Are they filming his life – twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week?
Obviously not. That’d be absurd.
But the thing is, they may as well be.
Because Dermot is now painfully self-conscious about every single thing he does. He can’t move or speak without feeling ill at ease. It’s as though he’s been cast against his will in some nightmarish reality TV show – but no one has explained to him what the rules are or who’s producing it.
Nevertheless, he’s been playing along. He drops Orla and Niamh off at school every morning. He goes into the office. He works. He comes home. He hasn’t uttered a word to anyone about the report – which he has also deleted, along with an early draft of it and any relevant emails. He hasn’t got into a conversation with anyone about Noel Rafferty. Nor does he have any intention of doing so. Because these fuckers have his balls in a vice grip and he’s not going to give them the slightest excuse to tighten it.
‘Oh my God,’ Claire says, ‘that is delicious.’
He looks across at what she is having. ‘How are the scallops?’
‘Yeah,’ she says, ‘they’re fine.’
Fine? Whatever.
Dermot smiles thinly across the table at his wife. He has told her more lies in the past two weeks than in all the rest of the time they’ve known each other, which is the best part of twelve years. He has lied about work, about money, about his state of mind.
He lied to her earlier today about why he wanted to take her out to this overpriced two-star Michelin restaurant. He said he wanted to make it up to her for being so moody and hard to live with recently. But the real reason was that he wanted to send them a coded message. Originally, he’d had a grander gesture in mind – he wanted to go straight out and blow all the cash on a new car, a Mercedes SL or a Jaguar, something that screamed, Hey, I’m not shy about spending your money, I’m not conflicted, I’m in. But he couldn’t have explained it to Claire. The bonus he’d lied about getting at work wasn’t that big.
So he figured, in the meantime… dinner at Cinq.
And some jewellery.
He bought her an expensive pair of earrings and a chain the other day – mainly to be seen buying them – but he hasn’t had the nerve to give them to her yet.
He nods at her plate again. ‘Well, they look nice.’
‘They are. Jesus. I didn’t say they weren’t. Here.’ She skewers a scallop up and holds it out to him. It’s almost like a challenge. ‘Try one.’
With both forks held high, they make the transfer. It’s an awkward manoeuvre, and slightly combative-looking. Dermot places the scallop at the side of his plate.
A waiter then glides up to the table and asks them if everything is all right.
‘Yes,’ Dermot says, smiling up at him, ‘wonderful, everything, thank you.’
‘Yes,’ Claire says, ‘thank you.’
After the waiter has gone, Dermot says, ‘The service here is great, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah.’
It’s the more abstract lies that he hates, though – the emotional lies, trying to pass his fear off as despondency, trying to make it seem as if he’s burned out and needs a change of scene.
That stuff is really hard to maintain.
Because Claire isn’t stupid. Far from it. In fact, from the look she’s giving him right now, he even thinks she might have her suspicions about what’s going on.
At some level, anyway.
‘Dermot,’ she says, and shrugs, ‘I’m not sure what’s happening here, the weird behaviour… Australia, this.’ She spirals a forefinger in the air to indicate their immediate surroundings. ‘I’m really not, but -’
‘Yeah?’
Now he hopes she has her suspicions, and that she’s smart enough to work it out, because he’s getting desperate here. He needs to be able to share this. He looks her in the eye, willing her to see, to understand.
‘- the thing is,’ she says, and hesitates.
‘Yeah… yeah?’
It’s almost as if he’s panting.
‘Look, I hate myself for even asking you the question,’ she goes on finally – and all of a sudden his heart sinks – ‘but, I don’t know… are you having an affair or something?’
Five
1
On the way into town from Dublin Airport the next morning Larry Bolger skims through the statement he’s going to be making at a press conference in twenty minutes.
Paula is slumped in the seat next to him. She has fallen asleep and is snoring lightly. Bolger himself hasn’t slept in over thirty-six hours and probably won’t for at least another twelve.
On the plane, he revised the statement endlessly, each time making amendments, but now he’s more or less satisfied with it. On Saturday he issued a bald statement from Chicago denying all of the charges. This is merely a clarification of that denial with some specifics thrown in.
But it’s the Q &A part of the press conference that he’s dreading.
It’s not that he’ll have a problem answering any of the questions they throw at him – he won’t – but getting tied up in Jesuitical knots over his personal finances, justifying expense sheets and unauthorised credit-card use – it looks bad. It’s undignified and will dent his credibility.
Of course, he’ll do his level best to turn things around by focusing on what the trade mission accomplished and by constant use of the phrase ‘going forward’, but they, the media, will drag it back – inevitably, inexorably – to the race meetings and the assignations, to what he ordered from room service on such and such a date… to the betting slips and the Cristal and the lobster and the porcelain veneers.
It will be a war of attrition.
He looks out of the window to the left. They pass the Bishop’s Palace and approach Binn’s Bridge.
He hates the media. Some of the stuff they dug up in the papers yesterday was despicable. Two of the articles he saw online went as far back as Frank’s accident and even included archive photos of the crash scene.
He shakes his head.
They’re a shower of bastards.
Because of them, as well, he now has to explain to his wife and daughters what he was doing five years ago with some woman they’d never heard of until last week. He has to work on convincing the party that he’s not a loose cannon. He has to maintain his composure and pretend to his supporters that his chances of taking over as leader haven’t been seriously compromised.
He can’t begin to imagine how all of this is looking from the fifth floor of the Wilson Hotel. According to Paddy Norton, who phoned again yesterday evening, no one’s been in touch about it yet – though of course they will be.
Bolger looks down and straightens his tie.
It has certainly raised his profile here, though. Nationally. Bolger is in the cabinet and gets interviewed a lot, he’s well known, but this level of name recognition is something else again. It’s the kind most politicians only ever dream about.
That is, of course, if you accept that there’s no such thing as bad publicity.
They take a left at Gardiner Street.
Beside him, Paula is muttering something. He turns to look at her. She’s still asleep.
‘… but my phone isn’t charged… yes, I know… nine point seven…’