Dinny turned his eyes towards the window. Sean looked down.
‘Because you never think about what you won. Dinny, you might already know this, but you don’t, Sean. You never think about what you won. You think about what you lost, and when it’s gone it’s gone, and if you are to blame for that, you have to carry that load. Forever.’ He shook his head again from side to side, as though in disbelief. ‘And it’s a heavy load,’ he said, the words coming out viscous and hoarse, bearing such a weight of sorrow it seemed as if he would be crushed under them.
The three of them remained still for several moments in the quiet that followed. Sean picked up the glass of water and offered it to Bill, who looked at it as if he didn’t know what it was for. He looked at Sean as if he didn’t recognise him. But then he rallied. He inhaled and exhaled a few times, sipped the water and nodded his head and tapped his hand against his thigh.
‘Have you a brother at all, Dinny?’ Bill said.
Dinny shuddered as if struck and said thickly, ‘No, Bill, I don’t.’
‘Have you, Sean?’
‘No,’ Sean said, noticing that Dinny’s two hands were now clasped tightly between his knees and throbbed with the intensity of the grip. He tried to see Dinny’s expression, but his face was turned to the window.
The old man grunted.
‘I don’t want either of ye or anyone else to be carrying that load but if ye lose that match that’s what will happen. It was eleven years before Cork won another All-Ireland in ’66 and the same thing could happen to ye. It could. I was hard on ye earlier, but the fact is that Clare will be harder on ye. They’ll stand down on yere necks if ye show one bit of weakness, one slip. And ye’ll be hard on yereselves too, and that will go on and on for the rest of yere lives. Ye have to find the traitor and get rid of him. Ye have to be pure ruthless. There’s winning and losing and nothing else. Nothing.’
He took in another bit of air and let it out. He puffed his inhaler twice. He held up a finger and shook it, but it was to himself this time, not to Dinny or Sean.
‘The other side of the story is this. Sean? You and those other players? The only reason I questioned ye is that I know what ye’re capable of. I know it; Dinny knows it; we all know it. Not only that. Ye were born to do it. Ye were put on this earth to play in that match and to excel and to drive and drive and drive on until ye win it. Everything about yere lives has a purpose and in a few weeks ye will fulfil that purpose and bring the cup home. I know this. I know it.’
He smiled at Sean, and his face was completely different, lit up, like another man’s entirely. It was something to see, his eyes wet again but soft now too, transformed.
‘I know it,’ he said, in a whisper that went through Sean like a bullet. ‘And when that happens, it’s glorious.’
Sean smiled in reply. Another quiet filled the room but it was lighter. There was air again.
Dinny stood up and Sean followed his example. Sean could sense an electric ripple of change. Something had happened, though he didn’t know what. He wanted to stay, to hear more.
‘I’ll leave ye to it so,’ Bill said from the bed, his eyes now closed.
Dinny and Sean put the chairs back in the corner and left the room. They walked down the long corridor in silence, side by side.
At the nurse’s station a young orderly asked them for a selfie and they smiled and complied but they did not speak to him. A few nurses and some visitors watched them from nearby with a kind of hushed wonder. The reception area was empty and they walked past it and out into the dusk.
The car park was quiet except for the beeping of a truck reversing somewhere at the side of the building. They walked to their cars, which were close by each other.
Sean was confused. He wanted to ask Dinny what had happened, what it meant and what they should do about it. But he didn’t know what to say. Dinny held out his hand and Sean shook it.
‘Thanks for coming, Sean.’
‘No bother, Coach,’ Sean said.
‘Right, so,’ Dinny said. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘See you tomorrow,’ Sean replied and he sat into his car. He started the engine and put on his seat belt. He took the phone from his jacket pocket and turned off Airplane Mode.
He sought out a number in his contacts – one he had been staring at often in the last few days since he’d finally gotten hold of it. He looked at the name and number for a long moment.
As Sean put the phone down on the passenger seat, he realised that his breathing had quickened. He licked his lips and opened the driver-door window. He took a sip from his water bottle. His eyes were drawn to the entrance of the nursing home, now lit by lamplight. He thought about Bill Barrett inside, lying frail on his bed, looking at the wall on dark mornings and remembering a match he lost over half a century ago. He thought about Ted Barrett, in his grave of six years, somewhere in Cork city, the medals in a small mound beside his body. He imagined the medals still shining there.
He wondered how many hurlers, down through the years, had been put in their graves with their medals. He pictured trembling hands removing the medals from the padding of small black boxes and slipping them into the breast pockets of suits, or down the soft white lining of the coffins. All those hurlers reduced to bone and dust after all this time, in graves all over Ireland, their medals shining a soft light beside them under the earth.
Sean looked out the open window. A crow called from the big trees to his right and another answered. They both took flight and passed low over the car park towards Lough Mahon and the sea. He watched them until they faded away to nothing in the darkening sky.
One Step
Puking your guts up at the start of a long drive to the All-Ireland final is never a good idea. I don’t recommend it. I would have done it out the window but when I shouted at Jonno, after he wouldn’t pull in, that I couldn’t open the window – there was some stupid fucking child lock on it – him and Mick ignored me, chatting away to each other, giving out about somebody. They didn’t ignore me when I made pure shite of the back of the car outside Bunratty, I can tell you that. They went fair fucking quiet then, until Jonno started shouting and roaring at me. Mick was giggling; he’s as thick as a ditch, that fella. He barely scraped a pass in the Junior Cert, and he was out the door of Flannan’s like shit off a shovel straight after – he hadn’t a pup’s chance in the Leaving.
To be honest, I was probably still drunk from last night when I got into the car. Wouldn’t have been the first time, says you. Me and Ray had an almighty scourge of drink yesterday. There were two matches on; United were playing Chelsea at one o’clock – that kicked it off. We had a scatter of pints in O’Halloran’s and then we went to a party in some house over in Killaloe. There were a lot of women at the party, some hotties off the boats on Lough Derg too, but by that stage I was more interested in their vodka than what was under their miniskirts. I was clane off my nopper, no two ways about it. I done the dog on the drink all week, starting on Wednesday in Limerick – I was fair poisoned by last night. What happened after is no surprise, really.
Anyway, Jonno rocks up to the front door of the flat around half-seven this morning, flags flying out the windows and the boot, blowing the horn like a man in a bad traffic jam caused by women who won’t pull out on the road and DRIVE THE FUCK ON. As if I wasn’t in enough trouble with the neighbours. He’s an awful impatient man, Jonno, always was, and he wasn’t in the hale of his health this morning, either. He was cranky as fuck, from start to finish. Mick was like a briar, too. He ran out of fags last night at home so he’d a big puss up on him in the car.
If Jonno hadn’t kept blowing the horn and shouting out the window I might have taken a bottle of water or Lucozade Sport or something with me. Maybe even had a cup of tea with a bit of bread and marmalade to settle the stomach, but no. A shower might have helped too, come to think of it, but I forgot to set the alarm.
I think that’s why I puked in the car and we only twenty minutes up
the road – I’d nothing to soak up the dregs of the drink in my gut. I told him twice I was going to get sick but he was thick with me because I kept him waiting. Fierce stupid thing, not to pull over, when somebody after a feed of drink says to you that they’re going to get sick in a car. But that’s Jonno, a gowl of the highest order. So ’twas his own fault.
A few weeks ago the Super put me on a month’s unpaid leave and fined me two weeks’ wages on top of it. You’re on your last chance, now, Lonergan, says he, make good use of it, or the force is not the place for you. The big, ugly Kerry bollox – everybody knows what he done to that young girl from Kilmallock, and she only just out of Templemore.
What he didn’t know was the money didn’t matter a fuck, anyway, because I was after remortgaging the house for fifty grand, so I was rolling in it, and I was only delighted with the month off. After Clare winning the All-Ireland I was planning the mother and father of all piss-ups and then I’d head to Listowel to clean the bookies out there. After that, I’d be back on track. I was going to sort it out with Karen, pay the ESB and the gas arrears, put a bit into the mortgage, take it handy on the beer and the gee-gees, look after Kaylee, go back to work, maybe even play a bit of junior hurling, and clean up my act.
I had it all planned out and everything.
Karen lost the head altogether when the electricity and the gas rang on the same day about the missed payments. She clean flipped. I had a couple of bad months after Cheltenham: I probably shouldn’t have gone over there with the lads and I definitely shouldn’t have borrowed that money from Hogan. That was a mistake, I grant you that. First off, guards shouldn’t owe money to scumbags. Second, guard or no guard, he’d break your fucking leg, or your wife’s leg, as soon as look at you – he’s as mad as a bag of cats, the same lad.
Not that Karen knew about Hogan, nor ever will, hopefully. But she did know about the four missed payments because the ESB and the gas company rang the home number, the stupid bolloxes, instead of doing what I told them to do which was to ring me on the mobile – I gave them the number specifically for that purpose. Now they might have rang me and left some messages, and I might not have answered or rang them back. But sure the whole thing was only a blip, only a bit of a hiccup, and I’d sort them out as soon as my luck turned. There was no need to ring the bloody landline and tell the wife.
Karen checked the bank account and saw that my wages weren’t going into it any more. I was using a different account for that. I told her that I was just diversifying the banking and that TSB had a way better interest rate, anyway, but she didn’t see it like that. So she gave me the road. I probably didn’t put up much of a fight, to be honest. I might have even been glad to see the back of her nagging.
I know this is disgusting, but there’s sick and there’s sick, right? Big difference, too. It’s one thing eating a bad bit of fish or something out of a chipper like Karen did in Kilkee that day and throwing it up straightaway. It’s messy and all bitty and everything but it’s still fresh food. But what I puked up in Jonno’s car? Ah now. I was after eating it yesterday, or maybe even on Friday, and it was well digested by then, I can tell you that. With a lash of porter and vodka thrown down on top of it and some other kind of shots, and God-only-knows-what in the house after. Not a good mix at all. I made a right dog’s dinner of the car, lads – and the amount of the stuff! I couldn’t believe it.
When Jonno eventually pulled over – he wasn’t worried about stopping on a motorway now, though, was he? – I was able to get some of it off the mat on the floor and he had a couple of old jerseys in a gear bag in the boot that wiped more off the back of the passenger seat. My own jeans were fucking destroyed altogether but I took them off and put on a manky tracksuit bottom that was all covered in dried mud. Got a few beeps off cars on the road for that striptease, I can tell you. Of course cleaning up gave me a bad dose of the retches – the two boys as well. Typical Jonno, he hadn’t a drop of water in the car to wipe anything down, or wash out my mouth. He’s some tool.
At this stage his face was after going a bit purplish and he was marching up and down by the ditch, roaring like a bull, the big thick. ‘You’re fucking cleaning up this fucking car, and you’re fucking paying for a full fucking valet in Shannon tomorrow,’ says he, spitting fire. ‘Getting the fucking smell of puke out of a fucking car is next to fucking impossible.’ He stuck his head in the back door and recoiled. ‘Fuck’s sake.’
‘I told you to pull over. I told you to open the fucking window,’ I said back, in between retches. There wasn’t much said after that, on the way into Limerick, with all the windows down, and we breathing through our mouths, our lips puckered like young ones looking for kisses.
I wouldn’t mind, but when we pulled in to the Maxol at the Ennis Road roundabout, the place was jam-packed with cars stocking up for the journey. Saffron and blue all over the place and lads coming and going, full of the joys. Just what I needed, this morning, and the state of me.
Jonno hopped out and went to the jacks. Or went to queue for the jacks; it looked like a lot of fellas had left home in a hurry. Mick went into the shop for fags. I bought a big bottle of water, a packet of tissues, some wet wipes and a bottle of Dettol spray cleaner, and I went at it. I got some looks in the shop, with the pointy tan shoes and the muddy tracksuit pants, but I stared the fuckers down.
Of course, as I was leaning into the car and spraying and wiping away with the door open, who walks past only Tommy fucking O’Gorman from Sixmilebridge, the self-righteous prick. He stopped and looked at me, like I was dog shit stuck to his shoe, his face all wrinkled up. And the same man all over me like a rash not so long ago. I couldn’t get rid of him the night we gave Cork a right good trimming in the League semi-final replay – down in their home patch too. And me after winning man-of-the-match and keeping O’Sullivan scoreless. Anyway, I told the cunt to go fuck himself and I went back to the spraying and wiping. And retching.
I dropped the bottle of Dettol and the wet wipe then, and punched the inside of the door. I hit it a right few digs, nearly took it off the hinges, until the panelling cracked. Jonno and Mick were still chatting in the queue for the jacks, so I went back into the shop and got some glue – they have everything in those garages in fairness, even if they are desperate robbers – and I stuck the bits back together.
I felt a bit better in the car after Limerick, except for the splitting headache and the sore wrist. I was after washing my pants in the garage jacks, gagging away the whole time, but I thought by then that everything that could come up had come up. I was wrong about that too. I had a good shit and that didn’t do me any harm, and I settled into the other side of the back seat with my bottles of water and 7up.
And that’s when I saw the envelope.
There it was, a little splinter of brown peeping out of the pocket in the back of the passenger seat, exactly in the place where I seen it a few weeks ago, when we went up to the semi-final against Waterford. It was the only picture the family had of Jonno’s mam and dad’s wedding, and Jonno was supposed to make copies for all his brothers and sisters for the mother’s month’s mind the following week. He’d obviously forgotten about it. I leaned over slowly and slipped it out of the pocket, keeping it low. The brown envelope was stained with vomit and just as I was about to remove the photo to wipe it, I had another idea. I quietly folded the envelope twice and put it into the pocket of the shitty kaks that Jonno was after giving me.
We came into a lot of traffic outside Portlaoise where the two motorways meet. We were crawling – it looked like those cocky Cork fuckers were coming up in numbers. Probably thought it was going to be a cakewalk. I fucken hate that crowd, I have to tell ye now; they think they’re God’s gift.
So Jonno loses the rag. Like I said, he hasn’t a jot of patience. He got the brainwave to pass on the inside, on the hard shoulder, to make up some ground on the langers. Fuck it, says he, and pulled the car sharp to the left, but he forgot to look in his wing-mirror, so he didn�
��t see the Avensis bombing up behind. The Avensis braked, but too late, hitting us a right slap and slamming my nose against the driver’s headrest. I don’t like seat belts at the best of times.
In all fairness, the boys from Cratloe in the Avensis took it well, considering it was Jonno’s fault out-and-out. Of course it helped that I jumped out of the car screaming blue murder and came the heavy, waving my warrant card around the place and threatening to have the driver put off the road. It probably wasn’t a bad thing either that blood was pumping out of my nose – I must have looked a right sight, all the same.
Jonno was in the wrong, no question, but so were they driving up on the inside like that, so ’twas a no-win situation for everybody. We’d have sorted out the whole thing in a few minutes only that a squad car from Roscrea pulled up and a pernickety Tipp sergeant insisted on writing it up. There wasn’t hardly any damage to the cars and my nose gets bloody whenever I get a slap. The worst of it was that, after I calmed down a bit and the Cratloe boys backed off, I got another fit of the gawks and these were the bad ones.
Basically your body is a one-way system, right? From the mouth down through the belly and out the hole. And it doesn’t like any traffic going the opposite direction. It’s bad for business, I suppose. So what happens is that the further down in the gut the stuff is, the harder it is to bring it up. This fair fucking hurt. You think of funny things when you’re in physical pain; mostly you just want it to go away. But all I could think about on my hands and knees, there on the side of the road, were the smirking faces of those Cork bastards and they crawling past a few feet away, no doubt enjoying the spectacle. All I had left in me to puke apart from the water and 7up was a bit of dirty orange-looking bile, hardly worth its while coming all the way up, but it did anyway – and good fucking riddance to bad rubbish.
The First Sunday in September Page 2