Boys Don't Cry

by Fíona Scarlett

  I can’t get sight of Sabine, and I can’t risk going back to her flat in case she’s not there and I land her in it. I ring her. Again. No pick-up.

  You back at yours?

  Online

  Just let me know you’re all right.

  Typing

  I wait. Keep checking for her response, turn up the screen brightness so I can see, so I won’t miss it.

  Online

  Fuck sake, Sabine.

  Look, call up to us after, yeah?

  Two grey ticks coloured blue. At least I know she’s seen it.

  I think about going to the Tavern, finding fuckface Carthy, putting a bit of O’Reilly pressure on, the shit. But that’s what Da would do. That’s what Da would want me to do. Fuck Da.

  I walk around to the back of the flats, and head towards Captains Hill, the only bit of green in this sea of concrete and steel, broken glass and destruction. I climb to the top, up and over, and there she is. Feet stretched out in front of her.

  ‘How did ya know I’d be here?’ she says, puffing smoke rings high above her head, one after the other, the reek of smoke tinged with menthol lingering, no chance of evaporation in this dead heat.

  I didn’t.

  Me and Sabine have been coming here since we were kids. All the kids come here. The hill, that is. You can roll down it on your own, all tucked in like a cannonball, or on your skates or your bike or Gertie’s wooden canteen tray when it snowed. This is where we had the craic. Where Finn had the craic.

  ‘Go on, give us a drag,’ I say, and add a few rings of my own, mine not as polished or round as hers. ‘Jaysus, Sabine, the state of those menthol yokes.’

  ‘Go get your own so, ya fucking scab,’ she says, pulling it back off me with a laugh, the old Sabine back, but shadowed. Shaded by fucking Carthy.

  I don’t say anything, I just sit close, shoulders touching, letting her lean in, alternating menthol inhalations with her diminishing fag butt.

  ‘Look, Joe, I don’t want to get into it,’ she says, filling the silence.

  ‘Has he done anything?’ I ask. It’s all I want to know. All I need to know. ‘Sabine, has he?’

  She begins to scrape at the flecks of green polish covering her chewed, ragged nails. ‘Not yet,’ she says, and takes a fresh fag out of the pack, lights it off the stub in her mouth, sucks hard till it ignites, then flicks the old one to the ground, stubbing it quickly off the sole of her worn red Converse.

  ‘Not yet?’ I ask, not able to keep it level. I dig my nails into the palm of my hand and hope it leaves a mark. ‘What the fuck is that even supposed to mean, Sabine?’ I dig harder.

  ‘It means not yet,’ she says, uncurling my fingers, lacing hers through mine and breathing with me, in and out until our breath returns to normal and we sit holding hands, watching the young ones race up and down Captains Hill in a variety of contraptions.

  ‘It’s Nanny,’ she says after a while, taking her hand back, linking her fingers together around her dimpled knees, hugging them close. ‘She went to Murphy for a loan.’

  ‘Ah fuck. Sabine, why didn’t you say anything?’ She gives a quick glance, but continues on.

  ‘I was applying for a spot, on that make-up course in town, you know the one I was on about, the one that does the special-effects stuff and everything. It’s the best. Well, one of the best you can get here anyways. But the application was €250. You were guaranteed it back if you got a place. There were special scholarship spots and all.’ She stops and starts plucking at clumps of grass underneath her.

  ‘I didn’t get a spot.’

  I pull her in close, put my chin on her head and wrap my arms around tight. How did I not see this? How did I not know?

  ‘And Carthy?’

  She pushes herself away, back to picking the grass.

  ‘He’s collecting.’

  No, there’s no way. Carthy? Who in sixth class begged Sabine to take the blame for leaving an eggy sandwich in Ms McNamara’s desk, right before midterm, who always needed me with him when Josie’s pitbull was about The Yard, and now Dessie is entrusting him with the implementation of his threats, of getting results? Sure, who in their fuck would be afraid of him? They all rip the piss – Dessie, Da, I’ve heard them at it, at the flat. He’s just a scrawny lick-arsed runner to them.

  ‘They want me to sell,’ she says, gulping at the extra breath in her, ‘to clear the debt, and fuck, Nan,’ she squeezes my hand, ‘if she knew I was getting involved in something that stole Ma from us, that I could put that damage and hurt on someone else …’

  ‘Sabine. No. There is no way he’s collecting for Murphy. No fucking way. There’s something else going on here.’ I get up. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I ask again.

  ‘Tell you,’ she says. ‘How the fuck could I tell you?’ She’s looking at me. Raging. ‘You’d forgotten I’d even applied. Never even asked me about it. You hardly call round. You never phone. It’s been four months, Joe. Four fucking months. You can’t just …’

  ‘Can’t just what, Sabine?’ I let out a harsh, rough laugh. I can’t even help it. I still see him everywhere. The scribbles in the stairwell, the bench on The Yard; the place is filled with him. Here. Him flying down this hill. I get my two palms and press them hard into my sockets, trying to wipe the heat and the pain away, the scorch of anger pouring out of me. Always. Fucking. Pouring.

  ‘Joe,’ she says, reaching out for me as I stand. ‘Joe,’ she says again, trying to make contact, trying to pull me in as I walk away.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she calls after me.

  ‘The Tavern.’

  ‘Why?’

  I ignore her.

  ‘Why, Joe?’ she says, louder this time.

  ‘For a fucking drink, Sabine.’ And I leave her, standing on Captains Hill, discarded fag butts at her feet.

  Finn

  ‘Right, there’s the bell,’ Mrs O’Sullivan said. ‘Lunches out. Quickly.’ She set the ten-minute timer on the interactive whiteboard.

  I reached into my bag and pulled out my lunchbox. Sitting there, right on top of my digestive jam sandwiches, was Joe’s Post-it.

  ‘Who did he do for you this time?’ Jasmine asked, leaning in to get a good gawk.

  ‘Batman,’ we said together.

  Mrs O’Sullivan came down to see too.

  ‘Ah, the Caped Crusader,’ she said, then got the scrapbook from the reading corner and glued the Post-it in with Pritt Stick. The scrapbook was nearly full now. Full of Joe’s Post-it sketches, signed Just Joe in the bottom right-hand corner. Mrs O’Sullivan said she had every intention of showing it off when Joe was a famous artist.

  ‘Will ya give us a bit of that?’ Jasmine asked, as I opened the wrapper of my Fruit Winder. I unravelled it to full length, bit it in half and catapulted her half over. I pushed up my sleeves and wrapped mine around my wrist.

  ‘Saving it for later,’ I told her. She had hers already eaten.

  The whiteboard timer flashed ten seconds.

  ‘I’ll get the ball,’ Jasmine shouted, and I snapped closed my lunchbox and flung it on the floor.

  ‘Lunchboxes in school bags, please,’ Mrs O’Sullivan said, looking straight at me. I tugged on the zip of my bag, trying to yank it open, trying not to miss a second of big break.

  ‘Ah Miss, it’s stuck,’ I said, as the rest of the class ran out the door with the bell.

  ‘Bring it here, Finn,’ she said, and took the bag from me and had it open just like that. Using her famous elbow grease.

  ‘It’s the extra material. See here, Finn, the one covering the zip, you need to keep that away from it.’ I just wanted my bag back and to get out with the rest. I reached my hand out to get it from her, but she just held it outstretched and stared at my arms.

  ‘Where did you get those, Finn?’ she asked, pointing to the bruises running up and down both arms.

  ‘Just from tag, Miss, in yard earlier.’

  ‘From today?’

  ‘Yeah.’ />
  ‘Finn, they look older. Are you sure it was from today?’

  ‘Yeah, definitely, Miss, they weren’t there this morning, anyway.’ I wished she would just let me go already.

  ‘It must have been rough. I’ve told the class before about rough play on yard. Do I need to consult Mr Kelly?’

  ‘No, Miss, honestly, it wasn’t rough, just the usual tag.’

  I’d a few under my knees too, from swinging on the steel bicycle rack just behind the main school gate, but I wasn’t going to tell Mrs O’Sullivan that. I didn’t want a trip to Principal Kelly’s office or worse, him visiting the class.

  ‘Can I go now, Miss?’ I asked. I’d wasted about five minutes already and all the best spots would be taken. I’d be left as referee again.

  ‘Yes, Finn, off you go,’ she said, and took out her notebook, the one she leaves in the top drawer, the locked one, and wrote something down. I began to run towards the class door.

  ‘Finn, your lunchbox.’ I rammed it into my bag, zipped it up and ran to find Jasmine, Dunner and Shane.

  Six minutes late.

  I bet I’m the feckin’ referee.

  Joe

  Fat Mick is on the door, all black trousers and fake leather jacket and the sweat only pumping off him. Not so much a bouncer as a beady-eyed watcher, a snitch for Murphy’s gang, to give a heads up if anyone who didn’t know their place was about. And he’d put you in your place all right, if it was needed. Right into the A & E waiting room, all busted to shite.

  He’s positioned just how he likes it, in the space of the one opened double door, wedged in tight, no way of taking a quick peek in, bars on the windows and Fat Mick at the door, no quick getaway either.

  He stands aside when he sees me coming, at least he has the cop for that.

  ‘Ah howya, head,’ he says, smiling as I cross his threshold. I’m not in the mood for chewing the fat.

  ‘We’re all missing Annie about the place. Is she coming back to us any time soon?’ He places his hand on my shoulder, giving it a staccato double pat, knuckles freshly cracked and blooming.

  ‘Could ya just leave it to fuck, Mick, yeah,’ I say, and I walk on past him, to the chaos that is the Tavern.

  The place is hopping; Thursday is dole day and everyone is sloshing the cash, buying the rounds, whooping it up. Any excuse is the fucking motto here. The two-piece band, Abba-Salutely, are crammed into the corner, playing all those ABBA hit wonders for the auld ones, bet into their leopard prints, the sax solo unbearably loud, filling the air around us.

  The carpet has a firm stick to it as I make my way to the bar, and the place is filled with smoke, stinging my eyes, the makeshift smoking area just outside the propped-open fire escape doing nothing to prevent the smoke from smothering this poxy place.

  The lads, the old gang, are about the pool table. Redzer and Spud and Gimpy. The eyes are hanging out of their heads, euro coins stacked on the pool-table ledge, even though no one else ever bothers with a game. It is always left to the lads.

  ‘Well, would you look at who’s decided to grace us with his presence,’ Redzer calls, the drink giving him a little Dutch courage.

  ‘All right, Joe,’ Gimpy says, giving us a nod.

  Redzer gives him a thump. ‘What are ya talking to that prick for, too good for us now, so he is, up in his posh private school, all posh and fucking private,’ he spits, barely able to stand.

  ‘Jaysus tonight,’ Spud says. ‘Just get on with the game, yeah.’

  Redzer, eyes still on me, stumbles across the floor, skidding into the jacks. ‘I’m taking a slash,’ he says, ‘but I’ll be back to say me piece.’ Yeah, in his hole he will. All trousers and no balls, him.

  I remember it was always us around that table, from younger than Finn, all of us, and Carthy, and the Mas and Das throwing over a big box of Tayto and bottles of red lemonade, and we’d spend hours playing pool, playing darts, stealing change left on the counter, and me and Carthy pulling out the band’s sound system, hiding their leads when they were out getting the rest of their gear, and the roars and shouts out of them when they came back, and me and Carthy busting our holes laughing, and I still remember his face, Carthy, when I told him I’d got the scholarship, how I wouldn’t be going to the local VEC after all, how Ma had finally persuaded Da, after weeks of begging, and how it all had made a liar out of me.

  I take a stool at the bar. I have to go in the middle – the one in the corner, the one for skulking, is already taken. I can see straight behind the bar here, straight into Dessie Murphy’s snug. His eyes lock on mine as I take my seat.

  ‘A Guinness, Pat, when you’re ready.’ He gets a glass, pulling it, the look of resentment on his face with every drop. His Da owns a pub in Spain but makes him look after the family business here. He wants to be sunning it in the Costa del Sol, not getting sweaty burnt fuckers drinks in Dublin.

  ‘Your Ma about?’ he asks, leaving the pint to rest.

  I don’t answer. But I know what he’s getting at, the bollox.

  ‘She’s rightly left me fucked, you know? Will you tell her that from me. Fucking fucked, big time.’ He rants away as I sit waiting for my pint.

  ‘Can I not just drink me pint, Pat? Can you not even let me do that, in a bit of bleedin’ peace, like?’

  ‘Listen, you little fuck, I don’t even have to serve you,’ he says, tapping at his Management Reserves the Right sign taking pride of place beside his triple-X barmaids postcards. ‘Not to mention you’re underage, to fucking boot. Tell her if she’s not back by the end of next week, she can fuck off with herself. I’ve a load of young ones only dying to work here, bleedin’ begging me so they are, you should see the pile of CVs I have back at the gaff,’ he says, tapping the bar with his beer mat.

  This is why I hate the middle seat. You always get landed in the chats with fucking Pat.

  ‘Ah for fuck’s sake, he’s at it again,’ Pat says, and he’s out from behind the bar and over to Ned, stuck in the door of the jacks with his chair.

  ‘This isn’t accessible, Pat, I should have the safety officer out to ya,’ Ned says, repeatedly bashing his chair off the frame of the door.

  ‘Ned, you’re not even a bleedin’ cripple, would ya just get out of the chair and into the jacks and we’ll say no more a-fucking-about it.’

  ‘It’s discrimination, that’s what it is. Bleedin’ discrimination,’ says Ned, still trying to jam his way in, bits of the frame starting to splinter in jagged edges around him. He’d want to watch it or he’d get a splinter in the mick. No laughing matter, that.

  ‘You’re going to have to carry me in, Pat,’ Ned says, stretching out his two arms, half lifting himself out of the chair.

  ‘Carry you in, get the fuck,’ says Pat, who starts trying to dump Ned out of the chair, Ned hanging on for dear life, his heels dug in in front of him, keeping him grounded.

  I reach behind the bar, grab my pint, and top it with a flick of the pump in front of me. I rub my thumb down the length of the glass and take a long sip. Only one pint, mind you, enough to dull but not take control.

  The snug is filling up now. Dessie lording it over the lot of them. He has them all eating out of the palm of his hand, not daring to knock the hand that feeds them.

  It’s hard to separate the memories from the capabilities of the man that is Dessie ‘The Badger’ Murphy. Myself and Finn used to love when Dessie would call. A big bag of jelly babies and a packet of Kimberley flung onto the table in front of us.

  ‘Get that into ya, Jacinta,’ he’d say, laughing, tearing open the packet and firing biscuits at you, one after the other. He never brought his kids, though, or we never went to his. Him always on his own, to our flat, and he’d give us a fiver after a while, to get us the fuck out, to let him and Da have the chats. Here he is in the snug, still having the chats with the right sort of lads.

  They’ve tried to take him down, the Guards that is. They have even planted some of their own, trying to win the glory and the fa
me and the promotions that bringing down The Badger, head of the infamous Townies gang, would inevitably bring. But he has a knack for sniffing them out. Sniffing out anyone who doesn’t belong, who doesn’t know what side their bread is buttered. And he always lets them know it, slowly but surely. Always fucking slowly.

  Dessie likes to think that he got his nickname from his fearless but vicious tendencies. But the head on him, all jet black set with a shock of white, speaks the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It’s that simple.

  I sit drinking my pint and let it warm me, fill me, hoping that the dullness will start soon, wishing I could just sit here and down pint after pint and let everything wash over me. Like Ma. Pass out to a blackness that holds no memory.

  I spy Carthy now, and the grip on my pint tightens. He’s mooching around the edge of the snug, trying to get a foothold. He’s just hovering though, not in, not out. Slyly clinging to the edge. You can’t just join the Townies, no matter how much you want in. You are invited, head-hunted, initiated. You need to have a fucking purpose. And each purpose is unique. No double-jobbing here. Only Townies get a seat at the snug table. Carthy is nowhere near that table, but Murphy is letting him lurk, and there is something in that.

  He’s there now, scratching his chest, takes out a small black phone from inside his jacket, not the obvious one protruding from the back pocket of his jeans. Looks around, and fires a quick text and zips it back in. Quickly.

  A whoosh of warm air hits my back as Sabine enters.

  ‘For paying customers only,’ Pat says, his determined hands still pushing and pulling out of Ned’s chair.

  ‘Ah I love you too, Pat,’ Sabine calls back, pulling up a stool beside me.

  ‘Look, Sabine, I’m sorry, yeah?’ I say.

  ‘Forget it,’ she says. ‘Let’s just forget it, yeah?’

  That suits me. She reaches over and grabs my pint, downing the rest of it. I leave her to it. I look out the fire escape, and Carthy is in the middle of the lads now, having left the snug, and he’s in a jock, off his head, laughing and joking and pulling at the tip of his mickey, and Murphy is looking on. Silently.