Islandbridge

by Brady, John

  “Go on,” he said. “Your fellas are going on without you.”

  She had to steady herself when she turned to look back. The two men were staggering in some kind of unison now. The other girl was wavering a bit herself while she searched in a small handbag.

  “Don’t mind them,” she said. “They’re only gobshites. We can get other fellas.”

  Her sudden yell startled him then.

  “Yvonne!!”

  “What?”

  “We can get any fella we want, can’t we Yvonne?”

  Now the other woman began to make her way back. Kelly almost groaned aloud.

  “Give us a fag,” the other girl called out. The first girl ignored her.

  “You should put your uniform on,” she said to Kelly instead. “Why don’t you?”

  He looked down the street.

  “Shouldn’t he, Yvonne?”

  He stole a quick glance at Yvonne’s face. Her mascara had gone astray and her pale face and empty eyes told Kelly she could puke any moment, without warning. He took a step back and turned to look down the street in the wake of another taxi.

  “Shouldn’t he put on his uniform, Yvonne, this copper?”

  Yvonne shivered and nodded.

  “That’s where the money is, I’m telling you,” said the first one.

  “Where are the fags?” Yvonne asked through a shiver.

  “Will you wait? Jesus, where are yours . . . !”

  “You should buy some,” the girl said. “You iijit.”

  “They’ll be gone if you don’t hurry up,” Kelly said.

  The Yvonne one lurched as she reached for the packet. Kelly turned at the sound of her sole scraping the pavement.

  “Do the routine, you know?” the first one said. “Peel it off. They throw their knickers up at them in the one in Finglas. They throw money too.”

  Kelly returned to studying the far end of the street. The more sober, or less drunken, man had stopped now. He rested his mate against a car and drew on the cigarette he managed to light.

  “Come on, will yous?” he shouted. Kelly didn’t hear the rest of what he said, as the man reached over to right his tottering mate.

  “You’ll miss your lift home be late,” he said to the girls.

  “Home? Ha ha. Home . . .?! We’re only starting! Isn’t that right, Yvonne?”

  The Yvonne one drew long on her cigarette. She couldn’t focus on him, he saw. Puke could go six feet, easy. She began to move off in the direction of the two men.

  “Where are you going,” said the first one. She turned back to Kelly.

  “Come here, I’ll show you.”

  He brushed her hand away.

  “Enough.”

  “What do you mean enough, here–”

  “Bugger off home, you dirty scrubber.”

  Her face gave way to a sneer.

  “Want me to run you in?” he said, and glared at her. “You and your pals?”

  He enjoyed knowing she couldn’t find the words to snap back at him. Slowly he headed back to the doorway.

  “Did you hear that?” she managed at last, and her voice gave out at the end. It turned into a ragged shout.

  “Yvonne! Yvonne!”

  Kelly spotted a car coasting slowly down the street toward the club, the reflected lights from the shops and the street lights sliding over the windscreen every few moments.

  “Kev!” the girl was shrieking while she walked away. “Come here, will you?”

  The car slowed even more, and Kelly saw an arm resting in the open window. There were two men in the front seats, and another sitting behind. The front passenger pointed at something.

  The club door opened and that same, stupid tune they always played this time of night poured out, louder than ever. That was another thing driving him bonkers here, how they played the same thing over and over again. The Police, “I’ll Be Watching You.” Ha, ha bloody ha. Not funny, never was.

  The car accelerated and then suddenly braked, with a loud, hissing skid. The two women had noticed it. The driver leaned over to look out the passenger window. The women said something back, and they began scurrying awkwardly down the footpath.

  “A spot of bother?”

  “Almost,” said Kelly.

  Kelly heard the skittering heels as they tried to hurry, and tracked the red, arcing glows of their cigarettes. The car kept pace. There was shouting.

  He stepped into the street and looked down at the taillights. The girls were trying to run now. Then they just disappeared. The taillights bounced once as the driver took it up the curb, and headlights swept over a wall before the car itself vanished into the laneway. He waited to hear shouts but none came to him over the steady hum and thumping from the club behind him.

  “It was their own lookout,” he muttered.

  Slowly he walked back to the footpath himself. A motorbike passed, hissing over the tarmacadam, its springs squeaking as it took the bumps. Now he thought about the swimming pool in the picture of the hotel where he and Eimear had booked their honeymoon. They’d stick near that pool all day, for sure. You could swim in the sea, of course.

  He cupped his ear. It might have been another shout.

  The door of the club opened, and he watched a couple coming out. Sleazy wasn’t enough of a word for it. The man looked old enough to be her da, for God’s sake.

  He looked back toward the laneway again. It was one of several, he knew, but of how many he wasn’t sure. All he knew of this part of the inner city was that there were more than enough laneways that wormed their narrow winding ways through the Markets and on into Smithfield, places where everyone stopped to pee and anything else they felt like.

  How did he ever wind up here, he wondered, with the clammy night air full of the stench of Dublin city seeping into his skin. And why did Guards have to take nixers like this, to moonlight, anyway? Half the force was at it, and everyone knew about it. It was almost expected, as if to say: “Here, welcome to the Guards. You’ll get lousy pay, and have to do nixers like this for ages until you get sick of it. Or you can emigrate, like everyone else your age is doing.” It would be ten years before they’d even look at you for Sergeant. The word was that you had to be in the know to get plainclothes too.

  One of the women was back now.

  It was the other one, the one who had been the drunkest. She was in a hurry now, and he saw that she had one shoe missing. Away she went, half hopping and half scurrying down toward the Liffey. She kept close to the shop windows, brushing against some of them, looking back every now and then. Then she stopped and she took off her remaining shoe.

  He waited for the others to show up. A taxi passed. The woman had covered a lot of ground, and had broken into a clumsy run every now and then, with her hand out often to fend off parked cars along her way. Then she was out of sight.

  Declan Kelly was surprised to find himself heading down the footpath. The frustration swirled in his thoughts and he muttered and swore. He passed dribbly streaks that reached out from the walls where the boozers had stopped for a leak. There were plenty of gaps between the parked cars here now. The music faded behind him, but he heard no voices coming from the mouth of the laneway ahead.

  He stopped at the end of the footpath and looked up the laneway. There were cobblestones glistening, and little sprays of light from broken glass. A car had blocked the lane further up. One of the doors was hanging open, and the headlights were on.

  He rested his hand on a parking meter, and listened. Still he heard nothing. He yanked at the meter, and cursed, and looked at the drops of rain that fell from the meter when he shook it again. Then he saw someone, a man, holding the other girl by the arm. He yanked her around the open door and shoved her into the car. She wasn’t putting up much of a fight. He heard her say things, loud, but couldn’t hear the words. The man slammed the door and stood by it.

  Kelly crossed and stood by the corner. Now he saw movement in a small gap that opened to his view beyond the car. Anothe
r fella was standing up there, and pointing at something. Someone called out, a name. Johnny? Tony?

  The man who had stood by the car reached in and switched off the lights.

  Kelly’s neck began to itch. There was a phone in the club, he knew.

  There was no sign of the woman in the car. She seemed to have keeled over in the back. Still he saw a figure detach itself from the darkness, still pointing. Now some small movement – a hand – from by the wall. Someone sitting down up there, waving?

  Kelly’s feet took him down the narrow footpath. The stale stink of the market rose up around him, its overripe and discarded fruits squashed into the gutters, along with the malty tang of urine. He heard voices, not words.

  There was a door, or a gate, recessed in from the laneway, and there sat two men, their knees up. Over them stood another man, and behind him another, whose hand clutched the driver’s side mirror as though to keep the car from running away.

  Kelly heard the voices going up now, an argument. It was effin’ this and effin’ that, from the man standing. He was beginning to pace up and down a few steps now.

  A few words came back from the two in the doorway, in that tone of crude, sing-song earnestness that Kelly had heard too often here in this city. Those words were cut short by more from the one standing. Told you, didn’t I, Kelly heard. Effin’ messers, he heard, and then something about always . . ., and never – never listen. He heard clearly when the man shouted then: keep you effin’ mouth shut when I’m effin’ talking to you . . .

  This was no place to be. He began to turn away, but stopped as the man standing made a sudden move.

  The flashes made the man’s arm jump. He kept them coming as though to quell the shouts that erupted. Cracks echoed down the lane and spread between the buildings, and Kelly heard the sounds of something metal falling and rolling. It could only be a dream, he believed, when you are so tired to doze off a few moments even standing up. His legs wouldn’t move.

  Someone called out, Jesus, Jesus, Tony. The car shook a little as a head came up to the window. It was the woman, with her hair astray. There was a dull shout from inside the car, and a scream. The light went on as she opened the door, and he saw the hair twisted across her face. The other man pushed the door back at her. He reached around and shoved her head and she fell back. He stood by the door looking in.

  A man was talking again now, but in a low voice. The dim light from the car showed legs at the foot of the wall. The feet were pointing at odd angles. The man with the gun stepped in, leaned, and shot again, once, twice. The one by the car jumped a little with each sound as he skipped to the driver’s side and got in behind the wheel.

  The man with the gun walked slowly to the car side and got into the back. The girl screamed and he yelled. It looked like she was hammering at him.

  Kelly pushed himself harder into the wall. The car shot off and he stepped away. Then the brake lights came on. The tires sizzled to a stop. Kelly saw the door opening, and then his running legs were taking him back down toward the street.

  There was no immediate pain, only surprise, when he found his cheek on the wet cobblestone next to the curb. He knew he had hit his head, and his knee. The pain tore up his leg and exploded in his head when he got up, but he pushed on, the slimy wetness from the stones all over his palms. The leg gave way when he put his weight on it, and he pitched sideways.

  Kelly heard himself groan when he hit again, felt his palms punch the stones as he tried to break the fall. Still he tried, the dread on him like a dead weight. He fought off believing that he couldn’t run, and he begged that the clattering feet of the man running his way would lose their grip on this greasy laneway too.

  His fingers brought him up, and he elbowed over and got his hands under him. He tried to get up, thinking in an instant of the three-legged races he’d run as a child. Even after falling, he and his best friend Donie had still carried on crablike, seized with shame and hilarity, but trying their best to scuttle to the finish line.

  It was himself wheezing and talking, he knew, but he kept it up so he wouldn’t hear the slowing footfalls or the sound of a gun that’d reach him, he understood, long after a bullet would.

  He spun with his good leg to face him. He couldn’t see a face but it was the same punk-rock hair in silhouette. Back up the lane, the driver was standing in the open door of the car.

  The air seemed to quiver all about. He watched the man’s arm.

  “Look,” he said, and had to pause. “Wait! I’m a Guard, a Garda officer.”

  The man’s shoulders were heaving, and Kelly heard him trying not to pant. He smelled the car’s exhaust settling over him. He looked down at the cobblestones. If he didn’t look up, then he wouldn’t see the gun, and that meant the man wouldn’t shoot. Kelly wanted the other man to get out from behind the wheel of the car, and come over. It meant this one standing over him would stop, or think, or leave, or at least break this spell.

  Kelly heard everything, saw everything, knew everything. The man’s breath whistling through his nose. The perspiration and stale cigarette smoke off his clothes. The filth of Dublin here, the greasy stones that made up the lane. He even saw the labourers setting them in centuries ago. He saw Eimear sleeping, he saw the kids they were going to have. There were his mother’s hands whitened with flour and him bursting into the kitchen from school. Now it was the passing out parade in Templemore, the rub of the new uniform cuffs above his thumb. He saw his father’s moist eye when he was working alongside him in the fields. Now came his patrol partner O’Keefe’s buck teeth, the car’s tire treads shining down the lane, a smell of something he never smelled before, scuffed toes of the shoes that had stopped three feet from his.

  The driver had kept the engine running. Kelly heard some wheezing or a muffled shout from the car, saw it move a bit on its shocks.

  He was surprised that he could speak, that his voice was strong, even.

  “I am,” he said. “I’m a Guard.”

  The laboured breathing stop-started, and he heard breath sucked in between teeth.

  “Jimmy,” came the voice from beside the car. “Come on.”

  The feet turned, the man yelled.

  “Will you shut up?”

  Kelly’s heart sank. The name he’d heard made everything worse. He kept his eyes on the shoes.

  “I just wanted to see the girls were okay.”

  “What? What are you saying?”

  “The girls–”

  The man shouted again from the car.

  “Are they all right?” Kelly asked.

  “Is who all right?”

  “I saw them leave, I wondered if they were okay, I’m a doorman.”

  “A doorman?”

  Kelly watched the man’s arm come around from behind and then fall back. When he tried to speak, nothing came. It was as if all his words had fallen away, and now even feeling was leaving too. Nothing mattered now, not the protesting the colossal unfairness of this, the bad luck, or even his own stupidity.

  The man’s breathing slowed. Kelly heard a crunch of gears and tires hissing. He looked over and saw lights turn into the lane.

  The driver yelled again. Kelly watched the car skid to a stop and buck, as the driver let go the clutch early.

  “Jesus, Jimmy. It’s your old lad . . .”

  A heavy-set man had launched himself out of the car and was half skipping, half rolling toward them now.

  “What are you doing?” Kelly heard him say. “Who’s that?”

  “Go back, Da,” the man answered, his voice rising. “I’m taking care of something.”

  “Jesus, put that away. That’s not necessary. Put it away. Where’d you get that?”

  “Leave it, Da!”

  “Who’s that?”

  “I’m a Guard.”

  The man kicked him in the leg and then raised his arm.

  “Stop it!” the father shouted. “Are you mad? Jesus! Put it down!”

  “Shut up, Da. I have to
do this.”

  “I swear,” said Kelly, but his voice gave out. He cleared his throat. “I swear to God, I was just walking by.”

  “Jimmy put that away. In the name of God–”

  “Da, you don’t know anything! Just leave us.”

  “It was the girls,” Kelly said. “I was worried–”

  This time he kicked Kelly under the arm.

  “I told you to shut up, I did.”

  “Who’s in the car there?”

  “Da, just get back in your car and go off home. I’ll explain it all later okay?”

  “Is that who I think it is . . . ?”

  Kelly’s panic surged when he saw the older man walk quickly toward the car.

  “I was only trying to help!”

  The arm went out again, pointing at him, Kelly rolled on his side and put his hands over his ear. He registered the kicks in his spine and back, wondered for an instant why they weren’t hurting.

  The kicks stopped. He heard raised voices, a car door being slammed. Then a girl’s scream burst from the car, followed by the older man’s muffled shouts.

  There were sports pages from a newspaper on the floor of the car, bits of potato crisps, empty cigarette packs, a plastic bag, half-crushed cans of Fanta. The hand was still on his neck, holding his head down behind the seat.

  “I can’t breathe,” he said as the car leaned into a bend. “I can’t.”

  The gun pushed harder into his neck.

  “What did he say? What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “He said something.”

  “He’s complaining about something.”

  “I can’t breathe here,” Kelly said.

  The barrel was shoved into his neck again.

  “Shut up,” the son said.

  The car passed over broken roadway, and stopped. The red from the traffic light came to Kelly from its dull glow on the wrappers beside his face. He listened for other traffic.

  The father didn’t talk. He was driving cautiously, and stopping at all the traffic lights. His whistling breath and cigarette smoke filled the car. Kelly hoped it was a sign, that he was buying time to think. A man of the father’s age wouldn’t be a savage, he couldn’t be. Any delay was good, moments even, to give this maniac son of his time to cool off. Jimmy. Jimmy who? Maybe the father knew the son was on drugs, and he was trying to calm him down by cruising around. But maybe he’s afraid of his own kid, Kelly thought then. Maybe he’s not in control of this at all.