I sold a house in Booterstown this morning for about 60 Ks more than it was actually worth – and if that's not an excuse for taking the afternoon off, then we might as well declare the Celtic Phoenix dead and all go back to using both sides of the toilet paper.
I’m enjoying an Americano in my usual spot in 3fe – Three Focking Euro, I call it – when I spot a familiar figure walk pass the window. I bang on the glass, except she doesn’t hear me, so I jump up from the table and chase up the road after her.
I call her name and she turns around. It's Helen – as in my old man's still technically wife?
She looks terrible. And I don’t mean in the way that my old dear looks terrible – like a botoxed scrotum with eyes and teeth painted on to it. No, Helen just looks tired and worn down – as if she’s been crying since, I don’t know, forever.
I’m like, “Helen, what’s the Jack?”
She goes, “Oh, Ross! I’ve just been to see my solicitor!”
“About, like, the divorce?”
She nods.
I’m there, “You’re better off without him, Helen. I said it in my best man speech, if you remember. I said you were way out of his league and it’d probably only last for as long as it took you to wise up to that basic fact.”
“He wants the house, Ross.”
"Whoa, your house?"
It’s an unbelievable pad on, like, Ailesbury Road. It says a lot about the way the economy is going that my first thought is, “I wonder do they have a selling agent in mind?” It possibly says a lot about me as well.
She goes, “It’s been my home for nearly 40 years,” and that’s when the tears stort to come. “Your father is claiming he’s entitled to a half-share in it.”
I’m there, “The man has a neck like Ruby Walsh’s undercrackers.”
“He says I can either buy him out or he’ll force me to sell it.”
“Let’s hope it never comes to that. Who are you thinking of using if it does, though? It’s not Felicity Fox, is it?”
“Ross, your father wants to put me out on the street!”
"Yeah, no, he's definitely lost it – and when I say it, I mean the actual plot."
“What happened to us? Two years ago, we were happy. We were getting ready to settle into our old age together.”
“I remember. He was talking about moving to the Caribbean to be closer to his money.”
“Then he found that wig in the attic. And since that day, everything has gone wrong. This war he’s gotten himself into with Denis O’Brien. His court case to try to prove that the Constitution is unconstitutional…”
“He got the go-ahead for Aquatraz, by the way. I mean, no one’s supposed to know until after this, I don’t know, water rates commission reports back, but he’s going to be building a prison on Lambay Island.”
"I miss him, Ross. I don't mean this version of him. I mean the real him."
"This is the real him. Cholesterol and greed. The nice guy routine was just a midlife crisis."
“We have to do something. We have to wake him up to himself before it’s too late.”
And it’s there, standing on Lower Grand Canal Street, that I end up having one of my world famous ideas.
“Ross,” Helen goes, “what’s happening with your face?”
I’m there, “I’m thinking, Helen. I’m thinking deeply. And I’m remembering something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know if you’ve ever heard me mention this, but when I was a kid, I did my work experience with his solicitor.”
“Hennessy?”
“Yeah, no, it was mostly just burning paperwork in a barrel in the cor pork. I was hospitalised twice due to smoke inhalation and my work experience report is still in an evidence bag somewhere in Kevin Street Gorda Station.”
Helen laughs. She obviously thinks I’m joking.
"Anyway," I go, "I was mostly getting rid of paperwork that incriminated my old man in, like, dodgy stuff? As you know, he's as crooked as a Welsh put-in. But I kept four boxes of documents back."
“Why? Why did you do that?”
"Let's just say insurance. Actually, it was literally insurance? When Axa wrote to me every year telling me I needed to pony up another three or four grand to stay on the road, I'd ring my old man and say, 'Pay it or those boxes will find their way into the public, I don't know, demesne?"
“So what are you suggesting we do with them now?”
“We’ll give them to one of his enemies. Send them to Denis – unanimously.”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Ross.”
“Or we could just send them to the Gords. Three or four years back in a prison cell might soften his cough.”
“Perhaps just the threat of it might be enough to bring him to his senses?”
“I still say it’d be funny to see him in jail. I brought him a hormonica the last time he was in. I don’t know if he ever mentioned that.”
So what ends up happening is that I hop into the cor and I drive home. I meet Sorcha in the hallway, dragging her IV drip stand behind her. She’s obviously having a late lunch.
She goes, “What are you doing home?”
I’m there, “I sold a gaff this morning. I thought I’d make the afternoon a kind of lap of honour.”
I’m actually on the way up the stairs when she says it. She goes, “You’ve just missed your dad.”
I’m like, “Excuse me?”
“He called around with Hennessy about 20 minutes ago. Wanted to know could if he could borrow your golf clubs?”
“My golf clubs?”
“Yeah, I told him he could go up to the attic to get them.”
I race up the stairs, taking them three at a time. I pull down the Stira and I clamber up it into the attic. I flick the light and that’s when I see it. My golf clubs are still there. But there’s a big, empty space where four boxes of documents used to be. ILLUSTRATION: ALAN CLARKE