The Emerald Lie

It’s not easy to simply lose a month. But I had experience. One way or another, I’d been losing bits of myself all my life. In increments, as they say. I began my binge in Garavan’s on Shop Street in Galway and ended up in a dive on Kilburn High Road. Took the scenic route.

I was as usual on the opposite side of the current thinking. I was the guy who went to the graveyard on a sunny day while the world headed for the beach. Everybody and his nephew were searching for themselves. My mission, and I had chosen to accept it, was to lose all.

I can vaguely recall taking a room in Whelan’s Hotel in Dublin and cutting that short when I realized it had live music nightly. That is every single night. Music is a bad distraction when you are studiously avoiding guilt. I was drowning in clichés. If you are going to do just one thing, do it the best you can.

Right.

Dublin confused me. It was, on the surface, friendly, but only apparently. You were always a culchie. Not of the city. I didn’t help my case by sneering at their hurling team on a fairly regular basis. Was I looking for a fight? At every turn.

One memorable evening, and I use the description loosely, I sat in Neary’s on Chatham Street. Like all Dublin pubs, south of the river, it tended to boast some literary connection. I think it was Patrick Kavanagh that occasion and I had mocked,

“Apart from ‘On Raglan Road,’ what else is he remembered for?”

The lady in my company that evening knew nowt of Kavanagh or, indeed, “On Raglan Road.” I was at my most vicious, said,

“No doubt you are in mourning since Desperate Housewives finished.”

She’d given me a long look, said,

“You have a limp, a hearing aid, mutilated fingers, and you are insulting me?”

I think I laughed, went,

“Sorry, Sheila.”

“It’s Maura.”

Indeed.

That was Dublin.

London was cold and bitter, in every sense. Most of it I recall as dark pubs and darker people. Desperation is its own beacon and I seemed to attract the worst and the worthless. Insane conversations with the walking insane. A night in Notting Hill, in what used to be, I think, Finches, telling some arsehole,

Like this,

“I used to be a Guard.”

Him.

“Like, in security?”

He could give a fuck but I was buying rounds so he could fake an interest. I said,

“No, the police.”

He was in his late fifties and, like me, on the run from himself. He was, he said, or used to be,

“Something in the City.”

This is the same gig as being an Internet consultant. I tuned him out for a bit as I watched the horror of Charlie Hebdo play out in Paris. It seemed as unreal and awful as my life.

ISIS beheaded another hostage and I told myself I was well out of a world that was so crazy and merciless. Bizarre note: If I saw someone walking a dog, I felt convulsed with guilt. And in the UK, it’s nigh impossible not to see that happen many times a day. Maybe it was some weird loneliness but I took to walking along Kilburn High Road in a vague desire to hear Irish accents. Futile, as a myriad of international voices drowned out even the traffic.

And then.

They say if you walk in London long enough, you will meet just about everybody you ever knew. Fanciful and statistically impossible but a nice notion. My money was taking a hammering and thus preoccupied, I didn’t at first recognize my own name.

“Jack. Jack Taylor!”

Drinking like I’d been, you begin to ignore voices as you suspect they are mostly internal and never the messengers of anything good. Kept going until my arm was grabbed. I thought,

“Nicked and about time.”

Turned to see Father Malachy, the bane of my past life. We had some history and all of it bad. He’d been one of those priests who attach themselves to old women and seep in piety together to the detriment of all. I’d once memorably helped him out and was he grateful?

Was he fuck?

I almost didn’t recognize him as he was in civilian clothes, quite a smart suit and heavy overcoat. He still had that priest air; it trails behind them like bad news. Not sanctity as much as superciliousness. I asked,

“Did they defrock you finally?”

He threw away a cigarette he’d been drawing on. He was one of those incorrigible smokers, smoked during a smoke. In a weird way, I was kind of glad to see him and that shows the depth of my desperation. He said,

“Who are you on the run from, Taylor?”

I nearly laughed. He was unchanged and, in a world of darkness, he had at least stayed true to his nature. I indicated a pub on the corner, asked,

“You want to grab a pint?”

He gave me that ecclesiastical stare, long on disapproval and short on compassion, and said,

“I’ll consider it penance.”

The bar was quiet, one middle-aged guy tending who greeted,

“Fathers.”

Irish.

They can spot the clergy at close range. That he thought I was one was just more insult to my burdened mind. We ordered some pints and chasers. The guy said,

“Grab a table and I’ll shoot them over to ye.”

We sat and Malachy reached for his cigs. I cautioned,

“You can’t smoke here.”

He tried defiance for a moment then decided not to. When the drinks came, he sank the Jay fast, belched, said,

“Ah.”

I know the feeling, nothing else quite like it, a split second when the world lights up and you have such peace, then...

He asked,

“Why are you hiding out in this heathen land?”

He still spoke like a character from Synge. I said,

“Bit of a break.”

He snickered, started on his pint, said,

“I’m here for a symposium on church and communication.”

He thought for a moment, added,

“Whatever the fuck a symposium is.”

His face took on that flush of the habitual drinker. It could almost pass for ruddy health, seen from a certain angle. He said,

“I don’t think I hate you anymore, Taylor.”

I said,

“Makes me feel all warm.”

He was ready for another round, shouted,

“Bring more drink.”

Then,

“I used to think you were an arrogant drunkard who was the death of his sainted mother.”

There was a time when I might have argued the toss but now I simply didn’t care, said,

“To tell the truth, Father, your feelings of me never mattered a good shite to me.”

We continued in this vein for another round, softly exchanging insults. Then he got a wistful look, sighed, asked,

“Did you ever experience love?”

First, I put it down to drink talk and was about to be scathing when I realized he was deadly serious. I stalled by draining my pint, then,

“Years ago, there was a child, she had Down syndrome...”

I trailed off, couldn’t revisit the death of Serena-May, who had died on my watch or, rather, my absolute lack of watch. He actually listened, which was rare. Priests take confessions, have parishioners come with their troubles, but listen?

Not since the penal days.

He said,

“I have never known it.”

I was going to try, Surely the love of God, but his expression was so serious that I went with,

“My mother.”

Nearly choked on this but persisted,

“My mother, um, seemed, to like you well enough.”

He gave a nasty cough, said,

“Your mother hated the world and everyone in it.”

True enough.

I asked,

“But why did you spend so much time with her?”

He looked up at the ceiling, which was discolored from the years when people smoked, said,

“The oldest reason in the book.”

“To give her comfort.”

“For money.”

I could have lashed him for taking sorely needed cash from our strapped household but what was the point? He seemed to be in a hell that was hot enough already. I had stoked plenty of fires in my life. He said,

“Terrible curse to be in a job you have no faith in and the very people you are meant to serve distrust and loathe you.”

Try as I might, I had no sympathy for the clergy. Even now they ruled with an arrogance that was breathtaking. I said,

“So resign, stop whining, do something.”

He laughed, almost amused, asked,

“And what pray would I do? Where would I live? I know some half-remembered theology and some half-arsed Latin, not exactly cutting-edge stuff.”

I reached for my coat, there is only so much self-pity you can endure. I said,

“I’d like to say it’s been a blast.”

He looked at me, asked,

“How are you fixed?”

I wanted to scream, being touched by a priest, so many ironies therein. I said,

“Keeping the tradition alive are you? Tap the son now?”

He near whispered,

“Couple hundred is all.”

Jesus and his mother.

At the bar, I laid a twenty on the counter, said to the guy,

“Buy him another.”

I didn’t look back.