The Valparaiso Voyage

by Dermot Bolger

  ‘Look at me gabbing away,’ he laughed. ‘But I feel like I’m talking to a ghost. The Hen Boy, of all people, eh? You sly fuck. Go on, tell us why you disappeared?’

  ‘I had my reasons.’

  ‘Don’t we all?’ He shook his head in amusement. ‘The two great male fantasies, eh? Acquiring the young bombshell mistress and disappearing with your clothes left on the beach. Much good it did you and Eamonn for managing to do both between you.’

  ‘My father was a widower,’ I corrected him. ‘Phyllis was no saint but hardly a mistress either. Barney had the franchise for that, with his private room up in Groom’s Hotel.’

  Pete Clancy laughed. ‘The legendary room in Groom’s, eh? My mother found out, you know. She arrived up with me in tow when I was nine. Daddy did the only decent thing possible, collapsed clutching his chest and croaking for an ambulance. Thrashing about the floor, with my mother and the queer hawk both screaming. He sees me crying my eyes out and gives a sudden wink. Ten days in a private ward and the night he gets out he has the Bishop of Cloyne renew their marriage vows up in the house, with altar boys, incense and all. But you know the shockingest thing, Brendan? Daddy was humping an old lump of a heifer you’d pass on the street and not turn your head. A fat American with notions about herself who wrote for the papers and never shaved her legs. The type who would be better off sticking to knitting than spreading her thighs. But Phyllis, on the other hand, was worth risking a marriage for.’

  ‘I’ve told you before –’ I began angrily.

  ‘You’ve told me nothing,’ he interrupted dismissively. ‘Your mother may have been cold but she certainly wasn’t stiff when Eamonn landed Phyllis with Red-Arse himself as a bastard son.’

  ‘How the hell would you know?’ The twine dug into my wrists as I jerked forward.

  ‘How would you know different, Hen Boy? You and Eamonn hardly had many cosy chats spitting into the fire. But Daddy groomed me for this job, every useable speck of dirt on every family for three generations. Who do you think Cormac’s father was? This convenient mythical Scotsman that Phyllis dreamed up? She was just a kid from the cabins off Dorset Street scrubbing away in the kitchens at Groom’s, when Daddy dropped the hand on her passing through the dining-room. She couldn’t even take it as a joke, slapping his face. Eamonn found her crying in the yard, out among the bins. She thought she was going to lose her job. He walked her home, told her not to worry. She thought he was cultured because next day he posted her some half-arsed love poem with her name in it. I mean what the fuck rhymes with Phyllis apart from syphilis and knickerless?’

  He shook his head ruefully, picking up the shotgun to aim it randomly around the byre. He settled on an imaginary target and mimed squeezing the trigger.

  ‘Those were the times that were in it, Brendan,’ he said, lowering the gun. ‘Ireland was opening up, with spoils for the brave and a man’s only crime was getting caught. Daddy blamed himself. It made Eamonn feel special that Phyllis took him when she could have been the minister’s mistress and the fact that Daddy once wanted Phyllis made her seem special in Eamonn’s eyes. But your mammy and you never suffered. Only those few in the know knew and none thought any the less of him. The problem was that Eamonn didn’t understand the get-in and get-out rules of affairs. He was a romantic, and Phyllis was worse, caught in his fantasy. He started talking crazy when she got banged up with a kid. God knows what would have happened if Daddy hadn’t arranged for her to disappear into a convent in Athlone. But she did a runner instead, having Cormac in some Glasgow dosshouse. How Eamonn tracked her down, two and a half years later, I don’t know. Still I never believed your mother found out. That corner of Ludlow Street was always a dangerous bend where anyone could get mown down. It never stopped Phyllis from blaming herself though. Daddy told them it was wrong to keep you in that shed, like they could banish every reminder of her. But Phyllis never liked Daddy and after your brother’s lies she never liked me either.’

  A Swiss army knife had appeared in Clancy’s hands. He knelt forward watching me drag myself back towards the wall.

  ‘Easy now, Hen Boy,’ he whispered. ‘We’ll have no pig-killing here, it would ruin my jacket.’ Slowly he reached behind my back to cut the twine binding my bound hands to the iron ring.

  ‘Turn around,’ he ordered. Reluctantly I allowed him to lower the knife behind my back and felt the blade brush against my skin as it dug into the twine around my wrists before snapping it. Blood began circulating into my stiff fingers again. Clancy sat back. I didn’t trust his snake’s eyes. I’d seen him release small boys, allowing them to get several paces away and take their first breath of relief before his foot flailed out to trip them again. His gesture couldn’t be humanitarian; it had to be an initial negotiating gambit. I couldn’t even be sure if McGuirk and Egan were actually gone. I watched him put the knife away and wipe sweat off his palms with a white handkerchief.

  ‘Wipe all you like,’ I said, ‘but there’s still blood on those hands. At least Barney never killed anyone.’

  Clancy folded the handkerchief and replaced it carefully in his pocket. ‘Granddaddy did enough killing for any family,’ he replied. ‘Michael Collins chose his apostles well, but even borrowing P. J.’s shotgun twice a year to fire the bloody thing and start golf classics gives me the willies. Your father died of a heart attack, Brendan. He was an old man, irascible, on tablets for high blood pressure. It could have happened at any time. I’m sorry for your troubles, but you’ve only made them deeper by butting in here. Now what do you want?’

  ‘You’re the man who knows the value of everything,’ I said angrily. ‘What price my silence, what price my father’s life?’

  ‘Your silence comes cheap, seeing as you face a jail sentence for embezzlement. As for your father, nobody can put a value on a man’s life.’

  ‘Why have Slick tie him up and terrorize him so? And why is my son being followed when he knows nothing about any of this?’

  ‘It’s news to me that anyone keeps following him,’ Clancy said, then shook his head, half-amused. ‘Though the fact is that Slick is obsessed by the boy. He fancies him if he’d only admit it. How do you know this?’

  ‘I spoke to the kid. He doesn’t even know who I am. Did you honestly believe my father would testify against Barney’s memory? He’d have walked into that tribunal and remembered nothing, pleading ignorance and senility. Now I have someone in Dublin with a complete list of your father’s account numbers which can be posted anonymously to Dublin Castle.’

  Clancy rested the shotgun under his arm as he undid his zip and urinated against the wall. ‘Go ahead and this will be your reward as far as I’m concerned,’ he replied. ‘You can have the steam off my piss. You were never the brightest, Brendan, so why not just drop the iron bar now?’

  He turned, with one hand unhurriedly doing up his zip and the other aiming the shotgun towards me. I couldn’t see how he knew that I had picked up the iron bar McGuirk had forced the lock with. He released the safety catch as I dropped it.

  ‘Maybe you missed it on your travels, Hen Boy, but some years back the Government brought in a convenient tax amnesty. It wasn’t just for Dublin drug-dealers and crooked Cork dentists who think that eating prawns in pink sauce with their wives in the Irish Club in London is posh living. It was a straight fifteen per cent on all money declared, with anonymity guaranteed and no questions asked. I don’t know what account numbers are on your list and how you would prove their connection to my father. What I do know, because I’d to virtually wring his neck to make him comply, is that any money in Daddy’s war chest smelt of roses by the time he died. It was an expensive move, later cost me a fortune in death duties, but I always knew a day of reckoning would come. Play the sleeveen informer, Brendan, but you won’t hurt my pocket, so you’ve picked the wrong man for a crooked little blackmailing scam.’

  ‘Yeah? Then why burgle his house if you’re so clean?’

  Clancy’s hands moved so fast that I was cer
tain I was about to be shot. I crouched, flinching and only just caught the shotgun before it hit the concrete floor. Puzzled, I clutched it and stared at him as he lit another cigarette.

  ‘Good thing you grabbed that,’ he commented, ‘it might have made an awful mess going off had it hit the floor. This isn’t about your father, Brendan. It’s personal, I see it in your eyes. I bet this is how you always dreamt of it, with you the big man this time, the bully with the gun. You like the sense of power, don’t you? You’ve seen me load it so come on, try aiming for my heart.’

  My hands shook as I raised the shotgun, suspicious yet somehow more scared now that I had the responsibility of the weapon. I’d had no time to think when aiming at his car in the yard. But here the actuality felt different from any fantasy played out in my mind. He watched impassively as I struggled with the sudden ability to splatter his brains against a wall.

  ‘You’ve every right to hate me,’ he said. ‘I made your life hell. I had the power back then, you see, that was the difference between us. People like Slick are born bullies but like most kids I just filled whatever role was allotted to me. I was my father’s son – even the teachers seemed half-afraid of me. You were one lonely snot-nosed fuck, but at times I envied you your freedom to be an insignificant nobody. Slick and P. J. stuck to me like fucking leeches, their daddies would have placed them in my cot if allowed to. Anything to keep close to the court of King Barney. I bullied them too, especially Slick, gave them tasks to be in my gang. They ate worms, rolled naked in mud. I knew their daddies would beat them black and blue if they dared fall out with me. But they were different, Slick especially, lapping it up like a rite of passage. Bullying you was almost a pure experience, the smell of your fear. You were such a perfect little victim. But victims grow up. So you have the gun now, Hen Boy, you even know where to bury me. All-The-Cows-Shat Manor. The cement will be dry by morning. It won’t help your son but do you care? You tried to kill me out in the yard, so what are you waiting for now, permission?’

  ‘Fuck you,’ I snapped, rattled.

  ‘Squeeze the trigger, Hen Boy. It will probably be like sex for you – unless you do it real slow it will be over so soon you’ll hardly even remember having done it.’

  The shotgun blast was louder than I could have ever imagined, deafening me and almost dislocating my shoulder. It took me a moment to make out Pete Clancy still standing in the same spot. His face was white, the cigarette had dropped from his hands and flakes of whitewash coated his hair and shoulders from a section of plaster blasted off the wall above him.

  ‘Missed,’ he noted wryly.

  ‘When I want to I’ll hit you,’ I replied. ‘Now shut the fuck up. You’re messing with my brain.’

  ‘I’m trying to clarify it. Like most people you don’t really know what you want. I wanted to kill Daddy in disgust when I found out all the scams and rackets he was tied up in. I mean I looked up to him just like you looked up to Eamonn. But surely you knew Eamonn was into every scam.’

  ‘I knew nothing.’

  ‘That’s what I tell people but they keep saying it was in front of our eyes. Every dog on every street knew, only none of them ever seemed to have bothered barking.’

  ‘I’ll use this other fucking barrel if you don’t shut up.’

  ‘Go on then, do so. I’m forty-four. Life is downhill from here, with my great future behind me. Maybe that’s why I sent our two friends packing. Maybe you’ll be doing me a favour.’

  I took two steps closer, bringing the hot barrel right up against his shirt. I wanted to see fear in his eyes, I craved respect.

  ‘Be afraid of me before I blow your brains out, you bullying cunt.’

  ‘Sorry, but you’d simply be murdering the wrong man.’ His gaze was man-to-man. ‘You can’t kill that school bully because he died long ago. Life killed him off slowly with a thousand little cuts, never letting him crawl out from Daddy’s shadow. He wanted to change the world, but junior ministers with clouds over their families change nothing. He grew up into somebody else, like you did on your travels, and neither of us can have our pasts back. We’re different people, Brendan. This “little-boy-inside-you” psychology shite is just shite that shrinks peddle so they can afford foreign holidays and conservatories. Our daddies both let us down, but this is between you and me, the way we are now, grown men of the world. I swear to you I had nothing to do with your father’s death or any danger your son is in.’

  ‘It’s not just between us,’ I reminded him. ‘Slick and P. J. know too much about me and I know too much about them.’

  ‘What P. J. knows and says are two different things. Slick is different and difficult. He never left that schoolyard. He was born a bully and will die one and like all true bullies he’s frightened of his own shadow. There was a time I could control him but not any more. He frightens me and should frighten you. Himself and your father were at war almost from the time Slab got so bad with the Alzheimer’s. I’ll be honest, we wanted Slick to rob the house in Cremore but when your father wasn’t in. P. J. and I knew nothing about him going on a solo run until he turned up shaking and crying. He didn’t mean to kill him, just went too far tying Eamonn up, like he goes too far with most things. He’s the man Conor has to watch out for.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He just is. After tonight he’ll want you dead and anyone else who might link him to Eamonn’s death.’

  Clancy stubbed out the smouldering cigarette with his toe. He knew I wasn’t going to shoot him. My stomach felt cold and queasy. Holding the shotgun gave no sense of power now. It felt childish and embarrassing.

  ‘That doesn’t mean we can’t get around Slick,’ he added. ‘I’m trusting you with my life here. But you’ve got to trust me in return.’

  ‘Maybe I’d sooner trust the devil.’

  ‘I’m as close as you get, except that I’m real and the devil’s a convenient fiction to scare children. I’ve only bought us this time because Slick thinks I’m burying you at present or at least beating you up so badly that you’ll never show your face again.’

  ‘You could always control Slick.’

  ‘Maybe there was a time when Daddy could throw Slab the odd bone, bend the rules, indicate the inside track. But politics has changed so much that you daren’t breathe now. Europe, civil servants, newspapers dissecting your every decision and peering up your arse day and night. It’s a liability for any builder to even know a politician now if he wants to get ahead. I’ve had to change, but Slick and P. J. simply took over where their daddies left off. Their vision never got bigger, just their greed. Apartments on every postage stamp of land they can buy up. Builders don’t stand for election, they needn’t give a fuck what anyone thinks of them. Making a holy show in the winners’ enclosure at Navan race track trying to impress strangers with champagne when some syndicated horse they own half a leg in comes home. Slick belongs nowhere except on a building site, while P. J. is better but still a generation away from not being a peasant. Neither trusts the other as far as he could throw him. But there was always more to you than met the eye, Brendan. That’s why I kept kicking you as a kid. One day this worm will turn and show us who he really is, I thought. Now, listen to me and listen close…’

  I didn’t want to listen. I had listened to Phyllis on the day I opened the locked bedroom in Navan. Afterwards I had never blamed her for beating me, I blamed myself for being stupid enough to hope that she meant what she said. I wanted to interrupt Clancy before I fell under that same spell. But his eyes never wavered, his voice was almost hypnotic. One shotgun barrel was still loaded. If he’d made a sudden movement I might have fired it. But he just stood still, talking.

  ‘A judge would call what Slick did to your father manslaughter, but only if it wasn’t his own father. Eamonn wouldn’t play ball with him, you see; even when Eamonn retired he remained too much the high and mighty civil servant. The problem with official keepers of secrets is that after a time nobody is quite sure what they know or don’
t know, what they might or mightn’t tell. After he retired he thought he would become a sort of prime-minister-in-exile up in Dublin with grateful old friends dropping in to receive advice and shower him with retainers as a consultant. Maybe Slab McGuirk promised him some sort of tin-pot role and Mossy buttered Eamonn up too. But the day Eamonn retired from Meath County Council he became yesterday’s man and in the real world Slick and P. J. were never going to be bound by some vague promise made by their fathers in the back of a pub.’

  ‘So they ditched him,’ I said.

  Clancy shrugged. ‘He was on to me day and night in the early years, ranting about promises broken and his “position”. I gave him any work I could –’

  ‘Rent collector,’ I jibed.

  ‘At least I gave him work. P. J. and Slick ignored him until the tribunals got them scared. It wasn’t his advice they needed now, but his silence on the past. They weren’t going to be ungenerous either, there was a decent backhander going for him to clear his attic. It didn’t have to be a suspicious fire or flooding. He hadn’t even been called as a witness at that stage. Hiring a skip was all that was needed and Slick needed it most because the Slab in his heyday was as big a crook as Eamonn was a hoarder. Slab kept most of his dealings in his head until he went daft. He’s in a home in Mullingar now without a snowball’s clue of who Slick is and why he won’t leave him alone. Meanwhile Slick is driving himself crazy not knowing what skeletons could jump out in the tribunal. Slick didn’t know Phyllis had been released from hospital, honest to God, he thought the house would be empty.’

  Clancy shivered as if cold. He looked tired and far older than his years.

  ‘Half the County Council task-force files were up in your father’s attic,’ he continued. ‘Slick already had two plastic sacks filled when your father took his heart attack. Something inside him died after you and Cormac went and even Daddy had problems retrieving documents from him. Slick had been getting more and more agitated about what papers Eamonn might be holding. Then three months ago he found out about the money.’