The Gamal

by Ciarán Collins

  —I dunno, I goes.

  —But he must have said something to you Charlie.

  —He just thought like. Same as the music. You needed to try things. To taste the world. We didn’t really know what was in your head.

  —Did you not tell him it was ridiculous Charlie? Taste the world? Did you not tell him it was stupid?

  I didn’t say anything so she asked again so I answered.

  —Yeah.

  There was silence then for a bit and then she goes,

  —It was that scarf. Why did I say my mother stole it and lost it? Why did I say that to him?

  Silence then again for a long time.

  —How did the Rascal get his hands on my scarf Charlie?

  After a while of staring at the water she looked at me. I wondered was there a chance she thought I robbed it? That the Rascal put me up to it. I got sickened in my stomach thinking that she could think that. Could she have? Her brain was in a bad state if she did. It was then I realised that I had no right not to tell her the truth. Only question was when she’d be strong enough to hear it. Dunno if humans ever get strong enough for the like of that. I just stared at the water and let the silence eat my broken thoughts. After a while she spoke again.

  —Surely you told him I couldn’t have cheated on him. I loved him. I loved him so much. It doesn’t matter about tasting the world. He was my whole world. My whole world. All I ever wanted.

  Her voice broke into a cry and we both cried silently and hard for a long time and I never felt so useless. She tried to talk a few times over the next while but she couldn’t. She was just sitting there all hopeless on the gravel beside me and she was wringing her hands with a weird force as if she was trying to rub her own skin off. Her head was down like a bold shamed child the whole time. I was just looking at the river that was all the wetter and unmerciful with the tears in my eyes. It was starting to get dark then and I goes,

  —I heard someone talking Sinéad. Dinky stole the scarf from Roundy’s when you weren’t looking.

  She didn’t say anything, just kept staring out at the water. So I just went on.

  —I heard Dinky telling Teesh. Dinky knew everything. The Rascal told him what he did to you. I was in Snoozie’s one night pretending to be asleep and I heard Dinky talking to Teesh.

  I told her the whole thing. And how I never caught up with James on time to tell him and then he was gone. She just sat there still looking at the sky’s darkness on the river. I was ready to grab her in case she ran into it. But she didn’t. After a bit she just straightened up her back and turned to me and goes,

  —Can we meet again Charlie? Maybe tomorrow evening when you’re finished work.

  —OK. You won’t do harm to yourself tonight sure you won’t? I said.

  —I won’t Charlie, no, she said quietly, already getting up to walk back to the village.

  Next evening I walked up to her house and I could see her in the living room standing looking at me. She’d been waiting and was coming out the front door by the time I’d reached it. She said,

  —Hi Charlie, and she had a kind smile on her face.

  —Hi, I said.

  She walked faster than I was expecting so I’d to speed up a few steps to catch up.

  —Where we going? I said, the river?

  —Yeah. Will we? she goes.

  —Yeah, I said.

  We spoke about lots of stuff. Some of it was private and some of it wasn’t. We were there for hours and hours. I’d told her earlier how I’d kill Dinky, that I didn’t think the gardaí would take care of it right. She wouldn’t let me kill him. You might think it’s only talk but she knew I’d do it if she wanted. I think the world is made up of people who think that the police and judges can be trusted to get fair play. And then other people who don’t think that. I think the only thing wrong with the death penalty is that you’re not allowed to torture them for a bit first. She held my hand for most of what we spoke about. She asked me one time when I was crying, she goes,

  —Would you do anything for me Charlie?

  and she starts crying herself then too, but like kinda smiling too and looking at me nodding, and I was crying mad and I goes,

  —Yeah,

  and she squeezes my hand real tight for a long time and we both crying and then she hugged me and I hugged her. Then later on a lot of what she was talking about was what I could do with my life after. After going away I mean. She said America was probably the place to go cos America was always good to music.

  I’m still having problems talking about the happy memories. You might have realised this yourself at this stage. It’s just that they’ve lost something along the way. Meaning or something. Or reality. They’ve lost realness I think. Those memories. Something happened to the happy memories when the shit happened. They got a spattering of it too. Stench of hurt.

  Pallet of Blocks

  ’Twas around this time I went up to the building site of the new houses where I was doing jobs only to be told that there was no work today. I says will I get paid and the foreman told me to go away and have a good shit for myself. I asked him why there was no work and he says there was an accident now fuck off home out of it.

  I looked up and I seen a garda car and an ambulance up at number three. All the houses had numbers even though most of them weren’t even half built yet. I could hear the foreman inside cancelling a delivery of concrete and then he came out and walked up towards number three where the boss was talking with a couple of gardaí and two other fellas in suits.

  —Are you gone yet? he said.

  —What happened? I said.

  —Go home now Gamal if you know what’s fucking good for you.

  I watched him go but he turned around and walked back towards me. I said I’m going and took a few steps back but he walked back into the portacabin and came back out wearing a shiny yellow hard hat.

  —Where’d ya get the grand new hard hat? I asked him and he walking up towards number three again. No answer.

  So no more building or singing or raping for the Little Rascal. Justice is mine said the Lord. It is in my hole. If there’s a life after this one Rascal better hope he doesn’t end up in the same place that James is or he’ll be wishing he was alive and not after pulling a pallet of blocks down on top of himself and smashing his earthly skull.

  I like to think Sinéad thought it was the ghost of James who knocked those blocks down on top of the Rascal. In a way I suppose it was. We never spoke about it. But the inspectors from the health and safety crowd figured he pulled them down on top of himself. He slipped off the ladder and grabbed a rope but the rope was tying twenty-four blocks together in a nice heap so grabbing the rope only slowed down his fall for a little bit but then his weight pulled the twenty-four blocks down so when he landed on his hole on the ground the blocks rained down on top of him. Nice surprise for him at seven o’clock in the morning.

  Only other thing was that they put the little fucker in a child’s coffin and ’twas the talk of West Cork.

  Nobody

  Nobody had the heart for nothing after James died you know. Nobody. And then life goes back to normal. A match. A wedding. Some accident where a local farmer got his leg taken off by a combine harvester. Someone else got cancer. Someone else’s marriage went on the rocks. Someone won the Lotto. News. That’s the way it happened. That’s how I remember it anyhow. People found their heart again. Misneach isn’t it?

  Moonlight Runner

  In Ballyronan about fifteen years ago a horse called Moonlight Runner won Cheltenham or the Grand National or some big massive horse race that was from Ballyronan or the owner was from Ballyronan I’m not sure which. There was a free bar in Roundy’s and The Snug for two nights running. There was TV cameras and news crews and radio people and the whole lot sure. In our own little Ballyronan. Old Master Higgins was on the six o’clock news on RTE. Roundy was on BBC radio talking from Roundy’s where half of the village were fully legless. The Snug had the other half le
gless over in his own place. The whole village was happy. Even after it sobered up. For a long time. Spring in the step isn’t it? But now the whole village was gone gaunt and sickly. Made the horse racing seem like the village’s childhood memory. Made the happiness seem awful silly.

  Ballyronan was in the news again now and it wished the world never heard of it. Just wanted the old days back and to be left alone. You might think what does a place know? But a place gets to know its people doesn’t it? There’s nothing worse than someone being made to see that their happiness is silly.

  I remember watching my cousins when I was small. I was sitting on the windowsill outside my cousins’ house at a birthday party. I usen’t play with them at all. Just watch them and tell them fuck off if they came near me. But my cousin Séamus anyhow was playing house. He was the same age as me. About nine or ten. So he’s playing house with the other cousins. Three girls and two boys all between about three and seven. Next thing his older brother and cousin who were about twelve came along. They started laughing at Séamus for playing house. Séamus went red and said that he wasn’t really playing house, that he was just minding the younger ones. He left the house made of boxes then and followed his older brother and cousin around the place instead.

  —I was only helping them to make it cos the boxes were too big for them.

  —Oh really? Were you the mammy or the daddy?

  —The daddy, said Séamus and went all red again.

  One of the younger ones kept trying to follow Séamus around then until Séamus gave him a dead leg and told him to fuck off.

  The village became bitter of the world. Embarrassed that they were watching them when they were being so childish. Runs deep what people think is good and what you think is good yourself. In life.

  Sometimes I think James and Sinéad did this to Dinky and Teesh and Racey and them. Just by being. That they did that. Made the merry happiness in the pub seem silly. And all the posturing and the laughing at the laughable. Sinéad and James made it all seem like children’s play. Caused a kind of wild seething fury and gave Dinky and Teesh terrorists’ eyes cos I seen pictures of terrorists’ eyes. Be careful your existence doesn’t insult anyone’s way of life.

  So anyhow back in Cape Clear island once James sang this one. This is called a flashback Dr Quinn tells me. Gives out to me when I don’t tell things in order. Says I must make it clear. Flag it he says. Flag that it’s a flashback. I’m flagging now. We do need a song. And James sang this one on a night on Cape Clear one time. James seemed to only get angry when he was singing an angry song. Like ‘Country Feedback’ he sang that time. He sang it shit but no one cared. They still enjoyed it.

  People love to look at each other when they’re laughing. Oh I find that very funny and so do you, the two of us are the same, not like that silly clown we’re laughing at. You know it’s true. You know it. Wolves hunt in packs and people laugh in packs.

  Sinéad and James sang this song in a strange kind of harmony. Give you the holy spooks.

  There were two sisters walking down by a stream

  Oh the wind and the rain

  The older one pushed the younger one in

  Oh the dreadful wind and rain

  Pushed her in the river to drown

  Oh the wind and the rain

  Watched her as she floated on down

  Oh the dreadful wind and rain

  And he made a fiddle from her own breastbone

  Oh the wind and the rain

  The sound could melt a heart of stone

  Oh the dreadful wind and rain

  The only tune that fiddle would play

  Oh the wind and the rain

  The only tune that fiddle would play

  Oh the dreadful wind and rain

  Sinéad played us a Bob Dylan song once that she said was like it. About a fella whose friend killed people by accident in a car crash. Turn, turn, to the rain and the wind, it goes. He says he stood up fierce slow cos the room was gone funny. That’s shock. You’d know what that meant if you were at the court case I was at. Everyone who was there would know. People stood up slow after hearing parts of it. Knees go shaky isn’t it?

  More of Sinéad’s Psychiatrist’s Evidence

  —And tell me, were you surprised by this development?

  —Ahm . . . a little but not entirely. I just don’t think she was quite ready to accept it.

  —Would you say you predicted this?

  —No. Nobody could have predicted this.

  —Thank you. Yet you say that she made an excellent recovery and became mentally a healthy person. How can you really be certain of this? Given the fact that you were surprised by her previous setback where she became totally delusional, can you really now say that you are certain, absolutely certain that she was in good mental health at the time that she died?

  —Of course I couldn’t be certain. Nobody could. All I can provide is my best medical opinion.

  —But you are willing to accept that your medical opinion was completely wrong in the past, are you?

  —I would have to accept that to be the case, yes.

  —So tell me please, Mr Mooney, can you be certain, absolutely one hundred per cent certain that Sinéad was not suicidal at the time she died?

  —No. I cannot be sure.

  —Thank you, Mr Mooney, for your honesty. That’s all, Your Lordship, thank you.

  Dr Quinn said to me today that he’s noticed the last six weeks or two months that I’m the whole time biting my lip. Never noticed except just that they’re red raw and sore. I just said it was the cold weather and he said it was only October. Another time he was on about the skin that joins the bottom of your thumb to your pointing finger. I know its called index but that’s stupid. It’s the bit of skin that can stretch. Bit webbed it is. I rubbed mine so much it bled and went scabby and would rub off the scab again until the skin went all hard like the heel of your foot and it would crack and tear when I stretched out my hand. Dr Quinn said it was a nervous thing. I said I wasn’t nervous. Just realised now this second that I been biting my lip this whole time. Nice when you get a bit of skin between your teeth and when you move your lips the skin comes away and you can keep doing it until it hurts and even then you can keep doing it and you can suck the blood out of your lip and bite it off and suck the blood back to the side of your tongue where you can taste it best all sweet and salty and metal and your eyes watering with the lovely pain.

  Teesh in Court

  Teesh stood up in court that time in the middle of Snoozie squealing on him.

  —You’re fucking dead. You’re fucking dead Snoozie. You’re a fucking dead man.

  Tim Buckley’s song ‘Valentine Melody’ goes here. It was a fairly big part of Sinéad’s mind for a while, this song was.

  When I took the tablets for an dubh I didn’t like my favourite song any more. That’s why I swore to Dr Quinn that I’d slit my wrists before another one of them pills crossed my lips. We’ve listened to it a trillion thousand times me and Sinéad and James but we still never figured out the words. I think Eddie Vedder might have made up some of the words cos real ones didn’t fit.

  I remember Sinéad singing the song. All timid and sweet the first couple of times and then whatever pain and anguish was in her came through the third time and she was crying at the end of it and James went over and held her in his arms. Then after a bit she went over to the tape recorder and went to the bit where it goes,

  Tongue twisted thoughts have spin ’round my head

  and she must have rewound and played it a hundred times. She couldn’t get over the way Eddie Vedder sang the word, ‘spin’. Said it was the whole spirit of the song condensed into a split second. Said she’d never heard anything like it. Shaking her head she was. Tears in her eyes, nearly. Moisture anyhow. When she got James to play along with her as she practised that line we began to realise what she meant. Disappointment and love and anger and acceptance were never so close than in the way hers and Eddie Vedder�
��s voice went on that word, ‘spin’. Made different words of it. For different worlds. Human breath became part of the word and the notes somehow. A baby’s cry was in there too. And the roar of an angry god. Fierce and frail. Sinéad was getting very close to it but I’m not sure if her lungs were strong enough yet but she would get it. I was certain of that. Hardest thing is seeing a peak like that, ’tis so far above us. But she knew where it was and she’d get there.

  The State Pathologist’s Evidence

  —The victim was lying with her back to the ground naked from the waist down under the bridge at Ballyronan.

  —Was she under the middle part of the bridge or . . . ?

  —At the part nearest the bank on the eastern side of the river. Under the arch closest to the bank.

  —I see. Was she under water?

  —No. Her head and her upper torso were in a little water, but her waist and legs were quite dry. There was no water running through this part of the bridge as it was summer and the river was low. Just a couple of pools.

  —I see. And she was naked from the waist down, is that so?

  —Yes. She was wearing a beige blouse and nothing else. No underwear.

  —Was there anything else about the scene of note?

  —By the time I’d arrived the forensic team had highlighted certain aspects of the scene to me. Extensive photographs were taken. On the river bank the victim’s underwear was found. Her knickers were on the ground and her bra was hanging on the branch of a tree. It appeared to have been thrown there. Her handbag was washed up on the river bank down river and had probably been thrown into the river at the scene of the crime. Also found at the scene was a silver piece of torc neck jewellery belonging to the victim.

  —I see. You later carried out the post-mortem examination, Dr Gleeson. Were you able to establish how Sinéad died?

  —Yes. The post-mortem showed that she had died from asphyxia due to strangulation. Her larynx had been broken, most likely during strangulation. There was considerable bruising to the front and sides of the victim’s neck. Also the presence of petechiae in the eyes would strongly suggest strangulation.