The Dualist - Chapter 5

The temperature changed from warm to bloody freezing in the time it takes to snap a finger. There appears to be no pattern to the weather here any longer. There are no definable seasons. The sun rarely shines in the summer time. The monster rains have drenched its fires. The heavy clouds have, like a gang of kidnappers, put a bag over its head and muscled it from the sky. It is as though the weather is an apt metaphor for our own uncertain times. August had days of winter bleakness. It snowed briefly in July. This October day, the mid-morning was warm and dry until a sudden flow of cold air from the draughty window suffused the room and made turkey skin of my sleeveless arms. I went looking for a jumper and found one in the bottom of the wardrobe. It was an old navy crew neck with felt patches on the elbows and shoulders and a company logo embroidered on the breast. It had been issued to me when I signed up with the Cabs & Couriers radio cab company around the time I first began working as a cab driver. That company went to the wall back in muggy May, another victim of the recession, and cut off a steady supply of lucrative corporate business that I had not yet been able to replace. All that was left was the jumper which didn’t look too stylish anymore, now that the reason for wearing it had disappeared. But when it’s cold, who’s complaining?

I finished my tea and thought about the dead man’s wallet. I went outside and crossed over to the car, clicked it open and sat into the passenger seat. Before I opened the glove compartment, my eye caught sight of my taxi driver’s ID, my tiomanaí deimhinithe, on the dashboard in front of me. It was the first time in a while that I’d noticed it, the plastic sign issued a couple of years or so ago by the Taxi Regulator bearing my ID number E23428, my name and date of birth and my picture, its lo-res passport quality thankfully subduing the varicose rawness of the scar on the right side of my face. To everyone that sits in my cab that photo fully represents the person I am. In its entirety. It is the thing that communicates to them the whole story of my life: Frank Wright, taxi man. Full stop. There is no story or plot or denouement. It is just that. For the twenty or so minutes that I am relevant in the lives of nearly all the people I encounter that is wholly who I am. But to me the picture has no such meaning. To me, it has no meaning at all. It represents the last person I think I am. In fact, it is as though the image details the identity of someone else. Someone who’s being and body I only occupy because with every turn of the steering wheel, every shifting of the gearbox, every step upon the gas, I think I am living someone else’s life and not the one that was intended for me.

I always felt I was made for bigger things.

I still hope for bigger things.

I opened the glove compartment and fumbled my way past a torch, an old cloth, some CDs, a roadmap and an old coffee cup until I retrieved the dead man’s wallet. In broad daylight now I could see it was made of tanned leather which blackened towards the edges with a horseshoe logo on the bottom right hand side of its front. It looked old too as though it had received a lot of wear and tear in its lifetime, although something told me that the steady flow of money had contributed little to its present dilapidated state. I opened it up and went through it again, with no anticipation of finding any cash but in the hope that it might reveal something about the identity of its owner. I searched its pouches and card compartments but there wasn’t much to glean beyond a couple of suburban DART tickets and one Intercity return to Portlaoise. There was a return bus ticket to and from Virginia, Co Cavan and a couple of other scraps of old receipts and betting slips. There was a book of stamps that according to an accompanying receipt had been bought in the post office on Elgin Street earlier on the day I picked him up and it was behind these that I found the card. Bingo! A social welfare ID card bearing the following name and address: Tom Foley, 21 Elgin Place, Dublin 2

Ta-daaah!

The black and white ID picture was of a man, gaunt, charmless, a mouth moulded by meanness, thin lips, the top one shaped like the letter m, weak chin, hard eyes, lustreless hair, stringy and grey, cheeks sunken more from chain smoking than, say, from long distance running. No oil painting. It was hard to tell for sure if the person in the picture was the man in the backseat – but as it was the only ID in his wallet it was good enough for me.

Because now I had a name and address, the means to positively identify this person and bring closure to the whole saga of the dead man in the back of my cab. And to bring this closure sweetly and swiftly, all I had to do was to wait for the Garda woman to call me back and tell her that I had indeed found a wallet with an ID inside it that positively identified their dead guy and that would be the end of things? Nothing more to see here. Time to move on.

But did it turn out that way? It did in its arse. I reckon plain old curiosity played a part. As did boredom. Driving around a desolate town later that morning without as much as a fare in sight was how the two got acquainted. Before I knew it they had me scuttling across the city towards the street where Tom Foley lived.

The sky had taken on the texture of dirty cotton wool and my windscreen was flecked with intermittent spits of cold rain as I turned into Elgin Place, a narrow street lined with red bricked terraced bungalows not far from the place where the Grand Canal meets the Alexander Basin on the south side of town. The odd numbers were on the right I noticed as I slowed to 15 kmph and eased the car towards number 21. A large van outside with the words Staines Removals printed on the back and sides was parked outside the open door of the house and a car parked outside the house directly opposite meant my cab couldn’t get past. So I had to pull up. As I braked I saw two men emerging from inside the hold of the van after loading a rickety chest of drawers into it when one of them noticed me there.  He signalled to me and said something I couldn’t hear.

I lowered the window.

“What’s that?” I said.

 “You the courier, yeah?” he said he said pointing to the logo on the old jumper I had put on earlier.

I can’t remember what I said but whatever it was; he took it as a yes.

 He went on.

 “Yeah, just as well ye showed. We were wondering what to do with the parcel, maybe just fuck it in the skip was what we were going to but … hold on there.”

 “This isTom Foley’s place?” I said.

“Absolutely, pal. Gimme a sec there ‘til I get it.”

Before I could reply he disappeared into the house and came out not more than twenty seconds later brandishing a package.

“Here ye go ...” he said and handed me a heftyish padded envelope which I took from him and put on the passenger seat.

“Thanks indeed, I’ll drop that off right away,” I said, as my chancing arm twitched under my jumper.

I looked at the address and read two words written in blue marker: For Courier. It was addressed to a publishing house in PCP Books in Merrion Square.

 “Nice one, man,” he said.

“So has he moved out or what’s the story?” I asked, pointing to the removals van.

“Kicked out more like,” he said with a laugh.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Didn’t pay the rent. So the landlord sent us over to clear the place. And give him a few slaps first. But I think he was expecting us cos he's legged it anyway.” he said with a laugh.

 “Oh!”

“Ye know yourself, yeah?”

“Yeah … I .. I suppose.”

“Left the place in shite too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. So he'll stay away if he's wise.”

I thought about telling him about what had happened to his boss’s tenant only the night before but thought better of it seconds later.

By then my removals man had changed the subject.

“Ye’ll need to get out I suppose,” he said and pointed at the van.

I nodded.

“Hold on and I’ll shift it up a bit,” he said and fished his keys from his pocket.

 “Thanks for that so,” I said, starting up the engine and wondering had I gone temporarily insane.

“No worries, friend. Cheers,” he replied and then got into the van and moved it forward, far enough to allow me drive pass, beeping the horn in thanks as I drove away.

It wasn’t until I turned right at the top of the street that I wondered to myself what the hell had just happened back there. How had such a bizarre sequence of events ended up with me taking possession of something that would, when I look back at it now, alter my life beyond all recognition?

I’ve thought about it many times since and I’ve asked myself that same question over and over again. I never did find the answer and I don’t suppose I ever will.

Not that it matters much anymore.

© Séamus Bagnall 2014

So. There you have it folks, the first five chapters of The Dualist. Hope you enjoyed and hopefully it's the start of a process that'll see this here work of mine on a bookshelf in a shop in the not too distant future. Thanks again taking the time to read it.

Normal service will resume tomorrow ...