The Valparaiso Voyage

by Dermot Bolger

  Alex Lever was the sort of man my father would instinctively look up to, the son-in-law Phyllis had always longed for. The problem was that Sarah-Jane was still only a smoulderingly rebellious pre-teen and Alex wanted the hand of her darling son. Phyllis was incapable of accepting Cormac’s sexuality, no matter how many hints he tried to drop when he moved out at eighteen following the late-night attack on the bus to Cremore. Always it was somebody else’s fault – especially mine for stealing him away from her influence by agreeing to move out too and share a flat (or, in other words, pay almost all the rent). She would rail about Trinity College types leading him astray and that no girl would date him anyway with me hanging around. But if really pushed she retreated to her mantra that ‘what that bastard Pete Clancy did to him made him shy around girls’.

  Ironically my father was the most understanding – or at least implicitly and silently understood the most. Not that himself or Cormac spoke much on the rare occasions they met (as a man capable of removing an exact sum from his wallet in shops without the wallet ever leaving his pocket, my father had turned circumspection into an art form). But his unspoken animosity left no doubt that he felt he finally had Cormac’s measure. If this made him regret the apartheid he had previously practised with his own son, then I never allowed him to get close enough to say so.

  While it surprised my father that Cormac and I set up flat together, it was a source of consternation to Phyllis who had never called at the North Circular Road for fear of encountering me. Even after Cormac shifted to Ballsbridge and I moved in with Miriam, she still believed we lived there, unaware of Alex Lever. Cormac would laugh after meeting her for coffee in Bewleys as he recounted her concern that we might share clothes or bed linen in case mine were lice-infected.

  I didn’t find this funny. In my new world I wanted no reminder of the past. Our landlord doctor was coming home, with his money made and war stirring in the Middle East. Miriam and I would have to move out. Another flat would have done us but I cycled around Dublin for weeks, searching for the perfect house to buy. I sat for hours on a bench in Saint Anne’s Park, looking at one house for sale opposite it, almost afraid to imagine the perfection of a life there with Miriam.

  Miriam loved the house when I showed it to her but argued that we could not afford the Crosbies’ asking price of thirty-one thousand pounds. She had already pooled her savings of eleven hundred pounds in a joint account with six hundred pounds I had managed to hold onto. The Cheltenham festival was on. I phoned in sick, withdrew twelve hundred pounds without her knowledge and placed three separate bets in different bookies – all on the same double, a 5/2 favourite and a 3/1 horse who loved heavy ground. It was the ultimate bet that I had always dreamt of. I sat out the first race in Dominick Street Church – not to pray, just to be alone. It was a photo finish, still undecided when I reached the nearest bookie’s. The result flashed up for the favourite. Both my bet and life with Miriam were still on. There were two more races before the second half of the double. Time felt different, as if all previous bets had only been dummy runs before the life-and-death reality of this gamble.

  Everything hinged in the balance, with nine thousand pounds plus my stake back if I won – giving us the dream deposit for a house. And if I lost? Part of me wanted to lose, to be exposed to Miriam as who I really was by failing her. She would walk away then, returning me to the darkness where I belonged. My horse seemed out of it, running in fourth with two furlongs left. People shouted at the screen but I said nothing, numbly watching the leaders tire on the heavy ground, seeing my jockey use his whip and knowing that he was going to catch them from a hundred yards out. My legs trembled, my chest hurt but I still didn’t make a sound, even when he raised his whip in triumph after crossing the line, winning by a short head.

  That was the night I promised Miriam never to bet again, that night when she took off the engagement ring I had purchased that afternoon and almost threw it into the canal after discovering where the money came from. I believed I would stop too. The win was so monumental and complete that surely it had purged my compulsion. For the first time in my life I was ahead and with her support I could stay there.

  Miriam insisted on us asking my father and Phyllis to the wedding. I never felt more nervous and sick about any occasion, like I expected Slick McGuirk and P. J. Egan to be lurking in a back pew, ready to throw straw among the confetti as they cackled and shouted ‘Hen Boy!’ Phyllis wore a hat, which she refused to take off before Miriam’s mother removed hers. She played the role of the groom’s mother to perfection without ever managing to look into my eyes. Alex Lever sat among the guests, like he had arrived to carry out a VAT inspection on the hotel. He watched Cormac and the bridesmaid dance with strained forbearance.

  Barney Clancy’s arrival at the ‘afters’ caused a stir – mainly of derision among younger guests. Miriam and I hadn’t asked him, but my father looked puffed with pride like he had pulled off a coup on our behalf. Perhaps the only person impressed was Alex Lever. He touched my shoulder. ‘I’d like to meet him,’ he announced, ‘I know people who greatly admire that man.’

  Clancy stood at the bar like a deity awaiting supplicants. He shook my hand warmly and winked. ‘I should have warned you,’ he joked, ‘beware of slow Meath horses and fast Dublin women.’ I introduced Alex and got caught in the crossfire of their small talk while my father hovered like an unwalked dog. They muttered about mutual acquaintances and the state of the country while I watched Cormac dance with Phyllis. Both looked so suddenly alike, with so much in common – having reinvented themselves for the love of far older and duller men. Barney Clancy raised an invisible wing to draw my father into the conversation, their voices lower now as they praised some banker named Des Traynor and mentioned the name of a builder I’d vaguely heard of. Miriam waved from across the room. I moved off and my father followed me for a few paces, putting his hand on my sleeve.

  ‘Is he from Miriam’s side?’ he whispered.

  ‘No. Ours.’

  ‘Really? You know him?’

  I hated the sudden respect in his eyes. I wanted to say, He’s fucking Cormac, Da. He’s one of those funny bunnies you always say should be put up against a wall and shot. But I said nothing, just walked towards my new wife who held her arms out.

  We honeymooned at a small exclusive guesthouse overlooking a lake in Mayo. It was the type of place I knew we could probably never again afford. Indeed we couldn’t have afforded it then, except that, swearing it was a one-off, I broke my vow to put thirty pounds from a wedding whip-around in work on a Jim Bolger horse at ten-to-one. I re-sealed the envelope afterwards for Miriam to open and affected amazement at the amount collected for us. We were the only guests but they set the dining-room fully for us with a log fire and complimentary champagne after discovering we were newlyweds. Their daughter played the piano in the small foyer for our benefit. At fourteen she had the most beautiful hair and blushed whenever we praised her playing. It rained for two days but we didn’t care, walking in the wood and even trying our hands at fishing.

  Dublin was always going to be a comedown, yet – despite a hike in mortgage rates while we were away – it seemed an adventure as well. Four days after our honeymoon we moved into the house the Crosbies had vacated in Raheny. It looked different in their absence. Rooms had gained an echo with the furniture gone, the pipes were suddenly loud in the attic. We were both shaken by the sudden reality of what we had taken on. Nervously we laughed as we laid a mattress down in the back bedroom with a blanket being used temporarily as a curtain.

  Miriam undressed listening to the radio, but I had to walk my property one last time. My own home, my own back door, my own pebbledash wall. I kept touching things, like a dazed explorer. I had opened the shed to check that the Crosbies had cleared it out when something stirred, then a pair of eyes held my gaze. I found the light switch and stepped back. The black cat was grossly overweight with one tooth protruding like a fang. Although the ugliest creature I’d
ever seen, I might probably have stopped on the street to pat her. But finding her here late at night was the first tainting of paradise. I hated her on sight because she was simply too much like me. I chased her out and blocked up the old cat-flap.

  Shortly after dawn Miriam woke and went to fetch an extra blanket downstairs. Her scream brought me running down. It wasn’t just how the black cat scratched with one paw on the kitchen window or the sight of her single fang which looked so unearthly. It was the look in her eyes, like we were intruders invading her home. Yet her gaze wasn’t hostile, merely pleading to be allowed in. The cat meowed and slowly scraped her claw along the glass again, fixing me in her gaze as if recognizing a kindred spirit. Miriam recovered her composure but I was petrified. I knew that longing to be inside too well.

  After breakfast Miriam phoned Mr Crosbie, accepting his apology that the cat had escaped from their new bungalow. He warned her against feeding it, saying he would call over. Miriam stood in the yard as we waited, allowing the cat to brush against her ankles though she gave Miriam the creeps too. Mr Crosbie was full of apologies. Their dog didn’t care where he slept once there was a fire and the two white cats we’d seen on an earlier visit were adjusting well to their new home. But the black cat had grown frantic in the bungalow, racing from room to room until she found a way out.

  The black cat reluctantly allowed Mr Crosbie to pick her up, but was back the next morning. She was barely collected by Mr Crosbie before she escaped again and made the two-mile trek to scratch at our window. Every time it took the man longer to come and each time his hint grew that perhaps we might adopt her. Finally he said he could do no more. Next time she appeared we would simply have to call the cats’ home.

  Next morning I was relieved to find the windowsill deserted. Stepping over frozen puddles, I went to get my bike from the shed. The cat had somehow found a way in there during the bitterly cold night. Her eyes watched from behind a pile of boxes. She had nothing to lie on, but kept purring, delighted to have found some niche to call home. Miriam entered the shed behind me to get the moped she had bought for her new job in a Citizens Advice Bureau in a crumbling shopping centre that was due to be totally redeveloped. ‘Shag it,’ she laughed, ‘maybe it would be simpler to keep her.’

  I couldn’t explain to her why I got so uptight, shouting about Mr Crosbie trying to emotionally blackmail us. But I felt increasingly terrorized by that cat. The problem was that I knew exactly how simple her needs were, the depth of her unthinking gratitude at merely being allowed to exist at the end of the garden. I loved animals, yet couldn’t bear to constantly be reminded of myself and keep seeing my own eyes staring back.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, noticing me shaking. ‘It’s just a cat. We’ll call the ISPCA, they’ll find a home for her.’

  We knew they wouldn’t. At best she would endure four days in a cage before being put down. Feeling like Judas we left food and milk in the shed. In work I couldn’t concentrate, snapping at people until I relieved the tension inside me by losing fifteen pounds in the bookie’s at lunchtime. The ISPCA man arrived at teatime. There was something blackly comic about him crouching with a wooden pole trying to coax the cat into a cage. The cat kept a watchful distance, occasionally shooting me a hurt, baffled look.

  After twenty minutes I had enough. Ordering the ISPCA man out I phoned Mr Crosbie to demand that he take responsibility for his cat once and for all. The old man arrived and said he would take her to the vet to be put down. He walked to his car without looking back. We never saw him or the cat again.

  The funny thing was that the cat was more of a haunting presence in my life after it was gone. Taking the rubbish down to the shed last thing every night, I was almost afraid to glance at the boxes behind where she had tried to set up home. I would turn the shed light out and gaze up at the kitchen window where the woman I did not deserve was framed, then cast one last glance back into the dark. For the briefest second eyes would watch me there – not the cat’s eyes but my own, aged nine and ten, crouched on the floor, begging not to be left alone and refusing to let me go.

  The byre door reopened. I knew without turning my head that Pete Clancy was alone, Egan having managed to lure Slick McGuirk away. A match was struck and for a second I suspected that Clancy was about to set the straw ablaze. Instead I smelt tobacco and heard the flame being blown out.

  ‘Boys-o-boys,’ Clancy affected a thicker Meath accent, ‘you were always fond of sheds, Hen Boy.’

  ‘Trust you to bring your bully-boys along, you bollix.’

  There was a scrape of metal as he upended an old bucket to sit on. I turned to watch him in what dim light filtered through the doorway, adjusting my position painfully with the twine behind my back.

  ‘Slick invited himself, and P. J. tagged along to keep a watching brief on him,’ he replied. ‘Didn’t I warn you to only use my private e-mail address? Slick’s niece runs my constituency office. She informed him, like she tells him everything. They were waiting for me outside the party meeting in Kingscourt. We could have been alone if you hadn’t copied her in on your demand for this stupid moonlight encounter.’

  He tapped his cigarette ash onto some loose straw on the floor where it began to smoulder. Idly he watched a wisp of smoke rise and then stamped it out, watching me as if he had guessed at my phobia about fire since that train crash.

  ‘I have those account mandates and you know it,’ I said. ‘Lie to your stooges but you need me.’

  ‘I need you about as much as I need Slick’s niece for a secretary. It’s a terrible thing to run out of relations of your own, especially as Carol has both her uncle’s slyness and his arse.’ He uncocked the shotgun to remove both cartridges, then blew into each barrel, polishing the gun absent-mindedly. ‘Why is it, Brendan, that people think I’m a bottomless well of favours?’

  In the open I could have faced anything, but this confinement contained too many echoes. I hated myself for being unable to stop shaking. Clancy reloaded the shotgun, closing it with a click.

  ‘Eh?’ he enquired. ‘Did you say something?’

  ‘You’re a cunt, Clancy, always were and always will be.’

  ‘You could be right there, Hen Boy.’ His tone seemed almost friendly, until he knelt to grab my hair. ‘But I could be the cunt who’s about to blast both these barrels up your arse unless you start talking. Now what the fuck do you really want and where have you crawled from?’

  I lashed out with my foot, heedless of his gun, and Clancy knelt on my thighs, crushing them as he gripped my hair tighter.

  ‘Don’t annoy me, Brendan,’ he said. ‘This last year I’ve grown a tad sick of surprises, bits of the past that refuse to stay in their boxes and keep trying to jump out and ambush me.’

  ‘Is that why you had your thug kill my father?’

  ‘My thug?’ His voice became almost infused with nostalgia. ‘God be with the days when he and P. J. were. Loyalty went out of fashion in your absence. Your da was the last honourable man, not simply out for himself.’

  ‘Like your da was,’ I sneered.

  Clancy released my hair but kept my legs pinned down. He had fattened out so much into middle-age that in the dimness he might have been his father’s ghost. I half-expected to see braces and smell Barney’s aftershave which nobody else in Navan had ever worn.

  ‘Daddy might have been a tad crooked by the standards of today’s squeaky robots,’ he said, ‘but he was still my daddy. That’s the way with daddies, eh? Look at you. Eamonn only ever gave you dog’s abuse as a kid, yet you’re still seeking revenge – or is it that you’re just out to fill your own pockets?’

  ‘Barney was a gangster,’ I said, ‘and you know it.’

  ‘I know that Daddy did great things for Navan, visionary acts when other politicians were still wiping their arses with clumps of grass. The contradiction isn’t incompatible. Daddy made sure things got built in Navan, and by locals instead of foreign businessmen who’d fuck off afterwards. When thi
ngs are built money gets made and spread around as an unavoidable consequence.’

  ‘He didn’t spread his share too far, did he?’ I sniped back. ‘I’ve seen the list of off-shore bank accounts.’

  ‘You know feck all, Brendan. Daddy could never walk the length of Navan without having to empty his pockets.’ Pete Clancy mimicked a succession of women’s accents: ‘“My child is sick, Mr Clancy.” “My husband’s gone to England and left me.” “You’re my only hope with three weeks rent due, Barney, and sure didn’t I know your father at school.” “These new-fangled vibrators have my heart scalded, Minister, they eat their way through batteries.”’

  ‘Very droll.’

  ‘Very taxing. Priests pulling their wires in the confession boxes in the cathedral could just dole out a few Hail Marys, then bugger off back to their housekeepers for a steak dinner. Daddy sought their votes instead of their souls and people expected their dividends in pounds, shillings and pence.’

  ‘He was still a crook.’

  ‘He was a man of the people. Voters knew exactly who he was and they got what they voted for. Honesty is a luxury for figureheads like the president, which is why we keep sticking in high-minded Protestants and gawky long-winded women you wouldn’t ride on a dark night. But it’s fuck all use when helping out a constituent in a tight corner. Daddy had the biggest funeral in the history of Navan. People queuing to pay their respects, every second one dropping hints about him having promised them something. I felt surrounded by greedy mouths like chicks in a nest hungry for worms. Daddy’s funeral and I wanted to vomit.’

  He sat back on the upturned bucket, releasing my legs. I watched distrustfully, ready to kick out if he reached for the shotgun.