The Valparaiso Voyage

by Dermot Bolger

  ‘He never took a penny for himself. A whole chain of people used him. Nobody was innocent back then, the whole nation was on the fiddle. He was a man of his generation.’

  ‘And you’re one of yours,’ Conor sneered. ‘I want no part of your scam, so piss off and stay dead!’

  ‘I’m your father.’

  ‘I have a mother and a gran, nobody else.’

  ‘She’s not your gran,’ I said.

  ‘She feels more like a gran than you’ll ever feel like a father.’

  ‘Get rid of me so. Do this for my sake if not your own. I never wanted to ask you for anything, but without a fresh passport I’ll be found out. It was your grandfather who put your name on those accounts, not me. The man who owns that money is a savage. He was the bastard who broke into Cremore the night your granddad died, the one who tried to lure you into that car. You’re the only person who can unlock those accounts and he won’t leave you alone until you do. I’m trying to protect you and your mother. If you do this then I promise to vanish and make sure you’ve enough money to be whatever you want.’

  ‘I don’t need to buy a life,’ Conor snapped. ‘I already have one you know nothing about!’

  ‘Maybe I know more than you think,’ I snapped back. ‘I saw you sucking Charles’s cock up in your room.’

  ‘When?’ Conor was suddenly scared again.

  ‘It was me who disturbed you on Sunday night.’

  ‘You were spying on us?’

  ‘I didn’t know you lived there. I was looking for the bank codes that they couldn’t find.’

  ‘So you’re in league with them after what they did to Granddad?’

  ‘I hate them more than you’ll ever do.’

  ‘Then go to the police.’

  ‘How can I? I don’t exist.’

  ‘I do.’ Conor’s voice was quiet but hard-edged. ‘Let me nail the bastards.’

  ‘It’s not so simple.’

  ‘Maybe not for you. On the day I came out I swore that I’d face down every bastard and bully.’

  ‘Your grandfather was part and parcel of them. Things would come out in court that he’d never want uncovered. Now I can’t bring him back and I don’t want you in more danger.’

  ‘What do you want for Mam?’

  ‘What I always wanted. To make her happy.’

  ‘Is that some kind of joke?’

  ‘We were happy at first. She was special and made me feel special. I’d never felt special before.’

  ‘She deserved better than to be cheated.’

  ‘It was a different country, Conor, with no hope. I loved you so much that I wanted you never to be part of my cheating again. Never to be forced to tell lies. I loved you more than I loved her and she resented it. I knew she’d leave me when she found out how much we were in debt. I’d be on the outside, cap in hand, fighting to be allowed to take you out for a few hours at weekends. I couldn’t have borne living with you so close and yet out of reach, so I stood aside and let her keep everything.’

  I don’t know what response I expected. I had lived out this moment on numerous occasions, imagining us meeting in hotel lounges or by chance on trains. Father and son recognizing each other, instinctively drawn together. A hand reaching across a table. But now I felt dirty, standing before Conor like the accused in a dock.

  ‘I don’t believe you.’ His voice was matter-of-fact. ‘You did a runner for yourself and at heart you’re only back for your precious passport. Everything else is horse-shit to fool yourself. All you’re offering me is blood money when maybe I still want a bloody father. We would have faced down those men together. Maybe I’d have hated your guts and you’d have hated mine. But we might have found out if you’d offered yourself, pure and simple, instead of some cheap fucking hustle.’

  ‘I’ve nothing to offer anybody,’ I said. ‘At heart I’ve always just been a coward and a nobody.’

  ‘You’re my father. The only one I have. Does Mam know you’re back?’

  ‘I didn’t want to implicate her.’

  ‘Just us men together, eh? Nothing has changed except that the bribe of crisps outside the bookie’s just got bigger.’

  ‘It’s not like that.’

  ‘No. This time you want me to go in and place the bet for you. Where did the money come from?’

  ‘It’s the oil that greased this country for twenty years.’

  ‘Then give it back.’

  ‘To who?’ I said. ‘Everyone was involved, like a cancer riddling the whole land.’

  ‘Why pass it to me so?’

  ‘So we can bury it and move on. So you can make a fresh start.’

  ‘And you can keep running.’

  ‘You know nothing about me.’ I was near tears.

  ‘I know that I lay awake for years missing you. I suffered nightmares about how you died. I mourned you and so did she. Maybe Mam didn’t talk about it. But she brought me up to respect you and I know her grief was real and her guilt too for maybe not having loved you enough. But I suppose you squared that off on your balance sheet, eh, with so many thousand for Mam’s grief and so many thousand for my fucked-up childhood?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that.’

  ‘I grew up on crooked money and now you ask me to help myself to more of it. Go back to wherever you’ve been hiding because there’s nobody who wants you here.’

  He strode towards the steps. I knew he couldn’t wait to get away and find Charles in the Oliver Twist. The pair of them in bed with Charles stroking away his tears.

  ‘Don’t tell your mother I’m still alive,’ I begged.

  Conor stopped on the bottom step. ‘She’s been through enough already.’

  ‘I’ll sort this out. But you need to mind yourself. There are men out there –’

  ‘Real ones,’ he said. ‘Men who wouldn’t let their father’s killers walk free.’

  ‘It’s not that simple,’ I said again.

  ‘That’s the difference between us. I think it is.’

  He climbed up the steps without looking back. This time there wasn’t even a cigarette butt left behind that I could hold on to.

  For half an hour after Conor left I sat on the low wall beside the river, wishing that I had explained to him the full truth about that crash. But how could I when the truth made no sense?

  On the morning of the crash I had sat alone in a first-class carriage in Perth waiting for the Glasgow train to start. Something about my appearance must have suggested trouble, because passengers who passed my window looked in and then moved on to other carriages. Rumours of an election were sweeping Britain, but I could focus on nothing in the paper I had purchased, not even the runners at Kempton.

  The fifteen thousand pounds cash in my breast pocket felt uncomfortable. It would solve all my immediate problems in Dublin if I managed to get it home intact. But the debts would quickly start to build up again.

  The previous evening, after the police eventually finished their examination and left, the phone rang twice in Cormac’s flat. The first caller was Alex’s secretary offering to make the arrangements to fly Cormac’s body home after the autopsy. The woman seemed heart-broken and embarrassed at the implication behind the offer – that Alex wanted Cormac’s body out of Scotland as soon as possible.

  The second caller had been my father in Cremore. I knew Phyllis was in the room with him, relaying questions. She was flying into Glasgow next morning. My father wanted me to meet her at the airport and bring her to Perth. Confronting Phyllis seemed a worse ordeal than finding Cormac’s body. I knew we would have nothing to say to each other. Her eyes would just stare, silently asking God why I could not have died instead. Before he rang off he asked me how the money was. I froze, then realized that he meant the cash he had given me for my plane ticket. I fingered the fifteen thousand pounds on the bedside locker which I had counted and recounted. Cormac and Alex would probably still have broken up if the older man hadn’t found our names in Des Traynor’s office, but maybe not jus
t yet and not like this. I was filled with that irrational outrage which boils up inside adolescents when they realize their fathers are human. I wanted to shout down the phone and blame him for everything but I didn’t. I just told him I was fine for money and would meet Phyllis at the airport. Then he said goodnight, the last time I ever heard his voice.

  That night I cleaned every corner of Cormac’s room, folding and refolding his clothes, fingering his shirts, lying on the bed to hug a blue jumper that I knew he loved. My mood kept alternating. One minute I wanted the room perfect for Phyllis, to show that I had been a trustworthy guardian. The next moment I wanted to peel the wallpaper off the walls and violate it like she had violated the room I once called mine.

  Before leaving for the station I had left the room spotless, yet in the carriage as I waited for the train to start I grew edgy, convinced there was some last thing I hadn’t done. I opened the door to gaze down the platform which was empty at that moment. My irrational unease would not let me go. There was some vital thing I had overlooked. I could not bring Phyllis back to the flat as it was. A goods entrance was directly opposite me, with a mail handcart resting there after men had loaded parcels on board. I told myself that I could take the later train in an hour’s time and still make the airport. But perhaps in my heart I knew I lacked the courage to face Phyllis. I hesitated, then jumped down, vaulted over the barrier and walked out through the goods entrance. The goods yard was empty, with a gateway to the left where a sloping path led down to the street.

  I tried to shake off my fear and not run, but I couldn’t get back to his flat quickly enough. My fingers shook so badly I could hardly turn the key. I don’t know what I expected to find but at first everything seemed normal, the living-room tidy, the kitchen shining, even the legs of the bath gleaming after I got up to polish them in the middle of the night.

  Nothing seemed touched in his bedroom. But every drawer and the doors of his wardrobe and bedside locker were wide open, despite the fact that I had carefully closed them all. Autumn sunlight filled the room, almost dazzling my eyes. I was scared, unsure of what was happening. Something told me to open the window. The air was still outside with not a breath of wind. I know that nothing blew in past me. But when I turned five autumn leaves lay on the carpet, haphazardly blown together, yet from that angle they resembled a boat. I knelt to touch their crinkled surface and I could feel Cormac beside me as a child. I knew I had just to reach out behind me and he would have handed me back the yellow and burnt orange leaves I had placed in his care on the afternoon when Phyllis condemned me to the outhouse.

  Footsteps sounded along the riverbank, with some girl’s voice answering a youth. I felt for the spectacles with plain glass lenses in my pocket and flung them into the Tolka, sick of disguises, before climbing up the steps onto Mobhi Drive. It was a twenty-minute walk to Ebun’s flat. I was ready to kick down the door this time if necessary.

  Yet the front door of Ebun’s house was wide-open. I didn’t bother with the bell, just climbed the stairs to bang on her door. It was opened on my first knock by Lekan who registered my presence with barely concealed disappointment and an element of caution on his face.

  ‘I need to see Ebun,’ I said.

  He glanced behind. ‘This is not a good time. Maybe just now she does not want to see you.’

  ‘E jòó.’ I raised my voice, calling past him, using one of the few phrases of Yoruba I had picked up from her. ‘Ebun, it’s important.’

  A low voice said something behind him and, with a shrug, Lekan undid the chain. Ebun sat on the bed, knees pulled up to her chin.

  ‘Your papers,’ she said quietly, ‘they are gone.’

  I glanced around the room. Some possessions were missing, not many but there had been so few to begin with that their absence was notable.

  ‘Niyi?’

  ‘Gone with them.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said, but I did. All day the memory of Niyi standing outside this door as I left the flat had perturbed me. How long had he been there and what had he overheard?

  ‘He did not know what was in the envelope,’ Ebun replied. ‘But he knew it was important, something to bargain with.’ She searched for the correct word. ‘Owo. Currency. We have no currency here.’

  ‘Where has he gone?’

  ‘We do not know.’ Lekan spoke behind me. ‘We do not even know his name for sure.’

  I sat down on the single armchair, feeling sick. Niyi would have called the phone number on the envelope. Maybe Clancy was meeting him right now, with Slick and Egan lurking in the background.

  ‘He was your cousin-in-law,’ I argued.

  ‘Niyi was,’ Lekan agreed. ‘Niyi found us the money to come here after Ebun’s daughter died. Fifteen of us trafficked across Spain first in one van, then in two sealed vans with almost no air. Niyi was never strong. The heat of the earlier journey across Mali had been hard on him and the boat was rough that smuggled us into Spain. In France in the van he was the first to complain that he could not breathe. Soon all of us could hardly breathe with fumes. We banged on the sides, begging the driver stop. But he could not – or did not want to – hear. Niyi told us to stop banging, he would be all right, we could not risk discovery. But one man kept shouting that Niyi would die. He had helped us to mind him on the boat, giving Niyi his coat for a pillow, trying to nurse him. He and Ebun kept banging until the driver finally stopped. But Niyi died vomiting. It was the side of some motorway. I do not know where. The driver said that we must leave Niyi’s body with no identification. This man helped me to carry him into a field. They had told us to burn our papers but I saw him slip some document into Niyi’s pocket.’

  ‘Who was he?’ I asked.

  ‘When people die others may need their clothes or shoes. The man who helped us needed a new name. He told us a story but we do not know if it is true. We like him and three seemed better than two.’

  ‘People thrown together, knowing no one else, they grow to need each other,’ Ebun said from the bed. ‘In Ireland we did not think he would stay with us, but he was strong and good at finding and sharing things. But I do not like the way he looked at me. Lekan and I talked of ways to make him leave.’ She looked at me. ‘He did not like you. I was scared last night when you left. I thought he would rape me. He had that look a man has when he thinks he owns you. But I am nothing to him except in his head. He was angry but also scared. I do not know why.’

  ‘He came with me on the march,’ Lekan interjected. ‘He liked always say his opinion. People were there last night we had not seen before. Two began to shout at him, call him a name we never heard, Seyi. He very scared and he run away. They chase him. I do not know who they were or who he was – maybe good, maybe bad. Life is not simple. But they disappear in the crowd and never come back.’

  ‘How do you know he has my papers?’ I asked.

  ‘This morning he was gone along with them,’ Ebun said. ‘I thought I had hid them but he is clever. All day I am looking for him. What was in them?’

  I did not reply. Slick’s niece would have answered the phone in Clancy’s office. A quick call to her uncle and a meeting could have been arranged without Clancy knowing a thing. Somewhere isolated where the Nigerian could be surprised. All that had held Slick back from confronting Conor was the missing account mandates. With them Slick could bypass Clancy to muscle in on Conor, delivering a good hiding if the boy refused to cooperate. Slick would enjoy that, like he’d enjoy attacking the man I had known as Niyi, somebody from outside his ambit who threatened his horizons. Ebun seemed to read my thoughts.

  ‘He is in danger?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  ‘You do.’ She was angry. ‘You know much but say little. We are at enough risk in our lives without you making things worse.’

  ‘I have to go,’ I told her.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘A pub. I must check if my son is there.’

  ‘I will come with you.’

 
‘No.’

  ‘Yes.’ Her hiss was fierce. ‘What would you have me do? Sit here? Last night you seemed to care, today you just want your papers and to go.’

  ‘I care,’ I said, ‘but I don’t want you in danger.’

  ‘I care also. But you do not let me help.’

  ‘Then help me,’ I said. ‘Put your arms around me.’

  They had stopped serving in the Oliver Twist by the time we got there. Most punters had left, and the barmen were trying to nudge the remnants off the premises. There was no sign of Conor and only on my second sweep around the room did I spot Charles talking with two youths at a high table.

  ‘Has Conor been in?’ I asked him.

  He scrutinized me, having to revise his opinion of my intentions when he spotted Ebun.

  ‘What’s it to you?’

  ‘It’s important that I know.’

  ‘Is that your missus or a faghag?’

  ‘Answer the fucking question, right?’

  The other youths leaned slightly back on their stools, increasing the distance between themselves and him. Charles ran his tongue over his lips, reminding me of a nervous dog.

  ‘Why can’t you people just fucking leave him alone?’

  ‘What people?’

  ‘Men your age buzzing around like flies. One was here an hour ago, annoying him over something. I wouldn’t mind only he was in bad enough form when he arrived, impossible to get a word out of. One minute he was drinking with us, the next he was gone.’

  ‘Gone where?’

  ‘I’m not his minder.’

  ‘What did the man look like?’

  ‘Not my type. Like a pin-up from a 1979 Mr Muscle Man calendar after going to seed.’

  ‘Did Conor leave with him?’ I snapped.

  ‘I told you, I’m not his minder.’

  ‘You’re supposed to be his fucking lover.’

  Charles shifted. ‘And just who are you?’ he asked.

  Ignoring him I led Ebun to a public phone in an alcove near the gents’ toilets, handed her the receiver, put in money and dialled the number for Cremore.