Books

Christmas Reunion, a new short story by Conor Griffin

Sparks fly when three old school friends, one home from the US for the holidays, meet in the pub

Conor Griffin

Conor Griffin
Fri Dec 23 2022 - 04:58

It was the evening of one of those nameless days between Christmas and New Year’s when Tadhg thundered into our snug at the back of Carroll’s. He’d flown into Shannon from Boston that morning, his pinstriped shirt freshly pressed but his face stubbled, tiny red tributaries polluting the whites of his eyes.

‘Batten down the hatches,’ he said too loudly as he pumped our hands and pummelled our shoulders. ‘The three whoresmen of the apocalypse are back for one night only.’

I didn’t correct him that two of us permanently lived there, and I already had a sense of heads turning and harsh judgements being made. But then again, I had always been more self-conscious than him and it was just as likely that nobody paid us any heed.

‘The missus is sleeping off the jetlag back in the parents’ gaff so the three beasts might even make Dreamers tonight,’ he said.

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‘You might ditch the apocalypse stuff,’ Simon said, ‘and Dreamers shut down last year.’

‘No way. Anyway, much more importantly, single malt or single grain?’

He rubbed the palms of his large hands together like he was trying to generate sparks and turned for the bar without waiting for an answer, bringing down three Green Spots with a new round of pints despite the full ones in front of us. As usual, his initial show of generosity meant that we were locked into €35 rounds that would make the next day a hellish write-off.

It was over two decades since we fell in together in Applied Maths, where we bonded by ignoring the curriculum to dissect the minutiae of Star Trek: The Next Generation in the back row of the classroom. Analogue was still king, so an uncle of Simon’s in Miami posted us videos of new episodes that we watched in Tadhg’s old playroom on Friday evenings. As such, it probably won’t come as a surprise that while nobody ever called us the three whoresmen of the apocalypse, I overheard us being referred to by a few other labels, and it seemed that for two or three years, we were never further than the length of an umbilical cord from each other.

Tadhg was, without doubt, the alpha male of our small group. He took great pride in the fact that he was on the rugby team, though in a school that struggled to find 15 willing players, this was hardly the feather in his cap that he sometimes made it, and he took the safer social option of dominating our small paddling pool rather than taking the risk of drowning elsewhere.

The weekly highlight of those summers was the Saturday night visit to Dreamers nightclub, usually after necking cider or Bacardi and Coke in the corner of a wet field somewhere. The sense of potential over those few hours of outdoors drinking was usually as good as the night got. Though we were always blindly hopeful, romantic encounters in Dreamers were rare and fleeting, unlike the constant threat of violence. Still, Tadhg’s presence guaranteed our safety. The wispy-tached hardchaws never quite knew what to make of him as they weighed his corduroy blazer and glasses against his tree trunk legs and gargantuan shoulders. On mature consideration, they generally chose to leave him and us alone.

College scattered us from our small provincial town to Limerick, Cork and Dublin. It was enjoyable in parts, but there was no walking a beautiful girl home from a ball at dawn, my tuxedo jacket around her shoulders, the milkman saluting us like in the advert. No experimentation or debauchery either, just a lot of toast and Countdown and not having the bravery to approach the girls I fancied from a distance.

The three of us would still meet for pints several times a year, and in the years after graduation and the seemingly obligatory stints in Australia, myself and Simon eventually moved back home within months of each other, buying in separate new housing developments that both contained the names of tree types that were nowhere in sight. Sycamore Mews. Ash Lawn. Marriage followed, and a few short years later I was threatening two small children that they wouldn’t be allowed to watch cartoons in the morning if they kept creeping downstairs after bedtime. With no great effort either way, I had become my father.

I took a post as a civil engineer with the county council, while Simon had quit his IT role to work in a nursing home. I got the impression that despite his own success, the two of us living near each other again made Tadhg feel insecure, and while his relationship with me was less adversarial, his interactions with Simon were never further than a careless phrase away from rancour during our increasingly infrequent reunions.

For his part, Tadhg had stayed in the States after his work placement, clambering up corporate ladders in a succession of what I think were financial services jobs. To be honest, neither myself nor Simon knew exactly what he did, though it was definitely something to do with money. He eventually married a girl from Ohio with golden hair and the type of immaculate, American teeth you might only see in an orthodontist’s promotional literature. Their wedding was a lavish affair over there, two hundred people gorging on lobster and fillet steak in a vast, white marquee on Nicole’s family’s lawn.

Myself and Simon had travelled despite the lateness of our invitations (neither of our wives made the journey), but we were so far back from the top table that I suspected we were part of a past that he was doing his best to distance himself from. We were seated beside three great-aunts from the bride’s side who ate pureed versions of the menu and whose knowledge of Ireland seemed to have been filtered exclusively through the plot of The Quiet Man. Our table was beside a flap in the marquee through which a battalion of busboys whizzed back and forth to scrape leftovers into huge open dumpsters, the din they made distracting from the main event of Tadhg’s speech.

By the time dessert arrived, the viscous crustacean innards piled just five yards from us in the full heat of the summer sun were already reeking, though our elderly companions didn’t seem to notice. It was clear that the Americans loved his bluster, particularly the stories about himself that he fabricated for his 42-minute speech, during which even Nicole seemed like an afterthought. Unsurprisingly, there was no mention of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Dreamers or Applied Maths.

‘To good health, beasts,’ Tadhg said, raising his whiskey glass and draining what remained. When we’d finished those Simon bought another round, and I already felt a heat about my cheeks and a drag to my words.

Tadhg was doing his best to be seen to take an interest in our lives, and without making any effort to hide my enthusiasm, I described the drainage scheme that I was overseeing along a troublesome stretch of the bay road that flooded every winter. I used folded beer mats and my wristwatch to illustrate the design, and though Tadhg’s eyes glazed over, he feigned interest with an uncharacteristic politeness.

‘And you, Simon, a new job,’ he said.

‘You wouldn’t be doing it for the money,’ Simon said. ‘Long hours, tough work.’

Simon always belittled his achievements around Tadhg. It was as though he was a village chief razing dwellings to the ground to deny the approaching marauders the satisfaction.

‘It’s not everything,’ Tadhg said, looking into the middle distance as though to give his words gravity. ‘The money, I mean.’

‘Easy for you to say,’ Simon said. ‘Croesus of the skyscrapers over there.’

‘On out of that,’ Tadhg said, swatting a hand towards him. ‘I have to say though Simon…’

‘You have to say?’ Simon said, eyes narrowing in anticipation of the sting.

‘Easy, cowboy. I was about to say, it must be great to feel you’re actually helping others. Rather than just being sat in an office all day analysing charts and tapping at a keyboard.’

A brief silence then.

‘It’s alright, I suppose,’ Simon said. ‘You know yourself.’

‘I don’t, Simon. That’s what I’m saying. I don’t know what that’s like. To feel part of something bigger. A community, even.’

I could see that Simon was reluctantly buoyed by Tadhg’s words, lifted by his approval in a way that he wouldn’t have been by mine. Still, I felt a growing unease. While I was immune to Tadhg’s brashness, the cloying sincerity that he sometimes turned on quickly became excruciating, like being ambushed by a movie’s sex scene while sat in the living room with your parents at the age of 15, the discarded farming supplement suddenly something of great interest, your father piping up to say that it had been cold in the shade that afternoon despite the sun.

For all that, there seemed a new introspection or even melancholy about him, so maybe I was wrong, perhaps even he was capable of changing his spots. I pondered this as I went up for my round, and when I returned they were talking about the time Tadhg had knocked out a bouncer outside Dreamers. My recollection was that his off-balance slap had barely connected before the three of us scarpered, but I didn’t offer this alternative version, and we clinked a vigorous cheers that spilled some lager on the table.

Silence between us then, and I only became fully aware of the cacophonous din of the rest of the pub, the hoarse shouting and braying laughter, the competing egos everywhere. A synthetic Christmas tree in the corner, tinsel and candles in every window. Wham! and Fairytale of New York. The bonhomie of Christmas would be a fleeting thing and the pub would be a cold morgue in three weeks’ time, everybody now there instead engaged in self-enforced penitential regimes that wouldn’t survive to see the second week of February. The whole thing suddenly seemed sad and part of me wished I was back at home.

‘Would you ever wonder though, what it’s all about?’ Tadhg said. His voice felt intrusive after our silence, and it was rare that he asked a question that didn’t contain an answer. It seemed like a new weakness, a breach in his armour, a puncture in his space suit.

‘Sometimes,’ Simon said.

Again, the noise of the rest of the pub cascaded in, battering at our senses. And Tadhg still looking into space, but the corners of his mouth twitching, the tell-tale sign that something bad was getting the better of him. Danger here, as a football commentator might say. He sipped his whiskey too carefully and placed the glass down on the table soundlessly, his eyes on Simon. He leaned in closer and spoke lower.

‘Something else I meant to ask, Simon.’

‘Yeah, go on.’

‘I meant to ask.’

‘You meant to ask what?’

‘Maybe I shouldn’t. It’s probably none of my business, to be fair.’

‘Go on.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Get on with it or shut up.’

Tadhg leaned further in and whispered something to him, too low even for me to hear, bookending it with his trademark smirk. I didn’t need to hear whatever had been said, didn’t want to, and I’d had enough to drink that I can’t recall the exact choreography of what followed. Simon certainly punched Tadhg, an echoey thwack that connected with his nose. There was blood but no retaliation. I’m almost certain Tadhg fell off his chair, but I’m not sure if it was himself or Simon who the bar staff dragged out first.

Then we were all outside, me standing between them like a live border, the night air slapping us like a cold sea. It could just have been a power thing, but Tadhg was seemingly oblivious to Simon’s desire to split his head open, leaning against a wall holding a ball of tissues to his bloody snout as though this was the only outcome he’d wanted from the evening. He’d scabbed a cigarette from somebody and was trying his best to smoke it. Some of the tissue caught flame and he threw it onto the footpath and stamped it out.

They sat either side of me in the Accident & Emergency waiting area. There was still a trickle from Tadhg’s nose and some of his blood had spotted my shirt and jeans. I Googled ‘Washing out blood stains’ on my phone and wondered if the combination of words would prompt an alert and add my details to a secret database of people who should be closely observed and monitored.

In the absence of more drink, I could already feel the embryo of a hangover, my mouth drying and the tell-tale pressure behind my forehead. With a bit of luck the abrupt end to our session would mean I’d sweat the worst of it out by the morning. It was my turn to get up with the kids so Toy Story 4 would be doing the heavy lifting once the trauma of making them breakfast was over. I wondered when my life had become an exercise in fearful damage limitation. Perhaps it always had been.

Beside me, Tadhg was mumbling something, dragging me out of whatever cave it was I’d been wallowing in.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Are you deaf as well as stupid?’ he said, ‘Nicole didn’t fly home with me. She moved out last month. She’s shacked up with a lad she was with in high school. He doesn’t even work. She even left the engagement ring.’

The word ‘ring’ seemed to crumble on its way out of his mouth. Beside me, Simon’s head turned slightly so that he might hear better.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ Tadhg said, the quiver of his voice more shocking than the disclosure, his show of vulnerability a fundamental truth forever shattered. I did the only thing I could: I pretended I didn’t hear his heaving sobs and his uneven breaths. He didn’t need whatever cold comfort I could have offered – he was like one of those wobbly man toys that would always right itself regardless of how hard it was pushed, or so I told myself. Wasn’t he? Wasn’t he?

The three of us look straight ahead, nobody saying anything, and we could be back in Applied Maths 20 years earlier. Newton’s laws, motion in a straight line under uniform acceleration, conservation of momentum. All of it going over our heads but two new episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation awaiting us in Tadhg’s old playroom and the future a book that is simultaneously open and closed.

Originally from Tralee in Co Kerry, Conor Griffin lives and works in Dublin

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