Chapter 5
AL
As a child, Al would sit at the kitchen table for hours studying maps, or lie on the rug by the fire while the family watched TV.
His finger would follow the curve of a river or road, pushing cars and trucks off the motorway, toppling sheep from mountains.
He loved the deep satisfaction of seeing how borders kiss, roads connect and combine, where rivers rise, meet and end.
The journeys of roads, tributaries and mountains.
And bridges. Layers upon layers of life on a simple page.
Free of the office and the stifling environment of being trapped in a space with Walter, Al walks the streets, no need for a sat nav, reading the map in his head.
He needs air and a change of scenery. The Grace Plunkett Bridge comes into sight when he reaches Kilmainham.
He stops to study it from afar. It’s a bridge he knows well, a short footbridge over a relatively narrow river at this position.
An open-top, single-level bridge, the deck constructed with wood and the supporting structures made from steel.
The trusses are steel too, and below them square grids offer protection from falling or jumping.
It’s on these steel mesh grids that the love locks have been connected to the bridge.
It has been less than a year since Al has been to this bridge and the increase in the number of love locks takes him by surprise.
The No Locks Association weren’t overreacting.
The Grace Plunkett Bridge was erected in 2016 during the commemoration of the Easter Rising in Dublin as part of many ceremonies that took place around the country.
As an activist in the Republican movement, illustrator and cartoonist, Grace Plunkett née Gifford was given the honour of a pedestrian bridge nearby the Kilmainham Gaol she once resided in, and more notably, where she wed her husband Joseph Mary Plunkett hours before he was executed for his involvement in the Easter Rising of 1916.
It has become a great symbol now, including a beloved love story, and so people, mainly tourists who finish the tour of Kilmainham Gaol with the heartbreaking love story fresh in their minds, visit the pedestrian bridge named for Grace Plunkett and attach their love locks to the railings.
In solidarity with Grace and Joseph perhaps.
Al moves closer to the bridge, and steps onto the wooden deck, which is wet on this grey January day.
Beneath the bridge, the grey-green River Camac, usually more of a stream, is higher than usual today due to the heavy rainfall.
Al’s alone on the bridge. He walks up and down, slowly, taking in every inch of the bridge, as his eyes run over the thousands of love locks attached to the wired netted squares below the handrail.
The actual padlocks vary from lock to lock: metal, steel, brass, all different shapes, sizes and colours, many red and heart-shaped, with initials, engravings, dates and motifs.
Some have rusted from the elements over the years, others are sparkling new.
As a collection the love locks are an eyesore, but more importantly than that, Al can see that due to the weight of the padlocks, each and every one of the safety nets, particularly those in prime position in the centre of the bridge, are bending outwards and over the river.
He’s unsure at this point if the bridge could buckle from the weight of the pressure but he doesn’t need to call in the forces, there’s no need for ground-penetrating radar and ultrasonic testing equipment.
It’s clear to see that the bridge’s metal meshing can’t take the pressure.
Overcome with the weight of love they could easily collapse. He can relate.
After examining the bridge’s structure his attention moves to the locks themselves.
Initials are written in marker on the locks.
Doodles of hearts, quotes and words in different languages of meaning to the couples.
He didn’t leave a padlock here or on any bridge for him and Tara but it’s the kind of thing he would have done in a foreign country, if they’d had more time.
He liked grand gestures. He liked everyone knowing how he felt about her, how in love they were.
He would have secured the padlock and made a drama of throwing the key, he would have posted it on Instagram, he would have counted the likes.
It wasn’t enough for him to feel it, or for her to know it, he liked to display it and have everyone celebrate it. What an idiot.
It’s only been a matter of weeks and how he loathes his former smug, vomit-inducing self and yet is far from enamoured with this broken bitter man who has emerged.
His finds himself looking for the deceivers’ names: Walter and Tara.
He crouches down to the love locks level, heart pounding with anger as he searches.
He expects to find them: Tara Jones and Walter Whelan.
TJ and WW. He searches. It’s the type of thing they might do.
How long were they seeing each other behind his back?
Sharing their love on this bridge would be the perfect and only way they could publicly declare their secret love to the world.
He feels hot inside, a deep red rage overcoming him.
He wants to rip the entire railings off.
These fools who brandish their love as if it makes them something special.
His back sore from bending, he goes down on his knees on the saturated ground and searches through the locks, crammed in together, fighting for space.
His hands are purple with the January biting cold, he can barely feel his fingers as he pushes through the pieces of metal, some of them with sharpened corners that slice through his skin.
He sits back on his heels, ignoring the stares he gets from passersby.
There must be thousands of locks on the bridge, there is barely an available space on the nets on either side.
He focuses on a small area, and counts. When he gets to fifty, and has barely scratched the surface, he realises they could be looking at twenty thousand or more love locks.
Tara and Al could have a lock on this bridge and he’d never know it.
The bridge isn’t built to take this weight, surely.
He stands and gives the railing a shake to see how secure it is. The love locks rattle their optimistic tune, drunk in love, and chained to the iron grill for all eternity like protestors.
The safety net is under severe pressure, it could have dire consequences for pedestrians, especially children.
The locks alone must weigh ten tonnes, the bridge wasn’t designed to carry five elephants.
The steel mesh squares will have to be replaced, the love locks will have to be removed.
He’ll write up a report and file it with the utmost urgency.
After making the decision to remove the love locks Al momentarily feels lighter as he makes his way back to the office.
It’s a rare moment of relief from the pain in his heart.
Then he remembers why he’s been feeling so bad and he sticks the headphones on and blares ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ for the twelfth time that day.
He instinctively walks in the direction of the house he shared with Tara.
He still has the key. He gave them back his key, but he held onto the spare.
He’d found the house, he’d convinced her.
They’d viewed it together. Drawn down the thirty-year mortgage together.
They’d had long-term plans, she thought she’d love him for that long at least. Just fell short of twenty-seven years.
It had been the house of his dreams, and he’d been thrown out.
The key slipping in the door is familiar and feeds his longing.
He steps inside and the smell of home hits him and twists his gut.
Upstairs on their bed he lies down on the mountain of cushions that decorate the immaculately made bed and it’s there that he cries like no one is watching, like no one is listening.
Tara was always at him for not arranging the cushions in the right way, as though they were pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that could only slot together one way.
He recalls on more than one occasion spending an unnatural amount of time arranging them this way and that, four square pillows, two in a diamond shape and two oblong.
She’d look at the apparent sorry pile of pillows and roll her eyes, then she’d swap two pillows around, turn one upside down, tutting as she went.
Tara was house-proud and that’s okay, so was Al.
He cared about every single new item they’d bought for their home.
He enjoyed Saturday afternoons in home furniture stores.
He noticed when she added a new candle here, or a side table there.
He filled the house with indoor plants. He enjoyed their discussions about what to put where, paint or wallpaper, tiles or wooden floors.
Instagram knew so much about him, kitchens and fences would pop up on his feed.
Every inch of this house and renovated kitchen had lived first in his head.
Al had cared. They were building their future and he wanted to have a hand in it.
His relationship hadn’t just ended, he had been thrown out of his home.
He lies on the bed, conscious that the cushions are shifting beneath him. Where Tara and Walter now sleep. He turns to sniff the pillow to see if it smells of Walter.
Al and Tara had a healthy sex life; he’d always cared about her, paid attention.
There are parts of the house that remind Al of their lovemaking: the stairs; a few times she’d sat there and waited for him to come home, once naked, twice in lingerie.
When Walter was out or away of course. Then there was the couch.
Cosy nights, hungover afternoons, spooning, her bum backed right into him.
The bed didn’t make him think of them making love.
Their bed was more intimate than that, it was where he and Tara stripped down and out of their human possessions and slept side by side.
Where they dreamed together. They used to fall asleep holding hands, or toes touching.
Snuggling made them hot, but they would reach out to each other in some way, feelers and tentacles inching out throughout the night for comfort, to know they weren’t alone.
Bodies together, heads in other dimensions.
And then the whispered conversations in the dark, the pillow talk of secret revelations.
The shared fears, promises, assurances, confessions.
The bed had meant more to him than sex. It was where they shared their souls.
And now it smells of Walter.
Al sits up, not bothering to fix the cushions, and walks to what used to be his underwear drawer. It’s filled with Walter’s.
He takes Walter’s boxer shorts out and one by one cuts holes where his ball sack would sit, and puts them back in the drawer. He stuffs the excess fabric in his pocket and returns the scissors to the bathroom.
Then Al leaves, blaring ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ all the way back to his office, his eyes stinging, his chest aching so hard he thinks he’s having a heart attack.