“I don’t mind.”
“It’s just that I remember you, from when you were here before. You always reminded me of someone I knew years ago. You have the look of him.”
“Someone you were close to?” I asked.
“Not really,” she said, looking away. “An uncle of mine, that’s all. A long time ago.”
“I remember your son,” I said. “How is he these days?”
“My son?” she asked, looking up sharply with a frown. “What do you mean?”
“You have a son, don’t you?” I asked. “I met you both in a coffee shop once, more than twenty years ago now. You probably won’t remember. It was the morning I was getting married, so it’s burned into my memory. I can’t remember his name, though, and—”
“Jonathan.”
“Oh, yes. He was a precocious little fellow, as I recall.”
She smiled. “He’s a doctor now. A psychiatrist. He got married himself only a few weeks ago to a lovely girl, Melanie. They’ve known each other since they were children.”
“Do you have others?” I asked.
“Other what?”
“Other children?”
She paused for a moment and shook her head. “No,” she said. “And how about you?”
“I have a son,” I told her. “Liam. He’s twenty.”
“Well, that must be nice for you.”
I shrugged a little, uncertain why I was confiding in her. “We’re not very close,” I said. “I wasn’t there for him when he was growing up and he resents me for it. It’s fair enough but I don’t seem to be able to bridge the divide between us, no matter how hard I try.”
“Then you must try harder,” she said. “Make sure to keep him in your life, that’s what’s important. Don’t ever lose sight of him.”
The doors opened and a group of TDs came in, their voices loud and arrogant, and she stood up with a sigh.
“Well,” she said. “I better get back to it. I’m sure I’ll see you in here regularly now that you’re back with us.”
“You will,” I said, watching her as she walked away, and for some reason our conversation lingered in my mind now as I arrived at the gates of Mountjoy Prison. I showed my passport and my visiting order to the officer on duty, and he read it carefully before telling me to take off my jacket and shoes and walk through a metal detector, but all the time I was thinking of Mrs. Goggin and the way she had looked at me, and I felt a strange urge to continue the conversation with her at another time.
The ’Joy
As it turns out, a prison waiting room can be a great leveler of people, with relatives and friends of inmates from every social class gathered together in varying degrees of outrage, shame and bravado. I took a seat toward the rear on a white plastic chair nailed to the floor and tried to ignore the smell of antiseptic in the air. A carving on the right arm of my seat informed me that “Deano” was “a dead man” while the left added that the same Deano “sux cock.” On the wall facing me, a poster displayed an image of a cheerful police officer, a jovial young man and an almost hysterical older woman standing next to each other under the slogan We Can All Get Through This Together! in what I could only assume was an ironic statement on the prison experience.
Glancing around, I noticed a young woman in a shell suit struggling with a small child whose hair was cut into a Mohawk with green frosting at the tips to complement the series of avocado-colored hoops that pierced his left earlobe. Unable to control him, she turned her attentions to a baby who was mewling like a possessed cat in the pram next to her.
“You have your hands full there,” I remarked, giving her a sympathetic look as the older boy ran over the empty seats and stopped before various people, turning himself into a human rifle and letting rip at his unsuspecting victims, a trick he had presumably learned from his incarcerated father.
“Fuck off, ya ol’ pedo,” said the woman casually.
I took the hint that she and I were not going to bond and moved to a different part of the room, next to a lady around my own age who looked absolutely terrified to be in such an awful place. She held her handbag tightly in her lap and her eyes scanned the room back and forth as if she had never seen such awful specimens of humanity in her life.
“Your first time here?” I asked, and she nodded.
“Of course,” she said. “I’m from Blackrock.” She looked at me meaningfully. “There’s been a terrible misunderstanding, you see,” she continued after a few moments. “A miscarriage of justice. I shouldn’t be here at all and nor should my Anthony.”
“None of us want to be here,” I said.
“No, I said I shouldn’t be here. They have my son locked up but he didn’t do anything at all. He’s always been a very decent young man.”
“Do you mind if I ask what he’s been charged with?”
“Murder.”
“Murder?”
“Yes, but he didn’t do it, so don’t look so shocked.”
“Who is he supposed to have murdered?”
“His wife. But there was no real evidence, other than fingerprints, DNA and an eyewitness. Also, for what it’s worth, my daughter-in-law was a horrible girl and had it coming to her, if you ask me. I’m not a bit sorry she’s gone. She wasn’t from Blackrock and I told Anthony that he should marry locally.”
“Right,” I said, wondering whether I should move again. “Is he on remand then?”
“No, he’s serving life. The trial was a few months ago. I’m going to speak to my TD about it and see what can be done. I’m sure if I just explain things they’ll realize their error and let him out. What about you? What brings you here?”
“My adoptive father is in for tax evasion,” I told her.
“That’s a disgrace,” she said, sitting up straight and sounding positively appalled. She clutched her handbag closer as if there was a risk that I was going to steal it. “Sure we all have to pay our taxes, do you not know that? You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“Why?” I protested. “It’s got nothing to do with me. I pay mine.”
“And what do you want, a medal? If you ask me, prison is too good for tax evaders. They should be strung up.”
“And what about murderers?” I asked. “What should happen to them?”
She shook her head in annoyance and turned away from me, and I was relieved when a handsome young prison guard came into the room carrying a clipboard and called our names one by one, directing us along a corridor toward an open-plan room where we all took our seats behind small white tables with numbers inscribed across the top. A few minutes later, a door opened at the front of the room and a group of men in woolen jumpers and gray slacks trotted in, their eyes scanning the room for people they knew. I was a little surprised to see Charles waving at me with unbound enthusiasm and when he approached me and I stood up to shake his hand I was even more shocked to find him pulling me into his arms in a tight hug.