A stone of the heart imm-1

by John Brady

  "I have a brother out in the States. The wife is always at me to go over and have a look at the place. What about yourself, Matt?"

  "I don't think so. I don't think I could manage over there at all. It's a different life entirely," Minogue replied.

  Kilmartin affected to be considering some other matter and attacked the limp broccoli. Minogue waited. After several minutes' silence, Kilmartin looked up from the wreckage of his dinner. Minogue met his gravely gentle look reluctantly. Kilmartin's voice was barely above a whisper.

  "Matt. What did you tell the Walshes out beyond?"

  Minogue remembered Mrs Walsh dropping cup and saucer on the fireplace. A stain started in the carpet, her shaking hands reaching under cuffs for a hanky. Walsh had changed. No speech from him. He sat across from his broken wife, not wishing to be involved in weakness before a visitor. He told his wife she mustn't upset herself and she stopped. Minogue told them the truth. No, he couldn't be sure, but it was the most likely turn of events.

  "How did they react, I mean," Kilmartin probed.

  Minogue's anger turned the potato quite tasteless, an obstruction in his mouth. He waited, disguised in eating.

  "I don't know how they reacted, Jimmy."

  And he didn't. His thoughts went back to the Walshs' sterile living room, his attempt to explain the run of events to them… How Jarlath Walsh's knock on the door had probably not been heard by Allen because he was on the phone. The door was ajar, visualise. Jarlath puts two and two together and sees several things. Your son Jarlath sees credibility, a scoop if he can bring Allen to admit things out in the open. He doesn't know Allen is being blackmailed. Jarlath seems to have wanted to keep this all to himself. An exclusive. He tells nobody. He drops hints at Agnes. It's his secret, he's working on it. It's something he'll be proud of. Jarlath brings a tape recorder with him to talk with Allen, but Allen says nothing directly. Jarlath may have tried to wear him down probably, hints, winks. Allen is under terrible pressure and tells Loftus. Loftus tells him it'll be looked after.

  Loftus is the one who has checked into Allen. Allen's original name is O'Donohue and Loftus trips him up on what happened a long, long time ago. So, Mr and Mrs Walsh, these people severally and individually have helped to have your son murdered. Outburst of tears from Mrs, glares from Mr: did you have to be like this, Minogue?

  "And did Loftus murder Jarlath?" Mr had asked then.

  Minogue can't pick careful enough words.

  "We know he didn't actually kill him. He has an alibi for that night. But in law, he did, because he helped arrange it. Allen will be on the stand to testify to that."

  "Who killed him…?"

  "We don't know. Loftus is saying nothing at all. We doubt he'll even be induced to tell, if indeed he knows, at his own trial for capital murder. We think your son was killed by the same person who killed two Gardai within the last week."

  Mrs Walsh, perking up: "And who's he?"

  "We're trying to find out. We think he's American."

  Minogue, leaving, had felt the cold stare on his back all the way down the driveway.

  "Well, you let them know we're continuing on the case. Doing our best," Kilmartin said. Minogue shook his head. The case was technically open, but Minogue's papers had been removed, the office was being painted. Minogue wondered if Garda inspectors spent more than half their time worrying about the management of impressions for the public.

  "Yes," Minogue offered. Kilmartin was suspicious again.

  "Doesn't that beat Banagher though," Kilmartin went on. "His prints are not on file with the Yanks. We're going through the airline lists now. My bet is he'll turn up to be a dud as regards the passport he came in on too. We have the pictures sent out, that's all we can do. Some of the lads thought he looked familiar, but they couldn't put a finger on it. Looked kind of Irish they all said."

  Minogue tried the stewed apple but turned it away after one spoon.

  "Think he did it, do you?" Kilmartin said.

  "Yesterday, yes. Today, I don't know. There's the temptation to shove all the pieces together, to tidy up, I suppose," Minogue said in a conciliatory tone.

  Minogue wanted to allow the unspoken intimacy to drift back to them. He made an effort to leave clear answers and comments for Kilmartin. The waitress banged their plates onto the trolley. She returned and plonked two cups of tea down. Minogue looked up at her, but she had turned and gone. Kilmartin offered his packet.

  "Do you want a smoke?"

  "No thanks, Jimmy. I'll try and steer clear of them."

  "And Allen, how long ago was it…?"

  "He was thirteen at the time," Minogue answered. "He was babysitting and the parents walked in on him. I don't fully understand the wording from then, but I think it amounted to an aggravated rape on the child."

  "Jesus, Mary and Joseph," Kilmartin whispered with a grimace.

  "So he went to juvenile court, but they didn't send him to reformatory. Took counselling afterward and never looked back since. That's where he got the interest in psychology."

  "That's not one bit funny at all," said Kilmartin.

  "It caught up with him," Minogue speculated. "The whole thing."

  "Like…?"

  "His mother. Nothing he did was ever good enough for her. He couldn't be Irish enough for her. No wonder his Da died young. Allen, or O'Donohue, was left to her mercy more or less. It's no wonder he did what he did."

  "You don't believe that stuff about Irish mothers or parents in general, Matt, do you?"

  Minogue didn't answer.

  "What possessed that fella to be like that? I ask you. Couldn't he leave things well enough alone. I mean to say this hop-off-me-thumb helped to get people killed, do you follow me?" asked Kathleen.

  Minogue was following a lorry on the road into Tulla. The hedges and trees almost met over the road. The ditch was full of grass and brambles. Small fields, stonewalled, secretive patching over hillocks. Clare: fields like a quilt.

  They had passed the holy tree on the Limerick road, coins jammed into the bark, pieces of cloth tied to its branches. Minogue was daydreaming, waking, daydreaming. Words and verses had stayed circling in his head since he had woken up, thinking of his own parents.

  Will you come out tonight, love

  The moon is shining bright, love

  His mother hanging clothes across the bushes from the haggard, air sweet and close on a May morning, the birds filling the air with sound.

  "I mean. All this lu-la would never have happened. He must be a twisted man entirely. In Trinity College Dublin with them nobs. There one in the eye for that crowd. I'm glad Daithi and Iseult go to UCD, I don't care what they say. Where's your man from? Loftus is it?"

  "He's Cork. Well-to-do, I suppose. A career soldier who should have stayed in," Minogue murmured.

  "They all want power, isn't that the be-all and end-all," Kathleen asseverated.

  "I suppose. Some notion of duty mixed in with an inferiority thing, I'd wager. A powerful mixture, that…"

  "And he didn't budge," Kathleen added.

  "Even after your man being shot out in Dun Laoghaire," Minogue said.

  "Go on. Tell us a bit," Kathleen said.

  "Well. There was a watch on for this fella. Very brash he was, brazening it out by trying to get on the boat to Holyhead. It's not that he was stupid or anything. He calculated things, that's my feeling. But he got annoyed at some point."

  "How do you mean?" Kathleen asked

  "Well, frustrated maybe. He shot that Garda Connors. Maybe they were hounding him."

  "Who's'they?'" Kathleen asked.

  "The likes of that gangster, McCarthy. The old crowd. Maybe he just imagined it though."

  "Isn't it the strangest thing?" Kathleen said.

  Minogue was half driving, half looking around, half thinking. There were cars behind now. One had a Clare flag stuck out the window. No sign of the Kilkenny mob; the Kilkenny Cats, a sharper crowd of hurlers hadn't been let on the face of the eart
h. The Clare goalie would have to do Trojan work today.

  Minogue had smelled deep from a cattle lorry on the way into Portlaoise, They had been unable to pass for ten minutes. The smell was still with him. It had left a lingering unease which surprised him. He wondered if he had detected a fear in the animals, perhaps knowing they were on the way to be slaughtered. Minogue tried to laugh off the persistent memory still locked in his nostrils. Middle age, dotage-he tried all the sneers to keep himself in line.

  By the time they turned off the Limerick road to Killaloe and the Shannon, he had let his efforts slide. Though rested and jockeying a desk for a week, he felt the strangeness flood through him again. He had the baffling notion that things had changed again, that old things had faded and been eclipsed by something new. It was like waking up to know something was gone but that something else was imminent, a rejoinder. Without looking at her, Minogue sensed that Kathleen's thoughts had gone elsewhere too. She stared out the side window at the drumlins, the hedges, the tight and secret fields. Worrying still, Minogue knew.

  Within ten minutes, Minogue and Kathleen were in sight of the village of Tulla, home of the resurgent Clare hurling team. The overcast sky hung still over streets glutted with cars. Men with caps down over their eyes, dogs, children with ice cream. The pubs had just closed. Sunday hours. They'd have to go out the Ennis road to get parking.

  "You should do this more often so you should," Kathleen said. "The rest is a tonic, isn't it? Does for the both of us."

  Minogue's thoughts edged onto irritation. He didn't want reassurance this way, people circumspect as if he were an invalid again. He couldn't even think of the questions he wanted to ask. The words fled away on him like pigeons disturbed off a roof. He fought off the resentment.

  "Well now, if I'd known you were a fan, I'd have brought you here a long time ago, wouldn't I?" he said.

  "I'm getting pointers for the Dublin team so we can leather ye when we get the chance," Kathleen replied with a laugh.

  The traffic had been stopped for nearly five minutes. Minogue switched off the engine in the middle of Tulla. People walked around between the stranded cars on their way to the pitch. Then the cars ahead began to move. Stop again, wait.

  "Look," Kathleen said "It's Mick. Maura-and Eoin."

  Minogue looked out and saw his brother about to walk beyond the car.

  "Mick. Maura!" Kathleen called out.

  Mick turned, recognition dawning on him. He looked beyond Kathleen to Minogue. Maura came over too. Eoin, their oldest, looked on.

  "Off to the match, so we are," Kathleen said.

  "God bless ye," from hearty, pious Maura. Minogue imagined Maura tying bits of cloth onto the twigs over the holy well, polishing statues of the Blessed Virgin around the house. He watched his brother's face.

  "Aye, aye," Mick said.

  The wives began talking. Mick strolled around the driver's side. Minogue listened to Maura and Kathleen laughing. Eoin stood away. Like his Da, Minogue thought.

  "How'ya Matt?" and his arm resting on the door of the car.

  "Struggling," Minogue said, protected in ritual.

  "Great goings on above in Dublin I hear," Mick said.

  Minogue nodded and looked ahead. Maura and Kathleen were touching each other, laughing. Eoin stood like a sentry, frowning off into the distance, his arms folded.

  "Hard to know these days, isn't it? Who's who, I mean?" Mick said.

  Minogue nodded.

  "I saw your name in the paper, Matt, in connection with it."

  "Marginal, Mick. Very marginal."

  "We all do what we can, I suppose. Or do what we must?"

  Minogue saw cars moving ahead.

  "A bit of both, I'm thinking," Minogue said.

  Mick nodded his head slowly and studied the chrome rim on the gutter.

  Minogue started up the engine.

  "That's the way of it, isn't it now? There's always another day, so there is," Mick said.

  "God bless ye! " Maura waved.

  That day, Clare beat the socks off Kilkenny thereby overcoming a superstition about losing vital games on their home ground of Tulla.

  To Minogue the land, the hills, the hedges, the clouds were as parts of a stage. Kathleen had done more cheering than he had. Minogue began reciting "The Ballad of Tommy Daly":

  On the windswept hill of Tulla

  Where the Claremen lay their dead,

  Three solemn yews stand sentinel

  Above a hurler's head…

  The crowds began to disperse. The pubs were opening, cars starting up. Only once during the game did he feel himself falling away, but he recovered quickly. His chest felt like a damp house for a while afterward.

  He bought Kathleen and himself a steak in Portlaoise and he was picky about the wine. Kathleen was excited.

  During the meal she told him she wanted to find a job and would he mind, bearing in mind that Iseult and Daithi would be gone soon. And speaking of which, Daithi was too embarrassed to broach the subject, but could we see our way to paying his fare to the States in the summer. If he gets the visa that is. He could visit his cousins up in Canada. It'd do him good so it would. And why not, because everyone else was going there these days and he'd learn to look after himself and couldn't be worrying about every little thing that might happen to him. Good experience for him.

  Kathleen drew him out. He said let's go to France and why the hell not. She laughed and blamed it on the wine when she couldn't stop laughing. Oh didn't I marry the right one, she laughed, romantic nights in gay Paree, go on you're joking me. He said he wasn't. She laughed against her breath. Spluttering, laughing again. He said look at the Dublin crowd making a show of themselves down the country with drink. You can do what you like in Paris, she croaked in reply, even see the Follies but don't tell anyone.

  In the valley after the wine, they were crossing the Curragh in darkness. Like the plains or the Prairies, Minogue thought. His throat was dry. He did not resist when the memory changed tense for him again that day. He knew this might be the last time it erupted over him before he could finally house it and think about it without the anger or the desperate urge to be forgiven, to try again. He wondered if he could bear to look at Allen again as he would probably have to during Loftus' trial.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Herlighy showed no surprise at Minogue's request. He followed Minogue out of the office.

  "I'll be back within the hour, Mrs Sullivan," Herlighy said as he passed the receptionist. There was no one in the waiting-room.

  "You're sure I'm not inconveniencing you, now," Minogue said as he grasped the hall door handle.

  "Not a bit of it," Herlighy replied lightly. "I've been cooped up inside all day. Pardon the expression. Glad of a bit of fresh air, such as it is here."

  Minogue pulled the heavy door open. The brass plaque on the door caught his eye as the wan afternoon light moved across it. Dr Sean Herlighy in black, the brass clear and polished. No mention of Herlighy's stock-in-trade, psychiatry, Minogue mused again.

  Minogue paused before descending the half-dozen steps to the footpath. He looked out on Merrion Square ahead. Two days of wind and rain had left the trees bare of leaves.

  "Hold on a minute," he heard Herlighy from behind. "I forgot my cigarettes."

  Minogue leaned against the railing and looked down the terrace. Merrion Square was still a showpiece of Georgian architecture. Railings everywhere, granite edges to the steps, the wide doors with fanlights above. The rain had left the tree-trunks blackened. Cars hissed by on the roadway. The grass inside the Square would be completely sodden, Minogue calculated vacantly. Stick to the paths.

  Herlighy had a lighted cigarette in his hand when he opened the door. The two men crossed the street and headed for the pedestrian gate. Minogue felt his nervousness as something unnecessary, a leftover from the anticipation which still clung to his thoughts even now beside Herlighy. They entered the Square. They had the place to themselves.

 
; "I half thought of slipping into the National Gallery beyond and having a cup of coffee or the like," said Minogue.

  "That'd be grand too," Herlighy said neutrally.

  "Ah but I'd spend the day there looking at the pictures, I don't doubt."

  Herlighy smiled tightly and blew out a thin stream of smoke. They walked slowly on the gravel path. Herlighy seemed to be studying the path ahead of him. Minogue knew it was up to him to start.

  "So I was thinking I'd like to postpone things awhile," he began. "Wait and see^hat way the cat jumps, do you see."

  "The sessions we have?" said Herlighy.

  "Yes. What I mean is that… I think I'd like to try out things for myself now," Minogue added quietly.

  "I understand," Herlighy said after a pause. "If you say you are ready, that's fine by me."

  "You're not going to be idle now that I'm taking a break from the sessions, I hope," said Minogue.

  "There's always plenty of work in my line," replied Herlighy.

  "It's not that I didn't get a great deal of value out of our… you know," Minogue looked to Herlighy.

  "Our chats."

  "Our chats. I got a great deal of good out of them, yes indeed…"

  "Are you staying on in the job, so?"

  "If you had have asked me that two weeks ago, I would have said no. I don't think I would have even gone back to Vehicles."

  Herlighy stopped and glanced at Minogue.

  "You had offers of doing something away from the front-line, I remember. Crime prevention, a bit of training for in-service or new recruits…?"

  "Ah, I'd be bored stiff with that stuff, I have to admit," Minogue shrugged.

  "Tell me why you're staying on, then."

  Minogue blinked. He looked beyond Herlighy to the dripping trees. Were psychiatrists supposed to be this direct? A test?

  "I haven't quite worked it out completely but… I didn't want to throw in the towel because of what happened. What you explained about trauma was very good, you see. I got so as I knew what was happening better. It's more like I don't want to be sitting at home watching the news, being able to switch off the telly or change the station if I don't like what I see… It's hard to express, you see…"