The Valparaiso Voyage

by Dermot Bolger

  His footsteps quickened as he heard me enter the alley. They almost broke into a run, then stopped like he was waiting for me or trying to hide. I was afraid to call, not wanting to frighten him. I turned the last corner. Dame Street lay ahead, through an archway fifteen yards on. Conor had stepped back against the steel door of a restaurant kitchen, with the sound of pots being banged inside and an extractor fan billowing out the stench of cooking oil. He confronted me, trying to act like a practised hardman, but unable to disguise his vulnerability.

  ‘What do you want?’ he demanded. ‘Why are you following me?’

  Under the glaring pub lights he had seemed older, a stranger with a blonde streak. But the light here made his face young. I could see the child I had chased on the beach at Donabate, both of us tumbling down between sand dunes in a tangle of excited limbs.

  ‘I don’t want anything,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, sure.’ In another year his sneer would be perfect. I searched his eyes for any recognition of my voice but they were distant and watchful.

  ‘Except maybe to talk,’ I added.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Listen…’ I had to stop myself from using the word, son. ‘Could we not go somewhere?’

  ‘I don’t go down alleys.’

  ‘I’m not…I didn’t mean…’ I had no right to feel upset at being misunderstood. In fact I had no rights at all. I didn’t even know what I wanted to say. I had fucked up his life once already, so why risk doing so again? ‘I’m not looking for sex.’

  ‘Men your age always say that when they come on to you.’

  ‘What men?’

  My concern perturbed him. He looked down the alley for reassurance at people passing on Dame Street.

  ‘You’re a funny old buzzard, aren’t you? Charles said you were.’

  ‘Come for a coffee, just you and me, please.’

  ‘You listen…’ For a moment I thought he was going to touch my arm in sympathy. ‘Go back inside. You’ll meet someone else. There are lots of lads in there up for it. Younger than me even.’

  ‘It’s only you I want to talk to.’

  ‘I’m sorry but I have to get home,’ he said, ‘my mother’s expecting me.’

  I couldn’t tell if this was genuine or a tactic to emphasize our age difference.

  ‘Does she know…about you?’

  He tossed his head back and laughed, his voice natural this time with all the defensiveness gone.

  ‘A bishop wouldn’t ask me that.’

  ‘Let me walk you to your bus stop, please, Conor.’

  ‘How do you know my name?’ He was cagey, on guard.

  ‘I overheard it in the pub.’

  He scrutinized me carefully, as if trying to place me. Perhaps he sensed something familiar – though maybe this was wish-fulness on my part.

  ‘Come on then.’ He smiled. ‘Lucky old me with my personal chaperone.’

  We left the alley and joined the throng in Dame Street. Now that he had allowed me to be with him I could think of nothing to say. But I couldn’t stop gazing at him, even though I knew this attention in public was making him uneasy.

  We crossed the street where a cluster of girls sang, deliberately out of key, drinking from cans beside the world’s ugliest fountain on the Bank of Ireland plaza. Several of them eyed Conor with obvious interest. The pavement narrowed as we turned into Westmoreland Street so that we had to fight our way through the crush under the porticoes of the old bank. Another new hotel was being built behind the façade of an old building across the road. Buses were pulling out where crowds queued at the line of stops. Conor glanced at me suspiciously when I chose the correct queue for Cremore.

  ‘You don’t say much, do you?’ he remarked.

  ‘I like walking with you.’

  ‘Why?’

  The queue dissolved into a scrum as a bus swung around the corner. A young couple pushed between us, the girl leading the way, her eyes fixed on any gap in the crowd ahead. Conor mounted the step then looked back at me and waved. But I couldn’t let him go. The bus was packed, with the driver shouting that he could take no more. I elbowed my way ahead of two youths who cursed at me. If I didn’t get on board I knew I would have to fight them. Maybe the driver sensed this too, because after he had told me again that the bus was full and I still refused to step back, he shrugged and closed the door. He sat encased by security glass, telling me to insert coins in the steel slot. I did so, then fought my way through the people standing in the aisle.

  There was no sign of Conor downstairs. The bus had circled Parnell Square and reached the Black Church before the crush began to ease as several passengers descended the stairs. I climbed up to look around. The absence of smoke was what I noticed first. When I was Conor’s age, travelling upstairs meant sitting inside a tobacco cloud. Often at night you didn’t even pay the full fare, but ‘tipped the rent’ to bribe some conductor on the fiddle who never bothered to issue tickets. The tradition of couples virtually mounting each other in the back seats remained the same however, with the last bus still acting as a fast-track method through the early stages of foreplay. Other passengers climbed up behind me, anxious to find seats. There was a space beside Conor at the very front. I occupied it, not looking at him. He glanced across defensively, betraying his sudden fear.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ he hissed.

  ‘I didn’t get to say good-bye.’

  ‘Jesus!’ He raised his eyes, then peered discreetly around. ‘Some people on this bus know me from my new school. Don’t try following me home, you old queen. I’ll fucking kill you if you do.’

  Conor’s voice was so low I could barely hear it. He clenched his hands anxiously on his knee, making me want to touch them in reassurance. I glanced back, but nobody paid us any attention. We could be total strangers or just an ordinary father and son. But nobody had seemed to be paying Cormac any attention either on the night he was suddenly jumped upon at nineteen on this same bus route. There were no security cameras back then. The bus conductor was in on the attack or at least had not risked a trip upstairs until the youths stomped noisily off, leaving Cormac with his face bleeding, a rib broken and the word ‘QUEER’ scrawled with his blood on the window. I wanted to tell Conor about his uncle, I wanted to tell him a hundred different things. But I knew that I couldn’t. Not here and possibly not ever.

  ‘Give me a nod,’ I whispered. ‘Three stops before your stop. I’ll get off and promise not to bother you again.’

  He looked across. ‘Use your sleeve,’ he urged quietly, then saw I was baffled. ‘You’re crying.’

  I raised my sleeve awkwardly, then peered through the misted-up window at streets so familiar they were heart-aching. A thousand bus journeys here alone or with Cormac. I didn’t feel like a ghost any longer. This ache was so real it was unbearable. Up close Conor looked more like me, but nowhere in his glance was there any hint of recognition. We reached Hart’s Corner, the tiny lane up to the gravediggers’ pub, then the Botanic Gardens. He should be warning me to get off before coming too close to his home. I wanted him to so that I could be alone now, to walk down steps to the Tolka river beside the Pyramid Church and end it all with Joey Kerwin’s old revolver. Those bank accounts didn’t matter any more, nor revenge upon Pete Clancy or passports. I just knew that Conor had built his own life and there was no way back into it for me.

  He touched my knee gently at Washerwoman’s Hill, indicating that I was to rise. Maybe he meant to stay on past his own stop and double back when I was gone. But as I descended the stairs I found him following me. I stood on the kerb as the bus moved off, aware of Conor behind me.

  ‘You’re a bloody nuisance,’ he said, softly now, with almost bemused affection.

  ‘I’ll wait here and get a bus back into town,’ I replied without turning.

  ‘If you’ve come this far you can chaperone me for the last bit. But there’s no coming in, mind you, nothing like that.’

  We crossed the ro
ad and walked past a line of nineteenth-century houses, with long gardens and high walls casting the footpath into shadow. Had other men walked here with him, stopping to kiss him in the shaded gateway where I once kissed a Holy Faith girl who dated me as a substitute for Cormac?

  ‘You’re one of life’s great talkers,’ he teased.

  ‘Does your mother know?’ I asked again.

  ‘She knows what she wants to know, I don’t think she’s ready to face the rest.’

  ‘That must be lonely for you.’

  ‘It is since my gran went into hospital. She was great.’

  He looked back at where I had stopped, though he couldn’t see my expression in the shadows.

  ‘Your gran?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah. I’ve always been able to confide in her. You see, years ago she had a son who…’

  ‘She told you about Cormac?’

  Conor froze. His defensiveness and suspicion returned. ‘There’s been something bugging me ever since I saw you. How do you know about my uncle?’

  He took a step forward, then backed away and looked around. This stretch of road was always lonely, with few passers-by.

  ‘Don’t be scared,’ I said.

  ‘I’m not scared. It’s just you give me the creeps. How long have you been stalking me? Now fuck off with yourself.’

  ‘Conor?’ I put a hand out.

  ‘No.’ He backed further away.

  ‘I knew Cormac,’ I said. ‘I was…we were…’ I left the sentence unfinished, knowing he would substitute the word lovers for brothers. ‘At times you look very like him at your age.’

  ‘Do I?’ Despite his unease he was curious. ‘I’ve never met anybody who knew him, or at least knew him when he was out. Not that I’ve asked around, I mean you don’t want to give too much of your identity away. Was he nice?’

  ‘He was special,’ I replied, ‘more than nice.’

  I leaned against a high wall, feeling pebbledash dig into my back.

  ‘You look like you could use a smoke.’ Conor held out a packet of cigarettes. ‘Have one of mine.’

  ‘You shouldn’t smoke,’ I cautioned and he laughed.

  ‘Jaysus, you sound like a parent. I mean, your preachy tone.’

  ‘What do your parents sound like?’

  ‘Mam’s a social worker, so you can imagine. Normally she doesn’t like me out this late but it’s my midterm break. Dad died years ago.’ He lit his cigarette, then held the match out. I stooped to take a light, aware of how the match lit up my face. Cormac dropped it suddenly as the flame almost scorched his fingers.

  ‘Do you miss him?’ I wondered were there still photographs of me at home or had Miriam put them away.

  ‘If he was anything like his own dad he might not have been too understanding.’

  ‘Never judge a son by his father. What was your granddad like?’

  Conor’s tone hardened. ‘You ask too many questions, pal. I know your face if I could place it. Maybe off the telly. That’s what this is about, isn’t it? The bloody tribunal he was supposed to give evidence to. He’s barely cold in his grave and you’re digging for dirt to use him as a scapegoat. I’ve read about how the dead can’t sue. Well, he never had a penny and any peace he had was destroyed by solicitors and anonymous bloody phone calls before that scumbag broke in.’

  ‘What phone calls?’

  ‘You’re the bloody reporter. You figure it out.’

  Conor stalked off. When I followed he began to run, then slowed to a walk as if determined to show that he refused to be intimidated.

  ‘Please…please.’

  He turned to confront me at the corner of Cremore. ‘What?’

  ‘I swear to God I’m not a reporter.’

  ‘Then who the hell are you? You’ve never even said your name.’

  ‘I knew you when you were small. You loved the Wombles. You had a cuddly toy of one, Uncle Bulgaria, with a plastic bead for a nose. You loved the noise it made when you banged its nose against the window.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  I could see that he barely remembered himself. ‘You lived opposite St Anne’s Park in Raheny.’

  ‘We moved in to mind the house after Granddad died. It didn’t stop sickos breaking in during his funeral though, grabbing anything they could find, even my passport from my room. We still get late-night calls, heavy breathing like an asthmatic with a poker up his arse. You’re not the first guy to hang around watching me. Who can blame me being paranoid when these last months have been hell.’

  ‘Tell me about being assaulted.’

  ‘How do you know about that?’ Conor asked, suspicious.

  ‘I read it in the paper. After your grandfather’s funeral.’

  ‘I left the pub one night,’ he said. ‘A car pulled up, I thought it was a hackney. The driver was huge. He drove down a lane and clattered me a few times. “That’s a warning for someone close to you,” he said, pushing me out. A policeman found me bleeding. I had to pretend it was random young fellows, I didn’t want to admit to being in the bar and all – I mean I’m under-age. Gays get attacked the whole time but normally we’re beaten up worse than that.’

  ‘Who do you think it was?’ I asked.

  ‘A relation of somebody in the pub trying to teach them a lesson through me. Maybe I’d danced with their son. Or maybe a parent from school because next morning graffiti was sprayed on the wall there. Phone threats started then. Mam’s renting our house out until I finish the Leaving Cert. I’m in a new school where nobody knows me and there’s no hassle so far at least. That’s why I have to be home on time. I promised Mam…’ He looked at me. ‘Would she know you?’

  ‘We’re talking about a long time ago.’

  ‘But you were obviously in our house…maybe with Uncle Cormac. I’ve never seen you around the pubs or the…’

  Conor left the sentence unfinished and me racking my imagination. Cormac had always maintained that the gay saunas in Dublin were among the most promiscuous he’d ever known. Where did Conor spend his weekends and taking what risks? There were so many questions that I knew I couldn’t ask.

  ‘I’ve been away.’ I hesitated, then asked. ‘Does your mother miss your father?’

  ‘That’s her business,’ Conor said brusquely. ‘What’s it to you?’

  ‘I knew them both…through Cormac.’

  Conor gazed up the road towards where a light burned in what was once my father’s house. ‘There was a long limbo when they tried to establish how many were killed. They found nothing of him, but he was caught on security camera buying a ticket.’

  ‘But she did get compensation?’ I obviously sounded panic-stricken, because Conor stared at me.

  ‘Eventually,’ he said flatly. ‘She never talked about it much.’

  Loud footsteps approached, a courting couple in the midst of a petty squabble. We fell silent, standing further apart as we waited for them to pass. They crossed the junction and stopped at the far corner, the youth leaning back against the wall to put his arms around the girl. Both glanced proprietorially over, letting us know we were on their patch.

  ‘How’s your gran?’ I hated using that word for her.

  ‘Chemotherapy never worked. They’d sent her home before the break-in because there was nothing else they could do. She’s very ill, gets confused, even over what she heard that night.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She told the cops that Granddad cried out “quick”. Afterwards she thought it was “Mick” or “sick”, but didn’t want to look foolish by changing her mind. What’s wrong?’

  My fingers gripped the revolver in my pocket as I remembered a boy’s leering face.

  ‘Nothing,’ I lied.

  The couple stared across, their presence disturbing Conor. He wanted to go in, yet I couldn’t part from him under their gaze. Conor sensed it too and walked up the incline towards my father’s house. I followed in silence. The gardens were raised up from the road, filled with mat
ure shrubs. Trees grew on the grass verge, creating a mosaic of shadows. Conor stopped under a tree, our view of the couple blocked by a parked van.

  ‘I don’t want you coming any closer if you don’t mind.’

  ‘I understand,’ I said.

  ‘You’re still not my type…just in case you were thinking…’

  ‘I wasn’t.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll see you around.’

  ‘I have to meet someone later,’ I said. ‘Business to sort out. I don’t know if I’ll be around. I just want to say –’

  ‘Don’t,’ he interrupted gently. ‘Things people want to say at this time of night they generally regret in the morning.’

  He glanced down the path, then leaned his face forward. I drew back, surprised, and he smiled, in control now like I was the child.

  ‘I’m not going to bite,’ he teased and kissed me once on the lips. He drew back, unable to read my expression. ‘That was for Cormac,’ he said.

  He turned to walk off quickly, but I knew he was moving in a deliberate way. Not flaunting himself, but conscious of his youth and allowing me to enjoy the sight. I walked to the corner and looked back up towards the house. Conor never glanced around, even when he opened the door. A shadow appeared briefly at the landing window. My wife concerned for her son. Refuting the rumours about him, but uprooting herself from her home to give him another chance elsewhere.

  The courting couple had made up their quarrel. The youth raised his eyes from where he was dug into his girlfriend, trying to intimidate me into moving away. But I knelt down to search the pavement for the cigarette butt I had stubbed out. A present from my son. I held it in my palm as I walked all the way to Finglas Bridge, gripping it so tight that by the time I hailed a taxi it had crumbled away into a hundred flakes. But still I wouldn’t let it go as the driver drove in silence along the motorway to Navan. Ebun would understand because she would never know such treasure. Sitting in the dark cab I alternated between tears and elation, hardly able to focus on my forthcoming confrontation with Pete Clancy. Nothing mattered except that I had met my son who was being threatened by something that I was sure he knew nothing about and that I swore I would sort out for him.