The Magdalene Martyrs

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“I built a house and found — why was I surprised? — Thoreau was right.

If a man builds a barn, the barn becomes a prison.”

Gary Paulsen, Pilgrimage on a Steel Ride

*

A Monday morning, late January, I had an alcoholic fit. Doesn’t get more serious than that. Put me smack back in hospital. A doctor looming over me said,

“Mr Taylor, have you any idea what happened to you?”

“No.”

“The next attack could kill you.”

“I’ll be careful.”

He looked down at my chart, shook his head, said,

“Care isn’t what’s needed. You cannot drink.”

The episode terrorised me. When I got out of the hospital, I didn’t drink. But I’d been down that road a thousand times. Sooner or later, the edge of the fear dropped off or I got to “Who gives a f**k?” and drank.

I sank into deep and deeper depression. Getting out of bed became increasingly difficult. During the night, massive anxiety would pull me from sleep, on the hour, every hour. Drained, I’d crawl from bed and have to force myself to the shower. Food held no interest, but I tried. Asked myself, “Why bother?” Shaved my beard and was horrified at how sunken my face was. But hell, I’d great teeth.

In my last case, two brothers had come after me. If they lived in America, they’d have been trailer trash. Here, they were “bachelors”. Implying, it was their choice. Among their agenda of hatred were tinkers. I’d been working for the travellers. Coming home from a funeral, I’d been pissed and eating chips, the Irish Nirvana or, as purists might say, “Tír na nÓg”.

The brothers had hit me in the mouth with an iron bar. Weeks of dentistry resulted in a smile that glowed.

I’d once heard depression described as being under murky, fetid water and not being able to break the surface.

That fit.

Each day was drearier than the one before. The high point was going to bed so I’d be able to just cease. If comfort could be squeezed from anything, it was the thought of suicide. It is deep s**t when that’s the only light. Months before, I’d been drinking in a dive off Merchant’s Road. What drew me was the menace, palpable in the very air. A Russian sailor, dry-docked for eight months, sold me a .32-calibre Heckler & Koch. It’s a nasty piece of work; I was amazed to get it, and so cheap.

Most nights, I’d hold it in my hand and think,

“One movement up, then squeeze the trigger.”

I cannot say why I didn’t. Tried to return to books. There had always been reading. No matter what went down, I could always read. Wasn’t working any more. All my old reliable ones, Thomas Merton, Nelson Algren, Walter Macken, Francis Thompson.

Nope.

Weren’t doing it.

Returned to a writer who’d give me the blackness. Derek Raymond, the founder of English noir. Also known as Robin Cook. He had a lifelong affinity with the criminal, the damaged. Educated at that “hotbed of buggery”, Eton, it was, he said, “an excellent preparation for vice of any kind”. Prompted by an almost terminal boredom, he absconded, first to Paris and the legendary Beat Hotel, then New York’s Lower East Side. The first of his five marriages went down the toilet after sixty-five days.

My own marriage had run almost parallel. I didn’t plan on four more.

He said,

I knew things were going wrong when I got home, put the shopping down in the kitchen and the table gave a terrible cough.

No wonder I loved him.

He wrote a spate of books that drew a cult following. Translated as good reviews, no money. It didn’t worry him unduly. He said,

I’ve watched people like Kingsley Amis, struggling to get on the up escalator, while I had the down escalator all to myself.

Here’s when I like him best.

Nearing fifty, he began the Factory novels. Unremittingly black thrillers, the protagonist haunted by personal tragedy and obsessed with the deaths no one else bothers with, they show London in despair. Scoured by “vile psychic weather”.

The books culminated in the astonishing I Was Dora Suarez. He wrote of his novel In Mourning,

If I had no guilt to purge, I would not have known where the road to hell was, … she was my atonement for 50 years indifference to the miserable state of this world, a terrible journey through my own guilt, and the guilt of others.

Liver cancer and booze took him out of the game at the age of sixty-three. I’d lined up his works by the wall, like a series of bullets I had to simply load. His final years, he lived in a Spartan bedsit in Willesden.

If I hadn’t known to mourn him back then, I was making up for that now.

I could feel his finger on the trigger of my Heckler & Koch.

In my previous case, I’d enlisted the help of a hard man named Bill Cassell. I asked him to protect a young girl and he did so. Then I further indebted myself by asking him to eliminate a killer. Such help doesn’t come cheap. Gave him a shitpile of money, but it was the favour he’d call in one day that was most worrying. You owe a man like him, you have to deliver, and the dread is waiting to see what it is he will ask. At the time, he does warn you, but I went ahead and made the trade. He is your seriously hard man; even the guards give him a wide berth. He doesn’t have perimeters, there is no line he won’t cross, and you better hope you are not the one he is crossing that line to see. The call came on a Sunday night. He opened with,

“You’re a hard man to find.”

“You managed.”

Low chuckle.

“Yeah.”

“How is your health, Bill?”

With liver cancer, how could it be? But I felt I should at least make an effort. He said,

“f****d,”

“I’m sorry, Bill.”

“You’ll know why I’m calling, Jack.”

“My chit’s due?”

“Right.”

“What do you want?”

“Not on the phone. Sweeney’s at twelve, tomorrow.”

“I’m off the booze.”

“I heard. You won’t be there long.”

“I suppose that’s a comfort.”

“Take it where you find it.”

“I’ll try.”

“Twelve, Jack, don’t be late.”

Click.

The depression sat on me like cement. I knew Bill’s call had to come, but now I couldn’t even rise to anxiety. All dealings with Bill required a high level of unease. Forced myself to put on my coat, get out for a walk. What I wanted was to curl up in a corner and weep. As I passed reception, Mrs Bailey said,

“Mr Taylor!”

“Jack, please.”

I knew she’d never get that familiar. Her face was concerned. She asked,

“Are you all right?”

“Touch of flu.”

We let that float above our heads for a moment. Then she said,

“You could do with a tonic.”

“Right.”

She looked like she’d a ton to add but let it slide, said,

“If there’s anything I can do…”

“Thanks.”

I walked to Eyre Square.

Gangs of young people milling about, all with cans of lager, flasks of cider.

Booze, booze, booze.