Different parts of her are twitching. It’s as though she has a low-level electrical current running through her body.
Deciding not to wake her up just yet, Bolger turns away again. He glances out of the window, at Mountjoy Square.
He wonders what Frank would have made of all this – or, if he wasn’t so unwell, the old man? What would he make of it? Politics was big in their house when they were kids. Liam Bolger was a local councillor for many years, and two of his brothers – Larry’s uncles – were in the trade-union movement. All of them were fierce party loyalists. Frank showed an interest from the beginning, and the old man encouraged him, took him to meetings, got him involved. Larry showed little interest, and if he wasn’t a disappointment to the old man, it was never exactly clear what he was. Frank, in any case, was the golden boy, and all of the family’s hopes for a successful political career – all of the old man’s hopes – were pinned on him. But then came that awful night… the trauma and grief of a fatal car crash, the horror of losing a son, the crushing blow of seeing your dreams die. Afterwards, in a desperate attempt to regroup – and with unyielding determination – the old man turned the spotlight onto his next son down.
Bolger closes his eyes.
There was a touch of that whole Kennedy thing to it, the royal succession, the passing on of the baton, of the flame - though over the years Larry has never been able to figure out if his relationship to Frank was more like Jack’s relationship to Joe Jr., or Bobby’s to Jack, or maybe even, and most likely, Teddy’s to Bobby.
He opens his eyes.
Just ahead is the Carlton Hotel, where he’s giving the press conference. He nudges Paula awake.
‘Oh… oh shit. Where are we?’
‘At the gates of hell,’ he says. ‘Look.’
She leans forward.
Dozens of reporters and photographers, jostling for position, are gathered at the entrance to the hotel.
Paula whips a compact out of her pocket, flicks it open and examines herself.
‘Oh God,’ she says, making a lame attempt to adjust her hair. ‘Look at the state of me.’
‘I wouldn’t worry about it,’ Bolger says. ‘I don’t think you’re the one they’re interested in.’
As the car pulls up at the hotel, the photographers and reporters surge forward.
‘Remember,’ Paula says, like a ringside coach slipping in his plastic mouthpiece, ‘you’re indignant about all of this, you’re bewildered, you’re hurt.’
‘Yes,’ Bolger says, nodding his head.
He takes a deep breath and reaches for the door. Then, as he steps out of the car and into a hail of clicks, whirrs and flashes, he repeats to himself, over and over, mantra-like, indignant, bewildered, hurt… indignant, bewildered, hurt…
2
It takes Gina no more than ten minutes to locate Mark Griffin. When she gets into the office that morning she sits at her desk, pulls out the phone book and simply looks up his name. There are six Mark Griffins and over twenty M. Griffins. She starts with the Marks. Most of the previous night she lay awake thinking about how hard this would be, anticipating all sorts of obstacles, dead ends, trails gone cold – but now she’s surprised at how easy, and obvious, it is.
With the first and second Marks she’s a little awkward in her approach, a little too direct, but by the third one she’s got it right.
‘Hello, may I speak to Mark Griffin please?’
‘Speaking.’
‘Hello. I hope I’m on to the right person. I’m, I’m looking for a Mark Griffin who lost family members many years ago in a road accident, I -’
‘No, no,’ comes the immediate response, ‘no, no, sorry… you must be looking for someone else.’
The next response, number four, is very different – a silence that goes on so long Gina eventually has to interrupt it.
‘Hello?’
‘Yes,’ the voice says, ‘I’m here.’
Gina swallows.
This is him. She can tell. She glances at her watch.
Ten minutes.
She didn’t think it would happen so fast, and now she’s not prepared. What does she say next?
‘Thank you.’
Thank you?
‘Look, who is this? Are you a journalist?’
‘No, no, of course not. My name is Gina Rafferty and I… I lost someone myself, two weeks ago, a brother, in a road accident, I…’
She doesn’t know how to proceed.
Then it’s Mark Griffin’s turn to interrupt the silence.
‘You have my condolences,’ he says, ‘really, but listen, I’m not a grief counsellor, I -’
‘I know, I know, and I’m sorry, but I do have a specific reason for calling you.’ She pauses. ‘I wonder if we could meet somewhere and talk.’
He exhales loudly and then says, ‘How did you get my name? How do you know about me?’
‘Can I explain all of that when we meet?’
Somewhat reluctantly he agrees, at first saying he’s busy and that it’ll have to be sometime later in the week. But then, as he flicks through what Gina imagines to be a diary or a notebook, his attitude seems to shift.
‘Look,’ he says, ‘what are you doing now?’
‘Now? This morning?’
‘Yeah.’ There is a new urgency in his voice. ‘In the next hour or two.’
‘Well… nothing, I suppose.’
‘OK then.’
They arrange to meet in a café on South Anne Street at eleven.
Before he leaves the house, Mark stops for a moment in front of the hall mirror. He looks awful. He didn’t shave this morning and his eyes are puffy. If it wasn’t for the Italian suit he’s wearing, he’d probably look more of a shambles. He doesn’t care, though.
He gets in the car and pulls out onto Glanmore Road.
It’s just after ten o’clock. Rush hour in Dublin never really ends, but if he’s lucky he should be able to make it into town in twenty-five, thirty minutes, get parking and be at the café on South Anne Street just before eleven.
He needs a little time to get his head together.
Mark has no idea who Gina Rafferty is or what she wants, but in the half hour since she called he’s come as close to having a panic attack as it’s possible to get without actually, technically, having one – the only thing holding it in abeyance, in fact, being a blind and unreasonable expectation that this woman, whoever she is, is going to be able to tell him something.
The traffic through Drumcondra is light enough, and once he crosses Tolka Bridge it loosens up even more.
Mark looks in the rearview mirror – at himself. His eyes are still puffy… and red and rheumy. This is the first hangover he’s had in a very long time. It was the first drink.
Half a bottle of Bombay Sapphire.
He’d resisted for days. But eventually there didn’t seem to be much point. It’d been so long since he’d had to confront head-on the reality of the accident – and it turned out to be more of a strain than he could bear, sifting through his memory like that…
The thing is, Mark thinks he can remember the crash happening, but the truth is he probably can’t. No doubt, in retrospect, his imagination has filled in a lot of the detail – provided colour, splashes of red, a wash of orange, a rotating blue light, as well as sound effects, screeches, screams, groans – but the reality of it all, buried deep somewhere in his subconscious and effectively inaccessible to him now, may have been quite different. What he can picture in his head, and what shows up unbidden every once in a while in dreams, is a serviceable version of the event. It may not be an accurate representation of what actually happened, but this ‘memory’ accords with the facts as they’ve been handed down to him, and anyway, it’s all he’s got.