I can see it, Cait, though another century will have long opened before I’m released back into a city ringed by golf courses. Exclusive restaurants between the green canals, sporadic insurrections still in the shanty towns. The crowd of youths not dispersed by the water cannon but by the bored cameraman finally screwing the cover over the lens. Out here electric fences will hum in the evenings, crackling when a stray dog stumbles against them. In the white pillar beside the solid wooden gates an intercom will wait for messages. Motorists gliding silently through the woodlands, the drone of Dutch and French over the car telephones.
And the chosen million Irish left: red-haired girls in peasant aprons bringing menus to diners in the converted castles, at one end of the scale; at the other, middle-ranking civil servants who will close their eyes at night, knowing that once we could have stood up as equals, not been bought out like children by the quick lure of grants. Irish officials, knowing they began too late to reach the top posts, will swap electronic gadgets with their neighbours, wondering some evenings about the times of their youth, never speaking of them in front of their children, like parents a century and a half before ashamed of their Gaelic tongue.
Maybe Pascal died well; maybe I did him one final favour. A bull-like man, living on instinct and animal strength. He died as he had lived before a thousand officials cut him into pieces with triplicate forms. He was too much himself to ever adapt to their world: too burly, too steeped in his past. His brother will purr like a lap-dog but they will soon tire of that. And Justin? The chosen one. In a bar full of emigrants about to depart, I once thought of him as the angel of death. His childish games are over now. Farmers up for the markets in the frozen dawn will knock in vain on the door of The Clean World Health Studio, students will no longer reach Holland with phone numbers in their pockets. When you are a child you play with childish things; you play with grown-ups when you inherit the earth.
From this night we will have a son. I feel it as surely as I know they will catch me. When his turn comes, will he join the queues at the airports, or will you teach him to run like his father tried to? Woods like this have sheltered us for centuries. After each plantation this is where we came, watched the invader renaming our lands, made raids in the night on what had once been our home. Ribbonmen, Michael Dwyer’s men, Croppies, Irregulars. Each century gave its own name to those young men. What will they call us in the future, the tramps, the Gypsies, the enemies of the community who stay put?
I do not expect you to wait for me, Cait. Just don’t leave, stand your ground. Tell him about me sometime; teach him the first lesson early on: there is no home, nowhere certain any more. And tell him of Shay, like our parents told us the legends of old; tell him of the one who tried to return to what can never be reclaimed. Describe his face Cait, the raven black hair, that smile before the car bore down and our new enslavement began.
I can hear that animal creeping closer, paws barely touching the grass, nose alert for danger. Sleep on, my love. Tomorrow or the next day they will come. I will keep running till they kill or catch me. Then it will be your turn and the child inside of you. Out there, across the cities and villages, the celebrations must still be going on, the newspapers full of statistics, shifts and voting patterns, commentators discussing the reaction of the nation. It doesn’t matter to internal exiles like us. No, we’re not exiles, because you are the only nation I give allegiance to now, sleeping with some strands of your hair caught in the torch light. When you hold me, Cait, I have reached home.
GLOSSARY
Ard-Fheis: A political party conference
Baby Power. A bottle of Power’s whiskey containing one (Irish) measure
Ban Garda: A policewoman
Boreen: (From the Irish) A very small country road
Bounce, the: Playing truant from school
Crack: Enjoyment generated in other people’s company. Cheaper than the American version and a great deal more fun
FCA: Ireland’s reserve army—mainly joined by boys in their late teens
Fainne: Rings of varying precious metals (depending on the wearer’s proficiency with the language) worn on the lapel by Irish-language speakers.
Hard Chaws: Tough men (or women), street arabs
Jockeybacks: Piggybacks
LDF: Ireland’s local defence force during the war. A forerunner of the FCA
Leb: Lebanese dope
Mitch: The same as going on the bounce
Mot: A Dublin term for a girl or a girlfriend
Nixers: An unofficial piece of work done outside (or sometimes inside) working hours
Spots: Pounds
Three Cross Doubles: Three doubles and a treble in the one bet
Turlough: (From the Irish) A lake without obvious sources, which vanishes in summer and suddenly fills up during a wet winter
Dermot Bolger
was born in Dublin in 1959. His eight novels include The Woman’s Daughter, The Journey Home, Father’s Music, Temptation and The Valparaiso Voyage, all of which are published by Flamingo. A poet and playwright, his work has received many awards, in Ireland and internationally. He has edited many anthologies, including The Picador Book of Contemporary Irish Fiction and devised and edited the best-selling collaborative novels, Finbar’s Hotel and Ladies Night in Finbar’s Hotel. Bolger has been an energetic champion of new Irish writers as founder-publisher of Raven Arts Press, which he ran until 1992, whereafter he co-founded and became executive editor of New Island Books. He has been Playwright in Association with The Abbey Theatre, Writer Fellow in Trinity College, Dublin and in 2002 received the inaugural Hennessy Irish Literature Hall of Fame Award.
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Praise
‘Bolger’s themes are moral and sexual degradation and the ubiquity of corruption. The relentless honesty of his writing is savage and refreshing.’
Time Out
‘Hano’s initiation into sleazy Dublin nightlife and Shay’s fall from grace and eventual tragic humiliation is conveyed with a compelling, even reckless, intensity.’
Irish Independent
By the same author
Novels
Night Shift
The Woman’s Daughter
The Journey Home
Emily’s Shoes
A Second Life
Father’s Music
Temptation
The Valparaiso Voyage
Plays
The Lament for Arthur Cleary
Blinded by the Light
In High Germany
The Holy Ground
One Last White Horse
April Bright
The Passion of Jerome
Consenting Adults
Plays: I (selected plays)
Poetry
The Habit of Flesh
Finglas Lilies
No Waiting America
Leinster Street Ghosts
Taking My Letters Back: New & Selected Poems
Editor
The Picador Book of Contemporary Irish Fiction
Finbar’s Hotel
Ladies’ Night at Finbar’s Hotel
Druids, Dudes and Beauty Queens: The Changing Face of Irish Theatre
Copyright
Flamingo
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
Flamingo is a registered trade mark of
HarperCollinsPublishers Limited
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Published by Flamingo 2003
987654321
First published in Great Britain by Viking 1990
Previously published in paperback by Penguin 1991
Copyright © Dermot Bolger 1990
Dermot Bolger asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
This nove
l is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.
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EPub Edition © JUNE 2010 ISBN: 978-0-007-39425-8
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