“Here.”

He held it in his hand, said,

“You took a risk.”

“You know me, Jeff, Mr Sail-Close-to-the-Wind.”

He pinned it on his shirt, said,

“ ’Preciate it.”

Upstairs everybody was hugging the baby. Cathy was watching with a wondrous expression. I asked,

“Everybody’s doing OK?”

Cathy smiled, said,

“Never better.”

Spent the afternoon there. I managed some slow pints, nothing major. I’d have crawled into a bottle of whiskey, but they’d have murdered me. So, took it easy. Cathy made stew that tasted terrific. Laura asked,

“How did you learn this, you’re English?”

“Well, I put everything in, heavy with the meat and potatoes, then I almost overcooked it, and Jeff said…add poitín.”

She pronounced it like a woman from Connemara. In my life of turmoil, it is so rare for me to be part of a domestic scene. Not that I didn’t want it. I did, but I wasn’t prepared for the small acts of devotion that lead up to it. My nature is essentially selfish, and to participate in family life you have to make room for others. Too, I’d mastered the art of sabotage. To paraphrase Oscar, each alcoholic destroys the image he craves. I wanted to be able to get drunk when I wanted and read till dawn if I wanted and wasn’t able to make the jump to forgo such things for the sake of company. And yet, how I yearned to be different. To sit in the warmth of family and just be easy. But that day, I was lucky. I knew how much I appreciated the moment. Thank God, I didn’t have to wait for the verdict of hindsight. The storms, ever present on my chart, seemed less threatening. As we were leaving, Cathy, unwittingly, verbalised the death knell, said,

“We should do this more often.”

I knew, sure as shooting, we never would. The awareness blunted but didn’t erase the glow. Laura linked my arm as we walked to Hidden Valley. She asked,

“Did you like the CD?”

Jesus, I’d completely forgotten her pushing the packet into my hand. I’d stuffed it in my jacket and never given it another thought. I said,

“I didn’t want to open it till we were together.”

“Oh, you’re so romantic, Jack.”

Yeah, right. I warned,

“The house is in a state.”

“Was it…him?”

“No, it was yahoos.”

The house was spotless Not a sign of the chaos. Even the bookshelf was stocked, even if it seemed to be all of McBain’s eighty publications. I said,

“Wow!”

“Jack, the house looks great.”

“Sure does.”

I couldn’t believe Keegan had restocked the bookcase. That impressed the hell out of me. I’d check the titles later. Joy is so random, you have to ration it carefully. I said,

“Let’s have a drink.”

“Let’s go to bed.”

“Let’s do both.”

We did.

It was good. No doubt, I was improving. I’d never be a hot gasp lover, but I was definitely focusing. What I lacked in expertise, I was compensating with energy. Lying in bed, I opened the Zhivago bag, looked at the CD, went,

“Oh, my God.”

She sat up alarmed,

“You don’t like it?”

It was Just Another Town by Johnny Duhan. I said,

“I love it, but it opens a box of memories I don’t know am I able for.”

Back in ’82, I was still in uniform, dating a girl from Boher-more. Man, I played that album to death. A track, “Shot Down”, was the very breath I inhaled. The girl would say,

“Are we having a Johnny Duhan day?”

Were we ever? And more than any decent person could bear. Over the dark years, I’d keep pace with each Johnny album. As his songs deepened, I spiralled ever down. Before the girl dumped me, she said,

“Don’t get me wrong, Jack, I like sad songs, but you…you need them.”

I knew she was right. There has never been an occasion when, if I encountered a brass band, I didn’t want to weep. Freud that. Later, when the CD was playing – I mean later, as in weeks on – and Sweeper was in the kitchen and “Just Another Town” was playing, he said,

“That’s the first time I ever heard my upbringing in a song.”

I gave him the thing, what else could I do? In the terrible months of soul darkness when these events had concluded, I went and rebought the whole Duhan catalogue. Only Emmylou Harris reaches me thus.

Back to the moment with Laura, I shook my head as if that would erase the memories, said to her,

“You couldn’t have got me anything better.”

“I was going to buy Elvis. Do you like him?”

“Hon, I judge people on whether they like him or not.”

She gave the most radiant smile. Times are now, I wish I’d never experienced her happiness. The pit opens and I rush headlong. She said,

“I wrote you a poem.”

I didn’t know how to respond, went for,

“You write?”

Trying to keep the astonishment from my voice. Shaking her head, she said,

“Oh, God, no; just this one.”

She reached over to her bag, took out a pink sheet of paper, handed it over solemnly. I opened it with a stone heart, mantra-ing,

“No, this will not touch me in any way.”

Read:

The love that hurts.

By

Laura Nealon, Galway, Ireland.

That first piece had me full fucked and I still had the poem looming. Focused.

My love I have lost

The love from the west

I long for the night

The night that will come

Upon my pillow I will lie

My love beside

I long to touch

The love to watch

At your side

I love to breathe

I love to kill

By my love’s side

I wish to lie.

I don’t know much, but I knew I was going to need strong drink soon and a whole shipful. I said,

“It’s terrific.”

“I won’t write any more, it was just to…”

“Thanks a lot.”

After a while, she asked,

“Was your wife very smart?”

“She left me, how smart can you get?”

She let that dance, said,

“Cathy said she went to college.”

Cathy had a big mouth. I said,

“Yes.”

“To do what?”

Jeez, on top of the poem, I was perilously close to bluntness, said,

“A doctorate in metaphysics.”

She bit her lower lip, said,

“I don’t know what that means.”

I relented, said,

“Hon, the places I’ve been, the places I’m likely to be, it wouldn’t buy you a dry spit.”

She mulled that over, then,

“I’m not sure what that means either, but it makes me feel better.”

Sleep was creeping up on me. I said,

“Get some rest, hon.”

“OK, but in my job I make tons of money. I’ll give you some.”

Jesus!

She was gone early next morning. I had what they call an emotional hangover. Would settle for the booze variety any day. Leastways, you knew how to deal with it. An envelope had been pushed through the door. Opened it cautiously: a wedge, whole stack of large denomination. A note:

You’ll be short, don’t be.

Sweeper.

His handwriting was superb. Almost as if he’d used a quill; shit, maybe he had.

One of the first lessons you learn as a guard is hard men. They don’t teach this in the manual. You learn it on the streets. Every town has its quota. They are hard in the true sense. Ruthless, unyielding, merciless. Unlike the pub version, they don’t advertise their mettle. There’s no need. It’s in the eyes. The ones I’d encountered all shared one trait: a granite fairness. Never mind that it was their take on it, they stuck by it. Bill Cassell. Isn’t that a hell of a name? Nobody, and I emphasise nobody, ever cracked wise about the dictionary. He was a hybrid, a Galway mother and a father from hell. Bill had a fearsome reputation. The guards kept their distance. I’d gone to school with him. For years, he’d taken numerous beatings till he grew, and then he dished them out. Every teacher who’d ever thrashed him got a reprisal. Later, rather than sooner. He was a man of infinite patience.