Hayden knew several car songs. Three Little Aunts Sitting in the Front Seat wasn’t one of them. He sat silent in the back. Frankie Pope didn’t know it either. He sat silent in the back. The pink 1963 Mini bounced down towards the city to the rhythm of the a cappella aunts. And then a curious thing happened. The aunts fell silent; their little heads stopped bobbing about. The car bounced on.
Hayden looked over at Frankie Pope, alleged godfather of crime. He sat hunched in his seat, a pair of reading glasses on the end of his nose, engrossed in what looked like a literary magazine by the light of the pre-dawn moon. Was it possible that this mild-mannered, ostensibly studious young man had killed Eddie? Had Lou Brannigan got Frankie Pope totally wrong? Hayden mulled this over: implications of.
I, meanwhile, was processing some new information of my own. I always thought I’d got into St. Al’s top tier on merit, but if Frankie Pope was typical, I may have gained automatic entry based solely on my postcode. If I’d been aware of this at the time, it might have toned down the arrogance and assumption of superiority which I wore, lightly it has to be said, through my teens and early twenties, and made me a nicer person. Such is life. I am what I am. Enough.
The car seemed to glide through the pre-dawn city, smooth and silent as it crossed the Liffey and headed along the quays, down Amiens Street, past Fairview Park and my old alma mater, under the railway bridge and home, the only sound the gentle, triple-nosed snores wafting in tiny waves from the front seats.
The Mini pulled up outside Frankie Pope’s security
gate. A milk float trundled to a halt. The subject of a forthcoming documentary, The Last Milkman in Christendom, leapt out and placed a bottle by the gate. He hurried back to the float and trundled off to his next address twelve miles away.
Frankie Pope removed his spectacles, folded them neatly, placed them in his breast pocket and sighed.
‘He won’t deliver to the door,’ he said. ‘Thinks there’s dogs and heavies and stuff in there. Fact is, I don’t like heavies, and dogs pump up my histamine levels.’ He ruffled Rusty’s head before continuing. Rusty was apparently exempt. ‘I don’t even lock the security gate. Reputation, eh? If only they knew.’
He folded the journal and held it out to Hayden. ‘Great piece about Clontarf in here,’ he said. ‘Might be of interest. Anyway, best be off. Oh, and I’m not a drinker, but if you ever fancy a coffee, we could always do Bewley’s.’ He grinned sheepishly. ‘Preferably when the ma’s not around.’
Hayden glanced over at Frankie as he pocketed the magazine. It’s true what they say, he thought: we choose our enemies, but our mothers choose themselves.
The 1963 Mini is a two-door saloon. Frankie managed to prise his way past the one-and-a-half aunts snoring gently in the front passenger seat. He turned back at the gate, waved and was gone. The three aunts were now wide awake in the glorious moon-fading hour before dawn.
‘Youse two behaved yourselves very well in the back, Hayding.’
Rusty barked his agreement.
‘But it’s been a busy night, and your old aunties are a bit long in the toot for this class of carry on.’
‘So off you pop to beddy-byes like a good boy, and we’ll see you on the morrow.’
Hayden stretched and yawned. ‘I might just unwind a bit first,’ he said. ‘Listen to a couple of tapes.’
He regretted it as soon as he’d said it. You don’t tell your aunts anything they don’t need to know. Remember? They turned to face him like a three-headed hydra.
‘Tapes, Hayding? So you were listening to them after all?’
‘Well, sort of,’ he stammered. ‘You know. For educational purposes. They’re… they’re very… educational.’ They stared at him, expecting him to go on, so he did. ‘Fascinating social history and… stuff.’
Their eyes narrowed.
‘We see, Hayding. We see.’
‘So how far have you got?’
‘With the… stuff.’
‘Oh, you know. Not very far.’ He fake-yawned for effect. ‘Might just give them a miss. That’s it. Straight to bed for me.’
‘We see, Hayding. We see.’
Hayden thought about this as he walked up the
driveway towards Eddie’s front door, with Rusty trotting, I’m tempted to say trustily, by his side. We see, Hayding, we see. They’d said that twice, but he couldn’t, despite giving the matter a good deal of earnest thought, see what it was that they saw.
I’m reminded of that clichéd old dictum ‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead’, usually attributed to world record-holding insomniac Sleepy Zee. Hayden went for the amended version: I’ll sleep when I’m in bed. Far more sensible. But first: he didn’t know it yet, but Hayden was about to solve a case.
He dismissed the three aunts’ little obsession with the tapes. Probably some ‘adult’ content they didn’t want him to hear; he was, after all, only forty-three. Having said that, he’d gone off the idea of listening to them now. What if the aunts checked up on him? Instead, he unfolded Frankie Pope’s magazine, Intertextualities. Frankie was certainly the deep one. Hayden flicked through the pages. Weighty stuff. Impenetrable poetry, impenetrable prose.13 His head was starting to hurt. But hold on. Frankie had mentioned something about Clontarf. He speed-read the opening lines of each entry. Nothing to suggest – ah! Found it!
I should perhaps declare an interest here. I wrote the piece in question. I know, I know. Delusions of grandeur and all that. I’ve always had a hankering for a modicum of literary success. But never mind its intrinsic literary value; Hayden was soon more interested in the article’s subject matter which is based, I might add, on a true story.
Here’s an edited version. The full text will, of course, be available in the annotated ibid. But the essence:
Clontarf was, compared to the rest of the country, a hotbed of multi-culturalism in the late fifties, by which I mean there was a foreigner living on Kincora Road. So unusual was this that a plaque was erected to mark the historic spot. We were never formally introduced but had a run-in anyway and here, in distilled form, is my side of the story.
I was a very small boy, as was the fashion in those days, and nothing pleased me more than to wander from garden to garden in search of adventure. One day I must have strayed further than usual and found myself in a strange garden, littered – no pun where none intended – with dead felines. Curious. My child’s mind was both repelled and fascinated. Just then I spotted an earnest-looking man of Germanic aspect shoving our family cat Houdini into a large box. Job done, he began scribbling furiously onto a nearby blackboard.
Undaunted, I stepped forward and, at the precise point of his stentorian Germanic ‘Eureka!’, whipped the box open. As my hand located Houdini, a dark shadow fell across my line of vision. That’s funny, I thought precociously, that shadow doesn’t belong to the man. Unless he’s working on light particle displacement theory and has paused for a bit of harmless fun.
As I yanked Houdini out of the box, a large female hand fell over mine. I looked up. It was accompanied by a large female.
‘That is Herr Schrödinger’s Katze, little boy,’ she said. ‘And I think you’ve just killed it.’
Hayden closed the magazine. He located a black marker and wrote Ref. Schrödinger in bold letters on the cover.
Verschiebung. The word springs back into play here. Hayden had managed to relegate Marina from his frontal lobes by sheer force of will; not always, but mainly. Sometimes his defences fell and those frontal lobes were right in there, and they were certainly right in there now. Having said that, this is not an erotic novel, although I may have to reconsider as we approach the – I hope – thrilling climax. Possible scene for the film version: Marina, the flash of her eyes, the curve of her breast, the rustle of silk…
Sorry. I’ve just had an unfortunate flashback.
Ref. Schrödinger. It seemed so – what’s the word? – unfinished. Hayden couldn’t resist adding Yours Sincerely, H to the journal’s cover. He had his subliminal reasons.
He left Rusty tucking happily into a tin of Madden’s Gold Star Prawn Cocktail Brunch, slipped quietly out of the house in the pre-dawn half-light, walked quickly down the driveway, across the road, and up Marina’s drive. He pushed the magazine through the letterbox, listened for the thud on the mat, and lowered the flap gently to stop it snapping shut. He had a moment of doubt. Perhaps he should have blacked out the title.
Intertextualities.
Would a woman like Marina open a magazine with such a title, let alone read it? Even with the Ref bit? And if she did, spurred on by natural curiosity, would she read the suggested piece? Erwin Schrödinger? Who, she might think, was Erwin Schrödinger, and why should she possibly be interested? But then she might see the cat reference and think ‘A-ha!’
This was mere conjecture on Hayden’s part. The magazine, and Marina’s take on it, was now in the lap of the gods. He began to retrace his steps to Eddie’s when he had a thought. The Marina : Court sign! Good time to check it out. He was sure it read Courtesan. Very Clontarf. But best to make sure. He grabbed hold of a rhododendron bough and was about to pull it away from the sign when a susurrating sound upset the early morning stillness. He glanced over at the three aunts’ house, caressed by the waning but still bright moon. Behind the cotoneaster, also caressed, bobbed three wizened heads. He thought about saying ‘It’s not what you think’, but ‘It’s not what you think’ usually means ‘It’s exactly what you think’, which in this case it wasn’t, so he opted for a not-a-care-in-the-world whistle and strode, faux-nonchalant, back to Eddie’s.
He sat with the headphones on, the living room discreetly lit by a dusty lamp, gazing out on the back garden, and pressed Play. A quick dose of displacement therapy and off to bed. It might be noted at this point that he’d totally forgotten about finding Eddie’s killer. I find myself wondering if this book might be better suited to the literature section. But this is to pre-empt, not to mention digress, which you simply don’t do under Crime.
The tape he’d chosen was Suffer Little Chizzlers. Chizzlers is a charming Dublin expression which features in the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘No Entries Found’. Their loss. The tape in question certainly made a nice change from Eddie’s more artistic offerings. A small boy chortling with delight as Eddie showed him some of his more playful artworks. Example: A Dublin Underground with all the stations marked out on the floor and, under the floorboards, the sound of the Circle Line passing through Tallaght. As Hayden listened to the tape, the memories flooded back, the years fell away. Then this:
EDDIE: Someday you’ll be a great artist just like –
Hayden turned the tape off, overcome by a sudden and profound sadness. He sat and thought about the small boy he once was. He thought about Eddie and yes, Eddie was a great artist. Way ahead of his time. And Hayden? He thought about all the artistic compromises he’d made over the years. Only Quotin’: a dreadful TV quiz show with seemingly obligatory swearing.14 Father Brown’s Boys: ‘The paedophile priest thingy.’ Sadly, however, they weren’t the nadir of an otherwise creditable career. Hayden had been on the way up, much like Foetus O’Flaherty. He’d just signed up with hot comedy agent Richard Mann. Hayden was offered an Irish Tourist Board ad.
‘Whatever it takes, mate,’ Rich had drawled.
Hayden whatever-it-tooked. Toadstool. Leprechaun suit. Ignominy. And now he sat with his head in his hands and wept for his tragically compromised past. Pretty standard procedure for those of a comic bent, to be honest. Angst? Don’t talk to me about angst.
Having said that, the leprechaun suit ad was particularly bad. So, head in hands, salt tears.
Hayden had been up all night. I too. But Hayden had been on an emotional rollercoaster, while I’d merely been taking notes. He made up the sofa, and was about to plump up the cushions when Rusty barked furiously and raced out into the hall. Hayden followed him, yawning.
‘What is it, Rusty?’ he said.
Rusty barked a response. He was now standing outside the door to Hayden’s childhood bedroom. Maybe, thought Hayden, he’s seen a mouse. Plausible. There was a gap under the door. But this wasn’t just any door. Hayden’s childhood was in there. His hopes, his dreams, his hurt – which is why he slept on the sofa. His head was a mass of warring emotions. He stood frozen for a long moment, then steeled himself and opened the door to the width of a small dog. Rusty raced in, still barking. Hayden stood outside and waited. Silence.
‘Come on, old son,’ yawned Hayden. ‘Bedtime.’
No response. Hayden walked away. He stood by the living room door and waited. Repeated the request. Still no response. He sighed and plodded wearily back to the bedroom door. What was it with aunts and dogs?
‘Rusty,’ he said. ‘Out. Now.’
Nothing. Not a sound. Probably playing a game, thought Hayden, but he really wasn’t in the mood. Poor old Rusty, though. Is a bit of harmless fun with your new best pal too much to ask? Put like that he would have to say no, so he forced himself to face up to his demons and dragged himself wearily in. Put the light on. Stood there, all thoughts of sleep momentarily gone. The room was exactly as it was when he was little. He’d spent most of his teen years here as well, but Eddie had re-decorated it exactly as it had been when he was seven – and what a revelation to his adult eye.
The lights were a riot of tiny pinpoints, dotted into the ceiling like multi-coloured stars; the Plough and the Milky Way jumbled together in a crazy, playful pattern. Shelves lined the far wall, stacked with Eddie-made, Hayden-friendly toys. The duvet cover was a young Hayden woven abstractly into the fabric, hands behind his head, looking dreamily up at the night sky.
Hayden was suddenly overcome with an exhaustion he couldn’t fight. He rubbed his eyes and leaned heavily on a small desk by the window, a scaled-down replica of Eddie’s desk downstairs. On top of it, slightly incongruously, sat a thick brown folder, but Hayden was too tired to notice. He yanked himself away from the desk with a groan and flopped down on the bed. He thought of Eddie, re-imagining his room long after Hayden had grown up and gone away, and it filled him with sadness, longing and regret.
He thought he heard a noise in the living room. Yes. There was no doubt about it. Three tiny voices. Six tiny feet. Why? What could they possibly be doing here at this time in the morning? But he was tired. So, so tired. He curled up on top of the duvet like the child he’d once been, and never would be again. As soon as he fell asleep, Rusty re-appeared from under the bed, hopped up beside Hayden and snuggled contentedly in.
There never had been a mouse.