The Valparaiso Voyage

by Dermot Bolger

  Ebun slammed the brakes, causing the truck behind us to beep as she pulled over onto the lay-by.

  ‘Nobody “shacks-up” with me,’ she retorted angrily.

  ‘What do they do then?’ Conor demanded. ‘He’s only back here a few days and you’re hanging out of him. What are you after?’

  ‘Stop it, Conor.’

  ‘No,’ Ebun said. ‘Let him say it.’

  ‘I mean what do you want? A white baby or for him to divorce Mam and get you a passport?’

  ‘I don’t need no white baby,’ Ebun hissed, ‘not that it would be white. Any baby born here automatically becomes a citizen. Is that what you think, boy, that I’m trying to fuck my way into staying? Why waste time waiting to trap your father? I could have got a head start by screwing everybody on the container truck we came over on.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Conor tried to backtrack. ‘I’m just confused…twenty-four hours ago I thought this bastard was dead.’

  ‘He’s no bastard. He loves you.’

  ‘How would you know?’

  ‘Because I loved a child once.’ Ebun restarted the car, nudging her way back out into the traffic. ‘How come you people can only ever see us now and never the lives we lived before.’ Ebun sought my eyes in the rear-view mirror. ‘What will you do?’ she asked.

  ‘There’s nothing to link us to that building site,’ I said cautiously. I’m sure Forensics will find a hundred things but they won’t know who to look for.’

  ‘Unless you turn up,’ Ebun said. ‘That would be one link too many.’

  ‘There’s five weeks left on Cormac’s passport,’ I replied. ‘I could return to Oporto, get back my old job in the bar and simply accept that I’m trapped there, never able to leave Portugal again.’

  ‘Is that what you want?’ Conor asked.

  I gazed at him. ‘Is it what you want?’

  Conor looked away, burdened by the question. ‘I’m just a schoolkid, Dad.’

  We parked the Ford Fiesta down a sidestreet off the North Circular Road and walked back to Dorset Street. It was half-ten. Conor phoned his mother’s mobile from the callbox outside the post office where old people queued for their pensions.

  ‘I’m OK,’ I heard him say. ‘I can’t explain on the phone…I know you’ll kill me…no, you were right to go into work, I know you’re in court…no, I’m not at school…don’t come home, I’ll come out to you…soon as I get a bus…I’m sorry…real sorry…no, don’t collect me, I’m on my way.’

  He replaced the phone. ‘Some things never change,’ he said. ‘You still have me lying to her. She’s in Kilmainham Courthouse, going character witness for two of her car-thieving lads. They’re always slagging her clapped-out banger, offering to steal her a better one.’ He rooted in his pocket for change. ‘Throw us a few bob, will you? I’d better put Charles out of his misery.’

  Conor gave him the car’s location, telling him to have his mother explain to the police that it had been a misunderstanding. I could hear Charles’s agitated voice: ‘It had better not be scratched. You know how precious she is about her car.’

  ‘It’s untouched,’ Conor told him, ‘not a mark on it. But come for it soon, because you know what your father always says about the Northside.’ He put a hand over the mouthpiece to wink at me. ‘Charles’s family are paranoid about North-siders. They’ll just be thrilled there’s still four wheels on it.’

  The pain in my shoulder was becoming unbearable. When we reached her flat Ebun removed the ligature and tried to clean it, but shook her head. ‘It will turn septic,’ she said. ‘You must visit a hospital.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  Footsteps descended the stairs and Lekan opened the door. He took in the scene and shook his head, anticipating bad news. Ebun went over to him, speaking in her own tongue. I didn’t need a translator as I saw his face pass from shock to grief. Now that Ebun was here she felt able to cry again with the anguish of someone a long way from home. Lekan held her close as Conor and I watched awkwardly, knowing we were intruders. Finally she wiped her eyes and stepped out onto the landing.

  ‘I will go to Navan and identify him,’ Lekan said. ‘Better to be buried under the name he chose than no name.’ He observed me gravely. ‘We had enough troubles before you came, without needing you to add to them. But I will say nothing about why he went to Navan. I will leave you out of this for Ebun’s sake. Now say goodbye to my sister. This morning I wish we had never come here.’

  The landing was empty, with the house quiet for once. Ebun’s eyes were still red.

  ‘It’s better for all our sakes if we pretend this never happened,’ I said. ‘If I just go away again.’

  ‘That’s why I chose you.’ Ebun looked up. ‘I knew you would not stay around to break my heart even more.’

  ‘I have no choice.’

  ‘We all face journeys we don’t want to take.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘Wait endlessly for my appeal until one day they deport me.’

  ‘They mightn’t, you know.’

  ‘Every factory keeps screaming for workers, offering bribes for people to come from every corner of the earth, yet still they won’t let us work. You want rid of us, maybe because we remind you too much of how you were.’

  ‘If I can find a way to stay in touch,’ I said.

  Ebun didn’t reply, just nodded. Conor stood behind me. I touched her hand but we did not kiss. I descended a few steps and looked back. Conor had stopped beside her.

  ‘I’m sorry for what I said in the car,’ he said awkwardly.

  ‘Make sure your father goes to a hospital. Ó dàbò.’

  Ebun put her arms around him, hugging him like I think she would have hugged her own child, then stood with Lekan to watch us descend the long stairs.

  The queue in the Casualty Department was slow moving. We took a ticket and found a quiet corner to sit in. Conor brought us over two paper cups of coffee.

  ‘You should get a bus out to your mother’s office,’ I said. ‘She’ll be back from court going frantic.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Then why don’t you go?’

  ‘Because once I walk out the door you’re going to slip away and not get your shoulder seen to.’

  ‘The pain isn’t bad now,’ I lied. ‘I could get it seen to in Portugal. I’m more worried about you.’

  ‘I’m OK, I tell you.’

  ‘You saw things tonight I never wanted you to see, things your granddad could never have expected.’

  ‘If I kept your secrets before, I can do so again,’ Conor said. ‘I can phone Mam, stall her for a few hours. Find me the fare to Jersey and I’ll go for you on the next plane. You can have every penny of what’s there. Buy yourself a dozen crooked passports if you like.’

  ‘I don’t want a passport.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘To watch you grow up,’ I replied.

  ‘I am grown up.’

  ‘You’re not. But you know I can’t stay.’

  ‘Too scared?’

  ‘Not for myself,’ I said. ‘Not of jail any more. I’m scared to see you and your mother lose everything. They’ll want every red cent back, everything collapsing around your ears.’

  ‘Maybe they won’t,’ Conor said. He sipped his scalding coffee as I watched a trainee nurse surreptitiously eye him up. ‘Either way Gran hasn’t long to live. I want her to live forever but people don’t. We’ll be due half the proceeds of the Cre-more house. If Mam got anything illegally I know that she’d want to pay it back. And maybe I’d gain something. Do you put no value on yourself?’

  ‘Faking my death was the only worthwhile thing I ever did.’

  ‘You helped conceive me or was that worthless too?’

  ‘You’re worth a thousand of me, son.’

  ‘You don’t know me,’ Conor replied.

  ‘I do. I spent entire nights checking your cot every five minutes to make sure I could still hear you breathing. I saw you st
and for the first time and wanted to bring in strangers off the street to show you off. I was so proud and still am.’

  ‘Then make me proud of you,’ Conor said. ‘I don’t really remember you. I only know you through other people’s stories. You might be the biggest bastard in the world but maybe you’re not. If you disappear I’ll never know.’

  ‘You wouldn’t want to know me,’ I replied quietly.

  ‘Let me decide.’ Conor was angry. ‘You don’t know me now. I’ve a life of my own with thoughts and failings and fuck-ups all of my own. I’m confused and weak and half the time I don’t know where the fuck I’m going. Maybe I need someone to look up to or look down on or just simply talk to and ask if you ever felt this way. Did you never think of that?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you come back? Don’t mention money, I’m sick of hearing about money after tonight.’

  ‘I was scared that you’d hate me or maybe scared you might need me and I’d fail you again. I felt that I wouldn’t know what to say once you grew beyond the age where a bar of chocolate cured everything. I see Cormac in you every time we meet. I loved your uncle more than anyone before you. I was his sidekick, a dog happy to lie under any table he sat at. I couldn’t live without him so I tried and failed to become him.’

  A nurse came out to call the number before mine. Conor put his coffee down. ‘Cormac wasn’t at all like you. He was gay for a start.’

  ‘One night in a bar in Belgium I said my name – Cormac’s name – in company,’ I replied. ‘A man glanced up, looked at me different from how you look at people. A look I didn’t understand until I realized he had known Cormac. People drifted away and I knew I should have gone too. My cover was in danger of being blown, but I couldn’t leave and he sat there like we were waiting for the bar to clear, with something pre-ordained arranged between us. “Don’t say you don’t know me,” he said, and I replied, “I know you, it’s just been how long…?” “Too long,” he told me, “you look different but the same.” I had never touched a man’s body before nor ever wished to. But I stayed because it felt like Cormac had sent him to test me and if I slept with him just once and fooled him into thinking I was Cormac then maybe I would finally feel what it was like to be him.’

  “What did Cormac feel like?’

  ‘Pure as crystal. I saw him once in a window in Navan, framed by light, and I knew I could never be so pure. I knew I’d always be outside in the dark and from that moment I loved him.’

  ‘Did you sleep with the man?’ Conor asked.

  ‘Have I asked how many men you’ve slept with?’

  He blushed slightly and looked away. ‘That isn’t a question one asks.’

  ‘What do you ask men then?’

  ‘When I wake in the morning will you be gone?’

  ‘Do they answer truthfully?’

  ‘You never know until the morning.’ He looked at me, embarrassed. ‘So Charles tells me. With me there haven’t been many men.’

  ‘It’s dangerous, you know, it’s…’ I stopped, unable to prevent myself smiling.

  ‘What?’ Conor asked.

  ‘Nothing. Just that I sound like Phyllis.’ I looked at him solemnly. ‘I slept with the man in Belgium.’

  ‘And how was it?’

  ‘It wasn’t me. I knew I had only been trying to fool myself.’

  ‘Do something for me,’ Conor said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Go to jail. Maybe you’ll only get a suspended sentence. But either way I’ll get to know you.’

  A crew-cut young man emerged from between the screens with his arm bandaged. He had the stunted Dublin look of someone raised on deep-fried carbohydrates and cunning. I tried to imagine sharing a cell with three men like him.

  ‘You mightn’t like what you find,’ I said.

  ‘Neither might you.’

  The nurse returned to call my number. I rose without replying and walked away from my son, aware of his eyes following me. The African doctor was suspicious of my story about having burnt myself with an iron. He asked me to wait while a nurse cleaned and dressed the wound, then administered an injection. I had no idea if he was calling the police or checking the bogus name and address I had given him. Through the screens I could see Conor in the public area. I didn’t know which terrified me the most – the prospect of jail or of starting afresh with Conor, being expected to live up to the term ‘father’. Behind me I could see a door marked ‘Exit’ through which I could slip out and run. There was enough money in my hotel for an airline ticket. I vacillated, too scared to move either way, until the doctor returned.

  ‘Take these every six hours and come back in two days,’ he said.

  I thanked the doctor and rose. Conor had his back to me, examining some magazine on the table. I thought of Ebun, her grief, her body, the way she made me feel special. Maybe we had no chance, both of us on the precipice of undetermined futures. But maybe, even for a brief while, we could share that uncertainty here together. With a last glance back at the exit I took a deep breath and pushed open the screens to call my son. He looked up and smiled as he nodded.

  It was a semi-private room, but the other bed was currently empty. A screen was half-drawn around Phyllis’s bed. An almost untouched dinner tray waited to be collected. Conor went first, moving almost on tiptoes across the floor. I hung back, waiting for him to speak but he remained silent, then beckoned me. I would have sooner faced anything than confront this woman. Nurses talked out in the corridor. Conor beckoned again for me to move forward and stare down at Phyllis.

  She was asleep, with her glossy woman’s magazine having slipped to the floor. I picked it up, staring at page after page of colour photographs of the home of some minor inbred relative of the British royal family. It would have annoyed me once, but now I felt sorry for her need to peer in at other people’s worlds. Her life had never been easy. An unmarried mother when it was a badge of shame; the reluctant blow-in to a tight-knit town; the babydoll unable to stay within her role; the wife of an ageing, cranky man whose devotion to Barney Clancy surely grew to rankle more than any liaison with a mistress ever could; the mother of a dead son with whom she could never be fully honest and who was never fully open with her; the bearer of an estranged daughter who had never wished to understand her.

  Her life might have been so different if Barney Clancy had not crudely tried to bed her. If she had met somebody her own age that night behind the kitchens at Groom’s Hotel instead of being comforted by my father. A youth with a motor scooter who laughed and fed her chips after dances at Red Island in Skerries instead of showing her off in middle-aged restaurants and writing bad Georgian verse in her honour. Somebody who would simply have let her get on with growing up into the person she might have become.

  Her hospital bed might now be surrounded by hordes of Dublin grandchildren, street-wise and yet respectful to her, a husband reminiscing about all the fun they had despite their hard times and a steady flow of neighbours popping in from the nearby streets to see her. I doubted if visitors had come in from Cremore where she always stood out by trying too hard to blend in.

  She stirred slightly, fingers plucking at the blankets. Conor sat on the edge of her bed. He had surprising gentleness for a boy as he kissed her forehead. Her eyes opened and took him in, a smile registering even though I could see she was in pain.

  ‘How are you, Gran?’

  ‘The better for seeing you.’ Her voice was barely above a whisper.

  ‘You mustn’t get alarmed or upset, Gran, but there’s somebody here you never thought you would see again.’

  Phyllis turned her head slowly. Her expression didn’t change, just her eyes. She thinks I’m Cormac, I thought as I recognized the awful hope in her look. Then I realized that she didn’t think this, merely wished it with all her heart. Conor beckoned me closer, then when I didn’t come he physically drew me over, taking my hand and placing it in hers. Her fingers felt knotted and cold.

  �
�My baby,’ she whispered, ‘my poor boy.’ Her eyes were piercing, the only strength left in her. ‘You saw him last. He’s not gone, you know. Friends of his I didn’t know…three of them…wrote or called to see me. The same dream…Cormac in a garden tending water lilies. They said he was happy, you know the smile he had…never in my dreams but theirs. Cormac knew they would tell me.’

  I knew the painkilling drugs were having an effect, but this was pure Phyllis. No interest in where I had been for ten years or any wonder at my reappearance from the dead. She could only ever focus on what was important to her. Why didn’t you mind him? The question wasn’t spoken, just framed in her eyes as she moved her hand away. My anger returned. 1 wanted an apology from her, I wanted her to break down in tears at my presence or at least show some emotion beyond a flat disappointment that I was not somebody else. I needed her to take this chance to make amends, yet deep down I knew it was impossible for her.

  ‘You were always sneaky,’ she whispered. ‘Even as a child you had to be as good as Cormac…had to steal the limelight at his death. You were never on that bloody train at all.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Now you’ve come back to gloat.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Gran.’ Conor looked near tears. ‘Aren’t you happy he’s alive?’

  Phyllis gazed at him anxiously. ‘He wants to steal you from me…poison you about me.’ She looked back. ‘Your father’s dead.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘They wanted to drag him through the courts. He said it would be like Nuremberg, questions, questions. What would your father know? He knew nothing.’ She looked at Conor. ‘Are you OK? I worry for you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There are bad men.’

  ‘The man who tied you up in Cremore is dead,’ I said. ‘The men who threatened Conor are dead.’

  ‘What do you know about it?’

  ‘My father knew more than his prayers.’

  ‘He was a good man,’ she whispered. ‘All the neighbours…nurses in here…even since his name was in the paper…they think your father was a gangster…I see how they look at me…’