The Valparaiso Voyage

by Dermot Bolger

  A fox appeared at the gate, sniffing the air and eyeing us distrustfully. He crossed the cobbles cautiously, then bolted into the undergrowth.

  ‘When Daddy died Eamonn became like a sort of scared keeper of Daddy’s memory,’ Clancy went on. ‘The slightest innuendo and he would start firing letters off to the papers. He was obsessive about Daddy’s achievements being lost under accusations of sleaze. But that’s politics – the new stallion always has to piss in every corner of the stable to douse the scent of the old one. Eamonn said he was writing a book about Daddy. He was doting and getting dangerous. He had minutes of meetings that were dynamite. All over Ireland company accounts were being shredded, people losing bank statements and their memories and he was hoarding documents to write an apologia for an era. Slick went too far but he wasn’t just desperate for Slab’s money, he was terrified of being contaminated.

  ‘The money is in limbo now,’ Clancy continued. ‘Only two people could activate those accounts – your father and the family member whose name he put them in.’ He looked at me. ‘How did you clear the second account out?’

  ‘I’ve travelled on Cormac’s passport ever since I disappeared.’

  ‘You always were a man for the gamble.’ Clancy paused, letting his meaning come clear. ‘I’d say you’re still a gambler.’

  ‘I haven’t bet for four years. I lost everything so often that I’d nothing left to lose.’

  ‘You took a gamble coming here. If you have those last account numbers and the mandates, why didn’t you just go to Jersey to clean them out and run?’

  ‘Firstly I want my son to stop being hassled,’ I replied. ‘Secondly I can’t get Cormac’s passport renewed without checks being done on it back in Ireland.’

  The barely suppressed flicker of a smile crossed his face. ‘So you thought to try your local TD, did you?’

  ‘Fuck you, Clancy.’

  ‘That’s more like it. Maybe one time a TD could swing a passport. Before computerization and officials started tightening regulations up.’

  ‘Are you saying it can’t be done?’

  ‘When does it expire?’

  ‘A few weeks.’

  ‘Time enough for someone to enjoy a short break in Jersey and return home with everyone’s problems solved. That is if you really have the account mandates.’

  ‘I’ve told you I do.’

  ‘With who? Your queer son?’

  ‘Stop calling him that.’

  ‘Slick has become an expert on gay bars. He won’t let this money go. He feels that people made fun of Slab for years and used his illness to cheat him. He’s convinced your family is holding out on him.’

  ‘Conor knows nothing. I want a guarantee that Slick never goes near him again, a fresh passport and five thousand Euros to get me the hell away from here.’

  ‘You work cheap.’

  ‘I also want our own tax amnesty. Twenty-five per cent of all monies go into a legal, up-front account for Conor. Slick’s accountant can structure it as an anonymous trust fund. The boy need never know where it came from.’

  ‘Slick is greedy. He won’t like it.’

  ‘He’ll huff and puff, but he’ll do what you tell him. Only for Conor I’d cut his heart out for what he did to my father. But I need to disappear again without fuss for the boy’s sake. How do you explain the missing money Cormac and I took?’

  ‘Slick doesn’t know how much there is. Don’t forget he’s still as thick as shite on a blanket. P. J. and I will puff up whatever he gets in his mind until he feels like a dog with two mickies, especially if he knows you’ve vanished. He’s having nightmares since your father died, seeing his ghost in every corner.’

  ‘Who broke in during the funeral?’ I asked.

  ‘Slick is a loose cannon.’ Clancy drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. ‘P. J. stuck to him like glue after the event, knowing he’d fuck up alone. We were all at the church for the funeral, but Slick vamoosed when the cortege was heading for Navan. P. J. followed him to Cremore where Slick was scouring the attic again. P. J. tried to burn the place down. With P. J. what you see is what you get – a heartless bastard.’ He started the engine, then stopped. ‘His shotgun,’ he said, with a laugh. ‘Where would I be for starting golf classics without it?’

  I had left it on the byre floor. He climbed out, with the engine running, and walked back to retrieve it. A minute passed, then two, as I sat there alone. If I wished to I could simply drive off, abandoning him and his plan. Maybe he was deliberately giving me time to consider that option. All my life I had hated Pete Clancy. I’d come seeking revenge but wound up agreeing to run risks for him like a messenger boy. I told myself it was for Conor’s sake. But part of me was thrilled just for once to be inside the big boys’ clique.

  The prickling sensation I got before placing a bet possessed me. Odds played out a terrible familiar dance inside my head, that obsessive yearning for the adrenaline rush of success; once a gambler, always a gambler. I had sat in Gamblers Anonymous meetings in different cities, forsaking greyhounds, horses, football results, boxing matches, blackjack, poker, slot machines, roulette wheels, but always some other medium turned up for the poison to seep out.

  I closed my eyes to imagine that bank in Jersey, the gleaming white portico, the inner office. The risks would be higher after all these years, with every crooked banker in Europe knowing there were too many investigations for comfort in Ireland. An Irish passport would not be a welcome sight, but they might be happy to see the back of those final accounts.

  If I was caught Clancy would deny all knowledge of me. But the nerve-ends of my fingers tingled, pumped up, hungry for risk.

  There was still no sign of Clancy in the rear-view mirror. I opened the glove compartment, which contained a pile of party leaflets and a photo. Taken abroad under a non-Irish sky, it showed Pete Clancy with his arm around his wife, while two young girls smiled shyly beside their mother and a boy of ten stood beside him, staring almost belligerently at the camera. The boy had a Simpsons T-shirt and shorts with a Manchester United logo. His haircut was stylish, yet his eyes and mouth belonged in a schoolyard long ago. He looked more like the Pete Clancy I knew than the man I had just spoken too.

  ‘The Clancy clan.’ Pete’s voice startled me through the open window. I had not heard him approach. I replaced the photo as he climbed in. ‘I keep it with me. Sometimes I need to be reminded why I put up with all the shite I have to deal with, just who I’m building a future for.’ He released the handbrake and eased the car slowly down the overgrown lane. ‘The girls are lovely, aren’t they? They take after their mother,’ he added. ‘I need to protect them. I had enough rumours about my father thrown at me as a kid. I don’t want them to ever have to make the excuses I’ve had to make for him. You understand that, you’re a father too.’ He swung left, driving slowly so that overhanging branches wouldn’t scrape his paintwork. ‘Getting a passport will be risky.’ He looked across. ‘It’s a good thing we’re old friends.’

  ‘We were never friends…’

  ‘We go back a long way. There’s few enough people left who understand where we came from. I’ve more in common with you than with those two monkeys on my back. You don’t have to like someone to be their friend. Now do we have a deal?’

  Steering with his left hand he spat into his right palm and held it out, the way cattlemen did in the square in Navan years ago while dumb beasts waited for slaughter. I couldn’t tell if he was being ironic or genuine. I didn’t go so far as to spit into my own palm, but cautiously I gripped his hand and shook it.

  ‘Get me a plane ticket,’ I said, ‘and I’ll go.’

  We had reached the road. Clancy glanced left and right, anxious that no early motorist would spy us. ‘That’s the thing,’ he replied, ‘you won’t have to.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Two months after you died Eamonn told Daddy he was switching the accounts out of Cormac’s name. He said it was because Cormac had passed away, b
ut now I realize he was afraid of the rest of the money being stolen. Cormac’s passport will get you nowhere in Jersey.’

  ‘Then what the hell have we been talking about?’ I asked, puzzled. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Persuade. Provide sound fatherly advice. You know how sons always look up to their fathers.’

  He allowed the implication to sink in.

  ‘No way,’ I said, ‘no, no, no.’

  ‘Why do you think Slick keeps following Conor like a dog? Those accounts are in Conor’s name. Since your father died he’s been Slick’s only hope. I’ve managed to hold off Slick until we discovered if Conor held the mandates or not. I don’t want him hurt and neither do you. Slick would be less than subtle in any approach, especially since you’ve turned up. He’ll feel that your whole family is working together, trying to cheat him. I can’t be involved, so it makes sense than you persuade Conor. Tell him anything you want, but as little as possible, and most especially don’t mention me. This is Eamonn’s mess. Conor’s had to leave one school because of graffiti on the wall – not that Eamonn wasn’t warned in advance. CONOR BROGAN IS A QUEAR. Slick was never good at spelling. The boy seems to have settled into a new school in Glasnevin, and your wife is vulnerable enough in that house if Slick flips. I’d hate for things to come tumbling down.’

  ‘Is that a threat?’

  ‘I’m threatening nobody. I’m sick of the whole business. I’m telling you I can’t hold Slick off forever. Your son is in danger. You haven’t been much of a father so far, so here’s your chance.’

  ‘The boy doesn’t even know who I am.’

  ‘Then maybe it’s time he found out and discovered just how much shite his mother will be in if you stick around much longer. Nobody else knows, do they?’

  His voice was sharp. I thought of Ebun. ‘Of course not. You’re one bad bastard, Clancy, you always were.’

  ‘I’m my father’s son. He trained me for this job. Apply every bit of useable dirt subtly, when the time is right. Slick is a peasant, frightened of queers because he’s one himself and Conor had such a pretty face at Eamonn’s funeral that I’d hate to see it destroyed.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ I said. ‘I’m taking no risks with my boy. I’ll make a clean breast of everything to the cops.’

  I stepped out of the car and started walking. After twenty yards I heard the car start to follow. Clancy slowed down and lowered his window.

  ‘Don’t stalk off on me, like you walked off on your family. Thirty per cent to your boy, six grand to you and a fresh passport. That’s a lot for you both to gain, but by Christ you’ve far more to lose. Go to the cops and what proof do you have of anything? I have an alibi for tonight, just like Slick has an alibi for the night your father died. You’ll just do six years for embezzlement, your wife may be charged as an accessory, and your son will be left holding two illegal bank accounts he can’t explain. At nine a.m. on Thursday bring him to Dublin airport with the mandates. My name is not to be mentioned. A ticket will be waiting for Conor. Don’t worry about his passport, Slick stole it from the house on the day of the funeral. P. J. will hand it to him before he goes into departures and will be on the plane to give him instructions. Give your old passport and a new photo to P. J.. Meet me here at midnight on Thursday with the Shyroyal documents. I’ll have your fresh passport and cash. After that I never expect to see you or your family again.’

  The sickness in my stomach was an echo of the sensation I had known a lifetime before lying under my bed in Navan with a pool of urine seeping into my clothes.

  ‘You bastard!’

  Clancy touched a button and the window began to wind up. ‘Everything will be settled, Hen Boy,’ he said. ‘Just like your father would have wanted.’

  I heard a truck in the distance. Clancy accelerated away before it came into sight. The truck driver glanced at me as I sat on the grass verge, then shook his head, dismissing me as another drunk taking the long way home.

  V

  TUESDAY, DAWN

  It began to rain as I walked towards Navan, the sort of torrential downpour that rarely lasts long in Ireland. But it caused entire colonies of snails to materialize on stone walls, antennae raised, bodies straining forward on tortuous journeys. The sight made me sick as I picked my steps carefully along parts of the flooded road to avoid crushing them. I felt mugged, robbed of a treasured possession that was worthless to anyone else. The fantasy of a reconciliation with Conor had always existed in my mind, the moment when I decided to reveal who I was on my own terms and tried to make sense of my life. Now Clancy had stolen that moment from me, leaving me with an impossible choice. Any approach I made now would have to be to persuade Conor to collaborate with men who killed his grandfather. Yet by shirking that task I might leave him at the mercy of McGuirk’s unpredictable violence.

  Without the mandates Slick McGuirk was stymied. But destroying them and disappearing would serve no purpose. He would presume I had given them to Conor to claim the money or I was biding my time by keeping them for myself. Either way Conor could get hurt, while Slick tried to extract them from him or else as a warning to me of what might happen if I didn’t return and cooperate. It was impossible to decide which lesser evil would best protect my son. For now only the last vestige of authority conjured by the Clancy name kept Slick in his box. If Pete Clancy was the devil, at least he was the devil I knew. But it wasn’t my soul that I was being forced to bargain with.

  I was drenched to the skin, not even bothering to try and hitch a lift from the occasional vehicle passing in the dawn light. When a truck stopped unbidden twenty yards in front of me, I cursed the driver, wanting to be alone. Yet I climbed up into the cab when he leaned over to open the passenger door.

  ‘Did she kick you out of the bed from getting crumbs on the pillow?’ he asked heartily. ‘Where in the name of Jaysus would you be going on a morning like this? Is Navan any good to you?’

  ‘It never was before.’

  He studied my face, then laughed. ‘Jaysus, but you’re an awful man,’ he said. ‘It must be a woman has you this shook up. There’s no smell of drink off you at all.’

  Occasionally he shouted some question at me over the rattle of the engine, then shook his head, amused at my lack of response. I didn’t have to ask myself what Cormac would have said to him in this situation. He would have said nothing. Cormac had remained steadfastly silent on the evening, ten years ago, when a farmer stopped to pick him up in the rain near Kinloch Rannoch in Scotland, after walking for two days. The farmer pulled in outside the police station in Aberfeldy, leaving his mute passenger in the car. Cormac made no attempt to flee and offered no resistance to the police officer who first suggested he leave the car and then physically helped him to do so. He had committed no crime. When they put him in an empty cell it was purely because it contained a bed that he would lie on until examined by a doctor.

  That night was the second time in my life when the police came looking for me. Miriam had hovered at the top of the stairs, convinced I was going to be arrested for something I had not told her about. I was convinced too, the moment I saw the uniforms. I had felt a strange surge of relief that finally I was caught for some unspecified crime, out of the thousands that I felt I deserved to be charged with. Instead they were as apologetic as the policemen who had called to the North Circular Road on the night when Lisa Hanlon tried to drown herself. They came because our phone was off the hook all evening, with me blaming Conor when it was a trick I often did myself for fear of who might phone looking for money with Miriam in. I should not be alarmed, the police said. There was nothing physically wrong with Cormac. He had been found in a distressed state and gave their Scottish counterparts my name as next of kin. It was advisable that someone be with him, as a precaution in case he inflicted damage on himself.

  Cormac was a Trinity graduate, I explained, knowing this would impress them. He had gone to Scotland five years ago for work. They nodded, recounting tales of distant relatives w
ho graduated with first-class degrees, yet wound up working in petrol stations here before being forced abroad. ‘Emigration’s a killer,’ one stated, ‘especially for the man with brains.’ They drove off, relieved that I had found a way to avoid discussing what might actually be wrong with Cormac. It was five years to the month since Cormac had phoned one Friday evening, bubbling with excitement, while Alex’s half-exasperated voice scolded him in the background.

  ‘We’re on the move,’ Cormac announced. ‘Alex told me just this second. He’s been offered a job in Perth. I’ve always wanted to see Australia.’

  I could hear Alex in the background shouting: ‘Can you never listen to what I’m saying to you?’ Cormac had sounded like an upset child as he replied: ‘He’s my brother, I want to tell him first.’ Their voices grew faint, as if Cormac had dropped the phone, leaving me feeling like a voyeur as I strained to hear them. There was a silence before Cormac picked up the phone, his voice filled with disbelief. ‘Cancel the champagne,’ he said. ‘It’s Perth in bloody Scotland.’

  The words Scotland and bloody co-existed in most of Cormac’s sentences over the next five years, even though, despite himself, he quickly adapted to life over there. The adjective was more ironic than anything else. Bloody Perth was like Navan with fewer pubs and more Protestants. Bloody Edinburgh was as repressed as a priest in a closet. Bloody Glasgow was like Westmoreland Street on a Friday night, filmed by Cecil B. De Mille. Local mocking slang entered his speech, with Aberdeen becoming Scabadeen and Dundee Scumdee, but the more he complained in letters and phone calls, the more I knew that behind the bluster, he was having a ball.

  Some evenings I came home to find that he had kept Miriam on the phone for an hour, enquiring about correct temperatures for clothes in a washing machine and recipes for brown bread. ‘The day he bursts into “Such are the dreams of the everyday housewife” I’ll shoot him,’ Miriam would declare, exhausted from her day’s work in the Citizens Advice Centre, while Conor crawled around at her feet. I doubted if Cormac’s safaris into domesticity lasted long, but he loved the notion of us both being settled down, and, indeed, for most of those years he and Alex seemed a more happily married couple than Miriam and I.