Gabriel's Lark

Preface

Gabriel’s Lark is a dramatic and, more often than not, humorous novel about travel, independence, the struggle to find employment, and the dedication to family life. Its narrative weaves its way from Ireland and across continental Europe where adventures and hijinks lay waiting for Gabriel Costello, a young father and husband with an itch for adventure and a responsibility to provide for his family.

Gabriel’s decent into chaos amid a snapshot of Europe will have you gripping to turn the page. From drunken misadventures in France to brushes with the law in Germany, there is no shortage of excitement in J. Vincent Moran’s debut novel.

Chapter One

Gabriel Costello was in an agitated state of mind. But that was not unusual. It was early morning, and he was doing his rounds in his job of supervision, ensuring everything worked efficiently. It was a job he hated. Outwardly, he looked every bit the professional; he was attentive to duty, and his eyes revealed no evidence of inner turmoil. For those happy to have found their vocation in life, this might be the thrill of another working day on the factory floor. For Gabriel, however, it was nothing less than a treadmill to retirement, and beyond the unfulfilled climax of a boring life.

As he stepped wearily forward along the factory floor, he found himself looking through the proper workings of each machine to a crystal ball that suddenly unearthed an imaginary robot in his mind. It seemed to be scoffing at him, and he felt pulverized by its bleak vision, for it suggested a fate worse than death!

But it also prompted something else: escape from a mechanical existence that might wrench him free from dawn-to- dusk drudgery, from hurried breakfasts and out-the-door departures, from rush-hour warfare with motorists striving for advantage, and above all, from selling his soul to monstrous contraptions belting grating sounds that resonated in his ears long after he exited the factory gates each miserable rain-drenched evening.

Indeed, from everything that constituted mindless conformity to a daily routine, even if that meant getting away from the woman he had married and who had borne him four beautiful children, for it was she who had kept him firmly tied to that millstone, ceaselessly reminding him, like something of a broken record, of his responsibilities as husband and father.

The alternative, his imaginary robot reminded him, was to forfeit his existence to falsehood, and eke out a dull existence as a phoney human being. God-awful!

Advancing ostensibly, like a diligent soldier along the factory floor, notepad in hand, he cast a jaundiced eye over the figures tending their machines, slavishly committed to lives of voluntary drudgery out of touch with their real selves.

And he, unwittingly, one of them.

Somewhere deep in far-off woods, reclusive words he had once read in distant pages stalked him. And they reminded him he was right there in the middle of that conformist herd, quietly succumbing to a life of quiet desperation destined to go down in the soil with the song of life buried inside of him. He shuddered. Sooner or later he would have to obey the inner call.

Or die.

But how? Like those around him for whom he nurtured secret contempt, Gabriel knew he was trapped. His job told him he was in it for life. Ditto his marriage, which, because of its Catholic vows, enshrined permanent servitude. The former guaranteed subsistence, through money; the latter enslavement through the only known earthly purpose beyond religious speculation. He was, of course, only too painfully aware that propagating the species was central to the survival of the human race, and he, albeit unintentionally, was playing his part in that vital process.

But on a personal fulfilment level, where an undiscovered world beckoned to him outside the cage-like twin-windows of a marital home surrounded by factory walls, it seemed peripheral because it demanded he live his life in a cul-de-sac. A dead end! Surely there had to be something more than just marriage, children, domestics, and, most of all, the irritating roar of monstrous machines. Better to hear the roar of the waves on the high seas.

For long, Sophia Bianconi, the woman he married, had suspected something amiss behind the façade he had built up over the years. Apart from periodic bouts of moodiness always wrapped in silence, and warded off with the excuse -- it’s the pressures of the job – he gave her no clues as to what burnt inside his head. And helping him do it was his raucous laugh scoffing at the crystal ball and its ghastly prophecy. a laugh that with the help of alcohol copper-fastened the lie that was his life.

Feminine intuition, however, told Sophia that Gabriel’s moods were a direct result of his secret yearning for more freedom from his responsibilities – to be cut loose from the drudgery of the kitchen sink! But in the altruistic marital spirit of better or worse she endured his introspections without rancour because she did not want to lose him. She was determined to save their marriage, if not for herself, then for their children. For didn’t four of them need a father?

But, of late, she had become touchy, and the cause was not his moods, or the irritating volume and sheer length of his loud guffaws that attempted to hide them, but his increasing diversions to Flanagan’s pub on his way home from work where he usually downed three, four (sometimes more) pints of Guinness before stumbling in around seven or eight each evening. Drink had become his analgesic, and a laughing, if not laughable excuse for avoiding rush-hour traffic.

For Sophia, it had become a catalyst for venting frustration on a husband harbouring a discontent he was not prepared to talk about, or even discuss. As he burst in the front door, his breath smelling of liquor, she suddenly remarked: Could you ever quieten down that stupid laugh of yours? You sound like a bloody donkey.

The venom of her insult halted Gabriel in his tracks, and an apology was in his head, but it didn’t find his lips as he staggered to the kitchen table, and slumped into a chair. He had hoped to make light of his lateness home with reference to the weather, how wet it was, and would the rain ever stop. That avenue of escape had now evaporated.

But Sophia wasn’t quite finished. And that doesn’t mean you have to bloody-well drink like one too, she added caustically, diverting to that bloody pub every evening, and getting home late. Your place is here with your wife and family. Stalling nervously to find the right words, she added more angrily than she had intended: What the hell kept you this time?

Gabriel banged his fist on the table. He was physically – and mentally - exhausted, but he found the strength to respond. Don’t use that sort of language in front of my kids! he rasped, his voice shaking, while vaguely aware through the stupor in his head that her gripe had a ring of legitimacy about it. As the storm rose up around him he sensed the savoury scent of his dinner marking time in the oven, but all he could see was red sprawling all over his wounded ego.

Undeterred, Sophia continued her attack: Your kids? Since when did a man give birth to children? You don’t know how good you have it!

Yeah. You deliver them, and we carry them. It’s not a one way street you know, Gabriel retorted furiously.

It is to you, en route to your buddies in the bar. You think you can saunter in here any old time you like, and expect to be served?

That’s what I pay you for.

Sophia looked at him with contempt. Drop dead!

Gabriel turned to their two eldest children sitting at the other end of the table doing their homework, and, trying to restore calm, said: Go to your rooms while I discuss this with your mother? Off you go now children. And be good!

"Trying to get them out of the way, are you? Afraid they’ll learn the truth?

What do you mean by that remark? Gabriel was stunned. What do you mean! Then, lowering his voice again he trained his eyes on the children once more: Michelle, Siobhan, go your room. Quickly. The girls snapped their books shut, stuffed them into their bags, with pencils and pens, and stood up. Sophia cut across his bow: Stay where you are girls. Don’t mind him.

Michelle, Siobhan! Go to your room! That’s an order! Go! Now!

Mam, we’d better. Michelle eyes moistened in the familiar murky depths of a parental tug-of-war. She had witnessed it all before. C’mon Siobhan. With their satchels perilously tucked under their armpits, they hurried up the stairs, casting furtive, accusing, frightened glances behind them. Training his eyes on Sophia, now looking slightly unsure, Gabriel demanded. "What truth are you talking about? C’mon! Out with it.’

You know what I mean.

I don’t know what you fucking mean. C’mon out with it.

Mind your language.

Never mind my language. Out with it!

Sophia hesitated. There was a phone-call. A person called Josephine…she was looking for you.

Are you suggesting I’m having an affair!

Who is she?

You fucking eejit. She’s my boss. What a suspicious mind you’ve got.

Gabriel burst into his trademark laugh, but this time he was not too amused by it.

Well why is she calling you after work? Sophia persisted.

That’s none of your fucking business. Gabriel stalled, then quickly added: There’s a problem with one of the machines… she’s worried about production quotas for tomorrow. But why the hell am I telling you this? … you wouldn’t have a bloody clue.

I don’t believe you.

I don’t give a fuck what you believe. Where’s my dinner?

In the oven. Get it yourself.

Sophia jumped up, staggered backwards, and ran to the stairs. Gabriel felt an urge to run after her, grab her by the scruff of the neck and haul her back to do his bidding. Instead, he watched in dismay as she disappeared up a stairs. His eyes bored, like twin power drills of fury, into a deserted table, the smell of an appetizing dinner growing stronger in his nostrils. Should he get it from the oven and serve himself? Not bloody likely, he growled. His empty stomach said yes, but his injured pride no. It wasn’t his job, it was hers, the bitch.

After a minute staring at the oven, he suddenly jumped out of his chair. Fuck this, he said in a barely audible voice. And looking upward: And fuck you too!

Gabriel grabbed his coat from the back of the chair, and slipped it on clumsily. As he headed for the door, he caught sight of their wedding photograph on the wall above the living room mantelpiece. If he had a brick he’d smash it. He swung the door open, and shut it behind him with a bang that seemed to shake the foundations of a semi-detached house a mere stone’s throw from an undisturbed green countryside.

Thirty minutes later he was in Flanagan’s pub perched across the Shannon River, discussing everything with everybody, except the increasingly perilous state of his marriage, or, for that matter the mild flirtation he’d had with Josephine Carey, head of the Human Resources department. It had not gone beyond a caress and a kiss in her office, he reassured himself, even though he knew that Josephine, in her unhappily married state, would have probably taken it further.

Now that she had so stupidly phoned the house on the pretext of factory matters, and aroused Sophia’s suspicions, he would back off. His own marriage might be falling apart, but he wouldn’t be crucified for infidelity.

No fucking way, he vowed. I’ve got enough problems, and more important things to think about than getting involved with another woman.

It was well after midnight when Gabriel staggered from Flanagan’s, the laughter from his boozing buddies echoing hollow in his ears, the laughter of his imaginary robot still deriding him for the mess he had made of his life. He head felt full, his stomach empty, and he contemplated diverting to Broad Street for a Chinese take-out. But up the road stood a Garda station.

Fuck that! he said, as he crawled the car through bumpy back roads, the rain, dripping from tomb-like skies, his thoughts burning like shrapnel on some mythical battlefield. Someday he would douse those fucking flames, he swore – and escape. By God he would!

For now, however, it was back to his side of a very miserable marital bed. And another dawn rising in praise of Willow Wire Weavers Limited.

Chapter Two

Gabriel had just turned twenty-one when he jumped feet first into marriage, and quickly discovered after the fact he wasn’t the settling down type. Why had he done so, to be trapped like an animal in captivity for the rest of his life? At first he couldn’t figure it. And then it dawned on him. Sex. Damn sex. Fully licensed. And convenient. Shaw was right: marriage was popular because it combined the maximum of pleasure with the maximum of opportunity. Better than roaming the streets after dark like a frustrated predator.

But most swept sexual consequences under the mat while seeking to perfect otherness, with love the label on the package. All, however, paid the price – an existence of servitude between the dissipating romance of a woman, and the growing love of children. Like his fellow predators, he too had been ambushed by the lure of the flesh, and blinded by sexual need to the responsibilities that lay directly behind them in more rational forms of hot pursuit, like domestic expenditures, utility bills, mortgages and debt.

Sophia Bianconi, with her well-cut Italian figure, and voluptuous Latin-esque smile that flashed perfect glistening teeth, and a sensual tongue that explored the titillating corners of his willing mouth, was the bait he had bitten. But how could he, with Italian heritage on his father’s side, resist such charms? Four dark-eyed delightful children had brought them joy, but Gabriel knew now that freedom was the cost of membership in emotion’s greatest realm, while Holy Catholic Ireland demanded that as long as they slept together they must increase and multiply together.

Forbidden rubber ensured otherwise.

It wasn’t long before disillusionment began taking a toll on sexual desire, however. Gabriel began seeing it as a definitive source of entrapment, not pleasure, and certainly not happiness. When it did come knocking on the bedroom door, it was often violent and aggressive, as if one partner exacted retribution on the other. Afterwards, it was anti-climax, and nothing else.

And since he was stymied by the painful awareness that his own flesh and blood kept him and Sophia bound by sacred oath in a pact to the death …against his will, maybe hers too, he spent little time with its delightful by-products. He knew that was a mistake, but he couldn’t help but remain aloof from the children he professed to love.

Unlike Sophia who went to Mass each Sunday, and dragged them with her, Gabriel had had long forsaken that obligatory requirement, since the vows of the church reminded him that for rich or for poor, in sickness or in health, you stayed together – till death. What that spawned was a life sentence where the condemned parties stayed dutifully above ground, until they were shovelled into it!

Not for this chicken, he muttered, as he checked the quota list on one of the machines, ticked the pad and placed it back on the hook. Penal servitude might be my lot, but it sure as hell ain’t my forte.

But his hatred of the church was mirrored by his hatred of the job because the supervisory position he now held was sealing his fate against his will. A father might have brimmed with pride on a son’s meteoric rise through the ranks of respected orthodoxy, admirably equipped with educational honor, but to Gabriel it was the establishment telling him how he should live a life dedicated to nuts and bolts. How outrageous. How soul destroying. No one had the right to play God with destiny. Only God.

And he no longer believed in Him.

As he walked on checking production targets on machine after machine, ensuring targets were met, Gabriel silently cursed the presumption of a life mapped out to retirement by the gods and gurus of industry. Next stop the grave and premature burial. With a rueful smile, he imagined his epitaph: Here lies the body of a man who never died – because he never lived!

How could they all be so robotically contented slaving for their wives and families, he wondered, while he was miserable doing the same thing? All he could come up with was: I’m just not the settling type, a phrase that chanted a mantra of pre-packaged doom delivered daily to his early-morning doorstep.

At first, Sophia had tried to rein him, asking him what was wrong, but never getting answers, only a dismissive elongated laugh which as time went on had become more and more intolerable since it was filled with the whiff of alcohol, and late arrivals home. After her initial outburst, when she threw calmly expressed tolerance to the winds, she decided she was having no more of it and across battle lines demanded he come straight home from work – sober -- and spend more time with her and the children.

Gabriel’s response was to spend less time at home, and more time behind a pint glass. Trapped in an alone-together marriage, Sophia sought solace in the company of a younger sister, and a shoulder to cry on, taking Brendan and Paul with her to the other side of town. Often she hadn’t returned by the time Gabriel arrived home tanked with liquor. But he was just as well pleased. In an empty house he had peace, and a break from her nagging. And sure weren’t there plenty of pubs down the road.

And then the bombshell: Gabriel was made redundant. Six machinists under his supervision were placed on the casualty list. The official reason given was cut backs due to loss of export orders. Did his long-time disillusionment have anything to do with a noticeable decrease in production over so many months, he wondered? Probably. But he couldn’t care less about the job. It was, after all, a prison, and now he was being released from it. There was, however, the question of money and the company car he would now have to surrender.

As he drove home, he thought: Maybe now I can sprout wings and fly away, say goodbye to the woman I am pledged to stay with until carted down the old bog road. But how can I leave the children? he pondered. It was the fly in the ointment. He loved them, despite his failure to spend time with them. They knew it, and he knew they knew it. Trapped, he moaned as he made a right turn onto O’Connell Street between love and hate. Up a fucking down pipe, ha! ha!

Foregoing his usual diversion, he decided to go straight home. The sooner he got this thing off his chest the better. Seeing him arrive home early Sophia brightened. She thought he was finally heeding her words. But when, with grave expression and unequivocal delivery he spat out the news she became hysterical: Blast you, she yelled. You’re to blame for this. You lost interest in that job a long time ago - a bloody good job. Damn you to hell!

Gabriel absorbed her fury, and stared into her fiery eyes as the word irresponsible flew from angry lips like a dagger straight to his heart. He was not the man she married, she railed. He was a piss tank, nothing else. She started to sob uncontrollably. Gabriel turned his gaze from her, seeing a defence of his position as a waste of time. Perhaps there was nothing to defend. Her tears, far from engendering pity, disgusted him. Women always switched on the waterworks when they wanted their own way, didn’t they? It was their gender advantage, but it never worked with him. She could bawl her eyes into a waterfall for all he cared.

He stormed out, and slammed the door behind him. Minutes later he was walking a country road sniffing the night air, fresh, clean and natural. A faint moon sailed swiftly through a wisp of white clouds as he hurried along with a sense of urgency that suggested he was going somewhere new, even if no destination was mapped out in his mind, only an indefinable sense of freedom racing through the nerve centres of his being. All was silent, but for the irritating ringing in his ears, not of Sophia’s sobs, caused by Willow Wire Weavers, and its infernal machines. He was glad to be seeing the back of it. Maybe her too? He cast his eyes upward, searching for answers in the stars.

One would come down, sooner than he had expected. But it was not one he hoped for.

And its conduit was Rocco, Gabriel’s eldest brother, a gourmet chef who had worked in hotels throughout the country, and in France. He had just branched out on his own, setting up a company selling sauces to supermarkets and other retail outlets. He lived on the south side of town, in a semi-detached house, bought before the rocketing of real estate prices, and his dream was to build a better life for his wife and three children. He was determined to achieve it, through hard graft, and bank loans. To advance his dream, Rocco urgently required someone with managerial experience as back up, someone good at figures, and it so happened that Gabriel fitted the bill perfectly. What better than to have a brother, with a good track record, on board? When he heard that his brother would soon be out of a job he approached him with confidence.

But Gabriel, though initially tempted, decided to decline the offer. He had no desire to be drawn back onto a treadmill from which he had just escaped, to grind out a daily routine behind factory walls again, even if this arrangement would be more of a personal nature, much smaller in operation and, he suspected, allow him greater flexibility. But pressure from Sophia, who quickly found out about the offer even though he had not told her about it, forced him to change his mind.

Welcome on board brother, a delighted Rocco enthused, giving him a hearty handshake. You’ll do well here. I’m sure of it.

Really? responded Gabriel with his trademark laugh, a laugh that masked the disgust he felt in having so quickly returned to a lifestyle he despised, in this case sucked into the ad hoc role of quality control clerk, cum sales assistant, cum accountant, all rolled into one.

Arriving home after his capitulation, he feigned no enthusiasm in front of Sophia who, greatly relieved, greeted him warmly as she prepared dinner. Her thoughts were firmly fixed on what she considered to be new and perhaps exciting possibilities for their future, matched by the relief she felt about the prospects of saving their crumbling marriage. But Gabriel immediately brushed her aside.

This is just a temporary arrangement, he said, bitterly, with one eye fixed on the far horizon. It won’t last. So don’t get your hopes up.

A puzzled Sophia turned away in tears.

Chapter Three

Two weeks later, resigned to what seemed like a fate worse than death, this time in new guise, Gabriel walked to the little building on the edge of an industrial estate which housed his brother’s business dreams, having exited himself from Willow Wire Weavers Ltd. without as much as a good luck or goodbye ringing in his ears. His head measuring the uneven pavement beneath his feet as he trudged wearily along, he pondered a future that offered no appeal, and tried to console himself in the knowledge that he still had an income. But where it would lead him? He hadn’t a clue. Perhaps to some place where the sun shined? This surprising, out-of-the-blue brotherly offer surely had to be just a stopgap to something more meaningful, he guessed, or even hoped. Maybe the damn thing would fail, and he’d be finally set free. Fat chance. The rain that came down in buckets, beating hard against the umbrella he held above his head, didn’t help him in his half-hearted quest to get on the bright side of his mind, or, for that matter,