26

WHEN CHRISTMAS has well and truly spent itself, the first signs of spring show in the evening light. Garden centres are waking up, and Valentine cards are appearing in the shops. This spring is different: European Central Bank officials are making frequent visits to Dublin, throwing shifty glances and smiling when they appear on television. Through the windows of the Merrion Hotel and the Four Seasons, American and German investment bankers can be seen poring over papers while they dine alone. Some have come to see if they can salvage anything for their bosses; others, like birds of prey, are in search of fire-sale bargains.

In early February, Doc Clifford is stepping out of the village delicatessen one morning when he runs into one of his neighbours, a retired schoolteacher.

‘Have you heard?’ she wants to know.

‘What’s that?’

She glances up and down the street. ‘La Salle will be on the market again. They’re splitting up.’

‘What a shame.’ He checks his watch. ‘Afraid I’m running late.’

She tags along beside him. ‘He’s going to live in an apartment in Donnybrook. The son is going with him, and madame is taking the daughter to London; she got another promotion recently. It couldn’t last, I always told myself. Both in the fast lane. He’s up to his neck in debt. Millions invested in that bank.’

Clifford presses the key fob of his Volvo. ‘Such nice people,’ he says, putting his groceries on the back seat. ‘So sorry to hear that.’ He does a clucking sound with his tongue. ‘Although, I wouldn’t place much store by rumours. Someone sees a fly at the top of O’Connell Street and it’s an elephant by the time it reaches the GPO.’

She isn’t listening. ‘He’s got a job as a branch manager.’

‘Anyway, I’m sure they’ll be fine. Good day to you.’

Later that day, as he is leaving the village clinic, his mobile goes off. He reads the text: ‘Shoot the breeze over coffee when u got a minute? Philip’.

The following Saturday morning, Doc Clifford arrives early to shoot the breeze with Philip, and spends the time walking up and down the harbour. The sky is clear, but a cold breeze is blowing in from The Sleeping Giant and whipping up newspapers and empty chip bags along the front. A planned extension to one of the café bars is now a deserted building site: steel scaffolding and wooden planks as they were when the Polish workers were given their final pay packet. The head rusting, a hammer lies on one of the wooden planks. Shoots of grass are showing on a bag of topsoil.

‘Dylan will be nearer to college, at least that’s one plus,’ Philip tells Clifford when they meet for coffee in the only café bar open after the financial collapse. ‘Heavy loss on La Salle, but that’s only part of the story. We’ll be lucky if we get half the purchasing price. And as for Nat Am shares – well, I could throw them in the fire. Not worth the paper they’re written on.’

‘Don’t I know.’

‘I feel so bad about that. I was the one who gave you the wrong advice.’

‘I went into it with my eyes open. I’ll survive, Philip.’

‘Sam has a place on the Baldoyle Road for herself and Zara,’ Philip continues, stirring his coffee. ‘And Zara won’t have to change school. Thank goodness.’ Beneath the stubble, his face looks pinched. ‘Doesn’t mean we’re finished though.’

‘No?’

‘We may get back on track. We’ve talked it over, but we’re agreed we need breathing space.’ He attempts a smile, while doing a referee’s T sign. ‘Nothing definite.’

‘A sabbatical, you might call it. I’m glad.’

In a monotone, Philip talks while he stares the rows of bottles across the counter, or follows the movements of the staff and customers, but his gaze is inwards, and he scarcely notices any of these. ‘We were reaching for something that isn’t there, chasing an illusion.’

He smiles at a memory. The time he and Sam took the children to New York to see the Christmas Show at Radio City Music Hall. Then, everyone was going to New York for their Christmas shopping, and boasting about the great bargains in Saks or Macy’s. ‘When we had more money than cop-on.’

They had joined the long queue of people who had lined one side of Sixth Avenue. Children wrapped in scarves and woolly hats were stamping along the footpath with excitement, and to keep warm; steam was rising from manholes, and the air was filled with the great Christmas smell of roasting nuts from the street vendor across the way.

‘A Hollywood version of Christmas and we were now in the picture – the main actors, you could say. In the foyer, we were given 3D glasses to be used when Santa came on the stage, and after the Royalettes had done their “Little Drummer Boy” piece, he arrived. We put on our glasses. He was right there in front of us, floating in his sleigh, tossing out gifts, and Ho Ho Ho. The effect of the 3d glasses was so funny. People – not just children – were stretching out their hands, because you’d swear you could grasp the gifts.’

Philip took off his 3d specs to see the audience snatching the air, clutching at appearances. Everyone took it in good part; they laughed and then clapped like children at the futility of their attempts.

The rueful smile fades. ‘That was ok, it was fun – part of the Christmas spirit. Trouble is – we bought into the real life version: grab what was going; we were stretching for a mirage. And we couldn’t see because we had the 3d glasses on. And we had Heinrich’s credit card and pin number in our pockets – Germany was our bestie!’

He holds the cup between his hands, and grows silent. ‘Do you remember that odd padre we had at the house-warming? McKeever.’

Doc Clifford laughs. ‘Said we should all be digging our gardens and talking to trees: back to nature.’

‘That’s an act. He might seem off his trolley – far from it. And lately, especially with everything going pear-shaped – Kevin’s death, the banking collapse, I wake in the night and that line of poetry he kept quoting: ‘What then?’ sang Plato’s ghost. ‘What then?’ Can’t get the damn thing out of my head.’

‘Yeats. I looked it up.’

‘We had it all. Hah, the boxes ticked …’ he shakes his head. ‘And it seemed to slip through … I don’t know. But we may still have a chance.’ He looks directly at Clifford, ‘One thing I know for sure: even though Sam and I have torn strips off each other over the years, I’m not letting her go without a fight. Here’s something you may find strange. I strolled around La Salle one evening; the house was silent.’

‘Right.’

‘I was mulling over a few things – Sam and myself, the shenanigans at Nat Am, and Kevin’s dead face in the coffin. And for some reason – don’t understand it – I came to realize that when I’m about to pop my clogs, it’s not golf at bloody Quinta do Lago, or the Beemer, or Guilbaud lunches that will count. It’s – did I ever love anyone in my whole life? Did I notice the flowers in the spring, who our children are, or what was it like to give away Zara on her wedding day?’

‘A salutary reminder.’

‘I’ll be getting a fraction of my salary in the branch job, but I’ll have time for other things – like the Tanzania project.’

Clifford pushes the cup aside. ‘I admire your courage. Not many – ’

‘The fault lines in here were crashing against each other, Ned. And I think my heart attack,’ he does inverted commas with his index fingers, ‘was a smoke signal. In a way I’m lucky; it was a wake-up call.’ A half-smile shows: ‘Had to confront the Queen Bee also.’

‘Who?’

‘Sam’s put-down name for the mother. The Mam got on her high horse when she heard about my decision to take the branch manager’s job, and give more time to others things I want to do. This time, I had to tell her to back off.’ He grinned. ‘We were not amused.’

That is their last conversation, apart from the morning Clifford goes to say goodbye when Philip and Sam are keeping an eye on the removals men: one truck is bound for Philip’s apartment in Donnybrook, the other for Sam’s bungalow on the Baldoyle Road.

The grim sight of the two trucks destined for separate stop-ping places casts a gloom over Clifford’s day. By mutual agreement Philip and Sam had already apportioned the contents of the house, such as furniture, pictures, silverware, cut glass and china they had used for dinner parties. Philip would take the barbecue with the extra wide grill and the small fridge at one side, so that the alcove that contained the shrine to the Sacred Heart would be empty once more. They divide the bubble-packed Knuttels, Rooneys and others they had bought at the Stephen’s Green gallery. They had come to a polite agreement also about plasma screens, the Bose, the gilded mirrors and the silver-framed photos of themselves as a family.

On the surface the arrangement seems courteous and very grown-up; that is, until the act breaks down when Sam goes searching for their wedding day photos.

Surrounded by boxes in the dining room, she asks Philip.

He looks at her. ‘You mean you’ve forgotten!’

In an instant, she remembers that dreadful night in Raheny, when Philip confessed his affair with Ellen and, in a fit of rage, she ran out and flung their wedding photos into the bin: one taken in front of University Church and another on the steps of Newman House. Her eyes fill up, she rushes out of the room and Clifford can hear her footsteps resounding on the curved stairs.

All their precious belongings are strapped to the inside of the trucks, or packed in straw and placed in boxes. The lights from Copenhagen, Sam’s ‘must have’, are straw-packed also and fitted into secure niches.

While the removals men are checking the straps that hold the pictures in place, a couple of Sam’s school friends arrive. Resting their coffee cups on the basalt stone top of the island, the women say little and, when they speak, their voices sound hollow and strange like at a wake. Their brave efforts to be upbeat have the same effect as sympathizers at a funeral who reassure the mourners that ‘she wouldn’t want to linger, anyway, or be a burden; your mother was that kind of independent woman’.

By the time the Lalors leave, the last of the hard hats and high-visibility jackets have disappeared from Auburn. Estate agents’ men arrive in a van and hammer a ‘For Sale’ sign into the hedge at the entrance to La Salle.

Polish carpenters and painters drive to Dublin Airport, aban-don their nineteen-year-old cars in the long-term parking lot, and take the next flight out to Krakow. Roofless shells of houses, pallets and mounds of sand and gravel lie deserted on sites that ‘provide panoramic views of Dublin Bay’ and which have cost a fortune. Blue sheets of insulation that have come loose from the walls howl in the wind.

Most of those who moved in during the boom manage to hold on to their trophies, but they are anxious about the future. Some are popping Xanax to help them get a good night’s sleep. They hear the economists disagreeing about the country’s prospects: some are saying that the recession will be over in four or five years, others are claiming that there’s worse on the way. In any case, the party is well and truly over: the coloured balloons have drooped and fallen to the ground.

After they have gone, Philip and Sam live on in Clifford’s head. Their fractured dream marked by the removal of bag and baggage in separate trucks bound for different stopping places comes back to him at odd times – and it compounds the still sad music that plays faintly in his head since the death of his wife. Before he draws the curtains at night, he finds himself staring at the outline of the sad bulk across the fence, and when he closes the curtains, he paces the room, hearing in his head his wife’s reprimand, when, as a young doctor, he was getting too involved in people’s problems. In a half-joking way, she had once remarked to her friend: ‘Off again tonight after surgery to try and fix up a marriage, and his own in shreds.’

Usually Clifford’s two sons and their families visit him over the weekend, but whenever they are away or have something else on, he bring flowers to his wife’s grave and goes for Sunday lunch in the Marine, where he glances through the papers.

On one such Sunday, he drives to the hotel and finds his favourite table that provides a wide view of Dublin Bay. Beyond the palm trees, a lagoon, divided from the sea by a ridge of sand, runs parallel to the back of the hotel; the blue hills of Dalkey compose a restful backdrop.

In the lounge are mostly families: mothers and fathers whose children are playing out on the lawn. Taken out for the day, feeble grandparents at the table are bent over soup; one or two metal crutches are resting against the sides of chairs. The grandparents look up from time to time with the dread in their eyes that often comes with old age.

After lunch, Clifford returns to his house, and takes the dogs for their walk around the Head. Close to the top of Cooper’s Hill are three unfinished houses on plots that had been bought during the gold rush. All are in a similar state: wire meshing and plastic insulation to save on heating bills.

Though sunny, the previous night’s frost still lingers in the clear air. About to go through the turnstile, he is surprised by early snowdrops: little white speckles that have pushed through dead ferns. Other clusters are scattered all over a grassy bank: their tiny heads are full of spirit in the light breeze. He takes a closer look to admire their delicate beauty, before continuing around the Head. His step becomes jaunty.

On the way back, his dogs are in a hurry. Smoke is rising from chimneys. Sunday Auburn is in repose: glancing through the newspapers or resting its eyes on The Sleeping Giant and the sloping green sward running towards the village. In his head, Clifford is already preparing his garden for spring bulbs, which he will plant before St Patrick’s Day. After that – in early April – it will be time to look in on his bees for any diseases, and begin to feed them syrup. That Sunday afternoon, however, he will read, and later meet his golfing friends in Robin Hill for a nightcap.