Sad Bastard

by Hugo Hamilton

  I need it in the morning, she said, dropping the keys into his hand. Not allowing his hand to touch hers. Not allowing his eyes to look into hers.

  Jimmy came down the stairs and Coyne told him to get into the car.

  Where are you going? she asked at last, but there was no explanation.

  We’re going to sort this out, he said.

  He drove away as though they were never coming back. With an alarming yelp of tyres, he turned out into the street. Jimmy was afraid, not knowing what his father had in mind. He was almost craving the quantifiable threat of Mongi O Doherty. At least that was simply a matter of money, whereas Coyne remained utterly silent, locked into a kind of ideological riddle with no answer.

  Coyne drove like a maniac. There was no other way to drive the small red car that Mrs Gogarty had bought Carmel. Past the Garda station. Screeching around the corner on to the main street. Feckless and furious. Turning towards the harbour and down to the very spot where Tommy Nolan had met his death.

  Not here, Jimmy pleaded, looking around and expecting to see Mongi lurching towards him with the musical wheel brace.

  Why not? Coyne said suspiciously. Was the truth coming out at last?

  He stopped the car and left the engine running. The moment of reckoning.

  They were parked near the edge of the quay. Nothing between them and the harbour now, not even a rope or a bollard. Just a step away from the surface of the black water. In the distance, some moored yachts swinging from side to side. Trawlers elbowing each other as they rose and fell on the tide. Nobody around: not a soul to witness this impromptu courtroom in a car. Just the cheap whine of the engine and the utter silence between them.

  Did you do it? Coyne asked with great solemnity.

  What, Dad?

  Coyne revved up the car. The engine hummed.

  Tommy Nolan? I want the truth. Why have they ransacked the flat?

  I don’t know, Dad. I didn’t go near Tommy.

  The truth, Jimmy, that’s all.

  Coyne let the handbrake down. Edged the car forward as if he had already made up his mind. Collective suicide. The most honourable way for them both to go. The truth involved sacrifice and he was ready to go with his son.

  Jimmy began to cry. He was still only a boy, for Godsake.

  What could he say? He was dealing with Coyne’s justice. A kind of double-bind test. The self-implicating verity fork. Because no answer could reach the absolute standard of truth set by his father. If he denied the murder of Tommy Nolan once more they would both be in the harbour, struggling with the fuel-laden gunge coming into the car.

  The headlights of another car flashed over the water in front of them. It was like a door opening, letting in a shaft of light across the boats. Perhaps it was Mongi O Doherty coming to rescue Jimmy from his own father, inching slowly past the shipyards, down to the quays. Casting huge moving shadows, a candle coming down the stairs. Past the barracks. Right down to the foot of the pier where it stopped and the headlights went out, as if the door had closed again.

  Coyne looked straight ahead. His breath was noisy, making a big sawing noise, keeping time with the crisis.

  Jimmy looked around at the yellow half-darkness where the other car was now parked. Yellow eyes watching. Jesus, if it was Mongi, then he might as well die, here and now, with his father.

  Go ahead, Jimmy said at last. Go ahead and drive.

  Coyne turned to his son. He was clearly surprised and elated by this response and looked right into Jimmy’s eyes as though he had witnessed a great redemption. He pulled the handbrake up and switched off the engine. Tears in his eyes. Tears in Jimmy’s eyes too, knowing that he had given the correct answer by sheer accident. Jimmy had shown himself to be made of the same noble stock as his father. He was ready to die to uphold the truth.

  By Jesus, Jimmy!

  Coyne got out of the car, went round to Jimmy’s side and opened the door. Nodded to his son to step out, then embraced him with a vice-grip hug. Jimmy’s ribs were nearly crushed right into his spine. His shaggin’ vertebrae were coming out through his mouth and his lungs punctured with the weight of paternal affection. Coyne kissed his son vigorously on the cheek to complete this extraordinary ritual. The trial on the pier.

  I knew you didn’t do it, Coyne said in triumph. I knew all along.

  Then he let go of his son and they both stood for a while looking into the solemn black water below. They had just dumped some great secret into the harbour and were watching it long after it disappeared. They understood each other fully – they had entered into a great lie together.

  You’re my son, Coyne said with great feeling. I’ll protect you.

  Thanks, Dad!

  Jimmy wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, trying to look like a man, and nervously glancing up the quay.

  In perpetuity, son. I’ll protect you in perpetuity.

  Coyne slapped him on the back, a reward for his bravery. Of course, there were other questions that needed to be asked, but the communion of minds put matters of a practical nature on hold. It was a genuine father and son, funicular type relationship – pulling each other, but in opposite directions. An equal and opposite interdependence. Coyne didn’t want to know anything else, because that bright blue kernel of understanding had been located. They didn’t need to say a word more. They had postponed the truth. A dizzy reprieve, with the smell of fishboxes and engine oil all around them.

  There was somebody whistling. It echoed across the water towards them and Coyne turned to see a figure approaching with a torch, beaming along the quay. Jimmy thought of making a run for it, but Coyne pushed him back into the car and got ready to drive away again.

  It was Sergeant Corrigan. Whistler of all people had to come down and catch father and son staring into the harbour. This didn’t look good at all, Coyne realised. Whistler, the plain-clothed Holy Ghost standing on the pier with his torch shining from below, making a mental note of the circumstances.

  Coyne rolled down the window and smiled at the sergeant, as much as to say: what the fuck do you want?

  Are you looking for Jesus or something? Coyne said as he drove away.

  Sergeant Corrigan staggered backwards, a strange epiphany glowing across his face. A grin of sanctity. An apostle in plain clothes, standing on the pier with the beam of his torch entering his open mouth and lighting him up like a luminous souvenir.

  Were you really going to go in? Jimmy asked on the way home again.

  No way, Coyne said.

  You were only bluffing?

  Christ, Jimmy. Do you think I was going to kill us both?

  It was a strange denial which increased the terror in retrospect. In the awkward silence that followed, Jimmy began to experience the full aftermath of fear, when the moment of crisis had passed and the clarity of this bizarre Russian roulette sank in.

  They had started building a wall on the street where Coyne lived. As he came out of the flat the next morning, he saw that a truck full of granite rocks had been delivered and men were out there already with their cement, laying the foundations. A piece of twine had been spanned from a gatepost to the far end of the front garden and one of the men was placing the first of the granite rocks into an open trench.

  Coyne watched them for a moment with fascination. The same way that he had watched men building dry stone walls in the west as a boy. Here at last was a job Coyne would like to have done himself. He could ditch his career and become a wall builder like these men. He admired the simplicity of the job, the plain sense of achievement.

  One of the men wore a woollen hat on the side of his head like Toulouse-Lautrec. Coyne watched him slap cement on to the surface, then cautiously select a granite rock and place it on the cement. He tapped it into place with the handle of the trowel before stepping back to examine the progress from a distance.

  This wa
s a real job, Coyne thought.

  Coyne went to visit Fred Metcalf, bringing another box of chicken nuggets with him, and some Kimberley biscuits. There was a time when he used to tell Fred everything that went on in his life. But now he had become a little more guarded and they talked merely in an agreed tone of melancholia.

  Fred was going through a bad time. He was on multiple medication and had finally received a hopeless prognosis from his doctor. The obstacle lodged in his intestines was immovable. Fred Metcalf, the security guard, was going to die like Elvis, with a cement block in his stomach.

  Coyne put on the kettle and they sat for a while and talked, because that was all that was left to do. Fred didn’t even eat biscuits any more. Packets of them were piling up on the kitchen cupboard. He was wasting away.

  They’re not being honest with you, Coyne said. Doctors are liars.

  Nothing they can do now, Fred whispered.

  I’d put them under pressure. Demand the best consultants. I’m sure there’s something they’re not telling you.

  But that was far too much hope for one afternoon. There is nothing more irritating to a terminal patient than the sound of blind optimism. Fred had no time for hospital waiting rooms. He was basically like Coyne. He didn’t want to be cured. What was the point?

  Diabolical, was how Fred put it. He was not just talking about his own health but the health of the nation.

  It’s not fair, Coyne said.

  Look at them all dancing around, eating Pringles, Fred said. Everyone smiling at each other all the time. You’d think they had some disease or other that was making them soft in the head. Happy as pigs in shite all of them.

  I know what you’re saying, Coyne agreed.

  Everything is great, Fred said. Everything is cool and wonderful. Everything is a masterpiece. A tour de force. A triumph. The whole country is praising itself out of existence. All these empty superlatives. One of these days they’re going to run out of superlatives, Pat.

  Absolutely, Coyne colluded. There’s nothing ordinary.

  Fred and Coyne had long been of one mind about the decline of civilisation. They were staring up the same areshole of gloom, so to speak. Two men with grave expressions on their faces, belonging to the elite club of global paranoia, with only a minimum of sunlight entering the room through the small window, and the certainty of Fred’s slow but imminent death underpinning the decline. Both of them brought up on tragedy, war and doom expectancy which they were forced to remain loyal to. An ancestral readiness for disaster. As if they were waiting for the return of the bad days and deeply mistrusted the new optimism and fun: the forces of darkness and remembrance fighting a constant battle with the forces of brightness and forgetting. One of these days that optimism would fall flat on its face. Then Coyne and Fred would have the last laugh.

  Yeah, but are they happy? Fred asked triumphantly.

  Good question.

  You can see right through all this aerosol happiness. It’s fake.

  They’re only putting it on, Coyne said. Maybe Fred was right. Maybe the Irish were basically a sad people who pretended they were happy, just waiting for the next calamity. Going to all kinds of clownish extremes to deny their melancholia.

  It’s the dogs of illusion, Fred concluded, shaking his head.

  In the afternoon Coyne almost ran into his bank manager again. This time he was standing outside the book shop in the shopping centre. The town-killing Dun Laoghaire shopping centre. The ubiquitous Killjoy was now beginning to follow Coyne around, it seemed. Coming to haunt him after all the telephone calls. Maybe the Bank of Ireland had a long memory and had started cloning dozens of Killjoys, distributing them throughout the borough to stalk Coyne.

  Mr Killmurphy was staring straight at him. Giving him the evil eye. Ready for confrontation.

  It reminded Coyne to make more phone calls and to be more consistent in his campaign. Killjoy looked a little too happy. In fact, it appeared that Killjoy was saying something to Coyne across the distance. Killjoy looked like he was going to come over to talk to him.

  In the background, George Michael was screaming Freedom!

  Coyne had to make a swift detour to try and avoid Mr Killmurphy who was now coming towards him with a big grin on his face. Even had his hand up to indicate that he wanted to engage Coyne in conversation. To accuse him. Or maybe to ask for a truce.

  Fuck off, Killjoy. You can’t talk to me.

  As Coyne made his escape along the rail, sprinting almost, with a shopping bag dangling beside him, he could see in the corner of his eye that Killjoy was diligently giving chase. It was like one of those Olympic walking races, where the contestants are not allowed to run. Killjoy galloping along with lots of torso movements and elbow power.

  Coyne managed to get to the elevators, but then discovered that both were going up. It was typical of the town-killing shopping centre management to trap people on the upper floor to prevent egress. The twin elevators of no return. The inward and upward valve of shopping mall psychology.

  Coyne, almost caught, got away just in time. He had to act fast, and eventually escaped by running down the hallway towards the next exit. Killjoy calling after him: Hello! Excuse me!

  By late afternoon, the wall outside Coyne’s flat was almost finished. He stopped to admire the work. The men had gone home and a temporary barrier had been erected around the site. Coyne stood for a while examining the pointing and the skill with which the builder had selected his rocks. The cement was still drying, but the wall was already indestructible.

  It was a masterpiece, of course, but he didn’t want to start breaking into superlatives, going over the top and saying it was a brilliant wall. Or that no wall had ever been built like it. It was such an original wall. A new wall. A tour de force wall.

  For Christsake, no. A wall was a wall.

  He admired it quietly for a moment and went inside. The different shades of granite merging into a pattern. It was a fine wall.

  At the harbour bar, McCurtain was drunk and acting up. He was annoying two local lads who had come back home on a visit with their German wives. They had just returned from Munich for the first time, visiting relatives, spending money and buying pints for all their local friends and neighbours. But McCurtain was full of drink already and took exception to them. He felt that these two feral homing pigeons didn’t look quite right. They were too tanned and well dressed, taking their affluence to extremes, laughing and joking with the locals in a thick Dublin accent laced with a Bavarian swagger. The language of lederhosen made McCurtain bitter. It was sheer jealousy. One of the women was wearing glossy lipstick, and the pink print of her lips was embossed on the rim of a pint glass.

  Where are you from? McCurtain asked.

  Munich, one of the women answered.

  Munickers!

  It was a dodgy moment and the men exchanged acid looks. There would have been a row straight away only that one of the women smiled and acknowledged McCurtain’s shabby joke with an equally shabby response. Pouting her glossy lips, she shifted around on the barstool and said they weren’t half as tight as Dublin knickers.

  McCurtain was taken aback, and after a moment’s silence, everyone laughed it off. But he kept up his resentment. Wouldn’t believe that the men were local.

  You’re not fuckin’ Irish, he bawled. No way.

  Bloody sure we are. York Road, born and bred.

  Would you shag off! McCurtain waved his hand.

  I swear to Jaysus. My passport has a fuckin’ harp on it, you know.

  But it was a big mistake to defend your origins in the Anchor Bar. McCurtain refused to accept their credentials. Challenged them to prove they were Irish by singing a song in the Irish language. And while McCurtain was looking the German women up and down with lascivious interest, the men sang Cill Chais. They got most of the words right and were clearly delighted at their
excellent powers of retention. Working in a Bavarian printing firm with the noise of big machines around them every day, drinking abundant litres of German beer every night and still able to remember a sad old classroom lament to the ancient Irish oak forests. Tá deire na gcoilte ar lár… but even then, they didn’t look Irish enough for McCurtain. I mean, how Irish do you have to be?

  Krauts! You can’t sing either.

  Fuck off, one of them retorted. I’m as Irish as a Hiace van.

  Ah! McCurtain exclaimed. Now why didn’t you say that in the first place? At last he began to believe them. The Hiace van. A true icon of Irish life.

  They shook hands and embraced each other like brothers. In turn, they called McCurtain a Hyundai hatchback, and everyone became instant friends. Hyundai and Hiace suddenly became more indigenous than the Irish themselves. More pints were called for, and there was laughter all around until one of the women suddenly slapped her hand on the bar counter and said she could not let it go. There was a point to be made here about the whole issue of ethnicity. Furious at the slur against her husband, the woman with the glossy lipstick laid the matter to rest once and for all with a short eloquent burst.

  You fucking Arschloch, she said, pointing at McCurtain. What is this problem with you Irish? I don’t care who is what here. And even if you are some kind of Celtic prince, you are still nothing but a big Arschloch.

  Ah, take it easy, McCurtain said, holding his hands out in supplication.

  The Anchor Bar was silent. The barman stopped serving just to watch McCurtain being put in his place with a Bavarian oomph. She gunned him down with a big tirade while McCurtain looked at his shoes and leered. The twisted grin of shame.

  Big Celtic Arschloch!

  Coyne sat on his own with his pint, trowelling away the excess foam from his mouth with the back of his hand. The Anchor Bar was gaining momentum. Heading towards closing time fast. One of the visiting emigrants on the far side of the partition was still trying to put his origins beyond doubt with a new song. You may travel far far, from your own native home, he kept thrashing out again and again with fiery pride, but he couldn’t really get going at all. The lyrics stopped there every time. Like a drunk trying to get up on a bike, cycling along with one foot but unable to swing his leg over the saddle and take off properly.