Hayden wandered around Eddie’s for the last time. As he walked slowly through the house and back garden, those same emotions that had affected him so deeply at the scattering of Eddie’s ashes crowded back in on him. The love, the tenderness, the sorrow and yes, the idolisation. And the something he couldn’t find a word for. The something not quite so loving. The dark, brooding, clenched emotion that drove him to kill his own beloved father. And oh! The sense of loss.
He let himself out and walked down the driveway, also for the last time. He thought about cycling, but that would mean leaving the bike at Dollymount. It didn’t seem right somehow. He also had Rusty to think about. He felt bad about Rusty. He must have met him on his last tragic visit, but he didn’t remember a thing. Too late for that now, though, and Rusty was better off without him. He’d attach his lead to the three aunts’ doorknob. They’d be sure to spot the soulful-eyed little mutt eventually. Just in case there was any delay on that front, he’d leave a full doggy bowl there too. One of those two-bowl jobs – food and water. He’d just put it down and was about to attach the lead when the front door opened.
‘Will you look who it is.’
‘Howaya, Hayding.’
‘We weren’t lurking behind the door, by the way.’
‘Call it happy chance.’
Rusty looked up adoringly at Hayden. Hayden looked the other way.
‘Oh, will you look at that. Such adorayshing, Hayding.’
‘But what’s this? He senses someting. You can always tell wit a woof-woof.’
‘He was like this when Eddie went.’
‘Inconsolable, but dignified wit it.’
‘Oh yes. Stiff upper lip trewout, although I do seem to remember a bit of ow-ow-owooing last ting at night.’
This set Rusty off.
‘Ow ow owoooo.’
‘There. That’s exactly it. Clever dog.’
‘Oh, he senses someting all right, Hayding.’
‘And he’s not happy about it.’
‘Not one teensy bit.’
As Hayden walked down Kincora Road, he felt eight eyes on his back. His heart was breaking, but there was no going back. His course was set. On to oblivion and the everlasting blackout! Assuming, of course, the Catholics had got it wrong.
He turned right down Vernon Avenue, passed Madden’s, and met Bram as he reached the sea front.
‘The very man,’ said Bram. ‘Day off. Fancy a quick one in the Buoy?’
Hayden studied Bram as if for the first time. The open, artless face. The slight air of permanent bemusement. Bram was his best friend, had been since childhood, and this parting of the ways was breaking his heart anew. He clasped Bram’s nearest hand in both of his.
‘My dearest friend,’ he said. ‘My dear, dear friend.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Bram. ‘Is that a yes?’
‘No,’ said Hayden. ‘No, it isn’t. It’s…’
He couldn’t finish the sentence. It seemed so… final.
‘A no,’ said Bram helpfully. ‘If you change your mind later, I should be in there for a while. You know. Relaxification time. Cúpla scoops.’
Hayden watched him go. A happy bus-driver’s-day-off whistle. A middle-aged-man-skip off the pavement, back on, repeat. Through the glass door of the Nautical Buoy and out of Hayden’s life forever. A catch in Hayden’s throat, a heavy sigh, and onward; ever, ever onward.
He crossed the road and walked slowly along the promenade, the glorious summer sunlight mocking his dark, doom-laden mood. Every step he took would be the last step he ever took along that particular bit of the prom. He turned right down the Bull Wall towards Dollymount. Same thing with the steps. Last time. Over the wooden bridge, the water swirling and eddying, beckoning, below. He could jump off there, but what if it was only two feet deep? Excellent for comedy if you timed it right. Finlay Jameson had done just that in his final, aforementioned two-reeler, The Suicide: the one where his accidental head-first death plunge was deemed too funny to leave out of the final cut by the studio bosses.25
But this wasn’t comedy.
It wasn’t tragedy either. Yet. It would be, however, when he reached the last bathing shelter before the statue, took his clothes off and walked, finally and irrevocably, into the sea. That was the very stuff of tragedy. But not if he pre-empted the final act on the wooden bridge and landed head first in two feet of water, with a group of foreign students taking mobile phone footage to send to the folks back home and, beyond that, the world of social media. The ten million hits scenario. Hayden McGlynn RIP lol. Hayden walked on.
On his right-hand side water and, in the distance, the mighty beating heart of the metropolis. To his left, the Royal Dublin Golf Club, fenced off to protect innocent passers-by from the clientele. My own aversion to golf was referenced earlier, so I’ll say no more. Besides, Hayden was soon past the perimeter. He’d just arrived at the two point five miles of glorious Dollymount beach, complete with dunes. On one of the dunes he could distinctly see a large crowd, much as you’d see on the eighteenth fucking hole. Sorry. Language. But this was outside the imposing, and hopefully electrified, fence. I mean, golf! Listen, if you’ve been reading this far and happen to be a golf fan, I forbid you to read on.
The crowd was hushed. A scene was being played out in silence out of view. What could it be? Not golf, surely, unless the more odious practitioners of that equally odious sport26 had decided to extend the boundary fence by laying claim to the public dunes. Hayden’s curiosity won the day. Curiosity first, then suicide. For obvious reasons, it wouldn’t work the other way round. He prised his way through the crowd of hushed onlookers and there, leaning over a corpse, squatted Quilty, not a glass of single malt in sight. He was, however, swaying on his haunches and slurring ever so slightly.
‘A contusion to the left phrenology caused instant death, Inspective Detector, which proves beyond doubt that he himself was the perpetrator of his own demise.’
The inspector clapped him on the back. ‘You’ve done it again, Quilty. Drink?’
Quilty struggled to his feet. ‘As well you know, old love, I never touch the stuff.’
They both laughed heartily and walked slowly, and possibly homo-erotically, away from the corpse.
‘Okay, guys. It’s a wrap.’
As the corpse stood up and brushed himself off, Hayden noted for the first time the discreetly positioned cameras. He moved quietly away. Nothing in this world, he reflected, was ever as it seemed. He made his way back across the dunes to the sea road and started walking down towards the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Star of the Sea. The Brutalist-period statue that should have been Eddie’s but wasn’t. Just as Father Brown’s Boys should have been funny but wasn’t. Nothing was as it seemed; nothing was as it should be. Ah well. He’d be out of it soon enough. He’d go to the last bathing shelter, remove his clothes, walk down the steps and into the sea and sweet oblivion. No togs, but he wouldn’t need them where he was going.
Ten minutes later he was down to his underpants. He folded his clothes neatly and worked his way, each step a final step on that particular step, down the steps.
Death, he concluded, was also a final step.
Maybe a bit too final, so he turned around and slowly walked back up.