The Journey Home

by Dermot Bolger

  Shay couldn’t let it rest. What possessed him to complain I don’t know. Was he so long in Europe as to forget how things worked? I went down to the station with him, waited outside among the crowds returning from mass while he made his complaint.

  ‘Why the fuck did I bother?’ he said when he came out. ‘We’ll be in touch, they said.’

  ‘Let’s just hope to God they won’t, Shay.’

  A car had slowed to a halt across the road from the station, the passenger in the back watching Shay talking to me. The BMW had been traded in for a Merc like his brother’s official one and it took me a moment to recognize Pascal Plunkett. I pulled Shay on and when we reached the corner I looked back. Pascal had got out and was crossing the station forecourt. An instinct ingrained from childhood made me want to bless myself against evil.

  For two days nothing happened. Then on the Wednesday we went into town. It was after midnight when we left Murtagh’s. We walked home through the streets, familiar from a hundred other nights. It had rained earlier and now a steel-eyed moon lit rainbows in the oil slicks along the carriageway. Over the weekend a car speeding down from the South had overshot the junction and ploughed through the railings into the gully below by the stream. Broken glass still sparkled on the grass verge. I asked Shay to wait and climbed down past the scrape marks where they had hauled the twisted vehicle up, unzipped my fly and watched the are of urine splash on to the rocks by the edge of the stream.

  I was paralysed like that, unable to stop pissing, unable to run, when I heard the screech of tyres and the faint crackle of the radio as the doors burst open. I turned to look up through the bushes and distorted bars to where I heard Shay’s voice bemused at first and then alarmed. There was the thud of wood striking flesh followed by a sudden terrifying silence, and when Shay’s voice came again it was crying out above a chorus of boots and curses, punctuated by gasps for breath, pleading for them to stop. The silver-green arc of urine had trickled to a halt. If I wished to I could have turned and raced up among them, but I stood as though still paralysed, my penis in my hand, my shoulders hunched. He’ll call me now, I thought, and I’ll burst into motion, my fists flailing as I charge into the huddle of gardai to get my share of belts and kicks.

  But Shay never once used my name, never gave my presence away and I never moved until I heard them dragging his body into the back of the squad car. As the door slammed and it was too late, I found myself scrambling up the slope, roaring suddenly with a rock in my fist. The car was pulling out, I could see the back of Shay’s head slumped down between the two blue uniforms. If the police heard my shouts they didn’t even consider me of sufficient interest to be bothered with.

  I knew that Shay would never have hesitated; he would have gone in with fists flying if I had been caught. Nothing I could do now would be important; no action could redeem me in my own eyes. I walked up to the station and hovered nervously outside. Streaks of blood stained the gravel where the squad car was parked. I knew there was only one number I could call to stop what was happening inside. And suddenly I knew that Pascal knew it too, knew that he was waiting beside the phone in his house beyond the final street light, a whiskey in his hand, patience and power on his side.

  A car pulled up and a man got out. Even in plain clothes I knew he was a detective. A young guard came to the door, his face ashen white.

  ‘I don’t know who they are,’ he began in distress. ‘They just came in, took over the station…

  He saw me in the shadows and stopped. The detective came over. He was in his thirties, already going bald. He looked tired.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘My friend. He’s inside.’

  ‘Wait here.’

  I went to follow him inside and he turned to gesture with his hand. I knew what he was saying: I was safer out there. The lorries were trundling down the road from the north, air brakes squealing as they hit the traffic lights. I watched the drivers in their cabs, the vehicles trembling like frightened calves before shooting down the carriageway. Across the road the stream that gave the village its name ran behind the gardens of a few old houses and vanished into the pipe that bore it beneath the concrete to the far side of the carriageway. The glass door opened behind me and the detective whistled. He was supporting Shay who staggered and put his hand against the wall. His jacket was smeared with blood, his jeans spattered in it. His cheeks were puffed out and discoloured. He tried to grin when he saw me, the lips already grotesque, too large for his face.

  ‘Get him to hell out of here, son. There’ll be no charges this time.’

  ‘What do you mean no charges? He did nothing.’

  ‘Drunk and disorderly. Resisting arrest. Assaulting an officer. Can’t you see I’m trying to do you a favour? Just take him home and make sure he doesn’t come back. Of his own free will or anyone else’s.’

  We had to stop every few yards for Shay to rest. I remembered the night before he left for Europe. Our crazy fight along the main street where nobody had dared come out. How tough we’d felt then, how cocksure of ourselves. If nobody came out it was for a different reason. We crossed the metal bridge and I sat him down on the pavement while I looked for my keys. He keeled over to one side, supporting himself with his hand.

  ‘You were dead right, Hano,’ he mumbled, ‘not to come out of the ditch. They would only have beaten the shite out of the pair of us. I would never have got out of there.’

  I helped him to stand and got him upstairs. I boiled a kettle and tried to clean up his face. He mumbled again that I had done the right thing. I wasn’t sure which of us he was trying to convince.

  For three days Shay rested in bed. I fed him chicken soup and bread rolls—he seemed to find everything else hard to swallow. You came over, Katie, to sit with him during the day and every evening I’d find some trace of you left behind. When I returned on the third evening Shay was gone. I waited up for him. Afraid of what he might have done. It was after midnight when he returned. The bruises on his face had yellowed in colour, his lip had gone back closer to its normal size, and he was accompanied by Justin Plunkett.

  Even after Justin had left I still couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t explain the terror I felt in my heart. I went to work, not knowing if I would find Shay there when I returned. The lunch-time sessions in the Irish Martyrs had ended. Once or twice since her promotion Mary went over, but our conversation was stilted. Now at lunch-times she remained in Carol’s old chair as I slipped on my coat and walked out, looking back sometimes to catch a wry smile on her face. A new bloke had started and we’d wander off to eat fish and chips by the canal. Talking to him was strange. A woman gives her life to a place and, within weeks, all traces of her have vanished. Carol was just a name he had heard of, Mary a boss to be wary of, Shay…? Shay by now was hardly even a name.

  The previous week another temporary girl had started. She was blonde, nineteen, diminutive. The other girls took a dislike to her. They bitched in corners, inventing nicknames for her, mimicking her posh accent, her naive ignorance of the world outside her Southside suburb. It was her first job and she could sense the antagonism, which made her nervously retreat deeper into the stereotype they had created for her. Shay would have spent days slowly coaxing her out, deliberately talking to her and showing her things, until people came to accept her and she relaxed. I had done nothing beyond watching her daily crucifixion.

  That afternoon she came out of Mooney’s office and ran into the cubicle where Carol had died. I was taking files down from the dusty shelves outside when I heard faint sobbing. I stood on the step-ladder for five minutes, not wanting to get involved. I had grown bitter and stagnant over the past month, each day there folding drearily into the next. I felt like a hibernating creature, burrowed right down inside myself, waiting for a spring I felt would never come. Hesitantly, I climbed down from the ladder and tapped on the door. After a moment the bolt was drawn back. Her eyes were red, she stepped back surprised when she saw me. We had never spoken.
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  ‘I thought one of the girls wanted to…’ she stopped, confused as to why I had knocked.

  ‘Take three or four of those old cardboard boxes Jennifer,’ I said quietly. ‘And just slip out the door. Nobody will say anything.’

  She peered anxiously through the rows of shelving at the figures bent over the desks. I nodded towards the door again and she grabbed her coat and was gone. I took the sheaf of files and placed them beside my chair before opening the door on to the landing. She was looking down at the crowds milling around the door of the court room as though she expected them to devour her. I touched her lightly on the shoulder and she followed me, still confused and carrying the boxes awkwardly. I dumped them down outside the front door. We had the back lounge of the Irish Martyrs to ourselves. I ordered coffee. She kept darting her head towards the door, expecting Mooney or Mary or possibly the whole office to suddenly descend on our table with fingers pointing.

  ‘Don’t mind the fuckers,’ I said. ‘Nobody will notice. Just relax.’

  It took quarter of an hour for her to unwind and when she did I sat back and listened as she blabbered. Then I began to talk, telling her she was young, that this place was just for a few months before she found her wings and started her real life. I’d be ashamed to repeat the nonsense I said, but if she heard any of it it seemed to work. Then I realized that the girls were not the problem, it was Mooney himself.

  He had done nothing major that people would notice, just kept catching her alone, keeping his hand on her shoulder when he explained her work to her, touching her as if by accident on the breasts, brushing against her buttocks, placing his hand over hers as he talked about his daughter who, he told her, was almost the same age as herself. He would never dare be so blatant with the other girls but he was aware of this girl’s isolation, knew that in another week or two the pink resignation form would reach his desk. She was crying again and I didn’t know what to say to comfort her now. The barman had retreated into the front bar. I could hear racing on the television, the curses of a customer as the crowd roared the horses along the finishing straight.

  ‘Go to Mary,’ I told her finally. ‘Tell her everything you told me. She’ll look after you. She’ll understand.’

  It was nearly five when we returned. Mooney was in the office. He glared and the girl stopped, frightened. I pushed her softly on and she took her seat at the middle table. Mooney and I stared each other out for a minute, then he turned like a cautious animal, and retreated back into his lair. We had not spoken since the night of Carol’s death and I had never told anybody of our conversation. I saw Jennifer remain seated as the girls rose to leave. She glanced at me for reassurance. I nodded and as Mary passed she touched her hand. Mary bent down to listen and then sat beside her. I took my coat and slipped out, down the hill where the girls ran for buses, and across the park towards Shay.

  A water main had burst near the old monument across from the shopping centre in the village. The water soared up from the hole in the road and splashed down on to the tarmacadam. Two girls with a ghetto-blaster had climbed into the enclosed green triangle around the mock Celtic cross that had been paid for and unveiled by the Plunkett brothers in honour of their grandfather. Graffiti was smeared across its patriotic inscription. Reggae music blared out as children twisted and jived, running in and out of the high spray. I paused to watch.

  They were an autonomous world, a new nation with no connection to the housewives passing or the men coming home from work in the factories. And little even in common with me, though I was only a few years older than them. Because in those few years the place had changed beyond recognition. I could piece together obscure images that to them would seem from another planet, Corpus Christi processions through these streets; Christmas concerts in the old cinema where shoppers now queued at cash desks; dances in the parochial hall that was now a semi-derelict ruin. All I had known, as Shay had said that night in the graveyard, was the tail-end of it, the buggy squeaking as I cried, but enough of it remained that evening for me to feel as though I had lived in some other time, in a distant place where I would always be trapped.

  Two workmen, still in overalls and boots, checked the winners on the sheet pinned on the door of the bookies. Their heads were bent, eyes concentrated on the list of names as if it was a map of an uncharted universe. Nothing in their expression betrayed whether their horse had won or lost. Perhaps for the first time ever, as I turned the key I hoped that Shay was out. I was tired and I felt embarrassed now after the scene with the girl in the pub.

  The flat was empty, smelling of must after the heat of the day. I opened a window and the lace curtain billowed back into my face. When I turned I knew something was different. Nothing had been moved but the flat stared back at me as if trying to tell me what was wrong. His bedroom door was shut which it never was in the daytime. I was suddenly afraid as I approached the door, not sure of what I expected to find. I pushed it open with my hand. The bed was neatly made. He possessed so little that there was nothing to suggest his presence in the room. A few old T-shirts lay on the chair, an old pair of jeans tossed beside them. Everything seemed the same as when I had last been in there, but I could still sense a change. Furtively, not knowing how I would explain it if he walked in, I opened his drawer. The green passport he always kept there was missing. I checked the other drawers, half their contents were gone too. I knew he had left and for some reason I was glad. Shay was still my hero, my other half who was afraid of nothing. He belonged to the world of night-time streets or out among the autobahns of Europe.

  I remembered one Sunday a few weeks before, when I had seen him walking up the laneway towards Dalymount Park. The crowd at the match was so small that you were only aware of them outside when there was a goal. Shay had paused a few feet from the turnstile and then walked quickly onwards. I was about to call him when I realized what he was doing, and that there were a dozen like him there, circling the ground as if going somewhere else, waiting for the officials to open the gates early in the second half so they could slip in and see the remainder of the match free. If Shay was broke he would have accepted drink from you all night, but been insulted at the offer of a loan of the bus fare home. I knew he would be ashamed to be seen there, so I left him walking the red-brick length of Connacht Street, checking over his shoulder that nobody was noticing.

  The figure I had seen return to grow defeated and sullen seemed like some impostor—too human, too much like myself to be looked up to. I had needed my image of Shay almost as much as I needed him, like a torch for me to live up to. The first time he had left it had seemed as if my life had ceased; this time I felt his leaving meant in some way that it could begin again. Now I would follow him, not the Shay who had returned, but the Shay who had originally left. I too would take a cheap flight, find work where I could, until eventually, out among those cities and factories, I would meet Shay again, cured of his malaise, as strong and vibrant as the first day we had met.

  I sat on Shay’s bed like a widow, listening to the shouts of children playing around the burst water main outside like a giant wave of life washing over the crowded streets.

  Katie walked ahead of him, straight into the rain, hobbling from the soreness of her feet. They hadn’t spoken since the dancehall, afraid that words would break the mood that held them and provoke a quarrel. His feet had ceased to ache: they were numb now, no longer part of him. Would this march ever end he wondered, or would they just vanish into the rain, stooped ghosts walking for eternity?

  He remembered how, years before, on the last day he had spent with the old woman it had rained like this. All day he’d rarely ventured from the caravan, gazing across the bleak fields through the window, stroking the wet animals who came and went, talking as he had never been able to talk before. Near midnight it had stopped and he’d borrowed a pair of her wellingtons, slopping his way across the wet earth to the small road, thankful to be out in the air. A cold breeze had blown the clouds towards the east where
they hung like crumpled blankets pulled down on one side of a bed. The moon was full, igniting the damp tarmacadam into silver, the village silent.

  Flashing her small torch on and off, he took the small road that led down towards the bog, leaving the sanctuary of street lights behind, feeling a marvellous thrill of fear tingle through him each time he passed underneath the trees with their gnarled, mysterious shadows. Lights shone in the few houses set back from the roadway where dogs barked, suspicious of his footsteps. As the road curved downwards towards the bridge he noticed another light ahead of him. Puzzled, he switched off the torch and approached. There were no houses there and he wondered whether there was a poacher on the river, before remembering that since the factory opened outside Sligo all the fish had died.

  He reached the old bridge and saw the light clearly now, a phosphorescent column the height of a child hovering on a small bank of reeds, cut off on all sides by the swollen water. He could see through the light yet couldn’t tell where it came from. The ground was swamped on each side of the bridge and there was no way of getting any closer to it. Occasionally the light sank down slightly and rose again in a straight column, but otherwise it remained stationary. If it were gas rising from the polluted river surely the wind that was swaying the branches overhead would disperse it. But instead it rested above the reeds like a presence, an echo of something lost.

  He ran back to the caravan and brought the old woman down to the bridge. It was still there, brighter now than ever. He was relieved she could see it too, even though she had no explanation to offer. All she said as they walked home beneath the trees was that a child had died from drinking the water near that bridge soon after the factory opened.

  ‘When I came here first,’ she’d told him, ‘all the village took their water from the river. For three months after my husband’s death we were so poor we lived on trout my son caught there each evening. I could never eat fish again and later on meat. Now the women warn their children to stay clear of it, to let it carry its filth away through the fields.’