A Kind of Drowning, page 5
“Casey Clarke, the one you were drooling over back there,”
“Her cookery programme is enlightening,” said Crowe.
“My husband says the same. He still hasn’t managed to make his way to the kitchen and cook her recipes though. She was in here with Ephraim Hunt,”
Crowe paused.
“Hunt? The property developer?”
“Same,” she replied. She scrolled her phone and pulled up an image. Mel was wedged between stunning Casey and the gelled up tousled salt ‘n vinegar head of Hunt. It was outdoors near the harbour wall. Hunt’s ‘What? Who me?’ expression was framed in his signature yellow tinted shades.
“They had coffee here, brought the town to a standstill. It was in VIP,” she said.
“Don’t read magazines, either” said Crowe.
Teflon D and Ephraim Hunt. Roscarrig was attracting the vultures. Cannibals and vultures conniving tooth and claw.
Mel reached for a pink apron hanging on a peg and tossed it to him,
“You can get cracking now,” she said turning on her heel, “The cafe opens in half an hour. Mop and bucket are in the storage room. There’ll be a delivery here at ten. Can you lift heavy weights?”
“No problem,” he lied.
He now had a job, a roof over his head and last night’s bet had come in. With another thousand euro in his pocket dolefully handed over by Karen, he could afford to splurge,
“I’ll have a double espresso, Mel, three sugars, thanks.”
He handed her a tenner,
“Keep the change,” he said.
She handed it back,
“Get to work, John. You can take your break with Pavel and Maciej,”
“A shot of milk on the side?” he said.
But Mel was already in the café setting up for the day.
7
Thea Farrell hated to be late. Her mother, Grace brushed her hair, but Thea was impatient. She was excited. Grace hushed her with a gentle hand on her shoulder. Thea shouldn’t get too excited; it would cause her to trip over her words. Get in a little muddle. Muddles were silly billy. It was Thea’s first day of work, and she was keen to arrive on time. She kept turning her head to look at the radio clock on her bedside table.
Down Syndrome didn’t deter her. She was nineteen years old and ready to make her mark on the world. The Boogie-Woogie Café would be the start. The words ‘Boogie-Woogie’ made her laugh. Thea’s laugh was infectious.
“There,” said Grace, “Pretty as a rose,”
“Rose of Tralee?” asked Thea. She was giddy with excitement.
“Prettier,” smiled Grace.
If Grace Farrell’s insides were churning, it didn’t show in her expression. Thea was acutely attuned to her parents’ moods. Their communication happened over Thea’s head when she was on YouTube, in mouthed words and choreographed eye-contact, but Grace’s intuition told her Thea always knew what they were discussing. They had their misgivings about allowing Thea into a bustling environment. In fact, Andrew was dead set against it. But Grace held firm. He would come around eventually, she thought. She believed that Thea had to grow as a woman. Grace compartmentalised her fears and admired their gorgeous daughter. She was a gift. Everyone in Roscarrig knew Thea. Everyone loved her.
Thea’s nose crinkled in a smile,
“Don’t worry – be happy, Mam,” she said.
“I am, sweetheart, I am,” said Grace.
She felt a twinge of empty nest; she fought the rising fears.
“Dad will drop you over,” said Grace.
Andrew had been a knot of molten anger that morning, it was becoming a default setting these days,
“For Christ’s sake – we’re.. WE ARE running late,” he shouted.
The staircase echoed his anger.
Andrew Farrell hated to be late – tardiness was the eighth deadly sin for him.
“Hey Dad. Don’t worry,” called down Thea.
Grace kissed the top of Thea’s luxuriant soft hair,
“What would you like to do?” she asked
“I’ll walk,” replied Thea.
“She’ll walk, Andy,” shouted down Grace.
A volcanic silence simmered below on the stairs. Then they heard the sound of the van’s keys being wrenched off the hook below the coat hanger.
Thea was dressed in the crisp white tee, blue jeans and comfortable pumps required for the cafe. Her hair was bundled up into her favourite pink scrunchy and she had put on her favourite friendship bracelets, gifts from her friends Lauren and Lucy at the café, along with her bright pink watch. They had promised to protect her, their solemn pledge to Grace.
Thea’s backpack had her freshly laundered Garfield cat toy – he clung to the strap smugly. She put on her pink sunglasses and clipped her door key to her belt loop.
She waved goodbye to Andrew, who ignored her and over-revved his van out of the estate with his mobile pressed close to his ear. Thea walked down the narrow road from her home; a semi facing the sea. Some neighbours came out to wish her luck. With solid strides, Thea walked through the main street, and turned a sharp right to the harbour where The Boogie-Woogie and Mel waited.
She hugged Thea.
“Welcome, darling – ready for your first day?” said Mel.
Thea gave her best thumbs-up.
“Then let’s get to work, Thea,”
“Let’s get to work, Mel,” said Thea.
Thea Farrell strode into the first day of her working life with a thumbs-up to everyone sitting in the café. They gave cheery thumbs-up back. It was the brightest corner in Roscarrig that day.
Thea shook the hands of the shift: Pavel and Maciej - the short-order cook and pastry chef. Cash-till and front-of-house were a moveable feast of half-bored teenagers, but Lauren and Lucy were regular. They made a big fuss of her.
Crowe was wrestling dishes out of the dishwasher. Forty eight hours into the kitchen porter gig hadn’t improved his mood any.
“Don’t worry, be happy,” said Thea.
“I am happy, thanks,” said Crowe.
“No, you’re very grumpy,” said Thea.
“This is my everyday happy face, and you are?”
“Thea. Thea Farrell. Pleased to meet you.”
Crowe stacked the plates onto the workstation and wiping his hands in the soiled pink apron, he shook her hand,
“Nice to meet you. Now, I am very busy, Thea.”
Thea tilted her head, the sunglasses now perched like Mel’s. She narrowed her eyes reminding Crowe of a cat sizing up a sparrow.
“I am very busy too,” she announced.
And left the kitchen to take the clientele’s orders.
Lauren, the tattoo girl, sidled up to him, her expression was one long complaint,
“Be fucking nice to her, or I’ll burst you, Crowe,” she said.
“Yup. Be nice. Got it.” replied Crowe.
Lauren tilted a plate off Crowe’s wet pile, and it shattered on the kitchen tiles spectacularly.
“Be nice, Crowe. I know who you are and what you did to that man. We watch our own here. If you try anything, not only will I burst you, but Lucy will fucking burst you too - I’ll fucking upload it too. Snapchat and TikTok you to fuck.”
Lauren used profanities as punctuation behind the counter; ‘fuck’ was practically a comma at peak time, offset with sullen silences and grunts at smoke break.
Lucy slalomed past the chefs with an armful of plates, her platinum bob pinned up in clips. She looked capable of dragging a trawler onto land by its anchor and was imbued with the same ‘born too late’ demeanour as Lauren. Both girls posed a credible threat to life and limb.
“Thanks, Lauren, I’ll bear that in mind. Oh, and Lauren?”
Lauren whirled on her runners,
“Keep the language down around Thea,” said Crowe.
Lauren raised a middle finger.
Mel made one of her sudden apparitions,
“Next breakage will be out of your wages, John,” she said with one eye fixed on the tables outside, hoping the exchanges didn’t drift. She enforced a Bad Behaviour jar of €1 for charity. Lauren was the gift that kept on giving.
“Doing this for free, remember? Mel,” said Crowe.
“I’ll take it out of your tips then,”
That’d break the bank, he thought.
Crowe stacked the pile away and swept up the shards of crockery. His shirt was clinging to him, long rivulets of sweat were pooling around his lower back and running down the crack of his arse.
“And you need to work on your personal freshness, I can smell the whiskey from here, Crowe. Do you actually brush your teeth?”
Volunteering was now becoming a Dante-esque level of torment.
Crowe sorted the dishes and packed Lucy’s massive haul into the dishwasher. Pavel throwing the pots into the sink like javelins spilled suds over Crowe and the tiled floor, turning it into a skating rink that needed regular mopping.
He would give it another week.
Thea had her first orders in. Crowe looked up and saw the radiant glow of achievement in Thea’s smile. Sunshine on legs. He sought the darkened corners of the kitchen, slipping out into the wheelie-bin lined alley for an unscheduled smoke break.
He didn’t feel worthy of such a glow.
He scrolled down his smart phone; twenty messages sent to Alison and Cathal without response. Identifying himself as ‘Podge’ and Dad didn’t seem to help. His old phone had all the photographs, dead in the drawer of THE BIG MACHINE in Dublin’s Phoenix Park HQ. His new one had four numbers on the speed dial – Alison, Cathal, Mel Fox and Derry Gallagher. Don’t worry, be happy. He pressed his head against the wall and dragged the B&H until a loping arc of ash fell off the butt.
Fuck that, he thought.
He crushed the butt into the ground and wiped his sweaty brow with the apron. He had another four hours to go before a date with his bottle of Jameson, to wash down the snack box from The Dragon Inn.
8
It was a Monday afternoon when Crowe met Clodagh Robertson. Mondays and Tuesdays were his days off. The library was an old schoolhouse restored back to its former glory. A blocky Church of Ireland edifice, the stones, laid in Victorian austerity, gave it a solid sense of purpose. From across the carpark, he watched Clodagh freewheel in on an old fashioned bicycle with a basket on its bars. She was wearing dark skinny jeans, a loose striped top, and a vivid yellow rain jacket with reflective stripes. Expensive like her Nikes. Crowe looked at his wrist and remembered he didn’t have a watch. She clicked past him to the door of the library and expertly wrangled the bike against the wall. One of Roscarrig’s sudden onshore breezes hoisted the rain jacket hood over her head, masking her voice,
“Sorry, could you repeat that?” asked Crowe.
“I won’t be a minute,” said Clodagh.
“I have all day,” replied Crowe.
Clodagh locked the bike, squatting lithely. Crowe found something else to focus on other than her long legs and deft fingers. She wrestled the jacket’s hood back against the wind and he got a glimpse of shoulder-length hair, a long nose, but not disproportionate to her features, a stubborn chin, a mouth set in concentration and small eyes. Every part of her seemed to be measured and focussed.
Crowe allowed her a few moments to open the doors, deactivate the alarm and switch on the overhead fluorescents.
The interior really needed candles to finish the effect, he thought.
It was only his second time ever in a library. Alison had read all the books to Cathal at night, she belonged to the local library’s book club. The more Crowe thought about Alison, the more he realised that she was the kind of woman who seemed to think the planet would stop turning if she did. If her life were stopped at any point in a freeze-frame, Alison would be captured doing something ‘important’. Everything Alison did was ‘important’.
Including the Hospital Consultant.
He toyed with the old library card fished out of his battered wallet. It’s only company was his bank card, €20.00 and his driver’s licence.
“How may I help you?” asked Clodagh.
“My card won’t update on the Library website?” replied Crowe.
Standing at the opposite side of the desk that ran the length of the library he felt like he was shouting over a stockade.
Clodagh took the library card from Crowe. She tapped her keyboard. An industrial sized box of rubber bands, a stock of paperbacks and a lethal-looking stapler were nudged aside to allow elbow room. The word ‘gauche’ sprung to mind; the Librarian occupied more space than was allowed,
“I’ll need your address please?” said Clodagh.
“Sundrive Ave, Flat 3, Roscarrig Main Street,” he replied.
“Have you a recent utilities bill or confirmation of this address?” she asked
“I’ve just moved here. Gallagher Estates are the letting agent,”
“I know Derry, so I don’t think that’ll be a problem. Done. All updated,”
She handed back the card. Crowe noticed she hadn’t an engagement or wedding band.
“My son says that I seem to have an aura around tech. It doesn’t like me,” said Crowe.
He found everything these days an immense challenge – cash transactions, shopping lists, washing up and cleaning. It was as if the reboot in his skull was caught in a loop.
“Scan your card first and then the book’s barcode. On the back there,”
“I know what a barcode looks like,” said Crowe.
As he ambled around the shelves, Crowe found himself looking at her. Through furtive aisles between the shelves, he watched her movements. She looked like a city girl who through bad luck had wound up here. A star too bright for this backwater. Crowe brushed against a shelf and dislodged a volume. It dropped onto the aged wooden floor with a resounding boom.
‘fuck’. The expletive drifted across the library’s beams. Then with the gait of a fossilised T-Rex, Crowe disappeared amid the shelves.
Two old ladies clanged open the library’s doors and frog-marched themselves in with shopping bags full of returns. They waved at Clodagh who coldly smiled back.
Crowe scanned the shelves, the spines offered very little by way of identification. Block red fonts caught his eye, but he had no idea about the authors. A-Z, he worked backwards and forwards. He had no idea what he was doing. This began a spiral of unexpected anxiety. Occasionally in the maze, he’d meet the two septuagenarians. They stood their ground, not giving an inch if he had to squeeze past them. He caught some of their mutterings that hung in their hair like the virulent miasma of an old woman’s kitchen,
“I see it’s that Robertson one… back at home again… terrible; husband threw her out – the drink you know…Just like the mother – couldn’t keep a man…”
He spotted Clodagh taking a book from the returns shelf and walking towards him.
“I’m sorry to ask, but can you recommend something?” he asked.
Clodagh stared at him,
“Have you a genre in mind?” she asked.
“Not sure,” replied Crowe.
“What do you like to read?”
“Nothing too demanding?”
“Nothing too demanding might be sports, sports biography? Shelves just behind you.”
She seemed keen to get on with things. An innate impatience with the general pace of life hung around her.
“I like a good adventure; a page turner,” said Crowe.
It sounded hackneyed and Clodagh’s expression said it too. He imagined her mind mouthing page-turner, filed beside ‘unputdownable’.
“Well…, the author’s names might help. Child, Forsyth, Maclean, Patterson…? If its classical, Dickens, Wells, Conan Doyle, Childers, Melville… We have a great selection of Irish writers, contemporary, though you don’t strike me as romantic fiction.”
Hilarious, thought Crowe.
She side-stepped between the shelves and disappeared. Out of desperation, Crowe decided ‘C’ was the best guess. He trailed around behind her.
She was already gone. He crouched low scanning the lower shelves, he spied a Cornwell, some forensic thriller. He thumbed the pages but felt the font was too big. Is this what retirement felt like? He picked a dog-eared Lee Child and ambled over to the dangerous machine. He scanned the book out without setting all the alarms off and spun on his heel,
“Appreciate your help, thanks,” he said to Clodagh.
She looked up and nodded absently.
Crowe shuffled out of the library, clinging to the book under his arm.
9
Elvis Presley was playing in the background. He was wondering if you were lonesome tonight. Mel had the café’s radio tuned to a golden oldies station. Crowe thought about the Elvis festival the Garda station had held on his first posting. It had been a Garda charity event for the local hospice. Quigley had belted out ‘Suspicious Minds’ and Crowe had met Alison for the first time. Alison loved Elvis. Quigley and Alison counterweights to his life right now.
Crowe was more of a baroque man, Glen Gould, and Bach.
Pavel and Maciej were a secretive Polish pod that spoke and interacted with each other to the point Crowe couldn’t tell them apart. They both had their earphones on, Pavel’s head bopping to some death metal bombardment. Maciej was scrolling his phone between bites of the lunch they had prepared for the crew – omelette, chips, and salad. Crowe had gleaned on their days off they serviced cars for cash in the driveway and mended walls, fences and on occasion, painted houses inside and out. He suspected their English was better than they were letting on. The art of conversation is dying, he thought.
Thea looked over at Crowe,
“What are you reading, Mr. Grumpy?” she asked.
Crowe had forced a space in the kitchen where they could sit. He scrolled down Quigley’s reply fragmented across the screen: Teflon D lying low in R/Carrig. But NO close protection – orders from top brass. Q.
“An adventure, Thea, all about cops and robbers. You?”
He thought about the Jet skis he had seen. He texted: are the sons out here too?
Quigley responded – yep.
Crowe Googled ‘Jet Skis and Fast Power Boat bye-laws’. He pulled his sheaf of betting slips,
