by John Brady
“Would you describe her as a heavy drinker?”
“I don’t know,” Howard replied. “It didn’t stop her doing her work. She had worked a lot on her own back in Canada, doing graphic art and designing and the like. She had decided to go around the world but ended up here. Days on end she was up on the Burren. High up on the rocks, now, where there’s nothing but the birds, I suppose.”
Howard looked down at his empty glass.
“I thought they were all like that over in the States or Canada. The way you’d see them on telly, like-martinis and cocktails and that for their dinner. She was much the same person with a few drinks on as without, that I remember. She had the same…manner about her, I suppose you’d say.”
“Meaning she had the same appetites,” said Crossan, his eyes still on the embers.
Anger flared on Howard’s face, and it surprised Minogue.
“Alo, there are some things-” Howard began in a sharp tone, but he let the rest of his words go.
“That night,” Minogue persisted, “that night, she was not, can I say, terrible drunk?”
“I’d have to tell you that I had a lot of drink taken and I don’t like drinking on my own so…”
“So you poured a few for her.”
Howard nodded.
“And did she keep up with you?”
“She did.”
“Were you drunk and you leaving her house that night?”
“I was half-cut, as they say.”
“Can you hold your drink, then?”
“I can, I suppose,” said Howard, as though resigned to losing an argument. “I had plenty of practice. But look now.”
He paused and laid his hand over one of his wife’s beside him on the sofa.
“I don’t want you leaving here thinking she was a tramp or that. And there are things that I’d prefer we talked about on our own, you as a Guard, I mean, and myself.”
“Excuse me now if I’m bringing back…”
“Well, it’s never over,” Sheila Howard said. “Really, like.”
Minogue could not decide if her tone leaned more toward exasperation or pity.
“I was there at the trial, yes, and I heard everything. So don’t hold back on my account. Would you like tea?”
“Yes, please,” said Minogue. Crossan sat up as she left and sat forward, elbows on his knees, and rubbed at his eyes. Minogue had read Sheila Howard’s restless coming-and-goings for ice and tea as signs of her nervousness about their conversation. Maybe it was Crossan who was annoying her the most with his digs.
“How did you get out to her cottage that evening?” he asked her husband.
“I walked out. Sure it was only a mile or so out the road. A Clare mile, to be sure, but it was no great bother. A fine evening. I thought that she’d come in to the village with me after, for a few scoops and for the music. There were sessions with local box-players and a bit of set-dancing. She liked that.”
“Had you no car?”
“Yes, I did. But I had loaned it to Sheila. She was gone to Galway city for the day.”
So Sheila Hanratty had known him well enough to get a loan of his car, Minogue thought.
“You and Jamesy left her place, so…”
“Yes. Jamesy came in without so much as a knock. Barges in the door with a great welcome for himself and there we were. He had a bottle under his arm. Only it was full, he would have broken it over my head, I don’t doubt.”
“Ye proceeded to have a row,” Minogue led on.
“We did just that, yes.”
The Inspector heard in Howard’s tone embarrassment and impatience now.
“Not a pretty sight, as you can imagine. I’m trying to get me various articles of clothing on and Jamesy is working himself up to-”
“A volcanic fit of anger,” said Crossan with a sober expression.
Howard glanced over at the barrister and nodded as if to register the lawyer’s immaculate work of disguising the sarcasm.
“To add to my, em…”
“Predicament,” said Crossan.
“Predicament. Thanks, Alo. Jane seemed to find something funny about the whole thing. After she got over the initial fright, of course-”
“She was frightened of Jamesy Bourke?” Minogue interjected.
“No. Just the surprise factor, you might say. She turfed us out. While I was busy avoiding Jamesy’s digs and kicks, she took my stuff and threw it out the door. Quite the spectacle. Anyway. I managed to get out of the house and Jamesy stayed awhile giving out to her. There was plenty of shouting and roaring between them.”
“What did he say to her?” Minogue asked.
“He called her names for the most part. And he called me names too, of course. Bad language basically.”
Minogue looked to Crossan’s face. The mask was beginning to slip. An eyebrow fought to control the smile Minogue was sure had been building for several minutes now.
“Threats?” Minogue asked in a low voice, still watching Crossan.
“No. Name-calling. No threats or the like that I heard.”
“He called her names,” Minogue repeated.
Howard nodded.
“Would you care to enumerate any of the things he said about her? Or you, for that matter?”
“I wouldn’t really,” said Howard in a strained voice. “There was nothing you or I haven’t heard before. To the effect that she was a whore and suchlike.”
“No threats,” Minogue repeated. “Didn’t say anything about future meetings or looking forward or revenge? That class of thing?”
“No. He came out after me then and she locked the door. I heard her turn the latch and slide a bolt… Jamesy had boots on. I can recall being mainly worried that he’d connect with his boots. I got a few pucks and I gave him a few. But by then I had me stuff on and I was able to go.”
“What did he do then?”
“He tried to get back in the house. But of course he couldn’t. More shouting and roaring.”
“Could you hear what he was saying this time? How far away were you?”
“Well, I had hightailed it out to the road. I was caught between two stools really. I didn’t want him getting into the house for fear he’d hurt her. Then again, I didn’t want to be so close that he’d get a hold of me. I hung around near the gate.”
“You heard him shouting.”
“I did. He gave up pretty quick and out he came onto the road. He opened the bottle and took a big wallop of whiskey. He saw me and started up again but he didn’t run the greatest. I headed back to the village, trying to talk him down a bit. I was glad to get him out and away from the house. I offered him a few drinks but he wouldn’t at first. But between the exertions and what have you, maybe we sobered up a little because when we got to the village he said all right.”
“How did you calm him down?” Minogue probed.
Howard rubbed his ear and studied the mantelpiece.
“Well, for one thing, I didn’t try to make an iijit out of him. I told him that she was different from us, I remember that.”
“How do you mean?”
“That she didn’t have the same upbringing. That she would do what she liked, sort of.”
“Sexually?”
“Yes. She had told me that she had had plenty of, you know…”
“Lovers,” said Crossan.
“That he shouldn’t feel bad about it, that it was nothing personal.”
“Nothing personal,” Minogue echoed.
Howard nodded. “What I meant was that I didn’t take it personally, like, and that he shouldn’t. People were entitled to live their lives the way they thought was proper, and just because we were from the back of beyond in County Clare…”
Minogue said nothing. Crossan’s hand strayed to his Adam’s apple. Minogue heard his fingertips seeking out bristles.
“Basically I was trying to make him see that he shouldn’t take it so much to heart. That we should be friends despite it. Despite her, I mean.”
>
Crossan’s baleful gaze remained fixed on Dan Howard. Noting Crossan’s stillness, Minogue felt something brush around his thoughts. Was this Crossan’s idea of fun? He took up the thread again.
“So ye went drinking then. Did he continue to talk about her?”
“Awhile, yes. He was mighty annoyed at her and he was still sour on me, even after a few rounds of drink. But I couldn’t get mad at him, even when he was trying to give me a box in the teeth.”
“How do you mean?”
“Not to be shooting meself in the foot here,” Howard whispered, and looked up from the fire at Minogue with a sad and faintly amused look. “And me a self-respecting, tax-paying TD-”
“Spare us the speech, can’t you,” Crossan broke in. “If it’s a revelation you’re about to land on us, you won’t lose votes from the present company over it.”
“Nor gain them either, I suppose, Alo,” Howard added. He gave a quick smile before continuing.
“Well, it wasn’t hard to feel sorry for Jamesy. He had all his eggs in the one basket, you could say. Jamesy was convinced that she was his and that the pair of them could set up shop, her with her pottery and her photography gallery and him with his plays and poems. And that they’d travel the world.”
“Did he tell you that himself?” Minogue feinted.
“He didn’t.” Minogue heard Howard breathe out slowly. “She did.”
“I remember wondering if and when she’d run out of patience with him-or all of us, for that matter-and she’d let him have it. Lower the boom on him, maybe pack her bags and bale out.”
“Do you mean she led him on?”
Howard took a deep breath and held it in with his shoulders. Then he let it out and sagged back into the sofa.
“Maybe she did. It’s not for me to say. Jamesy wanted everything, you see. For all his wild ways, the same Jamesy was far from, what can I say, frivolous about her. Jane wanted to flit around and to dabble and to experiment. She had a lot of experience of men. She did things and said things that surprised me. I mean, at the time, I thought I knew a lot, but I had never met a woman who was so…”
“Assertive,” said Crossan.
“Come on now, Alo,” Howard snorted and sat up again. “You can do better than that. You knew her too. She wasn’t a man-eater, no. That wouldn’t be fair to say that of her, now.”
“I think,” Crossan said momentously, “that perhaps she was so exciting because she gave the impression that she could do what she liked. She wasn’t stuck to the land. She was a free spirit.”
Howard smiled with a tired look and he held two fingers to his forehead in mock salute. “There you have it,” he said. “Bachelor wisdom that can’t be beat.”
“But you had plenty of eggs,” Minogue said. “Or do I mean baskets?”
“Baskets,” said Crossan.
“Whereas Jamesy Bourke had but the one. Or thought he had.”
Howard nodded, serious again. “At the time, yes,” he murmured.
Minogue struggled to keep up a momentum whose direction he couldn’t determine.
“What did ye talk about in the pub, though?”
“Well, a lot of it was about Jane Clark,” Howard said wearily. “There were other lads there too, and I was hoping we could get Jamesy off the subject of you-know-what or you-know-who. There was crack and music and plenty of drink. I remember him talking to me about some poetry and a plan he had to go to the States for a while so he could make money to live on.”
More details came to Howard, but none of them sparked Minogue to intervene. While Howard talked and Crossan stared into the fire, Minogue’s eyes strayed to the windows. From his earliest days in school, the Inspector had realised that he was a better listener when he wasn’t intent on the talk. As though, by looking to the side, one could see a star better, Minogue had come to depend on this faculty of understanding without the effort of listening closely, this keen reverie. The window facing away from the town was a panel of violet where the absolute country night pressed on the glass.
Howard’s voice stopped and then resumed. Minogue listened, heard and waited, but he allowed his inner eye to leave through the window. He imagined the ghostly heights of the Burren. The names on the huddles of houses and villages came to him: Carron and Gortleca, Kilshanny and Rinnamona. Reciting their names within gave him an odd pleasure. He tried to list more villages from memory but the names drifted away. Ruins of fort, village and church: Corcomroe Abbey, he remembered, Holy Mary of the Fertile Rock. Those scarred terraces crowning the landscape above Ailwee Cave which had caused Kathleen to stare at them that day they had the puncture on the way to the farm. Howard continued.
Sheila Howard was backing in the door with a tray of tea things and a plate of biscuits. Howard sat forward in the sofa and began rubbing his hands together. He stopped after several moments and looked at his hands with a frown as if they were new to him. Crossan coughed and crossed his legs.
“This may sound corny,” said Howard. “But I will always regret to my dying day that I pushed drink at Jamesy that night. I thought it would…”
“Incapacitate him?” Minogue prodded. “Settle him down?”
Howard’s voice fell lower to a monotone.
“I suppose.”
He watched his wife sit down beside him as though it were for the first time.
Minogue said thanks to Sheila Howard. He was keenly aware of her in the room, near to him. Was she still annoyed? He was relieved that he had gained some control over himself. Still, he felt the restlessness return as a sag somewhere in his chest, the heat at his collar. At least he wasn’t sitting here glowing like a beetroot, flustered and dripping from the jowls, he thought with sour gratitude. She shoved the plate across the table toward him and he saw that her hands were big. There was no daintiness about her nails. Some surprise twisted at his mind: she wasn’t a bird in a gilded cage.
“We talked about anything and everything,” Howard was saying. Minogue watched him pour tea for his wife. “The way two lads who are drunk can talk.”
“Huh,” said Crossan.
“What kind of order was he in by the time you left the pub?” asked Minogue.
“Drunk.”
“Was he on his feet at least?”
“Barely,” said Howard. “To tell you the truth, I wasn’t paying much attention at that stage myself.”
“Tell me,” said the Inspector in a tone he hoped didn’t sound too urgent, “did Bourke leave the pub very annoyed at her yet?”
Howard shrugged and then sat very still. A frown came to his face.
“I couldn’t honestly tell you now. I seem to remember him saying things at some point during the night, but I can’t tell you when, I just know it was in the pub, that that was how they are over there.”
“‘They’ meaning Canadians, is it?” Minogue asked.
“Canadians, Americans, I suppose,” Howard murmured.
Minogue stirred his tea without allowing the spoon to touch the inside of the cup.
“Did he tell you that he might try to make up with Jane Clark that night?”
Crossan had moved in to the table. Howard reflexively pushed a cup and saucer toward him.
“I’m trying to remember, now,” said Howard.
“He did,” said Sheila Howard.
Minogue hid his surprise.
“I forgot, Mrs Howard,” he said. “You met up with them late in the evening.”
“That’s right. I came in late from Galway. And I stopped in at the Hotel to listen to a bit of music and see the girls before heading home.”
“Yes,” said her husband, “there was a mighty session on that night. Tourists all over the place. The weather was good, strange to say.”
“The place was packed, all right,” Sheila Howard added.
“Strange how you remember things when you get reminders, even a word or two,” said Howard. He shook his head slowly before sipping at his tea. Minogue noticed Crossan poised with his own cup. He
was struck by Crossan’s alertness as the lawyer eyed Dan Howard.
“That’s it,” Howard said then. “St. John’s Eve, do you know it?”
“The midsummer’s night,” replied Minogue. “Yes.”
Howard sipped more tea and looked into the fire.
“The bonfires and everything,” he murmured. “They don’t do it so much nowadays.”
Minogue turned to Sheila Howard.
“May I ask you something, Mrs Howard?”
His voice sounded small in the room. The Inspector swallowed and glanced at her eyes.
“You may indeed,” she replied.
Minogue was struck again by her poise and stillness. Mona Lisa- Mona Sheila… Minogue’s gargoyle flung an image at his brittle composure: Sheela-na-gig. An image of those pagan carvings and statues of women came to Minogue. These statues of women and goddesses, with their knees up and their fingers tugging the lips of their vulvas apart, were widely regarded as grotesque and had been quarantined in the back rooms of the National Museum in Dublin.
“Were you aware…” He struggled through the question and swallowed again. “Were you aware that night of what had gone on out at Jane Clark’s house?”
“Yes,” she answered. “I became aware of it.”
The formality struck Minogue: ‘became aware.’ A rebuke to him for a phrase which did not belong in this chat, in her home? A phrase used in law, in court. He looked over to Crossan and again doubt came to him.
“The girls had heard about it,” she went on. “And you know what that would mean in town. It was no doubt the way Jamesy was acting that got them wondering. Word travels fast, especially inside a pub.”
He looked over at Howard.
“Well, I don’t doubt that I let something slip,” Howard said. “With everyone coming and going in the pub and all the chatting and what have you. And sure once one knew, they’d all know in a matter of minutes. There was a funny side to it, I’d have to admit. Before what happened later, I mean.”
“You were part of a crowd?” Minogue asked Sheila Howard.
She nodded. “The way girls hang around together. Our mothers told us to hunt in packs.”
