The Valparaiso Voyage

by Dermot Bolger

  ‘I can put him down as an atheist,’ he suggested, then – upon deciding that my hysterics had grown into incoherent tears – simply wrote down ‘unknown’.

  They did give me a mild sedative while en route to the hospital in the ambulance. It held me together long enough to phone Miriam and then my father’s private office number. I dreaded having to phone Cremore if he wasn’t there, but the phone was picked up after one ring. My father the crook. It felt like phoning a stranger. His silence was so prolonged after I told him that I wondered whether he had hung up. I kept waiting for him to ask, ‘Why couldn’t you have minded him?’ Cormac had been released from the hospital into my charge and I was too incompetent to have kept him safe for even one night. Yet when my father spoke it was in the whisper of an old man as he thanked me for phoning him before Phyllis, as though I had done him a service. I felt the thick envelope in my pocket and almost told him about the money, torn between accusing him of using us and warning him about its disappearance. But then he was gone.

  From their tone I sensed the police had figured out that Cormac was gay. They seemed disconcerted to discover that the flat belonged to a specialist in the hospital to which we had taken Cormac’s body. They suggested that I break the news to Alex before they called later to take a statement. I had met Alex’s secretary once before. She recognized my face as I entered his suite of rooms.

  ‘He has patients all morning,’ she said stiffly, then lowered her voice. ‘He’s told me not to let Cormac near him. That probably means you too. It’s terrible, we all love Cormac here.’

  I felt more sorry for her, having to break the news, than for Alex. I waited until his first patient left and she came back out in tears.

  ‘He said nothing when I told him,’ she whispered, ‘just turned his face away like the blood was drained from it. To see him hunched there you wouldn’t know if he was alive or dead.’

  If I had confronted Alex myself I would have flung the fifteen thousand pounds on his desk before stalking out. But I hadn’t got the heart to drag his secretary into the quarrel by handing her the money.

  The police were waiting for me with more questions. After contacting the hospital in Dundee and their colleagues in Aberfeldy they had now absolved me of suspicion. I sat on in the canteen after they told me that I was free to go, almost paralysed by the responsibilities ahead. Finally I returned to the apartment. A policeman on duty asked me to touch nothing in the living-room where he had died. Cormac’s bedroom was cluttered, with bundles of clothes taken out as if he had made a half-hearted attempt to pack.

  I opened a drawer which contained a hardback book of 1950s art photographs – young men naked except for the remnants of cowboy outfits or Roman gladiator garb. There was nothing pornographic about them. The men were obvious amateurs, enjoying the novelty of play-acting out fantasies as they waited for their real lives to begin. I closed the book and picked up Cormac’s passport beside it. His photograph, taken just a few months before, had the same quality of barely suspended disbelief, as if Cormac was struggling to keep a straight face in the role he found himself in. The policeman opened the door, keeping a discreet eye on me. I pocketed the passport and closed the drawer.

  My memories now were shattered by a noise behind me in Gardner Street church. A young Garda officer stood there, as if having materialized from nowhere. I fought against the irrational conviction that he was pursuing me – an echo of the panic which often swamped me upon seeing police officers during my early days in Europe. But he seemed to be routinely checking the church as he ascended the centre aisle, making as little noise as possible, and then retreated, happy that nobody untoward lurked there. My perception about his presence changed. Possibly it was lack of sleep, but I became convinced that he was a sign, sent by Christ or Cormac or whoever might extract me from this mess.

  The nearest police station was beside Mountjoy Prison on the North Circular Road. Maybe just for once I could break with every instinct bred into me. It wasn’t that people didn’t tell the truth in Ireland when I was growing up, it was just that we told invented truths so vehemently that we wound up believing them ourselves. If I went to the police I would probably end up in jail, but Miriam might not have to return the insurance money. Everything seemed secondary now to keeping Conor safe from Slick McGuirk’s clutches. I desperately needed advice as I left the church and returned to Ebun’s front door.

  I had no more success than before and no idea of where an asylum-seeker with almost no money would spend her days in Dublin. I walked the length of Dorset Street, then onto Dominick Street and doubled back along Parnell Street. Dozens of small shops had sprung up, with black faces in the windows and children peering from doorways. I looked into each one, hoping to glimpse her. Foreign faces gazed back, cautious or belligerent, then indifferent as they sensed I was not a threat.

  I arrived back at her flat to ring her bell and then every other bell in the hope of someone opening the front door. Nobody did, though a window opened high up and a head peered down in silence before withdrawing again, ignoring my shout. I needed rest and knew I should return to my hotel. Yet despite my exhaustion I couldn’t stop walking.

  The North Circular Road was choked with lorries. Traffic-calming ramps and tiny roundabouts in garish brickwork lent a Noddyland feel to the adjoining narrow streets where Phyllis had been born. The grocer’s shop beside the police station had become an accountant’s practice. My mind was decided, I was giving myself up. Fuck Clancy and Slick and fuck my father’s reputation too. I might go down but I would bring them with me for burglary, manslaughter and tax evasion.

  The public office looked the same as I remembered it, the old clock on the wall, huge ledgers waiting to be filled out. A sergeant looked up from the phone, indicating that he would be with me shortly. An old man sat on a chair, dazed, his hand bandaged. I tried to rehearse my statement about how a Meath builder was threatening my son. Except that Conor knew nothing about it, not even that I was alive. The only proof was my word – as a man who had spent the past decade living a lie – against that of a respected junior Government minister.

  I had no documentation to link the bank accounts in Conor’s name to anyone, while a maze of offshore companies protected Clancy and McGuirk from any connection to the sale of the land the money had come from. No doubt an investigation might eventually yield some damaging evidence, but the tribunals had only been grudgingly set up by the politicians because of their own reluctance to tell the truth. For decades the police and revenue commissioners had known better than to dare investigate such matters. Any statement I gave might take years to be acted upon and in the meantime Slick would still hover dangerously in the background, in dread of being implicated with his other accounts and dealings under scrutiny. It might further panic him into violence with the police refusing to act until Conor was seriously hurt.

  The only person who could back up my accusations was Phyllis. She must know that my father had recognized Slick when he bent over to ungag him. Yet, through fear or loyalty, she had deliberately altered my father’s dying word. Her silence would remain steadfast because my father would not want a Clancy in trouble, even to avenge his own death. Phyllis would disown me and Clancy deny having seen me in ten years. His e-mails were proof of nothing except having politely answered an anonymous crank. There wasn’t even a message to confirm that he would show up.

  The sergeant put down the phone and walked over to the counter. ‘How can I help you?’ he enquired.

  I started trembling, not even thinking about Conor now. Clancy always had my measure and knew that I was too cowardly to face being confined to a cell. I had done my time as a child. The thought of bars and doors was terrifying. I felt claustrophobic just standing in this police station. The sergeant leaned forward, watching me closely.

  ‘You have forms for a driver’s licence,’ I stammered.

  ‘Maybe we do.’ He produced one, holding it slightly away from me. ‘Will that be all?’

&n
bsp; ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  He didn’t bring the form any closer so I had to reach for it with my hand shaking. I walked out, aware of him observing me quizzically. I didn’t look back, cutting along Berkeley Street towards the Mater Hospital. Turning down Eccles Street I wanted to run. Pete Clancy had me by the balls. Nobody would believe my word. All I could achieve by blabbing would be to screw up Conor’s world. His life with Miriam would collapse in a welter of suspicions. P. J. Egan might be less impulsive than Slick but he would be more clinically lethal if he felt in danger of being drawn into any investigation. I had no option but to persuade Conor to travel to Jersey and trust Pete Clancy to clear up this mess before McGuirk panicked at my reappearance and got to Conor before me.

  I knew that Clancy would make sure that Conor received his share of the money, because he only felt safe doing business with those who were implicated too. But I would insist on also travelling to Jersey to watch over him in the way that I had failed with Cormac. After that I would vanish from his life forever.

  The man in the black leather jacket was discreetly begging outside the Mater Hospital again. I gazed up at the windows behind which Phyllis lay dying. If my father hadn’t persuaded me to meet her in Glasgow airport after Cormac died I might never have disappeared. I had always done everything possible to avoid being alone with her, because she had become not just a hate figure but a repository of blame for my every failing.

  Yet I felt so alone now that it took all my will power not to enter the smoked-glass hospital doors. Even if Phyllis and I had only hatred in common, surely if I stood beside her bed she would have looked into my eyes and recognized our common rank in the fellowship of the truly guilty.

  Two hours sleep left me drained and sickened in myself when the alarm clock woke me in my hotel. But eight o’clock found me back outside Ebun’s front door, ringing any bell that might gain me admission to the house. Eventually I heard footsteps and a woman’s voice shouted something in a language I could not understand. I knocked insistently and, after what seemed a moment’s hesitation, she opened the door.

  ‘Ebun,’ I said. ‘I want to see Ebun.’

  She stared blankly at me and tried to close the door again, then stepped back, scared of being attacked, when I forced it ajar with my foot. Repeating the same phrase, she looked over her shoulder into the empty hall for support. Her lack of English made me angry, her apparition in this city where people should understand me and the way she brought home how lost I was.

  ‘Ebun!’ I pointed upward and she shook her head, cowering against the wall when I brushed past. Without those bank statements I could do nothing. I just wanted them back in my possession now and to get on with what had to be done. The house had never seemed so empty, my footsteps loud as I climbed the stairs, knowing in my heart that Ebun or Lekan or Niyi weren’t in. I knocked repeatedly, aware of the scared woman in the hallway. If men arrived who spoke her language I could be in trouble. I pounded Ebun’s door a final time, filled by an irrational foreboding of things slipping beyond my control, then ran down past the woman and back out onto Gardner Street.

  Eight-fifteen. At what time would Conor leave for the Oliver Twist? Surely Miriam didn’t let him go drinking every night of his mid-term break? I was aware of my hypocrisy in questioning her parenting skills, but tonight I didn’t want him going there. Not that Slick McGuirk would set foot inside a gay bar – being too terrified of what he might see or find reflected about himself. But I could imagine him parked outside watching.

  I walked up the long straight length of Whitworth Road, hearing a train pass along the tracks far below the wall that bordered the road. The pool-hall that Cormac once loved was still down a lane beside the canal at Cross Guns Bridge. Clusters of new apartments were crammed behind the railings of the old orphanage. Two buses passed while I tried to scan the faces in the upstairs windows.

  The off-licence on the corner at the end of Botanic Road had a new name. Around the corner, even the Botanic Gardens had changed, with raised paving stones outside the entrance where cars used to park. This was as close to Cremore as I dared to go. I boarded the first bus into town, and scanned the seats upstairs before disembarking at the next stop. I did the same with the next two buses in search of Conor. There was a twenty-minute wait before a fourth bus arrived, as I shivered with the cold, not even sure if I had already missed him.

  But he was upstairs when the bus came, at a quarter-past-ten. I saw him look down from an upstairs window, surprised and suspicious to see me. Nobody else sat at the front of the bus. He glanced across as I sat beside him.

  ‘I was hoping to catch you,’ I said.

  ‘I’d never have guessed.’ His tone was sarcastic, but not overtly hostile.

  ‘Don’t go into town tonight, Conor. Let’s have a drink around here.’

  He shook his head, amused. ‘I’ve told you before, you’re not my type.’

  ‘I really need to talk to you properly.’

  He glanced at. a couple in the rear of the bus oblivious to anyone but themselves. ‘You’re a bloody nuisance,’ he grumbled, but was still flattered enough by my attention to ring the bell. We got off at Hart’s Corner.

  ‘Where to now?’ he asked.

  As a parent I should not be encouraging him to drink at his age, but we could hardly walk around the streets all night. Besides, I needed a whiskey for my nerves.

  ‘Is Kavanagh’s – the gravediggers’ pub – still there?’

  He nodded. We walked in almost companionable silence down the narrow lane into D’Corcy Square. At first the small Victorian houses seemed unchanged since the time when it was one of Cormac’s favourite haunts, but up close I could see that many had been modernized as old inhabitants died off and young professionals moved in. A disused gate into the oldest part of Glasnevin cemetery dominated the square. Kavanagh’s itself backed onto the graveyard, although the hatch where gravediggers once knocked for porter was long since closed off.

  Music came from the lounge, but the bar looked unchanged since the 1980s when cemetery workers, hardchaws and students shared its counter with a hard-drinking Abbey actor whose much scribbled copy of the Racing Post bore testimony to our shared obsession.

  Conor grew uneasy as we entered. I understood why. His chances of getting served on his own were small, but I beckoned him over to two stools in a dark corner and ordered for us both. The barman glanced down.

  ‘Is he over eighteen?’

  ‘We’re celebrating his birthday. Don’t worry.’

  He hesitated, then reluctantly decided to trust me. The pints he pulled seemed to take forever to settle and be refilled, while I stood at the bar, downing the brandy I had ordered for myself as well. I glanced over at Conor. A son’s first pint with his father was a landmark moment in the Irish psyche. My father had brought me for such a drink on my eighteenth birthday in Dublin, going through an old Navan ritual with neither of us knowing what to say to the other. I carried the pints down, aware that Conor was oblivious to their significance.

  ‘Cheers,’ he said, taking a sup, then looked up, aware of me intently watching him. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Cheers.’ I took a long sup of my pint as well.

  ‘You look like you were in a fight,’ Conor said. ‘What is it you want to talk about?’

  ‘Your grandfather.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Did he get upset when graffiti about you appeared outside your old school?’

  ‘We never told him. Why upset the old lad?’

  ‘Because maybe that’s what the graffiti was meant to do. Maybe it had nothing to do with you.’

  ‘It was just lads acting the bollix.’

  ‘Lads today can spell “queer”.’

  Conor set down his pint with a bang that caused the barman to look across.

  ‘You give me the creeps,’ he said, openly suspicious now. ‘Something about you. I’m going into town.’

  ‘Listen to me…’

  ‘You listen. I n
ever told you that “queer” was misspelt on the wall. How could you know, unless you wrote it yourself? Is that what you’re telling me? You were trying to get at Granddad?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then why do I mistrust every word from your mouth?’

  ‘You’re caught up in something you know nothing about, Conor. Men have been following you.’

  ‘I’m looking at one of them,’ he interjected.

  ‘I’m trying to sort out a mess your grandfather should have settled years ago.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I care about you.’

  Our voices had attracted the manager who appeared at the counter, looking down at us and obviously reprimanding the barman. Conor finished off his pint in one gulp, aware of their scrutiny.

  ‘I want to leave now,’ he said.

  Draining my glass, I followed him out. A cat watched us from beneath a parked car, then ran out to squeeze through the cemetery gate.

  ‘I’m getting a bus into town,’ Conor said, ‘and I want you to leave me alone.’

  ‘Let me walk you home instead.’

  ‘I’m not going bloody home.’

  ‘It’s late.’

  ‘Maybe it is for you.’ He turned away as three women left the pub and walked towards a car, talking loudly.

  ‘I wasn’t even in Ireland when that graffiti was written,’ I said, when they had passed. ‘Now please, don’t go near the Oliver Twist tonight.’

  The women drove off, leaving us alone.

  ‘All right,’ he shrugged. ‘You’ve ruined my night anyway. But walk me to the main road and nowhere else.’

  A narrow lane led onto Botanic Road. The last time I had walked down it was with Cormac and a straggle of drinkers invited to some impromptu party on Marguerite Road. There was a fall of snow that night and we slid about, laughing when people slipped to the ground. I wanted to share a hundred such memories with Conor, who kept his distance, seemingly eager to escape. Yet he lingered at the corner when we reached the main road.