New Town Soul

by Dermot Bolger

  Bongo Drums appeared and broke up the match, unable to resist kicking the tennis ball himself. The lads teased him as they walked back to class. As he grinned good-naturedly I tried to imagine him playing drums in my father’s band. Shane drifted beside me as I walked indoors. His face was serious, the mask of good humour gone.

  ‘If you’d like us to stop hanging out together that’s cool.’

  ‘No,’ I replied, because I wasn’t sure what else to say. I didn’t have the words to express my increasing sense of unease. ‘I mean, we’re mates.’

  He smiled. ‘You and I are closer than mates, Joey. One of these days we’ll nick our palms with a knife and become blood brothers.’

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Shane

  August 2007

  Geraldine and Shane spent the day after their second visit to Thomas’s house trying to avoid one another. They felt burdened by responsibility because nobody else knew about the dying man. Geraldine was tormented by worries about how long it would take Thomas to die from his cancer, whether his pain would become utterly unbearable without medical help and whether they would get into trouble after he was found dead in that empty house.

  Shane found it easier to keep secrets because his parents kept so many secrets from him. The secret of how much money they owed. The secret lottery scratch cards Shane kept finding in the bin. The secret figures that Shane’s father crossed out on the back of newspapers. Last night, after his return from Thomas’s house, his parents had argued with ferocious intensity, as if an insatiable rage was tearing his family apart. The row continued until dawn, with Shane lying awake, fantasising about finding any way, no matter how outlandish, to get the money to buy some peace in this new home that he hated.

  It was eight o’clock in the evening when Geraldine texted him to ask if they could meet outside Blackrock Library. When he got there, she said that she could no longer keep Thomas’s secret because something about the old man scared her. She wanted to tell her gran, who would know how to organise medical help for him. Geraldine’s words made sense but all day Shane had been thinking so obsessively about the well in Thomas’s cellar that he couldn’t think straight any more. Something snapped inside him now. He started to shout at Geraldine, using the same furious tone as his father used with his mother during their late-night rows.

  Shane felt shocked at his own words, but a rage had taken possession of him. Insults tumbled out, the most bitter accusations. He found himself calling her a Judas and a traitor. Maybe a part of him had always been secretly jealous that Geraldine enjoyed such a happy home. But this could not explain his rage. He felt possessed by a panicked sense of terror that if anyone found out about Thomas’s house before he got a chance to return there, he would throw away the only chance he had – no matter how unlikely or how superstitious – to make his parents stop arguing.

  He wanted to stop shouting at Geraldine. He wanted to put his arms around her and apologise. But it was too late – she turned and ran away from him, down Newtown Avenue. Shane felt dizzy and scared. Nobody else was outside the closed library, but he did not feel alone. There was such an unnerving sensation of being watched that he began to run. He longed to chase after Geraldine, but an instinct – an overwhelmingly compulsive need – made him run towards Main Street. He reached the Rock Road and charged through the traffic in his haste to reach the house at the end of Castledawson Avenue.

  A black cat scarpered from the wall as he climbed the front steps and pounded on the knocker. His parents would be furious at him for breaking in here. They would ground him in the Sion Hill duplex, which felt like a lonely prison. He kept knocking until he heard footsteps eventually descend the staircase. With a reluctant groan the rusty bolt was drawn back and a key clicked. The door creaked open a few inches. Thomas peered out.

  ‘Geraldine is telling her gran about you,’ Shane said. ‘They’re going to get you medical help.’

  Thomas nodded slowly. ‘I don’t need help. I need to be left alone to die. But the night you broke in, I lost my chance.’

  ‘Are you not scared to die?’

  The old man looked out into the evening air. ‘I have been scared to die many times. Each of us is scared when our time comes. We will do anything to cling on. People long for immortality – but immortality can be a lonesome, unnatural place.’

  In the slanting sunlight Shane saw how sick Thomas looked. His eyes were exhausted, like he had not slept in years.

  ‘Go away,’ the old man said, starting to close the door. ‘I am lonely, and loneliness is a dangerous condition. You don’t belong here. Get the hell away.’

  The heavy door was almost shut, but Thomas’s hand shook so much that he seemed incapable of closing it those final few inches. He looked to be in pain. It seemed wrong to leave Thomas alone in agony, but Shane had more selfish reasons for wanting to stay.

  ‘Let me in this last time,’ he begged. ‘I need to ask you one question.’

  The old man hesitated as if battling with himself and then reluctantly opened the door. A tractor was cutting grass on the rugby pitch in the nearby college, but once Shane stepped into the hall, the sound seemed to come from another world. Thomas quickly closed the door and locked it.

  ‘Ask your question and then go,’ Thomas said. ‘I am older and more exhausted than you could possibly imagine.’

  Shane paused, feeling foolish. ‘You said you made a wish in that cellar when you were a boy. You said it came true.’

  The old man wearily sat on the stairs, shaking his head and muttering softly to himself. Eventually he looked up.

  ‘I knew they had picked you the moment I saw you. They knew you wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation.’

  ‘Who are these people you keep talking about?’

  Instead of replying the old man said, ‘If you could have one wish, what would it be?’

  ‘I asked you a question.’

  ‘I asked you a better one. What is your heart’s desire? When I was your age, only one living person knew that a well had been bricked up here – a mute named Joseph.’

  ‘How did he know?’

  ‘The longer you are forced to keep a secret, the heavier it becomes. What if, at the end of your life, you simply had to tell someone but wanted the secret to die with them? Who better to tell than a crippled mute boy who barely knew his alphabet? Joseph seemed the perfect choice to the dying man who had cut Michael Byrne’s throat when he was a boy, because surely Joseph could never pass on the secret.’

  Thomas rose. He seemed out of breath. Shane feared he would collapse.

  ‘Older folk used to say that Michael Byrne should never have built his house over that well. Even in pagan times, its waters were rumoured to cure everything from blindness to croup. Pilgrims used to leave pieces of cloth tied to a crooked bush. Pilgrims could pray for their darkest wish here, but only a tiny few knew the price you had to pay to make a wish succeed.’ Thomas sat wearily on the stairs. ‘Go away, young O’Driscoll. You have your whole life ahead; that should be enough for anyone.’

  ‘I can’t listen to my parents argue anymore. If we had money they wouldn’t argue.’

  The old man looked up. ‘Do you honestly believe money will make your parents happy?’

  ‘It’s what they argue over.’

  ‘You don’t know why they argue, what forces are playing with their thoughts.’ The old man pointed to the locked door with his stick. ‘Your grandfather was my friend once. He was the last real friend I ever had. For seventy years I’ve been unable to have friends; I have lived utterly alone. Now I’m telling you, on your grandfather’s grave, open the door and get the hell away from this house.’

  TWENTY-NINE

  Joey

  November 2009

  On my first day in Stradbrook College, my greatest wish had been to be Shane’s sidekick, but now, after glimpsing this wilder side of him on Bull Island, I no longer wished to become – as he called it – his blood brother. Instead I was starting to fee
l suffocated by always being in his shadow. I appreciated his friendship, but he was no longer the one whose company I wanted most. The person occupying my every waking thought was Geraldine.

  I found it hard to sleep because so much was going on in my life and I had so many new emotions to cope with. I started to go for long walks at eleven o’clock every night. Mum didn’t like it, but she let me go, knowing that otherwise I would sit up in my room for half the night, strumming my guitar and feeling caged. But often these walks only made me feel worse, because there seemed to be couples on every corner. I only had to turn onto Main Street from Brusna Cottages to spot cool-looking guys – those all-important two or three years older than me – venturing into the throbbing beat of The Wicked Wolf pub, leather jackets draped over one arm, gorgeous girls in party dresses on the other; guys with big jobs or rich daddies who seemed to personify the sense of money that flowed like electricity through Blackrock on such nights, when every girl looked chic and hot and every guy looked loaded and supremely confident.

  Dad had purchased our small cottage for next to nothing before I was born. Brusna Cottages was dwarfed on every side by modern buildings. I had lived in Blackrock from birth, yet I felt that I didn’t belong to it on those nightly walks up onto Temple Road, where I would pause to gaze in through the windows of Tonic bar and watch rich guys scoring rich girls, all hanging out together and laughing on the crowded leather sofas. This was the sort of place to which I wanted to bring Geraldine if I had the courage or the money. I had neither, and I knew that with Mum’s job we were just about getting by financially until I could start earning too.

  There were girls in my class that I could have asked out, but I only wanted Geraldine. She was the reason for my nightly walk further up Temple Road past the church and the Canada Life buildings to where it joined the dual carriageway and then back around by Newtown Avenue, which grew quiet after the bulk of traffic was siphoned off onto Seapoint Avenue.

  I was generally alone with my thoughts when I reached the small cul-de-sac where Geraldine lived. I knew it was childish, but I loved the feel of being physically close to her for a few precious seconds before I headed for home. I would pause in the laneway opposite her house and gaze through the side gate into her garden where an old hammock swung. This seemed to me like the most magical spot on earth, although I’d have been mortified if Geraldine ever spotted me on this nightly pilgrimage that had become my unspoken gesture of love.

  As I approached Geraldine’s house on a Tuesday night, six days after our mid-term history exam, I became aware that someone was lurking in the small laneway opposite her home. I considered turning back, but curiosity or suspicion made me glance down the lane. It was dark, but I could make out a solitary figure, unaware of me as he stared wistfully up at Geraldine’s lit bedroom window. At first I thought it was Shane, but when a shard of moonlight lit up the lane I recognised the old man who had harassed me outside my school. His face was haunting in its loneliness. He turned suddenly, as shocked to be discovered as I was to find him there. His aggression was gone. He looked vulnerable as he shuffled away down the lane on his walking stick, making his way onto Newtown Avenue. I followed him, feeling like a dog seeing another dog off his territory, although I had no right to stand outside Geraldine’s house at night either. But he was so old that his presence there seemed utterly gross. I caught up with him on Newtown Avenue and grabbed his elbow.

  ‘What were you doing back there?’

  ‘Leave me alone.’ He shrugged off my grip. ‘You know nothing.’

  ‘Stay away from Geraldine’s house, you hear me?’

  The old man stopped. ‘Do you love her?’

  ‘Mind your own business.’ I knew I was blushing.

  ‘If you love her, protect her from him. He steals everything.’

  ‘You’re talking nonsense. Tell me what Shane stole.’

  ‘Come back to my house and I’ll tell you everything.’

  ‘I’m not going near your gaff. Tell me here.’

  ‘You wouldn’t believe me here. I leave a key above the back door. When you’re ready to know the truth, pay me a visit. Until then, leave me alone in this purgatory.’

  A passing car stopped, the driver unsure if I was harassing the old man. But Thomas ignored the man who called out. He walked off, leaning heavily on his stick, his face guarded beneath a black felt hat.

  THIRTY

  Shane

  August 2007

  All Shane needed to do was open the front door of Thomas’s house and step outside into the safety of the evening air. But something made him hesitate. It was not just concern for Thomas, who looked gravely ill. It was an insatiable curiosity that kept tormenting him.

  ‘Can you show me how to make a wish in that cellar?’ he asked.

  ‘One part of me longs to give you the chance,’ Thomas whispered as he sat on the stairs. ‘Another part of me is begging you to run away. You see, I don’t know my own mind. Doctors always claimed I have a lot of split personalities.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means that I’m trying to hold out against myself.’

  Shane’s phone bleeped. He looked down. A text from Geraldine: my gran phoned your dad. where u now? When he looked up, Thomas’s eyes were tightly closed as if trying to block something out.

  ‘I was tricked into making a wish as a boy,’ Thomas whispered. ‘I refuse to trick you but I cannot stop you either. Only you can stop yourself. You will get your wish, you can be showered with money, but such wishes always come at a price.’

  Something brushed against Shane’s feet, startling him. It was the black cat he had seen on the wall, who had found its way in through the broken window. The cat sped off into the maze of deserted rooms. The temperature in the house seemed colder suddenly, the atmosphere more oppressive. ‘I don’t trust you,’ he said, rattled. ‘I don’t like this place; I’m leaving now.’

  Thomas’s eyes snapped open. His face had changed during the few seconds when his eyes were closed. His features seemed distorted, his lips covered in froth. Giving a snort like a pig, he rose from the stairs and shuffled towards the boy. At first Shane couldn’t make out what he was saying because the words had started to come in a strangulated grunt. Only when Thomas repeated them did it sound like his own voice. Even then it was barely above a whisper. ‘I need my painkillers. Fetch a glass of water from the kitchen tap. Quick, lad, don’t tarry; this pain is killing me.’

  Thomas looked to be in such agony that the boy reluctantly went down into the kitchen. The only drinking glass was caked in dust and he needed to clean it with his shirt. He filled it with oily tap water. When he turned around, Thomas was standing directly behind him. The old man grabbed the glass and swallowed two blue tablets. He grimaced, his voice harsh.

  ‘I’ve not tasted viler water since the Eagle Tavern. Make your decision, boy. Time is running out. Your father will never let you return here.’ Thomas stepped closer. ‘He knows not to trust strangers, especially a coward who is afraid to die.’

  Shane backed away. ‘I’ve told you, I’m leaving.’

  ‘The moment you broke in, I knew they had summoned you. You are not the boy they wanted, though. They have already killed his father in a car crash up at the Hellfire Club, with music blaring from the tangled wreckage. But they are running out of time. So even though you’re weak, you’re the boy they’ll settle for.’

  Shane’s phone beeped again. He glanced down. Another text from Geraldine: tell me where u are. am worried. He tried to text back, but when he pressed the keys on his phone, the battery died.

  ‘You think you can leave, but you can’t,’ Thomas added. ‘Greed and curiosity have you hooked.’

  ‘I can leave here whenever I want,’ Shane snapped, rattled. ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘Am I? I’m a gambling man; I gambled my way through several fortunes between dice and cards and hounds. I wager that you haven’t got the guts to call my bluff and find out if I am lying abou
t that cellar.’

  Shane stepped back, relieved to feel the handle of the back door behind him. He was almost out of there. He looked up to see the black cat perched on an empty shelf, observing them with bored eyes.

  ‘That’s right, leave by the back door.’ Thomas’s tone became haughty, snidely demeaning. ‘That’s the door reserved for servants like the penniless skivvying girl your grandmother was. You O’Driscolls were always peasants with no class. Run away home to your pathetic failure of a father.’

  ‘Don’t call him that!’ Shane said angrily.

  ‘How pathetic to try to hobnob with the quality in Sion Hill when he hasn’t two pennies to rub together. You O’Driscolls were always dirt-poor, breeding like rabbits in the mud cabins on this avenue until the Holy Ghost fathers could no longer stand the stench of poverty wafting over their wall. Geraldine has ten times more courage than you.’

  ‘Leave Geraldine out of this!’

  Shane could hardly believe that this was the same soft-spoken man they had befriended a few nights before.

  ‘You were never good enough to be her friend. Now, run off back to your penniless, bickering parents.’

  Shane only needed to open the back door and scramble his way up through those bushes. The groundsman would still be cutting grass in the college, cars still busily passing the railings on the Rock Road. But the taunts about his parents rankled too much.

  ‘I’m not scared of you, you twisted old snob. I’ll go down into that cellar and prove you’re telling a pack of lies.’

  The cat made a lunge down onto the floor and darted away. The malice left Thomas’s face, the snarling anger draining from his body. His eyes became indescribably sad.

  ‘Sometimes I can’t control the spiteful things I say,’ he said softly. ‘Think carefully before you do this.’

  But Shane didn’t want to think carefully. He would show the last of the McCormack family that the O’Driscolls were no cowards and then he would leave this house forever. He entered the passageway. The cellar was in darkness, but the exposed water possessed a shimmer of its own.