by Donal Ryan
And besides saying he was a great patient, which was not a thing you could go around boasting about because as far as he could see being a patient only involved lying down, she had paid him four compliments. He remembered her exact words and the way her voice sounded as she said them. They were the only compliments he had ever gotten from a girl who was not either related to him, in the ICA or Mrs Unthank. The first was about a week after he was brought in, when he was still very woozy and they were pumping him with stuff to stop pain. He distinctly remembered her saying he had lovely long eyelashes, just after Doctor Frostyballs had done his daily check and she was gently replacing his bandages. Then not long after that she was helping him to sit up and she was making a meal of it and he was starting to feel embarrassed when she said Oh you’re a big lad, and he’d thought she meant he was fat. Then she stood away a bit and he got the feeling she was looking at him. He felt his face burning and that’s when she delivered her second compliment: she said he was very well built. Very well built. Now! And she’d know, too, being in a line of work where she’d get to see an assortment of bodies and body parts. The third compliment had come just a few days ago, the day after his bandages had been removed. She had said You know you have the loveliest blue eyes. The loveliest blue eyes. Imagine that.
So, according to her, he was a grand, well-built chap with the loveliest blue eyes and grand long eyelashes. It was all old talk, of course; he wasn’t going to be cock of the walk around the place thinking he was a fine thing or anything. Still, though, she didn’t sound like she was only saying these things for the want of something to be saying. The fourth compliment was the best of all; it had a proper ring of truth about it, like it was something that made her feel a bit sad to say it, somehow, but she had to say it, but she couldn’t be saying it too loud because it was maybe more than a nurse should be saying to a patient. She was in around, tightening things up about the place and she stopped all of a shot and turned and looked straight at him and he looked away too quickly for her not to know that he’d been watching her progress around the room like an old dog would look at a joint of beef that had just been taken from the oven and she said You’re really sweet. Do you know that?
That was one of the big drawbacks with a girl saying nice things to you: you felt you kind of had to respond in some way. What could you say, though? Thanks? That would sound like you knew this good thing about yourself already and fully accepted the fact. That would make you a bighead. You couldn’t be refusing the compliment either as then it could seem as though you were fishing for further compliments by making the other person argue with you. You could try being cool and nod and kind of let on you didn’t care what they thought but that would most likely just look plain ignorant. Best thing was just to go red and mumble, which really was the only response he was capable of, anyway. Going red and mumbling, all things considered, was the perfect way to react when someone said something nice about you.
BY THE TIME Johnsey’s fever broke Mumbly Dave was on his feet regularly and mooching about and tormenting poor souls up and down the ward. Siobhán arrived in one day, just after Dave headed off to see who could he inflict himself on. I’ll just have a look at you, love, and see are you all ready for road. Road meant home. Home meant back to nothing, no company but his own thoughts and they’d start to turn on him again before long. No more Siobhán of the Lovely Voice. No more Mumbly Dave, who was the best friend Johnsey had ever had if he was to be brutal honest with himself. He was unnatural annoying, that man, but yet Johnsey couldn’t imagine his own bedroom at home, with only a blank wall to his left and no little fat baldy fella spouting shite non-stop.
Siobhán had her hand on his mickey. She was looking over his head and up towards where Our Lady was perched on a little shelf, surveying the room and all in it. Johnsey could see a bit of the strap of her bra where her nurse’s shirt had shifted slightly on her shoulder. It was black, and there were little lacy bits along the length of it. The bit of flesh that he could see yielding slightly under the bra strap’s pressure was lovely and brown and freckled. Had she been sunbathing, he wondered? Girls loved that old craic by all accounts. It wouldn’t stand to you in the long run, though, according to a wan on telly. You’d end up with a melon omagh. The sun was a sight for bringing out freckles. Those freckles were beautiful beyond any words Johnsey knew. She wasn’t saying anything. Then her eyes came down from the statue’s height and met his own.
Hmm, she went. Or Mmm, the way a woman in a film might if she tasted something lovely like a chocolate, or if a big muscley lad was kissing her neck trying to get off with her. Imagine, a girl was holding his lad and saying Mmm! This was one to file away for future reference. You could nearly fool yourself into thinking there was a purpose beyond the medicinal to her explorations.
She still wasn’t saying anything and had made no attempt to move back his sheet to have a look underneath at his ravaged tackle. Probably these trained nurses could tell all by touch alone. An old John Thomas like his was all in a day’s work, like a lump of rump to a butcher or a concrete block to a builder. Any second now she’d say all was well with his private parts, sorry again about that old infection, you’re good to go, good luck, go on, there’s more need this bed. But instead her hand moved up slightly along his lad and the little fella started to throw a few shapes. He felt his cheeks burn with shame. She’d think him a pervert. She’d let on not to notice his hardening but she’d rush off and scrub her hand and tell the other nurses what a dirty yoke he was and they’d all be wide-eyed and horrified and then they’d all look at one another and cover their mouths and break down and roar laughing at him. Why wasn’t she wearing a glove, anyway? Her cold hand moved down again and his skin was pulled back a little. Things were getting out of hand in her hand, but she didn’t seem to notice; she was just looking at him but there was nothing in her blue eyes or on her lips to say what she was thinking. She seemed to be concentrating hard on something that was in her mind.
Suddenly she asked How does that feel? Her voice gave him a shock. He gasped out a Fine. Good, she said and stayed looking distant and thoughtful. He tried his damnedest to tear his eyes from that black bra strap. He feared he’d relapse into blindness from the effort. Was she wearing black knickers as well? The thought was out of the traps and running at full tilt towards his crotch before he could stop it and she seemed to sense this; she squeezed a little bit and her hand began to move up and down in an easy rhythm. The sheet across her forearm rose and fell no more than ten times before oh stars above oh mother of all that’s holy oh oh oh, his eyes squeezed themselves closed and his heels dug into the mattress and his hands gripped two fistfuls of sheet as the hot, sticky fluid pumped and jumped and rushed in a flooding river out of him all over her hand and the bed and his leg.
July
NO SCHOOL in July. You could give every day knocking about the farm with Daddy. Or if he was right busy or had to go off laying blocks, you could stay in the kitchen and Mother would allow you sit up on the worktop and watch her baking, or you could walk over across the river field and see could you spot a rabbit or a hedgehog along by the ditches or maybe even a diving kingfisher. The sun didn’t always split the stones, but even if it rained it was never cold and the earth would steam after it and you could even swim while it rained and you could kind of know then how the wild animals felt, being free.
Daddy would bring Johnsey to the Munster final, and Paddy Rourke would go with them as a rule. If it was on in Cork, they’d stop at the hotel in Mitchelstown on the way down for their breakfast. They always did a beautiful fry in that hotel. One time Daddy was going mad looking for more toast, but the little waitress must have gone off on her break or something, so Daddy bowled into the kitchen to make his own toast to hell and Johnsey was scared in case he got into trouble and Paddy shook his head and said Daddy was a madman and a few minutes later he came running back out with a big plate of toast and a load more rashers and a big fat wan behind him waving a wooden spoo
n mar dhea she was awful cross with him, but she was laughing and Paddy and Johnsey roared laughing too and there were a few more there in Tipp jerseys and they all cheered and it was a pure howl.
The Pecker Dunne would always be busking below outside the stadium with a big pile of wild-looking children and Daddy was mad about him and he’d always put money in their box and salute the Pecker and the Pecker would salute him back and it wasn’t everyone got a salute off of the legendary Pecker Dunne and Johnsey would be pure proud. If they beat Cork in the Munster final, Daddy would be as high as a kite on the way home. He’d shout Woo-hoo boys, we have Cork bet and the hay saved. Now we have a proper summer!
It’s easy be happy in July.
YOU COULD nearly call him a man of the world now. He kind of knew what it was like to have a pal to talk to. Only kind of, because he had never returned Dave’s warmth and they had never really had conversations; it was more a case of Dave never shutting up talking and Johnsey being forced to listen to him all day and into the night. Johnsey was a captive audience Daddy would have said. He couldn’t help finding the bollix funny at times, though. And he did seem worried about Johnsey the time of the infection and the hot fever. Maybe if Dave hadn’t been so smart and forward with Siobhán Johnsey would have given him more hop.
He knew now what it was like to be in love. One-way, hopeless love, he knew, but still love. They’d had a stand-in teacher one time inside in the Tech, a little blonde lady straight from university. She was a fine thing all the townie boys said, and they gave many a break time over to discussions of her body and how she was definitely gagging for it and how you could definitely see her nipples pointing out through her blouse and her bra and that was a sure sign she was mad for riding. Johnsey admired their brave talk, but secretly he preferred her pale-green eyes to any other part of her and the soft sound of her voice. She read out this poem in class one time. Johnsey never forgot what it was called: The Dong With The Luminous Nose. It was about a woeful ugly creature called The Dong who was head over heels in love with a beautiful woman who could never return his love. His love for her was un-re-quit-ed. Miss had written the word on the blackboard and underlined it twice and Johnsey had not forgotten the spelling nor its meaning. Unrequited. Not returned, not given back.
The whole class stayed quiet for that whole long poem and afterwards, instead of guffaws and smart comments, there was only a strange sort of silence, like some kind of desperate sickness had befallen lads who only a few minutes previously had been full of the joys of spring. He was one of the thickest lads in that class, but even Johnsey knew what she was at, that little blonde lady from the university, that shining angel among all the dirty devils: she was telling them all they were only a shower of lovesick dongs and she knew full well they talked about her fanny and how she was panting for sex but she also knew each one of them was some way in love with her and they could sail away in their little boats and drown themselves in a sea of longing for all she cared; she’d never return their stupid, sweaty love. It was unrequited.
And he knew now what it was like to have somebody besides himself or that doctor that checks small boys’ balls put their hand on him. There surely wasn’t too much more a man could need to experience to consider himself worldly. The townie boys used to boast regularly about having gotten handjobs off of girls from the convent at lunchtime below in the castle demesne. Whenever a lad came in with this news it would cause a great stir. Some would be wide-eyed and want every detail, more would look sulky and roll their eyes and tell the boaster to go way out of that, he was bullshitting. One day a lad from Pearse Park arrived back from lunch claiming to have had the lad nearly tore off him by a wan from the convent and all were goggle-eyed at his story about how she had grabbed it near the top and yanked down and he roared out of him and she was awful put out over the aspersions he cast over her abilities and vowed not to leave him near her any more. The place was in stitches and the fella with the injured mickey was cock of the walk for days after, with fellas wanting to know how was his langer.
Dwyer had told him long ago that if you sat on your hand for long enough the blood would stop flowing through it and it would go pure dead. If you could manage to close the fingers of that dead hand around your mickey it would feel for all the world like someone else was touching you. Johnsey had tried it, but no matter how long he sat on his hand, it never went dead enough so that he was able to fool himself. Dwyer used to have a great imagination, though. Maybe he could convince himself more easily. How’s ever, he was one up on Dwyer now, that was for sure.
UNCLE FRANK drove him home from the hospital. It was the fourth of July. That’s Independence Day for the Yanks. They goes mad beyond on this day, by all accounts, celebrating their routing of the dirty English. How come the Irish didn’t do that? Didn’t we beat the fuckers out as well? Bruce Springsteen had a great song about being born on this day. Frank threw an odd eye over at Johnsey’s bag. You haven’t much stuff, he said. Johnsey told him he only had the few bits the Unthanks had collected from the house and brought to the hospital. You’ll be a while adjusting now to being on your own. Would you not stay with us a while? Teasie would love it.
Teasie. It nearly made her sound kind. She would in her hole love it, Johnsey felt like saying, but she would love to be telling all the biddies in the ICA and above at Mass how she was killed looking after the imbecile nephew and they’d tell her she was a saint and when her time came the gates would swing wide for her for she’d have her penance well and truly done and she’d be left stroll straight in past smiling Saint Peter to sit at Our Lord’s table.
The Unthanks were waiting in the yard for him. Johnsey could nearly feel the wave of relief breaking over Frank and splashing about the car. Good luck now and mind yourself. Grand, thanks, Frank. He fairly high-tailed it out of there. Poor old Frank, his life was made up of doing one thing after another that he didn’t want to do. He probably would have loved to hear Johnsey’s story about lovely Siobhán the sexy angel nurse and the black bra strap and the way she smiled after he exploded all over the place and gave two wipes and all the stickiness was magically gone and then leaned over and kissed him on the lips for a second and winked like a wan that would be on the telly late at night trying to make you ring a dirty phone line and sure a fella could hardly really still consider himself a virgin after all that had happened. And even still it probably wasn’t enough of an affront to the Church to warrant his feeling guilty if he was to meet Father Cotter. There was no rule, as far as he knew, about handjobs before marriage.
See you soon, she had said, and he had not seen her again. How soon, he wondered? As soon as hell freezes over, you great ape. You big auld dong with a luminous nose. Don’t be codding yourself.
AFTER HE HAD a fine lunch ate of juicy chops and floury potatoes and the Unthanks had finished fussing and were gone away, the warmth he’d had in his belly ever since the handjob and the kiss and the big manly hug he’d gotten off Mumbly Dave before he left and the promise to see him soon from Siobhán and the promise of going for a few pints at the weekend with Dave started to cool and fade away, like a dream that you really try to remember, but it just breaks up and floats off out of your mind and you can try to snatch it back but it’s like trying to grab a hold of thin air. It probably wasn’t real, any of it. Siobhán probably did what she did out of pure sympathy: she knew he had no hope of ever getting a woman to touch him. Nurses cared about people as a rule; she probably said Feck it, he’s had a horn since he first clapped eyes on me, he’s no trouble, really, the poor God-help-us, he didn’t whinge about the infected mickey, I’ll do him a turn to hell. For all Johnsey knew it was standard practice for nurses to relieve male patients in that way, just as they helped you empty your bladder and your bowel. Although surely to God Mumbly Dave would have loudly forecasted such pleasures. And that Mumbly Dave was a plámáser of the highest order; he probably invited everyone he met to go for a few pints. Anyway, he’d go through you, the auld talk out of
him and the way he’d smirk behind Siobhán’s back and make dirty gestures and then he’d be all auld froth to her face and you’d love to slap the puss off of him.
He was starting to feel the pain in his body that the doctor had warned him about, behind his eyes and down the side of his face and in his ribs and down along his freed-up, knitted-together arm. He said he wouldn’t give him a prescription for any painkillers but Johnsey was to go to a chemist and get himself something the name of which he couldn’t remember but it was written down on a bit of paper and anyway it was probably going to be a damp squib after the stuff they pumped into him at the hospital because anyone could walk in off the street and buy it without a prescription from a doctor. There was nothing on the telly only your man of the Kyles roaring at English bowsies about using condoms and that big black American lady that makes all the bigshot white women cry. The telly during the day would often depress you more than entertain you.
He thought about Packie Collins with his sour auld puss and wondered how was the little foreign lad getting on below with him. He was still a small bit shocked at how he had been able to tell Packie where to go. That’s one thing you can say for having great violence done to you – it gives you a bit of toughness. To hell with Packie Collins and his rolling eyes and angry auld jowls, he could make little of the little foreign lad now instead and see whether he’d take it as quietly. That box of papers upstairs would surely realize enough for a man to live in comfort while he thought about things a bit more and tried to see would he sooner stay or go. Anyway, wasn’t he a millionaire on paper as people kept telling him? What reception would he get in the next life, he wondered, if he entered it landless? Would Granddad and Daddy and the great-uncles and beautiful Uncle Michael be above waiting, wanting to know what sort of a blackguard was he? Would Mother even bother with him? Lord save us and guard us, it’s a solid fright knowing nothing, not even how to feel.