The ambulance came to take the man away. The bar was cleaned up and some Garda officers arrived to take statements, though nobody could remember seeing anything.
Kevin explained to me that the lines between good and evil had become blurred. You could no longer trust your instincts. Things were getting worse than ever before, spreading into all corners of the world evenly. Every city had its mafia and its Third World and its safe people who could not be touched. He was a lawyer and he dealt with all levels of society. The city was the greatest place on earth but it was also a dump and a war zone, depending on your entry level.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Nothing is going to change. You’re still my friend, my VBF. No question about that. It’s only that we need to be careful. These scumbags are not going to go away.’
Two days later, Darius’s workshop was burned down with all the wood and equipment inside. I went over to see it and stood there in the ruins of the smouldering building. Everything still had his signature neatness to it, even in total destruction. The tools still hanging on the walls in their designated spaces. Saws and hammers and chisels, grade by grade, blackened and warped by the heat. The fire must have had a great time with all those cans of lubricant and French polish. The electric saws were worthless. All the routers and mitre equipment, not even a tape measure to be salvaged.
Fire officers carried out an investigation on the spot, but the source of the fire could not be established. Darius never smoked on the premises and he never left sawdust lying around. He always cleaned out the machines and made sure to unplug the equipment before he left. On the evening before the fire he had taken some recently finished work out of his van and placed it into the workshop to be safe. All destroyed now.
There were no electrical faults to be detected and no visible signs of a break-in or arson either. It could have been accidental, if I didn’t know better.
Black drops of water were still dripping from the sunken roof beams. Darius showed me individual pieces of equipment, like an inventory, telling me where he had bought them and for what price. It had taken years to accumulate such a collection of hand tools and the value would never be replaced with an insurance claim. Then he laughed, an exhilarated, desperate sort of laugh that was closer to tears as he picked up two screwdrivers which had fused together by the handles at a ninety-degree angle.
‘I’m sorry about this,’ I said, because I knew it was my fault.
‘It’s all right,’ he said, trying to put a brave face on it. There are so many different ways of saying the word all right here, anything on a scale from brilliant to mediocre to utter resignation and helplessness.
He kicked a few things around, a piece of hand-turned timber that seemed to be covered in treacle, too sad and mutilated even to be thought of as female any more. He was trying not to cry, holding it in like a man. I put my hand on his shoulder, knowing that I was the importer of misfortune, bringing nothing but trouble with me.
They had mistaken Darius for me, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him. I felt like a scumbag, withholding this information. I told myself that I was doing him a favour, trying not to alarm him with thoughts of xenophobia.
But it was not fair to him. It was only right to tell him about the threatening phone call I had received. About the original confrontation and the court case and the arson attack on the Concannon house. When he heard this, he was so disheartened that he walked away from me in disgust. He could not even get himself to speak to me. All our achievements had turned to nothing. How could I expect him to work with me again? The news had possibly persuaded him that there was no point in rebuilding his business, that it was better to leave the country and go home.
Of course it was totally understandable that the Concannon family wanted their privacy back at this point. Kevin kept urging me to hurry up and get out of there as fast as possible.
‘Don’t hover,’ he warned, and I knew exactly what he meant. He had once told me that his mother said that to the waiter in a restaurant.
What took me a while to realise was that this was also the end of friendship. Not much more than a week later, I was out of the house for good. I worked from morning to night getting the place finished, from black to black, as Johnny Concannon would say in his own language. Rita went to stay in the Royal Marine Hotel, overlooking the harbour, while the small plastering jobs were given time to dry. Then it was the floor sanders and the painters.
There was a happy kind of sadness associated with finishing up. I sat drinking tea and talking with some of the other workers, knowing that I was only an employee like them. The painter told me that he was an illegitimate child, as the term went long ago. He had grown up in a Protestant orphanage and only recently discovered who his mother was. They had to set up secret meetings so as not to upset her new family. He went to visit her twice a month in Kilkenny where they sat together for an hour or two in the café, undercover. He would tell her about his work and she would tell him about her children, his half brothers and sisters whom he would never meet. Until it was time to leave, each of them back to their own lives.
When we were all finished, I got the painter to help me replace the furniture. The house was ready for living again. For a while, it had belonged to me and I would always remember the sounds and shadows, the hollow places, the creaks, the fragile, tragic air. Shouts left on the stairs. Doors slammed. The emptiness without a father. I would never forget this family.
It was great to look out through the new casement window one last time and catch that slice of blue sea in the corner of my eye. It went right into my deepest memory drawer, with all the other mental souvenirs I had collected, glad to have had the chance of standing here for a quiet moment and call it mine before I left for good. It didn’t bother me that the improvements would soon be taken for granted. Made me happy almost that I would be forgotten, like a perfect carpenter, disappearing without a trace, returning the home intact to its rightful owners.
I saw the sunlight bouncing off the floor. I smelled the last remaining hint of gloss paint. What a nice job, I thought, straight from a property magazine. I would never forget the joy in Mrs Concannon’s eyes, thanking me sincerely, right from the heart.
‘You’re the best worker we’ve ever had in this house,’ she said with some emotion in her voice.‘Dependable and honest as the day is long.’
Then she reminded me to give back the hall door key.
That was it. I got very well paid. More than expected. I brought the money that Darius was owed but he hardly even wanted to take it from me. And there was no way that he would go with me for a drink to celebrate the job, like we were meant to, because all that sense of achievement and camaraderie was in ruins now.
I went for a drink alone and made my way home that night on foot. I walked the long way round, by the harbour, along the seafront, still hoping that the friendship with Kevin would soon be reinstated, once everything had died down again.
From time to time, I looked around, just to make sure that I was not being followed.
I passed by the old people’s home where I had worked and where Nurse Bridie would be looking after sleepless patients, joking with them to make them calm down. I stood looking up at the windows, hoping to see her and maybe get a wave, but then I realised that, under the streetlights, she would not recognise me after all this time gone by. I wondered if I should go in to visit her again. I even thought with some fondness of that place which once felt like such a dead end, as though I had become one of the inmates myself. Some of them used to talk to each other without making any sense, as if they were speaking in different languages. It struck me that I had been too impatient to get out of there, afraid of suddenly getting old. I was always rushing to get on with my life. Leaping ahead constantly and only living my life in memory, after it had already gone by, just like Bridie was doing, keeping the letter of dismissal from her boyfriend in her handbag.
Then something happened which taught me a lot about the Concannon family
and also about myself and the whole world around me.
I walked on and stopped in a laneway because I was bursting after the beer. As I stood there, out of sight, in total darkness, a car pulled up right at the entrance to the laneway. I could hear the occupants inside the car shouting at each other. A man and a woman, stopping to fight.
‘Don’t push me,’ the man kept repeating. Then I heard her in the front seat beside him, laughing like a schoolgirl, a wild cackle. She seemed to be taunting him and he was waiting for things to get worse.
‘You stupid fucking prick,’ she said.
‘Watch what you’re saying, Fuzzy,’ he warned.
‘I should have listened to my mother. I should never have married you. Look at you. You big, fucking hunk of shite in a pair of trousers. Jesus let me out of here, I want to puke.’
I could only think of Rita and Johnny Concannon. I pictured them arguing inside the car, while the children were staying with Rosie next door.
She was speaking right up to his face, only inches away. He was staring straight ahead through the windscreen, gripping the steering wheel in order to keep his hands under control.
‘I’m warning you, Fuzzy.’
‘You’re a wanker.’
‘Fuzzy, stop it.’
‘You big Limerick wanker,’ she shouted, right into his ear.
I wanted to stop them. I wanted to run out and tell him not to take it seriously. But it was too late, already gone beyond words. His hands left the steering wheel and I heard the crack of her head against the glass. He was holding her neck with one hand and punching her face repeatedly with the other, a free target, with no protection. She didn’t even have the time to put up her hands.
‘Oh Jesus,’ she screamed. ‘Oh Jesus.’ But that didn’t stop him because he no longer believed a word from her mouth. He kept looking for better, more innocent parts of her face that he must have loved and hated in equal measure, until there was nothing left un-punched. ‘Oh Jesus, my teeth,’ she kept saying, though her words were muffled, gasping as he put his two hands around her throat.
I was such a coward. He was killing her in front of my eyes and I stood there, doing nothing. She went silent and he gripped the steering wheel again as if he was going to strangle that too.
But the car didn’t move away. Instead he opened the door and got out. He came around the front with his legs eclipsing the headlights. He walked straight towards me, into the lane. I could see the rage in his eyes, still glowing from the act. His face jaundiced from the streetlight. He looked away towards the car to make sure she didn’t move. No other traffic had passed in all this time, no late witnesses walking their dogs, nobody around with a phone camera willing to record the incident. Into the laneway he came, as though he had known of my presence all along and was now going to take it out on me for watching. He stopped just inches away. I stayed still with my back to the granite wall. Then I saw him hunch and begin to piss, right next to me. My impulse was to jump away quickly to avoid the splash, but I remained motionless, like a piece of cast-off timber left leaning against the wall.
The door on the driver’s side remained open. I heard a groan, a tiny high-pitched whimper. She’s alive, I thought, but in what state? He looked over to check and see how she was doing, maybe thinking that everything was fine and they were level again, made for each other as on their wedding day. He finished, shook himself, bucked once or twice and walked away, back across the headlights, closing the door on the dark side of the car and driving away finally, so I didn’t hear what they said to each other next.
28
Nothing. Not a single word or a phone call even. Zero contact. We were already edging into the autumn and I had not heard from him since the job was finished. The closest friends in the history of friendship from the beginning of time, and now, less than nothing. I tried keeping in touch. I contacted him many times to invite him out fishing, but he didn’t return my messages. I expected to meet him accidentally on the street, to pass by and wave at least. He must have discovered a new underground map where he could travel without being seen any more.
Only once. There was one occasion where I came across him by chance in a pub where we used to go together, his favourite place. Sitting there at the bar with his new friends and fresh pints in front of them. As I walked towards him with a big smile on my face, he looked around over his shoulder and saw me coming. I waited for him to stand up and put his arm around me and ask me what I was drinking, then introduce me to his pals. But there was something blank in his eyes. He didn’t recognise me. Or maybe it was more like being de-recognised. De-friended.
He turned away and elbowed his friends. Spoke to them briskly and then stood up to leave. As if we couldn’t be seen in the same pub.
‘What have I done?’ I asked when he was passing, but he didn’t say a word, only walked out with his new friends following.
Three brand-new pints left standing on the counter abandoned. Even the barman found it hard to believe that anyone would walk away from his own drink in disgust like that. He asked whether the pints were gone, but left them on the counter, thinking the men who ordered them were outside smoking. All night, they stood there, a triptych to lost friendship.
You had to understand his position. There was a perfectly good reason for him not being my friend, of course. He had helped me as much as he possibly could, but I was nothing but trouble.
At times I thought people had begun to check me out on the internet and rake up my history. I could feel they were still connecting me with Serbia and all the things that happened there.
I did a small job in the meantime for a woman who wanted shelving done in salvaged wood. She was environmentally aware, as she called it, and would not let me get anything new, not even the brackets. One afternoon we got talking about where I came from and she told me that she had once been to Bosnia during the siege of Sarajevo. The women of that city had sent a message out to women all over the world to come and stand by them. Women from places in Europe and Canada and the USA responded to the call to break the siege. There were buses waiting to take them into the city. She was frightened because they were all marked with bullet holes. Some of them were like colanders on wheels, she told me, with no glass in many of the windows and old blood stains gone brown on the seats. She took the bus which had the least bullet holes, believing that this might make the journey marginally less dangerous. She would never forget travelling along winding mountain roads at night, mostly with no headlights so as to draw as little attention as possible to themselves from snipers who lay in hiding all over the mountains around the city. Sometimes the buses had to stop when the sound of gunfire came close. Sometimes they only crawled along with no light at all, just guessing the road ahead in the dark, making sure they didn’t drive over the edge. When they finally arrived, the women of Sarajevo cried out of sheer relief at being reconnected with the world outside. Their visitors had brought gifts of food and baby things and essential medicines. They were asked if any of them wanted to get out of Sarajevo, but they could not desert their families. Then the visiting women went away on the same buses, leaving the women of Sarajevo behind, waving through the blue diesel fumes. She told me that the journey back was even more terrifying because the city was harder to get out of than it was to get in.
Helen was the only person left that I could talk to. We met once or twice, like a lonely hearts club. The dumped and the ditched, was how she put it, talking mainly about Kevin and remembering some of the good times.
The boat I had been working on was in the water by now, floating – for the time being, anyway. My ambitions as a boat builder were beyond my talents. Some things need to be passed on to you and I was still trying to work out what exactly it was that I had inherited. Not boat-building, in any case. Beware of the man who doesn’t know his limits. I was sure that was another old Irish proverb.
Helen came down to the harbour to meet me one day. She was wearing a black leather jacket this time, with jeans a
nd runners. The boat wobbled from side to side as she got in and she had to hold on to the gunwale to keep her balance.
‘Keep your tongue in the middle of your mouth,’ I said and she laughed. But it wasn’t my own joke. It was something Kevin had said to me when we went fishing together. I copied things like that from other people, but I couldn’t get them to sound right no matter how much I practised. I was always a secondhand man. There was a while when I tried to learn a few jokes off by heart, but they never worked either. Even when I got the punchline correct, there was always something awkward about the way I told it in my accent that was just not funny. Nobody ever laughed. And if they did, it was only out of politeness. It was easier to get them to laugh at me.
I rowed out into the bay. It was a calm evening and still quite warm, but always cooler on the water, so she zipped up her jacket. She looked at me from time to time as I was rowing and she was no fool. She could tell by the way the boat was gliding so easily across the water that it was the tide which carried us and not my rowing. I was impressing nobody. I might as well have put the oars vertically up in the air. She also knew that there was no way I could row back against the current either.
On the way out, we talked about what it was like to live in Belgrade. I had to tell her finally that I hated the music, particularly the turbo-folk that was pumped up during the war. She laughed and said it was probably like some of the freedom ballads that were sung here during the Troubles.
Hand in the Fire Page 19
