Islandbridge by John Brady

“Eimear Walsh? Did I get her name right?”
    He shrugged and he grinned, and he walked away whistling.
    Kelly closed the door, and made his way down the hall. The radio from the next-door flat seemed to have gotten louder. He couldn’t think. Eimear, they knew her name. Or had he said her name sometime before? No, and not her second name, ever.
    The coldness seemed to rain down inside, falling from his chest, and it left him weak and empty. He stared at the transistor radio by the fridge. Now he thought about Australia, what he’d been reading in that National Geographic at the dentist. They’d never find you in Australia. Wasn’t it Australia where Kevin Heaney had gone to work in a bank?
    His eyes drifted back to the phone. He had wrapped the cord around it and put it under the hall table. He hobbled over and eased himself down onto the lino there, his leg pointed back to the kitchen. He plugged in the connector.
    He could not remember later what he had done, or thought, in the time he sat there. It might even have been hours. Later he saw that it had only been minutes until the phone rang. He let it ring twice.
    â€œYou know who this is. You don’t need to say anything.”
    Kelly concentrated on the brown nick in the lino where someone had dropped a cigarette. The voice was quiet, and the Dublin accent almost friendly.
    â€œI said I’d be in touch. I keep me promises. So here we are.”
    He wondered where Rynn was. Maybe he had stayed up all night.
    â€œNone of us wants to go through something like that again. Right?”
    Kelly listened to the faint rasp in Rynn’s breathing. He said nothing.
    â€œLook,” said Rynn finally. “I’m sure you’ve been thinking the same thing as me in that line. Nobody would wish that on anyone. No sane person.”
    He heard the inhalation of breath again, the soft pop of a cigarette being pulled from between Rynn’s lips.
    â€œYou’re on your own there now,” Rynn went on. “I’m not in a phone box, so don’t go looking. I had someone pass on a message, that’s all. Look. I hope you haven’t done anything stupid now. Have you?”
    Kelly kept up his scrutiny of the dings on the hall door, the black marks where he and others had closed it a hundred times with their foot. He wondered if Rynn had someone outside here all night, watching.
    â€œI know you’re listening. Have you told anyone, I asked you?”
    He could put down the phone. He saw himself walking out to the car, the door open in his wake, getting in, driving to the bank to pick up Eimear, going out the Naas Road, away, away to the far end of Kerry or Cork or somewhere nobody went. Just to think, to know what was best to do.
    â€œYou’re tying the knot soon enough. A grand girl, I’m sure. A lady.”
    Kelly felt the weariness as a new kind of gravity pressing him flatter against the wall and into the floor.
    â€œNow of course every little bit helps when you’re starting out, we all know that. And I was thinking about you a long time last night. Does that sound peculiar to you?”
    He should have gotten a tape recorder.
    â€œI don’t know,” he managed to say.
    â€œOr you don’t want to know . . .? Well I’ll tell you anyway. You’re a decent fella. That’s what I decided. I can tell, you know. Actually even before I decided – it’s funny – that’s what I was telling you-know-who last night. You know who I’m talking about, don’t you? Remember what he wanted to do?”
    Kelly counted to five.
    â€œYes. I do, yes.”
    â€œAre you wondering why I keep on yapping here? Why I’m not worrying about who else is listening in? I’ll tell you why. It’s like I said: you’re not stupid. And your heart’s in the right place. You don’t want anyone getting hurt. Right? After all, no-one told you to go down there after them, did