Faithful Place

12

And that was about as long as I could put off going home. I tried fortifying myself for it at Burdock’s—the thought of Burdock’s was the only thing that had ever tempted me to go back to the Liberties—but even the finest smoked cod and chips have their limits. Like most undercovers, I don’t have much of a knack for fear. I’ve walked into meetings with men who had every intention of chopping me into convenient sections and arranging me artistically under the nearest patch of concrete, and never broken a sweat. This, though, had me shitting an entire brickworks. I told myself what I had told young Stephen: count this as an undercover op, Frankie the Intrepid Detective on his most daring mission yet, into the jaws of doom.

The flat was a different place. The house was unlocked, and as soon as I stepped into the hall the wave came rolling down the stairs and hit me: warmth and voices and the smell of hot whiskey and cloves, all pouring out of our open door. The heating was on full blast and the sitting room was packed with people, crying, hugging, clumping up to put their heads together and enjoy the horror of it all, carrying six-packs or babies or plates of EasiSingle sandwiches covered in plastic wrap. Even the Dalys were there; Mr. Daly looked tense as hell and Mrs. Daly looked like she was on some pretty high-powered happy peanuts, but death trumps everything. I clocked Da instantly and automatically, but he and Shay and a few other lads had staked out a man-zone in the kitchen, with smokes and cans and monosyllabic conversation, and so far he looked fine. On a table under the Sacred Heart, propped up between flowers and Mass cards and electric candles, were photos of Kevin: Kevin as a fat red sausage of a baby, in a spiffy white Miami Vice suit at his confirmation, on a beach with a gang of shouting, sun-broiled lads waving lurid cocktails.

“There you are,” Ma snapped, elbowing someone out of her way. She had changed into an eye-popping lavender getup that was clearly her top-level finery, and she had done some fairly serious crying since that afternoon. “You took your time, didn’t you?”

“I came back as fast as I could. Are you holding up all right?”

She got the soft part of my arm in that lobster pinch I remembered so well. “Come here, you. That fella from your work, the one with the jaw on him, he’s been saying Kevin fell out a window.”

She had apparently decided to take this as a personal insult. With Ma, you never know what’s going to fit that bill. I said, “That’s what it looks like, yeah.”

“I never heard such a load of rubbish. Your friend’s talking out his hole. You get on to him and you tell him our Kevin wasn’t a bleeding spastic and he never fell out a window in his life.”

And here Scorcher thought he was doing a favor for a mate, smoothing a suicide into an accident. I said, “I’ll be sure and pass that on.”

“I’m not having people think I raised a thicko who couldn’t put one foot in front of the other. You ring him up and tell him. Where’s your phone?”

“Ma, it’s out of office hours. If I hassle him now, I’ll only put his back up. I’ll do it in the morning, how’s that?”

“You will not. You’re only saying that to keep me quiet. I know you, Francis Mackey: you always were a liar, and you always did think you were smarter than everyone else. Well, I’m telling you now, I’m the mammy and you’re not smarter than me. You ring that fella right now, while I can see you do it.”

I tried to detach my arm, but that made her clamp down harder. “Are you afraid of your man, is that it? Give us that phone and I’ll tell him meself, if you haven’t got the guts. Go on, give it here.”

I asked, “Tell him what?” Which was a mistake: the crazy level was rising fast enough without any encouragement from me. “Just out of interest. If Kevin didn’t fall out that window, what the hell do you think happened to him?”

“Don’t you be cursing at me,” Ma snapped. “He was hit by a car, of course. Some fella was driving home drunk from his Christmas party and he hit our Kevin, and then—are you listening to me?—instead of facing the music like a man, he put our poor young fella in that garden and hoped no one would find him.”

Sixty seconds with her, and my head was already spinning. It didn’t help that, when you got down to the basics of the situation, I more or less agreed with her. “Ma. That didn’t happen. None of his injuries were consistent with a car crash.”

“Then get your arse out there and find out what happened to him! It’s your job, yours and your la-di-da friend’s, not mine. How would I know what happened? Do I look like a detective to you?”

I spotted Jackie coming out of the kitchen with a tray of sandwiches, caught her eye and sent her the superurgent sibling distress signal. She shoved the tray at the nearest teenager and zipped over to us. Ma was still going strong (“Not consistent, will you listen to him, who do you think you are at all…”) but Jackie hooked an arm through mine and told us both, in a rushed undertone, “Come here, I said to Auntie Concepta I’d bring Francis over to her the second he got here, she’ll go mental if we wait any longer. We’d better go.”

Which was a nice move: Auntie Concepta is actually Ma’s aunt, and the only person around who can beat her in a psychological cage fight. Ma sniffed and delobstered my arm, with a glare to warn me this wasn’t over, and Jackie and I took deep breaths and plunged into the crowd.

It was, no competition, the most bizarre evening of my life. Jackie steered me around the flat introducing me to my nephew and nieces, to Kevin’s old girlfriends—I got a burst of tears and a double-D hug off Linda Dwyer—to my old friends’ new families, to the four phenomenally bewildered Chinese students who lived in the basement flat and who were clustered against a wall politely holding untouched cans of Guinness and trying to look at this as a cultural learning experience. Some guy called Waxer shook my hand for five solid minutes while he reminisced fondly about the time he and Kevin got caught shoplifting comics. Jackie’s Gavin punched me clumsily on the arm and muttered something heartfelt. Carmel’s kids gave me a quadruple blue-eyed stare, until the second youngest—Donna, the one who according to everyone was a great laugh—dissolved into big hiccuppy sobs.

They were the easy part. Just about every face from once upon a time was in that room: kids I had scrapped with and walked to school with, women who had smacked me round the back of the legs when I got muck on their clean floors, men who had given me money to run to the shop and buy them their two cigarettes; people who looked at me and saw young Francis Mackey, running wild in the streets and getting suspended from school for the mouth on him, just you watch he’ll end up like his da. None of them looked like themselves. They all looked like some makeup artist’s shot at the Oscar, hanging jowls and extra bellies and receding hairlines superimposed obscenely over the real faces I knew. Jackie aimed me at them and murmured names in my ear. I let her think I didn’t remember.

Zippy Hearne slapped me on the back and told him I owed him a fiver: he had finally managed to get his leg over Maura Kelly, even though he had had to marry her to do it. Linda Dwyer’s ma made sure I got some of her special egg sandwiches. I caught the occasional funny look across the room, but on the whole, the Place had decided to welcome me back with open arms; I had apparently played enough of my cards right over the weekend, and a good slice of bereavement always helps, especially with a scandal-flavored topping. One of the Harrison sisters—shrunk to the size of Holly, but miraculously still alive—clutched my sleeve and stood on tiptoe to tell me at the top of her frail lungs that I had grown up very handsome.

By the time I managed to unhook myself from everyone and find myself a nice cold can and an inconspicuous corner, I felt like I had run some kind of surreal psych-ops gauntlet carefully designed to disorient me beyond any chance of recovery. I leaned back against the wall, pressed the can to my neck and tried not to catch anyone’s eye.

The mood of the room had swung upwards, the way wakes do: people had worn themselves out on pain, they needed to catch their breath before they could go back there. The volume was rising, more people were piling into the flat and there was a burst of laughter from a gang of lads near me: “And just when the bus starts pulling away, right, Kev leans out the top window with the traffic cone up like this and he’s yelling at the cops through it, ‘KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!’…” Someone had pushed back the coffee table to clear a space in front of the fireplace, and someone else was pulling Sallie Hearne up to start the singing. She did the compulsory bit of protesting, but sure enough, once someone had got her a drop of whiskey to wet her throat, there it was: “There were three lovely lassies from Kimmage,” and half the room joining in on the echo, “From Kimmage…” Every party in my childhood had kicked off the sing-along the same way, right back to me and Rosie and Mandy and Ger hiding under tables to dodge being sent to the group kiddie bed in whoever’s back bedroom. These days Ger was bald enough that I could check my shave in his head.

I looked around at the room and I thought, Someone here. He would never have missed this. It would have stuck out a mile, and my guy was very, very good at keeping his nerve and blending in. Someone in this room, drinking our booze and ladling out the maudlin memories and singing along with Sallie.

Kev’s mates were still cracking up; a couple of them could hardly breathe. “… Only it’s around ten minutes before we stop pissing ourselves laughing, right? And then we remember that we were legging it so hard we just jumped on the first bus we saw, we don’t have a fucking clue where we’re going…”

“And whenever there’s a bit of a scrimmage, sure I was the toughest of all…” Even Ma, on the sofa sandwiched protectively between Auntie Concepta and her nightmare friend Assumpta, was singing along: red-eyed, dabbing at her nose, but raising her glass and sticking out all her chins like a fighter. There was a gaggle of little kids running around at knee level, wearing their good clothes and clutching chocolate biscuits and keeping a wary eye out for anyone who might decide they were up too late. Any minute now they would be hiding under the table.

“So we get off the bus and we think we’re somewhere in Rathmines, and the party’s in Crumlin, not a chance we’re gonna make it. And Kevin says, ‘Lads, it’s Friday night, it’s all students round here, there’s got to be a party somewhere…’ ”

The room was heating up. It smelled rich, reckless and familiar: hot whiskey, smoke, special-occasion perfume and sweat. Sallie pulled up her skirt and did a little dance step on the hearth, between verses. She still had the moves. “When he’s had a few jars he goes frantic…” The lads hit their punch line—“… And by the end of the night, Kev’s gone home with the fittest girl in the place!”—and doubled over, shouting with laughter and clinking their cans to Kevin’s long-ago score.

Every undercover knows the dumbest thing you can ever do is start thinking you belong, but this party had been built into me a long time before that lesson. I joined in on the singing—“Goes frantic…”—and when Sallie glanced my way I gave her an approving wink and a little lift of my can.

She blinked. Then her eyes slid away from mine and she kept singing, half a beat faster: “But he’s tall and he’s dark and romantic, and I love him in spite of it all…”

As far as I knew, I had always got on just fine with all the Hearnes. Before I could make sense of this one, Carmel materialized at my shoulder. “D’you know something?” she said. “This is lovely, so it is. When I die, I’d love a send-off like this.”

She was holding a glass of wine cooler or something equally horrific, and her face had that mixture of dreamy and decisive that goes with just the right amount of drink. “All these people,” she said, gesturing with the glass, “all these people cared about our Kev. And I’ll tell you something: I don’t blame them. He was a dote, our Kevin. A little dote.”

I said, “He was always a sweet kid.”

“And he grew up lovely, Francis. I wish you’d had a chance to get to know him properly, like. My lot were mad about him.”

She shot me a quick glance and for a second I thought she was going to say something else, but she checked herself. I said, “That doesn’t surprise me.”

“Darren ran away once—only the once, now, he was fourteen—and, sure, I wasn’t even worried; I knew straightaway he’d gone to Kevin. He’s only devastated, Darren is. He says Kevin was the only one of the lot of us that wasn’t mental, and now there’s no point to being in this family.”

Darren was mooching around the edges of the room, picking at the sleeves of his big black jumper and doing a professional emo sulk. He looked miserable enough that he had even forgotten to be embarrassed about being there. I said, “He’s eighteen and his head’s wrecked. He’s not firing on all cylinders right now. Don’t let him get to you.”

“Ah, I know, he’s only upset, but…” Carmel sighed. “D’you know something? There’s ways I think he’s right.”

“So? Mental is a family tradition, babe. He’ll appreciate it when he’s older.”

I was trying to get a smile off her, but she was rubbing at her nose and giving Darren a troubled stare. “D’you think I’m a bad person, Francis?”

I laughed out loud. “You? Jesus, Melly, no. It’s been a while since I checked, but unless you’ve been running a whorehouse out of that lovely semi-d, I’d say you’re fine. I’ve met a few bad people along the way, and take it from me: you wouldn’t fit in.”

“This’ll sound terrible,” Carmel said. She squinted dubiously at the glass in her hand, like she wasn’t sure how it had got there. “I shouldn’t say this, now; I know I shouldn’t. But you’re my brother, aren’t you? And isn’t that what brothers and sisters are for, sure?”

“It is, of course. What have you done? Am I going to have to arrest you?”

“Ah, go ’way with you. I’ve done nothing. It’s what I was thinking, only. Don’t be laughing at me, will you?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it. Swear to God.”

Carmel gave me a suspicious look in case I was taking the piss, but then she sighed and took a careful sip of her drink—it smelled of fake peaches. “I was jealous of him,” she said. “Of Kevin. Always.”

This I hadn’t seen coming. I waited.

“I am of Jackie, as well. I used to be of you, even.”

I said, “I got the impression you were pretty happy, these days. Am I wrong?”

“No; ah, God, no. I’m happy, all right. I’ve a great life.”

“Then what’s to be jealous about?”

“It’s not that. It’s… Do you remember Lenny Walker, Francis? I went out with him when I was only a young one, before Trevor?”

“Vaguely. Great big crater-face on him?”

“Ah, stop; the poor boy had acne. It went away after. I wasn’t bothered about his skin, anyway; I was just delighted I had my first fella. I was dying to bring him home and show him off to all of yous, but, sure, you know yourself.”

I said, “I do, yeah.” None of us had ever brought anyone home, even on those special occasions when Da was supposed to be at work. We knew better than to take anything for granted.

Carmel glanced round, quickly, to make sure no one was listening. “But then,” she said, “one night myself and Lenny were having a bit of a kiss and a cuddle up on Smith’s Road, and didn’t Da come past on his way home from the pub and catch us. He was only livid. He gave Lenny a clatter and told him to get out of it, and then he got me by the arm and started slapping me round the face. And he was calling me names—the language out of him, I wouldn’t repeat it… He dragged me all the way home like that. Then he told me one more dirty slapper stunt and he’d put me in a home for bad girls. God help me, Francis, we’d never done more than kiss, myself and Lenny. I wouldn’t have known how.”

All this time later, the memory still turned her face a raw, mottled red. “That was the end of the pair of us, anyway. After that, when we seen each other about, Lenny wouldn’t even look at me; too embarrassed. I didn’t blame him, sure.”

Da’s attitude to Shay’s and my girlfriends had been a lot more appreciative, if not more helpful. Back when Rosie and I were out in the open, before Matt Daly found out and came down on her like a ton of bricks: The Daly young one, yeah? Fair play to you, son. She’s a little daisy. A too-hard slap on the back and a savage grin at the clench in my jaw. The kegs on her, my Jaysus. Tell us, have you had a go of those yet? I said, “That’s shitty, Melly. That really is. Five-star shitty.”

Carmel took a deep breath and flapped a hand at her face, and the red started to subside. “God, look at the state of me, people’ll think I’m getting the hot flushes… It’s not that I was head over heels about Lenny; I’d probably have broken it off with him soon enough anyway, he was an awful bad kisser. It’s that I never felt the same, after. You wouldn’t remember, but I was a cheeky little wagon, before that—I used to give Ma and Da dreadful back talk, so I did. After that, though, I was afraid of my own shadow. Sure, me and Trevor were talking about getting engaged for a year before we did it; he’d the money saved up for the ring and all, but I wouldn’t do it, because I knew I’d have to have an engagement do. The two families in the one room. I was only petrified.”

“I don’t blame you,” I said. For a second I wished I had been nicer to Trevor’s piggy little brother.

“And Shay’s the same. Not that he went frightened, like, and not that Da ever got in his way with the girls, but…” Her eyes went to Shay, leaning in the kitchen doorway with a can in his hand and his head bent close to Linda Dwyer’s. “Do you remember that time—you would’ve been about thirteen—he went unconscious?”

I said, “I try my very best not to.” That had been a fun one. Da had aimed a punch at Ma, for reasons that now escape me, and Shay had got hold of his wrist. Da didn’t take well to challenges to his authority; he communicated that concept by grabbing Shay round the throat and giving his head a good smack off the wall. Shay blacked out, for what was probably a minute but seemed like an hour, and spent the rest of the evening cross-eyed. Ma wouldn’t let us bring him to hospital—it wasn’t clear whether she was worried about the doctors, the neighbors or both, but the thought sent her into a full-on conniption. I spent that night watching Shay sleep, assuring Kevin that he wouldn’t die and wondering what the fuck I would do if he did.

Carmel said, “He wasn’t the same, after. He turned hard.”

“He wasn’t exactly a big fluffy marshmallow before.”

“I know yous never got on, but I swear to God, Shay was all right. Himself and myself used to have great chats sometimes, and he used to do grand in school… After that was when he started keeping to himself.”

Sallie hit her big finish—“In the meantime we’ll live with me ma!”—and there was a burst of cheers and applause. Carmel and I clapped automatically. Shay lifted his head and glanced around the room. For a second he looked like something out of a cancer ward: grayish and exhausted, with deep hollows under his eyes. Then he went back to smiling at whatever story Linda Dwyer was telling him.

I said, “What’s this got to do with Kevin?”

Carmel sighed deeply and took another dainty sip of fake peaches. The droop to her shoulders said she was heading for the melancholy stage. “Because,” she said, “that’s why I was jealous of him. Kevin and Jackie… they had a bad time, I know they did. But nothing like that ever happened to them; nothing where they weren’t the same after. Me and Shay made sure of that.”

“And me.”

She considered that. “Yeah,” she acknowledged. “And you. But we tried to look after you, as well—ah, we did, Francis. I always thought you were all right too. You’d the guts to leave, anyway. And then Jackie always told us you were in great form… I thought that meant you got out before your head was wrecked altogether.”

I said, “I got pretty close. No cigar, though.”

“I didn’t know that till the other night, in the pub, when you said. We did our best for you, Francis.”

I smiled down at her. Her forehead was a maze of little anxious grooves, from a lifetime of worrying about whether everyone within range was OK. “I know you did, sweetheart. No one could’ve done better.”

“And can you see why I was jealous of Kevin, can you? Him and Jackie, they’re still great at being happy. The way I was when I was a little young one. It wasn’t that I wished anything worse would happen to him—God forbid. I just looked at him and I wanted to be like that too.”

I said gently, “I don’t think that makes you a bad person, Melly. It’s not like you took it out on Kevin. You never in your life did anything to hurt him; you always did your best to make sure he was OK. You were a good sister to him.”

“It’s still a sin,” Carmel said. She was gazing mournfully out at the room and swaying, just a tiny bit, on her good heels. “Envy. You’ve only to think it for it to be a sin; sure, you know that. ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do…’ How’ll I ever say it in confession, now that he’s dead? I’d be ashamed of my life.”

I put an arm around her and gave her shoulder a quick squeeze. She felt squashy and comforting. “Listen here, babe. I absolutely guarantee you that you’re not going to hell for a bit of sibling jealousy. If anything, it’ll be the other way round: you’ll get extra God points for working so hard to get over it. Yeah?”

Carmel said, “I’m sure you’re right,” automatically—years of humoring Trevor—but she didn’t sound convinced. For a second I got the sense that, in some undefined way, I had let her down. Then she snapped upright and forgot all about me: “Merciful Jaysus, is that a can Louise has? Louise! Come here to me!”

Louise’s eyes popped and she vanished into the crowd at lightning speed. Carmel charged after her.

I leaned back into my corner and stayed put. The room was shifting again. Holy Tommy Murphy was striking up “The Rare Old Times,” in a voice that used to be flavored like peat smoke and honey. Old age had roughed up the smooth edges, but he could still stop a conversation mid-sentence. Women lifted their glasses and swayed shoulder to shoulder, kids leaned against their parents’ legs and tucked their thumbs in their mouths to listen; even Kevin’s mates brought the story-swapping down to a murmur. Holy Tommy had his eyes closed and his head tipped back to the ceiling. “Raised on songs and stories, heroes of renown, the passing tales and glories that once was Dublin town…” Nora, leaning in the window frame listening, almost stopped my heart: she looked so much like a shadow Rosie, dark and sad-eyed and still, just too far away to reach.

I got my eyes off her fast, and that was when I spotted Mrs. Cullen, Mandy’s ma, over by the Jesus-and-Kevin shrine having an in-depth conversation with Veronica Crotty, who still looked like she had a year-round cough. Mrs. Cullen and I got on, back when I was a teenager; she liked laughing, and I could always make her laugh. This time, though, when I caught her eye and smiled, she jumped like something had bitten her, grabbed Veronica’s elbow and started whispering double-time in her ear, throwing furtive glances my way. The Cullens never did subtle very well. Somewhere right around there, I started wondering why Jackie hadn’t brought me over to say hello to them when I first arrived.

I went looking for Des Nolan, Julie’s brother, who had also been a buddy of mine and whom we had also somehow managed to miss on the Jackie whistle-stop tour. The look on Des’s face when he saw me would have been priceless, if I had been in a laughing mood. He muttered something incoherent, pointed at a can that didn’t look empty to me, and made a dive for the kitchen.

I found Jackie backed into a corner, getting her ear bent by our uncle Bertie. I put on an agonized about-to-break-down face, detached her from his sweaty clutches, steered her into the bedroom and shut the door behind us. These days the room was peach-colored and every available surface was covered with little porcelain widgets, which argued a certain lack of foresight on Ma’s part. It smelled of cough syrup and something else, medical and stronger.

Jackie collapsed onto the bed. “God,” she said, fanning herself and blowing out air. “Thanks a million. Jaysus, I know it’s bad to pass remarks, but has he not had a wash since the midwife?”

“Jackie,” I said. “What’s going on?”

“What d’you mean, like?”

“Half the people here won’t say a word to me, they won’t even look me in the eye, but they’ve got plenty to say when they think I’m not looking. What’s the story?”

Jackie managed to look innocent and shifty at the same time, like a kid neck-deep in denials and chocolate. “You’ve been away, sure. They haven’t seen you in twenty years. They’re only feeling a bit awkward.”

“Bollix. Is this because I’m a cop now?”

“Ah, no. Maybe a little bit, like, but… Would you not just leave it, Francis? Do you not think maybe you’re only being paranoid?”

I said, “I need to know what’s going on, Jackie. I’m serious. Do not fuck with me on this.”

“Jaysus, relax the kacks; I’m not one of your bleeding suspects.” She shook the cider can in her hand. “Do you know are there any more of these left, are there?”

I shoved my Guinness at her—I had barely touched it. “Now,” I said.

Jackie sighed, turning the can between her hands. She said, “You know the Place, sure. Any chance of a scandal…”

“And they’re on it like vultures. How did I turn into today’s Happy Meal?”

She shrugged uncomfortably. “Rosie got killed the night you left. Kevin died two nights after you came back. And you were on at the Dalys not to go to the cops. Some people…”

She let it trail off. I said, “Tell me you’re shitting me, Jackie. Tell me the Place is not saying I killed Rosie and Kevin.”

“Not the whole Place. Some people, only. I don’t think—Francis, listen to me—I don’t think they even believe it themselves. They’re saying it because it makes a better story—what with you having been away, and being a cop, and all. Don’t mind them. They’re only looking for more drama, so they are.”

I realized that I still had Jackie’s empty in my hand, and that I had crushed it into a mangled mess. I had expected this from Scorcher, from the rest of the Murder stud-muffins, maybe even from a few guys in Undercover. I had not expected it from my own street.

Jackie was gazing at me anxiously. “D’you know what I mean? And, as well, everyone else who could’ve hurt Rosie is from round here. People don’t want to be thinking—”

I said, “I’m from round here.”

There was a silence. Jackie reached out a hand, tentatively, and tried to touch my arm; I whipped it away. The room felt underlit and threatening, shadows piled up too thick in the corners. Outside in the sitting room people were joining in, raggedly, with Holy Tommy: “The years have made me bitter, the gargle dims my brain, and Dublin keeps on changing; nothing seems the same…”

I said, “People accused me of that, to your face, and you let them into this house?”

“Don’t be thicker than you can help,” Jackie snapped. “Nobody’s said a word to me, d’you think they’d have the nerve? I’d bleeding splatter them. It’s hints, only. Mrs. Nolan said to Carmel that you’re always around for the action, Sallie Hearne said to Ma that you always had a temper on you and did she remember that time you punched Zippy’s nose in—”

“Because he was hassling Kevin. That’s why I punched Zippy, for fuck’s sake. When we were about ten.”

“I know that. Ignore them, Francis. Don’t give them the satisfaction. They’re only eejits. You’d think they’d have enough drama on their plates as it is, but that lot always have room for a bit more. The Place, sure.”

“Yeah,” I said. “The Place.” Outside the singing was rising, getting stronger as more people joined in and someone threw in a harmony: “Ringa-ring-a-rosy as the light declines, I remember Dublin city in the rare oul’ times…”

I leaned back against the wall and ran my hands over my face. Jackie watched me sideways and drank my Guinness. Eventually she asked, tentatively, “Will we go back out, will we?”

I said, “Did you ever ask Kevin what he wanted to talk to me about?”

Her face fell. “Ah, Francis, I’m sorry—I would’ve, only you said…”

“I know what I said.”

“Did he not get a hold of you, in the end?”

“No,” I said. “He didn’t.”

Another small silence. Jackie said, again, “I’m so sorry, Francis.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“People’ll be looking for us.”

“I know. Give me one more minute and we’ll go back out.”

Jackie held out the can. I said, “Fuck that. I need something serious.” Under the windowsill was a loose floorboard where Shay and I used to hide our smokes from Kevin, and sure enough, Da had found it too. I flipped out a half-full naggin of vodka, took a swig and offered it to Jackie.

“Jaysus,” she said. She actually looked startled. “Why not, I suppose.” She took the bottle off me, had a ladylike sip and dabbed at her lipstick.

“Right,” I said. I took another good mouthful and stuck the bottle back in its little hidey-hole. “Now let’s go face the lynch mob.”

That was when the sounds from outside changed. The singing trailed off, fast; a second later the buzz of conversation died. A man snapped something low and angry, a chair clattered against a wall, and then Ma went off like something between a banshee and a car alarm.

Da and Matt Daly were squared off, chin to chin, in the middle of the sitting room. Ma’s lavender getup was splattered with something wet, all down the top, and she was still going (“I knew it, you bollix, I knew it, just the one evening, that’s all I asked you for…”). Everyone else had fallen back so as not to get in the way of the drama. I caught Shay’s eye across the room, with an instant click like magnets, and we started elbowing between the gawkers.

Matt Daly said, “Sit down.”

“Da,” I said, touching him on the shoulder.

He didn’t even know I was there. He told Matt Daly, “Don’t you give me orders in my own home.”

Shay, on his other side, said, “Da.”

“Sit down,” Matt Daly said again, low and cold. “You’re after causing a scene.”

Da lunged. The really useful skills never fade: I was on him just as fast as Shay was, my hands still knew the grip, and my back was all braced and ready when he stopped fighting and let his knees go limp. I was scarlet, right to my hairline, with pure scorching shame.

“Get him out of here,” Ma spat. A bunch of clucking women had clumped up around her and someone was swiping at her top with a tissue, but she was too furious to notice. “Go on, you, get out, get back to the gutter where you belong, I should’ve never pulled you out of it—your own son’s wake, you bastard, have you no respect—”

“Bitch!” Da roared over his shoulder, as we danced him neatly out the door. “Poxy hoor’s melt!”

“Out the back,” Shay said brusquely. “Let the Dalys go out the front.”

“Fuck Matt Daly,” Da told us, on our way down the stairs, “and fuck Tessie Daly. And fuck the pair of yous. Kevin was the only one of the three of yous that was worth a shite.”

Shay let out a harsh, bitten-off clip of a laugh. He looked dangerously exhausted. “You’re probably right there.”

“The best of the lot,” Da said. “My blue-eyed boy.” He started to cry.

“You wanted to know how he’s getting on?” Shay asked me. His eyes, meeting mine across the back of Da’s neck, looked like the flames on Bunsen burners. “Here’s your chance to find out. Enjoy.” He hooked the back door deftly open with one foot, dumped Da on the step, and headed back upstairs.

Da stayed where we had dropped him, sobbing luxuriously and throwing out the odd comment about the cruelty of life and enjoying himself no end. I leaned against the wall and lit a smoke. The dim orange glow coming from nowhere in particular gave the garden a spiky Tim Burton look. The shed where the toilet used to be was still there, missing a few boards now and leaning at an impossible angle. Behind me, the hall door slammed: the Dalys going home.

After a while Da’s attention span ran out, or his arse got cold. He dialed down the opera, wiped his nose on his sleeve and rearranged himself more comfortably on the step, wincing. “Give us a smoke.”

“Say please.”

“I’m your father and I said to give us a smoke.”

“What the hell,” I said, holding one out. “I’ll always give to a good cause. You getting lung cancer definitely qualifies.”

“You always were an arrogant little prick,” Da said, taking the smoke. “I should’ve kicked your ma down the stairs when she told me she was on the bubble.”

“And you probably did.”

“Bollix. I never laid a hand on any of yous unless you deserved it.”

He was too shaky to light up. I sat down next to him on the steps, took the lighter and did it for him. He stank of stale nicotine and stale Guinness, with a saucy little top-note of gin. All the nerves in my spine were still stone-cold petrified of him. The flow of conversation coming out the window above us was starting to pick up again, awkwardly, in patches.

I asked, “What’s wrong with your back?”

Da let out a huge lungful of smoke. “None of your business.”

“Just making small talk.”

“You were never into the small talk. I’m not thick. Don’t treat me like it.”

“I never thought you were,” I said, and meant it. If he had spent a little more time getting an education and a little less getting an alcohol habit, my da could have been a contender. When I was twelve or so, we did World War II in school. The teacher was a bitchy, closeted little bogger who felt that these inner-city kids were too stupid to understand anything that complex, so he didn’t bother trying. My da, who happened to be sober that week, was the one who sat down with me and drew pencil diagrams on the kitchen tablecloth and got out Kevin’s lead soldiers for armies and talked me through the whole thing, so clearly and so vividly that I still remember every detail like I saw the movie. One of my da’s tragedies was always the fact that he was bright enough to understand just how comprehensively he had shat all over his life. He would have been a lot better off thick as a plank.

“What do you care about my back?”

“Curiosity. And if someone’s going to come after me for part of the cost of a nursing home, it’d be fun to know in advance.”

“I’ve asked you for nothing. And I’m not going into any nursing home. Shoot myself in the head first.”

“Good for you. Don’t leave it too late.”

“I wouldn’t give yous the satisfaction.”

He took another massive drag on the cigarette and watched the smoke ribbons curl out of his mouth. I asked, “What was that all about, upstairs?”

“This and that. Man’s business.”

“Which means what? Matt Daly rustled your cattle?”

“He shouldn’t have come in my house. Tonight of all nights.”

Wind nosed through the gardens, shouldered at the walls of the shed. For a split second I saw Kevin, just the night before, lying purple and white and battered in the dark, four gardens away. Instead of making me angry, it just made me feel like I weighed twenty stone; like I was going to have to sit there all night long, because my chances of ever being able to get up from that step by myself were nil.

After a while Da said, “D’you remember that thunderstorm? You’d’ve been, I don’t know, five, six. I brought you and your brother outside. Your ma had a fit.”

I said, “Yeah. I remember.” It had been the kind of pressure-cooker summer evening where no one can breathe and vicious fights erupt out of nowhere. When the first bang of thunder went off, Da let out a great laughing roar of relief. He scooped Shay up in one arm and me in the other and legged it down the stairs, with Ma yelping furiously behind us. He held us up to see the lightning flickering above the chimney pots and told us not to be scared of the thunder, because it was just the lightning heating up air as fast as an explosion, and not to be scared of Ma, who was leaning out the window getting shriller by the second. When a sheet of rain finally swept over us he threw his head back to the purple-gray sky and whirled us round and round in the empty street, Shay and me screaming with laughter like wild things, huge warm drops of rain splattering our faces and electricity crackling in our hair, thunder shaking the ground and rumbling up through Da’s bones into ours.

“That was a good storm,” Da said. “A good night.”

I said, “I remember the smell of it. The taste.”

“Yeah.” He got one last minuscule puff off his smoke and threw the butt into a puddle. “Tell you what I wanted to do, that night. I’d’ve only loved to take the pair of yous and leave. Up into the mountains, live there. Rob a tent and a gun somewhere, live off what we could kill. No women nagging us, no one telling us we weren’t good enough, no one keeping the workingman down. You were good young fellas, you and Kevin; good strong young fellas, able for anything. I’d say we’d have done grand.”

I said, “That night was me and Shay.”

“You and Kevin.”

“Nope. I was still small enough that you could pick me up. That means Kevin would’ve been a baby. If he was even born.”

Da thought that over for a while. “And fuck you, anyway,” he told me. “Do you know what that was? That there was one of my finest memories of my dead son. Why would you be a little bollix and take it away?”

I said, “The reason you’ve got no actual memories of Kevin is that, by the time he came along, your brain was basically mashed potato. If you feel like explaining how that was my fault, exactly, I’m all ears.”

He took a breath, gearing up to hit me with his best shot, but it sent him into a fit of coughing that almost jolted him right off the back step. All of a sudden both of us made me sick. I had spent the last ten minutes angling for a punch in the face; it had taken me that long to figure out that I wasn’t picking on someone my own size. It struck me that I had about three more minutes within range of that house before I lost my mind.

“Here,” I said, and held out another cigarette. Da still couldn’t talk, but he took it in a shaky hand. I said, “Enjoy,” and left him to it.

Upstairs, Holy Tommy had picked up the singing again. The night had got to the stage where people had switched from Guinness to spirits and we were fighting the British. “No pipe did hum nor battle drum did sound its loud tattoo, but the Angelus bell o’er the Liffey’s swell rang out through the foggy dew…”

Shay had vanished, and so had Linda Dwyer. Carmel was leaning on the side of the sofa, humming along, with one arm around half-asleep Donna and the other hand on Ma’s shoulder. I said softly, in her ear, “Da’s out the back. Someone should check on him, sooner or later. I’ve got to head.” Carmel whipped her head round, startled, but I put a finger over my lips and nodded at Ma. “Shh. I’ll see you soon. Promise.”

I left before anyone else could find anything to say to me. The street was dark, just one light at the Dalys’ and one in the hairy students’ flat; everyone else was asleep or over at our place. Holy Tommy’s voice came out our bright sitting-room window, faint and ageless through the glass: “As back through the glen I rode again, my heart with grief was sore, for I parted then with valiant men whom I never shall see more…” It followed me all the way up the Place. Even when I turned down Smith’s Road I thought I could hear him, under the buzz of passing cars, singing his heart out.