by Declan Burke
1951–57: Shay has three kids – Donal, Shay Jr and Margaret, aka Mags.
‘Marie, I should mention, she’s a smart woman. Except for marrying me, right? But yeah, she’s a thinker. She’s the one who suggests Florida, they’re building like they want to front the whole coast with hotels. I mean, you couldn’t live there, the humidity, Christ. But Marie is Big Dan Mullaney’s daughter. He came over in 1912, a Corkman but no one’s perfect, am I right? Anyway, Dan’s Boston Irish, made his pile after Prohibition running Scottish imports for one of Joe Kennedy’s booze com-panies. Now he’s looking for fresh potential. So the three of us sit down and have a look around and Marie says, “Florida”. So off we go.’
1962: Shay makes his first million.
1963: Shay makes his second million.
‘After that you’re diversifying, mainly to keep the IRS honest, so they don’t steal every damn thing you pull in.’
1967: Big Dan Mullaney dies of a stress-induced heart attack. ‘A real shame. Two Kennedys at the funeral. Cousins, OK, but the point was made.’
1969: Shay moves back to Boston. Building skyscrapers now, up into Maine, across into Pennsylvania.
1976: ‘Marie says, “Alaska”. What am I going to say, no?’
The big diversification, into mining. Gold, sure. Zinc too; uranium. ‘One time,’ Shay Govern said, ‘Marie said she believed God meant to keep Alaska back for himself, that He buried all the good stuff there. She died four years ago.’ His fingers a blur as he blessed himself. ‘May she rest in peace.’
The foundation was Marie’s idea. ‘The tax breaks aside, she was genuine. About giving back, I mean.’
Irish students, graduates in engineering, the sciences, computers, getting a two-year deal with Govern Enterprise, bringing in new ideas, fresh blood. Sports scholarships, funding for innovation, the works. Then, they go back home, they’re skilled up, have a whole new outlook on the world. ‘That’s the theory, anyway,’ said Shay. ‘In the eighties and nineties, most of the kids just worked out their contract and jumped ship, went illegal or married a Green Card. Better than coming back here, right?’
Shay’s big plan for Delphi: ‘The old copper mine, it’s looking like there’s a chance there’s gold underneath – a seam that runs north up the lough. Not easy to get it out, but if it’s there that’s an opportunity to give back. I mean, it’s not just the gold, if it’s there. You’re talking about jobs, investment, the boost to the local economy.’
‘I saw the story, yeah, in the paper.’
‘Right. Any reaction to it?’
I shrugged. ‘Surprise, mainly. Gold in Ireland? There was a couple of leprechaun jokes. But most people, I’d imagine, would see it as a good news story.’
‘Isn’t it? Marie, it’s just a pity she can’t be here when it opens.’
‘But what I’m wondering, Mr Govern …’
‘Yeah?’
‘Well, I’m just not sure how talking about the atrocity helps here. Or why you need to mention it at all.’
‘You don’t get it?’
‘Being honest, no.’
‘Christ, call yourself a writer?’
‘That’s kind of my problem.’ I flicked back through my notes, gave up. ‘Usually, when you’re writing a story, there’s stepping stones. Something happens, so then something else happens, and on you go. But I’m missing a piece here, the one that bounces us from a massacre into opening a gold mine.’
‘Use your imagination, Tom.’
‘I’ve been trying, don’t think I haven’t. And about the best I’ve come up with is if the massacre doesn’t happen, you don’t leave Ireland, and if you don’t leave Ireland you don’t make ninety million dollars, and without that there’s no investment in a gold mine, no happy ending.’
‘That’s actually true,’ he said.
‘But not what you had in mind.’
‘Not really. I mean, it’s only true now we’re looking back at everything that happened. At any point along the line, though, no, that was never the plan.’
‘So what was the plan?’
‘There was no plan, Tom. Christ, what are you, five years old? We were making it up as we went along, trying this, doing that. What most people call life. Now I’m here, I have the money. There’s a mine on Delphi? Great. Now, at last, I can make it right.’
He was serious. ‘With all due respect, Shay, that’s crass.’
‘Is it?’
‘It is, yeah. These kids, you can’t just buy them back. You’re not running a balance sheet here.’
‘You’re talking,’ he said, ‘about how it looks, what people might think.’
‘Sure. That’s the whole point of telling your story, right?’
‘For me? No. This is personal, Tom. This thing’s been on my conscience more than sixty years, so mainly it’s between me and me. I mean, yeah, I’m Catholic, not a believer but I still know the rules. I could do the confession thing, sit down in a quiet box for a nice long whisper with Father Ignatius and get ten Our Fathers, a Decade of the Rosary, you know the drill. But I want to do this public. Here’s what I did, this is what I’m doing now. Expiating my sins, Tom. Does that still sound crass to you?’
‘Mediaeval, more like.’
‘Oh, yeah? Great, I’m an old-fashioned kind of guy.’ He sat back in the wicker armchair, cinched his robe tighter. ‘But maybe you’re only realizing that now.’
‘Or maybe it’s that you’re a bit more old-fashioned than you look. More Catholic than you seem to believe.’
‘Heh. You think?’ A flash of the perfect teeth. ‘That’s worth considering, Tom. It really is. But listen to me now.’ He sat forward, the neck of his robe falling open, revealing a thin chest dusted with white hairs. ‘This is all part of the book. And our deal is, I tell you what happened and you write it down. If it gets to where I need you to make moral judgements, work in some philosophy maybe, then we’ll have a chat and rework our arrangement, make sure your extra effort is taken into account. Meanwhile, and before we go complicating things unnecessarily, how about we put it to the people of Delphi, this idea I have. Let them decide what’s right and what’s crass.’
There was no edge to it. No malice. If it’d been pretty much anyone else, you’d have known he was putting you in your place, reminding you of the hierarchy of the boss–peon relationship.
Shay Govern, he was just laying it out there.
I gave him more, or better, than he believed he needed? OK, that was worth paying for.
The Delphi islanders? They could take their blood money or not take it.
I left the Shelbourne thinking there were maybe two stories going on. The first was Sebastian Devereaux’s, mixed with a little of Shay Govern’s, however the hell he wanted to tell it, or have it told.
The second was about how too much money deadens the soul.
That line from Ross Macdonald running through my mind.
Money costs too much.
SEVEN
It was nine forty by the time I made Enniskerry and pulled into the car park behind the football pitch in the bowl of the Bog Meadow. A beautiful morning, still a little crisp, the sun warm on your back when you moved from the shadows. I got out of the car and rang Rachel, watched as she fumbled in her pockets on the sideline, finally got the phone to her ear.
‘What is it, Tom? I’m busy. As you should know.’
Saturday morning football practice was usually my responsibility, mainly because I’d been the one to persuade Emily to take it up. This week, with the planned trip to Delphi, I’d had to tell her I couldn’t make it. Which meant Rachel had had to step up, again.
‘I’m behind you,’ I said. ‘In the car park. Can we talk?’
She turned, scanned the car park. ‘You can’t come over here?’
‘I don’t want Emily to see me. She might get distracted.’
Emily had been disappointed – yet again – when I couldn’t make football practice. To see me on the sideline, then watch me walk
away, would be a total crusher. And not just for her. I’d been one of those parents who’d held their swaddled baby for the very first time with a vague sense that that moment was the whole point of the universe to date, that all of infinity and eternity had somehow peaked and was already starting to roll back, the process of entropy inexorably set in train. And despite all the scientific evidence to the contrary, and a full awareness of how illogical that kind of thinking was, especially as virtually every other parent felt the same about their own kids, I still couldn’t shake the feeling.
Every time I disappointed her, told her I had to work, or needed to reschedule until next weekend, her little face would take on that serious expression, not quite a frown but as if she were contemplating an idea that remained irritatingly just beyond her ken, and then she’d blink twice or three times, and say, ‘That’s OK, Dad. I know you’re busy.’
And then, like some heart-scorching version of Einstein’s spooky action at a distance, her six-year-old sadness would detonate inside me. I’m not a man who believes in the soul, which is just as well, because if I had one it’d look a lot like a smouldering white flag.
‘Christ,’ Rachel said now. ‘Tom, this better be good.’
‘It’s important,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t.’
Rachel rang off and started marching in my direction. I watched Emily run her drills, dribbling awkwardly around the little orange cones, passing it off to the next girl in line then jogging to the back of the queue, laughing at something one of the other girls said. Felt the pang, the bitter squeeze of the heart, and had a moment of clarity – this was it, and this was how it would always be. Standing back, out of sight, watching Emily grow up from so far away that I’d need binoculars to keep up with the details …
No way.
‘What is it, Tom?’
‘Rachel. Nice to see you, too.’
She had her hands jammed into the pockets of her puffa jacket, a woollen cap tugged down over her ears. Her cheeks were ruddy from the morning chill but even so she looked wan, the eyes red-rimmed and dull. From the looks of things she’d had one toke too many the night before, and her expression suggested that this, too, was somehow my fault.
‘What is it this time, Tom?’
I handed her the cheque. She glanced at it, then looked again. ‘What’s this supposed to be?’ she said.
‘It’s a cheque for five grand.’
‘I can read, thanks. What I’m asking is, how come it’s made out to Emily?’
‘Because it’s hers. For a college fund. You can tell her it’s so she can go to the High School Musical school.’
‘She doesn’t watch that, Tom.’
‘What’re you talking about? We watched it a couple of weeks ago.’
‘She told me, yeah. Because you put it on and she hadn’t the heart to tell you it was, and I quote, “a little bit old-ish”.’ A shake of the head. ‘She’s six years old, Tom. Try to keep up.’
‘Will do. Only it’s hard to keep up,’ I said, ‘when I’m chasing her through this obstacle course that gets a few more obstacles, some more brick walls, every time I make it through.’
‘Tom—’
‘It’s not going to happen, Rachel. I’ll be lodging a copy of that cheque with my solicitor first thing on Monday morning.’
She shrugged, handed back the cheque. ‘Why don’t you just give him that? It’s post-dated until the end of the month anyway.’
‘Which isn’t a problem, seeing as Emily won’t be off to college for another twelve years or so. I’d imagine the judge will see the bigger picture.’
‘I’d imagine she will. A loving family home, a father who knows how much he’ll be earning next month, and the month after that …’
‘A mother who likes the occasional toke, had an affair with her boss when her daughter was three years old …’ I held up the cheque. ‘Rachel, you can open a bank account for Emily or I can do it, I really don’t mind. But here’s what you need to get your head around – I’m not going away. If Emily decides otherwise at some point when she’s old enough to make those kind of decisions, then that’s her call. But if you think I’m just going to sign her away on some piece of paper, tell the most beautiful child that was ever born she’s just this thing adults can play swapsies with, then you seriously need to lay off the Burma Gold or whatever it is you’re smoking these days.’
She stared at me, dead-eyed. I don’t know; maybe it was a Gorgon vibe and I was supposed to just fossilize right there in the car park, keel over and shatter into a million pieces. The cheque fluttering on the breeze.
‘I love her, Rachel. I mean, you know that, right? I love her like I’ve never loved anyone. And there is nothing, literally nothing, she could do to change that. All she’ll ever have to be with me is whoever she is. You think she’ll get that from Peter, no matter what a piece of paper says?’
‘Brave words,’ she said, ‘from a guy hiding from his daughter in a car park and waving a piece of paper around.’
Then she turned and walked away, shoulders hunched, hands jammed again into the pockets of the puffa jacket.
I drove back to town with one eye on the rear-view mirror. Not entirely sure who I was watching for, but alert to the possibility that someone might be keeping tabs on my movements, who I was meeting. It had been a wake-up call yesterday, when Jack Byrne mentioned in passing how he’d seen me in the Shelbourne with Shay Govern. Something of a shock, and a slightly chilling one when it became obvious that Jack was playing a long game, to realize just how visible I was to anyone who might be trailing me, keeping tabs, especially when I’d had no reason to suspect they were there.
For all I knew, Jack was having me tailed right now, or was doing it himself.
Rachel’s last line had burned, especially the bit about my skulking back in a car park hiding from my daughter. Given the way the conversation was going, though, it probably wasn’t a good time to tell her that I didn’t want Jack Byrne – or anyone else he’d dragged into my life – seeing me talk with Emily, or knowing where she lived.
Which reminded me. I put my phone on speaker, rang Jack Byrne again.
This time he answered, on the fourth ring, whispering, ‘Tom?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What’s up?’
‘I need to talk with Smyth again. There’s a couple of points I want to clarify.’
Mainly I wanted to look in those rheumy eyes and say the words Sebastian Devereaux, see if he flinched.
‘When?’ he said.
‘Today. This morning.’
‘Sorry, man. No can do. I’m on a job.’
‘You don’t have to be there. It’s just a couple of details I need to clear up.’
‘Like what?’
‘Dates, mostly.’
Silence, or rather a faint hiss, on the other side. ‘Text me the questions,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
‘Not good enough. I need to talk to him myself.’
‘Is there something you’re not telling me?’
‘Plenty, yeah. We’re on an unsecured line, right?’
‘Yeah, right. Shit.’
‘But Jack, you should know the clock’s ticking.’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘I talked with Govern this morning. Fronted him up about Gerard Smyth.’
‘And?’
‘He admitted it. Says he was involved in the massacre.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Yeah. But Jack, the guy wants to go public with it himself. He doesn’t want to keep Smyth quiet, he wants Smyth to confirm his story.’
‘You’re winding me up.’
‘Wish I was. But according to Govern, it’s the whole point of the gold mine. I mean, he actually used the phrase expiating my sins.’
‘Shit.’
‘So you can see,’ I said, ‘why we need to crack on. Look, text me when you get wrapped up at your end, we’ll sit down and talk. In the meantime, send me Smyth’s
address. His phone number too. I’ll buy him a coffee, we’ll have a chat, get these dates fixed. Then you and me, we can talk about getting this out there before Govern does.’
‘All right.’
He rang off. A minute later my phone vibrated with a text message alert.
I was in business.
I was going north across the canal on Leeson Street, turning right for Fitzwilliam Place, when the phone rang. Martin.
I got parked in jig time – one of the joys of Saturday morning in the city – and rang back.
‘Can you talk?’ he said.
‘Go ahead.’
‘More problems,’ he said.
‘Shit. Plural?’
‘Looks like it. Are you at home?’
‘Not right now. I’m in town, on the way to talk with our friend.’
‘Who, Govern?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Our older friend.’
‘Smyth?’
Not a great man for the code names, our Martin.
‘Why don’t you shout a little louder? There’s an old married couple out on the Aran Islands who didn’t catch that one.’
‘You’re worried about being tapped?’ he said.
‘Not any more. So what’s up?’
‘Maybe I should come meet you.’
‘You can’t just tell me?’
‘Not now,’ he said. ‘Now you’ve got me worried we’re being bugged.’
‘We’re very probably not being bugged, Martin.’
‘If you’re sure, Mr Bernstein …’
‘Fire away.’
‘All right.’ A rustling of paper being reorganized. ‘So I was up early with the kids, Jen being out last night, and I started reading through the, uh, paper. Anyway, I did a little bit of, ah, other reading, and I couldn’t find any trace of this hoo-hah our friend’s talking about. And here’s the thing – there was no sign of the, um, spaceship he was travelling in when he—’
‘Martin?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Can you get away now?’
‘Sure. Why?’
‘You know the Paddy Kavanagh bench on Grand Canal?’
‘I do.’
‘I’ll see you there, soon as you can.’
I strolled up the canal along Wilton Terrace, pacing myself with the swans gliding along, the reeds conducting the faint hissing sighs they were sifting from the breeze. Dandered back down along the not quite leafy-with-love bank again, trying to remember if we’d agreed that Martin would work on Gerard Smyth’s file. As far as I could remember, all I’d asked him to do was make a copy and stash it in his office safe. By the time I got back to Paddy Kavanagh’s bench, Martin was waiting, trying to work out how we’d all fit – him, me and Paddy – on the seat.
