After the torchlight red on sweaty faces. After the crash and the frosty silence in the car going away. After the words with the police and the formal statements. After the guy with the medical bag had put the police on to us. After they found and confiscated most of our stash. After Sylvie’s call to her parents in New York. After her father’s lawyers made their play. Half-an-hour afterwards we were free and the detective apologised they’d been over the top - Be careful y’all - Sorry, he said, for our grief - We wouldn’t be hearing from them again. Somehow the half-an-hour in the cells became all part of the dream that was that evening.
All red torchlight and sweaty faces, in my woozy, wonky memory. What a dark, dark day. Only it was such beautiful weather.
But then, the agony and all of the too answerable questions:
‘Could we have stopped it?’
‘Was it me, should’ve died?’
‘Lucy, baby, you saved me.’
‘What does it all mean?’
Nothing. Nothing at all.
After the song lyric stopped replaying hour after hour on the brim of my awareness… ‘Death is abroad this day and I don’t feel like dying’ …
After that lot, and the light flashbulbs red on our tired suddenly sober faces.
After the journalist torture and sitting in the dark away from it all in a hotel suite downtown at The Biltmore. Sylv had rang Tom from the station and quick thinking Tom had sent us there. We just didn’t know what to do; where to go.
After a bit of Bourbon, which didn’t work anyway…
Not to forget never to forget she who was living now is dead…
And after all, after that, we left the hotel: none of us could sit still.
We stopped by the formal garden of Dunbarton Oaks, as soon as it opened, and lightly tripped through the Orangerie with a little humidity, out into sunlight and onto lawns. Just adjusting to life again. We’re alive Sylvie cried. That worked for a moment or two. We settled on the grass, amongst the Saturday morning easy busy families with their young children, drinking coffee; jogging parents pushing their flesh in large wheeled pushchairs.
Next, we wandered along the avenues amongst the specimen trees…
And after all we had just been through invisible to all those around us we caught parents in the act of envying our debauched appearance; half-dreading, half-wishing their children might become so free-seeming, golden future-bound Georgetown students like us or perhaps regretting the day when they once were too.
She who was living is now dead.
Us, so evidently in the midst of such pregnant and glamorous lives.
In the midst of life, we are in death, et cetera.
Sylvie corrected me; it wasn’t the Smiths - it was Saint Paul the Apostle. Was he a sociopath? Lucy said no - She should know. One of her old schools was called for him. St. Morrissey’s? No, Stupid. St. Paul’s, Brook Green. Stupid tetchiness didn’t, couldn’t stop the lyric running around my head. I mouthed it sometimes. That much I did know. In the midst of death we are in life, et cetera. Or was it the other way around?
Afterwards: we began and after we stopped again to walk together silently, Sylvie, Lucy, me together, Tom arrived to join us, hugging us each in turn.
We left Dunbarton Oaks and we walked, still silently, through the 11am Saturday streets, muttering retreats, reluctant feet… Busy families piling into Scandinavian cars, going to soccer and going off to do shopping; students’ jogging… The diner full on O… Familiar faces… Couple strange looks here and there. Strange bliss of a crispy blue skied Western Saturday morning. Dean and Deluca for more coffees. Almond croissants. We left them uneaten for the swans by the canal.
And Celice’s sullen small mouth haunting away, all of us, chip, chip, drip, in different ways… Each of us remembering something… She who was living is now dead… Damn, a new lyric to replay endlessly, dancing around the body of my awareness… She who was living is now dead… In the midst of life we are in death, et cetera.
Midday by the time we finally made it back to Sylvie’s house. Difficult to know how to react to what had just happened. Lucy went upstairs where she tried to sleep for a bit. Couldn’t. For one thing: the drugs… Sylvie found her old stash. Lucy swore she’d been able to flake out on a gram in the past before. We did a line. I felt this pain in the back of my head.
“When you’re tired, you’re tired…”
“Well, I’m not.”
Tetchiness. Hardly surprising, when you think about it… Trying not to think about it.
Lucy ate two jam muffins. I ate nothing. Lucy made some for all of us. I forgot to eat mine. And Sylvie said she wasn’t hungry. Lucy said she wasn’t either. She just knew, she said, she ought to eat. I refused to be persuaded to eat, or to do anything. No one was hungry or sleepy. We finished the coke.
We played cards, patience, and solitaire incessantly. Repeatedly. It was something consoling, clear. Seven pm and we were all of us still, still in Sylvie’s basement thinking: let’s go back to The Biltmore. We’ll drink high-balls and talk for an hour. How would that look? Tom was right. We wanted to be everywhere at once and not somewhere alone. He hadn’t even asked what exactly had happened. Tom and I sat beside one another on a futon sofa, playing pontoon. Near to us, Lucy and Sylvie were conversing quietly.
The day had passed us by – thank God. It was almost totally dark outside. It was dark in Sylvie’s basement – bright lights did not seem appropriate. No one felt like switching them on. It would be twelve hours, Sylvie calculated, before her parents would send for her if she hadn’t arrived in Manhattan. It was twelve hours already. Who would her father send for her. Knock, knock at the door…
One of Lucy and Sylvie’s conversations turned out to be, as Tom and I spoke of thesis, antithesis and synthesis as an ongoing never ending dialectical process, about the question of bed.
They’d come up with a plan. Sylvie had to drive Tom back to his apartment so he could get stuff to write his term paper, which he was late with and while he gathered his shit Sylvie would drop Lucy and me home. Once home we’d go to sleep and first thing in the morning Sylvie would come by and drive me to the airport.
“Only, Jamie you’re not ready to come yet. Are you? Stay here, and come back when you’re tired.”
I told Lucy I wanted to go home with her (copy cat). I knew that if Lucy left to go home without me I would immediately regret that I was not with her in bed. Thus I chose to go with Lucy. But the way I told her this was, frankly, odd.
I communicated it by saying “listen-to-me-okay-?” without speaking – I merely virtually, violently shadow clasped Lucy’s cheeks and then said intensely (far too intensely), “I only want to be with you”.
The effect was completely ridiculous.
Lucy told me not to freak on her.
I chilled. Slightly. Just enough.
Raw nerves all round.
Celice? Damn.
So after an hour of no knock, knock on the door, Sylvie left us home to 49 O.
There we were sitting on Lucy’s bed, now, Lucy drew me into her arms and gently sobbed. That made me too. Lay there an hour or two. Hugging one another. Then she got up – we had, she said, to get ready for bed. Lucy was so together. She said it was because her mummy had died when she was young. And so we bathed and again lay down, again, together.
My arms around her. I’m assured in response to my question of her “do you mind?” She does not – mind, that is. My head, she insisted, be below her shoulder. I snuggled into her body but I couldn’t sleep. My only desire to be with Lucy now granted, what now? Why’d I feel still, so odd?
In a few hours, I’d be flying to London and on to Sorcha’s wedding in Kerry. Leaving Lucy for a whole week – our longest time apart since we’d met. I’d thought about not going. But why? Lucy would go to New York with Sylv. Jamaica was off. Sylv’s parents had summoned her. And she wanted Lou to go with her, for cover. Sylvie’s parents were grand with that, if they even knew already. Fair enough.
While Lucy slept, I shifted and I laid on the bed my knees upwards on which rested the book in which was written words – mere words. Dressed, I, in sleepy black, was writing, smoking, breathing, moving, preparing myself for this absence.
So I gazed upon her sleeping form, drunk in the moments slowly passing; absorbing her scent; watched her thinking, hearing her breath…
Watched she who snoozed gently with those two silver ear rings in her left ear; snuggled up so thinly within the enveloping folds of her dark blue eiderdown. Laid out, her beautiful head and drifty, gleaming hair scattering itself all across her pillow. Candle burning scentedly in star shaped earthenware container. Beside a pile of books on her bedside table. The crimson walls of her room.
While I’m in London… “I’ll go to meet your nanny, Lucy. Grand.” I shall go to see your nanny in London Lucy. I shall bring Nanny her birthday present from you, my darling Lucy. I shall deliver it to Nanny myself, Lucy. I will pass muster - Lucy said ages ago Nanny’d know whom she ought to marry the moment Nanny met them….
While Lucy slept softly sweet out of the eiderdown sneak her lily white feet. US college kids: we’re in one of those mid-eighties’ movies: I’m Andrew McCarthy and Lucy’s pretty, pretty in whatever.
I woke her at five am today in that way of mine… I endeavoured to engage her in caresses, which although unreproved, did not seem so very desired. I pressed on. Flushed and decided. Lucy hangs Freida Kahlo prints on her crimson chamber walls. And then to sleep, again. And what was left of the night and the fucking (again) of the early day melted into one, and it was time for me to get to plane. Sylvie arrived. She took us to Dulles. We said our goodbyes. Everything desultory. Sad to be separating? I boarded. It all felt too weird.
I arrived in London and connected with my flight to Kerry immediately. That’s grand, isn’t it. Adjusting to Irish me through the accents of my fellow passengers.
Walking across the tarmac, through the brisk Kerry air. Almost dark (again) already. A whole day had been passed between when Celice was alive and now when she is not. And I am not. Only partially. With a little patience. Rain or drizzle? That’s hard to say now. That’s what you’d miss about Ireland: so few words, so many types of rain. DA. So much wetness. Customs. Dia duit Ireland. I love Ireland.
Inside the terminal, there was my sister Siobhan. Adjusting my grip on my suitcase I just caught her face changing from a (probably false anyway) warm anticipatory smile to a troubled frown. I should have shaved. Bourgeois niceties’ land.
“There you are.” I kissed her on her offered cheek as I said it.
“Nice to see you.” Cool greeting. “Good flight?”
“Cool, cool. A little tired…” I replied.
“I can see that,” she muttered.
We walked outside. Mountains looming. Twilight. Brisk pace.
“Same car, I see,” I tried.
“You’ve only been gone six months.”
“Feels like longer. I feel more grown up now. Don’t know why.”
We sat in. “I don’t know why either,” she replied. “When exactly is it you’re going to grow up?”
“Don’t start. I’m feeling shite.” I moved the seat back. Shiv started the car.
“You look it. You know if you hadn’t cut it so fine you would have been here when that crash happened?”
“Good reasoning sis. But just maybe there would have been a crash here if I had. When Allah says it’s time to go…”
“I don’t really understand why you bothered to come?”
We pulled out of the airport car park and onto the dual carriageway. A large sign welcomed us to The Kingdom. I gazed away sure the rain was merely drizzle.
“You were all at me,” I started to explain why I’d come. “To sign those focking papers. And Sorcha particularly wanted me here. I couldn’t really let her down.”
“If you’ve decided not to sign, why bother coming back? Why’s Sorcha so special? You let the rest of us down without a second thought.”
“I don’t want to fight sis.”
“Then don’t come back here looking like you’re on drugs again. Are you?”
“You’re not making things easier at the moment, you know? I’ve been awake for 48 hours. I can’t get the crash out of my head.”
We were driving along the new by-pass. Night had fallen. Rain drumming on the roof. And in the distance other lights twinkling across the dark speckled mountains.
“Jamie, I’m too annoyed to sympathise… There’s no good in it. You’re a mess, you know that, don’t you?”
“Things are going great over there. Lucy and…”
“Jamie? Your friend was just killed and you’re telling me things are going grand? Hello?”
“I just need a shower and a shave,” I replied.
“Your eyes are on fire. What’re you on, Jamie?”
I pulled down the visor. I examined them. “I’m tired, that’s all,” I concluded. “When did you say Mum was arriving?” I asked, trying to change the subject. Bad move.
“If you ever phoned her you’d know…”
“Sis, she focking told me. I just wasn’t listening. You’re such hard work today.”
“How upset will Mum be when she sees you in this state? It’s like, like you’re back to the bad old days. Am I the only one in this family who isn’t falling apart?”
“No sis. You’re the only one who’s being a perfect bitch.”
“You’re also speaking like you’re English or something? What’s with the posh voice?”
“Please tell me when Mum’s arriving,” I replied. “I will listen to everything you say from now on. If you would just focking tell me that. Sis?” It suddenly seemed very important I had a chance to sleep before seeing Mum. Perhaps Shiv was right. I was in a terrible state. I felt focking awful.
“Around 9. Later. She’s coming down with Iseult’s mother,” Sis said finally. Izzy was, apart from Sorcha, my oldest friend. I remembered why America had seemed like such a very good idea. Home could be so tricky. So many people to see.
“Great,” I exclaimed, thinking about four hours’ kip between then and now. I would be straight with that.
“Not ‘great’, unless you tidy yourself up,” Shiv said as she turned in off the narrow country road we were by now on. We pulled up to some large white wrought iron gates. Paint was peeling off of them. To one side trees, to the other a gate lodge. Smoke rose from its chimney. Lights on. “Have you sorted things out with Izzy?” Shiv asked.
I undid my seatbelt and opened the car door.
“You don’t have to…” A policewoman appeared from the lodge and opened the gates. “Uncle Joe’s back in,” Sis explained.
“Course. I forgot. That’s grand, isn’t it?”
“Not really,” Shiv said. “He’s been taking a battering. He’s too old for it.”
“Ah, he’s grand. I’m just glad I don’t have to get out in that.” We drove in through the gates, through the rain, and waved thank you to the policewoman, as she shut the gates behind us.
“Have you sorted out things with Iseult?” Shiv asked again. “You were so close last year. What’s the story? Don’t fuck that one up Jamie. You hardly know this English one.”
“We spoke about the crash, last night,” I answered. “We’re grand. I’m glad… Really glad she’ll be here.”
“Mum was so upset when she heard. Her very first reaction was ‘Jamie’s on drugs again, I just know it’. Were drugs involved?”
“Course not.”
“Dad also wants to see you as soon as you get back to Dublin.”
“I’m planning to stay here all week. I don’t really fancy Dublin.”
“You’re not exactly flavour of the month around here either Jamie.”
“Uncle Joe told me he understands.”
“We have agreed you’re making the biggest mistake in your life. Just don’t get bloody sanctimonious about it again with Mum or with Joe.”
“I’ve decided Sis. Just leave me be.”
There was silence for a bit. We continued driving along the winding, bumpy several miles’ long drive. A couple of times Shiv had to slow the car almost to a stop as she negotiated a pothole.
“You’d think uncle Joe would sort this drive out.”
We shared a comfortable family look.
My phone rang. It was Lucy. She said the crash made all the DC papers, and the New York Times. The drug thing too. Fock. Not a bad time to be in Ireland it had to be said. But would they hear here? Fockin’ hope not. Journalists had been phoning and calling at our house in DC. Lucy was staying with Sylvie at her parents’ in Manhattan. They were planning to go to her summer house in East Hampton, as soon as Sylvie’s parents had finished bawling Sylvie out. Sylvie’s dad’s lawyer was taking care of the whole thing from a legal point of view. Lucy needed to fax a form for me to sign giving him power of attorney to deal with libel or defamation stuff or something arising from certain articles about the crash. At that point though it was like the crash, and Lucy and America were a million miles and several world’s away. I said I’d phone her back as soon as I got into the house. I didn’t mention anything about us all being in the papers to Siobhan beside me in the car. Nor about the fact the papers were making a fuss about Georgetown students and drugs and the crash.
That was the time I needed my sister to be my big sister most I think. She was angry, and not I now see for any selfish reason as I suspected then. She was just worried that my wanting to sever my relationship with our family trust fund meant, also, that I wished to sever my relationship with my family. I didn’t. It was just pretty complicated the whole thing.
My father, you see, had been a councillor from the age of twenty-three for an area within central Dublin in which our family garage business was situated. At the very top of the property market during the Celtic Tiger boom my father finally accomplished what he had always wanted to: the rezoning of our five acres of dilapidated sheds, derelict houses and old abandoned buildings from industrial to residential use. Suddenly a piece of land built up over several generations and covered in sheds and forgotten corners, lilac and Georgian tenement ruins which had been worth, at most, a few million became worth around 300 million.
For my father though who had worked hard over twenty years buying up bits of land here and there this wasn’t free money. Unfortunately at practically the last hurdle after the rezoning decision went through and after the land was all sold, Dad got busted for allegedly bribing two of his fellow councillors. He was sent to jail – a total scapegoat for all the other shenanigans going on in Ireland at that time. However as the land had belonged to a number of family members, none of whom it could be shown knew about the so-called bribes, only dad’s share was forfeit. I had been younger than 18 when my share was bunched up with the others’. Now it had been decided to cash in, and transfer the money to Grand Cayman in one tranche. It needed the whole family’s agreement though.
Instead of selling the site for ‘development’ in the first place I had lobbied hard in the family to have the land or most of it dedicated to a large park in honour of our great grandfather, one of the founders of the Irish republic. The others looked at me like I was special or something. I was only seventeen, they said. They were having absolutely none of it and since I didn’t have the legal power to stop it anyhow the land was sold. And here we were a few years later with an unbelievably huge whack of cash and the plan to place it off shore far from any tax authority. Years later now, when nothing still has been built and much torn down on that site and the money’s largely dissipated and my money completely gone I still regret that that land’s not a park.
Still moving slowly along Uncle Joe’s drive, jungle-thick red flowering flowing rhododendron bushes either side filled in every visible space between the tall poplars.
“I should’ve stayed in DC… This is gonna be a whole hassle.” I was getting nervous. My sister was freaking me out about my appearance. Mum would go nuts if she thought I was getting stoned again. I cleared away the condensation on the windows with the open palm of my hand. Finally, after a sharp corner, my uncle’s house appeared suddenly in all its faded, unostentatious grandeur. Granite, double-fronted, Georgian, huge. Placed between great mountains and the ocean. I smiled as I remembered all of the times I’d turned that corner before. I love Ireland.
Lights in all of those giant paint chipped sash windows. Fifteen across. Four down. Shiv scored deeply the gravel as she turned and stopped her car in front of the library.
“You get out,” she ordered. “I have to bring it round the back.” We shared a smile. Uncle Joe’s rules. “Don’t be caught on the mobler inside either. It’s still no mobiles in the house rule.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah…”
“Ach Jamie, it’s not me. You know it’s not me. Why make out I nag the whole time?”
I pushed open the giant oak front door. I heard from deep inside the house echoing noises from the kitchen. The pleasant whining of a piano and clatter and a clatter from deep within. Big vase of flowers. Scent. Fock. Nectar already on my nose and lapel. I need sellotape.
Beyond, in past the glass porch door I saw, just coming down the stairs, uncle Joe, the man himself, Prime Minister of Ireland. Beside him striving to lobby him on some very important matter strode my youngest cousin; one of his six daughters. She was seven and the moment she spotted me she suspended her protests and ran over quickly at me. I’d dropped my bags down on the paved stone hall floor just in time.
“Jamie, Jamie,” she cried. “Socks.”
“At dawn.”
She giggled as I knew she would. “Fight. In a sec,” she said skidding down on her knees and pulled up my trouser legs. Her father looked on, half-way between amused and surprised. “They match,” was her disappointed diagnosis.
“Didn’t when I put them on. Look again, Mouse.”
She looked more closely and pinged them a couple of times.
“They still match,” she looked up at me sternly, sceptically, “Gorilla legs. I can do the police in different voices. Do you wanta hear me?”
“Leave the poor man alone, for heaven’s sake,” interrupted uncle Joe. “You’re in the attic. Yellow room, I’m afraid Jamie. But we’re very glad to have you. Full house, for obvious reasons. Only family though. So we’ll be comfortable enough. Come on down quickly, will you? You’re just the man to keep Uncle Tim sober while I take care of some business.” No sleep for me then.
I galloped up to the attic, installed myself in my room and while I undressed I spoke to Lucy. It didn’t look good; they’d found actual heroin in Celice’s car. Jesus. I didn’t know she was into that. “Like I did?” Lucy replied.
“I wasn’t accusing you, Lou,” I said. “Alejo de Focking Eurotrash!”
“I don’t think that’s very helpful Jamie. You can’t blame Alejo for everything. Celice made her own choices. Anyway, darling… The media has all of our names, except Alejo’s. They’re in all the papers.”
“Seriously? Fock.”
“Sylvie’s family are doing their best. They know the papers’ owners. As her father said, If we can’t kill the story, no-one can.”
There had even been a reference to our being foreign scholarship students abusing American freedom. “Georgetown Eurotrash Crash” screamed the headline in the Post. And a New York Times investigation into the Eurotrash scene at elite schools. Feck it, at least no one here should find out.
After I’d shaved, I went down and through the varnished double doors into the library.
The rustle of the day’s Examiner being rapidly folded and a tall portly man stood up to shake my hand. “It’s grand of you to come all this way to see us.”
Uncle Joe came in furtively just after me, and shut the door quickly behind him. “Yes, Jamie we’re very happy to have you here,” he agreed with his brother.
“Wouldn’t have missed Sorcha’s wedding for the world,” I answered.
They asked me about the crash and we spoke of it for a bit.
Meanwhile, I was only half there… I was drifting off… Thinking… The library looked exactly the same as it always had. Being home so suddenly after being in DC. The juxtaposition. The familiarity…
That set of ivory elephants a long dead knighted relative had brought back from India parading across the tops of those same filled floor to ceiling book-cases. Ancient bound Spectators. Punch. 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. Sorcha and I had learned more from that than anyone now could easily imagine.
All this coursing through my mind, and more, spaced, pacing through my awareness as my uncles and I spoke of matters political, the crash, and soon no doubt all of that cash… The torn lamp shade. The growing number of souvenirs on the marble fireplace - each marking a family member’s trip abroad. Fock. I hadn’t brought one. Would have to find something. The worn leather sofas; that sofa behind which Sorcha and I’d hid, manys a time listening to the grown-ups. Trying to come up with ways of monetising knowledge gleaned from the political discussions we’d secretly overheard… We’d even once written an anonymous letter to a newspaper… The half-closed thick red velvet curtains dragging across the worn wooden floor. The giant lapis lazuli vase on a stand in the middle of the room with the long dead plant spilling over its sides. The still hanging in there aspidistra. A spitting log fire in the large open grate. The sofa, facing it, Uncle Tim’d been sitting on. And the armchairs, none of which seemed to match the room or the sofas. Arranged, so that the whole was cozy, inviting and relaxed. Perfect for late night discussions. Many of the behind-the-scenes’ deals which caused the rise and fall of the Celtic Tiger had been made in this very room.
“I respect your right to make the decision you have made Jamie,” my Uncle started. “Neither your father, mother nor I understand what’s going on in there.” I smiled as Uncle Joe indicated his head theatrically. “When you have children,” he continued, to educate, and to feed you will look back at this moment and say to yourself ‘I’m an idiot’. You must change your mind Jamie. All it takes is a signature and you will be rich beyond your wildest dreams. I will say this now and never again will I say it: You know, I always hoped you would continue our name in politics. To be elected you will need money, Jamie. That is why I advise you not to divest yourself. The secret of life Jamie is: Don’t change queues half way through. It might seem attractive to you now. The Irish rural dream. Wattle hut and daub, and all that malarkey. Even poverty. I’ve never been poor. I wouldn’t know. I do know that in ten years you will regret this. You will come to me and you will say: “Uncle Joe, you were right. I’m an idiot.” It’s lives lived like yours which were the ultimate dreams of your ancestors, of everyone’s ancestors, even of most of your contemporaries. Your freedom. Don’t ever forget you’re what they fought and died for in Ireland. Your life-stream must justify their blood sacrifice. Think further about this Jamie. We are meeting at McVeigh’s Solicitors, Kildare Street on Wednesday at 10 am. If you’re there we’ll say no more about any of this. There I’ve said it. So…”
Uncle Tim suddenly perked up from under his paper. “Tell us about Georgetown, Jamie,” Tim standing up and wandering over to the drinks’ tray addressed me. “Environmental politics, isn’t it? With all of your schtudying, you could probably teach Joe here a thing or two, I’d say, about politics.”
“I often wish I had time to study politics,” answered Joe.
“You’re not missing much, I don’t think. It must be great to be back in,” I congratulated uncle Joe.
“Ah, you know, it’s grand. Never thought I’d have another crack at it really. It’s a gift. There’s a different feel this time, though. We are going to get things done.”
“He always says that,” Tim said as he handed me a drink, slugged back some of his and sat down.
“First rule of politics is optimism. Do they teach you that in your American university? I hope they’re not turning you into a capitalist Jamie.” Joe was standing. He rarely sat down or still.
“A paper I’ve written is being published in an academic journal.”
“I hadn’t heard that Jamie. Congratulations. You are a chip off the old block. What is this paper about?”
“About revolution, really,” I said after a pause during which I tried to gauge how much detail to give him. I’d guessed right. Keep it thin. Keep it real.
“Best be watching our backs then, wha’,” uncle Joe boomed proudly.
My aunt then entered the room.
“Darling, have you heard Jamie is about to become a published author? He has a very important paper appearing in a renowned academical journal, isn’t that it Jamie?”
I kind of nodded.
“Joe, would you ever cop on? I told you this a month ago. Jamie, we are so proud of you,” she said. We hugged warmly. She was great my aunt. Always on my side. “Joe,” she continued, “we really have to get to the hotel. We’re supposed to be there half-an-hour ago. Jamie, when will you go to see your father?” she asked.
“I wasn’t definitely planning to,” I replied.
“Ah Jamie. He’s desperate to see you. You need to speak about the trust thing. He doesn’t want to speak about it on the phone. He’s feeling so powerless in there to influence you. Joe? Hotel…”
Joe looked to us conspiratorially, and raised his eye brows. He was led out of the room. Unexpectedly, he popped his head back in around the door almost straight away. “Jamie,” he said. “One more thing - Cousin Enda will be here tomorrow direct from Columbia. I understand he is looking forward to seeing you. Peace process or no peace process Cousin Enda will end up in jail, from what I hear. Do you follow what I am saying, Jamie?” He then left the room without waiting for a response. I knew exactly what he was saying. But politics couldn’t have been farther from my mind at that point. There was no need to worry.
The fire crackled. For a moment I totally wished there wasn’t to be a party or a Georgetown or an anything. I just wanted to sit there with the fire just the way it was. Ten logs and the scent of Messiaen from a piano somewhere. All that said, I was looking forward to seeing Iseult, and in a strange way also to watching Sorcha marry.
Meanwhile Uncle Tim and I were chit-chatting about the idea which I then favoured of countries becoming again totally self-sufficient. Whereas my uncle took the conventional view of free trade and all that. We had a couple more drinks. Sis came in. We got onto the subject of violence as a political strategy.
“… I don’t entirely disagree with you, Jamie. But I wouldn’t necessarily say as much.”
“If it’s true, I can’t see what the world gains by staying quiet about it,” I said, referring to the moral bankruptcy of Tim’s Grand Inquisitor argument.
“Ergo you don’t have what it takes?”
“Course I’ve got what it takes. I just refuse to prostitute it.”
“Same difference.” Tim was maddening. I loved arguing with him. Especially now when I could at last get the better of him.
“Jamie,” Shiv interjected. “You’re getting obstreperous.”
“He’s not. He’s grand,” Tim replied.
“You’re just trying to get a rise out of him,” Shiv insisted, this time of Tim.
“I am not.” Something in the tone of Tim’s denial suggested the opposite.
“It doesn’t matter,” Shiv demanded pointedly of me.
“Idealism’s endearing in a child. It’s a waste in a talented man.” Tim ignored her.
“At least I’m going to deal with my ressentiment without ballsing up the world.”
“That’s your privilege, Jamie. Just remember who are the guardians of it.”
“It’s not you politicians anyhow. All you’re guardians of is… is, is rubbish.”
“When you leave all that Marxism behind you’ll be just like me and Joe. I’ll remind you of this conversation then.”
“I’ll never be like you and Joe.”
“You already are, Jamie. You already are.”
Back in Manhattan, Tom, Lucy and Sylvie had driven to the beginning of Celice’s shiva. He let them out around the corner and went to find a parking valet. Turning from Madison into East 63rd street Lucy and Sylvie heard shouting. Around the entrance to the synagogue was gathered a group of well dressed people. As they got closer both Sylv and Lou experienced a certain frisson. There was shouting. Just as they were about to walk into the lobby they noticed Alejo. He was flanked by three stocky men in black puffa jackets. They looked like they were escorting him out. Lucy and Sylvie froze there just to the side outside decoding the scene. As he was practically pushed through the doors back onto the street past them Alejo was too absorbed in his predicament to notice they were there.
“… She was my girlfriend…” Alejo said back at the building, only half caring. “I have a right…”
“Please leave. Please go. You have no rights here. You’re not welcome here,” a man following the puffa jackets was saying sotto voce.
A few people, obviously on their way in, had collected outside. From inside they could hear sobbing. A handsome middle-aged man inside the lobby was being restrained by two besuited men around his own age.
“… You killed my only daughter,” the middle-aged man was telling Alejo. He pointed towards Alejo whose back was now turned away from him.
“Shush Dan. Shush. Shush. He’s going. He’s gone.”
“My God he killed my child and he wants to pay his respects? He has no respect.”
“Shush, it’s okay. Dan, it’s okay. He’s gone. He’s gone.”
“Get him out of here,” a woman who knew Sylvie said. “Just get him out of here before he causes any more suffering.”
“Let’s cruise,” Sylvie said putting her arm around Alejo’s waist. He let her steer him towards Fifth. They rounded the corner. Tom arrived back having parked the car. Lucy hung back and described what had just occurred. They turned around as they were making Fifth and looked back. The crowd outside the brownstone was gone. At its door Alejo’s puffa wearing escort remained like sentinels. There were tears in Alejo’s eyes. ‘Come on, come on.’ Tom and Lucy exchanged ‘I don’t know what to do either’ glances. Sylvie led them across the road towards the Park.
Mum and Uncle Joe had already flown back up to Dublin when I was woken up the morning after the wedding by one of my little cousins landing on my bed with a shower of tea and toast. I hadn’t really eaten now since the crash. I hadn’t really noticed. But I was hungry then.
My cousin told me he had liked a speech I had made. He was either bluffing for a laugh or I did something I didn’t remember at all. “Shame about the mirrors,” he then said as he unsuccessfully tried to get a rattling tea cup over to me without spilling more of it on the covers.
“I didn’t do that?” I didn’t think I had. Shite.
“We caught you and Mouse red handed. You had shaving foam all over.”
“I was trying to stop her. Ever think of that, Titch?”
“She said it was your idea?”
“I wouldn’t misspell “‘ho did dis?” on a mirror, would I Titch? I can spell. It was Mouse stoopid.” I knocked back the tea practically in one go.
“Mouse said you spelt it bad on purpose, Jamie.”
“‘Wrongly’ Titch.”
“You’re lying Jamie?”
“It is ‘wrongly’. Not ‘bad’. Do they teach you anything in that national school of yours?”
“Stop it. I don’t like your music. Your MP3’s were weird. Izzy says you listen to that stuff, even when you’re not at a club? Izzy said you do,” he said, as he picked up my empty tea cup.”
“Wha?” I said. “It’s too early for this. I’m half asleep Titch. Laters. K?”
“Mouse DVD’d you and Izzy. We all saw you. Izzy’s your girlfriend again? But Mam said you already have a girlfriend. In America. Do you have two girlfriends?
“Titch. Scram central. I’ll be too tired to go riding with youse lot. 2 o’clock, we said? I bags Bedoin. We will race you to the stone village, but only if you scram. Now.”
Later that afternoon Lucy called me. She recounted why they hadn’t made it into the funeral.
“Celice’s parents didn’t like Alejo anyway and then the horse they found with her in the car… They blame him.”
“Well?”
“It was hardly Alejo’s fault when you think about it actually Jamie. Celice picked-up, not Alejo.”
“What’d you do after that?” I asked, ignoring the defence, but noting it. “Save it for the Judge” I quipped in my head silently. I still felt odd.
“Came back here.”
“Old Prince von Trapp’s gone away?” I tried.
“Who? It’s Sylvie’s mother’s the princess, actually. But we’re not there. We’re at Alejo’s. Down the road from Sylvie’s parents’. He’s in a wretched state. He’s paranoid. Won’t see anyone but us. He’s scared he’ll be taken away somewhere.”
“Don’t be alone with him Lou. It’s not your responsibility. We don’t even know who he is.”
Lucy hesitated slightly, but not slightly enough.
“You on your own with him now?”
“He’s asleep. He’s on so many meds he’s not sure where he is.”
“Where’re Tom and Sylv?”
“Sylvie went home to pick up something. They’ll be back any second. Relax, Jamie.”
Later I would read in Lucy’s diary what Alejo was like then. Their dreamy conversations.
“What do you most fear Lucy?” Alejo asked one afternoon. They were in his apartment overlooking the Met. Next door to Jackie Kennedy’s building. Two floors. A roof terrace and a picture window over the park.
“Nothing really. Cruel things.”
“I despise cruelty Lucy. What is the cruellest thing that ever happened to you Lucy?”
“My mother died. I was 8. What about you?”
“I’m so sorry to hear about that Lucy. I didn’t know. Sylvie did not tell me this. I am so sorry. Poor Lucy. I think the person I’m in love with being cruel, Lucy. I’m beginning to fall in love with you.”
“Don’t be mad Alejo. What about Celice?”
He looked hurt. But he still pushed. “Is Jamie your true love?”
“Alejo? Isn’t Celice’s death cruel?”
“I don’t want to talk about that Lucy. Not now. Please. Let’s just talk about lightness. I want to talk about you Lucy.”
“No,” she laughed nervously. “I’m not sure want this conversation Alejo. Actually I’m sure I don’t Alejo.”
“If not him who?”
“What?… Doesn’t matter.”
“Please tell me Lucy? Lucy? I must know. It’s the most important thing to me.”
“Archie was. I’m sorry Alejo. I don’t really want to talk about this with you.”
“Was he Irish too?”
“God no. The exact opposite. Tom and Sylv will be back soon.”
“Let’s order food?” Alejo said.
“Tom and Sylv will be back soon,” Lucy repeated herself.
“They’ll eat without us. They always do,” Alejo answered confidently.
“Sylv won’t. Doesn’t. What are you talking about? I know she won’t. She asked us to wait for her. Don’t you remember Alejo?”
“They won’t mind…”
“Alejo? What is it about you? You push, push? I’m sorry Alejo, but actually…”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I know it doesn’t matter. But it’s like you’re trying to bargain with me the whole time. I’m not actually for sale.”
“Is this because of Archie, you said his name was? Please tell me about Archie? I have a way of finding these things out anyway. Did you meet at Cambridge? Your first love? Your hard riding Byronic country boy?”
Lucy blushed. “I’m not ready for this, Alejo.”
“I’ve touched a nerve. Sorry Lucy. I’m very sorry. Please forgive me. I am always doing this. It’s the cross I bear. I see things no one else does.”
“Maybe the crash and all… You’re just being weird Alejo.”
“It’s the crash. I’m sorry Lucy. I am just very grateful. I want to thank you.”
“Then leave me be. I am very sorry Celice has died Alejo. But I am not going to be her replacement, am I?”
“I don’t know,” he said silently, as if hurt.
“Well, actually I do. I love Jamie. Besides, if I were you, I would get over Celice before -”
“You’re right Lucy. You’re always right. Is that what you did? You got over Archie before you fell for Jamie? Of course… that’s it. I will follow you Lucy. I’m just grateful.”
Lucy and I next spoke again two days later. I was back in Dublin. I went to see Dad in gaol. Fock. I was signing the papers now. They were right. Everyone was happy with me. Mum asked me never to put “us” all through this sort of thing again. I had made such a storm in a tea cup. Uncle Joe said he knew I would see sense in the end. We all went out for a fine meal after signing the papers. We drank our toasts to Dad and through video cell phones had him with us in a private room. Uncle Joe spoke of how he had arranged for ‘structures’ to be put in place which would mean our fortune would remain intact and in the family for centuries. Famous last words! It was a strangely magnetic feeling. Not being able to speak about it to anyone outside the family meant, though, that we all became closer. I really missed Dad.
Lucy rang almost at the end of the meal. I went out onto Merrion Row to talk to her. It was drizzling rain. ‘Normal’ ‘real’ people were hurrying around in the post work rush hour. Lucy said when she rang that she was back in DC. While we spoke I was looking at all the expensive bric á brac in that shop there. I could buy any of it now, I thought. All of it in fact. As I said, it was a very strange feeling. It wouldn’t change me though. I was glad to be as old as I was before it all happened.
“I thought you were going to the Hamptons with Sylvie?” I replied. “Has something happened, Lucy. You sound strange. What?”
“Her family want her to themselves and Alejo has been taken away.”
“How is he?”
“Still weirded out and actually creepy as hell. Sometimes,” she added, oddly. “By the way,” she continued. “Have you noticed anything odd Jamie? I mean do you feel weirder than normal?”
“A little, why? Long hangover from the crash night. It’s weird how there seems to be a physical reaction in me to the crash,” I confessed, crystalising a thought which had occurred in bits and bobs over the previous few days I suddenly realised.
“We’re still actually high, Jamie. That coke…”
“Lucy,” I replied gently. “I think I’d know if I was high or not.”
“You wouldn’t actually.”
“Not you as well,” I said reflexively, thinking of my sister.
“What are you talking about?”
“Nothing. My sister.”
“See Jamie? We’re both still high, that’s why this is all so difficult. We’re actually tweaking. Alejo says it’s properly easy to miss, unless you know what you’re looking for.” Another phone rang in the background. “Hold on, Jamie. Must get that.”
“Leave it.”
“Can’t, darling. It’s Sylvie.”
‘So?’ I thought. Lucy put the receiver down and I could hear what Lucy was saying on the other phone. Even from where I was I could hear the totally different, more softly, chatty, voice Lucy answered the other phone with.
“You’re mad, Sylv… None of this is real… They’re still not speaking to you? … I just haven’t actually told him yet… He’s on the other line I better get back to him… Big kiss.”
She picked me up again. “That was Sylv. She’s seeing things. That wasn’t coke we got from Brett the other night. It was crystal meth. Crank.”
“Sorry?”
“Crystal meth amphetamine. Alejo says it’s, like, extra, extra strength speed. Everyone takes it here to write late-night papers. We’ve taken a gram each. You only need a tiny line to stay up all night. Alejo reckons we’ll be tweaking for a week, at least.”
“Tweaking?”
“Tetchy. Not totally with it. Sleepless. Unable to eat. Unable to concentrate…”
God. At least that made sense.
Saturday afternoon I flew over to London on the first leg of my trip back to DC. I went straight from Heathrow to Waster’s house at Vicarage Gate. We were going raving together. Just like old times. We went out to dinner first. Waster described his first five months as an investment banker. “What you thought was freedom just was greed.”
After dinner we called the information line and went to the squat. It was the same as ever: some Godforsaken outer London suburb, disused cinema, whatever you wanted, dancing with pretty dredded foreign girls, exhaustion. We got back to Vicarage Gate at 7. Neither of us could believe we’d once spent a whole summer once doing that every weekend.
My flight back to DC was at five o’clock that evening. But first:
It was 13h13 by the time I arrived at Lucy’s house. Only forty-three minutes late. Feeling bleary. Blinky, after the previous night’s endeavours.
The Boltons. Neither Kensington, nor Chelsea, nor Earl’s Court, but somewhere in between- Brompton. Finally, I found the house and felt like bolting. Presents from Lou in hand. So couldn’t. It’s vast. Basically a proper country house in west London. Bright white. Stucco. Video intercom. I cleared my throat. Quick visit. Hand this stuff in to nanny, then, back to Waster’s flat, chat, little splifferooni, fly, then Lucy… I wondered why I was there – the ideas you get when you’re high… Bleep. Hesitant hello. Alive hello back: my name’s Jamie…
“Of course, of course. Lucy told us to expect you. Come in. We expected you earlier? Not to worry. Just stand very close to the gate. It will open automatically.”
“No. Closer. No need to push it.”
“I see.” The gate swung open slowly and slammed shut fast behind me. Very James Bond.
Channel Island plates on all the cars in the carriage drive. Immaculate small lawn. Early spring flowers bloomed like they were planted there already blooming. Golf green grass. Front door open. Glimpse of a tennis court to my right. Her father. Lucy’s father. Girlfriend’s father vibes: am I ready for this? Nope. Up the steps. Shaking hands. Cold hands.
“Nice to see you. Lucy asked me to drop this by,” I said handing over Lucy’s birthday gift for her nanny.
“Of course. Of course she did. Thank you very, very much Jamie. You will stay for lunch, won’t you? We’ve actually been waiting for you.”
“I…”
“My wife’s counting on an extra mouth. Eh?”
I knew now I didn’t really have a choice. What was I doing there? Shite. I felt terrible.
“No thank you, Mr. Anstey.”
“What’s that? Call me Giles.”
Door’s shut. Intricate ancient Persian rugs over the vast hallway floor. Letters to be posted on the hall table. Tate Modern catalogue, still in its clear plastic cover. I was led into a reception room which was of the proportions of a country house. Paintings in that Italian way cluttered the walls. Caught myself wondering: Christies or handed down?
“Is that Lucy?” I asked suddenly. I stood up and walked over to a small portrait in oils. It was of the face and body of a raven-haired girl with mere pinprick hazel dots for eyes running like a watercolour in the rain.
“Yes,” her father’s reply thankfully shook my thoughts away from God knows where. “Lucy’s mother painted it while Lucy was eight.”
“Lucy’s mother must have been very talented. She’s captured Lucy perfectly.”
“Yes, it was rather a good likeness. Drink? I’m on white. Lucy’s mother tried for a very long time before she succeeded in capturing, as you put it, Lucy’s rushing, as was her wont, at almost every visitor to the house crying: ‘I love you! I love you!”
“My cousin’s a bit like that.”
“Did you say red?” Giles asked.
“That’s grand with me.”
“Sorry?”
“White please,” I said. I couldn’t wake up my mind about anything!
The door-bell chimed.
“Of course. That’ll be Henry.”
There were footsteps in the hallway. Sound of greetings. A lady’s voice. Lucy’s step-mother walked in, leading who must be Henry. I stood up.
“Please don’t get up.”
Too late, I thought. I’m fucking your daughter: somehow I knew that was exactly what Giles was thinking at that moment: this scruffy bastard’s fucking my darling daughter. Giles handed me a quarter-filled glass of red wine.
“Henry, this is Jamie…?”
“Dwyer.”
“Of course. Young Jamie here shares a house with Lucy in Washington DC. Henry and I were at Rugby together.”
A slightly awkward silence ensued. Mrs. Anstey excused herself and left the room to check on something.
“Will you stay in America after Georgetown, Jamie?” inquired Henry.
“We’re not sure yet what’ll we do.”
“I’d stick to Georgetown, if I were you,” advised Giles.
“Funny place America. Fine for making money,” added Henry, not entirely relevantly.
“And England’s the finest place to enjoy it,” concluded Giles, taking up the thread.
“I’m not sure I’m all that interested in making money,” I put in needlessly.
“Really? Would of thought a young man like you’d be ambitious. Still, Henry, as I’ve always said there’s more to life than money.”
“And as I’ve been known to reply: indeed, but not all that much,” said Henry with perfect timing.
They were both laughing heartily when Mrs. Anstey walked in and cheerily told us lunch was ready.
During soup we chatted about writers. I had mentioned that that was what I really wanted to do. Henry had been at a dinner with Salmon Rushdie on the menu a few weeks before.
“He was in our house,” Henry explained to me as if he might be both proud and ashamed of the fact. “I felt like going up to him and saying: come on plot properly for the next one, eh? Honestly. All that magic. You won’t get the Nobel prize, if you don’t. You can tell he’s, at heart, from the Third-World.”
“Of course,” concurred Lucy’s father. “What was it Wellington said of being born in Ireland?”
“You can take the pig out of the sty. But you’ll never get the sty from the pig?” Henry tried.
“No. That’s not quite it. Though close. ‘If a man was born in a stable it doesn’t mean he’s a horse’. Yes, that was it.”
I was lost. But there was a silence. “You weren’t his fag, were you?” I suddenly quipped.
“Wellington was a Harrow man. Besides he was born two centuries ago. You do know who Wellington was?” answered Henry, just a tad condescendingly.
“Yes. Of course. I meant Rushdie. It was a stupid joke,” I said sensing a serious faux pas in the making as soon as I said the word “Rushdie”.
Henry hadn’t reacted at first. But then what can only be described as a magnitude of horror grew over Henry’s face. ‘Fuck,’ I thought. Though I had no real idea why he blanched so. A bad joke is a bad joke. No need to have a focking heart attack.
Giles, rather firmly, interjected: “Of course Henry wasn’t Rushdie’s fag. He wasn’t even in school by the time we’d left.”
I thought: that was the point. Joke? Shite.
Lucy’s step-mother passed round some vegetables.
“You’re a vegetarian, Jamie… That’s nice,” she said, breaking the silence and smiling warmly at me.
I had to get out of there. “That’s for some ethical reason, I presume?” said Giles after a further pause.
“I just don’t like the taste,” I answered curtly.
“Of course. What do you make of all these vegetarians who hate killing animals but who wear leather shoes?”
I replied quietly I didn’t really know. I was wearing Church’s brogues.
“Hitler was a vegetarian,” observed Henry.
Only dessert, now, to go.
“You chose Georgetown because you’re a catholic?” Giles asked as he resumed his polite attempts to draw me out. “Dwyer’s a catholic’s name.”
“I was offered a, a scholarship…,” I retorted.
“You’re not a catholic then?”
“I’m not really a Christian,” I claimed.
“Would you like a bit more Jamie?” interrupted Mrs. Anstey.
“No, no thank you, Mrs. Anstey. I’m cool.”
“James is a Christian name,” Lucy’s father puzzled deliberately. “Were you at one of those frightful Christian Brothers schools one always reads about in de Irish novels Jamie? That must have been what put you off religion,” he persisted.
“No,” I replied softly.
“What was the name of your school?” he pressed.
“You won’t’ve heard of it,” I answered defensively.
“You never know.”
“Gerards. St. Gerards,” I answered finally, before realising I shouldn’t’ve given him the saint bit.
“Of course. So you are a catholic, then, Jamie?”
“Is it really that important?” I snapped.
“No I don’t suppose it is. Just making conversation. I do apologise for upsetting you Jamie.”
“You haven’t. Please excuse me. I’m sorry. I am so jetlagged.”
“There’s nothing to excuse. Of course, religion doesn’t mean so much to the English. Though Lucy always went to church, usually on her own.”
Giles turned to Henry and asked him something about his work. Lucy’s step-mother stood up.
“I’m sorry but I’d best be off. My flight’s at five,” I said flatly, after I’d eaten dessert and no one had spoken to me for a while.
“You have nothing to be sorry for, Jamie,” Giles said genially.
I walked over and rather awkwardly shook hands goodbye with Henry. He seemed a little surprised at my formality. Decided just to wave bye to Giles. That went down equally well. Focking hell.
“I’m so sorry,” Mrs. Anstey said as she led me into the hall and towards the front door. “Nanny’s not back. I expect she forgot. Poor Nanny. Now. I am sure I mentioned to her this morning Lucy’s beau would be here. I am so happy Lucy found you over there. We were so worried about her being lonely in Washington. She was so very nervous about going there. But when I spoke to her after she met you – it was the day after you first met, I think. Yes, I was so certain just from the way she spoke that you two were perfect together,” she continued, as we stood in front of the open door. “You must give our love to Lucy? And do please come see us next time you’re in London. You must. Promise?”
“I do. Thank you, Eva, for lunch… I’m, I’m sorry if I offended Henry. I was just…”
“It would’ve been very funny. Except that, and you mustn’t let on to Lucy’s father, now, but Henry’s… How shall I put it? Not quite as straight, as he seems. Lucy will tell you what I mean. Bye for now Jamie.”
Later that day Lucy and her father were speaking on the phone.
“First thing he did was look at the pictures.”
“Daddy?”
“It’s rude. When you walk into a room you address people, not the walls. Manners maketh man and all that. He’s a bit rough around the edges, darling.”
“You were rude too.”
“He said that?”
“No. No. I just heard what you talked about. It’s rude to ask about religion at the table.”
“I never taught you that, love. Besides, I was teasing. The Irish are actually supposed to have a sense of humour. He may come from an illustrious family or whatever you tell me, but he did seem well a bit ordinary to me, are you sure?’’
“Stop it Daddy. Please. We’re not actually getting married. You’re so funny.”