fiction writer and the fabulist, those seekers after truth who speak it for no one but themselves with no motive of defence or self-justification. This is the terrain in which someone other than myself will one day stake his ground.
During the days of testimony I saw James leaning forward in his seat, chewing on his bottom lip which had blossomed out in cold sores under the stress. His eyes bored at me from the other end of the courtroom as I confined myself to the facts.
U is for Unravel
The thin bonds of our family unit sundered completely after the death of my mother. On some unspoken agreement my father and I commenced separate lives within the narrow scope of our house and small farm. I rose each day at mid-morning when I was sure he was about his business in the fields. I ate alone in the kitchen, staring in mild surprise at the creeping ruin which had taken possession of the house. Now that we seldom bothered to light any fires, paint had begun to peel from several damp patches on the walls. A light fur like a shroud clung to the effigies and icons all about and the windows scaled over.
Yet neither of us would lift a hand to do anything. We were now caught in a game of nerves, each staring the other down, waiting for him to crack. But neither of us did: we were too far gone in stubbornness and pride. The dishes piled up in the sink and cartons and bottles collected everywhere. The house now reeked of decay.
I came down from my room one evening and he was at the table, drinking a bottle by the neck. I stopped dead inside the door and continued to stare at him. We spoke at the same time.
‘This place has gone to hell.’
And still neither of us made a move.
V is for Visit
Now that I have all my records and the last of my books I have begun to sense a distance opening up between myself and James. It gets worse with every visit, a widening fissure into which our words tumble without reaching each other. Most of the last few visits have been spent sitting in silence, staring at the blank table-top. We have made sudden despairing raids on old memories, seeking frenziedly among old battles and fantasies for warm, common ground. But it is hopeless, it is as if we were re-telling the plot of some book only one of us has read, and not a very good book at that. I am surprised at the different ways we have come to remember things. I tell him of one of his heroic interventions on my behalf and he grimaces and speaks dismissively of a rush of blood to the head. He tells me a bitter incident of crushed youth and violent temper and I wonder who he is talking about. We are different men now and we hold different memories.
This week he had a real surprise. He sat across from me with his eyes lowered on his hands, the curious air of a lover about to confess some long and ongoing infidelity.
‘This is the last time I’ll be here, Gerard,’ he mumbled. ‘I’m going away. America.’ He had developed a twitch along his jawbone since his last visit and I noticed that his nails bled.
‘When did you decide?’
‘A few months back, seeing you in here and all that. Everything’s changed, it’s all different now. I’ve got the medical and a job set up in New York. It’s all set up,’ he repeated. He continued to stare at his hands.
I was obscurely glad that it was going to end like this. James’ days as my protector were at an end and my incarceration was his loss also. I knew our friendship had exhausted itself – consummated might be a better word – and I knew that I was looking at a young man whose mission in life had been completed.
‘I hope it goes well for you over there. Make big money and meet lots of women. American women go mad for paddies, I’m told. It’s the dirt under the fingernails. Tell them you live in a thatched cottage, I hear it never fails.’
He smiled quietly. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do. Probably work for a while and save a bit of money. I’d like to go to college.’
‘That’s good. It’s good to have a plan if only to have something to diverge from.’ I rose from my chair and held out my hand. ‘Best of luck, James, I hope it goes well for you.’
‘So do I. And thanks, Gerard. You were the only real friend I ever had.’
‘It goes both ways.’
‘Goodbye.’
‘Goodbye.’
I watched him leave and I tried to remember a time when I had ever seen him walking away before. I couldn’t.
W is for Wisdom
My father made it clear to me that life wasn’t easy. It was his favourite theme, particularly in those drink-sodden days after my mother died. He would fall upon me roaring, snatching the headphones from my ears.
‘I suppose you think that it will be easy from now on, ya useless cunt,’ he’d roar. ‘I suppose you think that it’s all there now under your feet and all you have to do is bend down and pick it up. Well, let me tell you here and now that it won’t be like that, it won’t be like that at all, at all. No son of mine is going to be molly-coddled and pampered and I’ll tell you why. Because you’ll work for it, like I did when I was your age and every other man of my generation. Because, and make no mistake about it, you young cur, it’s work and nothing else that makes a man of you, a real man, not like those fucking long-haired gits I see you hanging around town with.’
He was well into his stride now, pacing the floor and breathing heavily.
‘Started work after national school we did, every man jack of us, footing turf at two shillings a floor, nearly a hundred square yards. And damn the bit of harm it did us. It made men out of us, real men who knew the value of money. Now all this country has is young fuckers like you spending all day on your frigging arses, cunts who know the price of everything and the value of nothing, eating and drinking the quarter session with no thought of tomorrow. I’m sick of the fucking sight of you.’
He would grab a hank of my hair then and lift my face up, his whiskey breath burning my skin.
‘But if your mother was alive there’d be a different tune out of you, I’ll bet. She’d have put skates under you and not have you sitting here all day like a frigging imbecile.’
This was the inevitable point of breakdown, the moment at which all his vehemence would drain away, rendering him mawkish and pathetic. He would collapse by the stove, weeping and snuffling into his hands.
‘Oh Mary, Mary my love.’
I did not know which was the most terrifying, the honest and direct terror from which there was no escape or this genuine grief which was his alone.
X is for Xenophobe
We watched the interview on television the following evening. A study in western gothic, it showed the three of us standing in the doorway, my mother staring into her hands, plainly abashed by the attention, my father square-jawed and sullen, glowering darkly at the camera. At their backs I rose up between them, a halfwit’s leer covering my face. The bright young interviewer, all smiles and bonhomie, waved a microphone in my father’s face.
‘Mr Quirke, you are the latest Lotto millionaire, the biggest in its history, it must have come as a complete shock to you.’
Father avoided the bait skilfully.
‘No,’
