J. Gregson: Brothers

Jim O’Connor was enjoying himself. He hadn’t eaten much tonight, not compared with what he’d shifted back in his rugby days. He’d had a couple of glasses of burgundy with his sirloin, but his head was perfectly clear. He didn’t want to get drunk, because he wanted to enjoy the evening. That meant having all your senses alert and missing nothing of what was going on around you. He had a speech to make, too, but he was trying not to think too much about that.

He could see everything in the room from his position at the centre of the top table. He wasn’t talking very much, because he was in a reflective mood. Some people probably said he was self-satisfied, but he didn’t have to consider what other people might say nowadays. And you were allowed to savour what you’d achieved. Surely that was permissible on an occasion like this. He’d come a long way from the Irish village where he’d started. It was surely only right to pause once in a while and consider what he’d achieved.

The rugby had been the start of it. There was no doubting that. Forty-three times he’d played for Ireland, twice he’d toured with the British Lions. It had opened doors to him; those were the years when he’d met important people, when he’d appreciated just what might be possible for himself in the future. He was only forty-six now and he’d played until he was thirty-one. Yet the rugby years seemed to belong to a different life and a different man.

Sarah was looking good tonight. She’d been right to go for the deep crimson dress, when he’d wanted her to settle for a brighter red. It set off the long, lustrous black hair she still gathered into a ponytail behind her slender neck. Not too many women in their forties could get away with a ponytail, she’d told him. Well, it set off the bare shoulders above her dress perfectly. She might have a few laughter lines around her eyes now, but it was appropriate for her. That was a point of agreement between them: he didn’t like mutton dressed as lamb and Sarah had no use for Botox.

She glanced up at him, almost as though she knew that he was thinking about her. ‘You all right, Jim?’

‘Sure I am. More than all right.’ The brain is an unpredictable and sometimes an inconvenient instrument. For some reason, his words flashed him back now to his first real girlfriend in Dublin, who had called him Seamus and thought the sun shone out of him. For a moment, he wanted the innocence of those days, wanted again to be that young man who knew little of the world but still had it all before him.

Moira had been the good Catholic girl his dead mother would have wanted for him, and for a little while he had thought she was perfect. She’d said she didn’t want to sleep with him, not until they were certain it was serious. He’d had her though, with her back up against the wall behind the dance hall, thrusting at her urgently, ignoring her pleas to be gentle with her. It had been just narrowly on the right side of rape, he thought. But Moira would never have accused him of that; she would have thought it was her fault for leading him on. The convent had taught girls things like that, in the old days.

Jim O’Connor wondered where Moira was now. He hoped she was happy and well. He had a sudden wish to find her, to give her money, to let her have some small part of what he’d achieved, for old times’ sake. But you couldn’t turn the clock back. He was indulging himself even to think of those times. He hadn’t thought of Moira for years — well, months, anyway. Better to kill off such thoughts than indulge them. Each man kills the thing he loves. It had been a fellow Irishman who said that. He hadn’t thought of him for years, either.

He wondered why he had wandered into this melancholic mood, when he’d been happily congratulating himself upon his achievements only a moment earlier. He glanced over his shoulder at the toastmaster, resplendent in his bright red jacket — or ridiculous, according to your taste. Ridiculous, Jim decided. A toastmaster had no function until he announced the speakers, but how could he blend discreetly into the background, wearing clothes like that? The man moved forward, as if he had taken O’Connor’s glance as an invitation to speak. ‘Do you want the speeches before or after the coffee, Mr O’Connor?

‘Before. They won’t be very long. I’ll see to that.’

He stood up, moved round the table until he stood behind his daughter as the waiters prepared to serve the desserts. ‘It’s bombe surprise for sweet, Clare. At least, that’s one of the options. I put it in for you.’

He wondered why he needed to say that, then realised that it was just an excuse to talk to her, because she had arrived late and they had scarcely spoken at the beginning of the evening. Clare looked up at him, then laid down her knife and fork together on her plate. ‘There was no need for that, Dad. It’s your evening, not mine.’

‘Of course there was no need. I wanted to do it, that’s all.’

He was aware of the young man she’d brought from university beside her, looking down at his plate with a small, supercilious smile. He had spots still on his forehead; his wrists were thin as they poked out from jacket sleeves which were too short for him. He’d have been no use on the rugby field, this scrawny specimen. Jim wondered whether they’d slept together yet. He tried not to think of his daughter’s lithe young limbs wrapped around this fellow. It didn’t seem long since he’d watched her unwrapping her birthday presents as a seven-year-old.

‘You want me after we’ve finished here tonight, boss?’

O’Connor started at the voice in his ear. It was Steve Tracey, of course. Jim glanced past him, saw the chair he had pushed back from the table behind him. He had moved softly, as big men often do, and Jim hadn’t heard him rise. Now he wanted to reject him, as if his presence and his question cast a shadow over the innocent celebration this was supposed to be. But that wasn’t fair on a loyal servant. Tracey had been with him almost from the start, rising from simple heavy to the director of the small group of hard men who enforced ‘security’.

Jim forced a smile, kept his voice neutral. ‘I shan’t need you or anyone else to look after me tonight, Steve. This is a social occasion, not a business dinner. We’re among friends.’

‘If you’re sure, boss.’ Steve Tracey looked round at the noisy, laughing tables as if searching for some hidden menace. He could see none. He looked back at O’Connor uncertainly for a moment, then nodded and moved back to his chair. Within a moment, he was laughing loudly with the rest of the table around him, working hard to be anonymous. The boss didn’t like his security to be obvious.

Jim O’Connor went back to his seat and fingered the card in his pocket which carried the notes for his speech. He pulled it out and looked at it; surely it couldn’t be a sign of weakness to show you wanted to be well prepared to speak. Public speaking wasn’t something he was good at — he was going to say as much in his first sentence. Then he’d make that reference to James I knighting a loin of beef here and making it sirloin. They’d all know the story, but he’d explain that’s why they’d had sirloin tonight and then slide in the joke he’d prepared.

He thought of that funny old poofter James I, passing through here to London and his coronation as the first Stuart king of England. And then his daft son had caused a civil war and brought Butcher Cromwell and his fierce Ironside army to Ireland. Three and a half centuries later, ‘The curse o’ Crummell on ye!’ had still been one of the fiercest oaths in his village — he hadn’t known what it meant, when he was a boy. There went that brain again, diverting him from the present, when he was trying to concentrate on his speech.