Karen doesn’t have anything against goody-goody sooks because in her experience they don’t exist. Helen gets called it just because she’s good at her work, and made out to be dead square by folk who don’t know the first thing about her. Helen had a tape of Dirk Wears White Sox back in primary school when all the professed Adam and the Ants fans in her year were still listening to the Grease soundtrack. Okay, it was through her big sister Nicola, but it’s the same difference.
What’s annoying is that there are a few holy-holy sooks—such as Bernadette, who goes to eight o’clock Mass every morning before school; and that Second Year, Francis Devine, who is an altar boy—so Karen detests the idea of anyone thinking she’s like that, too.
She hates RE. Hates it. Other folk don’t mind it because it’s a comparatively easy lesson with no tests and no homework, but Karen would rather be in maths, that’s how much she hates RE. It’s hard to say exactly why, but a big factor has to be that something about it makes her feel as if she’s back in primary school, under that crabbit boot O’Connor or that dried-up old shrew Harris, both of whom would have happily taught nothing but RE all day, every day, if all that pesky reading and writing nonsense hadn’t got in the way. She likes being at St Grace’s, and doesn’t spend the whole week looking forward to Friday afternoon like she did at St Elizabeth’s. It’s the variety of subjects, mainly, as well as little things like being expected to follow a timetable yourself, rather than being shepherded about by a teacher all the time. She especially loves art. There’s no wrong answers in art, and the teachers never shout at anybody. Her art teacher is Miss Munro, who is the best teacher Karen has ever had, maybe because she’s so unlike any other teacher Karen has ever had. She wears crazy clothes and has beads in her hair and manages to find something to praise or encourage in everybody’s work. Karen thinks maybe she’d like to be an art teacher when she grows up.
It’s really not fair that she’s missing art for this. Karen can’t think of anything more boring than Mass, not even Crossroads. You just sit there listening to a monotonal babble of words that don’t seem to mean anything. The priest reads from the Bible, but it’s never any of the interesting bits like you see on telly, such as Moses or Noah’s Ark. It’s always the First Letter of St Paul to the Boredstiffyins or whatever. Only the Gospel ever has a story she can relate to, but that accounts for about five minutes out of the whole thing.
Having it in the dining hall is even worse than at the church, because it gets really stuffy with so many people crammed into it and you can still smell whatever yuck was for school dinners. Plus you have the likes of Flaherty and the First and Second Year heidie, Mr McGinty, patrolling at the sides on the lookout for misbehaviour, with a zeal that suggests they’d be disappointed if they didn’t find any.
Karen isn’t getting to sit with her pals, or even well positioned for a bit of people-watching to pass the time. She’s right down the front, alongside several teachers, as well as Bernadette, the Holy Wilma who’s doing the other reading; Rachel Andrews, who’s doing the Bidding Prayers; and Francis Devine, Boy Wonder to Father Flynn’s Caped Crusader, though he’ll only need the seat when he’s not kneeling, ringing bells or jockeying the chalice.
She feels a bit sick, nervous about what she has to do. She’s not worried about the possibility of making an arse of herself. She’s worried because simply by doing this at all, making an arse of herself is guaranteed.
Father Flynn’s got his arms spread wide as he says one of the opening prayers. He likes to go all the way with the postures and showmanship, especially here, perhaps to make up for the fact that there’s no stained-glass windows to lend ambience, and that his ‘holy altar’ had six plates of mince and tatties sitting on it less than an hour ago. “Let us pray,” he intones, in that half-singing voice, then he pauses, closing his eyes to let you know he’s saying some secret priesty-prayer to himself before getting back to ministering to the mortals.
Somebody rifts, unable to resist filling the reverent silence. Quite a few folk giggle, and there are lots of hands over mouths. McGinty is on his feet in a flash, looking around with an angry face to warn the anonymous burper against a repeat. Then he looks back at Father Flynn, by way of both apology and giving him the nod to proceed.
“Let us pray,” he tries again, followed immediately by another rift. It’s a weird one, more like a big belly rumble than an open-mouthed belch. Karen remembers—who could forget?—that assembly at St Lizzie’s when Momo was driven even madder than usual by someone farting at will. It was Harry Fenwick who got the blame, but she later learnt it was Rab Daly who had the dubious talent.
McGinty leaps to his feet again. “Excuse me, Father,” he says, which usually means the stakes have risen and the whole Mass is on hold until he’s caught the culprit, or at least blamed somebody he doesn’t like anyway. “Okay,” he says. “I won’t ask who it was, but if it happens again, every last one of you will get a punishment exercise.”
He stands with his hands on his hips, looking round the hall for effect. A third rift punctures the silence and this time he stomps towards the source, which seems to be near the back. Everybody looks round. They’ll get told to face the front in a second, they know, but it’s automatic. There’s some sort of urgent kerfuffle in one of the rows, with one of the boys rummaging in his schoolbag. It looks like James Burns, one of the year’s out-and-out headbangers. Before McGinty gets there, Burns gets up and scrambles along the row, where he starts scuffling with John-James (or is it John-Jo? She can never tell which is which). Flaherty approaches from the other side and they wade in to separate the pair, who appear to be wrestling over the smaller one’s bag. It ends up a tug-of-war, with the teachers hauling from opposite ends while each pupil hangs on to one strap of the scruffy Adidas holdall.
A rip reports above the sound of the struggle, and a box comes flying out of the bag as the handles tear the manky old thing in two. The box clatters against the head of a girl two seats forward, then a moment later the entire row gets up and starts making for the aisles, some of the girls shrieking as they do so. Karen thinks she sees something green flying through the air, then definitely sees another row spontaneously decide to evacuate.
Within a few seconds, half the hall are on their feet, either to pile out of their rows despite the dire protestations of McGinty and Flaherty, or to get a better look at what improbably appears to be—yup, that’s certainly what it looks like; uh-huh, there goes another one—1S3 and 1S4 being attacked by an airborne squadron of frogs.
What follows is probably not the most sacred of spectacles, though maybe it could become a new sacrament: the Cleansing of the Puddocks from the Blessed Dinner Hall. Or maybe she’s viewing it the wrong way, and the frogs are God’s instrument in cleansing the Consecrated Canteen of unholy toerags such as James Burns and the JJs.
It makes for superb entertainment, far and away the greatest enjoyment she’s ever derived from a church service, with the added bonus that it eats heartily into the Mass’s possible duration. They’ll have to ditch a couple of hymns, maybe, and Father Flynn will have to settle for a fleeting mention of the Poles and his new-found love of Solidarnosc, ‘the only trade union I’ve ever heard of bloody priests sticking up for’, as her dad has bitterly remarked.
Watching them try to gather the errant green invaders while attempting to deter further hordes of the congregation from fleeing their seats gives her the briefest hope that the teachers will decide the simplest plan is to abandon the whole thing, but deep down she knows there’s no chance of that. McGinty and Flaherty are grimly determined that it will be seen through: it’s a point of principle, an uncompromising religious crusade. The precedent—and therefore incentive—would be catastrophic. If somebody died in here, they’d still finish the bloody service. So no way they’re letting some farcical carry-on put an end to Holy Mass.
Farcical, she thinks, yes, but not entirely unbiblical.
Karen looks at the tome in her hand, the bookmark a
t the reading Father Flynn has chosen, and starts flicking further back.
The place is finally returned to order, minus the amphibian visitors and about as many pupils: the boys to answer, via leather, for what happened; the girls to rein in their hysterics and in a couple of instances give their slime-smeared hair a rinse in the toilets. Father Flynn gets the show back on the road, noticeably cutting down on the pregnant pauses, then calls for the readers to come forward.
Karen knows there’ll be trouble, but hazards they’ll consider it theologically shaky ground to belt somebody for the crime of reading from the Bible. And besides, it’s just too good a chance to resist.
“First reading,” Father Flynn announces, and gestures Karen to the lectern.
“A reading from the book of Exodus,” she says. In the front row, she sees Flaherty’s brow furrow with satisfying confusion. “Then the Lord said to Moses, Go to Pharaoh and say to him, Thus says the Lord, Let My people go, that they may serve Me. But if you refuse to let them go, behold, I will smite your whole territory with frogs…”
§
So he’s sitting alone again, trying to make one drink last, feeling conspicuous as he always does in such situations: paranoid that everybody is looking, everybody is thinking ‘Billy No Mates’ or ‘Sad Mr Stood-up’. It’s a restaurant this time, which makes the effect even worse than the pub. Having a drink on your tod in a bar can at least be open to more generous interpretations: swift one before catching the train, mate running late, quiet wee indulgence with the paper or a book. Sitting on your Jack Jones at a bistro table for two, however, makes you the establishment’s conversation piece.
It’s to be expected, Martin appreciates. He’s done it to others often enough, caught up in meetings and unable even to get so much as a text through to that effect. It must be a dozen times as bad for the polis, with maybe only hospital doctors having it worse. This, he speculates, may be a large part of the reason Karen is divorced. Still, no news is good news, he reckons, checking his watch. She wouldn’t call to say she’s running late but on her way if she could be here any minute. The only reason to call now would be to cancel altogether, so, dear mobile, be silent.
He can’t believe he’s feeling so anxious; partly regarding simply whether she’s going to show and partly in anticipation of being here with her if and when she does. He was cooler waiting for Becky Soleno, but perhaps that’s not as daft as it sounds. If Becky Soleno hadn’t shown up, how much would he really have cared? Yeah, she was beautiful and never out of the glossies, but those things didn’t make her particularly special to him. Not like Karen Gillespie is special. This is the date his inner fifteen-year-old never had, and nothing Becky or Kara or any of the others had to offer could compete with that.
They’ve got some very important issues to discuss, obviously, but mostly he’s looking forward to catching up. Well, perhaps ‘catching up’ isn’t the term, because that would imply that they had a past relationship worth the name to catch up on. But maybe it is catching up nonetheless: catching up by having the conversations they were never able to because of whatever classroom convention decreed that only the coolest boys and girls could ever talk to each other. Catching up by getting the belated opportunity to find out who each other really is, really was.
This thought unfortunately brings him back to last night, and another conversation with someone he’d never truly spoken to. Was he hoping to bed Karen, too? Go for the hat-trick: three nights, three women, one horny but lost and fucked-up little boy? No. He just wanted to talk, wanted to get to know who Karen really is because back then he never had the chance. With Jojo it was different, something else, some brutal act of mutual catharsis.
So, to be more honest, Martin, you’re saying you didn’t want to get to know who Jojo really is? You reckoned you already knew all you needed to know and the book was closed? No. Okay, kind of. But what he really wanted last night was for Jojo to find out who he really is. That’s where all that aggression and resentment, all that frustration was coming from, wasn’t it? Uh-huh. Yup. But it wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t mutual aggression, resentment and frustration.
His drink is just about gone. It was a bottle of Sol, not quite chilled enough, served with the standard affectation of a slice of lime. The lime was about the only thing he really tasted. He could murder a pint of Eighty like he had at the Railway.
His phone rings. It’s Karen. Shite.
She isn’t going to make it. They just got access to a mother-load of Colin’s files and documents, and she’s going to have to spend the rest of the evening sifting through them. She apologises, says maybe tomorrow. He says he understands, and to remember their deal. She asks what he’s going to do with the rest of his Saturday night. He looks at the colourless trickle at the bottom of his bottle and says he doesn’t know. He’s lying.
Hard Cunts and Nice Guys
Robbie’s still got this sound in his ear from when his da leathered him last night. It makes this high-pitched noise that goes eeeeeeeeee. Sometimes it seems loud, sometimes it’s just in the background, but it’s fucking afternoon interval now and it’s still there.
His maw and da argued about it afterwards, like they always do. Da says he needs to learn to take it, toughen him up like Boma and Joe. (Da doesn’t batter them much any more because they’re getting too big and they’re liable to hit back.) Maw said Da never hit them anything like he hits Robbie. Da just said: “Aye, well,” and that seemed to be the end of it.
Robbie can take it. He gets a battering off Boma all the time. Not so much Joe, but then Joe’s more liable to take shite out on Boma, because Joe’s the oldest. Boma’s a cunt when he’s in a mood. Robbie can take that, and take leatherings off his da, and he reckons that means he could take anything the boys in his year could dish oot, no danger.
He ought to have more of a rep. He’s been at St Grace’s more than six months, fuck, and he’s hardly fought anybody. Some folk don’t need to fight much to have cunts feart of them, but nobody’s feart of Robbie. Every cunt’s feart of Boma and Joe, but none of it seems to have rubbed off. He’s sure folk shat it from Boma when he first came to St Grace’s, simply because he was Joe’s wee brother, but then Boma looks like Joe a lot more than Robbie looks like either of them. Now, obviously Robbie’s not the biggest, so he’s hardly going to be in there with the likes of Jai and Paddy, but fuck’s sake, at the moment he’s not fucking quoted, and when you see who is, it gets even worse. Christ, that boy Pete McGeechy, who looks aboot five stone soaking wet, had a fight with Richie Ryan, for fuck’s sake, and that’s him made now. There’s plenty will be keeping their fucking mouths shut who before that would have been happy ripping the pish out of him. No, Robbie needs to make a mark. Needs to be seen panelling some cunt so folk get the fucking message.
That fucking eeeeee noise, man. Doing his melt in, so it is. Some other cunt needs to be hearing that, so he does.
Question is: who?
Paul McKee leaps to mind. Always does. Unfinished business. If it’s all about reputations, about who battered who, then that’s a record he really ought to put straight. But, but, but, but, but…He’d never admit it to anybody, but when it comes down to brass tacks, he doesn’t fancy it. He always came out with some shite about how he never fought back that day against Paul, but the truth was he was feart. There was a look in Paul’s eyes, this burning, angry look, that told you how much he wanted it. Robbie’s seen his big brothers fight so many guys, and seen the look in their eyes that tells you they’re beat, sometimes before they’ve even started. Even the ones that start all determined, you can see the moment they know they’re beat, see the fear, after which they just want to end it soon as, minimise the damage. Paul’s look was like the opposite of that, the look Robbie’s seen in his brothers’ eyes: something mental inside, something that just wanted to hurt you and didn’t care what you gave back.
There’s plenty of cunts Robbie could take no bother, but there’s no point if they don’t fight
back. Just start leathering into somebody like that and folk don’t think you’re a fighter, they think you’re a heidcase. Plus chances are you’ll get one of the real big men knocking fuck out you because you’re out of order. That’s why Martin Jackson’s a non-starter, even though some folk think he must be harder than he looks because they heard he fought Boma. Total shite. Boma just fucked him for a laugh, like swatting a fly. Robbie’d love to show him up, show what happens when he really tries to fight not even Boma, merely Boma’s wee brother, but he knows it just won’t happen. Martin probably wouldn’t fight back, which would make it pointless. Plus Martin’s all palsy with Kenny Langton, so there’s no fucking way Robbie’s just going to go up and start picking on him. Aye, what a fucking disappointment that was, Kenny and Chick: Robbie thought they’d be starting wars but instead they’re big mates, and so is every cunt in that class. Kenny and Chick don’t even fucking smoke any more, because it would get them chucked out the school football team. Tight wee fucking unit, that 1S5 mob. Never even fight among themselves, even with Tarn Mclntosh in there. Big fucking disappointment.
But then there’s Coco, isn’t there, who he battered in primary. Coco fucking thinks he’s it these days. Thinks every cunt’s forgotten he was one of the wee poofs just because he hangs about with a different shower up at St Grace’s. Smart mouth on him. Joins in if folk are laughing at Robbie. Comes out with all sorts of cheek because he knows Aldo will laugh at it, but that doesn’t mean Aldo would protect him. Aldo likes the sight of a good fight as much as anybody.
Aye. Maybe about time a few folk got reminded where Coco stands compared to Robbie.
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