by Donal Ryan
His mother asked him questions now and then, but never seemed to hear him when he answered. As though she knew already all his truths. She never lost her patience with him, and sometimes still she put her hand on his face, out of the blue, when he was just sitting there at the table, and she looked at him with something unknowable in her eyes, some distant thing, and she’d run her fingers through his hair, and he felt embarrassed when she did it, and uncomfortable, but still and all he’d hate it if she stopped. She’d stood beside him the morning of the Leaving Cert results and read them from the sheet in his hand. He’d gone to the school early, to get it over and done with. That way he’d avoid the lads, and have to show no one his marks. Only the swots were there for nine. She’d nodded and smiled and kissed his cheek. You did very well, so you did. And she moved away across the kitchen floor and lined the ware up to be washed and whispered to the empty air, He did, so he did. Very well. English Higher B1. The rest are all Cs. Not enough points for any of his choices. What about it? He’s only young.
He knew the rhythms of the house and the two people below him, the syncopated beats of them, the tides that flowed and ebbed with no regularity but with a strange and comforting predictability, according to his grandfather’s form, his aches and moods and petty defeats and tiny triumphs, his mother’s movements back and forward from the present to the past. Friday mornings were always the same. Pop would have a feast of stories from the pub the night before. He could hear his grandfather telling a story now.
So I says I to him, do you know something, you’re the cut head off of that actor fella, what’s this his name is, oh, ya, that’s it … George Clooney. And he nearly shat himself he was so happy. And once everyone was finished congratulating him on the compliment he was after getting and admiring him and agreeing away with me and it was all gone grand and quiet again, I says, I says, Oh, hold on, no, it was the other lad I meant, sounds nearly the same, what’s it again, oh, ya … and I waited a minute till every fucker along the bar was cocking an ear, and I says, I says … Mickey Rooney! And I’d say he nearly burst his gut trying to frustrate his desire to fuckin kill me. And I raising my glass to him and toasting his health and all. You should of seen the puss on him. That showed the cunt and his new coat.
And Lampy smiled and he could hear his mother saying, Dad, in pretended offence at the terrible word, and his grandfather laughing and wheezing and hawking again, and he could hear the range door opening, and a spit and a sizzle, and the range door closing and his mother complaining about the spitting and he knew his grandfather had only been practising the story, that he, Lampy, was the intended audience, and the feeling this knowledge gave him was not quite articulable, this strange thrill of pride. His grandfather was wicked; when he was in form his tongue could slice the world in two.
Where’s Lampy, anyway? Admiring himself above in the mirror. He’ll have it wore out looking into it. Once he’s not pulling himself. DAD! His mother sounded cross now, but his grandfather was in his stride, talking on and on. And there was another lad there telling all and sundry about how he was going to a fancy-dress party inside in City Hall in aid of some crowd does be helping the refugees or the panda bears or something and he was wondering to know what should he go as and I says to him, I says, Do you know now what you should do? And he knew well there was something coming and he let on not to hear me at all, and so I says again, louder, Hye, hye, do you know now what you should do? And I could see the whole place again was waiting for the punchline, and Podge even stopped pulling a pint halfway and he was smiling to himself, he knew so he did, and there was a few tough chaws from the Island Field in and they were waiting for it, and I says to him, Do you know what you should do? And it killed him to say it, but he had to, he had no choice, and he says, What? And a face of murder on him, and I says, real even and slow and serious … You should put on your own clothes and go as a prick! And the whole place was in stitches, there was fuckin pandemonium, and he was fit to fuckin split me open.
And Lampy checked the snow again and hoped it wasn’t sticking, that the ground was wet and not icy, because he was driving the new bus, and he wasn’t too confident in it: it was wider than the old one, and worth a lot more, and the Grogans from the home were up in a heap about it and the cost of it, even though it was three years old and an import, and the fuckers of inspectors who had declared the old one unfit for purpose. He put on two pairs of socks and his new eight-hole Docs that his cousin Shane said were twenty years out of fashion but he didn’t care because they gave him an extra half-inch of height, and he buckled his jeans and he stood in front of the mirror and flexed his biceps and tried to get his hair to sit right and he wondered was his T-shirt too tight and he decided it wasn’t, and he wondered how far Eleanor would let him go that night and he wondered should he take her somewhere besides Supervalu car park and he hoped the Civic wouldn’t let him down again, she’d break it off for sure, and he hoped his mother wouldn’t try to make him have toast because he’d have to tell her again how he was off carbs and Pop would go to town on him and pretend to be up in arms over him refusing to eat toast and call him a queer and a nancy boy and every sort of a name.
And he felt good, and he smiled as he went downstairs, in anticipation of the stories, which would be embellished in repetition, drawn to the last. He felt he might get through the day without being winded, smacked in the stomach by some unbidden memory or thought or worry or regret. He might be able to go to the home and do his work and get his cash from James Grogan and drive to the city and pick up the young one and chat for a minute or two with her old man about the scores from the day and how Liverpool were shite again this season and he might be able to talk to her without calling her the wrong name and pissing her off, and they might make plans to go on a holiday in the summer and he might be normal, he might be a lad like any other lad, doing normal things, holding himself straight, holding his temper.
He knew that Pop had heard him on the stairs. Here he’s on, he was saying, and he was clearing his throat again, in preparation, Lampy knew, for the retelling of the stories he had just practised on his daughter. Lampy toyed for a moment with the idea of cutting his grandfather off, saying, I heard you already, Pop, George Clooney, Mickey Rooney, fancy dress, blah blah blah. But he couldn’t do it, he couldn’t put the boot in like that. Or maybe he could. It depended what way his grandfather greeted him. If he called him a queer or accused him of pulling himself all morning above in the bathroom he would listen to no stories. He’d wrap his sausages and rashers in a slice of brown bread – fuck the carbs – and he’d squirt some ketchup on them, and he’d go, and Pop could tell his stories to the dog.
The other night his mother had lit a Christmas candle. Pop had moaned about it coming sooner every year and Lord Almighty they weren’t even out of November, and she’d told him to mind his own business. The candle was fat and tall and she’d bared the bay window of curtains and blinds so she could set it in the centre of the sill. To bless his journeys, to light his way home. She hated him driving, he knew. She cried at every news report of fatal accidents; she blessed herself and whispered prayers for mercy for their souls, for their poor families, their poor families. Lord, can you imagine it? Could you not leave the car? she’d say, every time he looked for his keys. She’d never help him find them. Would you not let Pop drop you off to wherever you’re going? And he’d feel himself getting cross with her and he wouldn’t answer her and he’d swear beneath his breath as he searched under newspapers and behind cushions and along the mantelpiece and worktops and shelves. And Pop would say, Will you leave the boy alone, there’s fear of him, he’s no fool. He won’t act the ape on the road. And he’d see Pop looking at him, with a funny expression on his face, worry, and something else, a kind of resignation, and he wondered then if Pop knew somehow, about the times he drove full pelt along the narrow road from Lackanavea, his eyes full of tears, his seatbelt off, the twin piers of the railway bridge approaching fast, thinking, One flick of
my wrist, one flick. That’d show her.
The first conversation he’d ever had with Chloe was about the three little pigs. On the night bus coming back from town. He’d spotted her in the Chicken Hut and she’d smiled at him and he’d nodded, trying to be cool, and she’d laughed at him and looked away. Then on the bus she’d asked his friend Dave if he minded swapping seats and Dave said, No bother but I just farted, and Lampy felt like killing him but she just smiled and took Dave’s seat and she said nothing until the bus started moving and neither did he, and then she turned to him and said, You know the story of the three little pigs, who were fucked off by their mother because she was sick of their shit? And all he could do was nod, and watch the dimple that creased the skin along her cheek, but only on one side, and the light that flashed in her blue-green eyes, and the way her eyebrows arced as she spoke, the way she whispered, her smile, her bad smile, the redness of her lips, the perfect shape of them, the way she leaned close to him, like she was telling him a terrible secret, something filthy and delicious. You know how there are two versions? One where the big bad wolf blows the first two fucking idiots’ houses down because they’re made from twigs and straw but they escape and run to the smart pig’s house because it’s made from blocks and the big bad wolf busts his gut trying to blow down the concrete house and in the end the little fat fuckers coax him down the chimney and boil him alive? And the one where the wolf blows down the fucking idiot brothers’ houses and eats the fuckers? I way prefer that version. And not the version of that version where the smart fucker, before he boils the wolf alive, manages somehow to rescue the idiots from the wolf’s belly. That’s bullshit. They need to be fucking dead. They deserve it. Don’t they? And Lampy nodded, though he had no idea what she was on about, she was clearly pissed, but he had a pain in his crotch and in his heart, and he knew he was in love.
He only bought the Honda to please her. She loved going for spins. She’d lie right back in the passenger seat and turn the stereo up full and close her eyes and tell him to just drive and he’d have to force himself to keep his eyes on the road and not on her legs, on the place where her skirt rode up along her thigh, and his head would spin a little sometimes. Once she asked him to drive towards Ballina; she said she’d heard there was a place you could drive to, the very top of a mountain, where you could see five counties on a clear day, up past the graves of some fuckers from the old days? And when they got there she took a condom from her handbag and told him to put it on, all the while holding his eye, and she took off her underwear and lay back and said, Come on, Lampy, and it was all over in seconds and she laughed at him and they did it again a few minutes later and she said it was much better, and it was, and he’d thought as he drove back down the snaking mountain road that nothing mattered now but this, that this was the day all his days had been for.
He was stopped on the stairs now, halfway down, and the knuckles of his left hand were white from the force of his grip on the banister. The thought of Chloe always stopped him, paralysed him. Her slender hands and blue-green eyes, her soft laugh and gentle shrug to stop him in his tracks, the pain she’d leave him in, the pain she left him in, terminal it seemed to him. He’d surely die of it. Eleanor was small and dark-haired and she smiled a lot and she had lovely big eyes and massive tits in fairness, and there was something very sexy about the uniform she wore for work in Brown Thomas, but he knew that deep down she knew she was just a handy shift, a rebounder, that he was still in love with someone else, but she’d stick around in hope another while.
Chloe was different: angular, firm; the memory of the arch of her back and the press of her ribs against her skin scalded him. Even her lips seemed hard against his, urgent, as though it were her kissing him, as though he had no choice. Eleanor was soft in contrast, warm, eager to please him; her lips were full and sweet-tasting. Chloe was going to end up in a big house, he knew, with a high wall around it and remote-control gates. Eleanor would end up wherever; she’d be happy and she’d have loads of kids and she’d be really nice to them. She’d be forgiving. He wondered should he marry her and be done with it. He could love her if he really tried.
He reckoned she’d see how the Christmas went, if he’d stop calling her the wrong name, if he’d get her a decent present. Eleanor was from the city; he only met her twice a week or so. She didn’t know the full extent of it, the way he’d watch out for flashes of Chloe here and there, waiting for a downturned smile of pity and a tiny wave, a gentle push in the chest in the chipper when he tried to talk to her but all his sentences were drowned.
He thought about their spot, their mountaintop, up past the Graves of the Leinstermen where they’d sat after doing it for the last time, and he’d held her hand, stroking the back of it with his thumb, wondering at the feeling of the narrow bones beneath her skin, not knowing what was in store for him, what was coming. How fragile they’d felt to him, how perfect; he wished that he could see them for a second, see her from the inside out, inhabit her, possess her completely. He loved her so much, that was all, he loved her. She asked him could they drive into Limerick as far as McDonald’s. He still couldn’t figure out why she did that, why she chose Micky D’s car park to rip his heart out. Had she planned on eating first? Micky D’s was fucking ruined for him now. It’s not working with me being in college in Dublin, she said. It’s not fair on you. We’ll still be friends, always.
And he said nothing to her for a long while because he couldn’t trust his voice. There was a lump in his throat, an actual lump, and it was blocking his windpipe, it seemed, because he was having trouble breathing properly; his heart was beating hard and irregular in his chest and the colour was gone from the front of McDonald’s, the yellow M was grey and the lights shone white and every car in the car park was black, and he closed his eyes tight and when he opened them again the world was in colour and he caught a hold of himself and he said, I’ll move to Dublin. I’m doing fuck-all else. I could get a job up there. I should be up there with you anyway, the amount of freaks there are in that place. You shouldn’t be walking round alone. And she smiled and bit her bottom lip and put her hand on his and said, Oh, Lampy, you’re a lovely guy, you really are. I’m well able to look after myself. I’m sorry, Lampy. Will you bring me home? And he asked her why she’d asked him to bring her the whole way to Limerick to McDonald’s if she just wanted to go home again and she said she wasn’t hungry any more, she didn’t think she’d be this sad, and that hurt him more, that idea of her being surprised that she was so sad. He bent across to kiss her and she turned her face so he got her cheek, and his temper rose then suddenly, and he put his hand on her tit and squeezed hard and she screeched and punched him on the bottom of his chin and she said, FUCK, what the FUCK, Lampy? and she was wringing her hand in pain, and he was telling her to get the fuck out of his car, she was only a gowl, and she sat straight up in her seat, crying silently, saying, low, in a whisper, Bring me home, Lampy, just bring me fucking home.
He’d only seen her once since then, after the nightclub, four or five months ago. She wouldn’t talk to him. Her brothers stood between them in the chipper, blocking him, saying, Come on, Lamp, don’t be stupid, we don’t want to fall out with you. And he took a swing at the eldest lad and missed, and he slipped on a ketchup sachet someone had opened and dropped, and he’d hopped off the floor of the chipper and the whole place laughed at him, and he saw from the ground that Chloe was standing near him and she was looking straight ahead and she had her hand to her face and her friend had her arm around her, as though to protect her, and he was saying, Chloe, please, just come outside with me a minute, and her brothers were lifting him off the floor now and saying, Go on to fuck, Lampy, leave it, man, leave it, and the small little dark lad from the chipper was out from behind the counter and he was saying something in a high-pitched voice and Lampy couldn’t make it out so he swung again and missed again and the chipper lad had him in a chokehold and he was out through the door and into the street and he was falling, f
alling.
One of the Curran boys was in her year in Trinity. He didn’t know which one: they were identical and they were both cunts. He told him she was going with a Dublin lad. He was tall, he played rugby. His father was a barrister. That’s all he knew.
He thought of the day Pop rang her mother. What possessed him? Oh, Pop. What the fuck did you do? Pop standing in the hallway by the phone table, bow-legged, the way he always stood, his feet wide apart like a drunk man about to scrap, his face red and his white hair lifting from his scalp as though in indignation. It took a while for it to register with Lampy what was going on. He’d been crying in his room just like a child. Pop’s voice, loud and cracking, saying, Ye fuckers never thought anything of him anyway, ye think ye’re big-shots, and that’s the God’s honest truth, ye think ye’re too good for the likes of us, ye think that little strap of a one was too good for my boy, and she only a strap, that lady, a half-reared little rap, well, she better stay away from my boy, that’s all I’ll say. And the voice of Chloe’s mother, soft and placatory, and he couldn’t quite make out her words but she was saying something like I know you’re upset and you don’t mean that, Mr Shanley, and we really have to let them live their own lives, they’ll have their hearts broken a fair few times each before they’re twice married, won’t they? And she was laughing softly, and Pop was huffing fuming breaths out through his nose, and he was opening his mouth again to speak, and Lampy was taking the stairs in fours, and diving for the phone, and pushing down the contacts, and nearly knocking Pop down on the floor, and he was pushing Pop and shouting, WHAT THE FUCK, POP, WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK? And Pop was on his back foot, wordless now, embarrassed suddenly, and Lampy nearly hit him but he caught himself in time, and instead he said, I’m not your boy, Pop. I’m not your boy. And he left those words between them and he went out the door, and his grandfather didn’t call him back.