The Magdalen Martyrs Read Online Free PDF Page B

go down to Sweeney’s and kick the bejaysus out of Bill. I grabbed my jacket and took the hinges off the door. Childish but satisfying.
    In St Anthony’s Lane, there is a coffee shop. Invisible to most pedestrians, it’s run by a Basque. I’d intended asking how he washed up in Galway but had never found the energy. Plus, caution said that Basques don’t do probing good. As usual, it was doing a brisk trade. Law clerks from the Courthouse, teachers from the Mercy school, a random student and two Spanish fishermen. The owner said,
    “Jacques!”
    I don’t have the witty reply to this, nor could I remember his name, so went with,
    “How’re you doing?”
    Lame, right?
    Didn’t faze him. He said,
    “Cafe con leche, grande.”
    “Grand.”
    He lingered, then said,
    “I miss
Glenroe.”
    A
Basque who longed for Wesley Burrows; the world was indeed on its axis. I’d been in a few weeks back and a group of students were turning CDs into ashtrays. One of them said,
    “Don’t worry, it’s Garth Brooks.”
    He had a faded Marilyn Manson badge on his notebook. I knew the two events were connected, but I couldn’t work up the energy to work it out. The coffee came, and the owner asked,
    “Food?”
    “No, I’m good.”
    I stirred the liquid, anticipated the bitter kick. Such times, I’d have killed for a cigarette, then a scotch.
    Then a line.
    Then oblivion.
    Physically, I shook myself, in an effort to dispel the harpies. Loreena McKennitt was playing and I let myself bend to the music. Glanced up to see my mother pass. Old Galwegians always used the lane to reach the abbey.
    She was linking Fr Malachy. He, of course, was enveloped in cigarette smoke. Once in Carol O’Connell’s
The Judas Child
I’d come across
     
Her child needed a covert source of facts, the help of a dirty, backdoor invader, a professional destroyer of private lives, whowell understood the loathsome workings of the world’s worst scum.
    So this is motherhood.
     
    I mouthed,
    “Amen.”

 
    “Life taught me a long time ago to leave be anything
that’s got more teeth than me.”
    Daniel Buckman,
The Names of Rivers
    I was in Nestor’s, on my second glass of sparkling Balway wa ter. That the day would come when an Irish person paid for water and paid dear is astonishing. Jeff said,
    “You’re doing well.”
    “At what?”
    “You know, the drinking . . . the cigs . . . the other stuff.”
    I shook my head, said,
    “I’m flapping against the wind.”
    He stopped polishing a glass, looked up, asked,
    “What does that mean?”
    “I’m biting a bullet, and I’m sick of the taste of metal in my mouth.”
    He put down the glass, leaned on the counter, said,
    “Very poetic if a little ominous.”
    “Whoever said the clean life would help you live longer was right. They neglected to add you’d feel every boring minute.”
    “It’ll get easier, Jack.”
    “I wish I could believe that.”
    Jeff had been sober for twenty years. Then, riding on a low after the baby’s birth, he’d gone on the batter. A one-nightrampage. I’d been the one to rein him in. A drunk for the defence, he’d been back on track since. I asked,
    “Ever feel the need to blow again?”
    “Sure.”
    “That’s it . . . sure?”
    “No point in dwelling on it, Jack. I can’t drink, end of story.”
    I sort of hated him then. Not in a ferocious fashion but the dull ache that sickness feels for recovery. I pushed the water away and got up to leave. Jeff said,
    “Cathy’s been surfing the net, trying to track down that information you wanted. She hasn’t had any luck yet.”
    “OK, take it easy.” I was leaving when the sentry spoke to me; I nearly dropped from surprise, as he almost never did. He said,
    “You’re investigating the Magdalen? Well, I remember it well. When we were kids, we’d pass by there and see them working in the gardens. God forgive me, but we called them names and jeered them. The nuns were standing over the poor bitches like