Howard Linskey: The Dead

‘I love you too,’ I told her, ‘you and Emma mean everything to me. I know there are times when I haven’t shown that and I’m sorry. I know you are strong Sarah but there’s no way you can help with this.’

I told her everything then. How I was trapped between a powerful man who would kill me if I didn’t do his bidding and a vengeful superpower that would never tolerate me helping him.

‘There must be something we can do,’ she said.

‘There isn’t,’ I told her, ‘and you and Emma won’t ever be safe while I’m still breathing.’ And I drew her tightly to me then so she couldn’t see the look on my face.

When I arrived at Cachet, Danny was talking to the DJ and a couple of our dancers. I hung back and let him see me but didn’t approach him. He seemed to take a bloody long while to say his piece to them, so I guessed he was keeping me waiting to punish me or he was stalling because he didn’t know what to say to me. Finally he was done and they walked away. He turned his chair towards me and came over. He was wearing his ‘What the fuck do you want?’ face.

‘We okay for tonight?’ I asked, meaning the club, something I never normally asked him about.

‘Yeah,’ he said, but that was all he said.

‘And the gala dinner,’ I reminded him, ‘do you need anything?’

‘No,’ he shook his head.

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I’ll leave you to it then,’ and before I could say what was on my mind he started to back his chair away so he could turn it in an arc from me. ‘About yesterday,’ I said and he stopped, ‘I didn’t mean any of it. You of all people know that. I was upset so I took it out on you. I was a cunt.’ I was apologising in a manner that I thought Danny might understand.

‘It’s nae bother,’ he lied, ‘we were both upset and we were both talking shite man. Forget it.’ That last bit was an order. Danny meant he understood and accepted my apology and this was his way of saying sorry too. You just had to know Danny really well to understand that.

‘Got time for a pint?’ I asked.

‘Always,’ he said quietly.

‘I worked it out man,’ he told me when we were in a quiet corner with our drinks, ‘not at first like. I was still only a bairn when you came along. She told me she’d been away and seen me dad. He had a job down south but he couldn’t get back ’cos it was too far away but maybe one day he might come home for good. She said we’d have to be patient for a bit longer and see how things worked out. Then, later on, she told me I was going to have a little brother or sister. I was only young but I didn’t believe her about dad coming back, even then. I mean, it was shite, wasn’t it?’

‘When did you start to suspect?’

‘When I was a bit older. I can’t remember what was said but I overheard one of the nosey old bints in the street making some comment about me ma being “no better than she ought to be” or some such crap. I didn’t say anything about it but it got me thinking about why she might have said it.’

‘So you asked her about it?’

‘Not then, no. It was later,’ he admitted, ‘much later, when I got back.’ He meant from the Falklands. I guessed, after what he had seen there, it put our mother’s extra-marital affair into perspective. ‘Anyhow, it didn’t go well. She got very upset. I told her it didn’t matter to me but she was ashamed, I mean she was well embarrassed by it and she made me swear not to tell you. I think she thought you’d have been really upset.’

‘And she didn’t tell you who the father was?’

‘No bro, she didn’t. She wouldn’t let on to me, honest.’

‘And you had no idea?’

‘No, not really. I mean there were always men around but that was down to her job. She worked in Bobby Mahoney’s clubs and pubs, so I’d see her chatting away to the regulars and the guys in his crew but she never brought one home. Sometimes she’d get a lift off one of them but they wouldn’t come in.’

‘She got lifts off Jinky?’

‘I can’t remember,’ he said, but I guessed he was just being evasive, ‘maybe, yes, I reckon so, a couple of times, but like I said he never came in. Our ma wouldn’t allow that, you know what she was like, bit of an old prude really when it came down to it.’

Our young’un laughed. ‘Guess she wasn’t quite as big a prude as we thought.’

‘You and me though,’ I reminded him, ‘we look alike. I mean obviously I’m the young, handsome one and you’re the old, clapped-out version but there is a resemblance.’

He nodded, ‘We both look like ma though.’

‘I s’pose so.’

‘There is one way you take after Jinky though.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘The lasses,’ he told me, ‘I don’t know if it’s what you say to them, or the way you say it, but you’ve always had more than your fair share, just like him.’

‘And look how he ended up,’ I reminded Our young’un.

I hired a young lass to do the singing and she was ace; classically trained, with gold albums, the works. She’d sung for royalty, appeared at the Royal Albert Hall and belted out Abide with Me at the Cup Final to a crowd of ninety thousand. She had a voice like a bloody angel, plus she was as fit as fuck, so the mostly male audience loved her. I paid her well and asked her to sing some patriotic numbers because I knew the guys on these tables would lap it up and part with more of their cash for Help the Heroes , our chosen charity. She did Jerusalem and I Vow to Thee My Country and the applause was loud and warm. They were stuffing notes in envelopes and making credit card donations like they had money to burn.

It was a bit over the top but I got her to sing Land of Hope and Glory at the end and they all waved the little Union Jack flags we’d placed on the tables. I think the booze helped with that. They actually got to their feet and gave her a standing ovation afterwards. I walked on stage, gave her a kiss on the cheek and presented her with a big bouquet, while she smiled like she was having the time of her life, bless her.

She placed the bouquet carefully to one side and moved her microphone out to the front of the stage, so it was right by the top table. The band put down their instruments and let her get on with it.

‘I’ve one last song before I finish,’ she told the audience, ‘two actually, because I want to start with this one,’ and she then looked straight at Danny, who up to that point had been completely oblivious, and softly started to sing ‘Ha-ppy Birth-day to you, Ha-ppy Birth-day to you,’ at which point Danny’s eyes almost fell out of their sockets. I stayed poker faced as she finished, and the crowd all cheered and applauded.

Our young’un smiled self-consciously and gave them all a wave, then he mouthed ‘thank you’ at her, but she wasn’t finished yet. She waited till the crowd stopped applauding and held the microphone close to her lips and gave Danny a look like he was the only man there. Then she started to sing something everybody in the room recognised, ‘Oh Danny Boy… the pipes, the pipes are calling…’

Our young’un was transfixed. I don’t think he could quite believe that she was singing this for everyone in the room and only for him, all at the same time. He was staring goggle eyed at her, hanging on every word. Then, about half way through, as if he suddenly remembered me, he looked over and I winked at him. He looked away quickly.

When she reached the chorus of Danny Boy he started pulling some strange faces and it took me a while to realise that, like Jinky Smith, he was desperately trying not to blub. In the end he had to put his hand up to his eyes to stop the tears, so I was saved the spectacle of seeing two grown men crying in the same week. The funny thing was, I had to turn away too and fake like I was trying to stifle a cough. Because, when she sang that bloody, corny old Irish song to my older brother and he almost wept, well it got to me too. I told myself not to be such a soppy fucker, took a deep breath and just about managed to hold it together.