We are on our way at last, though Ariadne keeps looking back fretfully: news of the sleeping-bag soaking has given a gloss of martyrdom to the zombie sit-in.
‘He’s wrong about Royal Irish,’ I tell her. ‘I just wrote a report for the government, advising them to wind it down. It will probably be announced in the next few days.’
‘How will they get their clothes and things dry in this rain?’ Ariadne says.
The beautiful sunset has gone, leaving a brooding gunmetal sky from which rain descends in fusillades. As we rattle back over the bridge, I review the situation. The zombie has taken the chapter in completely the wrong direction. I should never have let him speechify like that! I should never have let Ariadne go off-piste with the trolley! How can I get the story back on track? If only I had more bila!
We come back on to the IFSC side of the river, rumble northwards past boarded-up doors, broken windows, lowered shutters, roofless houses. We are probably only a couple of minutes from Transaction House as the crow flies, but my surroundings are quite unfamiliar.
‘This is where there used to be all the whores,’ Ariadne says, seemingly untroubled by the menacing ambience. ‘When is call Monto. You know the song?’
‘Song?’
‘Dave taught it to me. Now when the Tsar of Russia, and the King of Prussia, landed in the Phoenix Park in a big balloon …’
A fresh wave of paranoia rises up within me. Who is Dave? Is it the zombie? Or some other interloper?
‘In the nineteenth century, after the Famine, there was no work and no food,’ she is saying, ‘so all these women come here and sold their bodies to the British soldiers. They don’ have another choice, either they do it here, or they get on the ship’ — she gestures back in the direction of the river — ‘and sell it in America. Is funny, eh?’
‘Is it?’
‘Once is the biggest whorehouse in Europe, now is mostly turned into banks.’
‘Oh, yes, I see.’
She bows her head, then says in a lower voice, ‘My mum told me that since the IMF came, there are all these girls every night at the end of our street. Getting into cars with strangers. Girls I went to school with, some of them.’
‘Right,’ I say blandly. This avenue of conversation does not seem promising, romantically speaking.
‘So there is still money to fuck them, I suppose.’
‘I suppose there is.’
‘It’s so horrible what is happening there,’ she says, suddenly passionate. ‘There are people starving everywhere you go. People starving! On the streets of the city where I grew up! And the world acts like we deserve it! We didn’t drop cluster bombs on Baghdad! We didn’t blow up hospitals in Gaza! Now, because we don’ pay back some loans, we are the worst in the world?’
Trying to be optimistic, I tell myself that our misfiring encounter can’t possibly get any worse. But now we arrive at our destination and I realize I am wrong.
A straggling line of men stretches along the pavement. Some are slouched against the corroded wall, others slumped on the kerb, still others sprawled across the footpath, apparently asleep, so we have to steer the trolley around them. They are young and old, bald and hirsute, corpulent and lean as junkyard dogs. There are Roma men with tragic moustaches and pork-pie hats, gaunt Slavs with chilly eyes, a couple of burly Africans murmuring to each other in French; the majority, though, from their features and accents, appear to be Irish: men with wild sailor beards and bulbous, capillaried noses, cans of beer in toxic colours; skeletal, shiftless men with pinhead-pupils; sheepish men, better-dressed than the others, who chew their gum, clear their throats and study their phones, as though it were a connecting flight they were waiting for.
A palpable quickening runs through the line as Ariadne passes along it; some of the men leer, a few of them address her — not by name, more in the spirit of, ‘There she is now,’ ‘Howya gorgeous,’ as well as a less articulate array of grunts and gurns. We make it around the corner without incident, but then in the narrow lane one particularly sordid specimen lurches up and grabs her by the arm. Feverishly I try to remember the tiger-throw Marco taught us in the Transaction House gym — then realize the creature just wants to show her an abscess on his leg, which Ariadne tuts over sympathetically before going through a door.
We have entered a low, poorly lit hall. Men and the occasional woman sit eating at rickety trestle tables, or queue with their trays at the far end, where food sweats unappetizingly under heat-lamps. A dour fellow in a hairnet comes out from behind the counter and greets Ariadne. ‘Thanks,’ he says curtly, taking the trolley from her and parking it by the hatch.
‘How are things, Brendan?’ Ariadne asks.
‘How are they ever?’ this Brendan responds. He pauses, directing an unabashedly hostile look at me. ‘You’ve a new helper?’
‘His name is Claude,’ Ariadne says. ‘I have kidnapped him to show him how the other half live.’
‘This is the Crawley Street shelter,’ I say, realizing where I am. ‘My bank has done some fund-raisers for you. Raffles, fun runs, that sort of thing.’
‘Of course!’ Brendan exclaims. ‘It’s thanks to you we’ve been able to open our East Wing!’ He points behind him, though all I can see is a blank wall.
‘Ay, Brendan,’ Ariadne scolds.
‘No offence,’ he says, the choleric blaze in his eyes belying the words, ‘but you people have a lot to answer for. When there was money everywhere no one wanted to know about this place because we didn’t fit the big success story. Now the country’s broke they tell us there’s nothing left for us. Then next thing you hear they’re giving billions to the banks?’
He is trembling now; Ariadne lays a soft hand on his shoulder.
‘Calm down,’ she says. ‘What’s the use to get angry?’
‘Sorry,’ the hairnetted man says bluntly. Then, turning on his heel, he mumbles, ‘I’ll go and get yesterday’s vat for you.’ He stumps back to the kitchen, leaving Ariadne and me in a slightly strained silence, broken sporadically by bloodthirsty cries from the surrounding tables.
‘He is not normally like this,’ Ariadne says.
‘It’s fine,’ I say. ‘As I said, my bank is an investment bank, not a retail bank. So we are not the ones who receive these handouts he’s talking about.’
‘I meant, I hope he is all right.’
‘Oh, yes, of course.’
A noise comes from outside: a chorus of angry voices and a series of thuds. Brendan, who is wheeling out the scrubbed-clean double of the vat we just delivered, thrusts it aside and runs to the door, where a large black SUV has pulled up. Its appearance seems to have enraged the men waiting in line: they have surrounded the vehicle and are rocking it on its wheels, thumping the doors and windows while yelling abuse at the driver, a frightened-looking woman, who has a small child in the back seat. Brendan wades into the crowd, tugging bodies away and shoving them back. ‘Lads, lads,’ he shouts. With a screech of its wheels, the SUV promptly reverses, and manages to make it back out through the crowd, though not without more kicks and a few gobbets of spittle adorning the shining bodywork.
‘What’s she doin’, comin’ here?’ a small outraged man demands of Brendan. ‘What’s she doin’ in a fuckin’ yoke like that?’
‘Go in and have your food and stop annoying people,’ Brendan tells him. Then to us he says, ‘Her husband went bust. He’s done a legger. Bank’s kicked her out of the house, she and the kid have been living in that car for two weeks.’ He gazes bleakly into the cloud-mobbed sky a moment. ‘This place is fucked,’ he says, and without further comment returns inside.