Mind Picker: Old God's Time

Enough time goes by and it’s as if old things never happened. Things once fresh, immediate, terrible, receding away into old God’s time, like the walkers walking so far along Killiney Strand that, as you watch them, there is a moment when they are only a black speck, and then they’re gone. Maybe old God’s time longs for the time when it was only time, the stuff of the clockface and the wristwatch. But that didn’t mean it could be summoned back, or should be.

Oof, but I love Sebastian Barry. Old God’s Time tells the story of a retired police detective — taking his due rest at a seaside town outside Dublin — and although this Tom Kettle has settled into his solitary routine of walking to the shops and watching the tides, when two city detectives come asking for his help with a cold case, Kettle is forced to confront old ghosts and demons; even if his memory isn’t quite what it used to be. As Kettle recalls how he met his quirky and beautiful wife June — and the joy they had in raising their two children Winnie and Joe — this, at times, had the feel of a heart-warming love story; but as he also recalls stories from his and June’s time as orphans raised in church-run institutes, this is a too-familiar story of loneliness and abuse and what it takes to survive such. What makes this magical storytelling is Kettle’s muddled memory: It’s often unclear whether he’s confused or fantasising, intentionally misdirecting or unwittingly protecting his wounded heart, and while the reader wants to take this decent man at his word, interactions with other characters force one to rethink what one’s been told, repeatedly. And through it all, the same situations repeat themselves — over time and across distances from a seaside castle in Dalkey to a New Mexico pueblo — and the question is repeatedly asked: What would you do to protect a child? And also: In God’s old time, just how is “justice” served? I smiled, I nodded; I cried and I gasped: I could ask for nothing more.

He stared at the rumpled sheaf, recognising all too well the very colour of the paper, the typed-out parts, and the long gospel of whatever they incorporated executed in a sober black ink. Paperwork, the policeman's penance. He had no desire, not even a smidgen of it, to take the documents. He felt the great rudeness of his hesitation. They were only boys. Well, Wilson might be forty. A grizzled face, really, with a little scar above his left eye. A childhood wound maybe. We all have our childhood wounds, thought Tom.

After a long and (somewhat) celebrated career with the Gardaí, Tom Kettle could be forgiven if he declined to put his retirement on hold after only nine months to help his old squad with a notorious cold case: but with advances in DNA evidence, and a strong sense of duty, Kettle decided to dress himself “with care” one morning and present his Travel Pass to a ticket agent at the local train station in order to make his way into Dublin. Nearly immediately we learn that things aren’t exactly as they seem to be, but between Kettle’s confusion about the present and the revelation of clear memories from the past, a life is eventually described of a man who is decent and caring, and undeserving of the pain he has suffered.

Old God’s Time is set in the “present” of the 1990s, and not only does this allow June to be presented as a free-spirited anti-war hippie, but Tom’s career saw him dealing with car bombs, returning runaway children to the notorious laundries and orphanages, and being forced to allow the Archbishop to deal as he chose with the hard evidence of predatory priests. Ah, but the times have changed: there’s a fragile peace afoot, the Church’s grasp has been loosened, and a man’s toothbrush might hold the key to events thought buried in the sands of time. If only poor old Tom Kettle was more clear about the past…and the present.

He didn’t care, at the core of the thing, he didn’t care a jot for himself. His ancient burden of ‘a sense of justice’, a heavy bloody thing that would break a civilian’s back, he knew, was not a burden he could ever put down, even now. Even now, as something gnawed at his own safety, his peace, like a monstrous rat, that was the tune that rose first of all things to his lips. Find out the truth and penetrate the crime. Bring the guilty to justice.

Barry brings the seaside setting to beautiful life: the light on the water; the changing skies throughout the days and the seasons. He also, for a shortish novel, packs in a lot of detail — from thirty years of Kettle’s history to the intersecting lives that all seem to circle through similar experiences — and as murky as the plot can feel with Kettle’s fantasies and memory gaps, it all propels to a shocking and fitting conclusion that brought me to tears. This was an experience — precisely suited to my tastes — and I can’t give fewer than five stars.