John Brady - All souls

“I didn’t know Tidy was gone,” said Minogue.

“Oh no,” said Mick. “Not gone to glory yet. He’s in a nursing home after a stroke. They say he’s lying up in the bed like a vegetable or something. They’re not sure if he has his wits about him. Poor divil. For all you might have said ag’in him when he was in the whole of his health…”

The Opel shuddered on a pothole and Minogue glimpsed his brother’s grimace. The first lights of Portaree flared on the windscreen.

A craft studio, a restaurant with candles and American Express signs in its windows and a big grocery shop slipped by their car. A flux of memories took over Minogue’s mind. Save for market days and Saturdays, his Portaree had been like a town asleep. He remembered cycling in for pints, cycling home again, drunk and dreamy, sometimes bitter, with escape carved on his heart. Mick seemed to read his brother’s thoughts.

“Money in town now,” he said. “We’d fork souls into the mouth of hell if the money were right.”

The pub was half-full. Faces turned to the Minogues and heads nodded greetings. They drew up to the bar. Minogue noted the brass foot-rail, the oil-lamps hanging from the wall. The dismal shebeen of his own youth had been made over several times by the Howards. A barman unknown to Minogue raised his eyebrows at him. Before Minogue had asked Mick and Eoin what they would drink, a fat man turned on his stool by the bar. He cocked his cap back on his head, settled it and greeted Mick.

“Gob now, Mick Minogue, is it yourself that I’m seeing in a pub? It must be the Christmas.”

He chortled and swallowed from a pint glass of beer. The barman looked on, bemused and careful. The man’s face put Minogue in mind of a pear, his nose pitted and large. The recessed eyes twinkled and the fat man spoke in a tone of mock earnestness.

“Please God, we’ll see more of you so then, Mick?”

Minogue gave the barman a look sharp enough to cause him to elbow up from the counter.

“Jamesons,” he said. “Two of ’em. Don’t make a cod of them with ice or anything. Two bottles of stout for comfort on top of them. Pint of lager. Please.”

“Are you here for the meeting, is it now, Mick?” asked the fat man.

“What meeting are you talking about?”

“Beyond in the dining room. Master Howard’s in town tonight. The Development Association.”

“The Dan Howard re-election committee, you mean,” said Eoin.

The fat man’s cheeks made slits of his eyes when he grinned.

“God, they haven’t pulled the wool over your eyes, Eoin,” he said. “Wide-awake you are, boy.”

He turned his attention to Minogue and squinted out from the pouches around his eyes. The Inspector folded his wife’s twenty and handed it to the barman.

“I know you from somewhere… Ah, yes! You’re the brother, the Guard up in Dublin. Wouldn’t know you from Adam if I wasn’t seeing you here next to the brother. Wouldn’t know you at all.”

Minogue took custody of the whiskeys and the bottles of stout.

“Maybe if you did, you wouldn’t want to,” he said.

The fat man regrouped with a smile and a nod. The barman changed the channel on the television. Minogue followed Eoin to a table and sat next to his brother.

“Don’t mind that half-wit,” said Mick. “He’s Deegan from up the Saint’s Quarter. ‘As I roved out.’ Does odd jobs for the Howards. Since Tidy’s gone, I don’t think there’s much love lost between Dan Howard and your man here. Always trying to get a rise out of one or the other of us.”

Dimly the Inspector recalled a family of Deegans. He rolled a soupspoon’s worth of whiskey around under his tongue and then nodded it back to his tonsils. The heat detonated in his chest first. Minogue, one: early winter in the west of Ireland, nil. A man took an accordion from a case at a nearby table. Good, thought Minogue as the whiskey crept further through his intestines. Now he had an excuse for Kathleen: There was a session, my dear. How was he supposed to fob off advice on Mick or Eoin?

The musicians were soon loose and free with their instruments. A teenager with a pony-tail and the faint and distracted smile Minogue associated with expert musicians started to fiddle. The accordion player began to slip in the extra notes and flourishes which are the insignia of Clare composition. The bar began to fill. Deegan had left the bar for a seat next to the fireplace where he drank with two younger men. Minogue spotted him looking toward their table once. During a break in the music, Mick wanted to talk about hurling. Minogue made a big effort to appear interested, but the music and the drink had set his mind rambling. Several times he glanced down at his empty whiskey glass, but Mick didn’t get the hint. His own glass had remained half-full for the past twenty minutes. Mick’s hands had closed on one another as he talked and his hands worked slowly at stretching the fingers. Many would never straighten again, Minogue knew. God, another drink, he decided.

“Well, look,” said Eoin, and leaned sideways to see around standing patrons. “The man himself.”

Mick broke off his monologue, looked up and wrinkled his nose. Minogue caught a glimpse of several men as they came through the door and made their way toward the bar. A hand rose and waved across the heads of the crowd at someone unseen to Minogue.

“Who?” he said to Eoin.

“Dan Howard and the crowd from the PDDA. Howard makes a point of dropping in here for a jar after the meetings. Oh, and here’s the wife. Jacqueline Kennedy, I heard her called the other day.”

“A state visit,” grunted Mick. “His own damn pub and all.”

Some memory came faintly to Minogue, but it disappeared before he could place it. She had straight white-blonde hair, lately trimmed, framing a ruddy, tanned face. The Inspector was observing a woman who looked after herself, who had money and plenty of outdoor pursuits to make light of her years. Horsey maybe, he thought, with that fresh-faced, American sort of health. She wore a green loden over knee-length boots. A burrowing presence low under his ribs seemed to grow still. Confusion snared his thoughts tight; he realised that he was staring at her. From her gaze the Inspector knew that she was well aware of eyes on her. He watched her shrug off her coat. His throat was suddenly dry. He took a breath and tried to swallow.

“Never passes up the chance of shaking a few hands toward the next election,” said Mick. “He has the music organised for the same night as the PDDA meetings. Cute hoor, by God.”

Dan Howard was six feet tall but looked even taller in his double-breasted suit. Black curly hair tinted with grey sat over his rosy, dimpled face. His eyes twinkled, his smile was steady and wide. Howard’s hand strayed to his chest and searched out his tie, brushing it tighter inside his jacket. He shook hands with a young couple sitting at the bar and smiled at the musicians. One of them hoisted a glass in return. Minogue watched Dan Howard’s impish, benevolent gaze sweep around the room. His winks and waves continued. He gave a thumbs-up and a gleeful wink to someone Minogue could not see.

“See the little fella under his arm,” said Eoin. “He’s a German. A bloody millionaire. He flies over every month for these meetings. I’m not joking you.”

Minogue caught sight of a white-haired man with heavy, hornrimmed glasses on a head that seemed larger than it needed to be. Howard’s wife wore a loden, he remembered. A gift, maybe.

“Fell in love with the place. Yes, he’s taken a special interest in our little corner of the world.” Eoin’s sarcasm brought Minogue’s eyes to his nephew’s.

“Spillner. He brings people here every now and then to buy places. Clare’s ambassador in Germany.”