, quite out of nowhere, and it is as if the landscape has been altered. I cannot continue the painting as it was. I have to invent a new context, a new perspective. You have grown, Aengus, these past weeks, and you have made me proud. Your strength, your compassion, your work, have made me proud. I can never be a father to you and it would be disingenuous of me to try. But you have changed the landscape. You have set out to find Aoife. You have shown kindness to Hélène. You have confronted a bitter past to help Oran. I see you with your friends – with Niamh and with Críostóir – and there is a kind, benign calmness in you that I have not seen before.”
He paused, taking a sip of wine to camouflage the silence and the search for the right words. Then he nodded, slowly.
“You are a good man, Aengus, and the way you have behaved stands testament to that. I would be proud to call you my friend. I can offer no more. I truly hope that it is enough.”
I nodded.
“As long as I don’t have to call you Dad!” The words came out in a croaked whisper with a weak smile.
He smiled back, relieved perhaps that the tension was broken, but nothing else.
“I don’t think that would work for either of us.”
He looked at his watch.
“It’s late and it’s been a long day.” He raised his eyebrows. “And quite some day, I think it’s fair to say. I’ll go to bed, I think.”
“Yes, sure. You must be exhausted.”
He nodded, and picked up his jacket from the back of a chair. He brushed some dust from the collar, paused a moment and then turned back to me.
“This has been festering inside both of us for far too long. I am very, very glad that we have had a chance to at least begin to put it right, Aengus. Very glad indeed.”
“Me too.”
And one more deal was closed.
When he had gone, I sat down heavily into a chair, let out a long, deep breath and closed my eyes. What a day. What an extraordinary day. It would, I supposed, take me some time to fully digest Lochlann’s explanations of the past and to craft my own view of our future. But my immediate reaction was that it provided a flicker of light in that future and that the past was best left in the past. I had never, I now realised, had a father. I didn’t really need one. And it was now too late and too futile to try creating some saccharine stage show that neither of us wanted and neither of us could pull off.
Oran came in through the Gallery door.
“Looked like you were having a heart-to-heart with the oul’ fella,” he said. “Thought I better leave you to it. How’re you doin’?”
I stood up.
“I need a pint,” I said, and we made for McGrath’s.
“So what was that all about,” Oran asked when I came back from the bar and set two pints on the table.
“The Master made us talk,” I said, and shook my head. “You’d honestly think we were both nine years old and we’d had a fight in the playground.”
“So you’ve kissed and made up?” he asked, frozen in wide-eyed mid-movement as he lifted his pint. “Jesus, I never thought I’d live to see that.” He put his glass back on the table, the pint’s creamy head still intact “That’s fuckin’ great, so it is.”
“Well, there was no kissing. But I think we made up. You know, I’m not exactly sure what we did, to be honest. But it’s not worse than it was, so there’s a good chance it’ll be better. After all this time, we can’t expect too much more, I suppose.”
“Well. I’m glad. It’s about time someone cracked your two heads together, and no better man than Críostóir.”
He reached again for his pint and drank deep.
“So does this mean you’re staying on?”
“I don’t know. I was talking to Niamh about this earlier. I have nowhere to go, I’m not in a hurry, and I don’t think I’m going back.”
“Really? To London, you mean?”
I nodded.
“I just can’t see myself there anymore, you know? I don’t belong. It’s like Lochlann said when he spoke on stage earlier – he only made it back because of the people and the place. Because he belongs here. I don’t know where I belong, but it’s sure as hell not there. I wouldn’t have done the things I’ve done these last few weeks if I was still in London. Partly because I wouldn’t have been able. Partly because I wouldn’t have cared enough to try. All that’s there now is a big hole where Caitríóna used to be. And I can’t do anything worthwhile as long as I’m afraid of falling in.”
“It’s funny
how your picture of the world changes, isn’t it,” he said. “When we got out of school, we’d have done anything to get the hell out of here. To try new things. To be in new places. Everything here just seemed like more of the same, I never thought I’d be in one place forever. Suddenly twenty years have shot by and I’m still here and you’re back. And we’re both looking at it and thinking, sure, maybe it’s not too bad, it’s nice to belong.
“But look at the trouble I’ve been in, Aengus, the trouble I’m still in. Just remember – when you fall into that very Irish trap of romanticising home and fond reminiscence about rebel song singalongs in the pub and Six Nations weekends and lazy Saturday afternoons on Grafton Street and seven creamy feckin’ pints comin’ out on a tray – just remember that this is the place that beat me up, and then kicked me again when I was down.”
He pointed a warning finger at me.
“You might not like the way things happen in London, but don’t fool yourself that they can’t happen here.”
“I know, Oran, I know. I’m not saying that it’s Neverland. But how much worse would it be for you if you’d been somewhere else, not in Dublin? With no Master and no Lochlann, and no Guards that look out for you because you played football with them and no publican that wouldn’t see you barred because you’ve been going there for years?”
He said nothing for a moment, then nodded.
“It’d be a cold fuckin’ place, Aengus,” he agreed, reluctantly. “I’m just saying that Dublin doesn’t get very warm either.”
“You two boys are looking very serious tonight!” Ella chirped, wiping our table and dropping fresh beer-mats. “Did someone tell you a joke you didn’t understand? Go on, tell me and I’ll explain it to you!”
Oran looked at me and said earnestly:
“Jaysus, Aengus, these feckin’ immigrants are getting’ fierce cheeky, aren’t they? Time we sent them all home, if you ask me.”
Ella grinned.
“No chance. There’s no getting rid of me!”
“So you’re here for the long haul?” I asked her.
“Hell, yeah,” she said, with a broad smile. “My mates are here, my boyfriend is here, my job – why would I leave?”
Oran grinned at me.
“What’s so funny?” Ella asked.
“Oh, nothing,” I said. “Just… well, we were just talking about why it’s good to belong, good to be at home.”
“I suppose it is good to belong,” she agreed, leaning on the table and looking to the ceiling for an answer to the riddle. “But you don’t need to be at home to belong, you just have to be where you want to be.”
Her youthful wisdom was unencumbered by the baggage of time and experience, and took her straight to the point without wondering or speculating.
“What about that bar in Queenstown?” I asked.
Her face lit up with a spontaneous smile and she nodded.
“Definitely some day, it’s a good dream to have, I guess. But there’s a lot to happen and a lot of places to see before then. So for now, I’ll stick with Dublin.” She looked at us and grinned. “ Even if the men are a bit miserable!”
“Again,” Oran said to me, “cheeky.”
“Admit it, that’s how you like us! Now, another pint?”
“If that’s what it takes to make you go away,” Oran smirked.
She grinned back and made her way to the bar.
“Any word from Pearse?” I asked Oran.
“Yeah, actually. He spoke to Paolo at the Bella Cucina. Apparently the old man will be happy to give me a character reference. According to Pearse, he was able to write it for him and he’ll just sign it.”
“That’s good news,” I said. “Pearse seems to think that references will count for a lot with Tobin.”
“He does.”
“How are you feeling, about the whole thing? Only a couple of days away now.”
“I know. Seems to have come around fast.” He drew a deep breath. “I don’t know, Aengus. Pearse seems to know what he’s doing, better than the other lad, for sure. But he’s not very optimistic. I’m trying not to think about it, to be honest. I can’t do anything more now, just let it happen. But thanks for bringing it up!” He smiled and raised his glass to me.
I smiled an apologetic smile.
“Sorry, Oran. I don’t mean to keep banging on about it. I just don’t know how you can be so calm . How you can just sit here and have a pint.”
“I might not be having too many more for a while, better get them in now while I can!”
I shook my head, at the strength of his resolve I suppose, but perhaps also at the naïveté of his dispassion. I’m not sure.
We left after only a couple more. Two days before a court appearance was not the time for Oran to be seen revelling in the very pub where the offence took place. I spent the following day pottering around the Gallery, tidying away what needed no tidying in preparation for the evening’s public opening, straightening what was already straight. I had missed a call from Hélène, and she had left a message to say that she was feeling tired after a hectic few days and, not to worry, but she was going to spend the afternoon chilling out by the fire with a pot of coffee and a book. Oran was busy attending to some small crisis and so I was, for perhaps the first time since I arrived in Howth, at a loose end. So I went to my room, pulled on my running shoes and made for the Head.
Away from people for the first time in what seemed like days, and alone on the trails in the breezy gathering gloom of the early evening, I pieced together the events of the days gone before and tried to put some context around what had been a passage of, it was now clear, great significance.
Equipping Oran for his imminent day of judgment, the exhibition’s triumphant debut, the completion of Hélène’s image – all important moments, landmarks almost. And somehow in their midst, I had managed to lose sight of what had been the most significant thing of all, the very reason for my being here. I was ashamed to admit that I had, just for a brief moment in time, forgotten about finding Aoife. Not forgotten – that is too absolute. But the search had slipped temporarily from its position of absolute prominence.
Now that all of those distractions were behind me, and with my emotions perhaps sharpened by my disquiet for Oran, my thoughts turned guiltily back to her, to where she was, and to when I might finally find her. The distractions had helped to pass the time until she came here. Its passage served only to question whether she ever would. The decision where to go and what to do could only really be made once I knew where the search for her would lead. I was no closer to the answer, but I had to find a way to make a choice.
CHAPTER 35
Oran and I met Pearse in Dublin, in a café by the river not far from the courthouse. The place was filled with an incongruous assortment of bespectacled, grey-haired and balding legal professionals in smart suits and gleaming brogues, and shaven-headed youths in cheap, ill-fitting suits and sports shoes. The outwardly respectable and those without respect. There were some parents there too, alternately berating the solicitor or the barrister and then the son who had brought shame on the family by getting into trouble. Or by getting caught. From time to time, a raised voice punctuated the sombre pessimism of the place. After a while you stopped looking up. Outside, the early morning was clear and crisp and cold, and Dubliners hurried about their business wrapped in coats and scarves and hats plucked from Summer hibernation. In contrast to their haste the murky river flowed quietly through the city, ambling obliviously past the cars that sat in daily gridlock along its quays, down to the port and out to sea.
Pearse arrived just as I ordered at the counter, right on time and looking unruffled and calm – almost bored. He must have briefed and instructed and calmed a defendant in this very place or in places just like it a thousand times, I thought. He nodded muted greetings to some of the others in his gang, each of them we
aring the same look of diligent yet detached dispassion, and for a brief moment, I was deeply jealous of him. Of his confidence in this place. Of the fact that, whatever happened today, he would not lose. Not really. He must get jaded by the persistence of those who will hurt and steal, tired of their nonchalant indifference and disheartened by the impotence of the legal system to change them. But at least, and day’s end, he can leave it behind.
He briefed Oran one more time, summarising his instructions from their previous meetings and making quite sure that he understood and would do as he was told. It was, I suppose, a lesson he had learned from previous encounters, but he need not have worried. We walked the short distance to the court building and Oran said not a word. Unlike some of Pearse’s charges who, I’m sure, had been there, seen and done that many times before, this was a shocking new other-world for Oran that he didn’t understand and had never expected to see. Like me, he had only ever considered the court system from the other side, taking for granted that it was there to serve and protect people just like us. The stark, cold reality of it – the ageing grubbiness of the waiting rooms, the hard carelessness of his fellow accused, the very meanness of it all – robbed him of his customary truculence. His antipathy to direction had been left behind, its place taken by an almost frightened meekness. For perhaps the first time in my memory, Oran needed and wanted to be told exactly what to do.
We sat in the ante-room for what seemed like hours, but there was a comfort in it that I didn’t want to end, the frightened comfort of a hiding place. When we were called, we stood up and Pearse shook Oran by the hand. Oran turned to me and we nodded to one another and I hugged him roughly without a word. Pearse and Oran went into the courtroom. I took a moment to say a silent prayer to whomever might be listening, then joined Lochlann and the Master, who had taken their seats in the public gallery.
The courtroom was a desolate, sterile space, bereft of the dramatic atmosphere and the enthralled crowds conjured by so many television report sketches. The cracks in the tiled floor were filled with a packed grime, the once-white walls were stained a dirty brown. The whole place had the air of the tired old hospitals that I remembered from a time long past. I felt like I was in the maternity hospital again, the same sense of lost foreboding, the same sense that we didn’t belong here, among these people.