he said suddenly, rising up and swinging the bottle wildly. ‘Stone dead I’d kill him. He hadn’t the right, he hadn’t the fucking right.’
My father entered at that moment, his face flushed with drink, the knot of his tie well over his collarbone. James sat down at the table.
‘Hadn’t the right to do what, James, hadn’t the right to do what? Go on, you young shit, spell it out.’
He was standing with his legs apart inside the door, the cage of his chest rising and falling. He looked like a man who was going to reach for a gun.
‘I was just saying, Mr Quirke, it was a real pity that all that money couldn’t be put to better use where right people might benefit from it.’
‘Is that so? And I suppose if it was your money you’d know what to do with it.’
James’ head was lolling heavily, a wide smirk crawling to his ears.
‘I’d have given it to the poor of the parish,’ he said, guffawing loudly and gulping from his glass. ‘Every last penny. And I’d have put a new roof on the church,’ he finished, now giggling helplessly.
‘And I suppose you wouldn’t have left yourself short either, James? You being one of these poor that weigh so heavily on your mind.’
He was leaning with both hands on the table now, towering over James. He wasn’t totally drunk, just in that dangerous condition where he could argue forever or loose his temper suddenly.
‘Do you know what it is, Mr Quirke? Something I saw today. Every one of those people were there patting you on the back with one hand and smirking behind the other. Telling you what a great man you were and then going away bursting their holes laughing at you. I saw it with my own two eyes.’
James had lost the run of himself now, he didn’t care what he said. I stood between them. ‘Cut it out both of you. James, it’s time you left, I need to get to bed.’ I began hauling him to his feet.
‘He’ll leave when I’m finished with him,’ my father hissed, squeezing out the words between his clenched teeth. ‘When I’m finished and only then. What about you, James, were you laughing?’
‘I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry, Mr Quirke, I was in two minds.’ He was swaying drunkenly now, bracing himself between the chair and the table. ‘I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. I was standing there thinking that some people have more money than sense.’
My father lunged at him, his outstretched hands reaching for his throat. James keeled backwards spilling the chair and my father landed across him, bellowing in rage and surprise. They grappled wildly for an instant. I threw aside the chair and James’ boot flicked up as he rolled over, catching me under the chin and knocking me sideways into the table. I fell down, grabbing the tablecloth and bringing the bottle and glass shattering to the floor. We scuttled to the end of the room and my father came off the floor clutching the neck of the bottle at arm’s length.
‘I’ll cut the fucking head clean off you,’ he roared.
He moved towards James slowly, as if walking over broken ground. It was at this instant that the axe rose into the air, just off my left shoulder, and passed in a slow arc over my head. And it was at this instant also that there was a sound of breaking glass and the light went out. The fluorescent light showered down around our shoulders as the axe clipped it and there was a sudden rush of cold air in the darkness, a grim sound of something splitting with a soft crunch. I rushed to the wall and turned on the bulb.
‘Oh Jesus, oh fucking Christ.’
My father lay face down on the floor, his head split open and the axe standing upright in it as if marking the spot. He was dead beyond any salvation. James was doing some frantic, crazy dance about his head and there was a smell of shit in the room.
‘Oh Jesus, oh fucking Christ, what are we going to do, what are we going to do?’
I was stone-cold sober then, hiccupping with fright but perfectly in control. I started dragging James towards the door, hauling him by the collar.
‘Go home now, James, there’s nothing you can do. Go home.’
I pushed him out into the darkness and slammed the door. My breathing came in jagged bursts and I needed to sit down. I righted the chair and sat at my father’s head, a four-hour vigil into the dawn with no thought in my head save that now, for the first time in my life, I had nothing.
When the grey sun rose I stepped into the hall and rang the cops.
R is for Responsibility
Not for the first time James was picking himself up off the tarmac, wiping the blood from his face. I was after telling him rather imperiously that his imagination was running away with him. He was having none of it.
‘Those fuckers walk all over you,’ he sobbed. ‘When are you going to stick up for yourself?’ He was near crying.
‘I can take care of them in my own time,’ I said cryptically.
‘Well, it’s about time you started. Look at the size of you, you’re well able for them, what the hell are you afraid of? And your father too, Christ, you put up with so much shit, it’s about time you started hitting back. You have to be every bit as cruel as they are. You have to meet every blow with a kick and every insult with a curse. You shouldn’t take this any more, it’s not right.’
‘I never asked for your help,’ I said coldly.
‘Well, this is the last time,’ he yelled. ‘From now on you can be your own martyr or your own coward. I want nothing more to do with it.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘you’ll always be there. You can’t help it, you have the imagination for it.’
I walked away, leaving him sobbing on the ground.
S is for Summary
Even now, in the fifth month of my sentence, I still receive weekly visits from my lawyer. There are loose ends still in need of tying up, details to be put to rest. He informs me that public interest in my case has not waned – apparently its notoriety is being seen as indicative of some sort of widespread malaise in the minds of our young people, a kind of national tumour in need of lancing. He tells me that there is much probing of the national psyche in the media.
More recently he has presented me with a sheaf of proposals from publishers and film producers, all of them looking for the complete story, the first-person account. I have refused all of them, returned the documents through the wire mesh. I have no interest in the superfluities that necessarily accrue within the scope of the extended narrative. I have chosen this alphabet for its finitude and narrow compass. It places strictures on my story which confine me to the essential substratum of events and feelings. Within its confines there is no danger of me wandering off like a maddened thing into sloughs of self-pity and righteousness.
T is for Truth
Under oath and on the Bible I swore to tell the truth. I confined myself to the facts, which may or may not be the same thing. I believe now that this preoccupation with the facts is exactly the problem with all kinds of testimony. A clear re-telling of the facts, no matter how accurately they record actual events, is a lamentable falling short of the
