CHAPTER ONE
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A GIRL NAMED CAITLAN

DUBLIN, NOVEMBER 2011.

I’m aware of a man, drunk, his clothing rough and dishevelled, being propelled out of the bar by a tall heavyset individual. Innumerable expletives pursue the drunkard from the big guy, as he is thrown into the street. The guy, who I imagine must be the landlord, pauses to regard me with no more than a cursory attention.

I judge the man whom he threw into the street to be about 50. His greying hair and beard are as rough as his clothes. He squints his bloodshot eyes into my face as the landlord disappears inside his pub.

“If you’re planning to go in there, mister,” the drunk gestures in the general direction of the bar, “don’t fuckin’ stare at the singer’s tits whatever you do, or ould Flanagan’ll throw you out.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I assure him. “So who is she, the singer?” I ask although I’m certain that I won’t gain much conversation from him in his drunken state.

“She sings like a fuckin’ angel don’t she?” I couldn’t help but nod my agreement. “But ould Flanagan’s barred me so I’ll have to try down the road.”

His whisky-soaked breath is enough to make me turn away and, without bothering to observe him stagger off down the street, I involuntarily push open the green painted door.

The place is, I’d guessed correctly, heaving. Most of the punters are crowded around the bar; nevertheless, there are a few vacant seats at green painted tables.

A group of young men, well on their way to being drunk, stagger ungainly to the bar. They cause me, for a weird moment, to believe that I am back home because their accents are unmistakably English. I conjecture mainly South London. I guess this is some kind of stag party.

Approaching the bar and leaning an arm across it, I see her. Not only does she sing like an angel, she also resembles one.

“The night was dark, the bottle empty.
The moon shone down O’Connell Street.
I stood alone and brave men cried.
Fighting for his country bold.
He fought for Ireland.”

She’s standing on a sort of raised dais at the side of the bar. Some of the punters are dancing to the music on a cleared floor area. The music is rousing, melodic and smacking of something akin to rebellious. Maybe this is a Republican Bar, although Uncle Sheamie assured me that the majority of political ‘shenanigans’ had evaporated by the nineties, even in Belfast. Still, sometimes, I can’t help but wonder.

She isn’t overly tall, maybe 5’ 3” in her stockinged feet, as she isn’t wearing any shoes. A short tartan skirt, worn at least 4” above her knee, compliments a black figure-hugging sweater. Her hair is long, past her shoulders, a dark tawny colour curled up at the ends. Her features are small, almost elfin; her lips are full, sensuous and set as if in a permanent pout.

Dancing in time to the accompaniment of her music, she belts out the numbers to her more than receptive audience.

“Only a tramp was Lazarus, they left him to die like a tramp on the street.”

“That’s an old Hank Williams song doncha know?” Her accent is pure Irish, with a lilt behind it as she sings.

“What’ll it be, mate?” A man’s voice growls at my elbow, serving to distract me from my reverie. Reluctantly I steer my gaze from the singer. “A small whisky, thanks.”

“Bushmills?”

“Sure.”

“She’s sure something else ain’t she, our Cait? She’s my barmaid y’know.”

I recognise the man who’d thrown out the drunk. I guess this has to be Flanagan. I ask him if she’s the resident singer in the realisation that I really would like to get to know this woman and not allow her to be the one who got away. “Mostly, it was only after she’d been working here a coupla months that I knew she could sing. Talk about hiding your light under a bushel,” Flanagan chortles, adding, “ain’t seen you in here afore.”

Sipping the whisky, I make a face. It is a fraction stronger than I’m used to. Maybe I should have ordered a beer and made it last, because she has drawn me in, distracting me. I have no intention of leaving without an introduction, I reason. Even if she tells me to ‘piss off’, at least I intend to try.

“I only arrived yesterday.”

“You sound as if you’ve been here all your life.”

“Oh the accent, I was born here, but left when I was a kid.”

“So where you been then?” Flanagan pauses to rub a big hand across the rather flushed features of, I suspect, a secret drinker. He also appears to be the only one serving.

While he talks, there are innumerable punters lining the bar.

“London,” I tell him.

He gestures toward the bunch of lads congregating about the stage, now embarrassingly heckling the singer to “get ‘em off, darling,” as if she is little better than a stripper.

“That’s where those boys come from,” volunteers Flanagan. “She’ll give ‘em short shrift if they heckle her. She does stand-up too.”

“Stand-up?”

“Stand-up comedy. Och, sure if she ain’t pretty versatile is our Cait.”

“A coupla Guinness’s, Flanagan,” a man addresses the barman impatiently. In turn, Flanagan sports a long-suffering expression on his big bearded countenance when he clocks the newcomer.

In his mid-twenties, I note that his hair is long and straggly; a sort of blond colour that falls around his face and which he keeps swiping back with irritation at intervals. He wouldn’t have been bad looking I suppose, if his lean-cut features were not so badly pockmarked with the remains of acne scars, or the fact his hair wasn’t quite so overloaded with grease. He’s wearing a black leather coat thrown over a pair of loose fitting jeans and a check shirt. His hands are encased in black leather gloves. He pushes in, almost needling me out of the way. I entertain an initial stab of anger, but allow it to subside. The man slaps his money onto the bar and Flanagan goes to fetch his drink.

The drinks paid for, the man grabs them. Moving away, he leaves me oddly relieved somehow because there is something about him, a something I fail to pinpoint. I catch the words, “fuckin’ Blackwood,” muttered from Flanagan at my elbow. I frown and enquire, “What are you talking about?” “Him, Shaun Blackwood, her fella.” He gestures to the stage. “Caitlan deserves better than him, sure she does.” As he moves away, Flanagan heaves a sigh before going to serve another punter.

So she has a fella, at least according to Flanagan. It serves to surprise me, however, that someone who looks the way she does, sings so beautifully, could possibly be interested in this refugee from the movie ‘The Lost Boys’.

It is almost ten in the evening and pitch-dark outside, apart from an assembly of street lamps located along the quayside. Of course, with the bar being so close to the river, if someone was drunk enough they could easily fall into the Liffey and be swallowed up by the waters. I bring myself up sharply for what I’m contemplating.

I now mentally scrutinise the punk, or whatever it is he purports to be. He has a couple of pals with him. One is skinny, with black greasy clothes while the other sports a plaid shirt that stretches every conceivable inch of his leviathan girth. It also becomes swiftly apparent that I’m not the only one who’s favouring the three punks with some attention. In fact, it seems that the majority of the locals are staring them out disdainfully.

Meanwhile, the English boys are pretty well on the way to becoming rat-arsed. Even though they aren’t in their own country they still manage to heckle, “fucking Paddies,” and Flanagan - this beefy, broad-shouldered guy - is having none of it. He moves from behind the bar uttering more expletives than I have heard one-person string together in a couple of minutes, making it plainly obvious that the big Irishman is his own bouncer. “C’mon, lads, fuckin’ break it up before I have to call the law and you wouldn’t want to end up in one of our Paddy jails would you?”

The boys turn on Flanagan with a load of abuse and cheek before he catches hold of a couple of them by the scruff of their necks and quickly hauls them out of the door. He brooks no argument, while those present applaud and cheer. While the two remaining English boys passively trail in the wake of their friends, ould Flanagan rubs his hands and spits into his palms before returning to his place behind the bar, nonchalantly.

Caitlan sings again and she informs everyone that it is to be her last number of the evening as Flanagan needs her help behind the bar.

While she sings, I observe in surprise that there are tears in the eyes of the man who, but minutes before, had thrown out four potentially troublemaking English boys without batting an eyelid.

The song is called ‘The Fields of Athenry’. One I recollect my mother singing when I was a child.

“By a lonely prison wall
I heard a young girl calling
Michael, they have taken you away
For you stole Trevelyn's corn
So the young might see the morn
Now a prison ship lies waiting in the bay
Low lie the fields of Athenry
Where once we watched the small free birds fly
Our love was on the wing, we had dreams and songs to sing
It's so lonely 'round the fields of Athenry”

I successfully manage to locate a seat at one of the green circular Parisian-style tables. Although my...