6

Whenever he is introducing a guest speaker in the assembly room or at a conference, Sharkey makes sure to slip in some reference to his Alma Mater. Debating a point of minor importance, he might laugh and say: ‘Well, you’ll understand, if I seem picky: Harvard does leave its mark.’ At other times when he wants to put down recruits, straight out of the Smurfit School of Business and oozing self-confidence, he might comment in a throwaway manner: ‘Of course, the Smurfit is fine so far as it goes, but it’s not … well, we had a different perspective in Harvard. Best brains in the world.’

This exaggerated claim is at variance with the reality: soon after graduating from Trinity, he had completed a three-month course at the Harvard Business School. ‘My research thesis’, as he refers to it, was a booklet he brought out during that period of study.

One of his American ideas, relatively new to Dublin, is to introduce a chill-out day. It means wearing casuals, such as sports shirts, on the last Friday of the month. ‘You guys,’ Sharkey says in his email, ‘might find this somewhat ott. Not in Cambridge, Mass.’

The day after the meal in La Méridienne is ‘chill-out day’. Apart from the odd exception – a country chap new to Nat Am who had turned up in the red of the Cork Gaelic football team – all wear rugby shirts. And even though the only game some of them would have played was soccer in the nearest green space to the swathes of semi-detached houses in which they grew up, they learned quickly that the rugby shirt, like the Merc, was a statement.

Unless he had meetings with developers, Sharkey appeared in the colours of his old school, Belvedere College. Step by step, he had made it to the Jesuit school through the persistence of a mother, full of country ambition, who had badgered her husband to get weekend work in The Cat and Cage pub, even though he was jaded from working long hours in Lemon’s sweet factory. The added income enabled her to put a down payment on a house off Griffith Avenue: here she was relieved to be away from ‘the riff-raff of the city’ and among ‘people who are making something of themselves’ – Guards, shop-owners and teachers.

Although he now joins the chorus that condemns the Christian Brothers as sadists, he had done well in the Brothers’ school. For months before the examinations, Sharkey, along with other clever boys, was given free tuition each Saturday; then, after the Intermediate Certificate, in which he got third place, his mother went straight to the Rector of Belvedere.

That chill-out Friday evening, Philip decides against going with the others to Doheny & Nesbitt’s; instead, he would take the dart to Auburn, and maybe get Sam to join him for drinks and a bite to eat at one of the restaurants in the village or at Robin Hill. And while there, he would confirm arrangements for the American Evening. But as he is lifting his briefcase off the desk, he realizes that it is her Spa weekend with the girls.

Thoughts of being on his own dishearten him. So, instead of going to catch the train for Howth, he decides to make the most of the fine evening, get a taxi into town, stroll along the quays and then grab a burger in Temple Bar.

The weekend crowd of younger bankers has already gathered outside pubs in Ballsbridge. Froth from their half-drunk pints clings to the glass; cigarette smoke carries in the light breeze. A man calls out to a woman passing by on the footpath: ‘Krystle later? Save the slow ones for me, babes.’

She releases a high-pitch laugh, and slackens her pace.

Playing with a set of keys, the man is on a roll and he knows it. ‘Got my new Harley. Some power there. You should try it some time. I’ve got an extra helmet.’

‘I’ll take you up on that.’

At Tara Street, Philip gets out of the taxi, crosses Butt Bridge and saunters along Custom House Quay. Reflection from the glass towers by the quays is casting a sickly shade on the slow-moving waters of the Liffey. With time on his hands, he intends to take a look around the International Financial Services Centre, but the stark figures of the Famine Memorial stop him in his tracks. They stand out against the glass and chrome cathedrals, as if a rogue artist had planked them there to challenge the gods of pride and money.

Images from his student days flood his mind. He is back a quarter of a century to nights when old men were clasping ragged bundles and shuffling out of dark alleys to the white van parked near Baggot Street Hospital.

With Father Tom, he is distributing soup in paper cups while Sam and other students give out slices of buttered bread. Steam from the cups rises in the night air; the men wolf down the bread and, crouched against the hospital wall, nurse the soup with both hands buried in their tattered coats.

Joey’s comical grin takes shape in his head: Joey who was found frozen to death one January morning outside Haddington Road Church. They skipped lectures at Belfield, packed into the same white van and travelled with Father Tom to the Paupers’ Grave in Glasnevin.

A cloud descends upon Philip, something to do with the memory of a time when he would improve the lot of misfits and no-hopers, make a difference – McKeever’s motto. We pass this way but once. But he scolds himself for his gloomy thoughts: many have genuine cause to be low-spirited – cancer patients, those like Joey, those in dead-end jobs. Even if the light is going out in his marriage, he has had a good education, lives in a splendid house, and has a well-paid job. He doesn’t suffer from the depressions you hear so much about nowadays. A school friend, who had a thriving medical practice in Terenure, went off down to Ennis one Friday evening. In a hotel room, he wrote out directions for his funeral, swallowed a bottle of pills, and lay on the bed waiting for his appointment with oblivion.

Despite an appeal to reason, Philip fails to banish the albatross that has perched on his shoulder. He thinks about phoning Ellen, and searches for his mobile. ‘No one knows, so we’re hurting no one’ had been her argument that last night in a Bayswater pub. Why is it so good with her, but not with Sam? Can’t remember the last time … He runs his eye down along the jaundiced Liffey waters, avoids the Famine Memorial and turns his steps towards the centre of town.

‘No terms and conditions need apply,’ Ellen had joked soon after their affair had flared up.

But the tide turned, as they both knew it would: terms and conditions slowly but surely crept in. ‘I’m just your piece on the side. For fucking. Wham bam, thank you, Ma’am,’ she had said when they’d been drinking and she wanted to meet more often. ‘I go back to an empty apartment; you return to the bosom of your family.’

‘We both agreed: no strings attached.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous – people always expect.’

He puts away his mobile.

Set free from drudgery, the city is teeming with weekend promise: trolley cases rattle on the pavement, as girls rush to Connolly railway station. Others are absorbed in the world of their mobile phones. With paint stains on their jeans, men with broad Slavic features and sallow complexions are hopping onto buses. A pink stretch limousine pulls up while Philip is waiting at the junction of D’Olier Street and Fleet Street. Young women have their heads out the car windows and are screaming. ‘Shag, shag, shag’ in a mindless sing-song way until the lights turn green. ‘Shag, shag, shag.’

One of them, with heavy mascara and dark eyeshadow, and wearing a bridal veil, eyeballs him as the limousine is moving off. ‘Hey, Mr Hot Shot Businessman, want to come to a party?’

Another one of them cuts in: ‘Briefcase, do you want to fuck?’

Crossing D’Olier Street, he can still hear the shouts, ‘Shag, shag, shag’ fading in the distance. A little woman, with a small white terrier looks up at him, smiles and puts her hands up to her ears. Two hefty female Gardaí are having a great time, getting their photograph taken with a group of American tourists.

A waitress finds Philip a table in The Elephant & Castle and, while waiting to be served, he glances through the window. Across the way in a lane, a young man, unsteady on his feet, is leaning against one of the walls; suddenly, a rope of green vomit erupts from his mouth and slides down the wall to the cobblestones. When he is finished, he wipes his mouth with his sleeve, shuffles out to the street and disappears from view. The waitress, who has returned with Philip’s burger, follows his gaze.

‘Is it always like this?’ he asks her.

‘Oh, all times.’ She forces a smile. ‘And later, many later, oh, yes, and very noise.’

The evening rush for home is well over when he arrives at Tara Street dart station where his train is almost empty. A teenage boy and girl enter, and as soon as they settle themselves in the seat facing the few passengers, they start necking and making wet sounds with their open mouths: their smacking lips and giggles are loud in the silence of the carriage.

When the carriage shunts and the train moves off, the young woman begins to stroke the back of the lad’s head, and then straddles him, causing her summer dress to slide up her rounded thigh. His tongue searches for the inside of her mouth; they exchange teasing smiles, whispers, and laugh at some shared secret.

At Fairview, a priest with severe eyes and a tracery of veins on his nose and cheeks enters. Dressed all in black and carrying a breviary, he removes his hat to show a head of dyed brown hair that stands out against the deathly pallor of his neck.

When the train is moving out of the station, the couple start up again, now more eager than ever. The priest glances at them, and clears his throat; throwing him a look of contempt, the young woman whispers in the lad’s ear. They laugh.

Apart from seagulls on a food mission to the fishing boats and declaring war on each other, the road up from the station is deserted: everyone is at a party, raising their glasses, laughing and playing music. Pewter clouds hang over The Sleeping Giant. Remnants of the evening lodge in Philip’s head as he climbs the hill: the couple in the train, the green vomit, and the screaming girls in the garish limo.

He needs to talk, at least, to clear his head, and considers the golf club, but Friday night is music night, to entice members to the bar: the last thing he wants is the blare of loud music.

As he told Clifford later, he was on the point of phoning him to chat over a shot or two of whiskey that might take him away from derivatives, share prices, net worth and the bond market. And leverage – always leverage.

But no sooner has he turned the key of his front door than he hears loud sobbing coming from the den. He drops his briefcase by the hallstand and treads lightly to the open door to see his daughter Zara curled up on the couch before the home cinema screen, her feet drawn up beneath her, her head sunk into her chest. She remains like that when he walks slowly into the room and sits beside her.

After a while she looks up at him, then her head sinks again; she starts to rock herself. Over the years he has grown well used to her fits of crying: whenever she didn’t do well in an examination, or when someone else in the class is the teacher’s current pet, or she has been excluded from a game in the school yard. Experience tells him he will have to be patient until she is ready to talk.

After a lengthy silence, broken only by her sobbing, he ventures: ‘Zara, what is it?’

‘I’m so dead.’ Her cheeks are smeared with eyeshadow.

‘How, love? Tell me.’

She turns away.

‘It often helps to talk,’ he says in a low voice.

‘Please, Dad; please don’t ask me.’

‘You might feel better.’

‘No, I wouldn’t.’

He waits for her to recover, and, eventually, she sits up, reaches for a tissue on the low table, and blows her nose.

After some time, when she has stopped sobbing, he happens on an idea. ‘Let’s go for a walk around the Head with the dogs. We can treat ourselves to a Beshoff’s, and pick up a dvd. How about that?’

She brightens and, once again, he is seeing his ten-year-old driving back in the car after they had been tapping a ball over the net at the tennis club. She is going to be Sharapova, and he will be her coach when she takes the women’s singles title at Wimbledon for the third year in a row.

Disappearing now and again into the heather, the dogs run along ahead of them. The stroll is reviving Zara, and when she and Philip have gone through the turnstile at The Nuns’ Walk and climbed the hill away from the houses, she stops and holds fuchsia petals in her cupped hands as if protecting them in case they fall and get crushed by passers-by. ‘Dad,’ she says. ‘Some girls in school are … they put things on Facebook that are so mean.’

‘That is not nice, love.’ He watches her admiring the fuchsia. ‘People can be very unkind to one another, but we must remember there are good people also – it’s what keeps us going.’

‘Dad?’ she walks ahead of him. ‘Am I, like … fat.’

‘No. Of course not.’ He looks at the rope of black hair falling on her back. ‘Why do you ask me that?’

‘You don’t think so?’

‘No. Most certainly not. Did anyone – ?’

‘No. No, it’s ok, Dad.’ She links him, and rattles on about how she can’t wait for the family holiday in August and, this year she’d like to bring Chloë and Michaela.

‘Do that, love.’ But his thoughts are not on the August holiday – he and Sam have short-changed their two children. Too taken up with themselves and their preoccupations – positive karma and the Christmas bonus.

‘Let’s do this more often,’ he calls to her while putting the fish and chips to reheat in the microwave, and she is plugging in the dvd.

‘Cool. Yeah. I’d really love that, Dad.’

‘Once a week around the Head. A family thing.’ Or stay in. He could count in one hand the number of times they stayed in to watch the home cinema together.

‘Brill, Dad.’

His BlackBerry rings. He takes the call out on the patio. Sharkey has sent him an email with details of some clients who are in default: would he ever run his eye over them and phone him in the morning?

‘With you in a minute, Zara,’ he calls out as he opens his laptop in the living room.

He has over thirty new emails on his computer. All are urgent.