Loopy (30 page)

Something had to be done—and quickly. The PR people recommended a ruthless cost-cutting exercise in every department—save their own. A key plank of their “slash and burn” policy was the pruning of smaller branches, an exercise calculated to soothe the big institutional stakeholders. The bank staff affected by the closures would either be relocated on promotion like Leo Martin or handsomely pensioned off. Tactics such as these, employed on a grander scale, should boost the share price, it was claimed. This should please everyone—except those long-suffering clients who would have to go elsewhere for their banking needs.

“All well and good,” Sir Andrew announced gravely to his fellow directors as he tapped the Trabane file, “just so long as one did not overdo it!” Almost fifty closures over two years, he murmured, was definitely overdoing it. The press coverage, while as yet mercifully just local, was but a straw in the wind. One need look no further, he reminded them with a wintry smile, than the recent protests on the sacred turf of Ballykissane. Sir Andrew strived to keep a straight face as he reminded them of the abuse that had been aimed at the bank directors and staff during the presentation ceremony. It looked, he stressed, as if fences needed mending—and quickly.

They should begin, he suggested, by abandoning the plans to close the Trabane outlet. There would be no loss of face, he was quick to point out, because it had never publicly been announced that the damn place was to be shut. It had merely been
leaked
by some incompetent idiot, quite possibly that local manager fellow whose name he could never remember. Not, he conceded, that it was all the manager's fault, since he may well have been acting on the instructions of the PR department.

That department, Sir Andrew observed sternly, had not come out of this at all well. However, there was still time for them to make amends, by devising an exit strategy for the bank in which all would emerge without too much egg on their faces. Naturally there must be no hint of a climbdown. No suggestion that ABI were reacting to pressure from the public or any of that kind of nonsense. A discreet word dropped in the right place at the right time to the effect that the rumors about the closure were just that—
rumors
should do the trick. Much stress, of course, would be laid on the importance of places like Trabane to the Irish tourist industry. A tongue-in-cheek emphasis that the very suggestion that Trabane might be left without the services provided by ABI was just
too
absurd to be taken seriously.

Even if they succeeded in this salvage operation, the PR department was overdue for a major shake-up. They had, Sir Andrew decided, become too arrogant and self-satisfied for their own good, and new blood would have to be introduced as soon as possible. For instance, the young lady who had devised the “turnaround” strategy for the Trabane Maltings might be enticed away from her consultancy work to help revitalize the bank's lackluster PR team. As might—he gasped in admiration at his own brain wave—the current holder of the Atlantic Trophy. He had listened with interest to that young man as he'd spoken of the tough times his hometown was experiencing as they'd both waited for the presentation ceremony to begin.

Well, Sir Andrew sighed with satisfaction as he closed the folder, that the bank was now remaining open and the Maltings were about to start rehiring might yet be the makings of Trabane. Until recently Sir Andrew had never given a second thought to the place, but the spirit of the protesters at Ballykissane and the gutsiness of their young golfer had suggested to him that it was a place that might well be worth fighting for.

It came as something of a surprise, therefore, when the group opposed to the gala dinner learned that their most ardent supporter, Leo Martin, had suddenly changed sides. In so doing he had taken from them the strongest plank of their argument—namely the cost to the club. Leo informed the committee that because of his strenuous efforts on their behalf, he could now reveal that ABI had agreed to sponsor the event. All club members were to be the guests of the bank.

The bombshell reduced Pat O'Hara, who could be relied on for an acid observation or two where Leo and his bank were concerned, to a stunned silence. Even he joined in the applause that greeted the news, though he managed to restrain himself from joining in the backslapping to which Leo was subjected. Turning to Joe Delany, O'Hara growled under his breath, “There's more to this than meets the eye, you mark my words. I wouldn't trust Leo or the crowd he works for as far as I could piss into a high wind!”

Joe would have none of it. It was just what the young lad deserved, he insisted, and if the bank wanted to pay for the celebration, then so much the better. It was Loopy's night off, so he didn't hear the news until the following morning. Even then, it barely registered because of the night before.

*   *   *

A week earlier on his way back from the Irish Rover to his digs, Sean Lynch had literally fallen over an old man lying in the gutter—someone with an accent like his own.

“Give us a hand up out of here like a decent man, will you?”

Sean looked down on the spread-eagled figure. Soaked from the rain and the splashes of passing cars, the man was a pitiful sight, but his eyes grabbed Sean's attention. They were old eyes, tired eyes, the eyes of a loser. They were uncannily like those same eyes that stared back at him every morning from the cracked mirror as he shaved in the dingy room that he now called home.

The bundle of rags struggled to his feet with Sean's help and, recognizing a familiar accent, snarled, “What are you doing over here? Why aren't you back where you belong? I left it too long.”

Sean tried to give the old man a few coins but he pushed them away. “Keep it yourself. There's someone back home has a better right to it than me.”

He shuffled off, pausing a moment to call back over his shoulder, “Just don't leave it too long like me.”

That, as much as reading of his son's victory, was why he found himself back in Trabane.

Now as he peered through the window, he was taken aback. He saw what he had feared most—the recurring nightmare that had haunted him since he'd left. It would wake him up with a start, sweating with terror. It was always the same nightmare, the one in which his family were only too glad to see the back of him. That, he told himself over and over, would be the last straw.

The dangerous cocktail of emotions deep inside him was fueled by the sight of his wife, well-dressed with her hair perfectly groomed. She hadn't looked like that since the day they'd married. Could she possibly have taken up with someone else? The panic ratcheted up his emotions another notch or two. His daughters, too, were a picture of contentment, their tongues clenched in concentration as they poured over their homework. As for Larry, his son had changed out of recognition. He had grown, filled out around the chest and shoulders. No longer a boy, he was now a man, and for some reason that he could not fathom, Sean resented this most of all.

It looked to him as if the family he had abandoned were doing better than ever without him. Should he slink away, unseen, back into the night and the hell that was the back streets of Birmingham?
No,
he told himself,
this is
my
home and I have as much right to be here as any of them.
With that, he lifted the latch of the door and walked into the kitchen.

The family froze when they saw him framed in the doorway. His eyes raked their faces, hungry for some flicker of welcome. There was none, just as he had feared. His nightmare had come to life and the old anger flared up inside him. Suddenly he felt wronged that he should have come all this way with the best of intentions only to be met with coldness, even hostility.

The harshness of his first words shocked even himself: “Am I not welcome in my own house, is that it?”

The question hung in the air for what seemed like a lifetime. It was no sooner out of his mouth than he wished he could have swallowed it back. Too late, for his son had leapt to his feet, fists clenched.

“Take it easy, will you! It's just that we weren't expecting you to walk in the door, that's all! Isn't that it, Mam?”

“Of course, Larry, of course. That's it,
exactly!
Here, Sean, take a chair for yourself and sit down. I'll get you something to eat. Then you can tell us all about London—”

“It wasn't London, it was bloody Birmingham, in case you didn't know!”

Brona would have let it pass, but not Loopy.

“How
could
she know? You never wrote, did you?”

The accusation reduced them both to silence, but they glared at each other furiously until Brona came back with a plate of bacon and cabbage.

“There, Sean, get that inside you first, then you can tell us all about your travels.”

“No travels…” It was as if some inner demon had taken control and was determined to argue with everything anyone said to him. He pushed away the plate untouched. “It was bloody
Birmingham
from start to finish. One filthy room between seven of us—”

Loopy cut him short. “Why didn't you write—or phone? Mam was worried sick about you.”

“None of your business, and don't use that tone of voice with me. Why can't you show a bit of respect for your father? Didn't they teach you that much at school?”

Brona was distraught as she tried to make peace between them. Her world, which had been so good before Sean had walked through the door, now looked to be disintegrating before her eyes.

“Ah, go on, Sean, can't you eat what's set before you? Aren't you hungry or what? I thought you'd be starving after that long trip.”

“I got something to eat on my way here.”

“Oh, I see,” Brona bridled at the rejection. “Well, you won't be needing this so.”

Surprising even herself, the usually timid Brona swept the plate of food off the table and emptied it into the rubbish bin.

“The bus was late so I had a bite in town before I came out here. That's all. There's no call to take offense at me for that, surely, is it?”

Another silence, then: “Did you sell my hay?”

“
Your
hay?” Loopy could hardly believe his ears. “
Your
hay? We sold the hay sure enough. Got a good price for it, too, didn't we, Mam?”

Brona nodded. She sensed what was coming and felt powerless to avert it. A part of her actually
welcomed
the inevitable confrontation between father and son. Suddenly it dawned on her just how much her son had grown up since Sean had left. Not just physically but in other ways, too. It did not show itself in an empty bravado, as it had with his father, but rather in a quiet self-confidence that seemed to grow day by day.

“We did indeed.”

Sean turned to his son. “Well?”

“Well
what?
”

Sean was beginning to lose his temper. “You know damn well what I'm asking. What did it make?”

Loopy was being as unhelpful as he could. What right did his father have to burst in on them like this and threaten to ruin everything? Suddenly he hated his father more than ever. He hated him for being a gambler. He hated him for frittering away every last penny the family had ever had, and most of all, he hated him for the wrong he had done to them all by vanishing and then, just as unexpectedly, reappearing.

Up to this it had been a lukewarm hate that simmered deep inside, but now it was about to erupt, like lava trapped inside a volcano. Incandescent with rage, Loopy could not bear to share the same table, the same room, or even the same house with this ill-tempered stranger. Loopy tried manfully to control his emotions by being as unhelpful as possible, but he knew that this could not last forever. Only one more wrong word would bring it to a head. If his father thought he was dealing with the self-effacing, shy teenager he had left behind, he was in for the surprise of his life.

Letting his temper get the better of him, Sean bellowed, “C'mon, tell me out straight! What did it make? The hay.
My
hay!”

There was a lull, then Loopy said in a steady voice that betrayed no hint of what he was feeling, “Mam, I think you'd better send the girls to bed. Then we can talk better.”

“Since when are you giving the orders round here?”

Sean was getting angrier by the second, but Loopy surprised even himself with menace of his cool reply. “Since you shagged off to England, that's when. Now why don't you say good-night to your daughters, then we'll talk all you want about
your
hay when they're gone to bed.”

Something in his son's voice made Sean agree. He gave each of the girls a brief hug, muttering, “Off to bed with you now.”

When the girls were safely out of earshot, Loopy again asked the question that had plagued him for months on end. “Why didn't you write? We didn't want money from you or anything. All we wanted was to know whether you were alive or dead. What stopped you from writing or telephoning?”

In the silence that followed the girls' departure, Loopy's question remained unanswered. No way was Sean going to admit to his son that it was a matter of pride. If he hadn't any money to send with the letter, there would be no letter from him and that was that.

As for Brona, she was tired of trying to make the peace. Even though she hated confrontation and would normally go to any lengths to avoid it, she realized that the dilemma of Sean's return was going to be resolved here and now. In truth, little by little, she had learned to live without him. Now, just when she was coming to terms with his absence, he'd come back uninvited and expected everything to be just as before. Not good enough, she told herself as she sat back in her chair and waited for her husband to answer.

“Like I told you already, it's none of your bloody business.”