Carl led the way upstairs to where crowds milled around more video games and rows of snooker tables. Rap music was thumping out. It must have been a trick of the light but the pigmentation on people’s faces gave the look of a tribe who had forsaken the sensation of daylight. Carl beckoned me up more steel steps to where a laser game was in progress.
Al was among the group of people watching. He turned after a moment, with a hunted look. I noticed that Carl remained in the doorway. Al walked over and I put my hand up to touch his face.
‘Are you okay?’ I asked. ‘What happened?’
‘Will you help me, Tracey?’ he said. ‘I’m in deep shit and you’re the only person I can ask.’
FIFTEEN
I HAD FEW ENOUGH clothes to smuggle from the hotel in Glasnevin. In the end I simply wore most of them under my spare coat. The bag was one I had taken from Harrow and I was happy to leave it behind. The night porter was back on duty, but he seemed more concerned with the remnants of the office Christmas party resisting his entreaties to leave. He glanced towards me and smiled, but said nothing. Yesterday I had acquired blonde hair, tonight it looked like I had gained a stone in weight.
I didn’t know how much trouble Al was in, or what danger I might put myself in by accompanying him. But, when he had asked, I had immediately agreed to travel to London with him, pretending that I was his girl-friend and we were spending Christmas in my flat if the British police asked. With Christy’s death in the papers he felt it would look too suspicious if he simply left the country by himself without any apparent destination. Somebody had put the rumour on the street that he had killed McGann and it was only a matter of time before the police heard it too. He needed to disappear until the business was sorted out. I liked Al and I trusted him but, in my heart, I knew I’d mainly agreed to travel with him because it offered me a chance to avoid meeting Luke on that plane. I was running away every bit as much as Al.
I crossed the road from the hotel and hurried down a side street towards an old schoolhouse with a narrow lane beside it. The street light in the lane was broken. I glanced behind at the deserted road before racing down the lane to scale the iron railway bridge leading across to poorer looking streets on the far side on the tracks. I stopped on the bridge and held my fingers against the wire mesh. Roxy’s father, who had been a British Rail driver, once told me that the worst aspect of the job was the suicides. One night a woman had jumped from a bridge to land spreadeagled on the windscreen of an express he was driving. The train’s speed had kept her trapped against the glass as though glued to it, staring in at him as he drove on, knowing that once he slowed down the suction would wear off and she would fall to her death. She had wanted instantaneous suicide, instead fate allowed her an audience with her unwilling and unwitting executioner. The train had entered a short tunnel and when it re-emerged she simply wasn’t there.
I heard a train approach in the moonlight, with empty trucks rattling as I hurried down the iron steps at the far side. Al had told me there was a laneway to the left, but not that it would be so dark and L-shaped. I ran through it. An isolated terrace of red-brick houses lay beyond, in the shadow of the railway embankment, lit by two amber street lights set into the walls of the terrace itself. This was where Al had promised to wait. Car headlights came on, blinding me as I heard an engine start. I ran towards the lights, praying it was Al as the passenger door swung open.
‘You’re getting fat,’ Al said, eyeing my layers of clothes.
‘Get me the hell out of here,’ I replied and slammed the door shut.
We turned on to a long road bordering a prison. The car ferry wasn’t for six hours yet. Al was tense and I could see that he was just driving aimlessly. Whenever we stopped at traffic lights he put his head down if another car pulled up. He was making me more nervous that I already was. I glanced at him, wondering if perhaps he might have killed McGann. Why was the finger being pointed at him? I remembered his bitterness at Christy’s removal and his hints of revenge. Al sensed me watching him.
‘I didn’t do it,’ he said. ‘All my life I’ve stayed out of it and now someone is using me as a scapegoat. I don’t know who or why, but it’s like a blood-lust out there. Not even Christy would mess with the Bypass Bombardiers. Maybe McGann did the job himself and put the blame on Christy. Christine is convinced McGann set Christy up to try and take the heat off himself, but I swear to God I didn’t kill him. I can hardly use a cigarette lighter, never mind a gun. I’d have shot myself in the toe or something. But McGann’s mates think I’m gunning for their blood and they have to kill me before I get them.’
‘Who killed McGann?’
‘How the hell would I know?’ Al asked. ‘Everyone’s at it. There’s more guns in this city than hard-ons poking around the blue section in my Da’s video store. You’re nobody in Dublin now without a trigger. You can smell the taste for blood out there.’
We had crossed the river and turned on to a stretch of motorway bulldozed across a hive of tiny roads. Solitary houses, which had once formed part of terraces, stood shell-shocked on the edge of amputated streets. Al’s car chugged along, its engine plotting mutinies. We turned off the motorway to circle through the narrow streets, with Al perpetually checking his mirror. He stopped across from a block of flats. A battered caravan was blocking the entrance with a tricolour painted on the side and a huge sign sprayed on the pavement: NO DRUG PUSHERS HERE. A group of men warmed themselves by an open fire, one of them incongruously dressed in a Santa outfit. I could see a pick-axe handle resting against the open caravan door.
‘Drive in there by mistake,’ Al said, ‘and you’ll have some talking to do just to get out with your knee-caps in place. Last week they beat a six-stone junkie to death. It was hardly worth the trouble, the guy could barely walk. They left him dying on the path, screaming at passing girls to stay away because he’d Aids. Even ordinary people are getting in on the act, moving the two-bit pushers and junkies along.’
The men had left the fire to stare at Al’s car. Santa Claus reached for the pick-axe handle. Al pulled away as some of them began to cross the road.
‘I don’t blame them,’ he said. ‘They see their kids getting strung out and dying. The pushers have people handing out free heroin outside the schools. But all the vigilantes do is move the small fry on to the next estate. There’s no fear of them tackling the big barons in their fortified houses.’
‘Like Christy,’ I said.
‘Christy never touched drugs,’ Al replied. ‘He was old-fashioned. He thought sexual perversion meant the doggie position. Everyone else was making their fortunes from crack and heroin, but Christy was a relic, living off his reputation. Unless you do drugs in Dublin you don’t have the muscle to count for nothing any more.’
‘Maybe Christy tried to change that,’ I said as we reached the deserted motorway. Al turned left, heading back towards town.
‘I don’t honestly know,’ he said. ‘I had started going to school before I realised there was anything odd in waking up to find police searching your bedroom. They never found anything but they kept coming back. I’d see it in school, parents whispering to the teacher about having their kids shifted from the desk beside me. I stuck it out and built a life of my own. Now it seems that all someone has to do is whisper and it’s snatched away from me again.’
Al slammed on the brakes and pulled in. He stared out, his knuckles white as he gripped the wheel. There was still hours to go before the ferry sailed. He looked across at me.
‘This is crazy,’ he said, ‘we can’t drive around all night. Besides, and don’t get me wrong, I really do think you should take some of your clothes off.’
Al parked in the laneway behind his father’s video shop, which was in a basement in an old street backing into the quays. He considered the front door too dangerous to approach, but there was a way in through the back, across an overgrown garden filled with rubble. He told me to wait behind a skip as he ran to the back door. He opened it and sw
itched off the alarm, then turned the light on and stood for a moment, as if making himself a target, before beckoning for me to cross the garden. The video shop occupied two rooms. Through a gap in the shutters I could see iron bars protecting the windows. There was a section beside the counter partitioned off with a plywood wall which didn’t quite reach the ceiling. A sign on the door read; Adults Only Admitted.
Al was afraid to put the main lights on. He rooted behind the counter and took out a red sports bag filled with pirated videos. He dumped them out on to the floor and I read the titles scrawled by hand in red marker: Anal Girls Three, College Girls Watersports and Bizarre in Bucharest.
‘Da gets them by the bucketful from some redneck cop who chases sheep around the bog of Allen,’ Al said, matter of factly. ‘I don’t ask too many questions. I mean, all small shopkeepers need to specialise to compete against the chain stores.’
‘You make your living from these things?’ I said in disgust and he shrugged.
‘You know the joke. A guy walks into a shite café and sees a school-mate working there. “Jaysus, Joe” he says haughtily, “I bet you never thought you’d wind up working in this kip.” “I might work here,” Joe replies, “but at least I don’t eat here.”’ Al picked the videos off the floor. ‘It’s just a job, the same as selling CDs or six inch nails. I rent them out, I don’t watch them. Well, apart from Cunnilingus in Clonakilty. I mean, you’d never think Irish sheep could do that.’
I refused to laugh. Al flicked on the monitor over his head and for a moment I thought he was going to play one. Instead he rewound the security tape. I looked up and saw a tiny camera on the ceiling trained into the adult section. Al found the part he wanted and pressed the play button. The picture quality was poor, with the time and date superimposed on the screen. The adult section was narrow with hardly space for two people to pass and crude shelving on every side. Once or twice for a giggle with Roxy I had run down into the basement of Lovejoys on Tottenham Court Road to jeer at the men standing sheepishly in front of the magazines there, but I had never properly witnessed this male world before. Men were herded into that confined space, brushing against each other but never seeming to speak or acknowledge anyone else’s presence as they examined the video cases on the shelves. The grainy quality of the film reminded me of a wildlife programme secretly recording worker bees inside a hive. Men of all ages came and left without comment, intent on their task and on catching nobody else’s eye. Two men stood at all times near the door. Every time it opened they glanced out, watching the desk. Al paused the film and pointed to them. I knelt up on to the counter to get a closer look and recognised them as having stood beside McGann at Christy’s removal.
‘I came in here at eight o’clock last night,’ Al said, ‘after hearing about McGann on the news. I glanced up at the monitor and saw them just as some punter opened the door. I threw myself down behind the counter and watched the pair of them on the screen staring out, waiting for me. One to plug me, the other to grab the security video. Sheila behind the counter thought I was cracked. I got her to pass me down the phone and called Uncle Luke who told me about the rumour that I had shot McGann.’
I remembered Luke’s prediction that nobody in Dublin would allow Al to just be himself.
‘All I want is a simple life,’ Al said. ‘I put in a few hours’ work here during the week and at weekends I mess around doing DJ and mixing sounds at parties. I might pop the odd E but I never touched any other shite.’ He turned the monitor off. ‘I ran out of here as soon as the door into the adult section was closed and I’m running still. I’m scared, Tracey. It doesn’t matter if I’m innocent or guilty, they’ll get me no matter where I hide in Dublin. Once rumours start they don’t stop. That’s why I’ve a bigger favour to ask. You know the cock-and-bull story for the police about me spending Christmas in your flat? Well, I need somewhere in London to crash, away from my family or from anyone they could track down. You don’t have to say yes, but if you had a sofa or anything for a few days, you’d be saving my life.’
I wanted to break away from Luke and his family. But I also knew I was returning to London to sit in that cold flat over Christmas and nurse my wounds. I didn’t want to be alone, inventing excuses to convince myself I wasn’t lonely.
‘My flat is poky,’ I said. ‘There’s only a single bed which I share with my teddy. Three would be a crowd, if I make myself clear.’
Al nodded. ‘You’ve a soft heart.’
‘I’ve a bloody hard sofa as well.’
He laughed. ‘I can keep an eye on the place for you on Christmas Day when you’re with your family.’
‘I’ve no family left,’ I told him.
‘Just a father.’
I wanted the conversation over. I picked up the empty sports bag and decided to put the rest of my clothes in it. The only place available to change in was the adult section. I closed the door behind me. Girls’ faces stared from the shelves in the half moonlight, sucking on erect cocks, imprisoned by chains or pouting as they fondled their own breasts while being taken from behind. I felt suffocated in there with the ghosts of a hundred men. How could Al casually handle these cassettes as a way of life? I stared uncomfortably up at the security camera, with no way of knowing if he had turned it on. I felt grubby. I had never run away from a hotel without paying before. I took out the clean underwear I had stuffed into my pockets. Undressing behind that plywood partition was like a microcosm of my time with Luke in Dublin, having to take everything on trust, never certain of anything or fully in control.
I felt better with less clothes on. I threw everything else into the bag and opened the door quickly, trying to catch Al out. Al stood near the window, peering up through the shutters and checking the street, with the monitor turned off. I knew Luke would have sat at the counter, making no secret of enjoying the show to be had on screen.
‘Would you like to get some sleep?’ Al asked.
‘I think I’m learning how to do without it.’
I walked around the shelves in the main shop and picked an old Spencer Tracy movie. Perhaps it was the fact that we shared a name but I had always loved to watch his films on TV as a child. I had imagined the adult world would be like his films, a place where simple, honest people won through. I sat with Al on the floor and we watched Tracy battle against prejudice with only his integrity and soft voice as weapons. Al fished under the counter for a hidden bit of hash and rolled a number. He put an arm around me, a little uncertainly and I snuggled against his chest.
‘You’re my favourite cousin, Trace,’ he said, ‘and I never even knew I had you.’
I remembered Carl’s remark about Christine and Al being kissing cousins once and wondered what it meant. I wanted to tell Al the whole truth, but I couldn’t. It felt better to seem to be Luke’s bastard rather than his cheap English tart. But it also was a way to keep Al’s attentions at bay. Not that he would try to force anything, but I suspected he mightn’t have to try too hard. It was Al and not Luke I wished I had met in the Irish Centre. He had qualities which part of me felt I would never deserve. Now even though I had decided that my affair with Luke was over, the scars wouldn’t easily go away. I felt cheapened and hurt and, no matter how much I liked Al, he would always remind me of Luke.
I must have slept because suddenly I found that Al’s shoulder wasn’t there, but his jacket was folded under my head. I opened my eyes. Al was hunched down beside me, smiling with a cup of coffee covered by a saucer in his hand.
‘I didn’t want to wake you, Trace,’ he said. ‘I was trying to keep it warm.’
I felt he had been studying my face as I slept. The video was turned off. I took the coffee from him and he proffered a packet of biscuits.
‘The cheapest of the cheap,’ he apologised in advance. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’
‘No, give me E numbers any time,’ I said. ‘I need all the additives and chemicals I can get.’
It was half-five in the morning. I splashed water on
my face in the tiny toilet. I went to flush it but I was afraid of making noise. We left by the same way we had come in, with Al insisting on going a little way in front so that if anyone was waiting they would get him before I appeared. The streets were deserted and coated with thick frost. I thought about the children trying to sleep under my jacket and shivered.
We reached Dun Laoghaire in the dark and joined the queues of cars fanned out into chicanes prior to boarding the ferry. The lines snaked along the concrete wharf, seeming to take forever to crest the ramp which led down into the bowels of the vessel. While we had been on the move Al had managed to cloak his nervousness, but now he looked genuinely terrified. He glanced in his mirror every time the car slowed to a halt. A battered-looking motorbike had begun weaving between the lines of cars. I saw Al watch the motorbike approach, knowing that we were trapped with no space to move in any direction. The bike drew alongside, the motor cyclist casually glancing in at us behind the dark visor of a mud-splattered blue helmet with a dint in the side. Then the bike was past and an official had run out angrily to wave the motor cyclist down and redirect him into line.
Our tickets were checked but nobody bothered asking to see our passports. We parked on board, then walked up on deck. I realised I had come to Dublin twice, once by boat only to return by air and now by that same route in reverse. Only when the boat sailed did Al relax. We watched Dublin shrink and for anyone observing us I knew we looked like any young couple. We shared breakfast in the restaurant while I warned Al about how small my flat was. He asked again if I really had nobody to go home to for Christmas. I told him I had been an only child and all my family were dead. I hoped this would put a halt to his questions but he started asking what my mother had seen in Luke. She never mentioned him much, I said, she had only travelled to Ireland once for a holiday, a long-haired girl in a sun hat with a different life seemingly before her.
Father's Music Page 20
