The Dramatist by Ken Bruen Page B

husband. Without grapes or even a hurley, but he did want to let bygones be bygones. What do you think, Ann? Should I let it go, maybe get a mass said, and every time I limp, I could like, offer it up for the souls in purgatory. Do you think that’s the way to go?”
    Her face was contorted in pain, as every word I slowly uttered lashed her deeper. She took a deep breath, asked,
    “Jack, could you…could you let it go?”
    “No.”
    She was wringing her hands, then,
    “If you harm him, I’ll never see you again. You’ll be dead to me.”
    A man walked up, asked,
    “You called for a taxi?”
    I nodded, stood and reached for my cane. She shot her hand out, touched mine, pleaded,
    “I’m begging, Jack.”
    I leant in close, her perfume causing a dance in my head, said,
    “Give your husband a message, can you do that? Tell him his hurling days are over.”
    I limped after the taxi driver, who asked,
    “You need some help there, buddy?”
    I shook my head. The help I needed only came with a Jameson seal. When I was settled in the back, he got the car in gear, swore at an ambulance and we moved. Eyed me in the mirror, asked,
    “That your missus?”
    “No, that’s my past.”
    Digesting that, he turned the radio on. I recognised Lyric FM, the classical station. The announcer said,
    “That of course was Arvo Part, ‘tabula rasa’, and later we’ll have ‘Festina Lente’.”
    I muttered,
    “I bet you bloody will.”

 
    “But this was no ordinary AA group. The failed, the aberrant, the doubly addicted and the totally brain fried whose neuroses didn’t even have a name found their way to the ‘work the steps or die motherfucker meeting’.”
    James Lee Burke, Jolie Blon’s Bounce

 
    Mrs Bailey made a huge fuss on seeing me, went ,
    “Oh, by the holy, look at the state of you.”
    She wanted to move me to a room on the ground floor because of my leg, but I was having none of that. I loved where I was, said,
    “The exercise is good. I need to keep moving.”
    Janet, the chambermaid, burst out crying, threw her arms round me, wailed,
    “We thought you’d been killed.”
    I went with the saying of my youth, the defence against emotion, said,
    “Sure, you can’t kill a bad thing.”
    I could feel her tears soak through my shirt and was more affected than I’d ever admit. Here, if fragmented, if ancient in years, was family.
    She finally released me, said,
    “And all the weight you’ve lost, you’re like a Biafran.”
    To a certain generation in Ireland, despite the number of world famines since, Biafra remains the reference, maybe because for the first time we saw up close the ravages of another country. Famine is the wound that moulded our psyche. I finally got to my room and closed the door with a sigh of relief. Janet had placed a bouquet of flowers on my bookcase and a box of Dairy Milk.
    Chocolates.
    It made me smile. I’d have killed for a bottle of Jameson and she’d given me sweets.
    The Sacred Heart calendar was still there, so I checked what nugget of wisdom was on offer, muttering,
    “Better be awesome.”
    “Lord, set my heart free.”
    So it was true, God did have a sense of humour, even if his timing was off. I lit a cig and turned on the radio. Bush was saying he had to bomb Iraq for his daddy, and John Major was playing down the revelation of his four-year affair with Edwina Currie. Then the local news: a schoolgirl had been attacked on her way to school. She was eleven. In broad daylight, a man had dragged her into an alley. He was still at large but a massive hunt was underway. I went to make coffee and almost missed the next item. A female student had fallen down a flight of steps, been killed instantly. I froze, the coffee filter in my hand, said,
    “What?”
    There were no more details. The weather forecast predicted rain and the chance of thunder. My knee ached and I checked the medication I’d received from the hospital. Six painkillers. Jeez, I could have done three right