The Last Four Days of Paddy Buckley (20 page)

6:45 p.m.

I
f there was a running motif throughout my brief life, it would be the close and present nature of death. I'd known it intimately from the start. My mother's when I was four, my father's when I was thirty-three, and, of course, my wife's and unborn daughter's when I was forty. And there'd been plenty more along the way—aunts, uncles, friends, acquaintances, never mind Lucy's and Donal's and the few thousand other funerals I'd attended. It seems there are two types of deaths: the ones your heart goes out to and the ones your heart gets pulverized by. By its very nature, death gives pause for thought on the essence and brevity of life, but when it calls close to home and we're submerged, heart first, into the depths of grief, and the questioning and processing and ultimate accepting it necessitates, the worldview we held previously can often be dismissed out of hand while we're rewired for life without the love we took for granted, or even treasured. There were times during my grieving when I wanted to go myself, when I pondered at length the likelihood of being struck down by a sudden heart attack or the dreaded cancer or by a brain hemorrhage like Eva's to the point where I looked forward to it, even invited it in. But no matter how dark the days got, no matter how miserable and lonely and scared I was, taking myself out was never really an option. That was the Almighty's job.

In terms of exiting the dream, my father's death was probably the easiest. He'd been driving back from Brittas Bay in his van along a hedge-lined road when an oncoming car towing a trailer half a foot proud of the car's width had pulled out to accommodate a pedestrian and clipped the van in the process, sending Shay sailing through the windscreen, landing thirty yards up the road. It was an instant death, thankfully, but it robbed the world of the pleasure of maybe twenty more years of his inimitable and marvelous company. And placed me next in line for the reaper.

The last time I saw my father alive was in Perrin's yard, where he'd been playing chess with George. They'd had a game going for thirty years, always playing beside the potbelly stove under the shelter of the garage, where they'd smoke their cigarettes and drink coffee. It was a Saturday and I'd dropped in a hearse for a spray job, and there I found him, happy as he always was, leaning over the board, puffing on his smoke—Major extra size. The way he looked that day is burned into my memory forever: He wore a thick black fisherman's cardigan over his brown suede waistcoat with the navy flat cap I'd bought him in Skibbereen, and when I remember him smiling from behind the chessboard, it's his playful wisdom I remember etched into every crevice of his face. I stayed for a cigarette and a chat, never knowing it would be our last. It was nearing the end of that particular game, which was a close one, and everyone's focus was on the last few moves.

“God plays chess and the Devil plays poker,” he said, while moving in for mate. “God's game is the one: strategy, positioning, control; you can play poker and win, but the Devil will get you in the end.” It was the last thing of any note he said to me. I stayed for the rest of my smoke, kissed him on his head, and walked back to Uriel Street. The following Tuesday he was dead.

The places I could go in Dublin now were few, and I had only a handful of hours left to me, so I'd driven to Esker to Eva's and my parents' grave to gather myself for my exit. Sitting on the edge of the sandstone slab while the light faded, I felt closer to death than perhaps I ever had. Closer to Eva and to Shay and to the mother I never really knew. It was perhaps because of my hunted status that I remembered the fox my father used to feed in our back garden at nighttime and how he tamed him over a six-week period. I'd seen him do the same thing with the wild cats in Gallagher's yard, having them literally leap into his arms by the time he'd worked his charms on them.

As a boy, I'd go to bed each night in our house on Arnott Street in Portobello and watch my father from my bedroom window tending to his radishes and carrots and French beans. On a clear night in the spring I turned twelve, I saw a fox stop on top of the seven-foot wall at the end of our garden and look down at my father, who stilled himself and returned the fox's gaze. For five minutes, they stayed like that, the silent intimacy between them a communion only they could understand. The fox moved on then, unhurried, but returned a few nights later to repeat the exchange. And again the next night, and the night after that. Until it became their nightly ritual. After a couple of weeks, Shay brought out a plate of cod's liver and nibbled on it himself during their little meeting. After a few nights of this, he stood up and extended a bit of food in his hand to the fox, whose desire to taste what he'd only been able to smell for three nights trumped his caution, and gingerly bringing his snout down to meet Shay's fingers, he carefully ate the cod's liver out of Shay's hand and continued to lick his lips and whiskers for ten minutes afterwards. For three weeks, this was as close as the fox would let him get. And then one night, after Shay had stopped reaching out to him but had kept the plate of food on the ground beside him, the fox crawled down the wall like a big cat and licked the plate clean and stuck around afterwards to get his chest rubbed. In the end, Shay had succeeded in gaining the fox's trust so completely that the animal would come into the kitchen and eat pieces of cured meat out of his hand. Whatever it was about him, my father had the same effect on nearly every living being.

Though the tide of death may well have been sweeping close and my hunters closer, I didn't want to die yet. I wanted to make it to London. I wanted to see Brigid one more time. I wanted to get away from the never-ending stream of corpses and coffins, and from all the details that constantly reminded me of what I'd lost. To where I could venture into the unknown, reinvent myself, and rise again.

Cemeteries, as junctures of wounds and remembrance, tend to bring up memories of what's been lost, and my greatest loss, of course, was Eva. As I readied myself to leave behind Dublin, the memory of Eva sitting under the Mickey Mouse clock in our kitchen at six on the morning she died stirred inside me. I'd woken to find the space in the bed beside me empty—she was heavily pregnant and her sleep patterns had become erratic—so I ventured downstairs and found her in the kitchen stirring a bowl of black tea. There she sat: white nightie, swollen belly, no makeup—just natural, beautiful, unadulterated. I sat down opposite her and placed my hand over hers and watched her slip a sugar cube onto her tongue and suck it.

“The baby is making me remember funny things,” she said to me, a little regretfully.

“What kind of things?”

“The bad things I've done.” I massaged her perfectly proportioned hands in mine, and felt her long nails and soft olive skin.

“Come on,” I said. “How bad?”

“I was a thief,” she said.
“Une voleuse.”

I couldn't help smiling at how adorable she was. “What did you thieve?”

“I was fourteen.
Maman
had got me a job for the summer with a friend of hers who had a cleaning company in Nantes. And I worked with those women for two months. They were older than I was, and they were kind.” She took her hand back and slipped her thumbnail between the gap in her teeth while her eyes became glazed with shame. “It was a Friday and everyone had been paid the day before. I was in the locker room on my own and I saw the money sticking out of the bag of one of the women, in her locker. It was locked, but the door was bent at the top, and I knew I'd be able to reach the money. It was, how do you say, a wad?”

“A wad,” I said, nodding.

“I didn't need it and I hadn't thought of stealing before I saw it, but it was an impulse inside me so strong, I couldn't resist. I checked that there was no one, and then I stuck my fingers in and took it. It was nearly two thousand francs, a week's wages for the woman who had worked hard for it on her hands and knees.”

“Did you get caught?”

“Before the end of the day, I came into the little kitchen for the cleaners, and the eight women were sitting at the table, looking sad, like they knew I had taken it. And the woman who I'd stolen it from, Madeleine, she looked terribly betrayed. I acted like an innocent and asked what had happened. My mother's friend told me, very serious, and they all looked to see my reaction. And I continued my act of innocence, and there were no more questions for me. But everyone knew. I am sure of it.”

“What happened in the end?”

“Nothing happened. I finished working there two weeks later, and it faded into my past. But I never forgot it completely. And now today I wish I could say sorry to Madeleine and give her the money back. I feel terrible, Paddy,” she said, with tears forming in her eyes. I took her hand in mine and kissed it and told her how admirable her sense of contrition was. Twenty-two years after her crime and her guilt still haunted her. Her remorse stopped her from stealing again and had probably helped shape her beautiful, compassionate character, but any chance she had of making amends to Madeleine went to the grave with her that very same day.

Eva wasn't a subscriber to any scripted faith, but rather listened to her heart, which informed her principles and moral code of love and tenderness and empathy and kindness. So I'd organized her a simple unpolished oak coffin without any handles, and instead of a crucifix, I painted two love hearts with sealing wax, one on the breast of the coffin, the other where her womb would be, and stamped them with my fingerprints. In lieu of a church, I held her service outside under the octagonal roof of the Phoenix Park bandstand in the handsome little hollow she loved so much with its crooked white benches and naked winter trees. The attendance and outpouring of sympathy were enormous—Eva would have held her hands to her face with astonishment—and we all cried together to the music of Damien Rice and the poetry of Séamus Heaney and Patrick Kavanagh and Charles Bukowski. Little did I know then what dreams were still to come.

The night had returned and had brought the rain along with it, giving rise to a mist coming up from the cemetery soil like upward tears from the dead. I kissed the gravestone goodbye and wandered back towards the car, my heart trying to balance the trepidation I felt with the sliver of hope I clung to and the lust for life that my parents had instilled in me.

7:55 p.m.

M
y dream of Hampstead was a perfect one, full of delightful restaurants and cafés and bookshops and well-educated people with exquisite English accents like Lucy's and sophisticated senses of humor. I'd discover what culture was to Brigid's artist friends over delicious food at intimate dinner parties, and Brigid and I would walk on Hampstead Heath, holding hands, confidants and lovers, neither of us with any family left but only each other to hold. In the morning, I'd wake her with croissants and coffee, and I'd taste every part of her, and we'd spend whole weekends making love. We'd go to Camden Town and Covent Garden and to art galleries, and we'd take trips to Scotland and have weekends away in Oxfordshire, and England would embrace us and our golden silences. I could reach and touch this vision of England. If only I could cheat the Devil and escape quietly.

I parked on Lamb Alley and stepped out of the car into a drizzling and balmy night, and smelled the hops from Guinness's on the breeze, reminding me of the pints I'd had with Brigid only the night before. I smiled while thinking if there ever would be a next time to sink a pint, it would be in Hampstead, a thought that gave me great excitement.

Just before I turned the corner to Uriel Street, I noticed a blue Subaru just like Richie's parked behind a battered yellow skip. I walked over and looked in the window. There was nothing to tell me it was his, and there were plenty of blue Imprezas around the place, but even still, the excitement in my belly was gone and in its place was a bowel-curdling dread. I checked my watch. It was a minute to eight.

I gingerly crossed the road and made my way into An Capall Dubh, which was filled with the usual punters drinking pints, watching greyhound racing on the television.

“Paddy,” said Gerry, with a nod while pulling the pints.

“Gerry,” I said, and skipped up the stairs to the Gents. I closed the door, turned off the light, and locked myself in the cubicle. I stood up on the toilet and peered out through the little square window into the front office of Gallagher's, which was empty and in darkness. Craning my neck slightly, I could see the parlor door was ajar, and I was barely able to make out the outline of a man standing in profile. Whoever it was had hair. Probably Richie. Then I saw a spark and a flame and Richie's brow lighting up as he sucked on his cigarette, and just beside him for the brief moment the flame was alive, I saw a face full of malice: Vincent's.

I slid down to a seated position on the toilet while my lungs deflated and I grabbed hold of my hair; my dreams of London dead like a flicked match.
Fuck it.

Christy, who'd never been late in his life, was undoubtedly in there. With Cullen. It was all over. My time was up. But even though it was my time, I couldn't let it be Christy's. His loyalty and first-rate friendship had got him into the ugliest fix in Dublin, and it was all my fault. I could only plead mercy for his life. It was the only card I had.

I shuffled out of the toilet and plodded slowly down the stairs with legs of cement. Vincent wasn't going to let Christy go and I was kidding myself if I thought he might. He'd only give me Christy's life if I had one to bargain with, and mine didn't count—it had to be one he didn't want to kill.

The cheering from the bar at the TV sent my focus to the slow-motion replay of the winning greyhound crossing the line, chasing the hare, and in a sanctified moment of serendipity, the answer presented itself like an ace being slipped to me right from the dealer's hand: the dog.