Barefoot Over Stones (18 page)

He kept a bottle of Jameson whiskey in the top drawer of his desk and he found himself thinking more and more of it as the clock seemed to crawl from six-thirty. Every minute seemed to drag, wilfully torturing him. With ten minutes to go he gulped greedily from the bottle and chewed a mint on his way down the corridors to meet with the future. It had taken longer than he had planned, but it was welcome all the same.

Stress was bound to have played a part. Dan knew this from his experience in the hospital and since his mother had had a recurrence of her cancer he had made it his business to talk to every consultant that would give him the time of day about her setback and treatment possibilities. He wanted to be doing something practical but the resulting prognoses were bringing him no relief. He knew by looking at her scans that it was easier now to point out the pockets of her body that the cancer had not visited, so rampant had been its spread. He entered the bright foyer of the Mater to visit his mother knowing that soon she would have to be moved from there to a hospice or back home, though home seemed an unlikely prospect now. Every ounce of fight she possessed seemed to have evaporated amidst the scandal that had unfolded around his father.

Dan got a coffee in the restaurant and sat for a while before he took the lift to see his mother, who appeared to be disappearing before his eyes. A table at the back was his best bet. He wanted to tuck himself away from faces he might recognize and well-meant enquiries about his mother that he didn’t have the heart to answer. He thought back to the night that his father’s junior ministerial position had been announced and to the day this nightmare had begun in earnest.

Dan and Alison had made their way to Leinster House, arriving before 9 p.m. There had been some speculation on ‘Five Seven Live’ and on news bulletins throughout the day that a major shake-up of the cabinet was in the offing, and Dan had told Alison that although his father had said very little in the phone call he presumed that he was about to be promoted. By the time they arrived there was a media circus around the steps, reflecting the fact that there had been six changes to the cabinet team: four moves, two drops and two promotions, of which Con was one. His dad had handled the media very well considering his relative lack of experience and watching him made Dan incredibly proud. He borrowed his father’s new mobile phone, a recent acquisition, to phone his mother, feeling that she should be included in the excitement of the night. She had seen the news and wished them all a good night. When Dan said it was a pity she wasn’t here, she said there would be time enough for celebrations and, just briefly, Dan allowed himself to think that things might well improve between his parents from now on. She seemed a little proud, not very mind you, but just a little.

Con had booked a table for them at a nearby restaurant, but what started as a private celebration inevitably expanded into a huge party, with every stray party hack coming to the table to congratulate Con and stay for a drink. Columbo docked with a coterie of party workers from Tipperary. The remains of his thinning hair were doused with Brylcreem and his ample face shone alarmingly with delight when he spotted Con. He was kitted out in a new overcoat (Mary Abernethy would approve) and when he lunged at the new Junior Minister for a hug Alison remarked to Dan that she thought he was going to cry or collapse with excitement or both.

‘I think Columbo has a bit of a crush on your dad, Dan. That reaction is just a little bit over the top, isn’t it?’

‘Very little about Columbo could be described as normal but in fairness he has put as much work into tonight as my dad, possibly even more. The man doesn’t really have a life outside politics.’

When Columbo finally released Con from his suffocating clasp he practically knocked down the maître d’ asking for drink for the table. Dan knew it was going to be a big night and he motioned to Alison that now might be a good time to escape. Con thanked them for coming and said he would be in touch in the morning. It might have stayed just that, a big night for a provincial politician and his team, had Con not decided to set up a tab at the bar, which he would settle in the morning, and take a midnight drive to see Leda. He was well on his way to triple the legal alcohol limit when he knocked down a female pedestrian dashing for a late bus at the corner of Stephen’s Green. At exactly 12.15 a.m. Garda Paul Crampton was taking a cigarette break on Stephen’s Green East. He had parked on a double yellow line in front of an emergency access lane because, frankly, who was going to stop him? He would testify that he noticed a black Mercedes being driven erratically in the direction of Leeson Street Bridge. He would further give evidence that it took several minutes for Con Abernethy to pull his vehicle to the side of the road. It appeared, Paul Crampton would say, that the Junior Minister (because he was one at the time of the accident, albeit for a historically brief tenure) was oblivious to the police siren instructing him to pull over. Two witnesses to the hit and run on Stephen’s Green would link the black Mercedes to the scene and if that were not enough strands of the injured girl’s hair and fibres from her clothing were found on the damaged wing of Con Abernethy’s car.

The Taoiseach, who had hoped to waken to positive media coverage for his cabinet revamp, was instead woken in the early hours by a phone call from a party aide whose presence had been requested by a rapidly sobering Con when he found himself at Harcourt Street Garda station without a leg to stand on. The Taoiseach visited the injured girl in hospital and breathed a small sigh of relief when she was finally declared out of danger. Con was only allowed to visit the girl and her family privately. Senior party figures did not want pictures of him to grace the front pages of the dailies with another series of inevitably unbecoming headlines.

At seven o’clock that morning Ciara Clancy was buttering what might well have been her tenth slice of toast after a particularly bad night’s sleep in the flat she shared with Alison just a few streets away from where they had first rented from Jean McDermott. Ranelagh had charmed them with its opportunity to live alongside people who had rakes more money and status, and there were plenty of places because houses were still better rented than sold. She idly turned on Alison’s stereo. Whatever was worth anything in the flat belonged to Alison, bought for her by her folks or sometimes by Dan. Ciara was hoping that situation might change any day now. She could practically smell her first real pay packet for something other than petty bits of shop work or waiting on tables, the inherent servitude of which she disdained. Alison had the fecking stereo tuned to Radio 1 again. My God, some things about that girl were proving impossible to change. She fiddled with the dial but not before she had heard Con Abernethy’s name in the headlines. She spat out her toast and rapidly turned the dial back to where she had found it.

Dan kind of knew he was oversleeping but he was reluctant to leave the warmth of Alison’s bed. He had to be at the hospital at eight and he knew he had to rouse himself within a few minutes. He pulled the quilt over their heads to enjoy one last snuggle. Ciara didn’t wait for an answer when she knocked on her flatmate’s door. No show of good manners would change the news. She burst in and when they sat up in the bed, the covers clenched to their naked bodies, she blurted out, ‘Jesus, Dan, your father has well and truly fucked it all up now.’

His performance at the previous general election had been extinguished by his carelessness and the long road to ministerial responsibility destroyed by an instant of irresponsibility. Mary Abernethy would say that the news broke her heart and Con would say with as much black humour as he could manage that, if she had one, she had kept it well hidden all these years.

The Mater café was getting busy with evening meals and Dan knew that the waitress who cleared his stone-cold coffee cup would rather he move so people who were buying food could sit down. His mother was in good form when he got to her room and had been visited by a palliative-care consultant from St Matthew’s Hospice. She told Dan, as she had told his father earlier in the day, that she would move there once a place became available.

‘You are being very brave, Mam. I’m very proud of the way you are handling all of this and I know Dad is too, even though he might not say so.’

She looked at him sceptically but there was a glimmer of softness where he had expected none. ‘Your father is love-bombing me with visits. He has a lot of time on his hands now that he has put the kibosh on his career. It’s funny the way no one wants to deal with someone who has been disgraced, as if they think they might catch something. I think that Clancy trollop has even decided that it’s contagious and has made herself scarce.’

‘I guess it’s too late for you two to forgive each other all the slurs and the harsh words. But it would be good if something positive came from all this – for everyone’s sake.’

Her breathing was laboured and the almost violent rising and falling of her chest, protected now only by a sliver of flesh, was painful for Dan to watch.

‘Oh, Dan, I know you have suffered and I know we gave you no example of how to live. I regret that, I really do. You see, I withdrew from the marriage early on, withdrew my company and my friendship and – you know – other stuff. I turned myself into a commodity that I was
unwilling to trade.’ Mary seemed uncomfortable at the mere reference to sexual relations and much as he wanted to listen to his mother, Dan was relieved that embarrassment might save them both having to contemplate her deepest regrets in graphic detail. Having regained her composure, Mary continued. ‘The trouble was I never knew how to try again with our relationship. In the early years your father might well have forgiven me but I just could not find the way back. Pride, I suppose, but inexperience too. I never made it easy for him, and you have to make the effort for the other person or they lose the will to try. He had his career and he treated that like it was much more important than I was, and I suppose it saved him from madness or loneliness or both. I had you and the house and I had money to do what I liked. Mostly that was enough. Plenty of people have less than that to be going on with. For ages I felt lucky, not blessed but lucky.’

‘Do you think things could have been different? Do you think you could have been happy together? I just remember you fighting. I don’t remember a good time, but maybe there was and I just don’t recall it.’ Dan hadn’t expected his mother to open up and he couldn’t stem his flood of questions. They broke like waves on the surface of the conversation, looking for answers to calm them.

‘Who knows what way life plays out? But we could have been happy enough. I would settle for that, I know that now but it’s too late, of course. My cancer and your father’s spectacular disgrace have taken the energy from our little feud. It’s not right to hate each other any more; hardly seems worth the effort when everything else has gone wrong. Every cloud has a silver lining and all that. Mind you, I am not sure that your father would willingly trade what he has lost for our modest silver lining. The state car that never was, the perks he never claimed. He took all that as a huge blow, you must realize.’

Dan took his mother’s hand. It was frail now and her finger too small for the mocking wedding band that swamped it like a child’s plaything. He squeezed it, willing her to understand that he forgave her and that he knew she had done her best even if that was not very good at all.

Con appeared at the door with another bunch of flowers. He looked as if he suspected they might have been talking about him but he didn’t mind.

‘Con Abernethy, I’ve told you not to buy me another single flower. The nurses are cursing me because all the vases for the entire floor are in this room.’

‘Ah, sure the florist down below knows me now. I couldn’t pass without buying something. He would think it bad form. Besides, it’s amazing the admiring glances you get when you are carrying a bit of a bouquet.’

Dan looked at his parents nearly grinning at each other and knew that this probably was as good as it got. He decided to be thankful before it was too late.

‘I see you made it for the barbecue too, sis.’ Leda waltzed into Shanahan’s lounge on the day of Mary Abernethy’s funeral, ignoring the admiring and lust-filled gazes that followed her to the counter from every corner of the bar. She was hoping to have a few quiet words with Con and had been momentarily nonplussed to see her sister standing cheek by jowl with Dan and his friends at the counter. She didn’t think her sister’s mystifyingly close friendship with Dan’s glucose pop of
a girlfriend would run to her presence at his mother’s funeral, but it seemed her loyalty was boundless.

‘I think you will find that the more common term is cremation, Leda, and for your information there was a change of plan. She was buried instead. Would you not stay away today of all days?’ Ciara had moved to greet Leda a little away from Dan because he was having a tough enough day without seeing his father’s on-off girlfriend hanging around. Leda’s timing was, as ever, brutal.

‘Where is the Rose of Tralee herself? Up making tea at the house, I suppose, preparing to be the new and improved Mrs Abernethy, though that shouldn’t be too hard.’

‘Listen, Leda, keep your poisonous rant to yourself. Alison has a job interview in Cork this evening and Dan insisted she go ahead with it. She asked me to stay here with Dan. We are getting the train in the morning when all this is over.’

‘God, you two must be as tight as thieves that she trusts you with him. He is a fucking ride. I know what I would do if she left him in my care. I’d show him what a real woman could do for him. After Con he would most definitely be on my target list but I do prefer the more mature man. They are grateful for any attention and the cash is stacked higher. Dan is probably still getting pocket money from Con. Something like twenty years to qualify as a doctor, isn’t it? Still though, Ciara, you could do a lot worse.’ As she said this Leda was scanning the lounge to see if she could see any sign of Con. She saw her father all right, looking as if he had had a fair few already, and she raised her hand to him in salute.