The Valparaiso Voyage

by Dermot Bolger

  ‘Why do you keep trying to scare me?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m trying to protect you.’

  ‘From what?’

  ‘Do you miss your grandfather?’

  ‘Yes,’ Conor replied. ‘Maybe it was how he died, but I still find myself in tears.’

  ‘Did you know him well?’

  Conor shrugged. ‘He was my grandfather, wasn’t he?’

  ‘That’s not the same thing.’

  Conor watched a bus pull out from the stop across the road. ‘I think I knew him,’ he said at length, ‘though we never had a proper grown-up conversation. I always stayed aged eight in his mind. When I’d help him do his garden as a kid he’d have a bag of chocolate buttons buried for me to find with my plastic fork. He’d laugh and say the fairies left them there. All he did out in the garden was play games and tricks with me. Mam says that after my own father died everything changed for him. Other people were always in a hurry, but Granddad found time to play, no matter what. I think he was gutted by Dad’s death. I don’t remember him much before that, I’m not sure he took much notice of me. But for a time afterwards we were so close it was almost scary. He’d never mentioned Dad, but sometimes when handing me a rake he’d say “Hold this, Brendan”, and not even be aware he was saying it.’ Conor looked at me. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Several youths emerged from a pub up the road and spilled out into the traffic. One shouted towards us.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Conor said, ‘they’re not coming this way. Besides, we don’t look suspicious. When I first came out I thought the whole world was watching, ready to pounce on me.’

  ‘Did you ever tell your grandfather?’

  ‘I never wanted to disappoint him. That sounds bad, like being gay is something to be ashamed of. But Granddad made me feel special, and I knew that, years ago, he and Uncle Cormac had a falling out. I think that Gran knew about me before I did, but she was different. I suppose maybe because Cormac wasn’t his own flesh and blood –’

  ‘That’s more lies they fed you.’ My anger was partly directed at myself for being too stupid to have figured the truth out years ago.

  ‘What are you saying?’ Conor was disturbed by my tone. ‘And what’s it to you anyway?’

  ‘Cormac was his son,’ I replied, ‘your half-uncle. But Phyllis is nothing to you. She was his mistress in Dublin while your real gran in Navan was being cheated on.’

  A gang of teenagers emerged across the road and waited to cross at the pedestrian lights, drinking from cans of beer. Conor glanced at them.

  ‘Leave my gran alone,’ he hissed, ‘and leave me alone too.’

  He walked off, making it obvious I was not to follow. The lights changed and the teenagers crossed over, following Conor down the path. There was something effeminate about his stooped shoulders. He had the same walk as Cormac when upset and vulnerable. One girl’s muttered comment was met by a laugh containing an edge of menace.

  Talking loudly they began to close on him, girls shouting, lads trying to outdo each other in bravado. Conor glanced behind, making himself more noticeable, then hurried slightly. A taxi stopped across the road, with two girls getting out and drawing a wolf-whistle from a youth in the pack. Conor glanced back again, drawing their attention even more.

  One girl looked around to notice me and said something. I couldn’t shake the image from my head of Conor and my father finding chocolate buttons in his garden and playing like we had never done. Cars streamed past the traffic lights at the off-licence, forcing Conor to halt. The gang was on top of him now. Grabbing a beer bottle discarded on the pavement, I rushed forward, ready to smash it for use as a jagged weapon if necessary. But the gang simply passed him and headed up Mobhi Road towards Ballymun.

  Conor crossed the road. He was shaking, though I couldn’t tell if it was because of the gang or what I had said. He glanced back, taking in my presence and the bottle clenched in my hand, then walked quickly on past the Addison Lodge pub. Dropping the bottle I dodged across the road, hearing brakes slam. My flesh and blood was as afraid of me as I had once been of my own father. I had almost caught up with him when he started running.

  A car turning right at the Pyramid church slowed him down as he tried to cross Botanic Avenue. He reached the far pavement and looked back as if defying me to follow. The road was clear but I waited, trying not to make him afraid. Then I walked very slowly towards him. I could hear the river behind the church, loud after rain.

  ‘What the hell do you really want?’

  ‘To talk.’

  ‘Why? Just who are you?’

  The lay-by at the Tolka House pub beyond the bridge was busy as motorists pulled in for a late drink. ‘Not here,’ I said. ‘Let’s go down to the river.’

  ‘You must be kidding, pal.’

  His tone annoyed me. ‘You know I don’t mean for that.’

  ‘How do I know what you mean? You give me the creeps and you wouldn’t be the first old lad to try and wheedle a sympathy hand-job out of me.’

  Conor’s deliberate attempt at crudeness infuriated me. He tried to back away as I grabbed his jacket.

  ‘Let me go or I’ll scream.’

  ‘You listen to me good,’ I hissed, pulling him close. ‘I don’t want anything like that and I’m sick of hearing you say it. We’re going for a walk by the river and you’ll listen to what I need to say.’

  I released my grip. Conor nodded slowly. ‘But not together,’ he insisted. ‘Not with people around. You go first, I’ll follow.’

  He turned to re-trace his steps without waiting for my reply. I walked on, past the church with its grotto and across the bridge before turning onto Mobhi Drive. When I looked back Conor had disappeared from sight. The long steps were steep as they descended to a narrow path secluded by a bank of shrubs. From above nobody could see who was down here and nobody down here could expect help if the wrong people were waiting. But tonight the riverbank was empty of cider parties.

  My hands still shook from holding Conor in an angry grip when I had longed to embrace him instead. Beneath the bridge I could glimpse the flash of a weir in the Botanic Gardens on the far side. I waited, listening to traffic pass above me and convinced that he wasn’t going to come until I looked up to see him watching from the bottom step. He glanced furtively along the path before approaching. Had he no memory of how his father had looked? I knew my appearance was different now, but we had been so close once. The more estranged I grew from Miriam, the more meals we ate in brittle silence, the more often I saw her remove her wedding ring when peeling potatoes and leave it on the draining board for hours almost as if hoping to lose it, the more important Conor had become to me. As a child, he had sensed the unspoken tension, clinging to me and not wanting me to leave his bed when I cuddled him at night.

  I longed to put my arms around him now. But I knew the slightest movement would frighten him away. Moonlight made his face so young. He stopped at what he judged was a safe distance if he had to flee.

  ‘I love you so much.’ The words came unbidden, but he didn’t turn away.

  ‘You don’t know me,’ he replied softly. ‘Even if you did, there’s nothing I can do.’

  He was trying to be gentle and not hurt me as he played at being wiser and older.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how to tell you. I’m frightened of losing whatever love you have left for me.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about? For the last time, I don’t know you.’ His unease was palpable.

  ‘Think. Please. Look at me.’ I removed my glasses and put them away. ‘You do know me. You just never thought to meet me again.’

  This time he didn’t reply. His gaze was quizzical and suddenly scared.

  ‘Your father and grandfather were never close. At least not after he re-married. Your grandfather had a new life then, he didn’t care; or, if he did, he didn’t know how to show it. He was caught in all kinds of contradictions, i
n the greed of that grab-all-you-can-and-bury-the-evidence world where he was Barney Clancy’s lap-dog. I hated him and yet I loved him. I wanted his respect, yet I wanted to kill him. Is it any wonder I was such a poxy father to you when I had only him for a role model?’

  Conor still didn’t speak. I sensed him desperately trying to comprehend what I was saying.

  ‘Surely to God you recognize your own father?’

  ‘Why?’ He spoke the word so softly that I almost didn’t hear it. I bit my lip, wanting to step towards him but not knowing if he would flee.

  ‘Why?’ His voice rose slightly above a whisper. ‘You bastard.’

  ‘I never stopped loving you.’

  ‘Why are you making up these lies?’

  ‘Look at me. I had a beard and my hair wasn’t red. But you have my eyes and my forehead. Can you not even see something of yourself here?’

  Conor took a step forward so that I was backed up against the wall, his face inches from mine as he stared with a mixture of fear and disbelief. I couldn’t tell whether he meant to kiss me or spit.

  ‘I don’t know you,’ he whispered.

  ‘You had a red blanket, Joe the Blank you called it. You took it everywhere. We had to wash and dry it when you were sleeping. The corner of the garden beside Boylan’s was your garage where you kept your plastic tools in a box, spending hours pretending to fix the yellow car we bought you. On your sixth birthday you fell outside the betting shop in Artane when I was putting a bet on. I made you promise to tell your mother it happened in the playground in Stephen’s Green. You have three tiny stitches above your temple, though the scar will be long gone by the time you grow bald like your grandfather.’

  ‘Dad?’ Barely even a whisper, it was the most beautiful word I had ever heard.

  ‘I’ve come home, son.’

  ‘Who says you can?’ Conor stepped back, struggling to control his emotions. ‘On my fourteenth birthday I looked up the newspaper accounts of the crash in the National Library. Until then part of me never accepted he was dead. I always had a secret hope he would turn up, having survived the crash but lost his memory, lost everything. But when I read the papers I finally accepted he was dead because no one could survive the fire on that train. You’re not him.’

  ‘You know I am. I boarded the train but got off again. I can’t explain, but I think Cormac was guiding me that day.’

  ‘You bastard.’ He was in tears now. ‘You fucking fuck of a bastard. You…’

  Footsteps pounded the steps above our heads. They stopped and we listened to a man urinate in the bushes. A voice called and the feet clambered up again. Conor seemed to be in shock, our conversation possessing the surrealism of a nightmare that he felt trapped within.

  ‘I knew from the moment it happened that what I did was wrong,’ I said. ‘But I had set a lie in motion and suddenly it was too late to stop.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because your mother and I…we were broke…in every sense. I’d wanted to give you both so much, yet all I gave was debts and grief. I made a mess by trying too hard to be a good father…’

  ‘You weren’t around to try at all.’ His bitterness was the more intense for being so quietly spoken.

  ‘When I was around you saw places you should never have seen,’ I said. ‘Bookie shops, money-lenders chasing me. You were bribed with crisps to sit outside pawnbrokers and never tell your mother afterwards.’

  ‘I fell in the playground in Stephen’s Green on my birthday.’ Conor was insistent. ‘I remember jumping off the slide and hitting the concrete.’

  ‘It was outside a bookie’s in Artane. You wouldn’t stop crying for your mother. I brought you into the Mater Hospital, asked the nurse in Casualty to keep an eye on you for a second. She thought I went to the toilet. I was racing to the bookie’s to see if my horse had come in. Afterwards I brought you to Stephen’s Green, gave you sweets and ice-cream, showed you the slide. We acted the accident out, making up the story between us.’

  ‘I’d have never lied to my mother.’

  ‘You lied because you loved me. We were men together.’

  Conor sat on the low wall, leaned against the exposed roots of a tree, and took out his cigarettes.

  ‘Can I have one?’ I asked as he lit up.

  ‘Buy your fucking own.’

  ‘I’m trying to tell you how it was and was always going to be. They would have repossessed our house if I’d stayed. I did the one thing I could do for you. By dying I could give you more money than I’d ever earn alive.’

  ‘Is that all you can talk about?’ he asked. ‘Has your whole life simply been about money?’

  ‘No.’ I sat down, at a careful distance. ‘It’s been about status, self-respect, proving that I was more than some fucking Hen Boy in a shed. I bet Phyllis never told you about my pain, eh, how I was treated? Suddenly the chance came when just for once in my life I could prove that I could get ahead. It was a scam and the world I grew up in valued scams above anything. Da’s friends talked of little else. Cheat the County Council, the taxman, the VAT-man, your wife, your friends, your neighbours, yourself. That was how you won respect, the slyer the better, the more devious the bigger a man you were. People thought I was a nobody in Navan, but I pulled off a bigger scam than they ever dreamt of. It was like a dream accumulator, an adrenaline rush so strong that I was finally free.’

  ‘Free from me and Mam,’ Conor said. ‘Free to fuck off while I cried for you at night.’

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘Free from the curse of being myself. All my life I’ve wanted to go somewhere.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Valparaiso.’

  Conor screwed up his eyes. ‘Where?’

  ‘It’s in Chile, I think, but it’s not a real place. I mean it is but it isn’t. It was an Irish poem we did in school about a man who sees a boat and longs to escape from the world he’s trapped in to a different life where he can start again as a different man.’

  Conor took a contemplative drag of his cigarette. ‘You abandoned us because of some poem?’

  ‘By the time I started thinking rationally again it was too late. Contacting your mother would have made her an accessory to a fraud.’

  Conor rose, tossing the half-finished cigarette into the water. ‘Then why couldn’t you stay dead where at least I might respect you?’

  ‘Conor…’ I stood up as well.

  ‘Don’t come any closer or I’ll throw you in that fucking river.’

  ‘I never stopped loving you.’

  ‘I don’t give a shit, pal.’ His shoulders were hunched like he’d been struck. ‘Things are bad enough just now without you turning up.’

  ‘I’ve come to sort those things out.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘It wasn’t a thug who burgled your grandfather’s house. You’re caught in something that should have been settled years ago. That’s why I didn’t want you going near town tonight. They know you drink in the Oliver Twist.’

  ‘Who the hell are they? Why do you keep trying to scare me?’

  ‘Former associates of your grandfather. The less you know about them the better. One of them thinks that he cheated him.’

  ‘And did he?’

  ‘I did…and Cormac…without knowing…we left my father to take the blame.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Jesus, Conor, when you get older you’ll realize there doesn’t always have to be a why. Now with your help I can do a deal.’

  ‘You mean you’ve only turned up because you hope to pull off another scam?’

  The half-truth in his accusation hurt.

  ‘I never found Valparaiso,’ I said, ‘just a succession of jobs and flats in cities that never felt like home. I was in hiding, always looking over my shoulder. But you could travel to real destinations, places you always wanted to see. I want you to have enough money to go anywhere you want.’

  ‘And you’re going to give it to me?’

  ‘Think of i
t as a gift from your grandfather who earned it in his own way.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘All you need know is that there’s money sitting in a bank in Jersey in your name.’

  ‘You mean it’s mine?’ Conor asked.

  ‘Thirty percent of it will be.’

  ‘Then why is it all in my name?’

  ‘Trust me,’ I said.

  ‘That’s rich from a gambler. And you get the rest, is that it?’

  ‘I get a passport so I can get the hell out of your life and leave you in peace.’

  ‘Then do exactly that,’ Conor said angrily. ‘Fuck you. And fuck whoever’s money it is too.’

  ‘Son…’

  ‘Don’t call me that. You lost the right years ago.’

  ‘I’m trying to earn it back.’

  ‘A bit fucking late,’ Conor snapped. ‘Where were you when I had no idea what was happening to my body? When I spent years tiptoeing around Mam’s grief, having to take your place? You’ll not earn it by robbing Phyllis. Any money Granddad left belongs to her first and to you and Aunt Sarah afterwards.’

  ‘I don’t want it.’

  ‘What makes you think I do? “Earned it in his own way.” It’s crooked you mean and every whisper about him was right. You’ve only come back to try and bring me and Mam down to your level.’

  ‘Leave my wife out of this.’

  For a moment I thought Conor was about to strike me. ‘She’s not your wife, damn you, she’s your widow.’ He lowered his voice, aware of footsteps on the bridge. ‘It’s true what they say,’ he hissed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Like father like son. Money was the real God for both of you.’

  ‘We’re totally different,’ I retorted. ‘You’ve no idea how he treated me. At least I want you to have what you’re entitled to.’

  Conor’s laughter was deliberately snide. ‘I’m entitled to nothing. You’re saying it’s hot money. Bribes or God knows what.’