by Donal Ryan
His bedroom was the best place to think about things. Too much thinking could balls you up rightly. Your mind could start acting like a video player, showing you your own thickness. It was worst when he’d had to talk to people, like one of the auld biddies quizzing him on the way home or in the bakery about Mother or someone stopping him on the street to know how was he and how was his Aunty Theresa and was Small Frank finished his auld exams and he’d stand there and feel his cheeks burning off of him and he’d do his damnedest to try and answer properly and sound like a normal fella but words could make an awful fool of you. What use was talking, anyway? What was ever achieved with words?
Johnsey often thought about girls in his room. He had a dirty magazine that used to belong to Anthony Dwyer, who wasn’t quite the gom Johnsey was, but who had the added hardship of being a meely-mawly with one leg shorter than the other. Looking at Dwyer’s magazine often landed him in a sinful place and the thought of doing that made him feel like he sometimes did before walking up to Communion if the Moran girls were sitting near the front in their short skirts: he could feel his heart hammering and jumping and kicking about the place, for all the world as though it was ready to jump up his throat and out his mouth and slap him in the puss before running off on little fat red legs, leaving a bloody trail behind it, shouting Good luck now, fatarse, sure you don’t need me, anyway! He had a look out the window and across the yard. No stir abroad. Why would there be?
He imagined Dermot McDermott with a lovely girl in a short skirt and she pinned up against that bollix, trapped, and he saying to her Go on, come on will you and trying to have his rotten way with her and she not wanting to and trying to free herself. Then he imagined he, Johnsey, striding up behind Dermot McDermott and he turning around and Johnsey planting him a box, square on the jaw, and the lovely girl crying Thank you, thank you and Johnsey would put his arms around her and she would suddenly decide she wanted after all to do the dirty things Dermot McDermott had wanted her to do, only with Johnsey, and not the curly fucker who was now prostrated in the muck.
JOHNSEY HAD never really spoken to a girl, besides Mother and the aunties and the auld biddies, and they were certainly not real girls like the ones in town or outside Molloy’s smoking fags in what Mother called their bum freezers. A few hellos and goodbyes and grands and yes pleases and thanks very muches to Packie’s daughter and the very odd customer in the co-op who was female; that was it, really.
His parents had talked him into going to a disco once. He didn’t know why they were so mad for him to go. It was for the youth only, and being held in a parish hall fifteen miles away. A bus was going from the village, a twenty-five seater, but some would have to stand. The thoughts of that bus, and a hall with girls in it, and Eugene Penrose and all the cool lads laughing and looking at him as if to say where does he think he’s going, he’s not one of us, and the risk of having to talk or being expected to disco dance; Johnsey didn’t know why Mother and Daddy were doing this to him. Why couldn’t he just stay at home with them, like always, and watch The Late Late Show and drink tea and eat buns or currant cake?
Johnsey was thirteen then, his hair was thick and black and wouldn’t be told which way to lie, his face was red, his hands were too big, his feet often betrayed him, his voice cracked in his throat and escaped from his mouth all high-pitched or too low and his head shook when he was forced to talk, and surely to God this much misery was too much for one boy to have to bear.
Mother had bought him new trousers especially – they would be for good wear as well, they wouldn’t go astray, anyway – and a shirt and a jumper. The jumper was right expensive, and it had a tiny little golfer on it like the ones all the cool lads were wearing. And he had Doc Marten shoes on. Daddy had brought them home for him in a box that said ‘Air Wear’ on it. But the ones he had brought were too small and he had to carry them back into town and get bigger ones, but he didn’t mind, he said it was his own fault – he should have checked.
When he was leaving the house that night for the disco, Mother had brushed his hair back with her hand and kissed him on the forehead and said My little man, off to his first dance. And Daddy drove him down to the village in the jeep, so he felt like a right big man jumping down from the high seat and Daddy winked at him and said Go handy now, leave a few girls for the rest! Johnsey wasn’t sure what Daddy meant but it sounded manly and funny and he laughed along and said Good luck, thanks, Dad – he only just remembered not to say Daddy while there was a chance any of the cool lads could hear. Daddy had given him a whole fiver on the way down, and it was warm in his hand. The bus was paid for and it was two pounds in, so three pounds of the fiver was all his for spending. What was there to buy at discos? Johnsey could not imagine. Surely there’d be Coca-Cola, anyway. In spite of his nerves, he felt a thrill.
He had been hoping Dwyer would be down at the memorial to wait for the bus so he would have a comrade in spastication. He could still hear Daddy’s jeep and smell its fumes when Eugene Penrose sauntered over, flanked by little Mickey Farrell and a lad with fair hair from Fifth Year who was in a fight one day with a fella from the minor team and he drew shocking red blood and won the fight and the fella from the minor team, who was eighteen, started crying and the blood solid spurted from his nose.
What are you doing here? Eugene Penrose’s hair was long, straight down from his fringe and over his ears. He looked like a right dipstick, Daddy would say. An awful-looking yahoo!
Going to the disco, Johnsey had said.
Are you now? Come on so, come over here and stand with us, old Paddy Screwballs is driving the bus so he’ll be ages yet. He’s probably above at home picking cling-ons out of his hole.
Johnsey didn’t know what to do. Eugene Penrose had talked friendly to him before now and it only ever ended badly. Once, it had lasted a full day, the friendliness, but then he had grabbed his schoolbag going past the church gates and hung it off the high railing and when Johnsey had reached up to get it, Eugene Penrose had pulled down his pants and put a big fist of muck in his underpants and mashed it in with a kick and started roaring that Johnsey had shat in his pants and the whole school-bus crowd saw him with muck all over his arse and on the backs of his legs and he was called Shittyarse Cunliffe for nearly a year after it.
But Johnsey followed Eugene Penrose and little Mickey Farrell with his slanty eyes (Mother had asked Daddy one Sunday coming from Mass, Is that little lad of the Farrells a Mongol, and Daddy had laughed and said No, he’s a rat like his father) over to the memorial where all the cool lads were and a few girls acting like they were disgusted with the cool lads but you could tell they weren’t, really, and a couple of nervous-looking spastics standing to the side, like bits of auld watery broccoli beside a plate of steak and chips.
Hey, lads, Penrose declared, pulling him by the arm to present him to the rest, Look at Cunliffe’s jumper – I’d say his mother knit it and glued a golfer on it!
I’d say his father bought it off the tinkers, someone else volunteered. Johnsey could see his fellow spastics were guffawing away with the cool lads, feeling safely ignored for the minute and trying to gain ground while they could.
Hey, Johnsey Cunt-Lick, don’t shit in your pants now, it’s only a small bus!
We’ll put the fucker in the boot!
Someone grabbed the back of his jumper and yanked the label out and roared Penneys!
Johnsey knew his mother hadn’t bought his jumper in Penneys; she’d gone to a right expensive place in the city. He knew because he’d heard her telling Daddy it was an awful price and Daddy said Sure what about it and she said It’s true, what about it. Then he heard a rip and the two buttons on the shoulder of his jumper landed on the ground. He bent down to pick them up but the jumper-grabber behind still had a grip and there was another rip. Now the neck of his jumper felt too loose and it was slipping down over his shoulder and he wondered how would he explain to Mother and Daddy how his new jumper that was an awful price got destroyed.
Paddy Screwballs arrived and Johnsey’s torment, for the moment, was at an end. Surely to God he would be left alone on the bus, with an adult driving it. He sat at the very top, as close to the driver as possible. The other two harmless lads sat across from him. They looked a bit ashamed.
But his sanctuary was soon destroyed: Eugene Penrose landed down beside him, and put a big mar dhea friendly arm around his shoulders, and Johnsey had to shove in for him, and little ratty Mickey Farrell and the fair-haired lad landed in the seats behind him and when they started tormenting him again and trying to pull his jumper off of him, old Paddy Screwballs just turned a bit sideways and said Hey, go handy there, and sort of smiled and Johnsey could see he had only three teeth in the front of his stupid old head and he wheezed and coughed and so did the bus and he rammed it in to gear and drove off.
Someone actually lit a fag towards the back of the bus! Even Eugene Penrose was a small bit surprised. But he wouldn’t be outdone in the badness stakes. He looked for a fag off of the lad smoking and came back with it lit and started to jab it in Johnsey’s face, making him hop the side of his head off the window of the bus every time he flinched. Yerra call a howlt, said Paddy Screwballs, and laughed and coughed. Johnsey could feel the heat of the top of the fag near his skin. He thought of Mother and Daddy asking how he got burned, who did it, and Daddy roaring off in the jeep to Eugene Penrose’s house and tackling Eugene Penrose’s father over it and there being a big fight and Eugene Penrose calling him tell-tale-baby-fucker all day Monday and probably kicking the shite out of him.
Instead of making a hole in Johnsey’s face, though, he made a hole in the new jumper. Right in the front, and the place where he touched the fag to the material actually went a bit on fire for a second and that got a great laugh altogether; there were screeches and whoops of delight and when Johnsey jumped up and was beating himself to put out the little flame his fiver escaped from the pocket of his new corduroy trousers and flew away on him and Eugene Penrose grabbed a hold of it and claimed the money as his own. Someone said Ah give it back to hell, but Eugene Penrose said What are you going to do about it? And that was that.
Johnsey imagined Mother in the shop buying him the new jumper, and probably asking the fella working there was it a cool jumper now and was it the type all the young lads wore, and his heart broke to think of her thinking so much of him and how happy she’d been over him heading off, all kitted out, like a normal fella.
When they finally arrived at the parish hall where the disco was being held, Johnsey slipped away from the queue. One of the other harmless lads asked where was he going. He didn’t answer. He headed for the darkness at the back of the hall where there was a copse of thick-branched trees. He stayed there all night until the disco ended and he heard Paddy Screwballs grinding up the hill. He’d had to retreat further back into the shadows a couple of times because lads came out holding hands with girls and they were kissing each other in among the trees and Johnsey tried to hold his breath and be part of the darkness, because he could imagine if they saw him how the girl would scream and the fella would call him a pervert probably and give him a box.
He heard Bon Jovi singing ‘Living on a Prayer’, his favourite rock song, and everyone singing along with it, and the DJ was turning off the music at the chorus and it was just the boys and girls at the disco singing and they were nearly louder than the music had been. Then he heard the national anthem and after that they all spilled out and onto the bus. He never had to talk to any girls that night, nor never got to drink a Coca-Cola at the bar like a real man. He threw his burned jumper into the dark among the trees. No one looked at him on the way home, they were all roaring up and down the bus about who felt whose arse and who got a shift and one of the other spastics whispered Where were you all night? and he just told him fuck off.
DWYER HAD GIVEN him a loan of the dirty magazine when they were pally, years ago. Johnsey had kept it for way longer than Dwyer had meant him to. For a finish, Dwyer had started to get a bit thick over it, but not too thick. A lad in Dwyer’s position couldn’t afford to be getting too antsy – his heart was in worse shape than his crooked leg by all accounts. He upped and died before Johnsey ever got to give him back his magazine. His heart just stopped beating one night while he was asleep.
His mother and father had been mad about him. Sure why wouldn’t they have been mad about their little crathur, Mother said to Molly Kinsella the day Dwyer died and a few of the ICA biddies had gathered in Johnsey’s mother’s kitchen to pick at the tragedy like crows picking at a flungaway snack box. Molly Kinsella allowed that she supposed, throwing her old hairy eyebrows and her witchy chin towards heaven, as much as to say a lad like that couldn’t be loved the same as a lad that would be fine and tall and handsome, like Dermot McDermott, and out hurling and having young girls huddled in the bit of a stand mooning over him in little giggling bunches.
Johnsey saw Dermot McDermott kicking his own dog once, above near the Height where the McDermotts’ big farm met Daddy’s little one. Johnsey had been up foddering but he had left the tractor in the near field and walked a forkful up. He’d heard shouting, a girl’s voice calling someone a prick, but by the time Johnsey got a view across to the McDermotts’ top field, Dermot McDermott was alone with their old border collie. A collie was a dog that would love you without fail or compromise. Johnsey saw Dermot McDermott deliver a kick to that lovely old bitch’s flank that nearly toppled her and she limped off, crying. He pictured some young lady, after fighting with Dermot McDermott, and she storming off down past their house in a temper, and his people only laughing at her inside in the house as she ran through the yard and he only shaking his head and going on about his business with his big experimental crops that they do be all congratulating him over in the co-op and all questions and telling him he’s great. Was that the way with all men and women now?
Not with Mother and Daddy, they only had harsh words the odd time, and then only over silly things like muck getting dragged in through the house and even then Daddy could placate Mother by making her laugh and Johnsey would laugh too at Daddy’s clowning and letting on not to know anything about the muck and pretending he was calling the guards because surely an intruder must be at large, and it seemed their world was nearly improved because of the fight. And the Unthanks, Himself and Herself as Mother and Daddy always called them, had a quiet way of moving about each other; you knew they were mad about each other just by the way they laughed at the things the other said and listened when the other was talking and called each other love the whole time.
But Johnsey had seen young couples outside Ciss Brien’s and they were certainly not nice to each other. One Friday evening, Johnsey had had to hang back at the pump before the corner because there was roaring and shouting going on just up the road and it made him nervous. A woman was shouting louder than he had ever heard at a fella – Johnsey tried not to listen, but the gist was that they had children and she was going away somewhere and he was meant to be minding the kids and he had promised and here he was drinking every penny he had and that was her money for the hen.
A hen? Johnsey couldn’t imagine this one buying a hen, with jeans that tight and heels that high. As he chanced walking past he saw her face clearly; it had black rivers running down it and your man was a fine fat lad like himself, but with a tattoo of a cross on his neck. Out from the city, like a lot were, rehoused by the County Council. The cross-tattoo lad was smoking his fag away and ignoring the woman in the tight jeans and for a finish she just stood there going You bastard, and when Johnsey walked past trying to be invisible she said What are you looking at, you spastic, in that singsong townie voice.
Johnsey felt aggrieved that she should know this about him. The cross-tattoo lad seemed glad she had a distraction from him. He’s only a retard, he declared. Johnsey picked up his pace. A retard. Ree-tard. Lovely, coming from a big fat lad with a cross drawn on his neck that wouldn’t mind his own children, besides drinking all the money
for the hen. Johnsey wouldn’t do that if he had a wife, even a wild-looking one with jeans stuck to her arse; he’d mind her and his children and bring all his wages home and do silly things to make them all laugh. Thinking of those jeans and the bit of pink frill he could see peeping over the top of them made Johnsey think of the magazine again. And what if one of those who had passed away was watching him and he inside in the jacks, interfering with himself? The dead are all around us, according to Father Cotter. They’re having a right old laugh at me, so.
Johnsey went down to the front room where Mother was watching the news and knitting something with no shape yet, and the big brown clock ticked and tocked the night slowly away. They’d hardly ever used the good room before Daddy died. If they were all watching telly, they’d sit on the long, battered green couch that was hidden away near the back kitchen, out of sight of visitors when not in use. Daddy would drag it into service and position it in front of the hearth, directed in by Mother like he was reversing a trailer in the yard, and Johnsey would sit in the middle between them and they’d look at a film or a comedy and Mother would make tea during one of the ad breaks and bring over tart and cream on a tray and you couldn’t get better than that. But now it was all the good room with Mother. That long, battered couch was covered in boxes and bits and bobs that had no business on a couch. It wouldn’t have been balanced right, anyway, without Daddy. There’d have been too much empty space on it, and that empty space would draw out your sadness like the vacuum cleaner draws out dust from behind the television: you’d have forgotten it was there until you went rooting around for it.