The Fearless Five

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The Fearless Five Page 19

by Bannie McPartlin


  ‘I’m going to fight for him,’ Uncle Ted said. ‘After all, I have been like a dad to him all his life.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said.

  ‘Let’s keep that to ourselves for now,’ he said.

  ‘OK. I swear. I won’t say a word. You can trust me. I’m really not a traitor,’ I said.

  ‘I know that, Jeremy.’

  And for the first time I knew that even though everything was terrible and sad and messy, things would eventually be good again.

  51

  The Future

  When the press discovered why we’d done what we’d done, the story just grew and grew, and within two days the Fearless Five were nearly as big as the Irish team. (Well, in one small suburb of Dublin anyway.) Reporters were knocking on our doors and photographers were sent to take our photos. In the end they took photos of our whole families and we all wore our Sunday best and everyone wanted to know how poor Vanessa Tulsi was and strangers all over the country said that they were praying for her. We got cards sent to us – most were really nice but a few mentioned we were going to hell. People we didn’t even know smiled and waved at us and gave us the thumbs up. I figured at the time that the DPP must have taken public opinion, because they closed the case very quickly and we were free!fn1

  Sheila Brown decided we weren’t so bad after all when she realised that being associated with the Fearless Five was a positive thing for Walker. That was good news. It meant that Walker could hang around with us for one last summer, even if he’d forget about us when he went to his posh school.

  On the day that the Irish team met the Pope my mam insisted on bringing me with her to visit Johnny J’s mam in the hospital.

  ‘But Johnny J’s not talking to me, Mam.’

  ‘Of course he is. Don’t be an eejit.’ My mam wasn’t as proud of my plan as my dad or Uncle Ted. ‘Robbery is robbery, assault is assault and battery is battery,’ she’d said after the photographer had finished taking our family photo for the paper. ‘Don’t think that you’re some hero. Good intentions or bad intentions, it doesn’t matter – a criminal is a criminal.’

  I really didn’t want to go to see Johnny J’s mam. The idea scared me, but Mam gave me no choice so I went, and I’m really glad I did.

  Uncle Ted was waiting in the hospital corridor.

  ‘How is she, Uncle Ted?’

  ‘Having a good day,’ he said, and my mam instantly cheered up. Johnny J was in the room with his mother.

  ‘Vanessa would love to see you, Jeremy,’ Uncle Ted said.

  ‘Why?’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be rude,’ my mam said.

  ‘She wants to thank you.’

  ‘Ah no, it’s OK. I’ll wait here.’ I was terrified. The last time I’d seen her she looked so sick. This time she would look paler, sicker, her veins might even be fatter, bigger. I just couldn’t bear it. I didn’t want to see her.

  ‘Ah no. Tell her I said she’s welcome.’ But Mam pushed me through into the room and suddenly there I was, standing in front of Mrs Tulsi and Johnny J. Mrs Tulsi was sitting propped up on a lot of pillows. She had a needle in her hand with a tube coming out of it and it was hooked up to a plastic bag of liquid hanging above her head. That made my stomach turn so I looked away. Johnny J was sitting in the chair beside her. He cast his eyes to the floor as soon as I walked in, but she smiled at me, a big warm smile, like she used to before she was sick. When she was smiling, she really didn’t look that bad at all.

  ‘There he is,’ she said.

  ‘Hiya, Mrs Tulsi.’

  ‘Hiya, Jeremy.’ She patted the bed. ‘Why don’t you sit here?’

  I wanted to run but I didn’t. I just perched on the smallest corner of the bed. It was really uncomfortable.

  ‘I have a lot to thank you for,’ she said.

  ‘Robbing is bad,’ I said. I don’t know why I said it. I was nervous and I could hear my mam in my head, saying, ‘Don’t forget you’re not a hero – a criminal is what a criminal does.’

  ‘Robbing is bad,’ she agreed, ‘but bringing my son home to me is good.’

  Johnny J looked up and his eyes blazed. He was still angry.

  ‘It was brave to risk losing your best friend to do the right thing, and even if it felt wrong, it was the right thing. I think that you are the best friend my son will ever have.’

  I wanted to cry. Stop crying! Please stop crying! Johnny J looked away.

  ‘Now make up, the both of you,’ she said, ‘and stop all this messing.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Tulsi,’ I said.

  She looked at Johnny J. ‘Well?’

  ‘OK, Mam,’ he said.

  She took a fiver out from under her pillow. ‘Go buy yourselves some ice creams, and send your mammy in to me, won’t you, Jeremy.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Tulsi.’

  Johnny J bought us choc ices in the hospital shop and we walked outside onto the grass and sat under a tree. We didn’t talk about Johnny J’s mam or the press attention we received, even though that was really cool. We didn’t talk about the fight and he didn’t look so angry any more. We just talked.

  ‘Did you hear Father Maloney is making us do penance?’ I said.

  ‘What kind of penance?’ Johnny J said.

  ‘We have to do jobs for him or something,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yeah, Mam and Sheila Brown organised it for all of us. Mam said it will teach us that good people do good things. Sheila Brown says it will look good for the papers.’

  ‘All of us.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I might not be here. Auntie Alison is determined to take me to England.’

  ‘That’s not happening,’ I said.

  He shook his head from side to side and he battled to suck back a bulging tear. I looked away.

  ‘This is your home,’ I said, looking up into the big blue sky. ‘It’s where you belong, with Sumo, Walker, me and …’

  ‘… Charlie?’ he said, and I nodded.

  ‘And Charlie,’ I said, and he smiled.

  ‘Anyway, what kind of jobs?’ he asked.

  ‘I dunno – cleaning the church, helping auld ones and the choir.’

  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘This is going to be really terrible,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah,’ I agreed. ‘Are you joining Rich’s band?’

  ‘Would you mind if I did?’

  ‘No, I’d like it,’ I said, and I was telling the truth. I saw how happy Johnny J was on the stage. I wanted him to be happy.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. I was thinking of managing it,’ I said.

  ‘No way?’ He sounded happy about that.

  ‘I think I’d be a good manager,’ I said.

  ‘You’d be deadly,’ he said.

  ‘Cool.’

  ‘Maybe things won’t be so bad after all,’ he said, but then his eyes darkened and I knew he was thinking about his mam.

  ‘Ireland made it into the quarter-finals of the World Cup, so anything can happen. Right?’

  ‘That’s true,’ he said. ‘Father Maloney described it as a miracle when he was visiting my mam.’

  ‘There you go,’ I said, and he smiled. Miracles happen. ‘No matter what, everything is going to be OK.’

  We were facing one last summer together before everything would possibly change. I promised myself to relax and not to worry so much. Of course there were still things to worry about, mainly the Auntie Alison problem. Uncle Ted had a battle on his hands.

  Father Maloney was making us do acts of penance. Slightly worrying. Rich was being really nice to me. Definitely worrying. We were known as the Fearless Five now, and everywhere we went people knew us. That could cause problems. How can we have fun if everyone is watching? I’d just promised my very best friend that, no matter what, everything was going to be OK. I needed a new plan.

  A day later Ireland lost to Italy in the quarter-finals and the dream of Ireland winning the World Cup d
ied, but the country still celebrated. The boys in green came home to a heroes’ welcome, and it didn’t matter that they lost, it only mattered that they’d tried. When my mam told me that I had to spend a whole day scraping wax from the floor of the Holy Mary Mother of Sorrows Church, I told her that maybe it didn’t matter that my friends and I did something bad, it only mattered that we’d tried to do something good. She thought about it for less than a second. ‘No! It matters. Now get scraping.’

  And so our time as wanted criminals came to an end, but we still had a whole summer ahead to laugh, cry, win, lose and love. You see, even if we couldn’t save Johnny J’s mam, maybe we could still save Johnny J and Uncle Ted from Auntie Alison and England. Our summer was just getting started. We had a band to break out, a family to save and a really annoying priest to shake off, and I had a new plan. But that’s a whole other story …

  Footnotes

  The Five

  fn1 1. I suspect Sumo’s parents regretted picking the name Brian.

  2. Although he’s a giant, he’s gentle and kind.

  3. He’s obsessed with comics and smells like Spam. Spam is disgusting sweaty pink meat that smells like feet.

  fn2 1. Walker isn’t a nickname, that’s his actual name. His mother just liked the sound of it, and because she is the bossiest woman in Ireland Walker’s father gave in without much of a fight.

  2. No one messes with Walker Brown. He’s small but he’s smart and mean as a snake.

  3. Walker says the word ‘fact’ after any statement he considers important, and he thinks most of what he says is important. Fact.

  fn3 1. Charlie is an expert tree climber and does deadly stunts on her pink Triumph 20 bike.

  2. She once walked home on a broken ankle! (After failing to stunt-jump over a dried-up riverbed on her yellow Triumph 20 bike, which broke in two!)

  3. She’s crazy.

  fn4 1. Johnny J’s grandad had come over to Ireland from the Caribbean in the 1950s and married Johnny J’s grandmother, who came from north Dublin.

  2. They had two sons. Both stayed brown even in winter, and everyone said that the Tulsis were the best-looking boys in the whole of Ireland.

  3. Johnny J’s father married his mother, another Dublin woman (light brown hair and really pretty, with big blue eyes and a lovely smile), and they had Johnny J, who looked exotic, so all the girls loved him.

  fn5 1. My headmistress makes me wear it in a ponytail and/or bun while on school grounds.

  2. Ponytails and/or buns are a brilliant way to carry pens and pencils around.

  3. I hated my freckles so much that my sixteen-year-old sister Rachel tried to get rid of them, when I was ten, by adding two spoons of bleach to one cup of lemon juice. She nearly melted my face off, but it did not get rid of my freckles.

  1. The Match

  fn1 1. Freaky Fitzer was slow but mean.

  2. Freaky Fitzer was weak but vicious.

  3. Freaky Fitzer was about as tough as a bag of kittens, but he scratched like them too.

  fn2 1. He was too young to enter the Young Scientist of the Year, but he did all the work on her project.

  2. She took all the glory.

  3. He couldn’t let it go.

  2. The Knockout

  fn1 1. Barry McGuigan is the most famous Irish boxer of all time.

  2. His nickname was the Clones Cyclone.

  3. He had 35 professional fights and won by knockout 28 times. Charlie Eastman, the next Barry McGuigan … AS IF!

  fn2 1. Chemo is short for chemotherapy. It’s a treatment for cancer.

  2. Sometimes people lose their hair and get sick when they are going through treatment.

  3. It’s really harsh and sickening, but back then before advances in science it was even worse.

  fn3 1. Bile is a dark green or yellowish brown fluid produced by the liver.

  2. Sometimes when you throw up violently bile comes out.

  3. It’s gross and also a bit scary.

  3. The Family

  fn1 1. Mr Lucey smelled like cabbage.

  2. He was sixty and lived with his ma.

  3. He had a face liked a well-chewed toffee.

  fn2 1. My dad’s name was Ronald, like the McDonald’s clown, but people called him Ron.

  2. His favourite food was a Big Mac.

  3. He was terrified of clowns.

  fn3 1. Space Invaders is a two-dimensional shooter game in which the player controls a laser cannon by moving it horizontally across the bottom of the screen and fires at descending aliens.

  2. By today’s computer-game standards it’s terrible.

  3. It’s also pretty great.

  fn4 1. My mother and sister killed each other over clothes.

  2. My brother lived to make my life hell.

  3. My father pretended not to notice when my mother and sister were screaming at one another and Rich was sitting on my head.

  4. The Idea

  fn1 1. Auntie Alison was Johnny J’s mam’s sister.

  2. She was very successful.

  3. She thought we were all yokels. At least that’s what my mam says, and I believe her. Note: Yokels are ignorant and unsophisticated.

  fn2 1. Everyone said so – Mam, the GP, the principal of the primary school, the school nurse and that specialist fella Mam brought me to see after she and Dad went on holiday to Wales.

  2. They left us with Auntie Valerie for a week.

  3. I wet the bed for six months after that.

  5. The Den

  fn1 1. Clint Eastwood is a cool American actor who has played cowboy gunslingers, gangsters, heroes and dirty cops.

  2. Charlie is a really annoying, wild-red-haired twelve-year-old girl.

  3. Just because she wasn’t afraid of anything did not make Charlie Eastman Clint Eastwood. As if.

  fn2 1. When I was eleven, I went through a phase of having temper tantrums and total meltdowns at least once a week. I don’t know why.

  2. Once I kicked a hole in the wall. (How was I to know it was only plasterboard!) My dad threatened to have me arrested. I believed him.

  3. I stopped having tantrums just before I turned twelve. My mam said I grew out of them. I think it’s because I didn’t want to go to jail.

  6. The Plan

  fn1 1. Rachel was private.

  2. She had major trust issues.

  3. She locked her bedroom even when she was away.

  fn2 1. It was a terrible plan.

  2. Maybe even the worst plan in the history of plans.

  3. I just didn’t know it.

  7. The Key

  fn1 1. My mother’s main worries in life revolved around fire, famine, flood and nits. She lost her mind every time we got nits.

  2. She also had a deep suspicion that all strangers (including grannies and kids) were potential muggers.

  3. My dad used to say, ‘Sometimes your mammy is mad.’ He was right. He also said, ‘Sometimes we’re all mad.’ He was right about that too.

  fn2 1. The Queen of Sheba was queen of a place called Sheba.

  2. She thought she was it.

  3. So did my sister.

  8. The Band

  fn1 1. I trembled and vomited in my mouth when old people tried to touch me with their gnarly old hands.

  2. My mother blamed it on the fact that we had no living grandparents. I’d never gotten used to wrinkles, weird smells or wonky parts.

  3. When I was six, an old woman tried to shake my hand. I panicked and kicked her in the shin. My mam didn’t allow me near old people after that.

  fn2 1. Buzz’s real name was Ben, but his hair stood on end and people said it was because he was electrocuted when he was seven.

  2. Fingers’s real name was Justin, but he was born with only two fingers and a thumb on his left hand.

  3. Cap was short for Captain America. His real name was Bradley. He was the only Bradley in Ireland at the time and it was an American name, hence Captain America/Cap. He had normal hair, all his digits and no sp
ots, so he was considered the good-looking one in the band. Cap was the one all the girls would go for.

  9. The Pepper Spray

  fn1 1. His other symptoms included a runny nose, coughing and spluttering and a loss of coordination and balance.

  2. At one point he made a miaowing sound like Mr Lucey’s newborn kittens.

  3. His mouth stayed wide open and in a circle for a really long time.

  10. The Public Poo

  fn1 1. The bad news was that the porcelain was stained brown.

  2. Smelled like poo.

  3. And wee.

  fn2 1. Walker called public loos public poos, and refused to go into them on account of them being full of nasty bacteria.

  2. He always did his business in his own house or in a bush.

  3. He was chased with his pants down by a fox once and it didn’t change his mind.

  11. The Bribe

  fn1 1. I had growing pains all the time because I was growing at a really fast rate.

  2. My GP told me to stretch in the mornings and evenings to help with the pain. He was a football coach in his spare time so he knew what he was talking about.

  3. Being short, Rich didn’t need to stretch. That annoyed him.

  fn2 1. Mrs Murphy (my favourite teacher ever) left to have a baby. She promised the new teacher would be lovely. She was mean as a snake and made Sumo cry. Change sucks.

  2. Colin Baker’s the Doctor regenerated into Sylvester McCoy’s the Doctor! Change sucks.

  3. My local supermarket stopped selling 5-4-3-2-1s, the best chocolate bar in the whole world, in multipacks! My mother only bought chocolate in multipacks. Change sucks.

  12. The Runs

  fn1 1. In the 1980s in Ireland most homes only had one bathroom.

  2. Toilets, sinks and baths came in putrid green, pale pink and dark brown. We had a pale pink bath and a putrid green sink and loo because my dad got them cheap.

 

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