“Sit down, Avery,” said an older officer, marching toward us and bringing an unappealing stench of four-day-old sweat with him. “No physical contact allowed.”
“But this man is my son!” cried Charles, appalled. “What kind of country has this become if a man cannot embrace his only child in public? Was it for this that Robert Emmet died? And James Connolly? And Pádhraic Pearse?”
“Take a seat or go back to your cell,” said the officer, who was clearly in no mood for a debate. “It’s your choice.”
“Fine, I’ll sit,” grumbled Charles, giving in as I took my place opposite him. “Honestly, Cyril, I’m treated like some sort of criminal in here. It’s beyond the beyonds.”
He’d grown old since I’d last seen him—he was well into his mid seventies by now—but he wore the years well. He’d always been a handsome man, of course, and his good looks had stayed with him into old age, as they so often do with undeserving men. The only surprise was the gray stubble that lined his cheeks and chin. As long as I had known him, he’d been scrupulous about shaving, condemning men with beards or mustaches as socialists, hippies or reporters, and I was a little surprised to find that he was not sticking to his morning routines in prison. Also, he smelled a little and his teeth looked more yellow than I remembered them.
“How are you anyway?” he asked, smiling at me. “It’s good to see you at last.”
“I’m fine, Charles,” I said. “I would have come before if you’d invited me.”
“No need to apologize,” he said. “I don’t get too many visiting orders and when I do I tend to send them to old friends and young women. But they all seem to be dying off now. The old friends, that is; the young women just don’t show up. And then one day your name popped into my head and I thought, Why not?”
“I’m touched,” I said. I’d only seen him a couple of times since my return to Dublin three years earlier, so we weren’t exactly close. Once was when I’d run into him in Brown Thomas on Grafton Street and when I went over to say hello he mistook me for a shop assistant and asked me did I know where the handkerchiefs were kept. I pointed him in the right direction and he went on his way. The second time was at his trial, when he asked me to bring some shoe polish and a Cornetto in to him in his remand cell the next morning.
“So how’s prison life?” I asked. “Everything going all right in here?”
“Well, I haven’t been raped by a gang of multi-ethnic bank robbers, if that’s what you mean.”
“It wasn’t what I meant at all,” I said.
“I suppose it’s not too bad, all things considered,” he said. “It’s not like I haven’t been in here before, and things have improved a lot since the last time. I have my own television set, which is wonderful, as I’ve grown quite addicted to Australian soap operas and wouldn’t want to fall behind.”
“I’m glad to hear that you’re spending your time usefully,” I said.
“Actually, I think I might go to Melbourne when I get out of here. It looks like a nice place. Full of drama, beautiful beaches and pretty girls. Do you watch Neighbors, Cyril?”
“Well, I’ve seen it,” I admitted. “Although I wouldn’t go so far as to say I watch it.”
“You should. It’s magnificent. Shakespearean in its characterization.”
“Anyway, I’m not sure if Australia allows convicted criminals in,” I told him.
“If I have to, I can always give the immigration people a little backhander,” he said with a wink. “Everyone has a price. I’m sick of this country. Time to start again somewhere fresh.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “So it looks as if you didn’t learn anything from the first time you were in here,” I said. “And you’re learning nothing this time either.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked. “What should I have learned?”
“That we have a little thing called income tax in this country. And that you have to pay it. Or they lock you up.”
“Well, as it happens,” he said dismissively, “I know all about the tax laws and on this occasion I don’t believe that I did anything wrong. Last time around I admit they had every right to put me behind bars. I was earning a lot of money in the forties and fifties and squirreling most of it away without paying a single penny to the government. Bloody fascists, all of them anyway, feathering their own fascist nests. Although if you ask me, a case could be made that Max Woodbead was the real culprit back then. He was the one who thought of all the angles and gave me such bad advice. How is old Max anyway, I wonder. Do you ever hear from him? I sent him a visiting order a few weeks ago but I’ve heard nothing back yet. Do you think he still holds a grudge against me for all that business with Elizabeth?”
“I doubt it,” I said. “Max has been dead for almost ten years now, so I imagine he’s past caring. Didn’t you know that?”
He scratched his head and looked a little confused. I wondered whether his mind was starting to play tricks on him. “Oh, yes,” he said finally. “Now that you mention it, I think I did hear something about him dying. Poor Max. He wasn’t a bad sort, really. He married up, which every intelligent man should do. I married up several times. And then across once or twice. And then beneath me. I never quite found the right level somehow. Perhaps I should have married diagonally or in a slightly curved direction. But Elizabeth was a great beauty, that’s for sure. She had it all: class, money, breeding and a fine pair of legs.”
“I remember,” I said, for it was certainly from his mother’s side of the family that Julian had got his looks. “You had an affair with her.”
“We didn’t have an affair,” he said, the word emerging like something crude on his tongue. “We just had sex a few times, that’s all. An affair implies that there are emotions at play and there were none. Not on my part anyway. I can’t speak for her. I suppose she’s dead too, is she?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Everyone’s dead,” he said with a sigh, before sitting back in his seat and staring up at the ceiling. “Poor Max,” he repeated. “It’s a shame that he died before he got a chance to apologize to me. I’m sure he would have liked to.”
“For what?”
“For landing me in here first time around. And for punching me in the face when I was in the middle of bribing a jury. That really didn’t help my case. If I remember right, his son was one of your lot, wasn’t he?”
“My lot?” I asked, frowning. “What lot are my lot?”
“A gay.”
“Julian?” I said, almost laughing at the absurdity of the idea. “No, he wasn’t at all. He was one hundred percent straight.”
“That’s not what I heard. Didn’t he get…you know…” He leaned forward and whispered. “The AIDS.”
“It’s just called AIDS,” I said. “Not the AIDS. And you don’t have to say a gay either.”
“Well, whatever it’s called, that’s what he died of, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said.