It Was Only Ever You (30 page)

Better to have loved and lost – and all that.

In his scruffy shirt Dermot had to go down to Hell’s Kitchen on what he had been led to believe was a straightforward document-signing mission. When he got there he found that Joe Higgins had arranged a meeting with one of the Balducci brothers. Some business about some woman who had slept with somebody’s husband. Dermot had been dragged in to ‘mediate’ the situation, which was gangster code for ‘if we do something really terrible can you get us off?’

Dermot had spent his morning listening and nodding sagely as some of New York’s most terrifying gangsters set before him convoluted scenarios of premeditated violence: ‘If a guy were to... say... lose his footing and accidentally fall into a large hole...’ ‘If a guy were to accidentally shoot himself in the knee – and say there was another guy in the car with him when it happened...’, and trying to find a way of responding that would not result in him playing centre stage in one such scenario.

All of this in yesterday’s shirt.

By the time he got out of there, Dermot was so stressed there was no way he could get into his car and drive. He walked around the block a couple of times, but he was more nervous of running into one of his clients, a highly likely scenario in this end of town, so he decided to pop into the church. He was not a good practising Catholic: Christmas, weddings, keeping his mother happy was about the strength of it. But occasionally, when he was passing, he popped into this church. It was a peaceful place to come during a crazy day and he always managed to clear his head when he came here.

Dermot sat on the end of a pew near the back of the church then closed his eyes and let himself sink into the incense-scented silence. Peace. At last.

When he opened his eyes, however, he got such a fright that he nearly jumped out of his skin.

Something more terrifying than any gangster scenario that he could possibly imagine.

It was Ava. She was walking directly towards him.

Dermot froze. He had not seen Ava since that night she ditched him. He knew she had married that singer, after becoming ‘disgracefully’ pregnant, as his mother described. Dermot had been beyond hurt. He knew he had to deal with it and, being part of the same Irish community, would certainly have to face her again one day in the future. But not today. He was not ready. He was not prepared. He was wearing yesterday’s shirt.

She had not noticed him so he would have to act quickly. Dermot leapt to his feet and ran to the nearest hiding place. The confessional box.

Father Moran said goodbye to the lovely young woman, who turned out to be Tom Brogan’s daughter. She really was a charming thing. The ladies that worked in his parish were a very tight-knit, older gang and she would be a real addition. A breath of fresh air. There was something, however, troubling him about their meeting, which he could not quite put his finger on. He was musing on that as he sat down in the box. First penitent in would be Bridie Flaherty. She was always first on a Saturday. Bridie would have been here since nine, doing the stations and firing out a few decades of the rosary. With a bit of luck she might have murdered her husband this week to make up for the years of sinless Saturdays she had made him endure. He engaged in his preparations, a good scratch followed by a pre-confession hearty cough and nose-blowing ritual. Bridie always gave him a few seconds before she came in.

‘Bless me, Father...’ said a low man’s voice.

‘Jesus Christ!’

The Irish priest made a habit of never swearing, unless he was drunk. Certainly never in a place of such holiness as a confessional.

‘You are not supposed to be in here,’ he boomed. ‘Get out and wait your turn!’

Bridie heard him and was delighted. She, along with the other penitents, had been horrified to see the young man leaping into the confessional. They assumed he was, at least, a murderer looking for urgent penance.

Dermot was mortified but, at the same time, he wasn’t going out there to face Ava. Especially not under this new, embarrassing circumstance.

‘...for I have sinned.’

‘You most certainly have... now get—’ But Dermot was going nowhere.

‘It has been ten years since my last confession.’

‘Humpf,’ Father Moran said. ‘Clearly.’

Now that he had started, the priest had no choice but to let him continue. Anyway, he consoled himself, a break from Bridie couldn’t be a bad thing. Men of his age in suits in this area often brought in great confessions. Sex and drugs and the odd maiming – occasionally a murder. No priest really liked to hear of terrible crimes against God and man happening on one’s doorstep but at least, Father Moran thought, it gave one a sense of purpose. The devout Bridie Flahertys of this world were two a penny but a good gangster could really turn a Saturday morning confession around.

Unfortunately, this was not one of those men.

Once Dermot started saying the confessional prayers, he found that the floodgates opened and it all came pouring out. Father Moran got the whole story. About how he was in love with this girl, and how he had been so happy, and then he had asked her to marry him, and she had said ‘yes!’. Oh joy! But then she had let him down by falling in love with somebody else, needless to say, a cad – a no-good singer called Patrick Murphy who deflowered her (he said, haltingly) – and now she was pregnant and married to this Murphy but he was still in love with her himself and what was he going to do?

Patrick Murphy? Hadn’t Tom Brogan’s girl mentioned that name to him earlier? Good heavens! Ava was married to Patrick Murphy and this young man was in love with her too. Father Brogan wondered who he was. He would ask Bridie later. Now then, that was a nice piece of gossip to pick up on a Saturday morning. But he felt certain there was something else. Something about that name, Patrick Murphy, that he couldn’t quite remember. He had thought it earlier when Ava had mentioned it to him. There was some connection he wasn’t quite making. Ava had said there was a girl newly arrived in the city and she might get involved in the parcels to Ireland. From Mayo...

‘What should I do, Father? What do you advise?’

Oh God. He was still here.

‘I am not here to advise, only to give penance. Say two Our Fathers, a decade of the rosary and a Glory Be.’

When the young man didn’t get out, Father Moran realized he was stalling because he was afraid of running into Ava. He could be here all day!

‘What I suggest you do, young man, is get a firm grip on yourself. Stop sitting around moping, get out there and find yourself another woman. There are plenty of fine young women in all the dance halls in New York and once you get out among them you will find that one is much the same as the other.’

‘I can’t dance.’

Even to Dermot’s ears it sounded pathetic. The priest sighed deeply. This lovelorn idiot was really trying his patience.

‘Well go and take some lessons then. Young Ava Brogan is married now and that is all there is to it. Now hop out of this box and give somebody else a turn.’

When Dermot didn’t get up he barked, ‘She has left the building!’

Dermot got up to leave so quickly he banged his head on the way out. A line of old ladies glowered at him so murderously that he didn’t even kneel down to say his penance.

Back outside, when the cruel snap of daylight hit him, Dermot realized he was furious. This was why he had stopped coming to mass, this Irish-American nonsense where everybody knew everybody else’s business. It was worse than any gossiping small town in Ireland.

His heart was broken and nobody cared. Not even, no, especially not, his priest.

Dermot decided to go home to sit in his apartment and feel sorry for himself for the rest of the day. But first he would head up to Saks on Fifth Avenue to buy himself a dozen new shirts.

S
HEILA
WENT
to the Lexington club where Frankie the Sax worked and managed to catch him on the kitchen phone.

‘Who was that kid you said got some other kid to write that tune? Turned up in a Benz, got signed to Decca?’

‘I hope you ain’t still in town, girl?’

‘I’m staying with my folks. Out of town. In Riverdale.’

‘Riverdale? Nice. I didn’t even know you had folks.’

Sheila didn’t know if Frankie had family either. She was guessing there weren’t too many of them if he did. That was the way the scene was. They were each other’s family, except there were no questions and no commitments. That was how she liked it. Freedom. Now she was living with her aunt and uncle and embroiled in some kind of a strange scene with Ignatius. The quicker she got Patrick’s show on the road and got enough money to move on, the better.

‘His singing name was Johnny Blue – I don’t know who the writer was. Some English kid, I think he said. The song did OK but not as good as Johnny hoped. I think he had to give the car back. As far as I know, he’s still gigging. You can catch him at Mo’s on a Wednesday.’

‘You got a number for him?’

Frankie laughed. ‘I ain’t even got a phone, sugar. Got no place to put one neither. Call Mo. He’ll put you in touch.’

Sheila thanked him. Was she crazy doing all this? Frankie’s tone certainly implied she was. But Sheila could feel her break was coming. She had to keep going.

It took a few calls before she eventually tracked down the songwriter. He was a kid called Malcolm English who worked out of a music factory in Chelsea. It was a large loft space where half a dozen young guys all worked and lived together. They spent their days writing music and jamming, and their nights partying and fooling around. They were hipsters, rebels. Some of them were trying to break into the music industry, others were already out of it, disillusioned with the big business.

There were any number of well-known songwriters that Sheila knew she could approach, but they were all expensive and she doubted any of them would be happy to work with another man’s lyrics.

‘Man, this is schmaltzy stuff,’ Malcolm said when she handed him a piece of paper where she had freshly typed Patrick’s poem. ‘Did you write this?’

Sheila stood in front of him in full skinny black beatnik gear, her dark eyes glaring at him from behind her long fringe.

‘Do I look like I wrote it?’ she growled.

‘I guess not,’ he said sunnily in his London accent. He smiled to himself as he realized she was trying to intimidate him. Malcolm didn’t even know what intimidate meant. He was twenty-four and the world was at his feet. He had already written half a dozen hit songs in the UK before deciding he didn’t want to be part of the music establishment and splitting for America to start again. The world was changing. A cat could move from one place to another – all he needed was cash. Malcolm chose who he worked with and when. He certainly didn’t usually work with other people’s lyrics but he liked this woman. She was kind of cool for an old bird.

‘The kid that wrote this has a lot of passion, but I need to get it out of him. Can you help me?’

Malcolm liked a challenge.

‘You want a ballad?’

‘No. I want
the
ballad. I want the best, most painful, most passionate ballad anyone has ever goddam written. I want something that will make every single woman in the world fall in love with this guy.’

‘It’ll cost you...’

‘...and I want it for free.’

‘You’re kidding, right?’

Now Malcom was intimidated. Hell, he was scared. This woman was sitting on the edge of his desk and now he knew she wasn’t cool after all, but crazy.

‘Look,’ she said, offering him a cigarette. He took it, shaking his head slowly. ‘You’re good, I know that. If I had a load of money I would give it to you to write the music for this song. But then, I would be crazy not to, right?’ Now the woman was admitting she was crazy. ‘But listen to this, Malcolm. If the song’s a hit, I stand to make a fortune. I should go and steal the money to give to you to write this song for me so that every penny that it makes belongs to me. That’s how the record companies do it, right?’ Malcolm nodded. ‘So how about this. You write a song, with these lyrics, with no fee. Then, I give you a contract saying you have fifty per cent of the copyright, and as such you get fifty per cent of all record sales. Does that sound reasonable?’

From experience Malcolm knew that music managers and record labels were making a fortune out of his work. He got paid a one-off fee, albeit a very good one, but by the time his songs were marching up the hit parade, he had already spent the money. He had hoped the system in America might be different, but it seemed it was just the same. This woman was clearly interested in operating outside the system. She was one of them.

*

A week later, Malcolm delivered the song.

Sheila could read music but Patrick could not so Sheila arranged for Malcolm to stay for one rehearsal to work through it on the piano with the singer.

She had called both of the young men into the Emerald for a rehearsal at three in the afternoon, making sure that Malcolm would arrive twenty minutes before Patrick so that she had a chance to look at the song and give it her approval. The band would join them for a full rehearsal at six when the doors of the Emerald officially opened for business. The dancing crowd didn’t start coming in earnest for at least two hours after that, and the band didn’t really consider themselves ‘onstage’ to their audience until eight.

Malcolm handed Sheila the sheet music and she scanned it, humming along on the first read. He was impressed that she grasped the notation so quickly. Even more impressed when she sat down at the piano and, falteringly, played it. ‘I like it,’ was all she said. Malcolm gathered from her demeanour that that was high praise. Then she stood up and gestured him to take her place just as Patrick arrived.

Sheila could not imagine two young men who were both the same age and probably equally musically talented and yet were so very different. Patrick, with his Irish good looks, so earnest and passionate, wearing his heart on his sleeve; Malcolm had that sneering, slightly cynical edge, but was as earnest and devoted when it came to making music.