“He said your name, Alice. Your name was the last word he spoke.”
“I loved him so much,” she said quietly, looking away. “From the time we were children, he always looked out for me. He was the best friend I ever had. And I don’t say this to be cruel, Cyril, but he was so good with Liam. Our son couldn’t have wished for a better father figure. He’s still not over it, you know. Well, neither am I, really. I never will be. But Liam is suffering very badly.”
“Can we…” I began, unsure what was the best way to phrase this. “Can we talk about Liam?”
“I suppose we have to. That’s why we’re here after all.”
“Not the only reason,” I said.
“No.”
“Do you have a picture of him?”
She thought about it for a moment and reached into her handbag, taking a photograph from one of the side pockets and handing it across to me.
“He looks like him, doesn’t he?” she asked quietly, and I nodded.
“He looks like how he looked when we were teenagers. They’re very alike. But there’s someone else there too.”
“Who?”
I frowned, shaking my head. “I’m not sure,” I said. “There’s something in his expression that reminds me of someone, but for the life of me I can’t think who.”
“He isn’t like Julian in temperament, though. Liam is much more quiet. More reserved. Almost shy.”
“Do you think he’d be interested in meeting me? Would you allow it?”
“No,” she said firmly. “At least, not until he’s eighteen. And I’d ask you to respect my wishes. He has his exams coming up and I don’t want anymore trauma in his life right now. He’ll be eighteen in a year’s time and you can see him then.”
“But—”
“Please don’t argue with me, Cyril.”
“But I want to see him.”
“And you can. When he’s eighteen. But not a day before. Tell me you won’t go behind my back on this. You owe me that much at least.”
I took a deep breath. She was right, of course. “All right,” I said.
“And there’s one other thing,” she said.
“Go on.”
“When you meet him, from the first day that the two of you talk, you have to be completely honest with him. No lies. You have to tell him who you are. You have to tell him everything about yourself.”
Which is what I did. One year later, ten days after his eighteenth birthday, when Alice introduced us for the first time and we went for a walk along Dun Laoghaire pier together and I told him the story of my life from the day that I had come downstairs in the house on Dartmouth Square, the house in which he now lived, to find his Uncle Julian sitting in the hallway, through to the world that had slowly unfolded for me and the realizations I had had about myself. I talked to him about why I had married his mother, why I had left her and how badly I felt about what I had done. I talked about my life in Amsterdam and New York, about Ignac and Bastiaan. About how he had been killed by a group of thugs who had seen us embracing in Central Park and how nothing had ever seemed quite as bright for me since. And through it all he listened and barely spoke and seemed shocked at times, embarrassed at others, and finally, when we parted, I went to shake his hand, but he refused it and walked off to catch the DART back into town.
In the two years between then and now he had thawed a little toward me and we saw each other occasionally, but there was still nothing like the affection or love that I imagined should exist between a father and son, and while he didn’t seem to want me to leave his life—he never picked a fight, for example, or attacked me for not being a part of his childhood—he seemed unwilling at the same time to allow me to involve myself in it either, appearing distrustful of me on the occasions that we met, which were few and far between.
But then this, I told myself, was the bed that I had made for myself. There was no one else that I could blame.
“Goal!” roared Jimmy and Liam together in the eleventh minute as Ray Houghton hit a shot past the head of Pagliuca and the ball landed in the top right corner of the net. The whole of Doheny & Nesbitt’s exploded in cheers, pints were knocked over left, right and center and there was much hugging and dancing around. The two boys embraced each other, jumping up and down in delight, but I stayed where I was, smiling and applauding, feeling unable to rise to my feet and behave as others were doing and not just because I would have looked ridiculous with my crutch.
“We’re going to win this,” said Jimmy, practically hovering off the stool in delight. “The Italians are too cocky by half.”
“Will you be going on celebrating somewhere if we do?” I asked, and Liam turned to look at me.
“We will,” he said. “But you can’t come with us. We’ll be out with our uni friends.”
“I never asked to come with you,” I said. “I was only asking, that’s all.”
“And I was only saying.”
“All right.”
And we left it at that and turned our attention back to the screen. The players were coming to the sidelines now and asking for bottles of water. The heat was too much for them. There was war on the pitch, Jack Charlton running on and complaining to the referee, substitutes pacing up and down in frustration. It looked as if the thing was going to end badly for everyone.
Date Night
I had given no thought to romance since Bastiaan’s death and so it came as something of a surprise to me when I got asked out on a date. The man in question—fifteen years younger than me and quite attractive, which did my ego no harm whatsoever—was a TD in Dáil éireann and a regular user of the library, unlike most of his colleagues, who generally sent their assistants down to do their donkey work for them. He’d always been quite talkative and friendly but I had put this down to an affable temperament on his part until the afternoon when he inquired whether I was doing anything that Thursday night.
“Nothing that I know of,” I said. “Why, do you need to use the library late?”
“Oh Christ, no,” he said, shaking his head and looking at me as if I was half mad. “Nothing like that. I just wondered whether I could tempt you out for a drink, that’s all.”
“A drink?” I asked, unsure whether I had heard him correctly. “How do you mean?”
“You know. Two people sitting down in a bar. Having a couple of pints and a chat. You do drink, don’t you?”
“I do, yes,” I said. “I mean, not to excess but—”
“So how about it?”
“Do you mean just the two of us?”
“Jesus, Cyril. I feel like I’m negotiating an EEC treaty here. Yes, just the two of us.”
“Oh. All right then. Where were you thinking of?”
“Somewhere discreet,” he said.
“What does that mean?” I asked, and perhaps that should have been my first clue that our night out together would not end well.
“Do you know the Yellow House in Rathfarnham?” he asked.
“I do,” I said. “I haven’t been there in years. Would somewhere in the city center not be easier?”
“Let’s go to the Yellow House,” he said. “Thursday night. Eight o’clock.”
“No, that’s the night of Mrs. Goggin’s retirement party.”