Кен Бруен - In the Galway Silence

Simply part of the plot. A guy at the bar asked me,

“Was that that writer bollix?”

Which in Ireland is as near a left-field recognition as you will get. But okay, it pissed me off, so I snarled,

“Have you read his books?”

Got the incredulous look and this,

“They’re stabbing books.”

Argue that.

More and more, odd events triggered events from my past. My father was a good, gentle man. How he ended up with my walking bitch of a mother is a mystery. He never once laid a finger on me. Which, nowadays, abuse seeming to be almost mandatory, is indeed remarkable.

But my dear mammie ?

Phew-oh, cunt on wheels.

I came home from school, I was about eleven, a hot dinner and care was not the order of the day. She was waiting behind the door and floored me with a wallop to my head, stood over me with her weapon of choice, a thin nasty reed, with tiny embedded studs.

No wonder the clergy loved her. She was their poster girl of punishment, the embodiment of piety and pious posing.

She hissed, spittle leaking from the corners of her small, mean mouth.

“Did you steal the rich tea biscuits?”

We had biscuits?

I burbled,

“No, cross my heart and hope to die.”

She had systematically beaten me for a full four minutes.

I counted.

You think, four?

That’s not so bad.

It is.

Immersed in a dark past, I told myself,

“Get some air, pal.”

I did.

The sun was still beating down and hordes of Irish bewildered thronged Eyre Square. I sat at the top, near the John F. Kennedy memorial. God, we love them there Kennedys, even Teddy.

A woman, nicely dressed, with a solid bearing, holding the hand of a gorgeous little girl, dressed like Holly Hobbie. (Remember her? Little bonnet, cute booties, channeling Laura Ingalls Wilder.* [1] From Little House on the Prairie . )

The * is for “footnote”; if you want to go literary, have at least one footnote.

The woman approached, the little girl smiling hesitantly.

The woman.

Something in the way she moved.

She stood right in front of me, said,

“Gretchen, say hello to your father.”

I stared at the woman, asked,

“Kiki?”

Oh, my sweet shocking Lord.

My ex-wife.

Though if you measure in time quantity it barely scraped under the legal wire.

After the Guards, such is how I see my dismissal from said force, I went to London.

Went to bits.

Living on Ladbroke Grove (not at all like in the Van Morrison song), and in some barely remembered haze, met and married a German professor of metaphysics. In her defense, she was even more into booze than me. I think she thought I was some sort of Behan manqué.

Two weeks and she was howling for divorce.

I had a beard as my hands shook too much to shave.

A child?

Really?

I thought,

What the fuck.

The chronology I figured would be about right.

I think.

She asked,

“You do not remember me?”

In a tone that leaked a now recalled severity in her speech. Maybe it was a German thing to be so direct. I said,

“ Guten Tag, Gedichte und Briefe zweisprachig .”

How I dredged that up, Christ knows.

But she liked it and, even better, so did the child.

Fuck, the insanity of the alkie mind-set. In my head I was already playing happy families. The child was staring at me with utter bewilderment. I asked in my dumb fashion,

“Does...

   Does...

She

  Speak

     English?”

A fleeting irritated expression danced across Kiki’s face. Now I remembered her intolerance of my ill-thought-out processes. She snapped,

“Gretchen was raised in New York where I got sober. She speaks three languages.”

I nearly asked,

“Any of them civil?”

As Kiki spoke, the sleeve of her Barbour jacket rode up, showing a gold Rolex oyster on a nicely tanned arm. The Germans coming to Ireland have obviously heard of our soft rain as the first thing they pack is ye old royal Barbour.

Even the child sported a Rolex.

Fuck.

This retriggered the happy family shit, and mindful of Kiki’s Ph.D. in metaphysics I said,

“The meta racket paying better than you’d expect.”

Gretchen piped up,

“Mommy is a doctor for sick souls.”

This, in an American twang. I wondered if maybe it was Teutonic humor.

Kiki said,

“My second husband is a very successful man.”

Second.

What kind of floozy was she?

I asked,

“How long are you in town for?”

She patted the child’s head and I for a split second wished it were me.

Madness.

She said,

“We must leave tomorrow for Berlin.”

The must bearing all the gravitas of the German imperative.

Then, with a sad smile, she referenced the TV show we’d watched in our brief time, said,

“ Auf Wiedersehen, Pet .”

As they turned to go, the child whispered in German to her.

I figured she wanted maybe a hug, asked,

“What did she say?”

“She asked why you are so old.”

“They threw a dead dog into the hole after the consul’s body.”

Such are the end lines of Malcolm Lowry’s

Under the Volcano .

Lines I always found shocking on so many levels. In the movie version, Albert Finney produced the best on-screen depiction of an alcoholic ever.

Such were my meanderings after discovering I had a daughter and, gee, I had all of ten minutes with her.

My cup fucking overflowed.

Across town, Joffrey was walking home from school.

He felt independent.

Didn’t take any notice of the white van a few yards from him. As he approached, a fat man came quickly around the side, grabbed him, pushing a cloth over his mouth, a cloth that smelled of hospitals. In seconds he was limp.

Peter Boyne was sweating profusely, but joy mixed with adrenaline coursed through his body. He muttered,

“Oh, my beauty.”

He slid the side door open, threw the body inside, didn’t dare look around but moved quickly, got in the driver’s seat, and slowly pulled away. He hit the music deck. Queen blasted forth,

“We Will Rock You.”

“Too fucking right.”

He shouted.

Punched the air in victory.

As he disappeared in traffic, a lone schoolbag lay on the path, like a discarded wish.

Lockdown.

In a whirl of grief, rage, frustration,

I barricaded myself in the apartment.

“ Some are born to endless night .”

My mind was a cesspool of

Remorse

Recrimination

Revolt.

Any word beginning with R , especially revulsion. Blocked out the world. My phone turned off. Sipping on Jay, trying to measure out how drunk I intended to get. Watched

Fargo 3 .

David Thewlis, in a performance to rival Billy Bob Thornton in series one. This was indeed the time of Noah Hawley, his novel Before the Fall winning a shitload of awards, his early books reissued, and Legion receiving rave reviews in its first season.