Sad Bastard

by Hugo Hamilton

  Initially Mongi was offended by her lack of gratitude. He explained that sometimes it was good to look like you had money. Money had a sacred element that gave off an aura. It made people ‘holy’, or cool. As a former moneylender, he was in a position to tell her that the appearance of wealth was often enough to achieve paradise.

  Corina looked at Mongi’s dress code to see if it matched the philosophy. He wore shiny blue tracksuit bottoms with white stripes down the side of the leg, and a T-shirt with sleek greyhounds running at great speed across his chest. He wore white socks and black slip-on shoes.

  I have some contacts who could point you in the right direction, he said. You could buy some plenary indulgences, if you get my drift.

  Indulgences? Corina was listening. Sipping poison.

  It doesn’t need to be that difficult, Mongi said, looking her up and down. If you put on a bit of make-up. Rob some decent clothes. I know people in that line of business who could see you right.

  What are you talking about?

  You have a great body, he said at last. You know what I’m saying. You could use it.

  Dracu, she said, getting up to leave.

  Mongi put a firm hand on her arm. There were debts to be paid, he insisted. A boat trip on a luxury trawler, with cabin accommodation. He needed a quick repayment schedule. His patience was running out.

  I’m not doing purgatory for you, he said.

  It was like the old days. Carmel’s birthday and everybody sitting around the table in the happy Irish home. Coyne and Jimmy back in the bosom of the family and Carmel’s mother bringing out the cake that looked like a UFO with a forest of lit candles on top. It was Carmel’s idea to bring everyone together for occasions like this. Even if they were separated, there were some essential family rituals that need not be lost.

  Mrs Gogarty was sceptical. Coyne noticed that she had started using the word ‘actually’ all the time. It was a theatrical distancing technique, and Coyne wanted to call her Mrs Actually, only that he was on his best behaviour and didn’t want to squander the privilege of being allowed to attend the party. Coyne had a few drinks before he arrived. Heavy smell of alcohol all over the birthday cake.

  Jennifer and Nuala were the only ones who were misbehaving. Fighting among themselves, calling each other bitch and cow over some clothes they had borrowed and not given back, until Mrs Gogarty said she’d had enough. This was Carmel’s birthday. They should all respect that.

  Carmel was stupefied by Coyne’s gift. A real leather shoulder bag and a bottle of Eternity inside. How did you know, Pat? she exclaimed. She had nearly run out of perfume. And it was her favourite too.

  Jennifer and Nuala took it off her and sprayed themselves immediately. The air was thick already.

  While they were occupied with the scent, Carmel put her hand into the bag and took out the green underwear. Looked at it for a moment in disbelief, then pushed it back quickly, out of sight. Mrs Actually missed nothing. She had seen the outrageous, ex-husband sexual proposal that was contained in this gift. Generosity is a form of conquest, she always maintained.

  You shouldn’t have, Carmel said, holding up the bag and feeling the leather. It’s too generous, Pat.

  I’ll be getting compensation, Coyne blubbered.

  She kissed him dutifully. A courtesy kiss. Cheek to cheek, with a large slice of air in between, and Mrs Actually monitoring the whole thing at close range like a referee in a boxing ring. Ready to shout ’break’ and separate the contestants.

  Coyne was chuffed with himself. So much so that he started cracking jokes with Jennifer and Nuala. Taking the sweeping brush and pretending to sweep the kitchen floor. Then helping to carry cups and dishes out to the kitchen until Mrs Actually blocked his way, taking things out of his hands.

  Mrs Gogarty, they should name a drink after you, he said. She gave him a fierce look and spun around on her hind legs.

  This is the way things should be again, Coyne thought. Of course it was all his fault in the first place. He was the first to admit it. His drinking. His fooling around. His moods. But he was ready to go straight over that waterfall of domestic bliss as he watched Carmel laughing as she used to in the old days. He could not see why they had ever separated.

  It’s insane, Carmel, he wanted to shout.

  Despite all the good will, Coyne could not persuade Carmel to go to the pub with him. Take one step inside a public bar with that man, and you’ll never come out, Mrs Gogarty warned. Actually, taking one step in any direction with that man is a fatal mistake.

  Carmel didn’t know how she could allow herself to go out with her ex-husband on her birthday. It would mean that she had nobody else in her life and was still depending on Coyne for emotional partnership. It was for the sake of the children, she told herself. And in some respects she took pity on Coyne since the fire. Was it possible that his victim-hero status was slowly winning her over? She considered the expensive gifts he had bought for her. The least she could do was go for a walk with him. But she was not ready to give up her independence to be seen in some squalid pub.

  Instead she suggested Irish dancing. I need a partner, she said.

  Coyne didn’t catch the irony.

  You’ve had bad experiences with Irish dancing, Carmel.

  She was willing to put it all behind her. Everybody is into it now, she said. There was a set-dancing revival club in every suburb, she added with great enthusiasm.

  Riverfluke, in other words, Coyne muttered. People hopping around to The Stacks of Barley.

  Carmel was keen to relive her childhood. She had won a lot of medals doing Tara Brooch dancing as a little girl. A cross between show jumping and the goosestep.

  The country is changing, she said. People are proud of their heritage. It will be good for your chest as well.

  Irish dancing was no way to repair your lungs, or your marriage, Coyne thought. But what could he do? He agreed to join her, even just to carry out a discreet little quality control check on this latest revival. He was the custodian of heritage. Coyne had learned a few steps himself when he was a young lad. Of course, he could have done with another drink beforehand, just to work up the courage. With enough drink he might even have felt he was rejoining society. Getting into the new Ireland.

  But it was too much to expect. Coyne was off on his own ideological counter-attack.

  For fucksake, he muttered when he saw the incompetence of the dancers. What a graceless pack of heifers.

  Pat, come on. Just get into it, she said. You’ll love it.

  Coyne waited on the sidelines. What was going on here? These people didn’t know the difference between Irish dancing and a haka. A woman wobbled past him with a low-cut dress, breasts churning around like she was making butter. Tina Turner gyrating on the Cliffs of Moher. A man stomping around with her like a cowboy, kicking dust and waltzing on bandy legs, like he’d been sitting on a horse all day. Coyne wanted to go up to him and give him a clout on the back of the head. Give that up. Dance properly. Stop moving your neck, you blackguard. And stop that pelvic thrusting, all of you. That’s got nothing to do with Irish dancing.

  Don’t be such a purist, Carmel said. It’s all evolving.

  Look at them wiggling, Coyne said in despair, pointing directly at the woman shaking her fuselage. He watched the new hip movements with great alarm. Where was the subtle introspection of Irish culture? The secrecy? The provocative understatement?

  You’re stuck in the past, Carmel said.

  This is all wrong, Coyne raged.

  As far as he was concerned, it had everything to do with the past. Irish dancing had its own unique swing. It was a triumph of control, with none of this cheap Riverfluke grandeur. How could you hope to merge humility with tacky exhibitionism? It was a cultural contradiction in terms, like a convertible Ferrari with a thatched roof. Where was the grace that made old women in Connem
ara look like young girls with their lightfooted dignity?

  Coyne had lost it. The one chance he had of getting back with Carmel was about to be aimlessly thrown away on this primitive argument. He was determined to show these people what Irish dancing was about. An exhibition they would not forget. He took a puff on his inhaler and leapt out like an okapi. Like he had fallen out of the sky. With stunning poise. His shoulders twitching in time to the music, a look of abject dementia in his open eyes, and his self-raising hair standing up on his head with great vigour. He moved as steadily as a ship. Only the heel every now and again slamming down on the wooden floor, punctuating the beat with an emphatic bang as he swung Carmel around the dance floor. He was back in the Aran Islands, dancing in the Kilronan Hall, with the generator purring outside.

  But as usual, Coyne went too far. People looked up in shock. Suburban novices, frightened by the sheer authenticity of his movements. They left a big gap of respect around him. Coyne the mountainy man, as cold and passionate as the dawn, yahooing and leaving casualties all around him. Swinging the wiggle out of Tina Turner and sending her practically into orbit. Until she was so seasick that she had to sit down with her head between her legs. White in the face. And her husband holding out a glass of water towards her.

  Carmel was furious as she dragged Coyne outside. He was a bogman. Dancing was all about courtesy. Not some contest of strength.

  Go back to aerobics, he shouted over his shoulder. You pack of flatfooted gobshites.

  And then outside the hall, Coyne started coughing like he was going to die before he could justify his crusading intervention. Stood there with his hand against the wall for a clear ten minutes, rasping and dragging up a string of emerald green rosary beads which he spat on the ground outside like a warning to all dancers.

  Take the wiggle out of Irish dancing!

  Carmel drove home in silence. Couldn’t wait to get rid of him. Coyne had definitely blown it this time. It was the end all right. Though when she pulled up outside his flat, he tried to cling on to some hope of a reunion. Refused to get out of the car and asked her straight out if she wanted to come inside for a cup of coffee. He still had a lot to say about Irish culture.

  The idea of it. She looked astonished. And I’d like to know where – you got the notion, is what she was saying with her eyes. Trying to make a pass at your ex-wife, for Godsake.

  I’ve got to go, she said.

  It’s you and me, Carmel, he said with another gust of passion, as if he’d met her for a tryst. We’re inextricably linked.

  She pushed him out of the car. Alarmed. Drove away and left him standing.

  We’re inextricably linked, he repeated to the empty street.

  Coyne’s attitude to women needed urgent exploration. Ms Dunford thought he was not only psychotic but dangerously unbalanced. He was in love with Carmel but he couldn’t take his mind off women in general for more than a minute at a time. He admitted to having an uncontrollable fetish about tartan skirts, bra straps and knicker lines.

  His relationship with women was more like a contest. Some big gender warfare, brought on perhaps by the way he was educated in single-sex schools, and the way the men and women gathered on opposite sides of the dancehalls in Béal an Daingin and in the Aran Islands. Or the men gathered in groups together outside Mass. And men together in the pub. It simplified everything into a clearly defined go-get-them role, but also left him without a vocabulary to deal with women, except as a lover. Love was easy. Talking was hard.

  Why did you leave your wife?

  I don’t really know, he said.

  Was it freedom? Some need to liberate yourself?

  Coyne resented the question. This was like a mental grope. Scraping at his innermost secrets. He protected himself, speaking in riddles. She had identified the problem, something awry in the nature of men; some deep, ongoing crisis that they carried around with them all the time, even when they looked happy and amused and well adjusted. Coyne was restless. He could not trust himself.

  I’m not in control, he said. I never was.

  You need control?

  I just never know where I stand, that’s all.

  While Coyne was living with Carmel, he wanted to get away. Now he couldn’t wait to get back with her. Maybe there was some profound contradiction in the male psyche that could never be reconciled, except through the active pursuit of desires – women, goals, music, football. Men like Coyne were never stationary. They were like mackerel, without the air-bag necessary to maintain a steady place in the water. They were forced to keep moving all the time, chasing around the pelagic depths of the ocean at forty kilometres an hour, all day and all night, unable to stay still for any length of time. Coyne the restless mackerel, like a channel surfer’s nightmare: obsessed with what he was missing.

  You should join one of those men’s groups, Ms Dunford advised.

  What?

  A lot of men are starting to meet and discuss their problems these days.

  What the hell was she on about? No way was he going to join up with some bunch of wackos in short trousers talking about their feelings and getting in touch with their instincts. Out there in some forest with bow and arrows, dancing around the campfire, chanting and bawling like lost elks. Primordial men, getting it all off their chests.

  In any case, what Coyne wanted could never really be discussed out in the open without destroying it. There would always be something dark and unspeakable about his desires, some innate contradiction. Coyne was a walking paradox.

  Sergeant Corrigan was trying to expand his investigation. He was casting a wider net, so to speak, and the biblical metaphor was appropriate since he had begun to investigate the entire fishing community. He went through every trawler. Spoke to skippers and sailors, some of whom had been asleep below deck when Tommy Nolan met his death. They must have heard something.

  He encountered a conspiracy of ignorance. Empty nets. Fish-head silence.

  Normally Sergeant Corrigan was more inclined to employ DIY metaphors. He was one of those who never stopped improving things. A true handyman. Every available minute off duty was spent sawing and drilling. At the weekend, he wandered around his home, measuring everything in sight.

  He had come down one morning early to do a few measurements at the harbour. As far as most of the fishing people were concerned, Corrigan should stay at home and measure his own mickey. They were seriously pissed off with this DIY stuff. Watched with contempt as Corrigan climbed down the side of trawlers, measuring the gap between boats and the quay. The angle of fall. The slack of mooring ropes.

  Sergeant Corrigan seemed to concentrate on skipper Martin Davis.

  Is the tide coming in or going out? he asked.

  Martin Davis was a busy man, and if the sergeant had nothing more serious in mind, he would like to get on with his work. Corrigan got a bit testy. He didn’t like to be rushed on his DIY jobs. He was the type of man who asked questions a second time if he didn’t get an answer. He belonged to the measure-twice-cut-once persuasion.

  You facilitated Tommy’s funeral, he said accusingly. You helped dispose of the ashes.

  Tommy did a few jobs for me, Davis answered with a hint of genuine respect for the dead. I was indebted to him. He was a great guy.

  But Corrigan was never going to be happy with the answer. He was there to measure things again and again. Maybe everything was not quite fish fingers at the harbour, he thought.

  The skipper squinted against the sun. The glare reflecting across the surface of the harbour was suddenly too much for him. Besides, Martin Davis was getting very irritated at being mistaken for a plank of timber. Sergeant Corrigan had a pencil behind his ear and looked at Martin Davis as though he could build shelves on his face.

  From there, Sergeant Corrigan went straight on to the Haven nursing home where he interviewed Jimmy Coyne again. Another vital piece of in
formation had emerged – a discrepancy, if you like, between Jimmy’s version of events and his friend Gussy’s. Of course, it had to be taken into consideration that they were both drunk and stoned on the night in question. Neither of them was reliable. The Sergeant was trying to work out why Jimmy had stayed at the harbour after Gussy went home.

  I don’t know, Jimmy said. I fell asleep.

  A real schoolboy answer, Corrigan thought. This time he found Jimmy’s behaviour strange. A little distant. Not quite in touch with reality. He formed the opinion that Jimmy was either very guilty, or else he had taken some kind of narcotic substance that prevented him from thinking clearly and giving rational answers. It was like talking to somebody with senile dementia.

  Did you encounter Tommy Nolan?

  You’re in the vestibule, Jimmy said.

  What’s that supposed to mean?

  Jimmy shrugged as though he didn’t know what he meant himself.

  Look, I can take you into the station if you like, Corrigan threatened.

  They quickly reached a kind of stalemate in the reception room of the Haven. It was clear that Corrigan had nothing more than suspicion on his side. Just a gut feeling. Hunch science. They sat looking at the calendar depicting a smiling over-seventies couple jogging through a forest and a schnauzer running beside them, trying hard to keep up. Lactulose! Like clockwork! Corrigan’s mouth had gone into the silent whistle formation. Like he could have done with a spoonful of lactulose himself.

  Jimmy Coyne was in love. At the old people’s home, surrounded by all that morbidity and decline, he discovered a great longing for life. He followed Nurse Boland around wherever he could. He brushed against her accidentally and she punched him back, accidentally. They slagged each other all the time and brightened up the mausoleum wards, as she called them. The age difference was meaningless and Jimmy told the old people he loved her. For the inhabitants of the home it was like a live soap opera unfolding in front of their eyes.