The Glorious Heresies (21 page)

It's Tuesday morning, the place is baking, and I'm stuck in writing you a letter. Melting, I am. Neapolitan blood will only get you so far. Only wearing prison-issue trackies and socks in my cell and I'm wringing. Tough on me, eh? S'pose next time I'll try not getting into trouble and see how far that gets me. Until then I just have to deal with it.

Prison is shit. Prison is very very shit. Of course it's supposed to be shit. Still, it's some land. Every day I get up I have to deal with the fact I'm only another day closer to getting out. Destination all the ways over there in January and January seems like a million miles away when you're stuck gasping hot in the middle of a heatwave. This is the absolute worst place you can possibly be when all you can think about is going down to Fountainstown for the day and balming out.

On top of everything else school is out for the summer, which I totally get the irony of because when I was at home I'd have done anything to not go to school. Weird what you miss. Really considering getting back into all that once I'm done here. It wouldn't be that hard. There's loads of schools in town. Except I guess Barry'd have to tell them I was expelled. There's no way I'd get away with that one.

Have a load of books taken out from the library over the past few weeks instead. It's funny how sick you get of reading when that's all you can do. Seriously, I was down there flaking through books thinking I'd never be bored again but a couple of days later I'm sick to death of them. Obvious irony is obvious.

Pretty much lost for things to tell you. Every day's the same. Nothing new happens. Least of my worries I guess.

“You like prison, Ryan?”

“Bored as fuck in there I was.”

“Eh, isn't that the point? Can't make it into a holiday camp for you, can they? Arts and crafts you're after? Ukulele? Surfing? Elephant polo? Tell me you're for real, boy. Here's a slap of reality. Eventually you'll get out and you can go surfing then. Shut up and put up in the meantime.”

Christ, I went off on one there, didn't I? Really, there's so little to tell you I'm waffling. Education through reading is noble but not the stuff of brilliant letters home. What about if I focus on the stuff I'm going to do when I get out? Seriously, here's the plan.

Ryan gets out of prison. Ecstatic, he dives into a whole new life. And he sticks to it. Determined, wiser and with a whole head full of book-learning, he finds some course to do, gets a job and even goes busking with Joseph. Eventually, his girlfriend realises how sorry he is for fucking things up and she forgives him. Very very slowly, but she gets there. Each day then is better than the day before. Ryan buys her tons and tons of shoes. Yup, he knows he said he wouldn't but he's changed his mind. There aren't enough shoes in the world for Karine D'Arcy. Heels
5
 inches high, slipper flats, Cons, boots, whatever she wants. It's shoe central around her gaff. Now her mam can't even get through her bedroom door for shoes. “Girl, your boyfriend must be loaded if he keeps buying you all these shoes,” she'll say. And you'll say yeah, he is, he got himself together, he's totally worthy now. Next thing Ryan knows, Jackie D'Arcy has invited him in for dinner and is telling him what a daycent son-in-law he is with daycent taste in shoes.

Does me good, that little dream.

Cian came up with Dad last time and said one of the McDaids next door to us emigrated last month. Australia. Now there's a gaff I wouldn't mind dipping my toes into. Melbourne, did he say? Adelaide? Karine, I don't remember but let's write them all down as possible destinations. Even the poison spiders would be worth it. There's more things that can kill you in Australia than anywhere else on the planet. Heard it on a documentary on the telly in the cell a few days ago but it didn't put me off.

I probably shouldn't have told you about the poison spiders, should I? Now you'll probably never go. Get over the poison spiders. Sun, sea, sand and surfing. There's no way we wouldn't love it. Of course, they're always looking for nurses there so maybe we could go once you're qualified. Until then though I guess I can cope with Fountainstown.

Guess who sent me a letter? Head-wrecker general herself, Tara Duane. I know. Freaky. The woman's actually off her game. How she'd think I'd want to hear from her I don't know. Even reading it gave me the wobblies. You know she lives in cuckoo land. There's rumours about her, like. Heard stuff like she told Con Harrington's ould doll that they were having an affair and poor Con hadn't gone next nor near her. It's insane what some people make up. No way is she to be trusted and no way do I want letters from her. Keep well away, like.

Yesterday it came. Opened it up in front of the officer because you always open letters in front of officers and he said my face could have turned milk sour. Unreal, in fairness. Restless all morning waiting for the post to come around and when it does it's a letter from a raving loon. Excitement wilting into nothing in the space of five seconds. Like you'd ask yourself if she really thinks I'm wasting one of my letters writing back to her? Obviously not.

She had nothing to say either. It's very quiet on the terrace, my dad's grand, my brothers and sisters are grand and she's sure they all miss me. No shit Sherlock, thanks for the update. God almighty like. I know I'm bored but I'm not that desperate. The silly bitch even hinted that I should stick her name down on the visitor's thing and she'd travel up to see me. Batshit! Up the walls of the cave batshit!

The thing is, I know it's not easy for you to come up and see me but your name is down as a visitor, like. I know I'm kinda clutching at straws on that one. Can't imagine your mam and dad would be too keen. And I know that I really let you down when I did what I did and ended up here. Never thought you'd even write for a while. Thought you'd be furious. But I guess you're even more amazing than I thought you were, aren't you? Really, you didn't have to be as nice about this as you've been. Every time I think about it it shames me. All I can say is that I don't deserve you.

That's the sad truth, isn't it? How I let you down. Even though the worst thing I could think of was being away from you I let it happen. When I get out I'll make it up to you.

I could do a hundred of these stints and if you read one letter for every one of those sentences I'd consider myself lucky.

That's about all for this letter I'd say. How to end these things I never know. Only to say I love you I suppose. Understand? There's nothing more true in the whole entire world.

Yeah, that's a pretty soppy ending.

Off I go.

Until January.

Ryan.

Tony got the call at a most inconvenient time, halfway down his second pint with Catherine Barrett's hand halfway up his thigh, to which she'd progressed following a friendly pinch of his knee maybe ten minutes back.

He didn't get up to answer. “Hello?,” eyes on his conquest, who smirked with easy confidence, welcoming even. She was married but on bad terms with her fella, who'd been sniping at her from England for the last four months. She had cropped dark hair, laughing eyes and a great wide mouth like a sock puppet; no looker, but she had a soft spot for Tony, and he'd learned to manage with a lot less.

“Am I speaking to Tony Cusack?”

“You are.”

“Hello, Mr. Cusack; it's Michael Tynan here.”

It was the governor. The fucking governor, at whose voice Tony became immediately enfeebled. He had always been inept in his dealings with authority figures, even when they weren't his own.

“The car isn't on the road so I can't get up there,” he said, and Catherine Barrett returned to her glass of beer with the careful grace of a spurned braggart. “But I could send my sister? My sister lives in Dublin. She could pick him up.”

“The usual arrangement would be to give him his train ticket,” said the governor, “but with him not being eighteen yet, I'd prefer to have him picked up. If your sister is available that would do.”

“Yeah, of course, yeah. I'll get her to meet him.” He paused. “I thought he'd be another week.”

He'd counted wrong, or they'd been messing with the dates again up there. They did that. Tony was confused by the process, but then it was made to be confusing, was it not? They were trained to make a monkey out of you. Over the past nine months he'd visited, written, received phone calls which were recorded and often, whether by design or shoddy apparatus, cut ridiculously short. Every time there was communication facilitated by these people they made Tony feel like a shit-flinger.

The visits were the worst. It was like going back to school. The same impatient courtesy, the same hot mass settling at the back of his tongue.

For the second call he made his way out to the smoking area, ignoring the woman Barrett with whom he might otherwise have enjoyed an ugly but crucial ride.

“Fiona? You'd never do me a favour, girl?”

“Jesus. What's he need now?”

“A lift to the station?”

January, and his lungs were full of fog and soot. January was a cunt at the best of times, pissing ice down on a crowd damp to their bones. Sudden room in the shops after the Christmas eruption, cold space in the pubs and the cheer sucked back out and up the chimney.

This January reeked of vengeance. Tony had suffered a Christmas subdued for his recharged addiction and the absence of his oldest son, and then a dose that confined him to the bed for a week. In the horrors, he'd had to plead with his mother to buy him a few naggins, citing the DTs, the sickness, his weakness, his failures, until she'd angrily relented. Then he'd curled on his side under the duvet, clammy and gulping.

He deserved it, oh, he knew it well. He'd turned in the pregnant girl, he'd watched a man die, he'd broken his sobriety, he'd betrayed his son.

Now and then J.P. took his recreation at the terrace, watching him or watching Duane or neither; he didn't know. His children, oblivious, had walked past the Volvo on the way home from school. They had been in the house when J.P. had barged in for unscheduled one-to-ones. He'd even turned up on Christmas Day with a bottle of Jameson, gift-wrapped but only half full.

Tony attempted to show his belly and hoped that it would prove too pathetic for the invader's sense of pride. The rolling over stung. Late at night, between hallucinated gunshots in a concrete bay and his next nightmare, he remembered J.P.'s sneer about jellylegged dads, and the shame burned down his gullet and summoned sweat. Feeling keenly the gaps in his character, he wept alone.

He had betrayed his son but his son was the forgiving sort and Tony Cusack was deeply sorry. The rationale had stood up to scrutiny; little doubt the boy thought he could handle himself, but wandering into Jimmy Phelan's field of vision was a life-changing experience, as Tony knew too well. Even so. Seventeen was no age to be locked up. Tony's family had intimated he deserved it. Gurriers tied to you were still gurriers.

During their visits the boy had been reticent to the point of silence but that was nothing to wonder about, not when the visiting room had been so full. Roaring mammies and young fellas screeching “HA?” down the phones; who could have a conversation in that environment? Ryan had always been soft-spoken.

Tony had a quick cigarette under the wind-rippled canopy and went back into the bar.

Catherine Barrett was sending a text. When she saw him on the way back over she smiled, and her mouth split her face in two.

“I thought you'd gone and left me!” she cawed.

He saw her plan in her twinkling eyes. They would drink up, drink up a couple more, she'd get frisky and they'd go back to her house and have a joyless fuck on her living-room couch, provided he could get it up and she didn't throw up over the edge of the armrest.

It was half an hour shy of midday. The barwoman continued with the clean-up from the night before, stretching out in the narcoleptic presence of her early drinkers: Tony; Catherine Barrett; Seamie O'Driscoll with the bent, bulbous nose; a couple of flushed ould fellas on whose pints the heads had turned the colour of straw; one crumpled ould wan whose name Tony had never learned, sitting alone at the end of the bar with a glass of crème de menthe. Tony had taken care with his disguise since his tumble from the wagon; today he was clean-shaven, fragrant and ironed. He was close to charming the knickers off Catherine Barrett, whose long coral nails and ornate necklace made a decent equivalent to his get-up. He was a morning drinker, but of a different kind to the horde. He could have been heading to a wedding, or a business meeting.

He drained his glass, and Catherine Barrett looked at him with vicious dismay.

“Have to go, Kitty Cat,” he said, and she tried a cartoonish pout and said, “Ah, Tony. But weren't we having the craic?”

“Another time,” and he considered adding
Something's come up,
but he didn't think he could bear the innuendo.

Tony arrived home with a slab of lager and a bag of rubbish—crisps, chocolate, fags. What else would the young fella need? Nothing, sure; he'd left the place in such a State-enforced hurry that he'd not even packed himself a bag, knowledge that had hit his father like a knock to the neck when he'd returned from the court. After that first weekend he'd made the trip to Dublin with the few things the lad was allowed and the shock still hadn't rolled off him. The kid had pretty much stayed in that state for the whole nine months, as far as Tony could tell. He'd banked on it; once he'd fallen for the Demon again, he'd fretted about Ryan twigging it on visits.

Later on there'd be words, if it still mattered to the young fella. Tony was hoping to circumvent that. Share a couple of pints with him, rip away the hard feelings.

He opened a can while he cleaned the house.

Bedrooms, bathroom, hall. He cleaned out the fridge and made space for the lager. He retrieved the laptop from Kelly's room and left it back on Ryan's bed. He hoovered the stairs. He had a second can while he rang his mother; she had received word already, through Fiona, that the boy had been released. A text message confirmed that Fiona had met Ryan at the prison and was taking him for something to eat before dropping him to his train. And that was it—nine months passed in the blink of an eye, and all that could happen within.

He texted back:
Is he OK?

Fiona's reply:
Not a bother on him. All he wants is a Big Mac.

Tony was, like the gaff, in tip-top shape by the time Ronan, Niamh and Cathal arrived in from school, and, off their reactions, in even better form by the time Cian and Kelly wandered in an hour later. He met them in the hall. Kelly dropped her bag by the door and glared at him, giddy in the kitchen door frame with a third can snapped open in celebration.

“Your brother's on the way home.”

She curled her lip and said, “I'm sure he's only desperate to see you.”

“Do you ever take a day off, Kelly?”

Cian waited until his sister had stalked away and cheered, “That's pure brilliant!”

“It is, isn't it?”

Cian reflected, “It flew.”

“Ask your brother whether it flew and I'm sure we'll get a different story.”

There were plans to be made. Dinners: there had been a quiet complaint about boiled spuds and cheap chops, so none of that muck. Should he ferry the lad over to see his grandparents? Maybe tomorrow; they'd likely nag but he might get a present of twenty quid out of it, and that'd keep him going for phone credit at least. It might have been an idea to put together a list of schools that might take him in, if he were to return to do his Leaving Cert. What else, what else? He didn't know. The drink was going down well.

The train was due at 5:30. He pulled on his coat and stood in the hall. Did Ryan have a coat with him? Had he been wearing one for court? Funny how memories you'd swear burnt tattoos on you dissolved into nothing when you needed to examine them. He remembered the judge, disastrously businesslike; the solicitor, who'd turned magenta with the indignity of having been so fucking wrong. He remembered Ryan, turning to face him, eyes like dinner plates, going, “Dad…” but as to what he was wearing, his father couldn't remember.

What had Maria been wearing the night she had sworn to take her children to the other side? Those were the details he didn't wish to remember, they were of no practical purpose. Here she was though, in the hall with him, threatening to wake the lot of them up and leave him in an empty shell. She went for the stairs, he dragged her back. She kicked his shin, he made a grab for her ankle and missed, he caught her only at the bedroom door where she was heading for chubby little Ronan, he slapped her, he caught her wrists, she screamed in rage. Black jeans, a trim grey Nike T-shirt, ivory ballet slippers dirty and worn, her hair kinked from heat and fury.

He came back to himself and shook his head like a swimmer dislodging a trickle.

He hunted through the coats under the stairs and found Ryan's hooded jacket, which he balled up under his own. He left the house distended and frightened Tara Duane, who was coming out her front door at the same time.

“Tony!”

He set his jaw and started down his driveway, but she hurried to reach the gate and hopped out in front of him.

“Tony, please stop.”

He stepped off the footpath to swing around her and she babbled, “I know we haven't spoken in months and months, Tony, but now that all that unpleasantness has died down I thought we could mend some bridges.”

He stopped. “What's died down?” he snarled. “Your fucking paedophilia?”

“Jesus, that is so insulting. I tried to be
pleasant
to Ryan—to all of your children—because we're neighbours. What's wrong with you that you have to twist that?”

“Get away from me, Duane.”

“You smashed my front window, Tony. You terrorised me. You embarrassed me in front of the whole terrace for giving you a friendly heads-up about Ryan's advances. And I'm the one trying to make peace; will you not even give me credit for that?”

“You're full of shit and I hope you die roaring,” he said. “And no fucking unpleasantness has
died down;
if you think I'm ever going to forget what you did with that girl…”

He shoved past and she threw her arms up and marched alongside.

“What girl, Tony?”

“You know what girl,” he said. “The pregnant girl. The one you sent up here on a watery promise that Tony Cusack would know where her boyfriend had gone. The one that came into my house and accused me of killing the prick in front of my fucking kids!”