Dublin Palms

by Hugo Hamilton

  The commanding officer steps into the light. He stands there smoking under the awning, staring at the sloping rain, while the voices in the office behind him continue in urgent assessment, listing off their chances, the weather conditions, the exact location of the garrison, the approximate location of the Russian lines, the time left before they will engage, no more than an hour, less than half a day.

  She sees the cigarette butt flying in an arc out into the rain, hit by a large drop and extinguished instantly. The scoop of remaining smoke from the commanding officer’s lungs drifts along the building like a question being silently placed all around him. He turns and stares straight at her, the thin strip of cardboard that she has become, stuck like a poster onto the door. Her face is a black-and-white photo of a woman bearing an intense gaze into the rain. The static image of an opera singer, her lungs ready to sing across the square in a voice that will echo around the doorways, into the corridors, around the rooms, under the beds, into the basement cells where the Czech prisoners are being kept, out across the walls of the garrison to their Czech friends in the town nearby, waiting for the end, pleading on the phone each night, trading safe passage for the return of their comrades.

  The commanding officer reads her like the details of an upcoming concert. She can’t even blink. Her breath is a voice brought short. He takes a step towards her, to make sure he’s got the date right, then he is called inside, the door closes, the rain continues without the light.

  It takes a while before she can move. The ambulance is far away, what seemed like twenty steps now becomes a hundred metres. She peels herself silently away from the door and makes her way back along the buildings, up the stairs to her room, she sits down on the bed, takes her coat off. She tried running away from the flag before, it didn’t work this time either. She stands up and looks out the window. She watches the ambulance slowly moving away, no lights come on, the gate opens, the ambulance disappears, the gate closes again.

  After I brought them to school, I went to speak to the principal. She sat behind her desk as I explained the situation to her. I told her we would have to take the children out of the school, her face had a puzzled frown. Was there something wrong with Montessori, the size of the school, the assembly hall with the stained-glass windows where families used to pray, hoping the sailors would come back? The girls were happy, I said, it was the best school for them, we could not pay the fees. She smiled and said the girls were doing well, it would be a shame to move them. She set aside what was owed and told me not to worry about the world, my ship would come in.

  I didn’t know how to thank her.

  I drove home and started clearing the kitchen, everything had to be spotless. Helen put her coat on. We drove down to the Fitness Café together without any talking, the staff were waiting, she asked them into the office. She gave them packages she had made up, a card to thank each one of them in person. She wished them good lives and good jobs, she was sorry she had not been able to give them more security.

  We closed the doors.

  That afternoon, when the girls got home, they ate the entire tin of Mennonite biscuits. I checked their lunchboxes and asked them why they hadn’t touched the cherry cake, they said it was full of ants. I saw the ants crawling out one by one, drunk with sugar. They had been coming up from under the sink, I thought I had blocked them, but they were finding new routes to get at the cake on the counter. Essie said the girls in her class refused to eat their lunch, they thought the ants were in all the food, the teacher had to put their lunchboxes outside the window.

  I told them I had a friend in Australia, his children ate green ants. They screamed. I told them he had four children and they ate ants all the time, I said, big green ants, they taste a bit peppery, full of protein. The letter I got said they had moved from Fremantle to Cairns, his family ate outside all year round, a lot of fish. He sent me a list of bird names, full of colour. He said he hoped the writing was going well and the weather inside the pubs was good.

  Not for the first time, the story of my life unfolding from moment to moment seemed to be part of a continuous report being sent off to a distant observer abroad. Each detail was staged, made more dramatic, more glorious and tragic, to be approved by my friend in Australia. I had the protection of an imaginary audience on the far side of the world, reminding me not to care so much about things left unfinished, I should be fucking off and never looking back.

  Late afternoon, I walked back down to the café on my own. The place felt even more empty than before. The chairs were stacked. The lights were off. I got out a marker and a sheet of paper. I wrote a note to let customers know the premises were closed. I taped the note up on the inside of the glass door – we regret the inconvenience.

  It must have been the same note my German grandfather put in the window of his shop on the market square in the time between wars. He thanked his customers for all the stationery they had bought over the years and apologised for not being able to serve them any longer. He signed his name on the bottom of the note and wished everyone well. He must have found it difficult to walk across the market square after that. My mother told me that his friend ran the cinema on the far side of the square, they always received complimentary tickets to every new film that was shown. From that moment on the tickets no longer came. The people of the town were afraid to be seen talking to him, as though his failure would spread to them, he was unable to make them laugh, the humour had gone out of the town. He sat for hours in the front room on the first floor, watching people passing by the shop gone silent on the ground floor. Perhaps it was his lungs that were at fault, some condition he picked up during war. Perhaps it was the coming violence, the political unrest in the streets, the slogans, the agitation, the resentment in the way people talked, the anger in the voices pounding on the radio. His health swiftly deteriorated, my mother was nine years old, he asked her to bring him a mirror when he was in bed, so he could say goodbye to himself.

  I took the train into the city.

  Back up the stairs past the chiropractor and the chess federation. Sitting in the solicitor’s office, we went through each debt starting with the highest. We ticked them off one by one, the strategy, the likelihood of forgiveness, payment schedules. The landlords were a consortium of investors based in Athlone. They wanted Helen to pay not only the arrears but also the rent for the next ninety-nine years. The fact that we had vacated the building was of no interest to them.

  We’ll come up with something, he said.

  It was late by the time we finished. I asked him what I owed him for all this and he laughed, he said that was the last thing I needed, him as a creditor. He asked me what I was writing about and I said it was hard to tell, maybe something to do with war. Love. War and love, that kind of thing, I said. But then I was instantly embarrassed, I blushed, even mentioning the word love seemed so uncool.

  Sounds good to me, he said, like a thriller?

  Yes, I said.

  Going out the door he slapped me on the back to remind me that I had nothing to worry about. The people I owed money to should be worrying. His laugh was reassuring, I carried it with me down the stairs.

  I started in Grogan’s.

  I went in the back door past the gents’ toilet into the bar, through the partition, through the front lounge and out the main door onto the street again. I had no intention of ordering a drink. No interest in getting drunk. It was the feeling of being there I wanted. People looking up to see who was coming in. A man turned around to face me, he must have thought I was somebody else. A woman looked up with great curiosity, perhaps she had seen me before and couldn’t make out where, the same faces will always come through the bar in rotation, in the back door and out the front.

  The night was warm, the city was full of lovers, couples making their way from one bar to another. I walked through Lemon Street and came to a men’s clothing shop on the corner, there was a yellow shirt in th
e window, this must be where the investor buys his clothes, I thought. How was he getting on, back with his family, his children?

  Across the way, there was a bed made up in a shop doorway, a place with an overhang. The bed was unoccupied. A sleeping bag and a pink blanket laid on top, tucked in. The pillow was a rolled-up mat. The base was a cardboard box flattened out, from a TV. A small strip of carpet on the step.

  In Kehoe’s pub, it was the same sequence, in the back door and out the front. I walked into the main bar, past the gents’ toilet which was to the left down the stairs. There was quite a crowd and I had to force my way through. Somebody spoke to me, but it turned out he was talking to the person behind – tickets, you must be joking.

  Moving on into the front section, a woman came towards me with a pint of Guinness in each hand. For a moment, it looked as though she wanted to hand one of them to me. Two pints, two arms, two eyes, why were so many human things doubled? For aesthetic reasons, for public assurance, a mirror of ourselves. Our symmetry reflected in architecture, a monastery I once visited in Germany had two doors in the main room, one leading in and out, the other leading nowhere, onto a blank wall, put there only for visual comfort.

  Leaving by the front door I found myself in congestion, people entering in the opposite direction. I stood back and looked around at the pub interiors, the ancient wooden partitions, the smoke-damaged ceiling, the wall of spirit bottles behind the bar. I saw the pint of Guinness that could have been mine, the creamy foam reaching another man’s lips, the black liquid slipping down his throat. I found a way forward, past the snug where Helen once breastfed Rosie, out into the street.

  I continued my tour.

  The same again in Doheny & Nesbitt’s. In the main door this time, past the snug. I heard the familiar bundle of voices, the crossfire of words in all directions, people laughing. People not taking much notice of who was coming in. On my way through, a man sitting at the bar gave me a nod. It was no more than a minimal movement of the head. Enough to stop me. Maybe we knew each other. No words necessary, just the angle of the forehead altered a fraction and returned to starting position. His face didn’t change. His expression didn’t move. I was mistaken. I had picked up an unintended nod.

  The barman held on to my eyes for a moment, but I kept moving. Back outside I stopped to get my breath. Another night, I thought, you could do the same route and everybody would know you. They would all be nodding, talking the whole night, holding on to you in the street after closing time.

  We were in the park that afternoon, across from the native basement. All the lovers were out. Lying on the grass with their sandwiches. Rosie and Essie running up and down a small green hill. I had a view of the building where I used to work, also the German library, and the National Gallery. The grass was still a bit damp that time of the year, but the soft voices of lovers made me want to sleep.

  Helen was still working. She was determined to get as much done as possible, to the end. She had arranged an interview with a composer, a professor of music at Trinity College. It was important to her to meet the deadline for the Sunday paper. The composer said he wanted his music to be experimental, he saw himself as an agitator, producing sounds that people had never regarded as music before. He seemed not to notice that she was expecting a baby. The contractions must have begun right there in that fusty room with three cellos and two violas and stacks of yellowed score sheets. Whenever she stopped making notes and shifted with discomfort in her chair, he looked surprised, she said sorry, then he continued talking.

  It was late afternoon by the time we got home, I made the dinner and she sat in the front room writing her piece on the composer while it was still fresh in her head. We were sitting at the table when her mother phoned to see if there was any news. Her father came on the line, telling her that she should be at the maternity hospital.

  Go, right now, he said, this minute.

  The plates were left on the table. I got her into the car, the girls jumped in, Essie had the window rolled down, shouting – the waters have broken. I drove like a car chase. I got into a race with a taxi. She was counting contractions. I was forced to stop for petrol, the fuel gauge, I couldn’t trust it. I put in enough petrol to keep us going. I had to jump the queue to pay. I came running out and she asked me what took so long, her fingernails were scratching at the ceiling.

  As we pulled out, we were delayed by something else. The wheel of a truck ran over a can of engine oil, it burst open and sprayed over the windscreen. I switched the wipers on thinking it was water but that only spread the oil right across the glass. I couldn’t see. I got out and wiped the windscreen with my sleeve. I still couldn’t see. It was like frosted glass. The car was a bathroom. I had to get something to clean the windscreen before I could drive on again.

  It’s here, she shouted, it’s coming.

  She was pushing the dashboard with her hands.

  The oil, I said, I can’t see with the oil.

  I ran around looking for paper. I found a bucket of water, a sponge, I washed the windscreen but that made everything worse, it turned to paste, grease, tiny beads of oil on everything, oil on my hands, oil on my jacket, oil spreading to every car in Dublin, the city was covered in oil.

  She howled the unending words – come on.

  I drove through oil. Guessing what was in front of me. We didn’t get anywhere near the maternity hospital. We were passing by the general hospital, it was an emergency – stop, she said, we’re not going to make it.

  I parked next to the ambulance and ran inside.

  A baby is being born, Rosie shouted.

  Helen smiled, or fought off the pain. She was taken inside on a trolley. It took no more than ten minutes, spontaneous birth, in accident and emergency, people with all kinds of injuries and acute lung disorders in the same room cheering. The nurses said it was the first in twenty years. I couldn’t see a thing. I heard them say it was a boy. I was blinded with the oil in my eyes, they gave me a towel.

  It was more of a homecoming than a christening. Helen’s mother was over from Canada, her uncles were back from London, Birmingham, France. Gathered in the pub with the bronze goddess holding the lamps up outside the door. They had taken over the end section of the pub, handbags and coats on seats all around, the baby was asleep in a carrier basket, people leaning over making baby faces, voices like tiny hands.

  Helen’s mother sat in the elbow of the red velvet corner seat, straight in from the airport, her suitcase was by the door, her arms clamped around Rosie and Essie on either side, claiming them back. She wore gold-rimmed glasses, lightly tinted. Her elegant Canadian clothes gave a feeling of prosperity, made me want to pay for everything.

  Helen introduced me as a person you waited all your life to meet. Her mother stood up and shook my hand. The smile, the magnetic eyes. She said I must be such a proud father, two lovely girls and a boy, her voice exposed my emotions to the entire pub, I felt so welcome.

  Thank you, I said.

  She looked at my shoes. My hair. My beige jacket with the copper sheen. I made a poor impression. I could understand her point of view, you come back to the country of your birth and find so many things disappointing. She was used to hearing only the best about me from Helen, condensed into a promising outlook over the phone. I had become vastly overrated. The photographs were misleading. I attempted to say something funny, but it was too late, that first impression cannot be revised, you can spend a lifetime trying.

  Her mother sat down again, she was in conversation with her sister, the aunt in the bible group. I could see the resemblance only the bible aunt sat hunched a little and spoke as though she was afraid of infection. They talked about the time they were both working as nurses in Dublin, the strict rules of behaviour and hygiene.

  I found a velvet stool and picked a place for myself on the fringe, listening to them all talking at once.

  I could see where H
elen got her laugh. Her mother had the identical shoulder movements. Matching hoops. At one point, I had to check to make sure which of them it was, both laughing together in the same voice.

  We ordered sandwiches.

  Everyone had the fresh salmon sandwich on brown bread. It was unique to that bar, a piece of tradition. The barman took the order, then he picked up a beige phone on the wall behind the counter and called the order upstairs to unseen people in a kitchen where they prepared the food. The sandwiches seemed to be constructed in a distant place, by people with no faces. The barman wore a white shirt and a black bow tie. Speaking on the phone made him look like the commander of a submarine, passing on the order to his crew above with an assertive voice. He was doing what he might have done as a boy, imagining he was part of a fleet of submarines moving across the floor of the North Sea. A while later, the food elevator descended with the order, the bell rang as though the bar had reached the required depth. He opened the hatch and took out the food.

  Each fresh salmon sandwich was a re-enactment of the last fresh salmon sandwich, the same two slices of brown bread, the same amount of salmon, the same leaf of lettuce. There was a jar of Hellmann’s mayonnaise replicated on each table. You opened the sandwich and spread the required amount of mayonnaise onto the bread with a knife, you put the leaf of lettuce back into position, then you closed it over and allowed the mayonnaise to bind the sandwich together by pressing down lightly on the bread with a flat hand. You held it pinned down while you cut it in half, making sure the leaf of lettuce was divided into two equal sections along with each part of the sandwich, a small bit of green like an undergarment on view at either end. People sometimes left the knife in the jar of mayonnaise, with the handle sticking up.