The Thing About December

by Donal Ryan

  Mumbly Dave said horse her off a text there so as they drove home. Johnsey asked him what should he say? Mumbly Dave said Jaysus boy, will I have to ride her for you as well? After he said that, Johnsey wouldn’t please the prick and resolved to make his own text without any help. You had to scroll through the menu to figure out all the yokes but he didn’t ask Mumbly Dave for his advice and he didn’t make a bad fist of it all the same now and for a finish he said: Hello Siobhan this is Johnsey Cunliffe sorry I missed you please call again.

  Mumbly Dave asked what was he after sending her? Had he the number in right? Johnsey wondered how Mumbly Dave was all of a sudden so browned off with him. It was he was making the smart comments and making little of Johnsey and yet here he was nearly shouting now about the blessed text and he was looking over at Johnsey and reaching to grab the phone off of him and the car was roaring for the want of a change of gear and he wasn’t being too careful about staying inside the white line the way you have to be because Daddy always said to Mother when she was driving if you put your wheels out over the line, some day you’ll go around a bend and there’ll be as big a fool as you coming against you and BANG! Two dead fools. And no knowing how many crathurs of innocent passengers taken with them, all out of foolishness. And Mother would roar at him to shut his face but still and all she’d pull back towards the ditch to quieten him.

  When Johnsey called out the text he’d typed, Mumbly Dave said hoo hoo hoo, that was the gayest thing he’d ever heard! Please call again? You’re some tulip, boy! This is Johnsey Cunliffe! Mother. Of. Jaysus. You’re some stones. You’re … And the car shook as the wheels on Johnsey’s side took too much of the soft verge and Mumbly Dave cursed and his hands moved fast on the wheel and when he got it straightened he said Ha ha! That shook you, boy! As much as to say he’d been doing the jackass on purpose, his bad driving only a stunt to put the wind up Johnsey. But there was a lot of colour gone from his face for a fella that was only playing the fool.

  He must have copped on then that Johnsey was like a dog with him for making a laugh of his text to Siobhán and was wishing to God he could reach in to the sky and pull it back and send something else cool and smart and funny and imagine it was out there now, bouncing off of a satellite and back down to earth and into Siobhán’s phone with the pink case around it and the blue love heart on it and wasn’t it an awful dangerous thing, a text message, because once you pressed that little send button, that was it. Like pulling a trigger of a shotgun and sending a pellet into a little rabbit’s brain as he sniffed the sweet spring air. You couldn’t undo it. You couldn’t ever take it back. Mumbly Dave said Don’t worry, boy, don’t worry, and drove straight and not too fast the rest of the road home.

  IT WAS ALL THE ONE for a finish. Siobhán had no interest in big long text messages. She just said: OK no prob Ill call l8r after wrk. And that was it then, she would text that she was going to call and he would just reply ok, and she would arrive about six or half-six and one day she sent a text to say: On way starving, and he panicked and rang Mumbly Dave and asked what would he do and Mumbly Dave said he didn’t know in the hell and he asked what had he in the fridge and Johnsey said sausages and rashers and puddings and he said make her a fry so I suppose and when Siobhán arrived she wanted to know did he really think she’d want to eat a plate of burnt, dead pig? And she laughed and told him eat it himself but it was quare hard to chew and swallow when your mouth was dry and your stomach was sick with embarrassment and she ate a sandwich made out of brown bread with cheese and sliced apple! Imagine that, a sandwich with apple in it! And after that if she said she’d be calling he’d have a bit to eat ready for her, like a sandwich made of brown bread and lettuce and low-fat cheese and a Diet Coke and an apple maybe (but not in the sandwich) because that’s the kind of stuff women love eating, apparently.

  Mumbly Dave took to going away before Siobhán arrived. If she sent a text message, he’d ask Johnsey what did it say and Johnsey would say she’s calling in later and Mumbly Dave would nod his head and say nothing and then he’d say he had to go away, anyway, he was meeting a few of the lads in the village for a pint but Johnsey knew he was going to go home to watch Home and Away on his own and then probably Emmerdale and Coronation Street, maybe, with his mother because she was sometimes home by half-seven.

  He was quieter these last few days since Siobhán started calling. He didn’t ask Johnsey too much about what they did when she called. Johnsey thought that was strange, but in a way he was glad: how would he have told Mumbly Dave that he just sat there like a tool trying not to leave his eyes wander down her chest or up her leg, trying not to think about what happened in the hospital, listening to her giving out yards about auld Dinny Shanley trying to feel her arse all day and his wife dribbling all over herself inside in the bed? But still, all the same, wasn’t it a fright that he couldn’t have Mumbly Dave and Siobhán without having to feel guilty about Mumbly Dave feeling left out and then feeling resentful if he included himself and being scared in case Siobhán expected him to do or say something meaningful or what have you and was it an awful bad thing if he wished sometimes he could go back to walking down the Callows with Mumbly Dave and talking comfortable auld nonsense about nothing? It was grand having Siobhán calling up alright, but did one thing you had have to be a bit ruined by getting another thing? Is that how life balanced itself out?

  How was he ever going to know what Siobhán wanted, anyway? She could talk away for hours and you’d still know nothing. Was it just the way he was on the road out to the Shanleys and it was handy for her to stop in to avoid going home too early to her mother who was a right sour-faced old trout of a wan by all accounts, forever giving out yards to Siobhán about being nowhere in life and her sisters were all married and settled down with lovely fellas, and if only Mammy knew the half of it, one of them was a rampant alcoholic and another was having an affair and her smarty-hole brother Peadair whose arse the sun shone out of was after failing all his exams above in UCD and Mammy after telling every auld witch in the parish that he was going to be the Attorney Fucking General! Or was Mumbly Dave right about her being one of them wans that goes mad for fellas with farms of land? What was so wrong about that, anyway? That hardly made her like the little fat lady with the short top or the dead-eyed girl in the shiny tracksuit, did it?

  November

  HALLOWEEN OPENED the gate to All Souls and then sure the next big push after that was Christmas. November would drag and you had to try not to think about Christmas or you’d go mad waiting for the time to pass. Wasn’t Santy a great man all the same? He’d be flat out in November, so he would, making presents. They put up the decorations inside in town earlier and earlier every year. That’s to try and drive people into buying stuff, Mother used to say. Imagine, All Souls just past, and feckin auld decorations up around the place. They should be banned from mentioning Christmas until halfway through December!

  Some people offered up a sacrifice for the Faithful Departed in November. Mother said that was only auld shaping – them that went around spouting about giving up drink for the month were the same ones that would fill their auld faces and drink themselves stupid non-stop all December. Letting on to be holy. All they were doing was sparing up the money they’d piss away at Christmas.

  THERE WAS another story in the newspaper about Johnsey in November. This time it was one of them papers that has pictures of women in only their knickers. He remembered once when he was a small boy, Mother caught him staring at one of them pictures with his mouth hanging open and she snatched the paper off of the table and rolled it up and went across to where Daddy was watching a match on the telly and she leathered him across the head with it and he got an awful drop because she had snuck up on him and she roared at him that she’d told him before about bringing that filth into the house and the child’s mind would be poisoned. Johnsey burned with shame for being poisoned and getting Daddy into trouble and he worried that the poison from the picture had gotten into his mick
ey because it was trying to jump out of his underpants but he was afraid to ask Mother about it, the mood she was in.

  This time, the newspaper only had a small picture of Johnsey, and it was the same one as last time – the one the posh lad’s pal had taken of him real sneaky the time in the yard. But there was a big huge picture of Eugene Penrose, with a bandaged stump where his leg used be and he as white as a ghost, with a framed photograph in his hand of himself in his hurling togs from when he played under-sixteens before they gave him the road for being a bowsie. And above Eugene’s photo, the big words said: LAND WARS.

  And below them words, beside and below the picture of Eugene and his stump and his photograph were a load of words about Johnsey again and how ‘the man who shot and almost killed Mr Penrose and later overdosed on prescription medication was closely linked with landowner John “Johnsey” Cunliffe, who has come to national attention in recent weeks as a key figure in a massive land deal, reportedly demanding a twenty-million fixed reserve for a parcel of land central to local redevelopment’, and Mumbly Dave said Yerra you’re nearly as well off not bother reading it, and Siobhán said No, David, let him read it, he’s not a baby, you can’t be trying to protect him from the world, and Mumbly Dave said he wasn’t, he was only trying to tell him that that sort of auld rubbish isn’t worth reading and Siobhán tutted at Mumbly Dave and rolled her eyes and Johnsey saw her making faces across the room and Mumbly Dave was bright red and Johnsey wished he’d just start saying funny things again like the last time.

  Eugene told the newspaper how everyone in his home parish blamed him for beating up Cunliffe even though he was never charged with that crime as there was no evidence against him and there was rakes of townies out around here now that had plenty of form for that sort of thing and Paddy Rourke had threatened him in the churchyard that he’d get his comeuppance and he had witnesses that would back that up, but he hadn’t reported it at the time because he had great sympathy with the elderly on account of his own grandfather was old and infirm as well and he had had an awful dose of a childhood, with his father running off and his mother turning to the drink to console herself and he having been left to fend for himself. Mumbly Dave said auld Pissypants Patsy Penrose hadn’t far to run, he was tapping Bridie Fitz below in the Munster pub when he wasn’t inside in the bookies! But Siobhán shushed him before he could get going and he threw her an awful dirty look.

  Eugene told how Johnsey had always acted like he was better than everyone on account he came from land and most other lads in their class were the sons of labourers and honest tradesmen and he always kept himself separate and signs on he was looking for all them millions to allow the development to go ahead, wasn’t he convinced he had a divine right to be elevated above his fellow man? He wasn’t saying John Cunliffe was behind his shooting, but he had an awful hold over people – there was plenty in the village at his beck and call, and since his parents had died, God rest them, he had lost the run of himself altogether. He was seldom seen in public but when he was, he’d walk over you. Whoever beat him up that time was probably at the end of their tether. Sometimes the have-nots lash out against the haves. That was a sad fact of life, brave Eugene said.

  MUMBLY DAVE said Lookit, it could be worse – at least they’re not making out you’re a faggotyarse or a kiddyfiddler! Siobhán said Oh for God’s sake, Dave, and rolled her eyes, but she was smiling as well, and they reminded Johnsey of Mother and Daddy when Mother used be trying to be cross with Daddy but she wouldn’t be able. Why couldn’t they all live there in the house together, and Johnsey could leave Mumbly Dave off with the big idea he was always talking about with the barn abroad and all the apartments you could put into it and the knobs from the city goes mad for them, we could call it The Barnyard or Cunliffe Manor or some shaggin thing and there’d be a rake of little Polish wans too, mad looking for Irish fellas, woo hoo boy we’d be right!

  There was a big pile of money in the Credit Union and more in the bank; Aunty Theresa had straightened all that out for him and maybe she wasn’t as bad of an auld boiler as she made herself out to be. Couldn’t he at least sell a few sites and feck it to hell it wouldn’t kill him to throw a few quid to Small Frank and Susan if that’s what Aunty Theresa wanted and maybe he was being a rotten yoke, depriving all them people of work and money and opportunity and maybe then the Unthanks could stop feeling like they had to explain themselves but they weren’t able and things would be easy and comfortable and lovely again in their warm kitchen with the smell of baking bread.

  Isn’t it a fright that Daddy or Mother couldn’t have told him what he was to do after they died, before they died? Would Mother go mad with him if he had a woman living in the house? Would she think Mumbly Dave was very common and not a suitable pal? Would Daddy think he was an awful useless meely-mawly if he could make no fist of life at all? Would he be proud if Johnsey could tell the McDermotts to shove their lease and take back the land and tell the auctioneers and the consortium and the newspaper crowd to shove it all up their holes and let them all go and shite and if he married Siobhán and had a big dairy herd and a rake of children and while he was thinking all this an awful commotion had started abroad in the yard and when he looked out there was a wild-looking fella with black hair sticking up out of his head in tufts like a wet dog and he had a hurley and Mumbly Dave was standing in front of him pointing at his chest and Siobhán was saying Who the fuck is that?

  IT WAS Eugene Penrose’s father. When Johnsey came out the door, he had leapt forward and swung a hurley and Mumbly Dave had ducked and grabbed him under the arms and he was roaring and screaming that Johnsey was going to go down for what he’d had done to his youngf’la and Johnsey never saw the other fella coming from the haggard wall who lamped him into the side of the head and as he hit the ground he saw the edges of Daddy’s track and he thought to himself Mumbly Dave is going to catch that with his shoe now any second and all you could see was Mumbly Dave’s arse and your man’s boiling-red head like a twisted-around four-legged monster-man, roaring blue murder and swinging a hurley and Siobhán was screaming Get away from him and he realized someone was throwing kicks at him and when he looked up there was another monster, with two heads and two spare legs wrapped around its middle and one head had long blonde hair and it was biting the cheek off the other head with the black hair and it had drawn blood and the bitten head roared and the Unthanks’ Bluebird swung in the gate and the squad behind them and the sudden storm stopped.

  SIOBHÁN HAD blood on her teeth. She was saying oh for God’s sake, her nails were all broken! The guards had Patsy Penrose and Junior Penrose in the back of the squad. The Unthanks were standing in the yard, looking unsure of themselves. They’d seen Patsy and Junior heading off towards the Dark Road and they’d heard Patsy cursing Johnsey and knew well they were out to cause ructions and told Jim Gildea straight away. Jim wanted to know did they need an ambulance? Siobhán said it was grand, she was a nurse, she’d look after them, and sure no one was really injured. Mumbly Dave said Ambulance me hole, it’s the fuckin army we need now, before some madman kills Johnsey, how’s it ye can’t arrest them cunts that writes lies in the newspapers about him, surely there’s some law to say you can’t blacken a man like that? The young garda who was with Jim told Mumbly Dave calm down but that only made him worse, and when he called the young garda a jumped-up little bollix, the garda pointed into his face and said Once more now, boy, and Mumbly Dave said And what? And what? And what? And luckily Jim Gildea came straight over and whatever else about Jim, Himself said afterwards, he was a long time at it and he knew how to douse a flame; he took the young lad away from Mumbly Dave and the Unthanks got Mumbly Dave to go inside and when they got in, Mumbly Dave turned on the Unthanks and called them a pair of fuckin Judases and asked why didn’t they shag off back to their bigshot pals besides creeping around up here trying to brainwash Johnsey and Herself started to cry and so did Himself and Johnsey thought his heart would break in two.

  THA
T’S A FINISH now to setting foot outside the gate any more. A man is only safe inside in himself. There’s nothing people won’t do or say when they think right is on their side. Who decides what’s right? Is Mumbly Dave more right than the Unthanks because they had money given to Herbert Grogan and the developers and he hadn’t? They could have had that done but years, before anyone had a notion what land would be rezoned. The clean truth unspoken became a lie, the way whatever unnoticed thing was inside in Daddy went bad and grew into a tumour that spread around his body and killed him. Maybe Mumbly Dave would have gave money towards this big plan too if he’d had a penny besides what you get for not working on account of your back being shagged or falling off of ladders and a nixer here and there and borrowing money off of the Credit Union below against this big payout that’s meant to be coming from Timmy Shake Hands’s insurance. That’s a finish to it now, he wouldn’t show his face any more and they could call him every kind of a blackguard all they wanted in words fancy or plain and God would have to get over him not going to Mass and the Unthanks could take their sorry eyes and their silence that was no longer easy but loaded up with the threat of apologies and excuses and leave him to his house and the odd walk down the river field to the Callows and if the world wanted him for something they could come and ask politely and he’d tell the world politely to go way and have a shite.