Along Dorset Street then and left toward the Mater Hospital, and even as I approached the jail I felt in uncommonly good spirits, for it was one of those fine mornings where one just feels happy to be alive. Seven years had passed since that terrible night in New York when I had lost the only two men I had ever loved within an hour of each other, six years since the trial, five since I had left the States forever after half a dozen operations on my leg, four since I had returned to mainland Europe, three since I’d come back to Dublin, two since Charles’s arrest for fraud and tax evasion and one since he found himself back in jail and had finally reached out to me in the hope of a little filial assistance.
At first, I had been deeply unsure about returning to Ireland. Throughout my years of exile, I had often longed to explore the streets of my childhood once again, but it had seemed like an impossible dream.
However, as things turned out, I felt immeasurably happy to be back and somehow glad that my years of travel were behind me. And I even found work in one of my old haunts, in the library of Dáil éireann on Kildare Street, a quiet study area rarely frequented by the TDs themselves but more often populated by parliamentary assistants and civil servants searching for answers to questions that their ministers might be asked later that day in the chamber.
It was in Dáil éireann, in fact, that I encountered a figure from my past, Miss Anna Ambrosia from the Department of Education, alongside whom I had worked for a brief period during the mid sixties. Miss Ambrosia, it turned out, had gone on to marry her Jewish boyfriend with the non-Jewish name, Peadar O’Múrchú, and produced half a dozen daughters, each of whom, she told me, was harder to control than the last. Her career had prospered in the intervening years and at the age of fifty-three she found herself the senior civil servant in the department, a post once held by Miss Joyce. We recognized each other immediately on the morning she called into the library and arranged to meet again during my lunch break, when we went upstairs to the tearoom to catch up.
“Guess how many ministers I’ve had to contend with in my years at the department?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Eight? Nine?”
“Seventeen. A bunch of thickos, every one. Half of them are completely illiterate and the other half can’t do long division. There seems to be some irony to the fact that the least intelligent member of the government always seems to end up running Education. And you know who has to make them look good, don’t you? Muggins, that’s who. Who was the minister when you worked here, do you remember?”
I mentioned the man’s name and she rolled her eyes. “That lunatic,” she said. “He lost his seat at the next election. Didn’t he punch you in the face when he got caught with his pants down?”
“No, that was the Press Officer,” I said. “Happy memories.”
“I don’t know why I’ve spent so long there, I really don’t,” she said wistfully. “Maybe I should have traveled like you did. You must have had a great time of it all the same.”
“Good days and bad days,” I told her. “You never thought about leaving then?”
“I thought about it,” she said. “But you know what it’s like, Cyril, with the civil service. You get your foot on the ladder and you’re set for life. And when they changed the rules to allow married women to stay on, I felt like doing it just to prove a point. Anyway, with six children, Peadar and I needed the money. I’m not complaining, I’ve been happy here for the most part. Except when I’ve been completely fucking miserable.”
Out of the corner of my eye I could see a young waitress running into the room and looking up at the clock in a panic—she was red-faced and late for work, I assumed—and as she made her way behind the counter, another familiar face from the old days, the manageress of the tearoom, emerged from the kitchen area to give her a scolding.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Goggin,” said the girl. “It was the buses, they’re always so unreliable and—”
“If that’s the case, Jacinta, then you might be a bus yourself,” came the reply. “Because your unreliability is on a par with that of the number 16.”
Miss Ambrosia—Anna—watched the ensuing dressing-down and grimaced. “That woman is not to be crossed,” she said. “She rules this place with a rod of iron. Even Charlie Haughey was frightened of her. She threw him out one day when he put his hand on a waitress’s backside.”
“He came into the library the other day,” I said. “I’d never seen him in there before. He looked around in amazement and said, I think I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere.”
“Somebody should save that line,” said Anna. “They could put it on his gravestone.”
“Mrs. Goggin must have been here for donkey’s years, all the same,” I said. “I remember seeing her here when I was just a boy.”
“She’s retiring soon,” said Anna. “Or so I’ve been told. It’s her sixty-fifth birthday coming up in a few weeks. Anyway, tell me all your news. Is it right what I heard about you? That you ran out on your wedding day before you could say I do?”
“Where did you hear that?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t remember. Gossip spreads quickly in this place, you know that.”
“Well, it’s half true,” I admitted. “I got through the I do part. I waited until the reception to make a run for it.”
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” she said, shaking her head and trying not to laugh. “You’re some bollix.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“Why did you do that?”
“It’s a long story.”
“And did you never marry again?”
“No. But tell me,” I said quickly. “Whatever happened to the other pair we worked with, Miss Joyce and Mr. Denby-Denby? Do you stay in touch with them?”
She put her cup down and leaned forward. “Well, therein lies a tale,” she said. “Miss Joyce lost her job after she had an affair with the Minister for Defense.”
“No!” I said in surprise. “She always seemed so straight-laced!”
“Oh they’re the worst ones. Anyway, she was mad as a hatter for the man but of course he was married and when she got a bit clingy and wanted more than he was willing to offer he saw to it that she was paid off and kicked out of the service. She wasn’t a bit happy about it, I don’t mind telling you, but what could she do? The ministers had it all their own way back then. They still do for the most part. She tried to sell her story to the papers but they didn’t want to upset the poor man on account of him having a family. The Archbishop intervened with the editor of the Irish Press.”
“And what happened to Miss Joyce afterward?”
“Last I heard she’d moved down to Enniscorthy to open a bookshop. And then I heard she wrote a song that almost made it to the Eurovision Song Contest. After that, I heard nothing more.”
“And Mr. Denby-Denby?” I asked. “What about him? I presume he’s retired by now?”
“Well, that was a very sad story,” she said, lowering her eyes, her smile fading.
“Why, what happened?” I asked.
“I suppose you didn’t keep up with the Irish papers when you were away, no?”
“Not very often,” I admitted. “Why?”
“Oh it was a terrible business,” she said, shuddering a little as she shook her head. “He only went and got himself murdered.”
“Murdered?” I said, and perhaps my voice rose a little high, for I noticed Mrs. Goggin glancing over at me, although when our eyes met she looked away.
“That’s right, murdered,” repeated Anna. “Of course, you know he was one of them, don’t you?”
“One of who?” I asked innocently.
“One of them.”
“Them being…?”