Is That All There Is? E-Book

William King

• Herausgeber: The Lilliput Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

It is boom time in Dublin, and Philip and Sam, a professional couple in banking and advertising gorged on vertiginous success, buy a run-down monastery in a wealthy suburb. As they renovate their statement home and throw lavish parties to consolidate their social standing, cracks begin to appear in the designer fixtures, mirroring the disintegration of their marriage and a once-solid moral scaffolding. William King pierces the surface of this era of glitz and easy credit, following the contours of Ireland's bubble-and-burst through a vivid cast of characters whose stories interweave - the unsavoury banker Sharkey, a retired doctor, a maverick priest, neglected teenagers, and trophy wives in trophy cars. With the financial tsunami sweeping across the Atlantic, Ireland's economy unravels, and Philip, Sam and the feral Sharkey confront the true cost of their sacrifices and choices. Praise for Leaving Ardglass King offers a richly textured and deeply felt portrait of a society in flux and of individuals ensnared in their fallible humanity and helpless in the face of time. The dubious privilege of moral judgment is left to the reader in this outstanding novel. JOHN BOLAND , Irish Independent A finely written and brave book that throws up uncomfortable truths and interesting parallels between hidden worlds, driven by ambitious men determined to survive. DERMOT BOLGER, The Sunday Business Post

Leseprobe

THE LILLIPUT PRESS

DUBLIN

1

Auburn standson the side of Cooper’s Hill and breathes a sense of privilege and old money. Set among trees, the free-standing houses of red brick or granite, with the odd cottage thrown in, compose a picture of comfort and good fortune.

At least that is the impression from high up on Beresford Road. From that vantage-point, the tall chimneys and slated roofs look snug amid beeches, maples and willows that line the sweeping avenues to these fine houses. On a summer’s day, a tremulous gleam glides along the tops of the trees and leads the eye to what generations of children have named The Sleeping Giant: a rocky island out in the bay, with an expanse of sloping green sward running towards the village. The trees were planted in the late nineteenth century when Auburn was home to merchants, bankers and a sprinkling of doctors and Protestant civil servants who remained after Ireland had won its independence.

Beresford Road dips down to the village, where once the houses along the harbour, in some cases neglected, snuggled close for protection against the rough seas of winter and the rain that frequently lashed the grey pier. In those days, a few boats reeking of mackerel rose and fell with the sway, while the fishermen drank in the pubs.

Now, the same houses form a row of fashionable restaurants and boutiques facing a forest of yachting masts glistening and bobbing withattitudein the marina.

The trees and the long avenues ensure that Sunday strollers on their way around the Head are kept at a distance from Auburn, and, in this way, Auburn people can continue to enjoy the privacy in which they and their ancestors have taken comfort for over a century and a half.

A narrow path, known as The Nuns’ Walk, leading towards the Head from Beresford Road by way of a turnstile, borders the gardens on the south side of Auburn, and continues on its winding way upwards. In late spring the hill on each side of the path is a glorious patchwork of yellow gorse; in May the hedges, laden with the white froth of hawthorn, give off a perfume of summer promise, especially after a shower of rain. The path eventually climbs to the summit of Cooper’s Hill and opens to the wide vista of Dublin Bay and the Irish Sea beyond. Here the newly rich now live: television personalities, rock stars and lawyers, who have made fortunes out of the inquiries and tribunals that have been a feature of life in the country for the past number of years.

In summer The Nuns’ Walk is lush with fuchsia, meadow-sweet and honeysuckle. It has always been a favourite with young people in love for the first time, and with couples and their children from the cottages and the squat bungalows of the late 1950s that stretch away towards Dublin airport. The builder of that ribbon development, a member of the Knights of St Columbanus, named the estates after Popes – Roncalli, Pacelli and Sarto – and used street names that denoted a deeply Catholic culture: Lourdes, Ave Maria, Assisi.

Then a new generation of residents came together at the time when the same culture began to unravel, and renamed the streets, The Downs, The Elms, and Estuary Boulevard. They wanted, they said, to make a small contribution towards harmony with the Unionist population in the North. ‘Show them that we’re not a priest-ridden country any longer. Enough trouble up there without adding to it.’

Sometimes the Sunday strollers stop and gape at the tranquil grandeur: the houses with their valleys of slated roofs, and the self-assured chimneystacks looking secure under the protection of the elegant trees. The afternoon quiet, too, suggests that families are out sailing around the Head, perhaps away in France having cheese and wine in a garden where the air is warm and laden with the scent of lavender.

The strollers wallow in the dream of having the whole bouquet: the children attending the convent school, playing hockey and off on skiing holidays during the Easter break. Many of their own parents, by scrimping and saving, had made it to the bungalows from tenement houses deep in the bowels of the city. The strollers themselves have secure jobs: in the city corporation, in teaching or in the civil service. Now they dream of going one better, to a place like Auburn, but they know in their heart and soul they never will.

That was all before the dream became a possibility, before American software giants and pharmaceutical companies arrived in the country. All boats began to rise. Money from Europe provided an open sesame to the bank manager’s office: tradesmen became golf-playing developers and left far behind the old order of doctors, dentists and civil engineers.

More restaurants with French and Italian names open up in the village; young women with university degrees come from Poland and Romania to serve those who pull up on the seafront in Mercedes, a concertina of credit cards in their wallets.

Loud money shatters the composure of Auburn. The invaders are loud also on Saturday nights when they break bread into their soup and boast of being ‘in the right place at the right time’.

Old Auburn residents retreat behind their curtains, and take some comfort in past glories; they cling to family stories of grandfathers whose draper shops in North Earl Street had been ransacked in the looting after the 1916 Rising. Over afternoon tea, when they glance out with rheumy eyes at The Sleeping Giant – a sight dear to them for generations – they recall great-uncles who had fallen in Flanders Fields, or who had dodged bullets in order to render medical aid to dying British soldiers during the Easter Week attack on the Dublin South Union. One frail woman’s father, a coroner, had been compelled to have the baths in Belfast converted into a morgue when the city was bombed in 1941.

Some – those who are growing feeble, who are suffering from macular degeneration, or who have had stents implanted – are ready to loosen their hold, even if they shake their heads at the disruption. Of late they have been anxious. One elderly couple had been tied up and their silver and jewellery taken. Another couple went out one morning to find that their beehives had been destroyed and their herb garden trampled on. So, many of the older generation moved to more secure apartments in Malahide to be near a son or daughter. This, along with a greatly enhanced bank account, was some consolation for leaving their beloved Auburn.

Down near the village, Les Sœurs du Perpétuel-Secours à Lyon, a teaching order of nuns, also sell up: they shuffle into the mini-bus that takes the girls to hockey matches, and retreat to the motherhouse in Rathgar. The house they leave behind was once the home of Jamesy Lennon, the famous Dublin surgeon, who had given the property to the nuns when his only child had taken the veil. Notre Dame du Bois goes to the highest bidder: a television chat show host, who moves in with his boyfriend and two cats.

As soon as the furniture removal vans trundle down the avenues laden with roped mahogany, silver – polished for generations by women from the cottages – and genteel china, the Jeeps, Pajeros and Range Rovers ride in, and join the fever of buying and selling houses. Hot on their heels come men in high visibility jackets and tool belts, pencils perched over their ears. They buy theMirrorand theStarand twenty Johnny Blue in the village Mace, and line up at the delicatessen counter for baguettes filled with deep-fried everything. The light from a bain-marie reflects their laughing faces as they swap jokes in Polish and Cork accents about conquests the previous night at some bar or nightclub.

In a country now on a merry-go-round, a few of the buyers come from the ribbon developments: men who had worked on the construction of the glass temples along the Liffey quays, close to where their fathers had rolled barrels onto Guinness boats fifty years before.

Following the builders’ instructions, the men with the tool belts work long hours and well into the weekends, for which they are highly paid; they install wet rooms, Shaker kitchens, cupboards in sage or cream, kitchen islands of polished granite, and Richmond duel fuel ranges. Some of those who move in have made a killing in computers, security alarms or conveyancing, and are passing each other at the revolving doors of banks with smiles and signed-off loans. Carpets are pulled up and thrown on top of skips where radiators and parts of window frames surface among the fragments of plaster and bricks. Bare floors are sanded and polished until they shine like a convent corridor. When it rains, mud drips from the slow-moving wheels of trucks, leaving behind parallel tracks on Beresford Road.

Older residents in tweeds and box-pleated skirts watch with scorn as their world crumbles about them. When they meet in the Marine Hotel for afternoon tea, they hanker forthe good old days, like when Maurice Nugent brought home the cup after winning the Irish Open at Fitzwilliam, and Captain St Lawrence kindly made the Castle ballroom available for a celebration.

Nevertheless, once they have exhausted past glories, they turn to the latest mouth-watering house prices from the Property Sections of the newspapers. And those who haven’t bequeathed their property to their children pay close attention to the rocketing prices: they have grown weary of rattling around houses too big to manage even with the help of Polish cleaners. So, from time to time, estate agents’ signs appear on Beresford Road, and nobody is greatly surprised when one appears advertising the auction of La Salle, a Georgian house, owned by the San Christ-ophe Brothers.

With the collapse in vocations and the loss of others through death or retirement, the Brothers departed, one by one. They handed over their school on the Dublin Road to a board of management who appointed a lay principal. Those Brothers who needed special care were taken to a nursing home.

2

The appalling accountsof stabbings and suicides he reads about nearly every day in the newspapers must have worked themselves into Doc Clifford’s sleeping life, because he wakes one morning from a strange dream and, staring into the darkness, tries to understand the language of the night.

Over forty years before, Clifford, a medical doctor, moved into Auburn, along with his wife, who was expecting their first child; they lived next door to La Salle and became familiar with the Brothers’ comings and goings. At Christmas they exchanged gifts of brandy or whiskey.

Gradually, when the fog in his head clears, his dream takes shape. He is at his old university before it became the National Concert Hall, strolling by the stalls during Freshers’ Week, when a weird sight stops him in his tracks. In one of the stalls, black plastic cutouts of human shapes are swinging from a clothesline. He calls to one of the students, hooked up to an iPod; the student is wiggling and rocking in his private world.

‘What are they?’ Clifford asks.

‘What?’ the student snaps, removing an earpiece. Frowning, he looks up to where Clifford is pointing. ‘Oh,’ he shrugs, ‘they’re just guys who topped themselves this year. And I’ll be with them soon.’ He replaces the earpiece.

Clifford grabs the student’s arm: ‘No, you mustn’t. Talk to me.’ The student breaks loose and runs away, leaving Doc Clifford holding the student’s detached arm in the jacket sleeve. ‘What’s the point?’ the student calls back.

Clifford reaches out and presses the light button on the bedside clock. Six-thirty. Another half-hour to doze. Banishing the frightening images, he is drifting off again when he is surprised by a sound like thunder, and shouting that comes crashing in on his drowsy state. His two cocker spaniels are yelping in their kennel. At first he thinks it’s another dream until he sits up in the bed and switches on the lamp.

The rattle of gears reverberates in a powerful engine; a throttle is opening up, followed by the crack and crush of foliage, so close it could knock the house down. By force of habit he glances across at his dead wife’s bed, empty except for his dressing gown where he’d thrown it the night before, as he always does. Through a chink in the heavy curtains he can make out the bulk of a jcb reversing and turning, causing powerful head-lights to sweep over the grounds and the gable wall of La Salle, with its long lunette window.

Wide awake now, he recalls a chance meeting at the auction with the new owners of La Salle, Philip Lalor and his wife, Samantha, who, she tells Clifford, since her college days has never been known as anything else but Sam. With bird-like movements of her head, she was alert to every shade of change in the room, so that their conversation seemed a distraction to her. When the sale began, she was the one – not Philip – who kept outbidding the others, although, he – head and shoulders above her – whispered now and again in her ear.

A few evenings later, while calling in to say goodbye to the Brothers, Clifford stood back when a shining black suv pulled into the grounds. ‘Here come your new neighbours,’ the Brother said while Sam, Ray-Bans perched on her blonde hair, was parking beside the flowerbed of Celtic Cross design. Philip, lean as a greyhound, stepped out on the passenger side and, with an open stride, came around to introduce himself. He had an eager handshake.

Their chat was fitful: the difficulties of moving house, parting with neighbours, and getting used to new surroundings. Their teenagers, Dylan and Zara, hop down from the car along with two golden labradors who bound ahead of them. As the kids are making for the front of the house, Philip calls them back, smiling an apology for their lack of courtesy. They endure an introduction – Zara showing her mouth brace when she grins; Dylan in black, with a mop of hair that hangs over his sulky looks.

After a while, Sam begins to fiddle with a measuring tape: a plain signal for Clifford to renew his good wishes, and start to move off just as her BlackBerry rings. She dives into her handbag.

‘No!’ she flares up. ‘No, I will not settle for that, and if you can’t do it, then I’ll instruct my architect to look elsewhere.’

‘Ned,’ the Brother calls to Clifford, ‘let me walk with you to the gate … No shortage here,’ he says out of the side of his mouth; ‘they haven’t sold their house in Raheny yet. Of course, he’s getting plenty of cheap money. A banker – lending managers, they’re called – and herself is in advertising.’ He chuckles. ‘They’re doing all right. Still what – mid-forties?’

‘In or around.’

Clifford switches off the bedside lamp and opens the curtains. The jcb is shunting and jerking – the headlights sweeping through the bare branches of the trees that line the party hedge, catching the sheen on the ruthless teeth of the digger as they sink into the spot where the Brothers had nursed colour out of the earth each spring.

Just as he is about to disconnect the alarm system under the stairs, his eye falls on his stethoscope and blood pressure sphyg on the wide hall stand where he had left them after returning from his day’s work in the clinic. ‘Gets me out of the house,’ he jokes to his golfing friends at Robin Hill. The clinic in the village had been his until one of his sons took it over, extended the bungalow out into the back garden, and engaged two other doctors – a physiotherapist and a part-time dietician. It suits him to do one day a week: he can keep in contact with patients he has looked after for donkey’s years.

After retirement he planned to go on a world tour: a dream shared with his wife. Then she discovered a lump under her arm one morning in the shower, and dismissed it as a cyst. So, apart from the visits of his sons and their families, and golf at Robin Hill, he is alone for the first time in his life. And fearing that he might go to seed – like some of his patients have done after such an upset – he came out of retirement to do locum two days a week: one for his son in the village, the other down in Greystones.

The rising smell of the coffee he has left to brew and the bread he has popped in the toaster revive him while he is stirring porridge. And, following the habit of a lifetime, he lays his diary on the table as he sits down to breakfast. Routine complaints of the previous day cross the screen of his memory: an ingrown toenail, children with coughs, a student worried about a sexually transmitted disease, a young woman looking for the morning-after pill. And the dreaded blood test that might show a positive reading.

While having breakfast, the sharp teeth sinking into the ground take over Clifford’s head. In his mind’s eye, he pictures one of the Brothers, through the hedge, putting all his bulk on the spade, bending, then raising and shaking out the brittle earth: a ritual that begins each year after St Patrick’s Day.

As dawn is breaking over The Sleeping Giant, he takes a cup of coffee to his study and looks across at La Salle. Seagulls are dipping and diving around the jcb in search of an early breakfast. The practised hands of the digger operator work the levers; the bucket rises into the air with a scoop of earth, shunting out of the way the statue of the Virgin Mary and causing it to tilt forward. The next time the teeth don’t miss: the statue is hoisted in the metal bucket and is dumped with a thud on the lorry parked alongside. One arm has broken off, leaving a bare rod reaching out for deliverance. With a tip of his shovel against the side of the lorry, a man, trampling all over the Celtic Cross flowerbed, signals to the driver, and the lorry moves off slowly towards the avenue. The statue sways like a drunk as it disappears around the curve of the driveway.

For generations, the Virgin Mary had become the landmark Auburn people gave to their visitors: ‘When you see the statue at the front of a big old Georgian house, you’re nearly there; we’re just around the corner.’

Clifford’s wife, while giving directions to house guests over the phone, might say, in a moment of mischief: ‘We’re next door to the monks’ goddess.’ Though a lukewarm Catholic – a pavilion member, as she used to describe herself – ever since a priest refused her absolution because she was on the birth control pill – she would have been sorry to see the goddess destroyed.

Thoughts of his wife bring back a memory that has been haunting him since she passed away – the evening he returned from his practice to find her asleep in an armchair with an empty bottle on the low table, and a broken wine glass on the carpet. When he woke her with an offer of coffee, she rounded on him: ‘You’ve a brass neck to lecture me about my drinking habits after you fucking that nurse. Get away from me!’

Over the past two years since her death, he has been holding fast to a routine: locum days, golf days, and visits from his two sons and their families at the weekend. But at times such as this when they would rake over the latest news, he catches himself planning a blow-by-blow account for when she returns to the house, or when they next drive down to the Marine Hotel for a coffee.

He closes his diary and sets off on his morning walk which begins on the path around the side of the house, along The Nuns’ Walk, then up to the summit of Cooper’s Hill, and finally around to the village for the newspaper.

The jcb engine is idling as he hurries by the back of La Salle. A man in a hard hat is shouting into a mobile phone.

‘I need them two fuckers down at the convent in Carlow bright and early tomorrow, to clear out the place. Do you get me, boss?’

Clifford slows his steps.

‘No, I’m tellin you, I need that chapel cleared out by Wednesday. We’re convertin it into a restaurant. The chippies are after me, so move your arse.’

Raindrops cling to the fuchsia branches; across the bay, The Sleeping Giant is shrouded in mist, but the dogsare delighted with themselves – running ahead and sniffing interesting nooks in the hedgerows.

As he drives to Greystones, his mind wanders from one patient to the next: those who cannot sleep, or who want something to calm their nerves. The women cry and tell him their deepest fears: ‘Do you think, doctor, that our savings will be lost? Or the house?’

‘Ah well, it’s not that bad.’

‘But they’re saying that those banks – Fannie Mae and the other one – ours could go the same way in a year or two.’

‘As far as I know, that’s a problem that’s confined to America, those sub-prime loans.’

‘I hope you’re right. So will you give me something to help – you know – with the sleeping.’

Right through the spring, the Polish workers arrive before dawn at La Salle. Then, all day, until after dark, they shatter the well-bred air of Auburn with the grating sound of concrete saws and the pounding of hammers; pick-up trucks, encrusted with dried cement, are pulling in with fresh lengths of timber, double-glazed windows or Valentia slate. Filling the air with the acrid smell of diesel, the trucks carry off the wooden panels that were used to divide bedrooms when the Brothers were at full strength. The builders winkle out the crest of the Blessed Jean Christophe, founder of La Compagnie de Jésus from over the door, and fill the imprint with plaster, so that by Easter no trace is left, apart from the name of the house, which Sam and Philip consider sufficiently European to retain.

As soon as the Poles have laid cobblestone paving at the front of the house, and built a fountain with a copper statue of Aphrodite where the Virgin Mary once stood, the Lalors move in. Now and again they come across Clifford when they too are walking their dogs up Cooper’s Hill, or pacing the harbour wall of a Sunday morning. And they fit into the habit of Auburn where people weave their own social network around one of the schools or the sailing or golf clubs. On weekdays, the newcomers rarely lay eyes on one another except to pass by in their suvs with darkened windows, or soft top Mercs, and when they meet at parties or at the tennis club, they are ‘busy, busy, busy’, and carry their BlackBerrys everywhere. In addition, the women are run off their feet helping Belvedere College or Goldsmith Park with the latest African project.

On one such walk around the Head when the gorse was saffron, and the coconut-scented air had well and truly broken the back of winter, Clifford runs into Philip and Sam as he is emerging from Moss Lane. Sam is excited about the house-warming they are planning for June, ‘but we’re not in barbecue weather yet’.

‘No. Not for another while. Still a bit of frost at night.’

Their dogs are exploring each other and trotting on ahead. As on previous occasions, Sam is openly demonstrative with her husband: idly picking petals off the gorse and holding up a handful for him to inhale the perfume, and full of enthusiasm about inviting the neighbours over for a barbecue.

When Clifford continues on his way, however, Sam picks at an old sore. Will the women of Auburn, who have had fountains in the back garden since they were children and grandfathers who had clothing shops in North Earl Street, detect that she is not really one of them?

3

When he arrivesinto Nat Am on the Monday morning after his chance meeting with Doc Clifford in Moss Lane, Philip spots some of his colleagues having a cup of coffee in the Plaza before the day’s business commences. The Plaza is a bright concourse with high palms in terracotta pots and glass panels in the roof. Situated in the middle of the six-storey building, it serves as a meeting place and coffee dock. Among those at the table is Kevin Egan, Philip’s best friend since schooldays; best man at his wedding.

‘The bubble could burst,’ Egan is saying in his teasing way, when Philip brings a cup of coffee and pulls up a chair beside them.

‘Oh, come on, Kevin. Don’t tell me you’ve joined the scaremongerers,’ says a woman from hr. ‘The Minister put paid to that last year, didn’t he? Told them, if that’s their attitude, they should get lost or leave the country.’

‘So are we learning anything from Northern Rock about reckless lending?’ Egan holds out. Thus far the conversation is relaxed and playful until Wheeler, an acolyte of Aengus Sharkey, the bank’s ceo, says: ‘Nonsense. Our banks are well-financed, and to imply otherwise is downright irresponsible, and it could adversely affect our standing in world markets and with foreign investors.’

Lisa from Customer Service has news that Merrill Lynch is in trouble.

‘Merrill Lynch. Jesus!’ One of the junior bankers is shocked. ‘Can’t be.’

‘No, it’s true.’ She had heard it on the bbc that morning. ‘And not only that: one or two of the big hitters – aib, for one – have sold off some of the family silver already, including their headquarters down the road.’

‘What?’ the junior banker is disbelieving.

‘Our neighbours. Sold off their trophy, and laid down a condition that they would have first option on leasing rights. Quite obviously they’re afraid of a nose-dive in the market. So they have six hundred million in the sack for lending,’ Egan says. ‘When the big hitters are doing that, it’s time to sit up and take notice.’ One of the others adds that an office block out in Santry has been empty for the past two months.

The cold wind of change is the talking point over lunch at Katie’s, and in coffee shops on Merrion Road; anxiety is spreading and affecting bank employees, despite the assurances from government ministers about ‘the fundamentals being sound’.

Sharkey too had read the newspapers and subsequently talked to his directors; he had overheard words like ‘sub-prime’ and ‘toxic loans’ in the mouths of those who wouldn’t know one end of a balance sheet from the other. These words now are being tossed around on chat shows, and on the way into work on the dart.

To restore confidence, he calls the section heads to an ad hoc meeting in one of the smaller conference rooms, and brings in Breffni St John Dunleavy, the bank chairman, to address them. The conference room is on the executive floor, where some of the top developers in the country, hoteliers and shopping mall owners are treated tocordon bleucooking, and Domaine Paul Pernot Meursault.

From an old land-owning family in Waterford, proud of its Catholic heritage, St John Dunleavy has a high profile around the Shelbourne Hotel, and the rds where his family has won many prizes for pedigree cattle. He appears on television, and, from time to time, is featured in the business sections of the national dailies; some had bought his carefully orchestrated spin that he was largely responsible for building up Nat Am from the time when it was a ‘basket case’. In truth, Sharkey had done the donkey work, like knocking on debtors’ doors and showing no mercy to defaulters. By dint of his headlong determination, Amalgamated, a small merchant bank, became National Amalgamated, and eventually Nat Am.

In his perennial tan, St John Dunleavy is ebullient. He talks up the healthy state of Irish banks. Yes, he had seen the television programmes. ‘Nothing more than that little pipsqueak economist has been trotting out for the past couple of years now. Look, my friends, it’s as plain as day. We have access to European money – the supply is virtually unlimited. Secondly, the Yanks are here to stay; the pharmaceutical and the computer industries are in good health, and all that guff about bubbles bursting is only another example of the national propensity for pessimism.’ And regarding the fact that aib was selling its headquarters? Well, he explains, that’s good business sense. Pure and simple. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, many thanks for your time.’ He rests his hands on the desk, leans towards them, and in his West British accent endorses ‘the lending policy this bank has pursued, which is the envy of other institutions. A policy that is good for the business community, good for our country and good for Nat Am.’

‘Hear, hear!’ Conrad Brennan, another one of Sharkey’s yesman, calls out.

But St John Dunleavy isn’t quite finished. ‘As a matter of interest,’ he says, as if imparting a secret, ‘if push comes to shove – I can reveal this to you, since you’ve been loyal to Nat Am – we on the board are in accord with granting another eight percent in the case of domestic loans, if, say, a couple needs a boost with their mortgage repayments. And, incidentally, give the begrudgers a wide berth. Nat Am will continue to be fitter, leaner and more competitive than our rivals. So my advice to you all is this: keep the naysayers at arm’s length, ladies and gentlemen. As the bishop once said on television – “We’ve become a nation of knockers.”’ Another round of applause follows.

When Dunleavy leaves the room, Sharkey gives them a pep talk about lending, and finishes by saying: ‘And to translate Breffni into plain speaking: fuck the begrudgers.’ Sharkey is well known for his foul language; some, especially those seeking promotion, link it with strength and control, and ape him whenever they can get away with it.

Sitting beside Philip towards the front, Egan joins the app-lause, but doesn’t share their confidence in the market as they chat in groups over coffee served by staff wearing white jackets. Privately, he has fears about the Celtic Tiger, especially when he glances at the property sections and sees that one can buy a villa in France with a tennis court for the same as a house in one of the corporation estates in Dublin. He can see sense in the perky economist’s warnings.

Nat Am, however, is not the place to voice such doubts; Egan has seen how Sharkey puts under pressure those who hint at caution, and eventually wedges them out. And, after all, he too has benefited from the bank’s low interest loan to buy a fine house on Sandymount Strand. Like the majority of Nat Am personnel, he has availed of the bank’s share options, and loans to invest in the Dublin Docklands Development. One day when the price is right, he vows, he will sell his shares and make a killing and, like they do in the City, take early retirement.

Sharkey holds an impromptu meeting of the lending mana-gers in the conference room. ‘No need to sit, guys,’ he says. ‘No matter what rumours you hear, continue to lend.’ He pauses and, over his half-lenses, scans the room with a twinkle in his eye. ‘Continue to lend. It’s as simple as this: if we don’t lend, the other fuckers will lend. Our investment portfolio is sound, so gun to tape, guys.’ Then, like a football coach, he draws them into a huddle, his arms around the two men who flank him. ‘Lookit, guys: sell. Sell everywhere. Rugby clubs, golf clubs, move your asses.’ He is getting louder. ‘Move your asses, because other fuckers like Anglo, aib, Bank of Ireland, and Ulster Bank have cottoned on to what we have done for the lending market, and are on our heels. Take your clients to Lansdowne, Croker, Shanahan’s. Take them on the fucking Orient Express if you want. If golf is their thing, take them to St Andrews. If they get off on tennis, take them to Wimbledon. No prob about tickets. Uni pals, friends: network, guys, Get out there and fucking network. Continue to hook them in.’

The whole manic performance is troublesome for Egan. Afterwards, he voices his concerns to Philip.

‘You’re a worrier, Kev’ is Philip’s response. ‘Behind the jokes, you always were. You see dangers that are only in your head. Remember when you were up the creek before exams and you always came out first or thereabouts. Nothing that eighteen holes shouldn’t fix. Let’s get down to Mount Juliet or the Glen on Saturday.’

‘But Bear Stearns – one of the giants in the us. What next?’

‘That’s America. Europe is still sound.’

Behind his buoyant mood, however, Philip sleeps badly that night. He recalls the early days when Sharkey held a credit committee meeting every Friday at Icarus Hall, a Nat Am mansion in Dawson Street, and tore strips off anyone who couldn’t show proof that a loan application was backed by security, cash flow and personal assets. ‘On your head be it, if this loan goes belly up,’ he used to shout at junior members of the lending teams. ‘And check the fucking net worth of every client.’ Now the credit committee is being ignored: no talk of net worth or of audited financial statements – the client’s word is sufficient.

So, to calm the ferment in his brain, Philip gets in his car the following day at lunch-time and drives to the National Gallery, where his father used to take him and his brother, when they were children. ‘This is my oxygen, lads,’ his father, a primary teacher, would say when they were going through the front door. His face seemed to look younger. ‘Food for the soul.’

In a low voice he would set them a test: ‘What do you feel – not think – when you look at that painting? Heart – not head, lads.’ After a while he would point out things they had missed, like where the light is shining, the look on certain faces,why is the beach deserted?and so on. Why did Hopper paint that woman sitting on her own in the hotel bedroom? Notice the suitcase.What’s he trying to tell us about ourselves?

It was there too that Philip went with Ellen on a couple of occasions, while the affair had them in its grip. ‘This is one place you won’t find bankers’ was her joke. She had studied at the National College of Art and Design before she joined the bank.

‘Why?’ he had asked when they were sitting at a table in a dim corner of the coffee dock.

‘Why what?’

‘Why did you … well … art to banking?’

‘Simple. On an art teacher’s salary, you can’t do Chamonix in January, and you’ll have to think twice about getting a bridge done if you lose a tooth.’

That day he has lunch alone in the sunlit restaurant, surrounded by chatter, the rattle of cups, and the grating sound of chairs being pulled up to tables.

While he eats, he scans a gallery brochure, and becomes aware of the rise and fall of conversations. A young woman at the next table is telling a civil-service type about her new Bose home entertainment system. ‘Eighteen grand. You should hear the sound from the fucking eight speakers.’

The civil servant nods.

Despite St John Dunleavy’s bluster on television, and Sharkey’s boasting around town that the bank’s loan book is healthy, and that share prices are holding up, the forecasts, like clouds looming over a garden fête, are threatening to call their bluff. With worried looks, bank staff sit at the round tables near the palm trees in the plaza, and exchange pieces of information. Someone’s sister, along with her partner, has moved into an estate in Athlone, and half the houses there are still empty after ten months. Someone else, on her way into work, is keeping tabs on an empty office block – which has been like that for ages now. The colours on the estate agent’s sign are fading in the sun. She knows of an estate agent who had to close down the Rathmines and Finglas offices.

The News Roundup team, armed with microphones and cameras, is loitering around Nat Am and other banks for a sound bite. Sharkey decides on a pre-emptive strike. ‘I’m going to invite them into the foyer before lunch some day. I’ve talked it over with Breffni,’ he tells his cronies. ‘I’ll be prepared, so they can’t ambush me. A few minutes in the foyer. I’ll need you guys close by. Looks good. Team-thing, get it?’

The reporter – a woman with thin lips – fires the questions: ‘Many say that our banks are lending recklessly.’ She thrusts a microphone in front of his face.

‘I can tell you categorically: Nat Am does not take risks – absolutely not – and, though I’ve no right to say this, a similar policy obtains in the other financial institutions in this country. In Nat Am our policy is, and always has been: unless we have assurances of security and cash flow for our loans – and indeed personal assets – no deal. No, Emma,’ he beams to the camera, ‘we are in robust health, and continue to outperform other banks in this country and abroad. No problem whatever with capitalization, or liquidity. Take it from me, and I’ve been in the business for longer than I care to remember: the probity of our bank is above question. Hand on heart, I can say that, in general, our bank is serving the Irish people in a responsible manner, and we intend to continue to do that.’ He gathers his trench coat about him and smiles. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve business to attend to.’ Afraid to let a big fish get away, the reporter’s voice grows shrill; a vein is swelling in her neck: ‘Reckless lending, Mr Sharkey, for the Galway Races brigade.’

For a split second, Sharkey loses control, a flash of anger in his beady eyes. He wags his finger in the reporter’s face.

‘No. Not reckless, but a willingness to support those who are enterprising, who have the courage to launch out. Our bank has been the catalyst for the prosperity that Irish business is now enjoying. We have a policy of responsible lending to those who are the backbone of this country. The fundamentals are sound.’

He composes himself; the Sharkey grin returns. ‘We needcan-dopeople to drive our economy; we don’t need hurlers on the ditch. We needchutzpah.’

‘Sorry,’ he turns again to the camera, ‘have to go, Emma. Meeting with a senior member of my staff. He’s spearheading a project to help the less fortunate people of Tanzania.Noblesse oblige, right?’

When the camera is turned off, and the television crew has left, Brennan and Wheeler applaud. ‘Game, set and match, Aengus,’ says Wheeler. The three men are laughing as they go through the revolving door.

Sharkey had built up a reputation for helping worthy causes, one of which is Philip’s project to provide education for children in Tanzania. Every May, Sharkey organizes a golf classic at Druid’s Glen. ‘After all, guys – it’s only fair to help out a colleague. I mean bloody decent of Philip to put in the time,’ he announces in the club one Friday evening while a few of them are planning the event. Those eager to move up the ladder know that by supporting Sharkey’s projects, they are showing loyalty – a virtue he prizes above all others.

But ‘money down the toilet’ is the way he describes helping Africa when he and some of his kitchen cabinet are on their own in the washroom. ‘Corrupt bastards out there hijack most of it,’ he says while drying his hands. ‘Lazy fuckers who won’t do an honest day’s work. No time for that shit. But, lookit – good optics for Nat Am.’ Under strip lighting, he examines his reflection in the mirror and pats the few strands of hair across his scalp. ‘No. Give me the American way any time: get off your arse and earn your crust, or else suffer the consequences. For the life of me I can’t figure out why Philip would be so naïve. Who does he think he is? Mahatma fucking Gandhi?’

‘Seems a favourite uncle, a missionary, was out there for years. Philip used to visit during holidays.’