I nodded, my face grave. He asked,
“Will you be visiting regularly?”
“Absolutely, to be sure your prognosis is right.”
His head came up, a challenge in his eyes, said,
“I can tell you, Mr…? I didn’t get your name.”
“I didn’t give it.”
“Ah, well, I can assure you it’s very unlikely the patient will ever be mobile again.”
I stared at him, made some medical noises of my own, then,
“I’m going to take that as a promise.”
Downstairs, the main hall was hectic with activity. The last time I’d been here, I had the disastrous meeting with Ann Henderson. I went to the café and saw they were advertising every type of designer coffee. I ordered a cappuccino without the chocolate sprinkle. The girl said,
“You mean latte?”
“If I wanted latte, you think I wouldn’t have ordered that?”
She gave me the look. After Buckley, I could take it and she backed off, got the coffee and, to coin a vigilante phrase, “charged me an arm and a leg”. I found a free table, sat down. The radio was playing Keith Finnegan fielding a discussion on the use of Shannon Airport by the American troops. Then he said listeners had requested a song by the Dixie Chicks from their new album Home, a track about Vietnam but just as relevant to Iraq. I was listening to that when a porter approached, launched,
“I hope you’re not even considering smoking?”
He’d taken me completely by surprise and I went,
“What?”
“This whole area is a no smoking zone.”
He was fired up, ready to rock ‘n’ roll. I recognised him but couldn’t find a name. I said,
“I don’t smoke.”
How odd that sounded. He wasn’t buying, snapped,
“I remember you, in the corridors, smoking in the alcove.”
I let out my breath, asked,
“Do me a favour, pal?”
“Favour, what favour?”
“Fuck off.”
He did.
The Dixie Chicks lingered in my head as I walked down by NUI. Students were milling round the canal, and I thought of the dead girls. It didn’t seem like I was ever going to solve that. At the church, I paused, stared at the stained glass windows. They didn’t provide any inspiration. I muttered,
“Windows. Just coloured glass.”
I returned to the hotel. Mrs Bailey, looking frail, almost delicate, was near swamped in paperwork. Though I wanted to be alone, to go into myself and basically sulk, I stopped, asked,
“Are you OK, Mrs B?”
She raised her head and it pained me to glimpse her skull through the thinning hair. That grieved me so. I noticed the profusion of liver spots on her hands and could only hazard a guess at her age. Someone had attempted to perm her hair and made a shocking mess, as if half way through they decided,
“Fuck this, it’s a shambles.”
And it was.
She said,
“I don’t want to burden you, Mr Taylor, what with your recent loss.”
I wanted to agree, slip away to my room, but I stayed, asked,
“How about I buy you a drink, a big fat warm whiskey, with cloves, sugar…hell, we’ll shoot the works.”
She smiled like a young girl for a moment, almost flirtatious, and I realised how much she meant to me. Course, my mother’s death had left me vulnerable, but this woman had stood by me through all manner of shit storms. Each time I got sober or clean then crashed, she never judged me. Kept a room always available. When I fucked off to London, to Hidden Valley, and came literally limping back, she welcomed me.
Top that.
She asked,
“Who’ll mind the desk?”
I indicated the paperwork, said,
“With some luck, it will be stolen.”
She was sold.
Came out from behind the desk and, lo and behold, linked my arm. No one links you like a Galway woman. I felt…gallant? How often are you going to see that description? I moved towards the door and she protested, went,
“Oh no, I don’t go out any more.”
“What?”
“It’s too dangerous.”
I couldn’t argue with that; it was bloody lethal out there, I had the limp to prove it. She added,
“Anyway, if I’m going to have a drink, I’d prefer to give the custom to myself.”
Despite the length of time I’d been at the hotel, I think I’d only ever once been in the bar. The don’t-shit-on-your-own-doorstep syndrome. My kind of pub though: dark, smoky, old, lived in. Serious drinkers had drunk very seriously here. You could feel the vibe, the one that whispered,
“If you want fancy drinks, fuck off.”
This was your pint of plain and a ball of malt, and if you needed that translated, you were definitely in the wrong place.
“While the grave was being opened the women sat down among the flat tombstones, bordered with a pale fringe of early bracken, and began the wild keen, or crying for the dead. Each old woman, as she took her turn in the leading recitative, seemed possessed for the moment with a profound ecstasy of grief, swaying to and fro, and bending her forehead to the stone before her, while she called out to the dead with a perpetually recurring chant of sobs.”
J.M. Synge, The Aran Islands
There was no one tending the bar. In Ireland, you find the strangest items in pubs, but an unmanned counter isn’t one of them. I looked at Mrs Bailey and she said,
“I’ll do it.”
I had to ask,
“Doesn’t anyone actually work it?”
She gave a deep sigh, said,
“We have a fellah, but he tends to be his own best customer. We don’t have much business, so I usually do it myself.”
I marched her to a table, sat her down, bowed, asked,
“What would Madam care to imbibe?”
She was delighted, went,
“Something sweet.”
I glanced back at the dusty but well-stocked shelves. I said,
“Might I suggest a schooner of sherry?”
She shook her head, said,
“That’s an old woman’s drink. I don’t want to be old for a minute.”
And who could blame her? I said,
“Crème de menthe?”
She clapped her hands, said,
“Perfect.”
I went behind the bar and stood transfixed, an alcoholic in front of the guns. All the lethal boyos were up there, optics in place: Jameson, Paddy, Black Bush. In jig time, I could have a double up, gone and walloped. I looked at Mrs Bailey. She wasn’t clocking me. From a ream of newspapers on the table before her, she’d selected the Galway Advertiser and was flicking through it. I poured her a large, got a Galway sparkling water for myself and left twenty euro on the till. No free drinks this day. Went over and sat opposite her, raised my glass and we clinked. I said,
“Sláinte amach.”
“Leat féin.”
She took a delicate sip, said,
“That’s great stuff.”
We savoured a moment of silence, not uncomfortable, then I asked,
“What’s troubling you, Mrs B?”
She folded her hands in her lap, then,
“They’re squeezing me out. Developers, creditors, a whole crowd of them. I’m sinking and I’m afraid I’ll have to sell.”
One more Galway institution to be drowned beneath progress, everything decent and fine and, yes, old was being demolished. She asked,
“Did you know they are going to cut down the trees on Eyre Square?”
“What?”
“They say they’ll replace them.”
She gave a strangled sound, added,
“I don’t understand it. You cut down healthy trees and then replace them?”
She was lost for words till she near exploded.
“ ’Tis blasphemy!”
I’d caught the aroma of the crème de menthe. Sure it was sweet, but the underlay of alcohol was as strong as loss. I got a massive compulsion to leap the counter, put my mouth under an optic and squeeze till doomsday. I shuddered and she laid her hand on mine, a gentle touch, asked,