Ken Bruen - Cross

I moved from the canal to St Joseph's Church, and a little along that road is what the locals now term Little Africa. A whole area of shops, apartments, businesses run by Nigerians, Ugandans, Zambesians, people from every part of the massive continent. To me, a white Irish Catholic, it was a staggering change, little black kids playing in the streets, drum beats echoing from open windows, and the women were beautiful. I saw dazzling shawls, scarves, dresses of every variety. And friendly… If you smiled at them, they responded with true warmth.

And that, despite the despicable graffiti on the walls:

Non Irish Not Welcome

Irish Nazis… a shame of epic proportion.

An elderly black man was moving along in front of me and I said, 'How you doing?'

He gave me a look of amazement, then his face lit up and he said, 'I be doing real good, mon. And you, brother, how you be doing?'

I ventured I was doing OK and fuck, it made me whole day. I moved on, a near smile on me own face. Hitting the top of Dominic Street, I turned left and strolled towards the Small Crane.

Isn't that a marvellous name? So evocative, and you just have to ask… is there a large crane?

No.

Then you hit the pink triangle. I shit thee not. In Galway. A gay ghetto. Me father would turn in his grave.

Me, I'm delighted.

Keep the city moving, keep it mixed, blended, and just maybe we'll stop killing our own selves over hundreds of years of so-called religious difference.

But I was getting too deep for me own liking, muttered, 'Bit late for you to be getting a social/political conscience.'

There's a lesbian bar on the corner and I would have loved me bigoted mother to know that. She'd have put a match to it and then got a Mass said.

I had quickened my pace, was on Quay Street, the Temple Bar of Galway, smaller but no less riotous, bastion of English hen parties and general mayhem, imported or otherwise. I turned at the flash hotel called Brennan's Yard, where the literati drank.

I had dreaded returning to my apartment. There's a Vince Gill song, 'I Never Knew Lonely'. You live on your own, see a loved one go down, there's few depressions like entering an empty apartment, the silent echoes mocking you. I wanted to roar, 'Honey, I'm home.'

I walked slowly up the stairs of my building, dread in my gut, the keys in my hand. There was a key ring attached, given to me by Cody, it had a Sherlock Holmes figurine. I took a deep breath, turned the key. I'd been to the off-licence, got my back-up.

Bottle of Jameson in my hand, I walked in, found a glass, poured a healthy measure, toasted, 'Welcome home, shithead.'

No matter what the cost – and I've paid as dear a price as there is – those first moments when the booze lights your world, there is nothing… nothing to touch that. Put the cap on the bottle. I was back to the goddamn longing, to trying to keep within a certain level of balance. Shite, I'd been down this road a thousand times, never worked, always ended in disaster. The silence in the room was deafening.

I'd been doing this demented stuff a while now, buying booze, pouring it and then pouring it down the toilet, each time muttering like a befuddled mantra, 'Down the toilet, like my life.'

Before the shooting – What a line that is, a real conversation spinner, beats Where I took my vacation hands down – I'd been trying to implement changes, had decided to change the things I could. Got as far as buying a whole new range of music, stuff I'd been reading about for years but never got round to hearing. Picked up a CD by Tom Russell, little realizing the serendipity of one track. The album was titled Modern Art and he had a recording of Bukowski's poem 'Crucifix in a Death Hand'.

I noticed I had the volume on full and wondered if me hearing was going. I poured the whiskey down the toilet. Once the drink compulsion eased, I looked round my home. Was there a single item that meant anything? The books were lined against the wall, a thin layer of dust on the spines. Like the shadows on my life, the dust had settled slowly and it didn't seem like anyone was going to eradicate it.

The girl was humming softly, an old Irish melody she no longer knew the name of. It was her mother's song and sometimes, if the girl turned real quick, she thought she could catch a glimpse of her mother, those blue eyes fixed on something in the distance, her slight figure, like a tiny ballerina, shimmering in the half light of the dying day.

She never told anyone of this, hugged it to herself like the softest fabric, like the piece of Irish linen her mother had put so much value on. It had been brought out on special occasions, handled with loving care and then put away, her mother saying in that soft Irish lilt, 'This will be yours some day, Alannah.'

Alannah – my child – the first Irish word that held any real significance for her.

The girl's eyes moved around the room: cheap wallpaper was peeling from the top, a thin strip of carpet barely covered the floor and the windows badly needed to be cleaned. Her mother would never have allowed that, those windows would have been sparkling.

Near the door was the cross, a heavy hand-carved piece, the features of the Christ outlining the torment, the nails clearly visible in the hands and feet. Her mind flashed to that other figure and she lingered on the image for a time. It was burned into her memory like a promise she'd made to her mother, and in her own way she had fulfilled the pledge. There was so much to do yet.

And then she smiled. The mantra her mother had used: 'So much to do.'

She was maybe six, and her mother had decided to give the house a total clean. 'Top to bottom.'

For some reason that had struck the child as hilarious, and as she laughed her mother had joined in, the two of them, arms round each other, laughing like they'd won the lottery.

When the laughter had subsided, her mother had looked right into her eyes, asked, 'Do you know how much I love you?'

And she'd said, to her mother's total delight, 'Top to bottom.'

The girl felt her eyes begin to fill with tears and she stood up abruptly, began to pace the worn carpet. She focused on what she had to do next, her conviction that not only would it be done but in such a way that it would scream, like the silent Christ on the handcarved cross.

She resumed her humming as the details began to take shape.

There's an open-plan café in the Eyre Square shopping centre.

Eyre Square was still in the throes of a major redevelopment and, like everything else, was two years behind completion. En route to the centre, I'd stopped for a moment by the site of Brown's Doorway which, like the statue of Padraig O'Conaire, had been removed. They'd promised they'd restore them and there were maybe three people in the city who actually believed it. There'd once been a monument to Lord Clanricarde in Eyre Square. Like a metaphor for all our history, it had been paid for by his tenants and, need I add, against their will. My father had told me of the wild celebrations in 1922 when it had been taken down, and, nice touch, after they hammered it to smithereens they used the base for the statue of O'Conaire.

You look straight down the Square and there's the Great Southern Hotel, though what was so great about it was anyone's guess. It was expensive, but then, wasn't everything? According to a recent poll, it was cheaper to live in New York. When I was a child, two cannons had stood sentry right where I stood and the whole park had been circled by railings. They were long gone.