The Glorious Heresies (10 page)

He inhabited the old brothel with her now, out of harm's way and anyone else's eye line. He watched her from the stairs. He waited to one side of the kitchen table while she ate, avoiding the spot of his ebbing. He stood at the end of the bed, right at the middle of the footboard, staring down at her when she couldn't sleep.

“Is it any wonder I can't with you here?” she used to say to him.

He didn't reply. His mouth wasn't made for it. His face shifted with her guesswork and never settled long enough to answer back. Sometimes he had blue eyes and luminescent white skin. Sometimes he had thin lips and hollow cheeks. Sometimes he smiled, or formed a wide O in belated horror. He never had teeth.

The cape of sticky crimson spread over his right shoulder and weighted his faded black jumper so it clung to him, exactly as it had in his final moments.

She sought redemption in him first. She lay awake at night and explained herself to him, first her actions, then her history, in case it would provide background against which he could shape his acceptance. But his mouth wouldn't stay put to confirm it. She told him again, fleshing it out where she thought he might want it. His sometime-face refused to engage.

“Will I tell you a story, Robbie O'Donovan?”

His blue eyes smeared across his sockets and onto his cheeks. Black substitutes flowed into position.

“When I was eighteen I met a man. He was twenty-four and from out Cobh direction, he wore a beard and beads; you wouldn't know the type, Robbie O'Donovan, because it was long before your time, but he was a catch and all the girls said so. His name was Dominic Looney, so it's a good job I didn't marry him. I was a skinny minnie—I used to wear pants up to my ears with bottoms on them wide enough to sweep the streets, and I had a head of hair on me like a mushroom cloud, so between the trousers and the fluffy
ceann
I don't know how he saw enough of me to want what he thought was on offer. But there you go: you fellas are strange. He thought I was a lasher and I didn't deny him the chance to keep telling me. So we were doing a line. We'd go out to Crosshaven for the dances and he'd get me drunk on shandy, which will tell you, Robbie O'Donovan, how small I was back then.

“We didn't go out for that long but it must have looked fairly serious because there was an assumption amongst the girls I worked with that we'd get married. And we pretended to be married enough times; we went for weekends away and told the Mary-Anns in the B&Bs that we were Mr. and Mrs. Looney and only married a year. And you can imagine what went on after that, can't you? Not that it'd do you any good imagining it now; I don't cut the figure I used to.

“Of course, it's different nowadays, but back then being a trollop was full of occupational hazards. No doubt the Mary-Anns would have called it my own fault and gloated at my situation—and that's what they used to call it then, Robbie O'Donovan; a situation, or a problem, oh, something vague and fateful.
What are we going to do about Maureen's problem?
Well, the first thing I did was arrange a shotgun wedding in my head. I was to wear a floating cream dress, and he'd have his beard and a suit, and we'd be in a house of our own before my belly escaped from bondage and made a whore and a charlatan out of the pair of us.

“But that wasn't to be, for as soon as Dom Looney got wind of it he was out the gap, flapping like a chicken trying to outrun a fox.

“So what do you think happened then, Robbie O'Donovan?”

The apparition's face flickered.

“Then I was sent away. For the neighbours' benefit I was gone away to work, but really I was being watched as I grew and grew and grew and the faces around me got longer and longer and longer. And then when I had the baby my mother—God rest her soul and say hello to her if you see her—fell head over heels for him and so it was decided that I give him up in atonement so that my mother and father could raise him in the stable and proper home that had given rise to the likes of me.

“So you tell me this, Robbie O'Donovan, when your face stops fading in and out and your mouth fixes in whatever shape your parents gave it: why was I asked to redeem myself for something my mother ended up coveting? Hmm? And if I've done all my redeeming, forty bleddy years of it, why in God's name do you think I should be seeking redemption for you?”

Lacking the necessary equipment to answer, the ghost of Robbie O'Donovan said nothing.

“I'll atone,” grumbled Maureen, “but I'm not taking any more punishment. Up to me armpits in punishment I was, for doing feck all. Do you hear me?”

Her thirst for redemption unquenched by the wraith's sullen insubstantiality, Maureen was left picking through more indirect routes.

The church seemed like the obvious place to start. The clergy were self-professed experts in bestowing grace on behalf of the absentee landlord. Then there was the notion of being pre-cleared of the burden of Robbie O'Donovan's death by dint of her suffering years of penitence with no sin to show for it. If the church that condemned her to childless banishment forty years ago could offer her something in the way of a consolation prize, well, she was interested in hearing it.

The church nearest her was across the river and ten minutes down the quays. The morning after she told Robbie O'Donovan his bedtime story, she took a walk.

It had been a nasty April so far, the weather weak and wet, and bitter. She had wanted to wear white for the occasion, but the rain dissuaded her; she swapped white trousers for a black pair, and her sandals for sturdy dark shoes, and her cream cardigan and white shirt gave her the look of someone who'd only sinned from the waist down, which was generally where it manifested on nineteen-year-olds in the seventies.

It was an old church, imposing in a way they'd discourage now that the country was wide to their private flamboyances. Maureen strode up the steps and through the colossal doors and inside spied grandeur good-oh. Gold and marble and wall-mounted speakers so as to better hear the word of the Law-Di-Daw. She chortled, loud enough to upset a couple of biddies sitting in one of the end pews.

There were confession boxes in the corner. She ran her hands over the outside of the left-hand door. Hardwood, varnished over and over again; all veneer at this stage, she thought. There was a black grille on the top half. The priest's station in the middle was hung with a velvet curtain.

Maureen slipped inside and stood in the dark, remembering all that time ago, when you'd be waiting on the priest to slide the hatch open, enjoying the stuffiness, the pomp of the ritual, even the smell of the thing, rich and musty, something of the bygones…

The hatch slid to the side and a voice said, “We're not scheduled for confessions now, but I saw you come in.”

“Jesus Christ!”

“ ‘Bless me father for I have sinned' is the customary salutation.”

She shoved the door open and hurried to the exit, and behind her the priest, bespectacled and white-haired as uniform dictated, opened the door of the confessional and hung out on one foot.

“I didn't mean to startle you,” he called.

Robbie O'Donovan was waiting for her when she banged shut the door of the brothel. His face, elongated this time, mouthless and sallow, stared her down from the end of the corridor. He was standing at the kitchen door, blocking entry.

“I'll get them,” she said. “Not today, obviously. But you'll see at the end of it: you, my lad, have no right to be here.”

She wanted a cup of tea and to sit down, and so she blinked hard, and when she opened her eyes again he was gone.

Maureen sat on it like a bird of prey fluffed up on an egg. She guarded it closely at first, but as soon as Jimmy gratefully consigned the deed to history the air around her turned viscous with her glee, and Jimmy watched it bubble into thick sighs and snorts and unspent exclamations until she decided it was time to tell him what she'd learned.

That gowl Cusack had let slip the name of the corpse.

What harm?
Dougan might have asked, if he'd been let in at all, and he hadn't. The worst of all possible outcomes had already happened; the fool was dead. What difference did it make if Maureen knew the name of the man she'd killed?

Without Dougan, though, Jimmy Phelan was a mess of what-ifs and how-dares.

The name of the corpse was a complication. Maureen made casual references to a ghost who'd popped into existence as soon as she had a name to give it, and the breeziness bothered him. No manifestation of guilt, this. Who knew what else the witch could do with a name?

It had been a season of extremes. The sun, when it shined, crisped everything it caught, but it never appeared except in a bruise of cumulus clouds. Showers kept the children indoors. The air was thick with fuming wasps.

Jimmy drove up to Cusack's house to beat out of him what in fuck's name he thought he was doing telling Maureen who the dead man was. He drove up to beat sense into him. He drove up to gauge his unruliness, and to find out whether there was more to this fuck-up than insubordination. Jimmy Phelan thought himself a great judge of character, and Cusack hadn't seemed like he knew the corpse's identity on the day they'd removed it from Maureen's floor. There was a possibility the fucker had conducted his own investigation, and carried the results back to Maureen for her to do with as she pleased. Jimmy didn't know.

He didn't know!

Tony Cusack's terrace was only one of dozens flung out in a lattice of reluctant socialism. There was always some brat lighting bonfires on the green, or a lout with a belly out to next Friday being drunkenly ejected from his home (with a measure of screaming fishwife thrown in for good luck), or squad cars or teenage squeals or gibbering dogs. Jimmy parked and grabbed a passing urchin for specifics.

Tony's house was in the middle of a short terrace facing the green. There was a silver Scenic in the stubby driveway, but the curtains were closed on both floors and there were no signs of life behind the frosted glass on the front door. Jimmy knocked anyway, and knocked harder when he didn't get an answer. How many children did the man say he'd sired? Six? Jimmy turned. The lawn was overgrown, the garden didn't sport anything in the way of ornamental hedges or flowerbeds, and the only indication of children was the couple of sweet wrappers caught between the corner of the lawn and the pebble-dashed front wall.

He stepped onto the drive and leaned against the car bonnet.

“Where are you, you little maggot?”

He cast his eyes to the end of the terrace, where figures shrank behind cars and walls and rosebushes, then looked the other way and caught a familiar face diving behind a curtain in the house next door.

That would do.

He began to whistle as he crossed from this driveway into the next. When he rapped on the door she opened it only a couple of inches and allowed him her eyes and her forehead.

“Can I help you?”

“For fuck's sake, Tara. You're not playing oblivious, are you?”

He slapped the door again, and it bumped off her nose.

“I'm not playing oblivious,” she said.

“Good girl. Because I don't have the patience for your play-acting. Are you going to let me in?”

“My daughter's in bed.”

“That's not an answer.”

She winced and sniffed as she stood aside and let him into her hall.

The sitting-room curtains were drawn. The room was illuminated by the glow from a laptop on the coffee table, supplemented by rolling sunlight from the sundered summer sky. Jimmy sat on the couch, spreading his arms across the back and crossing his left leg over his right and Tara Duane hovered by her own sitting-room door like a burglar made to face the music.

She'd fancied herself a madam once, and approached one of Jimmy's underlings for collaboration. The ugliness of the work had stunned her, and she'd spent more time wringing her hands over the ashes of her Munster Moulin Rouge than exerting herself, so she'd been deposed, and the collaborating subordinate given a slap around the chops. Since then she'd learned conversational Russian and had assumed position as a kind of guide for girls whose penury pointed them towards sex work. She still fancied herself a madam, only now she believed her freelance status allowed her an attractive impartiality and an air of great benevolence. A whore had once told Jimmy that Tara kept unhealthy hours online, employing sockpuppet accounts to argue with anti-prostitution campaigners and cribbing about Catholic Ireland. That had tickled him. He was happy to give her delusions free rein; his managers used her on occasion as a finder or a go-between.

Her front room was poky. There were magazines stacked on the shelves, clashing art on the walls. Beside the laptop on the coffee table was a mug with a delicate paper label hanging down the side. There was a chat window open on the laptop screen.

Of course hunni xxx Dont worry. My mom's just come home brb. Don't start without me plz luv u.

Don let her get to u baby. B strong.

“Online chat?” he said. “I thought your daughter was in bed?”

“She was up a while ago, like.”

He grinned and leaned forward. “Her ‘mom' just came home and sent her to bed, was it? Was she up all night talking to nobbers? And drinking tea with labels on it; ah, she's pure sophisticated.”

“Can I help you with something, Jimmy?”

“Probably,” he said. She went to fold her arms and changed her mind, for one brief moment falling into the chicken dance.

“Tara,” he said.

“Yes?”

“I'm obviously looking for someone.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know where the fuck he is?”

“Tony Cusack?”

“That'd be the man. I have the right house so.”

“Why are you looking for Tony Cusack?”

“Why are you asking me?”

Her hands made fists. She tucked each into its opposite armpit.

“Seriously, Tara? Trying to ascertain what I know before choosing your best answer is only going to make me very pissy.”

She pouted. “He's drying out.”

“He's what?”

“Drying out. You know. Some residential programme. The kids are with his sisters and he hasn't been home in weeks.”

“I didn't see Cusack as the health-conscious type,” he said.

“He's not,” she said. “It was court-ordered.”

“Court-ordered? Fuck me—what did he do to deserve that?”

“What didn't he do to deserve it?”

“Seems a harmless sort, is all.”

She seethed. “He's not harmless. He's a horrible man. Violent. Very violent.”

“We are talking about the right Tony Cusack, aren't we? Scruffy fella, big brown peepers, married a dago lasher with knockers out to here?”

“Some people are just bad,” she said. “No matter how often you get lost in their eyes.”

Her peevishness tickled him. “That doesn't sound like the bleeding-heart Tara Duane I know.”

“He's a child abuser.”

“Holy fuck, anything else?”

“Yeah, actually. He put my front window in. With a hurley. Beat the glass through. And I have to live beside him after all that and I frightened of me life of him.”

“Tony Cusack put your front window in.”

“Yeah. So I'd advise you to have nothing to do with him.”

“Why'd he put your window in?”

“Why do you care?” she said.

“I don't.” He leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Lovers tiff?” he asked. “Were you fucking him, Tara?”

“Excuse me, I was not.”

“Why else would a man blow your house down? Did you put the wrong tags on the bins? Stay up too late bawling along to ABBA? Come on, Tara. Why'd you fall out with him?”

“Are you looking for him or questioning me?”

“First one, then the other.”

The light from the laptop screen dimmed as it switched to screensaver. Jimmy stretched and shifted back on the couch.

“His oldest is a boy,” Tara said. “Sixteen. Last year he thought I was…”

It was pause enough to draw out his laughter.

“Jesus Christ, Tara. You're fucking children now?”

“I am not,” she hissed. “He's paranoid with the drink and the drugs. You'd want to be, wouldn't you, to accuse a young mum of something like that? Especially one like me.”

“One like you?”

“I'm a good person!” she snapped. “And that man is a nutjob.”

“If he caught you with your legs round his young fella's ears I'd say he had good reason.”

“Don't be disgusting.”

He was close to paroxysms. “Oh come on, Tara. I work at a conveyer belt of deviants and I know for a fact you failed quality control. The man knocked your window in because you've been playing Hide the Underage Sausage.”

“I didn't! I did not! I tried offering the kid a friendly ear and he obviously took it the wrong way, all right? And I had to offer that friendly ear because his father's a lunatic and living beside him has lopped years off my life.”

“If only living
with
him put years
on,
eh?”

“Yeah, getting back to it, OK? I don't know where he is,” she said. “Drying out. Court-ordered.”

“For what?”

“Drunk and disorderly. So taking into account his unprovoked attack on my glazing, that was enough for a judge to decide he had a problem. He's got too many kids for gaol, I guess.”

“That part sounds like Cusack,” he said.

“It all sounds like Cusack. You obviously don't know him very well.”

“I don't,” Jimmy said, and clucked his tongue, and put his hands on the couch, readying himself to get up again. Tara thought to exhale. He laughed.

“Christ, Tara. You'd swear you were the one up to no good.”

She sucked her lips in.

“I'll be on my way,” he said. “You've been useless. Still, I get you have more important things to be doing, like pretending to Mr. Internet there that you're his little wet dream soulmate. Sorry I haven't been a better
mom
to you.”

She followed him to the front door.

The pavement glistened under a sky indigo and low. Jimmy rolled his shoulders.

“One more question,” he said. “Do you know a fella by the name of Robbie O'Donovan?”

Her eyes widened. “No.”

“Think now. He'd know Cusack.”

She shook her head.

“Maybe thirty. Foxy hair. A right hand-me-down-the-moon. You couldn't miss him, but that's of no benefit to sore eyes.”

“I guess that's what you want Tony for?”

Jimmy stepped out the door and onto the driveway.

“So much guesswork, Tara. I'll take my leave of you. Stay weird.”

He walked towards the front gate. Wasted journeys tended to put him in bad form, and he could see that mass ahead of him, maybe five minutes into his future, maybe ten, a private tantrum that would fuck the rest of his afternoon. He had things to be doing. Much bigger things than chasing Tony Cusack around the city.

Behind him, Tara Duane called “Wait!”

He turned.

She was nodding. “Robbie O'Donovan. A tall ginger guy, whippet-thin, no great shakes, yeah, yeah.”

“Oh, it's come to you! Tell me: what do you know about him?”

She stepped onto the driveway and closed out the door behind her. Beyond her front wall, two bickering girls played on scooters, oblivious to the building pressure above them, the carillon hum of the imminent squall.