Sad Bastard

by Hugo Hamilton

  You’ve got to let go, she said. You’re driving with the handbrake on, Pat.

  Coyne looked up at her with a stunned expression on his face. Where did she learn all this cartoon psychology, he wanted to know. All these pert little phrases. All this shaggin’ common sense. There was nothing worse than amateurs spouting superstition, pretending it was science. She tried to placate him by putting the proceedings on first name terms. He could call her Clare from now on. She sat up on her desk. Perched on the ledge with giant feet dangling.

  You know, there’s an old Chinese saying that you can’t see your own chin, she said.

  Here we go again!

  Coyne was astonished by this latest remark. What in the name of Jesus was she getting at? What had Coyne’s chin got to do with anything. All I can see is your chin, Ms Duckfoot, and it looks like a giant strawberry.

  You can never grasp everything, she explained. It’s a mistake to try and examine your own soul too carefully.

  Listen here, you Jungian monster. I don’t want to be normal. I don’t want to be cured. I don’t want to go back to work. All I want is the compensation. And so what if I can’t see my own chin. I can’t see my own arse either, but that doesn’t stop me from grasping it, now does it?

  Tommy Nolan’s funeral was a quiet event. Coyne and a number of people loitering around the crematorium to hear the priest say a few charismatic words about the soul of Tommy Nolan. A great character who would be limping no more in heaven. A man who would be missed by the whole community. Some people in attendance who hardly even said hello to Tommy while he was alive. McCurtain from the Port and Docks board was there, pretending he had been a lifelong friend.

  And more surprising again was the fact that the burial at sea had been organised by trawlerman Martin Davis.

  On a windy, early summer afternoon, around a dozen people stood on the deck of the Lolita. The priest remarked that it was strictly against the law to cast the ashes out like this. But he was defying it for Tommy’s sake. The breakdown between church and state.

  So that’s how the ashes were disbursed in Dublin Bay. With the Superferry passing by a few hundred yards away, and the Dublin mountains in the distance behind the city. A decade of the rosary carrying out across the water. Another homily about the tragic nature of his untimely death and Tommy’s sister casting the white dust and shards of bleached bone out from the stern of the boat with tears in her eyes. Seagulls coming to investigate. Hovering over a choppy grave.

  The real farewell for Tommy Nolan took place later on that night at the Anchor Bar. Pints all round for the lads. The place had never been so jammed before, because people were of the firm belief that the only real way to honour the passing of Tommy was to get legless and locked out of their skulls. Mouldy in memory of the dead. That’s what Tommy would have done himself.

  Coyne was mute as a stone and full of resentment. He knew that Tommy’s death was no accident, and anyone who took part in this event was under suspicion. There was something strange about the fact that the skipper of the Lolita was buying pints for everyone. Magnanimous Martin Davis was hiding something, standing centre stage at the Anchor Bar with his arm around Marlene Nolan.

  This thing wasn’t over and finished yet, as far as Coyne was concerned.

  The rumour went around that Tommy had come across some foreign youths at the harbour. A conspiracy theory began to develop that he had been dumped in the harbour by a stag party on the return to the Superferry. A random attack on a poor defenceless man, killed for no reason. Tommy Nolan knew the harbour too well to have fallen in of his own accord. People liked a conspiracy theory.

  Everybody was langered. Sooner or later, McCurtain made his way over to Coyne and started talking indiscriminately into his ear, expanding on his own past glories. There was one of them in every bar, and Kelly’s Anchor Bar was no exception. Given half a chance, McCurtain soon got down to boasting about his life as a playboy. Telling Coyne how the women of the borough used to go mad for him. Making himself out to be some kind of legendary Irish Don Juan.

  There were more husbands after me than Indians were after General Custer, he announced, with a smell of diesel on his breath.

  Sure, Coyne muttered.

  Why this sudden rush of nationwide honesty, he thought. I mean, why couldn’t people keep things to themselves any more? On the radio; on TV: everybody exposing themselves and trying to come to terms with their own psychological junk. Go and expose yourself to the Blessed Sacrament. Why don’t you?

  The women used to place bets on me, you know, McCurtain bragged.

  Do me a favour, Coyne said, because he’d heard all these fantasies before, many times. Go home and decompose. Go on, back to your crypt, McCurtain.

  But the thick-skinned Irish Casanova would not go away and Coyne was drawn into the unavoidable confrontation. One of those drunken funeral debates that took place at the bar with everyone listening in. Some vital point that had to be hammered out, as though Coyne had a civic duty to challenge McCurtain with the facts. Let him know that Coyne stood on the side of aggrieved husbands.

  You’re like the Irish Elk, Coyne said.

  What are you on about now? McCurtain said, half walking away.

  You’re going into extinction, Coyne explained by way of a parable. Will I tell you what happened to the Irish Elk?

  McCurtain pricked up his ears. He was ready for this kind of schoolboy abuse.

  Go on, hit me!

  You want to know why he became extinct? Coyne went on. Sex, that’s why. Too much sex on his mind.

  The barman was listening in, smiling to himself. This was a good one. He even alerted the staff from the lounge next door to come in and catch this. Coyne talking extinction. Calling McCurtain an Irish Elk. Coyne was dead serious. Never before had the subject of sex been so openly debated in the Irish pub. Coyne delivering a vital message to General fucking Custer with masterful brevity and eloquence. Famous last words, spoken on the night of the funeral, in the shadow of mortality.

  The Irish Elk never stopped thinking about sex, Coyne announced. He was obsessed with nothing else. That’s what killed him.

  Would you listen to him, McCurtain smirked.

  The barman stood holding up a glass in his hand. Stalled with incomprehension.

  I’m not joking you, Coyne said, raising his voice. It was one big snuff movie for the Irish Elk. Because he was so interested in attracting the female and fighting off other males that his antlers kept getting bigger. That was his downfall. Couldn’t run around any more. Every time he bent down to drink water, he couldn’t get his head up again. I’m telling you, they found a whole load of ancient elk horns by a lake up there in Wicklow.

  Stick to bottled water, the barman said at last.

  Would you fuck off, McCurtain bawled. Coyne, you’re like an anthropologist. What’s wrong with you?

  You’re in a cul-de-sac, Coyne said.

  McCurtain winked at the barman. Exchanged a grin of consensus. Then McCurtain started laughing his head off, cackling like he needed to have his head examined.

  Coyne had delivered his message with crisp profundity. That would give the bastard something to think about, he said to himself. The barman too. Each man before the jury of his own sex life. Every one of them reflecting on the decline of the Irish Elk at the height of his powers. Living on an island, with hardly any predators. His own worst enemy. Running like the prince of the species across bogs and mountains. Barking through the darkness of the oak forest. Standing with his heavy antlers up and his sad eyes staring out through the silent intimacy of dawn.

  Somebody had brought a guitar. There was no band playing next door that night, so it was decided to do Tommy Nolan the honour of a few songs. They sang Galveston, because Tommy had always been a bit of a cowboy at heart, a freak character from some memorable Western, a humble man, making a living in the shadow of t
he great legends – the local sheriffs, baddies, barmen, molls and dollar men. Perhaps he had been abducted by the Indians as a child and left to stalk the borough like an enigmatic figure with a strange past that nobody wanted to know. Until he was dead, at least. For a moment the Anchor Bar became a saloon as they sang Tommy’s favourite number. Three wheels on my wagon – and I’m still rolling along…

  Later it was So Long, Marianne, which they sang like some fiery republican ballad. And Massachusetts. In deep male voices. Belting it out with such masculine pride and testosterone dignity that you’d think it had to do with some ambush in the war of independence, a shoot-out with the Black and Tans.

  I’m going back to Maaah-ssechusetts…

  In the name of Jaysus, Coyne thought. You can’t do that with a hippie song. It’s meant to be all about peace and love and banality, with eunuch harmonies. You can’t start that macho growl at somebody’s funeral either. Strumming the guitar like an anti-aircraft gun. Pack of granite gobshites, turning a flower power hit into a Provo marching song.

  And then it was McCurtain’s turn to sing. The great Irish Casanova with the rebel heart who never discharged a shot in his life. The overspecialised Irish Elk, facing extinction and singing The Fields of Athenry with huge passion and fervour. McCurtain and his pals were in an evolutionary cul-de-sac, crooning the anthem of republican, auto-erotic perfection. A mythological country between the sheets. The great, all-time fantasy ride.

  High-low, the fields of Athenry… they clapped and cheered in frenzied admiration as McCurtain raised his arms in the air, the bastard. Out of breath with post-coital exertion.

  But then, at last, came something European. A Russian fisherman offered to do a solo number. There was a visiting trawler in the bay that night, a big factory ship which had brought Russians all over the town, reciprocating with more free pints. Must have thought there was a funeral in Ireland every night. Just like at home.

  Hang on, lads! Pushkin here wants to take the floor.

  A man with dark brown rims around his eyes and hollow cheekbones started singing Danny Boy. Chest inflating. Letting out a gale of breath like it was going to bring ye back all the way to his own home town of Noril’sk.

  Oh, Dannyol Boy… From glyen to glyen…

  The crowd in the Anchor Bar was stunned. McCurtain said it was a travesty.

  Bleedin’ mockery, he growled. The Russian couldn’t sing and shouldn’t be let. If they hadn’t put up all the free pints, they’d be turfed out of the pub. Back to the factory ship with a filleting knife in the back.

  Fair play to you, Coyne encouraged the singer. Anything to defy the bellowing elk.

  McCurtain muttered on about the Russians as new invaders, fishing every benthic inch and fathom around Erin’s green shores, cleaning out the entire fish stocks. They had some audacity to come into the Anchor Bar and crucify Danny Boy like it was a karaoke night.

  But everybody else loved this new rendition. It was the greatest version of Danny Boy they had ever heard. An old song of emigration, rescued from the graveyard of trite emotion and brought back to life with the fresh lungs of Russian loneliness. Great big Russian vowels hanging in the smoky blue air and the whole pub bulging with the sound of this man’s epic voice. Veins standing out on his Caucasian forehead. And people joining in, even from the lounge next door. Danny Boy – from Donegal to the Urals.

  Come forward! I want to come forward.

  A number of witnesses had ‘come forward’ to say they had seen something going on the night Tommy Nolan was killed. A woman from one of the new apartment blocks overlooking the harbour said she had witnessed a struggle on the quay. From her bedroom window, no less than eight hundred yards away, she had seen two people either fighting or embracing. Later she saw people running. This was corroborated by a motorist who reported seeing car headlights on the pier and some youths fighting. Both gave a similar time frame – around 2:30 a.m.

  Sergeant Corrigan was in his element, like the whistling gypsy rover, doing house to house enquiries all around the flash apartments. He was chatting up the harbour police, nightwatchmen, caretakers, cooks; anyone remotely involved in harbour activity. Men in yellow coats. Torch carriers. Reflective sash and luminous donkey jacket wearers. He was seen drifting around the boat yards and yacht clubs, making a nuisance of himself all day. Then back to the woman in the apartment, just to confirm whether she had said ‘struggle’ or ‘scuffle’ in her statement. His handwriting was as bad as his whistling.

  Tommy Nolan’s postmortem had revealed very little. Officially, it was not quite a murder enquiry yet, but Corrigan was uneasy about the whole thing. The picture was not plumb, let’s say. The funeral and a rousing farewell at the Anchor Bar were not sufficient to put Tommy Nolan’s soul to rest, because society demanded some narrative conclusion. The full stop. Tommy Nolan had left behind a bit of a semi-colon, and Sergeant Corrigan was out there trying to finish the sentence with the right punctuation. He was besieged by the flat syntax of cop buzzwords and phrases, such as trying to close the book. Piece of the jigsaw missing. At the end of the day. In the heel of the hunt. He was always using words like complexion – oh that puts a different complexion on the matter. He was living in the world of the school textbook where Sean and Nora were always playing with the ball, Mammy was smiling in the kitchen making sandwiches while Daddy was outside mowing the lawn, and Rolo, the dog, was yelping at a cat in the tree. Something was not right in the early reader.

  The problem was that all of this was pointing straight at Jimmy Coyne. According to Corrigan’s linear logic, he was up to his neck in it. Corrigan was up at Coyne’s flat on Cross-eyed Park, whistling silently in the living room. Prompting. Trying to make Coyne talk about his son. Double-checking statements and generally wasting everybody’s time. You think we have nothing better to do than listen to you whistling some really thick, country-evangelical tune like What if God was one of us?

  What has God got to do with us, you gobshite? That was Coyne’s chorus. If God was one of us, he’d be a thick Garda sergeant, no question of it. A red-faced know-all, whistling through a bullet hole in his face.

  I’m just trying to clarify a few matters, Corrigan explained.

  Then he began to work up a line-of-enquiry. Just to demonstrate his capacity for lateral thinking, he looked around the front room for clues, took in the picture of Coyne in uniform on the mantelpiece and behaved as though he was still treating Coyne like he was one of the lads, only to turn on him with a tricky little question. Like a left hook. Real Garda tripwire tactics. Straight out of the manual.

  I believe you went to school with him? Corrigan asked.

  Yeah, Coyne answered. So?

  Coyne had nothing to hide, but he was far too bellicose. Definitely uncool. He should have waited a moment and then given a more composed reply. He just didn’t want to fit in with the logic of daily Irish grammar any more. Those formative links that went all the way back to school. He didn’t subscribe to neat Garda solutions. Motivation. Causality.

  Sergeant Corrigan turned his back and looked out the window. In the hope that Coyne could not see what he was doing, he started picking his nose. Coyne couldn’t believe it. This was not some discreet little knuckle wipe or nosewing scratch. This was explicit soil excavation. Hardcore. Over eighteens. Corrigan’s index finger penetrating diligently and his head tilted conveniently to the left in order to dislodge big stalactites on to the floor.

  Should have seen the look on Coyne’s face. You’d think he’d just been handed the joke shop lighter, with the electric current running halfway up his arm. Pulled his fist back suddenly as though he was going to box the sergeant in the back of the head. Give it up! Stop that unnatural practice in my home. Go and carry out your dig in somebody else’s place, you disgusting bastard.

  Corrigan turned and looked Coyne in the eye. Held up the foraging finger and pointed towards the door. Coyne was
more interested in the finger than anything else. Followed it wherever Corrigan pointed.

  I think your son is involved in this, Pat. There may be a connection.

  Forget it, Coyne exploded.

  Calm down. I’m only telling you what I think.

  Corrigan got ready to leave. He put his hand on the doorknob.

  I’m only trying to warn you, he said. As a member of the force and all that. You should have a word with him. He knows something, Corrigan said.

  Jimmy Coyne settled down very quickly at the Haven. He was transformed. He was suddenly making money and found the two things that gave meaning to his life – love and morphine.

  From the first day, he took to gerontology with great dedication. The exclusivity of being the sole youth among old people gave him a sense of immortality. They were on the way out – he was on the way up. He appreciated the feeling of indestructible health bestowed on him by the aged. Even the simple pleasure of passing by an old man on the lino corridor made Jimmy feel like he was travelling at ninety miles an hour, accelerating into the future.

  His duties consisted mostly of helping sisters and nurses to lift the infirm in and out of beds and baths. Driving wheelchairs around. Bringing patients to Mass and back, up and down in the lift.

  Jimmy enjoyed a sense of vigour and power, not just of his sudden athleticism, but also of moral superiority. At the Haven nursing home, he quickly assumed the role of God. Around these old people, he became the Lord of the Haven – a figure of immortality, bursting with the insurrection of youth. He was in a position to grant favours and to punish. If he felt that one of the old people was becoming too demanding, he would send them back to the end of the queue. As he passed by the rooms in his white coat and heard the helpless calls from inside, begging him to pick up a book or a ball of wool, he exercised divine power to leave them in their misery, or to reach into their fusty, apple-smelling rooms and help.

  It was like final judgement day, with Jimmy Coyne as the Almighty. At times he was extremely kind and warm-hearted. But these old people occasionally incurred his wrath, and he would be forced to exact revenge. He punished old Dr Spain for being so cruel to his bedridden wife who was unable to defend herself. He left him turned the wrong way round in the church, with the brakes on his wheelchair, leaving him looking away from the altar with a smouldering pipe in his jacket pocket.