Death at Christy Burke's (15 page)

“Do you suppose he’d be open to some help about his drinking?” Michael asked.

“Help?” Frank looked puzzled. “Taking the pledge, that class of a thing?”

“Not so much that as counselling, you know. I’ve done some of that in my time as a priest.”

“Well, I’m sure he’d appreciate the thought behind it, Mike. Not sure how much good it would do. I mean, does he want to give it up, you have to ask yourself.”

“Well . . .”

“My wife’s always after me to take the pledge,” Jimmy O’Hearn piped up. “Says I can move back in with her if I go off the drink. But to tell you the truth, I don’t think she means it. I think she’s happy with things just the way they are. She put the run to me when our youngest daughter moved out to get married. I pay Mrs. O’Hearn a visit once in a while and we get along great, and the rest of the time she has the place to herself. Suits her just fine.”

“Suits the both of you, I’d say,” Frank remarked. He looked at Sean Nugent, who was wiping the far end of the bar. “What would you do, Sean, if the whole crowd of us here took the pledge?”

“Sure I’d be out of work in short order, Frank, but I’d wish you all the best even so!” He smiled, folded his cleaning rag, and disappeared behind the bar.

“Now there’s a fine lad,” Frank said.

“Yes, a most personable young man, and he handles things very well here,” Michael agreed. “He told me he had an uncle who lived in the town where I come from, in Canada. Grand-uncle, I guess it was. Dead now. I’m thinking I may have met the fellow.”

“Right. Sean’s grand-uncle. Born back in the 1890s and married late in life. Let me tell you something about him. He did his part for Ireland, even though he was on the other side of the ocean. Smuggled guns over to our boys. On ships coming out of Canada. He and his brother, as soon as they got word of the Rising in 1916. He resisted the call to fight in the Great War. Refused to fight for the Brits, was the way he looked at it. Trained to become a doctor, and that kept him out of the army’s sights. So he was able to direct his efforts to assisting Ireland in her hour of need.”

Sean reappeared with a couple of bottles of John Jameson in his hands. He saw Fanning looking at him and asked if it was time for a refill.

“I wouldn’t say no, Sean. You, Michael?”

“No, but thank you anyway, Frank.”

Sean put his bottles on the shelf and began to pour Frank a pint of Guinness.

“We were just talking about you, Sean.”

“Nothing too terrible, I hope.”

“Not at all. I was telling Michael about your grand-uncle in Canada. You must be proud of him.”

“I am, Frank, but you know . . .” He leaned towards Frank as he passed him his pint. “Sometimes I wonder if it’s our family name that accounts for the way we get held up at customs and border crossings in the U.K.”

“Could be, Sean. Those fellows on British territory have long memories. Or it could be that somebody else in the family has been carrying on the tradition.”

Fanning winked at Nugent, and the young fellow gave a quick little smile. Fanning took a long draft of his pint.

Frank Fanning was obviously a man with a keen interest in history and politics. Little wonder he found Christy Burke’s such a congenial spot to drink and socialize.

But it was another regular, Tim Shanahan, who was on Michael’s mind. “I wonder what made Tim rush away last evening. I was with some friends — well, they’d be familiar to you by now — Brennan and Monty and his wife, and Sister Curran, and Sister was regaling us with some highly entertaining stories about her time in Africa. I noticed Tim was kind of listening in, and then he . . . well, he virtually fled the pub.”

“Tim spent some time in Africa himself, I know. Maybe the good sister’s stories made him homesick!”

“What was he doing in Africa?”

“I don’t know. It may have been back when he was wearing the collar, I’m not sure. He never mentioned it himself. It’s just something I heard. But don’t be worrying yourself about him, Michael. I imagine he’ll turn up as usual tomorrow.”

The next day was Wednesday, and Brennan had scheduled an extra couple of lectures at the seminary in Maynooth. Michael was having breakfast in Bewley’s Café with him before he left for the day. Monty, after taking a few minutes to admire the Harry Clarke stained-glass windows that adorned the place, joined Brennan and Michael at their table overlooking Grafton Street. They ordered a pot of tea, and all three of them ended up gorging themselves on Bewley’s rich cakes and pastries instead of anything one would consider a traditional breakfast.

They occupied themselves with their meal for a few minutes, and then Michael asked, “Now what is it you’ll be speaking about today, Brennan?”

“The trinitarian treatises of St. Thomas Aquinas. A comparison of what he writes in the
Summa Theologiae
and the
Summa Contra Gentiles
.”

“You’re not going to scare off a crop of young recruits, are you?”

“No, this is for the lads who are a little farther along. Only fitting, wouldn’t you say? What goes around comes around. St. Thomas himself, the Angelic Doctor, was taught by an Irishman.”

“How did he manage that?” Monty asked. “Came up to Dublin for a stag weekend and stumbled into a monastery on Monday morning?”

“Em, no. The Irish were imparting their wisdom to continental Europe by the early Middle Ages, as I’m sure you know. So why should anybody be surprised that there was an Irishman on the faculty of the University of Naples when Thomas Aquinas was a student there in the thirteenth century? Petrus Hibernicus. Peter of Ireland. Peter helped form the mind of our great medieval theologian. And that mind was appreciated back here by none other than James Joyce, who said that Thomas Aquinas just might have been the most clear, the most keen mind the world has ever known. And it falls to me to impart some scraps of Thomas’s wisdom to the angelic baby priests of Maynooth.”

“Well, I know you’ll be clear in your presentation of a very deep and complex subject. Best of luck!”

“No worries. I’ve been speechifying on this topic for years. So what are you two planning today?”

“There’s a traditional music session at Christy’s this afternoon,” Michael replied. “Would you like to take that in, Monty?”

“Great. I’m off to meet the MacNeil for some sightseeing now, but I’ll join you at the pub later on.”

Michael was at the bar next to Frank Fanning, enjoying a piece played on the uilleann pipes, when Monty arrived. Christy’s was jammed, but a group of young people at a table near the door invited Monty to join them. That was just as well because, as much as Michael enjoyed Monty’s company, he had something else on his mind today. Seeing Brennan head off to teach Thomistic theology to a group of seminarians made Michael think of Tim Shanahan, a priest out of uniform who had been a professor of literature before losing his job, a job he must have treasured. Once again, he was absent from the pub.

When the piper took a break, Michael said, “I see Tim’s AWOL again, Frank.”

“Sure I’m asking myself what’s got into him!” Frank replied.

“True. Let’s just hope he’s all right. Another thing I’m wondering about is why Tim left the priesthood. A priest inevitably wants to know why another gave it up. Did Tim leave to get married? Was that it?”

“Now I can’t help you there, Mike, because I don’t know myself what happened. He’s not married, though. Lives alone as far as I’m aware. I can tell you this much: it can’t have been a loss of faith. The man goes to morning Mass at St. Saviour’s every day without fail. Well, I say without fail, but he missed the last couple of days. I know that because Father Ryan, that’s the Dominican father who says the Mass, was in here for a wee drop — just one, mind — and he was asking me if I’d seen Shanahan. He wasn’t at Mass today or yesterday, and that was a fact notable enough to draw the attention of Father Ryan.”

“He came in especially to look for Tim?”

“No, he stops in once in a while for a quick one. He just mentioned it because he knows we see Tim quite regularly here.”

“Does Tim live nearby?”

“He’s not far at all. Corner of Henrietta Street and Henrietta Lane. It’s a little confusing, so I’ll draw you a map.” He grabbed a Paddy Whiskey coaster off the bar and drew a little sketch. “Big red-brick house, second one in, ground floor flat.”

Perfect. Michael would stop in to see him. He could tell Tim he’d heard that people were concerned. He’d heard as well that Tim was a priest so Michael was naturally interested in his story. Tim would understand that. And if it turned out that he was ill, perhaps there was something Michael could do for him.

He stayed on for a few minutes longer, then left the pub and headed down Mountjoy Street with Frank’s map. A couple of twists and turns brought him to a row of four-storey brick townhouses that had seen better days. And likely would again. Michael recalled reading somewhere that this had been one of the finest streets in Dublin back in the day. There was a bell push that seemed to go with the lower flat, but nobody answered. He rang again. He heard footsteps, and a hard-looking young woman with blue-black hair came to the door. Loud, insistent music blared from the recesses of her flat.

“Are yeh lookin’ for Tim?”

“Yes, thank you. Is he home?”

“I think he’s in there. Go ahead. Door on the right. It’s never locked.”

“Em, well, do you think I should?”

“Sure, go ahead. He never complains.” She turned and trotted back into her apartment.

Michael opened the door and entered the building. A grubby paper name plate on the right-hand door said “T. P. Shanahan.”

He knocked. “Tim?” he called out. No response. He opened the door and called again, a little louder. “Tim Shanahan?” By this time, Michael was in the tiny living room. Or, to be more precise, the library. Bookshelves covered every bit of wall space except for the front window and the door. Yeats, Joyce, Synge, O’Casey, Wilde, Heaney, Hopkins, Shakespeare, Dante, Blake, Aeschylus, Ovid. Michael gazed about him. This was the home of a man in love with literature and poetry. He was about to call out again when he heard a sound coming from another room. He followed it. His nose wrinkled up. There was a foul smell coming from somewhere in the flat.

Then he saw him: Tim Shanahan lying on his back on the floor of his bedroom. He was in his undershorts, and they were badly soiled. There was a pool of vomit at the side of his head. His eyes were closed, and his thin, handsome face was shiny with sweat. Michael was about to announce his presence when Shanahan sneezed, and sneezed again. His eyes and nose were runny, and he raised a languid arm to wipe them. All he succeeded in doing was to smear mucus all over his face. His right leg kicked out, and Michael moved away. The leg moved again, and Shanahan’s whole body began to shake. Michael had seen the DTs before — delirium tremens, the symptoms of alcohol withdrawal — but never this bad.

“Tim!” The man’s eyelids fluttered open, and the dark blue eyes stared vacantly at Michael. “Tim, it’s Michael O’Flaherty. Father O’Flaherty from, well, from Christy Burke’s. I’m going to help you. Let me get a cloth and clean you up a bit, then I’ll put you in your bed. I’ll call a doctor for you.”

“Call my . . .”

Michael leaned down to hear him. He thought Tim said “dealer,” but was it “healer”? His doctor?

“Who should I call, Tim?”

“Number’s there.” Tim tried to lift his arm. He seemed to be pointing to his bedside table. There were books on the table, and Tim’s eyeglasses were perched precariously on a volume of Yeats’s poetry. There were a few sheets of paper scribbled with notes. One was a phone number. Michael picked it up and recited it. Tim nodded and embarked on another bout of sneezing.

Michael found the telephone and dialled the number. It rang so long he almost gave up, but then a man answered. “Yeah?”

“Hello, this is, em, I’m calling from the residence of Tim Shanahan. He asked me to ring you. He’s not well.”

“How bad is he?” The voice on the phone sounded familiar somehow, but Michael couldn’t place it.

Michael glanced at the poor man lying in vomit and excrement on the floor. No point in painting a pretty picture. “He’s in bad shape, and he needs help immediately. Are you a doctor? Should I give him water?”