The Emerald Lie (13 page)

Jessica Cornwell.

Like this:

…

A groans like dried blood

R regal, dark

D as indigo

I makes a bright light

E is the color yellow

She muttered,

“The shite does this mean?”

She could imagine producing this in court and the lawyer annihilating her. Once upon a time, she could have shown this to Jack and he would have made some sense of it. She felt more alone than ever and then shook herself. Fixed her face, did her hair, put on a white silk T she’d been saving

For what?

There were no more special occasions. Grabbed her short leather jacket, black with studs to get the dyke vibe out there. And for some reason, that sailed the bitch Emily into her head.

Jack seemed completely smitten with the idea of the woman.

Ridge felt that Emily had perfected the Devil’s greatest trick, persuading the world he didn’t exist. Emily seemed to live large in Jack’s imagination.

Freudian thought?

“What-the-fuck-ever,”

She muttered.

Managed to block that cow out of her mind and head out. The night was young and full of hopeful peril.

Everything about Pat Maloney was big.

His ego

His car

His girth

But especially his mouth.

He ordered a pint like this:

“Do me a Black.”

A man beside him said,

“Tut, tut, surely you mean, may I have?”

Pat only glanced at him, a puny bollix, but then most seemed simply tiny. He said,

“Fuck off before I land me shoe in yer hole.”

The man gave what might have been a delighted giggle, said,

“Oh, how you trample on the sacred ground.”

Pat was distracted by his mobile and began one of those all too common exchanges of loudness and bravado. He sank most of his pint during this tirade of ostentation. When he finished, the annoying guy had disappeared. After a feed of drink Pat developed that drinker’s lust for fast food. It had to be greasy, a caloric riot.

He settled for Supermac’s, though greasy wasn’t their forte. Their pièce de résistance was curried chips, sprinkled with melted cheese and very, very large. He ordered an extra-large Dr Pepper and said to the girl when his food arrived, as he handed her a five-euro note,

“Keep the change, darling.”

There was no change unless you consider two cents that. Outside he savaged the chips, cheese running down his shirt, the wife would clean it—it was her job. He dropped the packaging, all messy and leaking, right beside a litter bin.

Then headed into the nearby alley to urinate.

As he let flow, he emitted a huge belch and thought,

“Life is fucking mighty.”

A voice said,

“According to goddess Truss, it is generally accepted that familiar contractions such as bus (omnibus) no longer require apostrophes.”

Then his head was crushed by a ferocious blow to the skull.

I got back to Galway—not a month later but nigh on two. Booze costs you time as well as just about everything else. Last lingering days in London, what I most spent my time at, apart from attempting to beat hangovers and fret about dwindling money, was, get this,

Watching YouTube.

One clip.

Titled “Wet Dog.”

Featured a Brussels griffon pup who was as weird and wretched as I felt. He was having what seemed to be a very human nervous breakdown and was flat-out funny and touching. Of course it reminded me of my pup, Storm, and how he was. I’m not claiming I returned because of him but it was in the mix. The only consolation was I missed Christmas and New Year shabby resolutions. If you want the very rock bottom of festivities, in all its naked misery and squalor, try a bedsit in Camden Town.

During my final London weeks, I’d watched
Wolf Hall
and marveled at the absolute stillness of Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell. In an era of all things Kardashian, it was quite astonishing to see such major talent and with such little movement. In some ways, I’d have killed for stillness and perhaps only being killed would still me.

Still.

Before I left London, I had some odd, not to mention almost mystical, encounters. Perhaps it was simply the befuddlement of drink or too much postponed grief but I had headed to Leicester Square to do an old-fashioned act. Some inverted homage to the generations of Irish who took the cattle boats to the UK. Never to return, swallowed up in Kilburn, on damp building sites, in Kentish Town and dead pubs and Cricklewood and death sentence boardinghouses, six to a shitty room.

To book passage home on the ferry.

No online booking, just the physical action of getting a ticket over the counter, one way only. The music of De Danann and the Leicester Square Odeon; it was showing
Fifty Shades of Grey.

Nostalgia through utter nonsense.

A homeless man looked at me beseechingly, utterly silent.

I put a tenner in the guy’s cap and he went,

“Hey?”

I turned back and looked at him. He had the shadowed face of the wretched but a beatific smile, said,

“Landau dumping, a strange phenomenon that occurs as a consequence of the energy exchange between electro-magnetic waves and gases in a state of plasma.”

With Google, later, I would find this was part of
Birth of a Theorem
by Cédric Villani, the punk rock mathematician.

No, me neither.

I said,

“You what?”

He smiled, said,

“Or, as O’Casey put it, the whole world is in a state of chassis.”

The night before I took the boat, I watched a horror movie.

Mad, eh?

In my heightened state, you would think it was the last thing I’d want to see. A debut by an Australian woman titled

The Babadook.

A scary simple masterpiece. Oh, yeah, a dog got killed in it. Of course. Left me even jumpier than I was. Next day, I packed my meager belongings: a leather coat I got on Camden Lock; books, of course; a silver flask with Jay and Guinness; and no hope in my heart. In my mind was Ed Sheeran with

“Make It Rain.”

As I boarded the ferry at Holyhead after an arduous train ride from Euston, ahead of me in the line were a father and son. The boy was maybe eight or so and woebegone. The man, slight, with that fading weak blond hair, stooped gait, and air of furtiveness. The boy caught my eye and smiled. I didn’t.

I was all out of cordiality.

As we pulled out of the dock, I went up on deck and stared at the retreating English coastline. I threw a bent penny over the side and wished

For …

Nothing.

I was sitting in the ship’s lounge, which was packed. Seemed people still liked to travel this way and of course it was convenient for traveling with children. I was rereading David Gates’s
Jernigan.
Class act. Alongside the novel
Stoner
, it reaffirmed the power of narrative and especially the art of desperation. It sang to me the dark melodies of

Loss

The broken

The wounded

Indeed.

Like holding a mirror up to my battered life.

Heard

“Mind if we take this seat?”

The man and boy.

I said,

“Sure.”

I noticed the boy sat absolutely still, like a tiny Thomas Cromwell. The father, by contrast, was a study in fidgeting. He checked his pockets, pushed his fingers through his thinning hair, checked his phone, then looked around like a bird of prey or a trapped one. Finally he leaned toward me, asked,

“I’m terribly sorry to bother you but would you mind watching Daniel while I grab a pint?”

I gave him a cold look, said,

“Make it snappy.”

I swear the boy nearly smiled. The man took it like the lash it was but rallied, said,

“Aye aye, skipper.”

And fucked off.

I tried to get back to the book but was aware the boy was staring intently at me, I went,

“Was there something?”

He had those huge saucer eyes, blue and grave. He asked,

“Do you think, I’m, like, weird?”

Duh.

I don’t know how to talk to kids. I mean, I can talk to people—well, some, anyway, and give me a few pints, I’d talk to the pope. I can talk to dogs and that’s no hardship, they are busy loving you regardless, even if you talk shite. Kids though,

Phew-oh.

I answered,

“Why would you think that?”

He thought about that, then,

“I don’t have any friends.”

Me neither. I said,

“Well, you’re young and lots of time.”

Fucking wisdom of the ages from me. He asked,

“Are you very, like, old?”

Fuck.

Then before I could lie my way around that, he said,

“My dad is sick.”

Okay.

I asked,

“From what?”

“Drink.”

I racked my remaining brain cells and got this gem:

“How about Xbox, you play those?”

“No.”

I looked around desperately for his father, realized I had a slight sheen of sweat on my brow, said,

“I’m sure you have a wonderful life ahead of you.”

He stared at me in utter derision, then said,

“Fuck me.”

Okay….

He began to recite in his very proper English accent,

…
Give up Paris

You will never create anything

By reading Racine

He pronounced Racine like Rancid.

Continued,

…
and Arthur Symons will always

Be

A better critic of French Literature.

He took a deep childlike breath, then,

… Go to the Aran Islands,

Live there as if you were one of the people themselves

Express a life that has never found expression.

He took a swig of a large bottle of Dr Pepper, asked,

“Do you know who wrote that?”

“I don’t.”

“Yeats.”

I had nothing to add to this and he said,

“Me and him are going to live on the Aran Islands.”

Oddly, he referred to his dad as
him.
Said
him
came back, three sheets to a whiskeyed wind, asked,

“You like Robbie Coltrane?”

Before I could answer this nonsense, he added,

“They have a betting shop on board.”

Just what the world needs.

His face had that barroom tan, the high color you get when you fast swallow the drinks and the booze suffuses your cheeks with a false sheen of health. And he had that limited bonhomie that is as intense as it is short-lived. I said,

“I’m Jack Taylor and I’ve already met Daniel.”

He shot the boy a warning glance, as in,

“Shut your fucking mouth.”

He said,

Turning,

“So poking your nose in my affairs already.”

Coming hard arse at me, it’s where I live, what I love. I snapped,

“Depends on what you’ve got to hide.”

His eyes flashed, rage pushing to be let out. I could help there. I put out my hand, the mutilated fingers on full show, gritted,

“So, your name?”

He gave a shrill laugh, well, more of a giggle, said,

“Good Lord, you sound like a cop.”

Daniel blurted,

“He’s not my father.”

Pause.

Now we had us a whole other interesting game of hurling. Instinctively he raised his fist and I said, real quiet,

“Touch the boy and I will fuck you over the side.”

Needless to say, this was something of a conversation killer.

The guy blurted,

“No need to get all het up.”

I asked, steel leaking all over my tone,

“What are you to the boy?”

Maybe I read it wrong but the boy seemed to be suppressing a smile. The guy offered his hand, said,

“We seem to be off on the wrong foot. I’m Stanley Reed, and I’m the boy’s uncle.”

In pedophile talk,
uncle
has a whole other connotation, and the guy suddenly realized that, tried,

“The boy’s mum is poorly and I’m taking him for a bit of a break to the Aran Islands.”

I stood up and he reached for my arm, pleaded,

“Please give me a minute,”

Looked at Daniel, added,

“Away from the boy.”

We moved out to a corridor but it was jammed. Between the cinemas, bowling, bingo, the place was a mini mall. We headed into the men’s room and

He started,

“You like hookers and margaritas?”

WTF?

Then,

“Who doesn’t, right? My treat?”

I asked,

“What the fuck is wrong with you? You think I want to go …”

Reached for the description,

“Do you want to party?”

Added,

“With you?”

He sighed, said,

“Guess not.”

Then sucker-punched me in the gut; it hurt.

As I bent over, he grabbed my hair, used his knee to break my nose, let me fall, and did a rapid series of vicious kicks to my head and face. In my head, Elton John was unspooling.

“I can see Daniel waving good-bye.”

Reed bent down, whispered in my ear,

“I paid good money for that little
cunt
, and you know what, hotshot? He is nearly too old for my taste already.”

Paused.

“How time flies when you are fucking …”

Another pause.

“… Sweetness.”