When that was done, I stood back up, wiped my mouth with my sleeve, sat into the car and slammed the door after me. None of the others said anything, including the Tipp sergeant – they knew that much, if they didn’t know much else. I opened the car window and spat onto the road. I put some tissues up my nose to try to stop the blood and it worked, but there was no getting the stains off the upholstery and my shirt. I did what I could with the Dettol and the wet wipes and I closed my eyes and tried not to think about the last few years of my life. I tried to get some sleep. I did too, eventually.
We motored on after that and by half-twelve we had stools at the counter in Quinn’s on the Drumcondra Road and I was ready for action again. The jeans were nearly dry when I put them on in the jacks – still a bit smelly but better than that stupid tracksuit bottom. I tore up Jonno’s mam and dad too and flushed the pieces to fuck down the toilet. I was probably out of order doing that – ’tisn’t a bit like me, to tell you the truth, ask anyone. But you know what? The fucker had it coming.
Anyway, now the day was rightly looking up. Nothing like the end of a hangover, and putting another in its place.
When Clare were making their way through the championship the last few years I knew straight away that I wanted them to lose. My own county – and I wanted them to lose. Even to Tipp. Even in the final against Galway last year. Outside, of course, I was shouting ‘Up the Banner’ with everybody else, but inside I was hoping the fuckers would get hammered. A desperate terrible thing to admit, but there you have it.
And I couldn’t go to matches either. Not a hope. I couldn’t go near a pitch; I didn’t have the stomach for it. I watched them all in the pub. That’s what I was planning today too, before the shit hit the fan.
I had a few quick pints to get things going and they stayed down, no bother at all. Jonno and Mick were in flying form, giving mighty stick altogether to the Cork langers in the pub about the hammering we lashed into them last year and how we were about to repeat the dose.
I was starving after the pints so I went around the corner to a little chipper and horsed down a couple of chicken and chips. Nothing to write home about, but they did the job. Here’s another thing: with only a few hours to go before the match, I had a right dose of the jitters. Remember when I said earlier that I remortgaged the house for fifty grand? Well, most of that was already gone. I had to fix up with Hogan, the headcase, for starters, and of course he screwed me with interest, not that he’d even know the meaning of the word, no more than the man on the moon; but he screwed me, anyway, in that shithole of a house of his, on the Island, with his mad-looking brothers in their scanger outfits with their pit-bull terriers and their ’tashes and tattoos. So that was thirteen gone. I had to pay back the brother the five I owed him, too – that’s a long story: I don’t want to talk about that now. Then I did a stupid thing and blew another ten in Galway, and that was after promising Karen I’d never go back after what happened at the cocaine party last year.
With a few other bits and pieces of eejitry, I looked at the App on the phone one day and saw the balance at only €18,056. So what did I do? What do you think I did? I put fifteen grand on Clare to win the All-Ireland, that’s what I did – this was before the semi-final and I got 7/2, to win the bones of 70K. Great odds altogether. I was all set to clean up; the win was guaranteed. Sure with McMahon and the lads flying and Cork in a heap in their back line, there could only be one result. Adding to the winnings with what I’d make in Listowel, ’twas happy days are here again and show me the way to go home.
But a bet’s still a bet, even when it’s a dead cert, so I was a bit nervy. And if I was in my right mind I probably would have ignored Jimmy Dolan when I saw him in the crowd outside Quinn’s on my way back in. But I didn’t.
Jimmy is one of Limerick’s finest little robbing scangers, and that’s saying something – there’s strong competition around there, I can tell you that. He’s one of my regular parishioners and he knows better than to go to a match in Gaelic Park or Cusack Park where he’d be spotted. The little bollix thought he’d be safe enough up here with the Cork crowd, but the thought made a fool of him. Or me, as it turned out.
I grabbed him by the collar and started dragging him over to a couple of our lads in uniform, who were directing traffic, to lock him up. But when I took a hoult of him, he peeled out of his jacket and shot off up the road like a rocket. He probably had a lash of money and phones on him, even though they often pass on their takings to somebody else. Anyway, I took off after him, like I wasn’t seventeen stone and after two feeds of chicken and chips and after a scourge of drink the day before and a dose of the gawks and me with a bad knee and not after training for two years.
But you know what? When I was sprinting up the road after the bould Jimmy I felt so alive that I started shouting. I was fucking flying, lads, and all the Clare and Cork fans cheering me on. I was back! There I was, belting up the road like the clappers in my pointy tan shoes, my smelly jeans, my bloody shirt, letting fly: yahoo, this is the life, boys, up the fucken yard, I have you now, Dolan, ya Limerick cunt ya. I was gaining on the little maggot too. I was.
I might have actually caught him but the next thing I knew I was on the ground in a heap on a bit of grass beside a tree. People gathered around me, leaning over me, saying stuff I couldn’t hear, and me looking up at them like a fool, gasping for air like a fish on a boat.
Fact of the matter is that drinking and gambling is great fun. Hard to beat it really, lads, and that’s the God’s honest truth. When you’re on the batter or you’ve a ton on the nose of a horse, life is fucking mighty. Why do you think people do it if it isn’t the bee’s knees? Jesus, it costs enough, ’twould want to be. And here’s what it does for you: when you’re on that high nothing else in the wide earthly world matters a damn. Nothing. The past never happened. You were never dropped off the Clare panel, missing out on an All-Ireland; you didn’t do your cruciate, put on four stone, fall out with your club, give the best part of 120 grand of your money to those bastarding bookies; you were never thrown out of your own home, breaking your wife’s heart; you were never on the verge of losing your job; you never lost interest in your only child or defaulted on the mortgage that was putting a roof over her head; no, you never fucked up one single thing in all your born days. Now isn’t that nice? Isn’t it?
There’s one drawback. Well, more than one, but the main one is this: while you can forget about your past, you can forget about your future too. The next drink or the next bet is the only future you have and the only one you’ll ever want. Nothing else comes close. That’s the price you pay, and every last man in the pub and the bookies knows it. Don’t tell me they don’t – even if they wouldn’t admit it in a month of Sundays.
And I don’t go in for all this malarkey about drinking or gambling or any of that being a disease. I just don’t buy it. That’s a cop-out if you ask me. Diabetes is a disease, cancer is a disease, malaria is a disease – something makes you sick and you have to treat it. Drinking is a choice – you either do it or you don’t. You don’t choose fucking lung cancer, I can guarantee you that, but you do choose to go into the bookies.
There’s the bookies, right? Across the road, or whatever. If you don’t want to go into it, you won’t. If you do want to go into it, you will. And if you want to bet the wages or the farm or the car or whatever, you will. Simple as. It isn’t a disease that made you do it. You wanted to do it. Same with the drink. There’s the pub, go in or don’t – it’s up to you. But don’t go blaming a disease you caught off your father or your uncle or whoever. Gimme a fucking break.
And going to those meetings and telling your troubles and all the terrible things you done to a bunch of losers and strangers? Sorry, now, no fucking way. Taking the twelve steps to recovery? A load of old shite. There’s only one step you have to take – step away from the bookies and the bar. Step into your own life.
Now, you have to keep taking it, I’ll grant you that. But �
��tis only one step, and it’s up to you whether you take it or you don’t.
So anyway, they’re working away on me, on the side of the Drumcondra Road, doing CPR and all the rest. A young one is on her knees beside me, giving me mouth-to-mouth and pumping away on my chest. Fair play to her, a Cork woman too.
It’s quare out, lads. I’m still in my own body, yer wan blowing away into my mouth and pounding on my chest. But I’m outside it too, looking on, kind of above the whole thing. It reminds me of the time I took those acid tabs with that nutter from Armagh at the semi-final against Kilkenny last year.
I think I hear an ambulance in the distance getting closer, but it’s all a bit weird, d’ya know?
I do know one thing, that’s for sure. I want to live. Fuck it, but I want to live. I don’t want to die here on the ground, like a big, fat, useless heap of shit, and all them people looking down at me. I want to see Kaylee grow up, and I want to get back in with the club. Jimmy Daly mentioned to me the other week that they want someone to mind the Under 14s next year and I’d love to give it a go. I’d love to have another baby with Karen, if she’d take me back after what I done to her; she’s not the worst, and wouldn’t that be something – a little lad for Kaylee to boss around and for me to put a hurley into his hand?
Jesus, that feeling in a dressing room before a Munster final. Where you’d go through the wall to get at the fuckers, there was no need for a door. That’s the way I feel now. Christ, but it was mighty. Or waking up the morning after beating Tipp, and me after playing a blinder, my man not even scoring, thinking: ‘Wow, that really happened, that was me.’ Sore after a few belts, maybe, but with such a sense of purpose running up and down my veins that I could do anything I wanted. Anything.
Lose weight? Piece of piss, I done it before. Step away from the pub and the bookies? You may be fucking sure of it.
And I want Clare to win too. Not because of the bet, I couldn’t give two shits about that. I want Clare to win because it’s my county, my people, my jersey.
Up the Banner!
Up the Banner!
Up the Banner!
This isn’t over. It doesn’t end here, by Jesus, it doesn’t.
No fucken way.
Forever and a Day
Paddy Horgan looks out the passenger window of the Skoda Octavia as the road follows the River Bandon heading towards Innishannon. He is surprised at all the traffic this early but a lot of people will be going to Dublin today, especially to cheer on Liam Óg O’Callaghan, the pride of Kilbrittain.
He checks again for his little blue backpack at his feet, containing his sandwiches, a bottle of water, a few bars of chocolate and two bananas. He’s always forgetting things these days. He moves the seat forward to give Cora, who is in the back with Willie, some legroom. The car is spotless; the dash is shiny and smells of polish, but Donie, who is driving, always looked after his cars. Donie is all spruced up too, Paddy notices, sporting a bright-red tie.
The last of the fog on the water fades away as they near the bridge. Rich red early morning sunlight drifts downwards from the tops of the trees, the leaves now softened to a tawny brown. The place always reminds him of Sheila; they used to go for walks on the riverbank.
Paddy and Sheila started going out with each other in 1982, after that disco in Actons in Kinsale. He had just turned twenty-six and was working in the Co-Op. They drove to dances nearly every second night that summer, or to play cards over near Mallow – Hazelwood. No: The Hazel Tree, that was the place. Sheila was a tasty card player, everybody said it. Singles or partners, it didn’t matter a damn. His pride when she’d produce a jack or a five to win the game, last throw. She often had one, just at the right time, however she managed it. There was a local man used to call her ‘the deadly ciotóg’.
After hurling training, Paddy would pick her up at home. He had a great Corolla at the time, the one he got from that queer hawk in Drimoleague the year before. They’d go for a walk down by the river and take a spin over to Clon to those summer dances in The Fernhill. They used to drive home by Garretstown and park near the strand. If the tide was in, the sound of the waves draped itself around them, in their own sweet world in the back of the Corolla. The softness of her breasts, the wetness of her mouth and the moans gentling out of her: a thing of wonder.
He thought those times would last forever and a day.
When the car crosses the bridge and turns into Innishannon, the low sunlight hits them full on. Himself and Donie pull down their visors.
‘God, lads, isn’t it great to be heading to Dublin on the first Sunday in September, all the same?’ Willie says.
‘Oh, ’tis,’ Paddy says, though he doesn’t want to encourage him. Once Willie starts up there’s no stopping him.
‘Will we do it, though?’ Willie asks, leaning forward and rubbing his hands together. Paddy thinks he can smell drink off him, but he’s not sure.
‘Faith then, we might,’ says Donie as he slows down the car to stop at the lights.
‘We’ll give it a lash, Willie,’ Paddy says. ‘We’ll give it a right lash.’
‘If we can mark yer man, we’re halfway there,’ Willie says, and he’s off. ‘D’you know what I think?’
Paddy grimaces.
His bad leg meant he could never hurl himself, but in his early twenties he got roped into looking after the Under 12s. Those training sessions were where he cut his teeth. Bright summer evenings, with swallows sweeping to and fro above the field.
Boys are so keen at that age – they haven’t learned to be smart yet. Or at least that’s the way they used to be, those days.
‘Pull on the ball, Jimmy. That’s it. Pull again, you won’t hurt it.’
They were desperate for trying to pick up the ball.
‘Jesus, but ye’re obsessed with picking up the ball. Mickey! Mickey! I don’t know what that is, but it isn’t related to hurling. Are you going to take it home with you or what? Hit the fecking thing!’
It’s where it all began for Liam Óg, too.
‘Good catch, Liam Óg O’Callaghan! Now, clear your lines. Good man, let the ball do the work. Now, Jimmy, over the bar. That’s it, lads. The ball won’t get tired, I keep telling ye. It’ll work away all day.’
‘What age is Liam Óg, now, Paddy?’ Cora says. There is a long tailback at the Bishopstown Roundabout.
‘Twenty-five,’ he replies, amazed that Cora wouldn’t know. But sure what else would you expect from a Skibbereen woman? ‘He’ll be twenty-six in January.’
‘Twenty-five?’ Cora says. She thinks about it. ‘Jesus, Liam Senior and Carmel must have had him fierce young so.’
‘Oh, they did,’ Willie says. ‘There was a bit of a rush with the wedding. Father O’Donovan from Kilmurry had to be drafted in because Father Mac had shingles.’
Willie is a desperate gossip. He’d go up your hole for news. Small Willie, he is known as, behind his back. Initially, he was called that to differentiate him from tall Willie O’Shea, but of course it stuck. Paddy doesn’t like the nickname, and only ever refers to him as Willie.
He often used to wonder what Willie had to say about Sheila going away. The same as what everyone else said, he supposed. Not that it matters now; sure, it’s old news.
That Neil Diamond concert in the RDS. The fourteenth of May 1989. He’ll never forget the date. Sheila was clean mad about Neil Diamond; she knew the words of every single song. She had booked a room in Jury’s in Ballsbridge. She was nursing in the Bons in Cork by then, earning more than he was – a fact that rankled with him.
In hindsight, she’d been tense all night. He should have known something was brewing. She’d been tetchy with him a few times that spring too. Normally, at concerts, she’d be singing along and buzzing afterwards. Not this time, though. They had a couple of drinks at the hotel bar after the short walk from the RDS. It was quiet for a concert night.
Later, he kissed her and moved against her on the hotel bed, but she stiffened and pulled away. S
he lay back and looked up at the ceiling.
‘I’m thinking about going to England, Paddy.’
‘What?’ he said. ‘You’re what?’
She faced him.
‘This isn’t enough for me. I want to make love to you in my own bed. Our own bed. In our own home. I want us to get married, to have children, the whole thing, but you don’t seem to want that.’
‘I do. I do, Sheila. We talked about this. I told you I do. And we will.’
‘You say that, but when? If you were serious about it, we’d be well married by now. We’ve been going out for seven years, Paddy. I’m thirty. My time is running out.’
He sighed and rubbed his forehead. ‘I just, I can’t leave Mammy on her own.’
‘I’m not asking you to leave her on her own. We can build a house. A nice new house and she can live with us. Uncle Seamus will give us a site. I can take good care of her, even with my job.’
‘I don’t want his fucking charity.’
‘I’m his niece, Paddy. He has no children of his own. Tim will get the farm; the least I can get is a site. It’s not charity.’
‘I don’t like this kind of blackmail.’
He sat up in the bed and faced away from her. His gut instinct was to get out of the room. To get away. His heart was racing.
‘It’s not blackmail, Paddy. I want to be with you. All the time. Not just like this, but I can’t wait forever. I won’t.’
She turned away from him and cried.
Now, enclosed by the dank walls of the Jack Lynch Tunnel, as Willie gives out stink about the County Board again, he tells himself that he’d wanted that too. In truth, he had. If only she’d given him more time. A small bit more time.
There is another tailback at the first toll, near Fermoy. Cora (who doesn’t have her glasses on) gives out to Donie for coming too close to the car in front. Donie tenses but he doesn’t fight back against the false allegation. There was a good six feet to spare and Paddy would have backed him up if Donie had asked him. He wouldn’t dare get involved otherwise.
The First Sunday in September Page 3