Claire Kilroy: The Devil I Know

Back to me. ‘Do you think you could get to your feet?’

I nodded.

The garda hooked my arm over his shoulder and raised me up, but the legs were dead under me so he lowered me back down. It’s frightening how quickly muscles wither. It’s frightening how quickly everything withers; your mind, your world, your life. ‘Just relax there, Mr St Lawrence. They’ll be here any second.’

‘Tristram,’ I offered, a name which inevitably sounds more formal to an Irish ear than mister . Castler, I should have told him. Me name is Castler, how’s the form? A saucepan lid or shield or some such thing hit the floor spinning, a shimmering metallic crescendo at which the garda apologetically shook his head. We looked into the darkness in anticipation. I was expecting a whole SWAT team to come bursting around the corner, the amount of noise they made, securing the exits, flinging me to the ground, barking at me to keep my hands where they could see them, but in the end it was just a straggle of rank-and-file officers, cobwebs snagged on the peaks of their caps.

*

I think you probably have the rest of the details on record from here, Fergus — the ins and outs, the ups and downs, the twists and turns. There is not much more I can add. Carted out on a stretcher, squirming at the sun, bruised, ragged and shivering, smeared in grime. I’ve been found in worse states. It used to be the order of the day. And then M. Deauville rescued me and I owed him my life. The ambulance was waiting in the courtyard. So was Mrs Reid. I heard her before I saw her. All I could see was the sky.

‘Is he alive, Guard? Oh God, tell me he’s alive!’

Her face projected above me as if peering into my pram. Her eyes shot to the top of my head and she covered her mouth with her hand. The rosary beads were still threaded through her fingers. ‘Sacred Heart of Jesus,’ she whispered.

‘What?’ I touched my head but found nothing amiss — no dent, no blood, no crack. ‘What is it, Mrs Reid? What’s wrong with my head?’

Mrs Reid lowered her eyes to look into mine. ‘Nothing, pet,’ she reassured me, and squeezed my freezing hand for emphasis. ‘There’s nothing wrong with your head. There is not a thing in the world wrong with your head, do you hear me?’ Then she started to cry.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Reid.’

‘I thought you were dead, love.’

‘That was another Tristram St Lawrence.’

She looked up at the garda through her tears. ‘He’s not a bad boy,’ she petitioned him, still clutching my hand. ‘He’s not a bad boy. He’s just… well, look at him, Guard. Sure you can see yourself. He’s very troubled.’

*

Some hours later, I met my reflection in a mirror over a metal hospital sink. It wasn’t the sight of my chimney-sweep face that made me recoil. It was my hair. It had turned white, and not a gleaming helmet of silver like Father’s, but chalky white. Just like that, in a matter of days. Look at me. I’m an old man. All washed up. Barely forty.

The garda had coffee waiting for me in a polystyrene cup. ‘Not the standard you’re used to, I’m afraid,’ he apologised as he handed it over. I smiled. Nobody knows what I’m used to.

‘So what are the charges?’ I finally asked when he began making noises about taking his leave. The doctors wanted to keep me in overnight for observation. The guard could hardly slap on the cuffs there and then.

He had been about to place his hat on his head but he lowered it and frowned. ‘The charges?’

‘Yes. What have I been arrested for?’

‘You haven’t been arrested, Mr St Lawrence. Your housekeeper reported you as a missing person. And now you’re found.’

‘I see. So when am I going to be charged?’

‘With what?’

‘I don’t know yet. That’s why I’m asking you. Economic treason?’

‘That isn’t a crime.’

‘Isn’t it?’

The garda put his hat on. ‘I don’t think so. But I can check?’

‘Would you mind?’

He left the room and I waited for him to get back to me. I’m still waiting. Everyone is still waiting. That was eight years ago now.

‘Thank you for your time, Mr St Lawrence. That concludes matters.’

Do you think? Not for me it doesn’t. Nothing can conclude matters for me. I figured that while I’m here, Fergus — while I am back in the country for this brief spell to answer your questions — I might as well pay a visit to the castle before departing these shores again. See what became of it sort of thing. It could be decades before I return again, if I ever return at all. I have no idea who even owns it any more, or whether anyone even owns it. It may languish still in that holding pen created by the Irish State for all I know, that portfolio of unsaleable property generated by the doom — I mean, the boom; impounded like a stray in the dogs’ home begging passers-by to take pity on it. Good home wanted for a good home. One careless owner. I am afraid to ask. I am afraid to ask what became of my castle. Why am I smiling? Because I’m sad. Because it’s sad. Because I don’t know what else to do with my big stupid mouth.

It was a dry, brisk, bright afternoon when I finished giving my evidence. I recounted the exchange with the garda in the hospital (‘Pray charge you with what, noble sir?’ ‘Why, you jackanapes, with economic treason!’) and that was the end of that. The stage hook appeared to haul me off. A clerk led me out and a cavity opened within. I was yesterday’s man.

I did not immediately leave the court building but instead sat brooding on the headmaster’s bench in the public area. There was a clue I must have neglected to impart, a damning detail to nail the case once and for all and finally make someone pay, but no matter how I wracked my brains I could not put my finger on what that incriminating particular might be.

I took out my phone and searched for the next available flight back to Mumbai. There was nothing until the following evening. It was Easter and the airlines were booked out. A whole afternoon to kill and no notion of how to kill it. The Devil makes work for idle hands. For trembling ones too, for hands with the DTs. I booked a room in an airport hotel.

I set off on foot up the Quays along the silver Liffey. riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs . Do you remember? It used to be written on the tenner back when we still had our own currency.

On O’Connell Street preparations were afoot outside the GPO for the celebration of the Centenary of the Easter Rising. One hundred years since the Proclamation of the Irish Republic and our sovereignty had been hocked. It was Holy Thursday and the panic-drinking was already under way, what with the pubs shutting to mark Good Friday. It would get messy on the streets of Dublin that night.

I caught a northbound train. In case you haven’t already rumbled me, I am unable to drive. I’ve gotten through my whole life making that admission to no one. I may as well get everything off my chest while I’m on a roll. The Dart passed Hickey’s construction graveyard before pulling into the station. I could hardly believe my eyes. It was all still there: the tombstone blocks with their gaping doorways, the building rubble, even the forlorn tower crane, untouched except by vandals and the elements. The Claremont site had been neither levelled nor completed but simply abandoned, stranded as it had stood the day all the money ran out, a war memorial. The show apartments were occupied but already betraying symptoms of their slipshod construction: cracks running the length of the façade, mossy stains weeping from the gutters, the bloom of rust beneath each balcony. In place of the Maserati carrying a surfboard was a neon Dyno-Rod van, its crew rodding the sewers.