John Brady - All souls

Minogue looked over again at the group by the bar. Howard was still looking around the crowd. His eyes lingered on Minogue as though he were trying to recall a name to go with the Inspector’s face, and he smiled broadly. Minogue nodded back. Someone handed Howard a glass of whiskey. The German had made his way over to the musicians and was talking animatedly to them.

Howard moved away from the bar and worked his way around the tables. He paused by one to shake hands with an elderly man. He inclined over another to listen to a joke, his smile broader with anticipation. His eyes focussed on Minogue while he listened. He showed perfect, even teeth when he laughed. The fiddle player drew his bow across the strings, set his jaw and launched into a reel. Spillner pushed at his glasses, laid his glass down and began clapping.

Mick eased himself more upright in his seat and grunted.

“Look at him, would you, for the love of God.”

The music had restored Minogue, renewed his thirst. He stood and made his way through the crowd. Damn it all, he thought, he’d do his best to spend the twenty-quid fee his wife had given him for parleying with Mick and Eoin. Danger money. He watched the barman uncapping the bottles of stout.

“So how’s Dublin?” called out the barman.

“Ah, it’s all right. A bit like Mars by times. But I like it.”

The barman shrugged and turned to the till. The fiddle wailed high over the guitar now and Minogue’s blood began to race with the music. His foot began rehearsing in miniature the steps to a Clare Set. Howard was still on the move. Minogue could not locate Howard’s wife, but as he stepped away from the bar he spotted her sitting next to the German. While he clapped vigorously she was looking at the musicians with a faint smile. She glanced over suddenly and returned Minogue’s gaze for several moments. The Inspector felt the soft compression about his chest again. A nudge on his arm from another patron drew him around to face the bar. The barman was shouting at him over the music.

“Your change!”

Minogue returned to the table and fended off money held out by Eoin. He wanted an excuse to stand up so that he could see her again. What was it about her that looked so familiar? Maybe she had been inspecting him to see if she could peg him from a family likeness. He thought of how her shoulders had rolled when she had slipped off the loden. And him like the world’s biggest iijit standing there, forgetting his change, staring at her. He took a gulp from his glass.

It was then that the Inspector noticed the customers moving away from the door. The man who now stood in the doorway seemed immune to the ruckus around him. He wore a thick black workman’s coat, a donkey jacket, with the collar turned up. Though he was tall and wiry, his shoulders were hunched under a mop of white hair. His beard was still almost completely black. The Inspector shifted to get a better angle and saw the plastic shopping bags dangling from the man’s hands. Others in the crowd had begun to look toward the new arrival now. The barman looked up from a glass he was filling and frowned. Several people edged closer to the bar. Minogue looked back at the bearded man. There was something more to him than that furtive alertness which Minogue associated with people who were cracked. In the animal shyness and caution was defiance.

The barman left the glass on the counter half-filled and lifted the hinged countertop. Men around the bar made way for him. The bearded man noted him coming toward him but returned to looking around the groups in the bar. The fiddle player left the guitar and the accordion to account for the melody and began to soar and fall around it. The German millionaire was smiling broadly, swaying from side to side on his stool. The barman’s face was set in an expression of resolute regret as he talked to the bearded man. The bearded man kept looking at the faces in the pub. The barman’s hands went to his hips and he nodded toward the door. The bearded man looked at him for a moment, seemed about to say something, but pivoted. Minogue saw that the bags seemed to be crammed with newspapers. So still had the collie been in the shadows behind that Minogue was surprised when it stirred. Minogue looked up from the animal to find the man’s eyes staring at him. The intensity held his eyes for a moment before returning to the barman’s. The barman nodded at the door again and shrugged. The bearded man left. The collie trotted out, its eyes locked on the man’s boots. Minogue looked to their wake until the door swung back, then sipped from his whiskey. Ah, good heart, he tried to decoy himself. The drop of malt, the soft drift into comfort: there’s always whiskey.

Mick leaned over and murmured into Minogue’s ear.

“That poor divil. Your man there, the go-by-the-wall. You know him.”

Mick shifted slowly in his chair and Minogue saw his brother’s face seize with pain as he moved.

“That envelope back at the house,” Mick added, sucking in air.

“Was that Jamesy Bourke?”

“None other.”

Minogue watched as Mick rubbed under his chin with the back of his hand.

“There’s a family that’s scattered to the four winds. The mother only died a while ago. Three year. I tell a lie. Four. Four come the Christmas. She lived there alone and died of a broken heart. Jamesy was let out under guard for the funeral and he was gone again until a few months ago.”

“Let out,” Minogue repeated.

“Don’t you remember that fire? The dead girl? A Canadian girl? I suppose it’s ten or twelve years or more now. She was burned to death in a cottage she was renting. It was Jamesy set the place on fire and she inside. A love thing that went sour on him. He got a life sentence as I recall.”

Minogue thought of the envelope he had dropped into the suitcase back at the farm. Crossan, the barrister, was working in some capacity for Jamesy Bourke. Something lurched into his thoughts then. Had Bourke known he’d be here tonight? Had he come to talk to him?

“I heard he lost his mind in prison,” Mick murmured. “Took a knife to a warder and had time tacked on to his sentence for it…”

“But he’s-?”

“Ah, he has medication and that.” Mick flicked his head. “So far, so good, I suppose. No run-ins with anyone. Yet. But there’s plenty of people didn’t want him coming back here at all. They cross the street or turn around rather than have to pass him. The poor divil. Lonely there by himself. There’s only Jamesy and his dog left above in the cottage. Very fond of the dog. You’d hear him talking away to the dog and they walking the roads, the two of them. It was the mother, God rest her, scraped that little house out of the farm after she was rid of it.”

Mick shrugged and began massaging his hands again.

“There was bad luck on that family, there’s no doubt,” he added.

Minogue stood and began to thread his way toward the toilet. Dan Howard was still on the move, shaking hands with a man just in the door of the pub. When he returned Howard was gone. The musicians’ faces looked redder but more determined, but neither the German nor Mrs Howard sat next to them now. Newcomers occupied the table, faces vaguely familiar to Minogue. He nodded at them and smiled, trying to place them, believing that he knew the family at least. He sat down next to his brother with faint dismay still hanging in his mind. Eoin raised his glass and tipped it against his uncle’s.

“Your health, now, Uncle Matt, and all belonging to you.”

The edges of the road glistened under the streetlamps and the night air was astir with the breeze in off the sea. Minogue felt its presence as it rolled and lapped up to the shore below the village. He paused on the threshold of the pub and watched a rain so fine as to be almost mist bloom under the rim of the streetlamps. The door of the pub hissed closed behind him, swallowing the talk within. He listened more keenly now, but he still couldn’t be sure that it was the hush of the sea he was hearing. The smell of seaweed from the harbour, mingled with turf-smoke, thickened the air around him. Eoin blundered out the door, nearly pitching him into the street. “Sorry, Uncle Matt.”