Stay Put
By sean mcnulty
- 352 reads
The way back from the bogs was not as undisturbed as the way in. Geary spotted me and called me over to the small candlelit table in the darkest part of the pub where he and Jane were sitting in the company of another. Out of overwhelming niceness in my heart, I went over.
First thing Geary said to me: 'Ah, Pascal, how are things? Still out of work?'
Bastard Geary.
I nodded and made like it wasn't a bother on me at all.
The man sitting with them offered a mysterious vainglorious vision of flair. He was wearing a fancy black homburg hat like someone out of a period American gangster epic, and he kept it dipped over his eyes even as I came to their table, not even lifting his head to acknowledge me. He looked a little older than the rest of us, by just a few years.
'How have you been, Jane?'
'I'm fine,' she said.
It used to be that Jane was always first one to make a greeting with me, but now something was different. Maybe that was my fault for not being quicker off the marks, I don't know, but she always got in there first. I was struck by this now. When a relationship came to a standstill or a defined conclusion, battle-lines were hastily etched into the turf. Jane was on the other side now, being one of Emer's closest friends, but at least she gave me the courtesy of replying.
'Oh, have you two met before?' said Geary. 'Probably not. This is Mickey Douglas, Pascal.'
'Nice to meet you,' I said to the man.
Mickey Douglas raised his head casually and showed off his carefully positioned vintage moustache. His face didn't seem to move much with that moustache on, he kept his face steady so as not to mess it up.
'Likewise,' he said.
'Are you the Michael Douglas who painted Erotic Vortex that's in the front room?'
He nodded like a proud unmoved superstar - there was acknowledgement, but a singular reluctance to pay the recognition any heed.
'Cool. I really like it. Very interesting work. Are you by any chance a relation of James Douglas? (This question just came out like a slippery bullet as I knew no-one else in Dundalk with the surname Douglas, and first meetings for me were always awkward, like grabbing at butterflies until I caught one.)
The same proud superstar nod was Mickey's response.
I didn't see what there was to be proud about. James Douglas was a local TD, always solidly left-wing in his politics, but like others who gained their ground during the economic boom and who found a place to sit in the establishment, he seemed to get easily sucked into the shadowy world of backroom commerce and clandestine ascendancy, and far from the world of the people. His most controversial moment came with the Fane Ghost Estate, a hamlet of 25 unoccupied houses built along the River Fane just outside Knockbridge. These estates were littered about the country. Large residential areas that were built at the height of boom-time by enterprising businessmen but remained hollow of heartbeats. They were called Ghost Estates not because they were haunted by the ghosts of people. Haunted suggested a lived-in history. But no lives ever graced the dusty cement floors of these buildings. They were haunted by something else, perhaps the ghosts of prospect and capital in the nation, wide-eyed financial planners and contractors conducting eternal spectral dealings on their phantom grey sofas in their grey flake living rooms. Douglas was caught up in it as one of his best friends had been the man behind development of the Fane Ghost Estate and Douglas had been instrumental in moving the planning permits along smoothly with the local authority as a favour to his friend. Though Douglas was never found to be responsible for any malfeasance, he would always be held in suspicion by the general public for his relationship to the episode, viewed in a shade of corruption, especially since his friend the developer would later fuck off to South America with whatever assets he still had to escape criminal charges. Douglas would return to his role as a prominent TD without further discussion, and with a deliberately bolstered leftist agenda to win his public back. There was so much corruption in Irish politics during this time that even some immoderately immoral offences were quickly forgotten.
'He's my brother.'
'Wow,' I said. 'That's cool. He's a good man usually.'
I was careful how I used 'usually' in that last sentence. If I'd paused before saying it, it would have implied I was referring to Mr. Douglas's well-known past, but by dropping it into the sentence without a change in intonation, there could be no darker allusions declared, and not a hint of provocation.
Geary here tells me you are a fan of Da McNamee?' Mickey Douglas continued.
'Oh, Geary's been talking about me?' I said. 'That's great.'
I really was pleased in a desperate kind of way. I'd always felt so very remote from Emer's social circle that the thought of me being discussed by any of them, whether it was good or bad, gave me some joy.
'Yeah, I've always been interested in him.....sure he's like Dundalk's William Burroughs, isn't he?'
'One of his 'things' is in the toilets,' said Mickey. 'Did you see it?'
I'd spotted one of Da McNamee's scattered quotations when I was looking at the graffiti on my recent onanistic venture, I was so used to looking out for and reading his work in every conceivable nook and cranny of the town that it hadn't made an impression on me. I'd seen the same line many times before anyway.
'Oh, yes. 'Stay put, an end will soon be along to relieve you.''
'I don't know why you like him,' said Mickey. 'Da McNamee was an absolute charlatan.'
I'd heard the word 'charlatan' used before to describe McNamee.
'I don't know, I've always been intrigued by him. Not just his work, which there isn't much of, to be honest, but his life too.'
'All I know is that he hung around this town for years promoting himself as some underground genius, when all the time he was just an untalented, uneducated scumbag drug dealer. That's how he died, you know. The IRA got him for drugs.'
'I've heard that before, yeah. I don't know. Some people still say he never died at all.'
Da McNamee had met with my thoughts again just a few days earlier. I'd been coming out of the library (where I'd spent half the day on page 1 of Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate while shooting looks over at Kate the librarian when she came into view) when I bumped into John Carroll outside the church at Roden Place. I only ever saw John Carroll in this section of Dundalk. By St. Patricks, by the museum and library, by the solicitor's offices. Or in McManus's pub which was close by. He never appeared anywhere else. I frequently spotted him in this area even though he lived quite far away in Ardee. I wondered that maybe he'd discovered a portal that started in Ardee and opened out onto this part of town. In the car park outside the church at Roden Place. He told me he'd found portals before. For Greece. And Sri Lanka. Maybe Roden Place, Dundalk, was too far-fetched and he didn't think I would believe him if he told me.
'Pascal, you'll never guess what?' he said, running up to me.
'Hey John, what's the story with you?'
'I think I found 'The Cooley Parallax.''
'Shit....what?'
The Cooley Parallax was apparently the title Da McNamee gave to his stylised reworking of Tain Bo Cualigne.
'I think I found a copy.'
'Where? Here?' I asked, pointing at the library nearby, and the town museum next to it.
'No, in the hospital. There's an old schizo in there and there's a load of junk under his bed which the nurse told me were his only belongings in the world. Well, I was mopping up some spillage there a few days ago and I had a quick look under the bed. One of the first things I saw was a big hardback notebook, you know, like the sort of thing we had to get for Science classes at school, and on the front of it, it said Cooley Parallax. The writing was really small inside, but there was lots of it. Before I got to read any of it, the nurse came in, so I had to put it back and return to the slop.'
'That's.....incredible,' I said. It didn't make any sense, but I had so much interest in Da McNamee that a ready-formed faith greeted the news. 'I'd love to see that.'
'I will try to get it. But I'll have to be careful. The old man goes through the stuff sometimes.'
'Who is he?'
'I just know him as Muckian. That's the name on the sheets, and that's what we call him. But I don't know anything else about him. Next week I will look for a good time and plan the operation to steal it. Or borrow it. Jackercrack timing is required. Once I get it, I'll come straight to town and pass it onto you. I can get here very fast.'
The thought of being privy to Da McNamee's legendary masterpiece excited me no end. I imagined telling Emer all about it. She'd heard me jabbering on about McNamee for years. Look, Emer, I have it. Finally. The Cooley Parallax. I'm the only one.
'Have you been in touch with Emer?' I asked Jane.
'I have, yeah,' she said, in a less than affected way.
'I haven't heard a word from her in ages.'
'I wouldn't worry. I'm sure she'll be in touch. Or you'll bump into her.'
'Right. How is she?'
'She's grand. Not a bother.'
I could hear Bao's voice around the corner in the front room of the bar. It was loud and drunk and rapturous. I decided to finish chatting with these headwreckers and return to the others up front.
'I should get back in there,' I said to them. 'I've more important people to be talking to.'
I said this with a laugh, and they of course got the joke, but once I had left their presence, it encouraged a conversation between the three of them regarding my manners, my class, my character, my intelligence. Which of course was my intention.
- Log in to post comments
Comments
Gripping, I wonder is written
Gripping, I wonder is written in the Cooley Parallex? Intriguing.
- Log in to post comments