17

During the summer, whenever Philip and Sam are away, such as at their house in Antibes, they ensure they are never on their own. They bring along Zara and her friends, or else Philip manages to talk his brother, or his father, into making up a party. Una went once, but the atmosphere between her and Sam was so tense, they were all in need of another holiday when they landed back at Dublin airport. For Dylan, the novelty of going to France has worn off; and since the family moved to Auburn, he much prefers to hang around Cooper’s Hill, or down at the harbour with his friends.

He is all too familiar with his parents’ rows. One night, a couple of years before they had moved to La Salle, he heard them while he was trying to get to sleep. ‘If you think I’m prepared to forget you and your banker-whore,’ she was screaming at him, ‘you’d better think again!’

‘You drove me to it. All that counts for you is to be head-honcho.’

‘Ah, go and fuck yourself. Guess what? I don’t know what she saw in you because you are boring. Really, really boring.’

The front door slams shut and Dylan hears Sam’s car driving off. And though he succeeds most of the time in putting it out of his mind, playing his rock music with Jamie, Mark and Rob, he dreads the day when they will call him and Zara to the kitchen table to announce that they are going to go their separate ways. Yet, even with his best mates, he likes to give the impression that Philip and Sam are off having a super time. When the weather is fair for sailing, he and his friends spend most of the day in the dinghy they all chipped in for.

While attending to his bees or weeding the flowerbeds, Doctor Clifford becomes aware of their shouts, or the rush of their feet when they play tag rugby. And whenever their ball soars over the hedge, he tosses it back to them. ‘Sorry, Doctor Clifford. Sorry.’ Then the scamper of feet and the shouts of excitement start all over again.

Jamie is gangly with a sheepish grin. Mark, the most handsome of the three, is never without a girl hanging out of him in front of the Mace store, or sitting in one of the sun-trap recesses at the harbour. And Rob, with his spiky hair and studs, nearly always wears black. If Clifford comes across them by chance when they are lazing in the heather with their girlfriends, they chat, so their awareness of each other is casual and easy.

On his own, and loitering around the entrance to the pier one day, Mark is anxious to talk, in a way that takes Clifford by surprise. ‘I want to travel; do graphic design when I get back, but my dad won’t hear of it.’ He keeps gazing out to sea. ‘Dad says I have to go to Trinity and then join him. He says, “You’ll be the fourth generation to work in the family law firm. It would be unthinkable for our proud name to disappear from the front door plate”.’

‘But law isn’t what you have in mind.’

‘Is this all I mean to him – someone whose name is on the fucking plate?’ Mark had just matriculated with the highest points in the class, but he isn’t in a mood of celebration. His eyes look as if he has been crying, prompting Clifford to remember a neighbour’s word in his ear: ‘They’re smoking that … that marijuana thing. I can smell it. It’s those newcomers who brought that around.’

True enough: when Philip and Sam are away, Clifford catches the sharp whiff that brings him back to his own student days – summers when he had got an internship at the Beth Abraham Hospital in the Bronx, and a few of them would hit Greenwich Village, or attend concerts in Central Park, all the while keeping a weather eye out for the police.

The laid-back look Mark had paraded for various girlfriends is gone. ‘All they can think about is fucking prestige.’ With his foot, he takes aim at a pebble. It soars over the edge of the pier and plops into the water.

All Clifford says is, ‘I know parents want the best for their children, Mark, and yours are no different, but it’s your future.’

That weekend Auburn is stunned with the news that Mark is dead. He had been found unconscious in his father’s new Jaguar after crashing against a tree, on a straight stretch of the road near Tara. When the fire brigade arrived, steam was rising from the car’s creased bonnet. An ambulance, with the engine running and blue lights flashing, waited on the road; the Guards put up diversion signs.

As soon as the fire brigade had cut him free, covered in blood, and shards of glass, the ambulance rushed him to Navan Hospital, where a surgeon and her team tried to save his life but failed.

An hour later his family stands sobbing around his cold body in the silence of a room off the surgical ward. All the urgency of young life has now drained from him. Gripped by shock and grief, they are deaf to the occasional clang of a trolley out in the corridor, or one nurse calling to another about an accident victim in casualty, followed by a commotion down the corridor. A young nurse hovers in the background and makes reassuring sounds when Mark’s father mutters to himself: ‘Why you didn’t wear the seat belt, son, I’ll never know.’

At the Requiem Mass, Mark’s friends bring up his guitar, a rugby ball and a copy of his sketches of The Sleeping Giant and others of Dublin Bay that he had been doing over the summer. The priest says that Mark was ‘a young man with promise, gifted and generous, whose death leaves a deep sadness in his family and in our community’.

A picture of the funeral appears in The Irish Times; beneath it is a heading for a short report: ‘Son of Well-Known Lawyer is Laid to Rest’.

Hair-gelled and serious and wearing dark glasses, Dylan, Jamie and Rob walk behind the coffin, black ties loose at the necks of their white shirts. The girls support each other. Sunlight glances off the hearse as it passes between two lines of students from Goldsmith Park forming a guard of honour in the church grounds.

In the sailing club, after the funeral, the guests are full of sympathy for Mark’s family. His friends, they say, as they stand around with glasses of wine, were so dignified – the way they took part in the ceremony – reading the intercessory prayers and forming the offertory procession.

Poor Mark. It just doesn’t make sense.

What?

You know. Well –

Oh yes, of course. The roads. Yes, the roads are lethal nowa-days. And those powerful cars.

For a week or so, the back garden of La Salle, and indeed the neighbourhood, is hollow and deserted, until one evening when Clifford answers a knock on his door. They are outside: Dylan, Jamie and Rob, and two of their girlfriends wearing teeth braces, dark eyeshadow and sad looks. After an awkward moment, when they don’t know what to do next, one of the girls ventures: ‘Could we ask you something, Doctor Clifford?’

‘Of course. Where are my manners? Come in.’

Over coffee, they speak more easily in the sunny kitchen about exams and university, until Jamie plucks up the courage to ask the doctor the question that has prompted their visit. Has he seen many people die?

‘Yes, especially when I was an intern in the Mater, and later as a registrar.’

‘What’s it like? Dying, I mean.’

‘One can never be certain,’ Clifford tries to read their thoughts, ‘but in the case of a tragic … a sudden death, there is little or no pain.’

‘Little or no pain,’ one of the young women repeats in an abstracted way.

‘Yes.’

‘You slip off.’ They exchange looks. One of the girls begins to sniffle.

‘So, Mark?’ Jamie raises his head from his coffee mug.

‘No, as far as I know… Mark became unconscious on impact, so no, there wouldn’t be any…’

‘That at least is …’

All the while Dylan is silent, searching Cliffords’s face, as if he might find some clue to this hammer blow that has ruptured their plans of having a great time in Lanzarote, then hitting Trinity in a couple of weeks. He raises his head. ‘And could it be that Mark … ? That the car went out of control, as the Guards said.’

‘Yes. Yes indeed.’

They leave as quietly as they had arrived. Before closing the door, Clifford watches them as they shuffle down the driveway.

A couple of weeks after Mark’s funeral, a mournful howl wakes Clifford with a start. At first, he thinks it’s a dog or a fox. Foxes often steal down the hill looking for food, and sometimes, a callous neighbour, who keeps hens, lays traps for them. After a while, he realizes he’s not listening to a dying fox but to a human cry coming from the direction of La Salle.

He parts the curtains and when his eyes grow used to the dark, he is able to make out the figure of Dylan lurching around the terraced garden, a bottle in his grasp. A couple of times he almost topples over while repeating the same tormented wail: ‘No fucking reason.’

He takes another swig from the bottle. Lights go on in the house and show up the pond, the sheen on the barbecue, the Valentia slate of the garden shed, and on his washed-out face looking up at the sky. A hoarse cry rises from deep in his chest: ‘Mark, why? Fucking why? I loved you, man. Now …’ He falls, but manages to hold on to the bottle while trying to struggle to his feet.

The patio doors burst open, and Sam, followed by Zara, both in their dressing gowns, appear and run to where he is lying.

‘Dylan, lovey,’ Sam pleads and hunkers down beside him, putting her hand around his head, ‘come into the house.’

But he shrugs her away and tries to get to his feet, only to collapse again.

Clifford throws on his clothes, rushes down the stairs and is met at the door by Zara, crying and pleading with him: ‘Please, Doctor Clifford, please. Dylan is so out of it. Come and help us.’

Ahead of her, he hurries down the drive and around by the back of La Salle and to where Sam is talking to her son, who is now flat out on the grass. ‘I hope you don’t mind my – ’

‘Oh, Ned, oh, please …’ On her knees and holding his head, Sam turns and stretches out her hand.

‘Let me,’ Clifford crouches on the grass beside Dylan.

‘Philip is down the country. Please, whatever you can do.’

Clifford turns him on his side. ‘Dylan,’ he calls. ‘Dylan, we’ll take good care of you, so don’t be worried about anything.’ His pulse is too weak for Clifford’s liking. ‘A torch, quick, a torch.’ He reaches out towards Zara who runs into the house, and returns with a torch. One look at the dilated pupil is enough.

‘Dylan, Dylan? Do you know where you are?’

Dylan mutters as if trying to make contact with reality, but all he wants is an answer from the grave: ‘Why, Mark, why? I … we loved you.’

The whiskey bottle lying at a slant on the grass catches Clifford’s eye. It is more than half-empty. ‘Casualty, Samantha,’ He whispers. ‘We have to. Better to be on the safe side.’

‘You … our mate. Why?’

In less than five minutes an ambulance screams up Beresford Road. Without fuss and with a few practised words of reassurance, the ambulance men place Dylan on a stretcher, and cover him with a blanket. Standing behind Sam as if for protection, Zara, now in a tracksuit, is sobbing quietly. Strands of her long hair are matted to her face.

Sam travels with Dylan in the ambulance; Zara drives with Doc Clifford. Before long the ambulance loses them.

‘Will he be alright, Doctor Clifford?’ she asks a couple of times in a snuffling tone.

‘He’ll be fine, Zara. This is just a precaution. He’ll be fine.’

She grows silent, blows her nose and sinks back into the seat.

‘I knew something bad, like, was going to happen,’ she says out of the silence.

‘How do you mean?’

‘Miss Myers, who teaches us physics, and she was, like, telling us before the summer holidays about birds falling out of the sky in some parts of the world, and that’s, like, a bad sign. And …’

‘Yes, Zara.’

‘I’ve been.’ She glances at him. ‘You won’t tell Mum or Dad.’

‘Not if you don’t want me to.’

‘I’ve been dreaming that a whole shower of small birds fell on our back garden. And I tried to help them but they were so dead. Are birds able to sleep at night?’

‘Yes. In the trees.’

‘I’m glad.’ She grows silent for a while and then pipes up with: ‘Dylan’s been on the lash all day, and he’s also on … I’m scared, Doctor Clifford.’

‘Of what?’

She dries her eyes. ‘We’ve everything, and we’ve, like, nothing.’

Lest he place too much on her young shoulders, Clifford considers his reply. He had grown fond of them, but the ingrained habit of the clinician he cannot put aside. ‘Perhaps this is a chance – a wake-up call – to do something about that, Zara.’ They are stopped at a red light in Fairview: ‘But you might let Dylan get better first.’

At the junction of North Circular Road and Eccles Street, they notice a head-to-head between a man and a woman in their thirties. The man swings his arm and strikes the woman on the face, sending her reeling. Another man, who is in their company, comes to the woman’s defence and receives a punch to the head for his gallantry. He teeters on the edge of the footpath and barely escapes being hit by an oncoming car; blood streams from his nose. The woman is screaming for them to stop. A police car, with blue lights flashing, screeches to a halt. Two young policemen in shirtsleeves jump out and break up the row.

Inside, the emergency unit is bedlam. From behind closed curtains come groans and shouts for assistance: ‘Me fuckin brain is stickin out, nurse,’ and from another end of the ward: ‘Is anyone goin to come and look after me? I’m fuckin dyin.’

With jigging stethoscopes around their necks, doctors and nurses are rushing in and out of the curtained bays, a blur of white uniforms. Some are examining those lying on trolleys; others are trying to calm frightened patients. ‘Keep steady… Good man. Hold your arm out straight … Good.’ Stale drink and hospital smells mingle with the whiff of urine.

Dylan has been wheeled into a bay. Inside closed curtains, a doctor and a nurse are attending to him. After some time, the nurse brings Sam, Zara and Clifford to an alcove, and reassures them that Dylan will be fine: that when he vomited, he got rid of some of the drink, and won’t have to be pumped out.

The shouting continues outside: ‘Am I goin to die in this fuckin place?’

A hospital orderly – mullet head planted on beefy shoulders – saunters to the bay, eases back one of the curtains, and says in a low voice. ‘Shut the fuck up. A doctor or a nurse will be with you as soon as they can.’ He closes the curtain and winks at a nurse hurrying by with a scissors and bandages on a tray.

Relieved by what the nurse has said, both Sam and Zara rest against each other: all they have to do now is wait until Dylan is ready. Clifford stands: ‘Back in a minute.’ Sam reaches out for his hand. ‘I don’t know what we’d have done without you, Ned. Thanks.’

‘Dylan will be fine, Samantha.’

He walks down the aisle between the curtains towards the door where another ambulance has backed up. The doors are thrown open and a man in a trolley is lifted out; around his waist is a blood-soaked bandage.

A young doctor, his white coat thrown open is shouting. ‘Theatre, quick, come on, out of the way.’ The orderly is also shouting and opening doors. ‘Stand back. Patient for theatre.’

A group of young women are sitting close on a bench in the waiting area, their arms around each other. One is crying, causing her eyeshadow to smear her face; another is at the admissions hatch arguing with a nurse. ‘We’re students; we can’t afford to go to a chemist … It’s just not on.’ The nurse is trying to tell them that they are busy right now, but will get to them later.

The mullet comes back and is now giving the girls the once-over. He smiles and whispers to Clifford: ‘The stampede for the morning-after is beginning early tonight. You always pay for your whoopee.’

There’s a shout from inside one of the curtains: ‘I’m losing him: get the defib.’ Immediately there’s a flurry of feet, and a rumble of the defibrillator machine along the centre aisle.

‘Stand back,’ a nurse orders.

Chubby and out of breath, a young priest comes dashing in; he is clutching a purple stole and a silver phial, one end of his clerical collar hangs loose. When he makes a move towards the patient, a nurse snaps at him: ‘Stand back, I said.’ With a sheepish look on his plump face, the priest slinks behind the resuscitation team.

When the intern lays the pads on the patient’s chest, another nurse turns a switch on the machine; the patient’s chest jerks and falls again.

On the journey home, they are mostly silent. Every so often, Sam, who is sitting close to Dylan in the back, asks him how he is feeling.

‘Grand, Mum. Grand now. ’

‘That’s good, lovey.’

Clifford parks beside Sam’s suv and waits while they trudge towards the front door, where they stand: a forlorn sight. ‘Thanks, Ned,’ Sam says in a hushed tone. She raises her hand and then lets it fall to her side. ‘Talk to you tomorrow.’

In a low voice also, Clifford says: ‘Have a good rest, Dylan.’

‘Thanks, Doctor Clifford.’

A ‘good rest’ is echoing in Clifford’s mind when he wakes in the dark, and the scenes of the previous few weeks form an odd mélange in his head. He gets up, puts on his dressing gown and saunters to his study where he looks across at the gloomy outline of La Salle. There he remains in the dark, trying to sort out the knotted skein until he is disturbed by one of his dogs yelping in a dream.