Twenty-two

Leo was not looking forward to meeting Vincy Erikson again, the man who had dumped Kate to have an affair with a married woman, the man who had been the cause of Kate’s nervous breakdown. But when the production assistant from Vincy’s news programme had asked Leo if he would do an interview with Vincy, he could not refuse. The publicity for the campaign would be tremendous, if they broadcast the interview.

Leo met Vincy in the atrium of the hotel, where he had met Kate last autumn during the bad time when she had been infatuated with Vincy.

‘Good to see you again.’ Vincy shook his hand. ‘How’s life?’

‘Great,’ said Leo, feeling a spasm of hatred rise in his stomach.

‘Still living in the depths of the country?’ Vincy said.

‘I’ve been up and down more than usual,’ said Leo.

‘With this campaign?’

‘That, mainly,’ lied Leo. He could not bring himself to mention Kate’s name to Vincy.

‘ok, so fill me in on it,’ said Vincy. ‘I’ll be honest, I hadn’t paid much attention to the organisation until yesterday, although of course I’d known of its existence.’

‘Of course,’ said Leo drily. But he filled him in.

‘And why are you calling for the resignation of the Minister, and the Taoiseach?’ asked Vincy. ‘It’s a drastic demand.’ He stared at Leo as if he were doing the television interview already.

‘We’ve been campaigning quietly for a long time,’ said Leo. ‘As you know, there is a fuss every time the death toll is shown to rise again. The Minister comes out and makes some fussy little speech in which he blames the drivers; if pressurised enough by the likes of yourselves, he promises a few more penalty points, better enforcement. But nothing actually happens.’

‘He’s not the only Minister who has a bad record on this issue,’ said Vincy.

‘No, he’s not. But his predecessor was reasonably good. He changed things. He introduced the penalty points system, which was a huge achievement in itself. He reduced the rate of carnage by twenty per cent. Then he got pushed out of his job.’

‘Why does Killing Roads think that happened?’

‘Who knows? Probably because he represented some kind of challenge to the leadership. Showed up the Taoiseach. He was demoted soon afterwards. Success is more dangerous than failure in this government. Maybe in all governments. Any Minister to show innovation, leadership, whatever they like to call it, gets pushed to one side.’

‘It’s one way of looking at it,’ said Vincy. He did not take notes. ‘Do you or anyone in your organisation know of any other reason why this Minister should seem to enjoy the Taoiseach’s favour?’

Leo shook his head. ‘No. Some people think he may know something about the Taoiseach. Some scandal.’

‘Like what? Financial? Personal?’

‘Like that he took some sum of money from businessmen – they all did, back in the eighties. Or something about his marriage break-up.’

‘Domestic violence? Did he beat his wife up?’

Leo shrugged. ‘Not that I know of.’

‘No?’ Vincy waited expectantly.

‘No.’ Leo began to get impatient. ‘How would I know if he did? Why should it matter anyway? Five hundred dead bodies is important enough. We don’t need some back story about thirty thousand pounds changing hands to push some re-zoning deal, do we?’

‘Maybe not,’ said Vincy, with a smile. He decided to finish the interview. Leo had nothing to give him. ‘Thanks for talking to me and good luck with everything.’

So he wasn’t going to run with it.

‘It’s a worthy cause,’ Vincy said.

Worthy cause. Faint praise. Fuck you, thought Leo.

‘Nice to meet you too,’ was what he said. ‘By the way, I don’t know if you’ve heard. I’m getting married to Kate Murphy.’

Vincy was visibly taken aback, to Leo’s gratification.

‘Well, I hadn’t heard.’ He composed himself. ‘Congratulations! When is the big day?’

Leo told him.

Vincy stood up. ‘Give my very best to Kate.’

Leo did not reply.

‘He lost interest when he found out we had no scandal on the Taoiseach.’ Leo drank his Guinness with a wry expression on his face.

‘Incredible!’ said Kate.

‘The carnage is not sensational enough. Dead pedestrians, people wrecked by grief … who cares about them? Well, obviously it’s not news. Bertie taking a few thousand quid in a brown envelope twenty-five years ago would rock the country. Bertie killing five hundred citizens every year – ah sure, that’s just the way life is.’

‘It’s hardly fair to say he kills them.’

‘Sins of omission. Next thing, people will be suing for compensation. Like the army deafness or the blood tribunals. Due care was not exercised by those in a position of responsibility. They’ll be bloody right too.’

Leo was red in the face. His eyes grew wild with emotion and he clenched his fists. Kate had never seen him like this.

She kissed him. The bar was dark and cosy, the coloured glass bottles twinkling like lamps. People glanced at the couple and smiled. Kate was so small and childish-looking, her looped crescent of hair dark as a chocolate Easter egg; and although Leo never looked exactly handsome, there was something uncannily appealing about him in this animated state. He looked wholesome and vigorous, like a well-groomed pony.

‘You’re fantastic, Leo,’ she said. ‘Something will happen. You’ll make something happen. You and Killing Roads.’

‘Me and Killing Roads.’ He looked attractive, but he felt terrible. If only Vincy had done that interview! Five minutes on prime time television would be worth a hundred protests in front of the Dáil. He sighed deeply.

‘I’ll help,’ she said. ‘I don’t feel as strongly as you do about this. But I’ll help … as soon as I get my wedding behind me.’

Leo ordered more drinks. My wedding. She was referring to it as her own. It wasn’t exactly democratic, but it did indicate a high level of commitment. And it meant he wasn’t expected to do anything about it, beyond getting the priest and the church, which was fine, since he had no intention of playing any role other than hiring an ecologically acceptable morning suit and turning up to marry her.

Killing Roads had an emergency meeting in the upstairs room of the Tower. Leo told them about his unfortunate failure to interest the media in their campaign, at which the group, with an unusual spurt of energy, resolved to hold a protest march on Leinster House the very next week, the hope being that this would capitalise on the limited publicity their letter to the newspapers calling for the double resignation of the Taoiseach and Minister had acquired.

So Leo had to stay in Dublin for the whole week, leaving Charlene to her own devices – indeed, blocking her out of his memory. Preparations for the march dominated the agenda – Kate acted as project manager; she and Leo did all the work of advertising, getting posters printed, making placards. Predictably, although most of the other members promised to come along to the march, none of them had time to help with its organisation.

Leo and Kate had to take time off to go to the second of the pre-marriage course talks.

‘This is romantic, in a way,’ Kate said, as they made their way to the place where the classes were held, a church hall on Whitefriar Street.

‘I need to take you somewhere really romantic,’ said Leo. ‘Venice, or Valparaíso.’

‘I’m just as happy around here,’ she said. ‘This part of town. I love it.’

They were walking up from South Great George’s Street. Having once been a grand street, it had fallen on hard times and for as long as Kate could remember had been derelict, its windows boarded up, its high red-bricked buildings with their Dutch gables the surprised victims of a whim of fashion or commerce that dictated that nobody shopped here any more. Lately the trend had reversed. A few shops had opened, and about a hundred restaurants. The wheel had turned. What had once seemed sad and derelict was beginning to emerge in a new light.

As one moved upwards, through Aungier Street and Whitefriar Street, that dissipated. These were still down-at-heel streets. The shops were small and tacky, old furniture stores, chippers and kebab huts. The high buildings ensured that the streets were always dark and gloomy in atmosphere.

‘It’s sort of medieval,’ she said.

‘Is it?’ Leo looked at the grey stone. He couldn’t place the age of these streets. They didn’t look medieval to him. They belonged to the same section, really, as Stephen’s Green and Grafton Street. He thought they probably were eighteenth century. Odd to think that the fashionable hub of Dublin was a stone’s throw away, and here you were almost in a slum. Dublin always surprised him by its abrupt changes. One minute you were on a street where you could buy an Armani handbag for several thousand euro, and the next minute in a place where an Armani bag would be snatched from you, at knife-point, as you passed by charity shops of the less salubrious kind.

‘It’s authentic, in its … sort of ugliness,’ she said.

‘I love you when you say things like that.’ He gave her a hug.

‘I hope you love me at other times as well,’ she said. ‘No doubt we will be given a lecture on the importance of just that. Love each other when you are old and fat and worn out.’

But they were not.

In this second session, a rather worn-out woman lectured them instead on the need to use the rhythm method of contraception, pointing out the evils and dangers of the Pill and of condoms. She told them they would be happy if they had children and brought them up in the Catholic faith. She advised them not to marry until they had a home and an income that could support children, and added, cheerfully, that romance did not last.

Leo wanted to walk out after the advice on natural birth control.

Kate restrained him, clamping his foot to the floor with hers. All around the room, young people gritted their teeth.

The hall was small, painted a cheerful yellow. It contained only one statue of the Virgin Mary, but that was a very big one, life-size. It had in fact migrated from the church next door, which had replaced its old statues with new modern ones a few years earlier.

‘How can they go on teaching this stuff?’ Leo said, as they walked down Aungier Street in the dark. ‘It’s amazing that anyone goes ahead and gets married after they’ve finished disillusioning you. Romance doesn’t last. Artificial contraception can give you cancer.’ (The woman had not said that, precisely, but had hinted darkly at evil consequences, other than the fires of hell, for women who took the Pill.)

‘What did you expect?’ Kate asked.

‘I don’t know. They could just ignore all that side of things. They know everyone is going to use whatever form of contraception they like.’

‘That’s Church teaching.’

‘You forget about it most of the time and even imagine the Church has a role in the modern world.’

‘That’s because you never go near a church,’ said Kate, uncritically.

‘I do!’ said Leo, pretending to be shocked. ‘I go to funerals. I go to Midnight Mass at Christmas.’ He added, ‘If I can manage it.’

‘And weddings!’ She kissed him.

‘It’s salutary in a way.’ He brought the subject back to the issue of the role of the Church. ‘At least it reminds me of what’s wrong with the Church and why we have rejected it. As you say, not going is dangerous. You might imagine you’re missing something.’

‘Maybe you are,’ said Kate. ‘The spiritual dimension.’

‘Poetry will have to supply that for me,’ said Leo. ‘What that woman is talking about is not the spiritual dimension. She’s as spiritual as a Muslim telling his wife the Prophet says she has to cover her face with a veil, or else he’ll kill her.’

‘Now you’re getting racist,’ she said. ‘Talking of which, will we eat in one of the nice ethnic places along here? They look like fun.’ They were on South Great George’s Street.

‘Let’s,’ he said. ‘Sorry to be so upset. I don’t know why I care about this stuff so much.’

‘You care about all stuff so much,’ she said. ‘That’s just you, Leo. Doesn’t this Mexican place look good?’

She stopped outside a restaurant that was fairly full. It was painted red, orange, yellow and purple. In the context of the austere grey street, this looked better than it sounds.