‘Grip with the legs. I don’t want to see air between your knee and the saddle.’
I did what I was told.
‘And keep your heel down.’
‘OK.’
We all started walking. Walker looked really wobbly.
‘If you feel wobbly, hold on to Frank’s mane.’
Betty mounted her horse Ginger with great ease. Barry mounted one called Loopy and they walked either side of us.
Betty did all the talking. Sumo and Johnny J were bouncing up and down like bouncing balls.
‘When walking, sit into the saddle and go with the rhythm. That way you avoid bouncing. You see, like Dave and Brittany here.’
Charlie and I shared a smile. Johnny J worked hard to stop bouncing. Sumo kept on bouncing. Walker lay forward on Frank, holding on to his mane and resting his head on his neck.
‘It’s really better if you sit up and hold the reins.’
‘I’m fine, thanks,’ he said, and Betty laughed.
‘No trotting for you then?’
‘No. I’m fine like this.’ He didn’t look at all fine.
We walked for a while until Betty felt we were ready to trot.
‘Moving to trot, count one, two in your head. Up on one, and sit into the saddle for two.’ I tried to do what Betty had said, and she nodded. ‘Nice. Keep doing exactly that.’
I rubbed Juniper’s neck. I was telling her what a good girl she was, when out of nowhere Freda broke into a proper fast gallop. Betty shouted at Sumo to pull the rein left. He tried but he failed. Freda ran like she was looking to gain first place in a race.
Sumo was screaming, ‘Oh me, oh my, oh me, oh my …’fn1
Betty set off after him, but Freda was fast. Sumo let go of the reins and hung on to her neck. They were fast approaching the fence. I couldn’t hear what Sumo was saying, he was too far ahead, but I guessed it was still, ‘Oh me, oh my …’ and that maybe he was crying. I definitely would have been crying.
Charlie, Walker, Johnny J and I just sat still on our ponies. Barry stayed with us while Betty followed Sumo, then we saw Freda soar over the fence, with Sumo hanging on tight and he fell to the side of her and Charlie gasped, but then he shot back up and clung on to her neck again. Betty and Ginger jumped the fence easily and followed the mad Freda and they all rode off until we couldn’t see them any more.
‘Don’t worry, kids – Betty will sort it,’ Barry said, but he looked worried.
‘Get me off this thing now,’ Walker said, and Barry lifted him down.
We trotted back to the stables, Walker took his pony by the reins and walked beside it. Barry showed us how to brush and feed the ponies. Juniper loved to be brushed and it was fun, but I was concerned that we’d never see Sumo again. I heard him before I saw him.
‘Best time ever!’ he was shouting.
‘Well, it’s not something I’d like to see repeated,’ Betty said.
‘Did you see how fast I went?’
‘I saw,’ she said. ‘I was there.’
We all came out of our stables and there he was with his mask in his hand and covered head to toe in horse poo.
‘I eventually fell off, well, one leg got stuck in a stirrup and Freda dragged me in some poo, but we cleared three fences before that happened!’ He was grinning, with horse poo all over his purple face.
‘You enjoyed that?’ I asked.
‘Enjoyed it! I loved it. I’m going to be a jockey when I grow up,’ he said, and Betty looked at the size of him and shook her head from side to side.
‘Not a jockey, lad, but we’ll find something for you.’
‘Really? Cos I’m coming back. I swear I am. BEST DAY EVER!’
Johnny J was laughing hard at the poo-covered happy Sumo and so were Walker and Charlie. I smiled, but it was hard to laugh, knowing what lay ahead.
45
The Traitor
Jimbo and Betty brought us to Peter’s pub for the Ireland v Romania match at 4 p.m. It was jammed, but Betty and Jimbo got stools and we all sat on the floor in front of the massive screen that was set up on a projector. The pub landlady laid on free sausages and chips and, weirdly, bucketloads of coleslaw!
‘Country people love coleslaw,’ Sumo said with an air of authority that he didn’t usually possess.
Walker nodded his head in agreement. ‘Fact,’ he said.
Play kicked off and it was really exciting to be sitting in front of a match among a whole village, ooohhing and ahhhing and with some fellas shouting words I’m not even going to mention.
‘Come on, lads, get into, will ye?’ one man beside us kept saying. There was a woman in the corner praying with rosary beads. During half-time she sprinkled holy water on the projector screen.
‘Will you keep the water away from the projector, Bernie? Almighty in heaven, you’ll spark the thing out.’
‘My dad’s right – everyone’s mad in their own way,’ I said to Charlie, and she laughed.
‘It’s brilliant though, isn’t it, Jeremy?’ she said.
‘Yeah, it is.’
I had worried that the others wouldn’t agree to come to the match, seeing as we’d all talked about keeping a low profile to avoid capture, but Jimbo told me to tell them that no one at the match would be looking at faces in the crowd. All eyes would be glued to the game. He was right. No one noticed us – we just blended right in. It didn’t matter though – even as the match started I knew that Jimbo had called the guards and they were on their way. I looked around at my friends and they were happy. I wondered how long it would be before they’d be happy again.
The game finished 0–0, and penalties were needed to find a winner. Each side scored their opening four, but then Ireland’s goalie, Packie Bonner, pulled off what everyone later described as ‘a brilliant save’ and it was down to a player called David O’Leary to score the penalty and take Ireland into the QUARTER-FINALS OF THE WORLD CUP! Everything and everyone came to a halt in Peter’s pub.fn1 The world waited. David O’Leary stood up and blasted the ball into the Romanian net. We’d done it. IRELAND WAS IN THE QUARTER-FINALS OF THE WORLD CUP!
The crowd rose to their feet, with arms in the air, screaming, laughing, hugging, crying, dancing, shouting and singing. What a moment, what a feeling! Sumo and Charlie were right – it was the very best of days. Jimbo shed a tear just, and Betty got up and danced a jig, kicking up her skirts to reveal the big bloomers she loved so much. Johnny J and Charlie danced a jig with her and then she showed them how to square dance. They spun around the room with a lot of others and they were enjoying every second of it and it didn’t matter that Johnny J was celebrating with Charlie and I was alone. I wasn’t jealous any more.
The pub started to empty out around 9 p.m. Betty drove us all back toward the farm.
‘Did you enjoy yourselves, boys?’
‘Deadly,’ Johnny J said. ‘Just deadly.’
We all said it was brilliant and we thanked them for their kindness and then we turned into the farmyard and saw the guards’ van with flashing lights in the driveway. I saw the panic in Johnny J’s eyes.
‘It’s going to be OK,’ Betty said in a calm voice.
‘Oh no. It’s too soon,’ Johnny J said, and his face paled.
‘They know about everything, boy,’ Jimbo said. ‘It’s going to be OK.’
‘They can’t. It’s not time. We need another week. We have to go. Let me out,’ he begged.
He panicked and started to try to open his passenger door. I tried to stop him. The locks on the car were manual. There was no central locking that Betty could press to stop a boy who wanted to exit a moving car from doing so. The door swung open and he nearly fell out, but I clung on to him while Betty brought the car to an immediate stop. The two guards came running in our direction. Johnny J struggled from my grip and crawled out onto the gravel driveway.
‘She’s done for,’ he said. ‘My mam is done for.’ Tears were rolling down his face.
In the car Charlie was crying too. Wal
ker chewed on his lip and Sumo couldn’t stand to look at Johnny J, but he took off his Wookie mask and focused on the chickens. I got out of the car and bent down to Johnny J, who was on his knees in tears.
‘Just one more week,’ he wailed, and he was sobbing so hard it was difficult to hear him.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.
‘Jeremy,’ Jimbo said, ‘it will be fine.’ He then spoke to Johnny J. ‘Johnny J, your mammy needs you now.’
Johnny J looked up at me with a tear-soaked face. ‘You told him?’
‘It wasn’t like that, boy,’ Jimbo said. ‘Your faces are everywhere. Betty saw the paper.’
‘You knew they were coming for us,’ Johnny J said, and he was looking at me as though I was a stranger.
‘We have to go home, Johnny J,’ I said.
He pushed me away. ‘Go away. Go away, Jeremy,’ he shouted. He was kneeling on the ground, his head bent low, and everyone standing around him, and he sobbed his heart out. I couldn’t watch. My heart felt like a grenade in my chest, rumbling, about to explode. It was the saddest thing I’d ever seen.
A few minutes passed before the two guards helped Johnny J to his feet. We sat in the back of their van in silence. It wasn’t a big van, but the others made a point of squeezing together to leave me on my own. Nobody wanted to be near the traitor. Johnny J didn’t look around at me once during the long trip home. He just faced the back window and watched the lights on the road. None of the others could look at me either.
The guards sat up at the front of the van. They didn’t ask questions. They were waiting till they got us back to Dublin. One of them threw in some bottled water and told us to go to sleep.
‘You might as well,’ he said. ‘It’s a long enough trip.’
No one spoke and no one slept the whole way home.
46
The Station
My dad was waiting in the police station. He was sitting next to Uncle Ted and Charlie’s mam and to his left sat Sumo’s dad and Walker’s mam and dad. He’d flown home from Italy. They all stood up when we were marched into the building in a line. One of the guards led the way; me, Johnny J, then Charlie, Walker, Sumo and finally the other guard. There was no escape. They lined us up in front of our parents. I couldn’t bring myself to look into my dad’s eyes. I didn’t know what to say. I could hear Walker sniff and take out his inhaler. His mam started crying.
‘And this is why I didn’t want you coming down here, Sheila. You’re far too emotional,’ Mr Brown said.
‘Emotional? We’re after raising a criminal! How do you want me to be?’ she said, and then she started crying again. For the first time in his life Walker didn’t know what to do. None of us did, and I think that included our parents. Uncle Ted stepped forward.
‘So is it all right if we take the kids home now, guards?’ he said. It was after midnight. It had been a very long day and as I looked along the line I realised how messy and tired we all looked. We also smelled.
‘Get them to bed and then I want them back here by 9 a.m. tomorrow morning.’
‘No problem,’ Uncle Ted said.
‘Absolutely, guard, thank you,’ my dad said.
‘You, move it,’ Sheila Brown said to Walker. Everyone bar Charlie’s mother, Tina Eastman, started to shuffle toward the door.
‘Excuse me, guard,’ she said, and everyone turned to face her. ‘Should we be bringing solicitors along in the morning?’
‘That’s up to you, love,’ the guard said.
‘Ah now, come on, they’re only kids,’ my dad said.
‘They broke the law,’ one of the guards said.
‘Well, how much will a solicitor cost?’ Sheila Brown asked in a very shrill voice.
‘Oh, they’re huge money,’ the other guard said. ‘I tell you, I wish I’d become a solicitor.’
‘My heart bleeds for you,’ Mr Brown said to the guard.
‘Don’t be cheeky to the guard, Denis,’ Sheila Brown said to her husband, and Walker laughed.
‘Don’t you dare laugh,’ Denis Brown said to his son. ‘I should be in Italy now, and as for the fellas in the job – I’m lucky I wasn’t fired!’
‘If we can’t afford solicitors …?’ my dad said, and he gulped the way he always did when he was uncomfortable about something.
‘One will be appointed if necessary. In the meantime, you are free to sit with your children while they are being questioned.’
‘Ah good, great, that’s something,’ my dad said. My dad always tries to find the positive in a situation. It’s one of the things I really like about him.
‘Look, my advice to you is to take those kids home, let them sleep and the questioning can happen in here tomorrow. They have a long day ahead of them,’ the guard said, and the parents all nodded.
When we got to the car park, all the other kids said goodbye to one another. No one said goodbye to me. They turned their backs. I understood. I was a traitor after all.
‘Johnny J?’ I called out as he got into the front passenger seat of his uncle’s car. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, but he didn’t turn around. They just drove away.
I sat in the passenger seat. My dad held on to the steering wheel of the car really tight like he was squeezing it. He didn’t turn the car engine on or the lights. He just sat there in the dark squeezing the steering wheel and gritting his teeth for the longest time.
‘Are you all right, Dad?’ I asked. I thought maybe he was having some kind of medical emergency.
‘Am I all right?’ he asked. ‘Are you all right, son?’ he said, and he sounded angry.
‘Yeah,’ I said, but I wasn’t.
‘Ah good. Well, let me tell you how your mammy is, shall I? She’s been crying her eyes out for the past few days. She hasn’t eaten. She hasn’t slept. She hasn’t taken her eye off the phone or the hall door. She’s a mess. Your mammy is a mess.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Sorry? Sorry?! Let me tell you about sorry. Your brother has two black eyes.’
‘What? Why?’
‘Because he got in a fight with some yoke over you.fn1
‘Oh.’
‘Yeah! Oh, and your sister has abandoned nursing school to move back in to mind your mammy, and she’s taken King Rupert (my dad called Rachel’s boyfriend Rupert ‘King Rupert’ because he had a posh accent) home with her. His parents are on the phone screaming blue murder because their son should be in medical school, not living in a house of ill repute.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means those poshies think we’re a bunch of gangsters, thanks to you.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Oh, well then, in that case everything is fine, isn’t it?’ he said, but it was very clear things were not fine. He started the car and we drove home in silence.
Mam was sitting at the bottom of the hall stairs when Dad pushed me through the door. She looked up at me. Her eyes were tired and her hair was a mess. She stood up slowly and uncreased her trousers by patting them down with her two hands.
Dad put his hands up in the air. ‘Stay away from him, Debbie. He smells of cow.’
She didn’t listen to him. Instead she walked over to me and I immediately felt like I wanted to hug her and run away from her all at the same time. It made me want to cry. She gently tugged my ponytail and looked into my face.
‘Are you hurt?’
‘No.’
‘Has anyone done anything bad to you?’
‘No.’
‘Have you eaten?’
‘Yes.’
‘Right, then get up those stairs and get to bed before I kill you,’ she said, and she let my hair go and I ran up the stairs as fast as my legs could carry me.
If you’d asked me if I’d be able to sleep after betraying my very best friend and facing criminal charges I would have said, ‘NO WAY!’ but my eyes were as heavy as my heart and when my head hit my pillow I was gone.
47
The Package
I woke up early t
he next morning to Rich shaking me furiously.
‘Wake up, Numbnutbutt, wake up.’
‘I’m awake,’ I said, looking at him blearily. His two swollen black eyes were shocking to see.
‘Well, well, well, what have you been up to?’ he said, and he was grinning as he spoke.
‘I messed everything up,’ I said, and I started crying again. I couldn’t help it. I really wished I could just stop doing that. What have you got to cry about, Jeremy? Just stop it!
‘What do you mean, you messed everything up?’ Rich said, and he held up two newspapers with the headlines about the Fearless Five. ‘You’re famous,’ he said.
‘No, I’m not.’
‘You are – there’s been loads of reporters here and everything.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah,’ he said, nodding. ‘It’s been mad. Here, do you think the Fearless Five would be a good name for the band? I’m not sure Fingers & the Fudge is that cool,’ he said.
‘There’s only four of you.’
‘Not with Johnny J.’
‘He won’t be in your band.’ He’ll be in England or a prison for kids.
‘Yeah he will, trust me.’
‘OK,’ I said. I was still half crying and I wasn’t in the mood to argue.
‘So, the Fearless Five – what do you think?’
‘It doesn’t work.’
‘Maybe. Still, it has a ring to it, doesn’t it?’
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘So what did you do it for?’
‘Cos I’m stupid,’ I said, and I placed the pillow over my face.
‘RICH! Get out of the criminal’s room. NOW!’ Mam shouted up the stairs.
‘Mam called in Father Maloney. You’re lucky you’re not being exorcised.’
‘What’s exorcised?’ I asked from beneath my pillow.
‘It’s when they pull demons out of people. I saw it on the TV once, it looks mental, but don’t worry, he’s only going to do a Mass in the house.’
‘Right.’
‘Yeah. Mam went totally nuts over this one, Jeremy. Best keep the head down.’
‘OK.’
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