Ken Bruen - Sanctuary

Office?

I climbed the flight and my limp objected, but not too much. The door to her office was open and she rose from behind a cluttered desk to greet me. ‘Mr Taylor, please close the door.’

I did.

She indicated the hard chair opposite her desk and she looked seriously worried. I felt like an errant student facing the principal. She no longer had the twinkle in her eye and she actually wrung her hands. ‘I don’t know how to begin.’ She sighed then said, ‘I’ve met with Jo.’

I was going to shout, ‘Did you call the Guards?’ But I went with, ‘When?’

She was now in deep distress. ‘A few days ago, she told me she had a confession to make and as she no longer trusted the Church, she had chosen me to hear it. Not for absolution, she said, but to set the record straight.’

She paused to let me digest this, see if I had any comment.

I didn’t.

She continued, ‘Jo told me that she had been with a man before she joined the convent. In fact, because of that, she joined. She had. . lain with him and then found herself pregnant. Back then, it was difficult to be an unmarried mother. She went to England.’

That could mean only one thing: abortion. No wonder the poor woman was unhinged.

‘Did she try approaching the man?’

Her hands were now twisted round each other. She wouldn’t look at me.

Took me a moment and then it all came together. I blurted, ‘ Me? Ah, for Jesus’s sake, you think I wouldn’t remember that?’

Maeve gave me the first direct look since I’d sat down. ‘She said you were an alcoholic even then and suffered blackouts. You had no memory of the event.’

Oh God Almighty, this was true. Harsh, bitter truth. From almost the beginning of my drinking, I had always been subject to blackouts. Then an even more horrendous realization struck me and I asked, ‘I could have had a child?’

Weeping, she nodded. Then she whispered, ‘It gets worse.’

She was fucking kidding. What could be worse? All those years of yearning for a child, I’d actually done the deed and the. .

I wanted to smash something, to drink the Corrib dry, to be numb.

Sister Maeve’s voice softened. ‘Siobhans’s suicide and the abortion. . it was like they merged, became one part of a mosaic of horror and loss. And Jo was truly lost. Then she read or heard about the death of Serena May — is that the little girl’s name?’

I nodded.

‘It was as if that became the catalyst, the fusion of all the trauma, all the terrible events, and gave her a focus. Now she could, as it were, lay it all on one single act. I’m not suggesting this was rational but she was in such a horrendous state of mind, she would have locked on to anything to escape the terror of her own thoughts.’

‘Where is she?’

Maeve seemed to have retreated into herself. The awful anguish of what had happened had finally caught up with her and she could no longer even think about it. She stared down at her hands, and I noticed the nails had dug into the palms, drawing blood.

The country went Lotto mad. A rollover brought it up to sixteen million and tickets were selling at the rate of twenty thousand a minute.

Summer was coming in Irish fashion — teeming rain and lashing storms. By a supreme effort of will, I reined my drinking way in. But I needed help lest I go on a bender again. Next time, I didn’t think I’d wake by the canal but in it.

You want to score dope, it’s beyond simplicity. Go and sit on Eyre Square, wrestle a bench from a wino or backpacker and wait. Course, you’ll also be offered everything else that a city drunk on new money has to offer the not-so-discerning buyer.

My first day, I struck out but did manage to part with some euros to a drinking school who blessed me with ‘ Bheannacht leat ’, ‘Blessings on you’.

Benediction indeed.

I was sitting on the bench the second day, listening to Johnny Duhan’s album Just Another Town . Been a while since I listened to J.D. as his music reminded me too much of harsher times — the horrendous killing-of-the-tinkers episode and the tragic conclusions I’d reached. Track three kicked in and I nearly jumped; it was titled, ‘Benediction’.

How the fuck did I forget that?

Before I could get to listen to the lyrics, a guy in his twenties, with long dank hair, combat trousers and a sweatshirt asked, ‘Where were you when John died?’

I looked at him. ‘I was in a pub in Donegal, drinking poteen.’

‘What?’

Obviously the question had been rhetorical.

He said, ‘You looking for something?’

I cut through the shite. ‘What have you got?’

He got suspicious, asked, ‘You a cop?’

I turned away.

He moved a little closer, went all hippy. ‘Hey man, no offence, but like, I gotta watch my back, you hear what I’m saying?’

I was going to snap, ‘I’m not deaf.’ But I was certainly heading that way.

He said, ‘I see you got you a limp there, dude. The citizens putting it to you right?’

I gave him my granite look and he went into the rap. Uppers. Downers. Beauties. Ice. Weed, Colombian Gold.

I put up my hand, said, ‘Xanax.’

He let out a long breath. ‘Got me some Valium, 10mg. . chill you right out.’

I gritted my teeth, said, ‘If I wanted fucking Valium, you think I wouldn’t have said?’

He smiled like a rodent with a plan. ‘Heavy vibe, dude. But yeah, I can get you those bad babes. Gonna take like an hour, and gonna cost. You down with that?’

All the Irish youth talked like this now. What a fucking tragedy.

I told him I was indeed down with that and told him how many I wanted.

His eyes widened. He stood up and asked, ‘You be mellow, I’ll be back in, like, warp speed. Anything else you need?’

‘Just that you don’t call me fucking dude.’

He was striding off and I had to ask, though I doubt he was even born, ‘Where were you when John died?’

He looked confused.

‘John who?’

Such times, I love the sheer lunacy of my country.

I watched the crowds passing, bemused — not one Galway accent to be heard. It had been on the news that we were the second richest nation behind Japan. There were, at the last count, nearly four thousand millionaires in the state, and yeah, the poor were getting seriously poorer.

A woman, dressed in a shawl, cautiously approached. She was an indeterminate fifty, had the Romanian look, all bangles and rings. The government had recently chartered a flight, made a pre-dawn swoop and gathered up nearly a hundred of these people who were camping on the M1.

Oh yeah, we were rich and getting real ruthless.

A cycling team from Latvia, due to take part in the Round Ireland Race, had if not legged it, certainly disappeared. I couldn’t help wondering what they did with the bikes.

She asked in a clipped Brit voice, ‘Is this seat free?’ That way the Brits have of making everything sound imperious and commanding.

I looked round — lots of vacant benches — but said, ‘It’s vacant. Very little is free here any more.’ Even the public toilets were pay-as-you-go.

She eyed me warily, wondering if she was making a terrible mistake, then sat cautiously down, keeping a safe distance between us. She took out a paper bag jammed with breadcrumbs and I thought, Uh-oh . Said, ‘If you’re going to feed the pigeons, you might want to bear something in mind.’

She paused — mid-crumb, so to speak — and I said, ‘Apart from the fact that they are flying rodents, you’re just fattening them up. Come evening, the New Age travellers net them and roast them over their campfires down near the pier.’