Hush, Little Baby

by Shane Dunphy

  Patrick nodded, still adjusting the filling in the pies. I took a second ball of pastry from the fridge, unwrapped the clingfilm it was in and began to roll it out, to make the lids for the pies.

  ‘Now I’d like you to understand that, no matter what, signing an order like that is never easy for parents. Sometimes it’s the greatest gift they can give their children, but it always, always hurts them to do it.’

  ‘You mean Bethany and I weren’t just tossed aside by them, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes. That’s what I’m trying to say.’

  ‘I have to ask my mum and dad why they didn’t come and get me. I’d like to know why they kept the baby and not me and Bethany. Why didn’t they even visit us? It’s been seven years, for God’s sake.’

  ‘You’ll get your chance to ask, Patrick,’ I said. ‘You might not like the answers you’re given, or you might not get any answers at all – but you can ask.’

  I could see the gradual decline in quality and cleanliness of the buildings about us mirrored in Patrick’s face as we drove into Haroldstown.

  ‘They live here?’ he asked, looking at the tiny crumbling houses, the tracksuited, shaven-headed men walking pitbull terriers and Dobermann pinschers, and the dressing-gown-clad women carrying bags of groceries back from corner shops.

  ‘I hate to tell you, Patrick – but they live in the rougher area.’

  ‘This isn’t the rough area?’ Patrick said, as we passed a crowd of overweight, cackling girls dressed in belly-tops that caused their bulging midriffs to spill out over the broad belts of their hipsters.

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  As we travelled south, the flats could be seen, rearing up out of the decaying concrete like termite mounds. Patrick couldn’t keep his eyes off them. They seemed to be calling to him in a language I could neither hear nor understand. ‘That’s where they live, isn’t it?’ he asked. ‘I come from those towers.’

  ‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of,’ I said gently. ‘This isn’t a whole lot different to where I grew up. There are good people here. They might not have a lot of money, but you don’t have to be well off to be a decent human being.’

  ‘But it’s so horrible,’ he said. ‘It’s ugly. Everything seems so dirty and broken down.’

  I didn’t say anything to that, because there wasn’t a positive response. He was right.

  I had been unable to find a contact number for Patrick’s parents. They had no landline, and if they had mobile phones, which they probably did, they weren’t registered. I had asked a community worker in the area to try to make contact, but he had also failed. This meant we were calling unannounced.

  The lift in the flats was broken, so we climbed up the concrete stairs, taking in shallow breaths against the urine reek. Patrick was stern-faced as we went upwards, and I knew he was doing his best to prepare for what lay ahead.

  We passed an old woman who sat on a step between the second and third floors, muttering to herself and nursing a noggin of cheap whiskey. She made no effort to move as we approached, so we climbed over her and kept going.

  Patrick’s parents lived on the fifth level, in No. 37. It looked no different to any other door we had passed – the paintwork was cracked, some moss grew on the small glass panel, and the number three hung drunkenly upside down. I pushed the bell, but no sound rang out, so I knocked. We waited. No one came.

  ‘I don’t think anyone’s home,’ Patrick said. ‘Maybe we should go.’

  ‘Not yet,’ I said, years of calling at places like this telling me that there was, in all likelihood, someone inside. I knocked again, even louder, and for much longer. This time we both heard movement inside, and someone complaining.

  The door was opened by a painfully thin, acned man.

  ‘What?’ he asked. He was wearing a filthy white T-shirt and oversized boxer shorts. I could see the pockmarks of mainline heroin use on his emaciated arms. He was so skinny, and so strung out from the drugs, it was impossible to tell his age. He could have been anything from twenty to forty. I had the sense he was young, but it was no more than a feeling.

  ‘I’m looking for Freda and Paddy Keany,’ I said. ‘Are they at home?’

  ‘Who wants to know?’ he asked, his voice querulous.

  ‘I’m a care worker from the Dunleavy Trust. This is Patrick, Freda and Paddy’s son.’

  The thin man looked from the boy to me, and then back again. ‘Their son?’

  ‘This is Patrick,’ I said.

  ‘Fuck,’ the man said, chewing his scabrous lower lip. ‘We … we don’t got nothin’ for him here. No cash, if that’s what you’re lookin’ for.’

  I sighed and took a step forward, so I was very close to his face. He smelled of sweat and rancid breath. I could tell that he’d been chasing the dragon for years. He was dying from the inside, the heroin killing him. ‘Are Freda and Paddy at home right now? If they are, we’d like to see them. If not, maybe we’ll wait.’

  He began to shake, as if he was experiencing a seizure. ‘Look, fella, Paddy’s long gone. He hasn’t been back here for years. Freda’s inside, though. Yeah, come on in. Why not? She’ll be glad to see her boy, I reckon.’

  He stepped aside, and we went in.

  There was a short hallway, which looked like it had not seen a lick of paint for several decades. There were holes in the plaster, and water stains that ran down the walls from the ceiling had been left unrepaired. The entire place smelled of unemptied rubbish bins, and there was an underlying stench of human waste, as if a sewer pipe had burst. I glanced down at Patrick, who looked pale and frightened. I felt a deep sense of pity for the boy. There was no going back now.

  The main living area was a higgledy-piggledy mess of unwashed clothes, food cartons and abandoned syringes. Beneath the detritus there was a faded, grease-clogged floral carpet that was threadbare in many places. The walls were devoid of any adornment other than dirt, and an ancient black and white portable television, with a wire clothes hanger as an aerial, was tuned between two stations in the corner.

  The thin man collapsed immediately on to a sofa that appeared to have only three legs – it teetered over to one side drunkenly. A huge ancient armchair sat slightly off centre in the room, and in it slumped a hugely obese woman, smoking a cigarette, a blissed-out expression on her sweaty, round face.

  ‘Freda, this here’s – sorry, I didn’t get your name, fella,’ the skinny addict said. ‘But look, he’s brought your boy!’

  The fat woman was dressed in leggings and a cavernous, off-white sweatshirt. Her hair was the same colour as Patrick’s, and, beneath the rolls of fat, I could just make out a familial likeness. My companion was staring at her in disbelief. She shifted with some difficulty in her seat and peered at him. ‘Patrick,’ she said, in a high-pitched, girlish voice that sounded ridiculous coming out of such a huge woman. ‘Is that my little boy?’

  Patrick took a step towards her and knelt down. She took his hands and leaned forward a little. ‘Yes, it’s you. I’d know that face anywhere. You always had your daddy’s eyes, so you did.’

  ‘Mum,’ Patrick said, and then said nothing for several minutes. This creature was so far removed from the image of his mother he had painted for me and Bethany as to be almost from a different species. I could only guess as to the myriad thoughts and emotions that were coursing through him, in that period of silence. Finally, in a shaking voice, he said, ‘Where’s Dad gone?’

  ‘Oh, he left us, love. He went away with some skank whore who said she’d give him half her takings if he watched out for her. We’re better off without him, lovey.’

  Patrick swallowed and, turning his mother’s arms over, saw the track marks. ‘Do you take drugs, Mum?’

  She tittered. ‘Oh, just a little bit. Martin there brings me some, now and again, to pay for his rent. He stays here with me now that bastard Paddy’s gone. It’s all right. I’m not hooked or anything.’

  ‘Daddy – he was a stuntman. In the circus. He had a motorbike
…’

  Freda shook her head. ‘No, you silly. He had a Honda 50, a little scooter, for a while. But he had to sell it to get us some stuff when we’d nothing. Oh, he used to love that bike, all right. Always dreamed of joining one of those biker gangs. But he was all talk, your dad. He was a loser.’

  ‘Do you know where he went, when he left?’ Patrick asked, his voice trembling.

  ‘I don’t know and I don’t care,’ Freda said, rubbing his cheek. ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish, that’s what your granny used to say.’

  The thin man, Martin, was rooting in the drawer of a small table that sat beside the sagging couch where he was lounging. As I watched, he took out a blackened spoon, a bag of powder and a hypodermic needle. I leaned over and said quietly, ‘Either do that somewhere else, or wait for the boy to finish visiting with his mother. Okay, fella?’

  The junkie said nothing but put his equipment back in its hiding place.

  ‘My sister,’ Patrick, still on his knees before the fat woman, was saying. ‘I had a little sister.’

  ‘Yes, Bethany,’ Freda said, glancing at the television. I sensed she was getting bored, or needed another fix. Our visit was drawing to a close, either way.

  ‘No, we had another sister. She was just a baby when you sent us away. Where is she?’

  Freda’s brow creased. ‘Oh,’ she said suddenly. ‘You must mean Winnie.’

  ‘Yes!’ Patrick said, looking over his shoulder at me in triumph. ‘That was her name: Winnie. Did you put her in care too?’

  ‘Oh, no, love. Winnie died.’

  Patrick seemed visibly to collapse at this news, and I was worried he might have actually passed out. It was only when he continued talking that I knew he was still functioning.

  ‘What happened to her?’ he asked. ‘Was she sick?’

  ‘Yes, darling. She was ill, all right. The doctors told us she was born hooked on the stuff. I don’t know why, I mean, I only had a few snorts of it while I was pregnant, but sure, there you go. She just kept crying, and she got sicker, and sicker and then, one night, she didn’t cry any more. It was for the best, really. She was suffering, the poor mite.’

  ‘Do you have any photos of her?’ Patrick said, his voice coming from somewhere deep within himself, a place he had walled off from the waking nightmare he found himself in. ‘I can barely remember what she looked like.’

  ‘Of course we don’t,’ his mother laughed. ‘She was only three months old when she died. Sure, who takes pictures of sprogs when they’re that small? She wasn’t really a person.’

  Patrick almost had his head on his mother’s knees, he had sunk so low on to the grubby floor. ‘I’d like to go now, Shane,’ he said.

  I took his shoulder and helped him up.

  ‘Wasn’t it nice of them to call, Martin?’ Freda squeaked. ‘You’ll come again, won’t you, Patrick?’

  Patrick, trembling slightly as he leaned against me, nodded almost imperceptibly.

  ‘We’ll be seeing you, Mrs Keany,’ I said, and pushed the boy towards the door.

  ‘Oh, mister, before you go,’ Freda said. ‘You couldn’t spare us a few quid, could you? It’s just, the rent’s due, and we’re a bit behind.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, starting to move with a greater sense of urgency.

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ Freda continued. ‘How ’bout a blow job? I’ll blow you for thirty euro. Now you won’t get a better offer than that today.’

  Patrick said nothing but was leaning hard against me. We were at the front door now, and I struggled with the handle. Mercilessly, Freda kept talking.

  ‘Okay, well, if you don’t want me to do it, Martin would be happy to oblige you, wouldn’t you, Martin?’

  ‘Oh, yeah –’

  The door swung slowly open, and I shoved Patrick out, closing it behind me. Half carrying him, I somehow got us down the stairs and to my car. Without a word, I drove as fast as I could away from the flats. Glancing over at him, I saw that he was crying bitterly, the waves of grief crashing over him with such force he struggled to catch his breath. His whole body was racked with sobs. I reached over and took his hand, and when we were safely outside Haroldstown, I pulled over and hugged him. There were no words that could make better or even lessen what he had just experienced.

  ‘I’m sorry, Patrick,’ I said, rocking him gently. ‘I am so, so, sorry.’

  It is painful, but it is a fact none the less: the truth does not always set you free.

  16

  Johnny Curran died at five o’clock in the morning on Tuesday, 23 December. He never regained consciousness, and his tiny body just gave up struggling. The doctors told me it was a peaceful, pain-free way to go. ‘He just drifted from one dream to another,’ the young medic said, when I finally got to the hospital. ‘If there’s a good way to die, he found it.’

  I usually sleep with my phone switched on, because I use the alarm clock on it to wake myself up in the morning. For some obscure reason, probably because I was very tired and didn’t want to be disturbed, I’d switched off the mobile and didn’t get the message until close to eight. I listened to the dry, emotionless voice informing me that Johnny was gone, then sat on my bed and cried.

  I work with many children, and while I care about each and every one, I am loath to use the word ‘love’ to express how I feel about them. Love is too serious a thing to be bandied about, and I would never wish to diminish the relationships I form with the kids or their families by overstating what I do or patronizing them. Somehow, though, Johnny, with his beautiful, open face, his deep, knowing eyes and his dogged determination to rise above his circumstances and be the best he could be, had found a chink in my armour. I realized, as I sat alone in the dark morning, that I loved him, and that the thought he was gone was almost unbearable.

  I went to the caravan, but no one was home. I paid a quick visit to the hospital and spoke to a doctor, who told me Tilly had already taken the body, but that he didn’t know where she and her brothers had gone.

  At eleven o’clock I arrived at the office. I hadn’t been sitting at my desk for ten minutes before Ben came in.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.

  I looked up at him, then turned my attention back to the wild garden. ‘Sitting,’ I said obtusely.

  ‘I’m giving you the rest of the day off. You’ve had a tough few weeks, and this morning’s news has been a shock, to us all. Go on home now.’

  ‘I should never have let them park the trailer there,’ I said. ‘I knew it was dangerous.’

  ‘You pointed that out to Tilly, as I recall,’ Ben said. ‘She’s an adult and decided that was where she wanted to be.’

  ‘He’s gone, Ben. How can he be gone, just like that?’

  ‘I don’t know, Shane. Life is bitter sometimes.’

  ‘I didn’t even get over to see him last night. I got home late, I was tired, I switched off the phone and went to bed. I could have given him an hour, for fuck’s sake.’

  Ben put his hand on my shoulder. ‘You’ve been putting in eighteen-hour days this past while. I am ordering you, as your boss, and telling you, as a friend, to go home now and get some rest. There’s nothing you can do here. I’ll chase down Tilly, and find out about the funeral arrangements.’

  I nodded and stood up. Ben hugged me, told me to take care of myself, and then I took his advice and went home.

  That night I propped up the bar of my local, nursing a pint and a hot whiskey, and feeling abjectly miserable. The pub was largely empty, and the barman, with the wisdom and insight only years of dealing with the morose can provide, was giving me a wide berth. I was drunk, and planned on getting a lot drunker before the night was out. I was watching a pint of Guinness settle when a voice spoke at my shoulder.

  ‘Self-pity doesn’t suit you, Shane.’

  ‘Fuck off, Devereux,’ I said, recognizing his accentless tones.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not about to do that. I need your assistance.’

  He
pulled up a bar stool beside me but shook his head when the barman came over.

  ‘You might as well have a drink, because I ain’t movin’,’ I said.

  ‘I heard about the Curran boy. It’s very sad, but there are others who are still in the land of the living – just – who require your assistance. Sitting here crying into a glass of whiskey is indulgent and pointless.’

  ‘Maybe I feel like being a little self-centred tonight. Have you thought about that? Am I not entitled, every once in a while?’

  ‘You seem to have been doing it quite a bit of late.’

  I looked at him in disbelief. ‘What in the name of fuck are you goin’ on about?’

  ‘I’d say kicking in Ishmael Green’s door, and putting him wise to your investigations into Edward Downey qualifies. What did you think you were doing? You might as well have put an ad in the Irish Times.’

  ‘Get out of my face before I get annoyed,’ I hissed.

  ‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous,’ Devereux said. ‘Do they serve coffee here?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  They did, and five minutes later Devereux had moved me to a table in the corner, with a large mug steaming in front of me.

  ‘It has come to my attention,’ he said in his odd, formal manner, ‘as it has probably come to the attention of many, after your recent antics, that you are interested in the conduct of Father Edward Downey.’

  ‘And this affects you how?’

  ‘I’ve been keeping an eye on him myself for a while now.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Does the name Garry Michaels mean anything to you?’

  ‘Wasn’t he a kid who committed suicide some time back? I heard he’d been in and out of care, sleeping on the streets –’

  ‘All true, except for one point the newspapers neglected to mention: in the three months before he took his own life, Garry and his mother were involved in a “prayer group” run by Edward Downey.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘This was no ordinary Roman Catholic gathering. From what Garry’s mother told me, they performed seances, nature rituals and table-tipping ceremonies. Garry was asked to attend private counselling sessions, to discuss issues of his spirituality.’