by Peter Murphy
‘So,’ I said. ‘Where you from anyway?’
He blanked me.
I made it to the front of the queue. The girl behind the hatch handed me napkins and plastic cutlery and two paper plates heaped with chicken and mashed potatoes. I ferried them back to our spot beside the dance floor and handed Jamey his plate.
The DJ, a gangly bloke with a ‘70s footballer haircut, interrupted the dance music to put on a slow song with a church organ melody. The floor cleared and just as quickly refilled with couples that began to dance close and kiss and grope each other’s hair and backsides. The slow song gave way to a sort of melodramatic ballad with a really long saxophone solo. Jamey put his empty plate under the chair and wiped his mouth.
‘John-boy,’ he yelled into my ear, making it whine. ‘Have you ever had a girl?’
‘Say again?’
I had heard him fine.
‘Have you ever, y’know, thrown the gob on anyone?’
‘Not yet.’
‘You’re what age?’
‘Fifteen.’
He looked at me sidelong and gestured around the room.
‘We’ll have to sort you out some cute Mercy bird. See anything you like?’
All the girls looked good to me, but there was one particularly pretty pale girl with red hair sitting with her friends at a table.
‘Her.’
Jamey followed my line of sight.
‘Oh man,’ he said, ‘you can pick ’em. That’s Rachel Cullen.’
‘She’s nice.’
He grinned.
‘It’s all war paint. She slow-danced with me once one night and put her head right here’—he patted his shoulder—‘next morning I woke up and found the imprint of her face on my good shirt. It was like the Shroud of Turin.’
I felt the alcohol buzz kick in, that feeling of being surrounded by a force field, like I had the gift of temporary invincibility.
‘I don’t care,’ I said. ‘I’m going to ask her up.’
The girl’s table was at the other side of the lounge. To get there I had to negotiate an assault course of chairs and tables and feet. The girl saw me coming and broke off from her conversation. She looked even better up close. Her friends stared like they expected me to make balloon animals or something.
‘Would you like to dance?’ I said, leaning across the table.
‘What?’ she yelled back.
Her friends exchanged glances and smirked and looked into their drinks.
‘WOULD YOU—’
The music stopped.
‘—LIKE TO DANCE?’
Rachel Cullen covered her mouth, and the friend to her left coughed ‘freak into her fist.
‘No thanks,’ Rachel said. ‘I’m with someone.’
The music restarted. I murmured something lame and beat a retreat. Jamey was holding my pint out.
‘Shot you down?’
I tried to act nonchalant.
‘You were right. She didn’t look that good up close.’
Jamey put his arm around my shoulder and leaned in, confidential.
‘See what you did wrong there, though?’
Like I needed a post-mortem to prolong the ordeal.
‘You walked over there like you were apologizing for being alive. Next time, put your shoulders back and stick your chin out. It’s all attitude, man.’
‘Nah,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘It’s not that. Girls just don’t like me.’
Jamey flicked my ear.
‘Don’t be stupid. Course they do.’
‘They don’t. I’ve got a bad name around the village.’
‘Why?’
I drew in a deep breath. It was kind of embarrassing, but I figured if he was my friend, I could tell him.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘this one time in school there was a free class. Everyone was playing spin-the-bottle. When the bottle pointed at you, you had to tell some sort of secret. When it came around to me, I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t think of any secrets, so I made one up.’
‘So what did you say?’
‘I said I had a secret desire to stick it in a jar of worms.’
Jamey snorted.
‘You’re joking, man.’
I smiled a bit.
‘Nope.’
‘And did you?’
‘Naw, I just wanted to shock them. It was all over the school in no time. All these Mercy girls kept coming up to me on the street and asking was it true. I just said yeah. It was easier than explaining.’
‘Oh boy,’ Jamey said. ‘A jar of worms.’
The slow set ended. The DJ put on something loud and angry sounding, and couples dispersed like it was a fire drill. Blokes wearing cut-off denims charged the floor and played imaginary guitars and whipped their greasy hair in a rotary motion.
We drank our beers and Jamey got us a couple more. It was so hot I gulped it down, but didn’t seem to be getting any drunker. The DJ played another slow set and one long fast one and then the national anthem. The lights came on and everyone stood except for Jamey, who sprawled in his chair, sipping the dregs of his pint and examining his fingernails. He noticed me staring.
‘What?’ he said. ‘It’s a crap song, man.’
Across the floor, Billy Dagg used his crutches to lever himself upright. He stood and glared at us.
‘Jamey.’
‘I see him. Relax.’
The national anthem ended in a clash of cymbals. Billy Dagg hobbled towards us, black eyes blazing. I stared, sort of transfixed, as he came closer and planted himself before Jamey.
‘Better men than you died so that music could be played,’ he said, ‘and all you can do is sit on your hole and look smug, ya little cur!’
Jamey drained his glass and got up.
‘C’mon, John,’ he said.
We hurried into the hall and collected our jackets from the cloakroom and stepped out the front door, but Billy Dagg was blocking our way. Beer soured in my stomach. All the bouncers were inside routing the couples smooching in corners. We moved sideways, like we were trying to get past a wicked dog. I needed to pee really badly. Billy Dagg’s fingers whitened on the grips of his crutches and his biceps bulged.
‘Don’t think I couldn’t hammer the lard out of both of you with the one hand,’ he snarled, hobbling after us down the drive, the crutches making spazzy rhythms on the gravel.
Jamey stopped and turned.
‘That’d hardly be a fair fight, Billy. We couldn’t very well hit a cripple.’
Billy Dagg moved fast for a man on crutches. He balanced himself on one and swung the other at Jamey, who caught the rubber-castored butt between his hands and held tight. For a moment the two were locked in a bizarre tug o’ war. Jamey called out to me, his voice calm.
‘John, help me out here, man.’
I lunged for the other crutch and got a hold of it. Billy Dagg cursed and roared. It was ridiculous.
‘Count of three,’ Jamey yelled. ‘Three!’
He wrenched on his crutch and I wrenched on mine and we jerked backwards like we’d pulled apart a huge Christmas cracker. Billy Dagg wobbled a bit and fell onto his front. He began to claw at the gravel, ranting and foaming at the mouth as he tried to get to his feet.
We legged it down the drive, ran until we lost ourselves in the warm night, darkness like soot on our skin, sweating and sobered with fright, running until our chests burned and we had to stop to catch our breath.
Jamey bent, hands on his kneecaps. He was wheezing like an old man.
‘Stitch,’ he gasped. ‘I need a rest. Got any smokes?’
I checked the packet.
‘Just the one.’
We passed the cigarette back and forth. Jamey considered the last few smoke-able millimetres.
‘Leave us a scald,’ I said.
He shook his head.
‘We’ll split it.’ He considered the tapered red tip of the fag and carefully tapped off the ash. ‘Open your gob.’
‘What for?�
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‘Just open up.’
He dragged deep on the cigarette, flicked it away, grabbed my head and clamped his mouth onto mine and hawed smoke down my throat. Then he put his fingers under my chin and pushed my gawping mouth closed.
I doubled up coughing, smoke coming out of every hole in my head.
‘For future reference,’ Jamey said, ‘that’s a blowback.’
He set off down the road.
We walked through the new estates that had sprouted on the outskirts of the village, gravelled driveways and neatly mowed lawns and security lights that winked on as we approached and flicked off after we’d passed. Soon the houses began to look like clapboard replicas of themselves. Above us, young summer stars glimmered in an inexplicable sky.
‘I’m starving again,’ Jamey said. ‘Must be the adrenalin.’
‘Or else you’ve got worms.’
Jamey rolled his eyes.
‘We could get something at my place,’ I said. ‘Maybe some toast.’
‘I’d murder some toast. How far?’
‘Ten, fifteen minutes.’
On we went until the houses thinned out and there were no more lights. We trudged through the soft night until we came across a dead bird lying on the grass verge. Jamey stooped to get a better look. It was an owl. There was sticky-looking blood all over its wings and its huge creepy-toy eyes were closed. It had the purest, whitest feathers I’d ever seen.
‘Jesus,’ Jamey said, and shook his head.
We walked the last couple of hundred yards to my house. I took the key from under the flower pot on the step and let us in. Jamey sat at the kitchen table while I put the kettle on and made toast and removed plates from the cupboard with the exagerrated care of a burglar.
‘This is the best fuckin’ thing I ever tasted,’ Jamey said, spewing crumbs everywhere.
There were footfalls upstairs, directly over the kitchen.
‘Shit,’ I said. ‘She’s up.’
Boots came down the stairs. My mother appeared in the kitchen doorway, fully dressed and wide awake. She was always a light sleeper.
‘Ma,’ I said brightly.
She took in the scene.
‘Who’s this boy?’
Jamey got to his feet and took my mother’s hand.
‘Jamey Corboy, ma’am. So sorry we woke you.’
She seemed a bit taken aback. So was I. The manners on him.
‘It’s all right, I was getting up anyway.’
My mother plugged in the kettle.
‘You lads must be hungry.’
Jamey looked at me, eyebrow raised, as my mother got out the frying pan and a bottle of sunflower oil and lit the cooker. She cracked a couple of eggs into the pan and put more bread in the toaster.
‘So, Mrs D,’ Jamey said, his voice raised over the crackling of the pan.
Mrs D? I mouthed at him.
My mother shovelled the eggs with a spatula.
‘Yes, Jamey.’
‘You look far too young to be John’s mother. You must have had him very young.’
My mother flipped the eggs, swirled the oil around, flipped them again.
‘Oh, I had him when I was meant to, not before. John, set the table for us, will you, son?’
I got out the cutlery, avoiding my mother’s eyes. She dished up the food and sat nursing a cup of tea while we ate.
‘How are your mother and father, Jamey?’ she said.
‘Fine, thanks.’
He was trying to simultaneously wolf down eggs and not speak with his mouth full.
‘And your brother?’
‘Good form. Bit of a handful.’
‘You’re fond of him, though.’
Jamey half smiled.
‘Hard not to be.’
I watched this exchange like a spectator at a tennis match. My mother took a sip of her tea.
‘He’s going to the special school, is that right?’
‘He is.’
‘And he’s getting on well?’
‘Loves it.’
‘That’s good. More eggs?’
‘No thanks, I’m full as a tick.’
He laid his knife and fork on the plate and patted his stomach.
‘Mrs D, they named you well.’
‘How so?’
‘That was divine.’
She smothered a smile.
‘Don’t be soft-soaping me, you. Smoke?’
She picked up her box of Silk Cut Blue and offered him one. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
‘I shouldn’t, Mrs D, but thanks very much.’
They sat puffing away like old friends, and when Jamey finished his cigarette, my mother said, ‘You’d better get home now, son. Your mother and father will be worried if they wake up and you’re not there.’
Jamey nodded and pushed his chair back.
‘You’re right, Mrs D. I’ll go.’
He clasped my mother’s hand between both of his and looked her in the eye.
‘Pleasure meeting you.’
‘And you.’
He turned to me.
‘John, would you walk me up the road a bit so I can get my bearings?’
I glanced at my mother. She was looking at him thoughtfully.
‘Ma? Is that OK?’
She almost jumped.
‘Fine, fine. Come straight back though. You need to get to bed or you’ll be no good to me tomorrow.’
We ducked out the front door and walked briskly up the road. Cows stood motionless in the fields like topiary shapes. Jamey cleared his throat.
‘That was weird,’ he said.
‘She was really giving you the eyeball.’
‘I noticed. Trying to get my measure. She thinks the sun shines out of your fundament.’
‘Come off it.’
‘She does. Only-child syndrome. Wait until you try and leave home. That’s when the fireworks’ll start.’
He stopped walking and looked around at the fields with the bemusement of a born townie.
‘I think I can find my way from here. You’d better go back.’
I watched until he was obscured by a hump in the road. I could still feel the effects of the drink and smoke swirling in my lungs, my bloodstream, my brain. The backs of my eyeballs ached as I stared up at the heavens, the long dead stars, and when I shut my eyes the afterlight remained imprinted on my mind, lotus-shaped lights flowering into big white wows.
I hoped Jamey’s parents were heavy sleepers.
It’d be morning soon.
Shapes stirred in the shadows of my room. A skull-faced crone with parchment skin who unfolded her withered briar limbs and moved to the foot of my bed. Nails long as thorns clawed back the bedspread. I couldn’t move. Cold crawled all over my skin, arousing thousands of tiny nipples. The crone pawed my legs with gnarled fingers, witch-teats grazing my balls and belly and chest. The smell of her breath, her hideous face, her mouth clamped on mine, the stink, the suffocating tongue down my throat scooping the air from my lungs.
When I woke, the too-sweet reek of old-lady perfume filled my nostrils. It smelled like fly-spray, overripe fruit. I crept onto the landing and sat on the top step and listened. Downstairs in the kitchen, tea gurgled from the pot and cups clattered on saucers. I needed to go to the bathroom but couldn’t resist eavesdropping for a bit.
‘They’re taking over the country, Lily,’ Mrs Nagle was saying. ‘Look at the Methodist church above in Ballycarn.’
Mrs Nagle and my mother appeared to have patched up their differences and now she was a regular visitor again. It started tentatively enough, with a shout over the ditch, or a salute on the road as she passed, then she’d ask to use the phone or have a look at the paper, squinting at the headlines in a manner that suggested she harboured a deep distrust of the written word.
She usually appeared when we were sitting down to eat. My mother reckoned the smell of cooking drew her out of her lair. She always had some comment to make about how many stone I’d lost
and wasn’t I gone fierce anguished-looking, the flesh falling off my bones. My mother took no notice, just gave me the odd wink behind her back.
Mrs Nagle slurped her tea and made an aaaah sound.
‘Used to be there wasn’t a sinner in it of a Sunday,’ she said, ‘the quietest little country chapel. Now you wouldn’t find a seat. Mrs Tector from beyond in the Holla was giving out, she says you can hardly get in the door of a Sunday with their singing and banging tambourines and all this happy-clappy business. If we’re not careful, they’ll start the same carry-on here. God knows it’s bad enough as it is, what with all these fecken folk masses.’
My mother cleared her throat. I could almost hear her smirk.
‘It’s not the same since they did away with the Latin, Phyllis.’
‘Never mind that. These crowd are worse than the boat people ever were.’
The tap ran.
‘Hah, Lily?’ she demanded. ‘Isn’t that right?’
Mrs Nagle couldn’t bear to think she wasn’t being agreed with, but my mother wouldn’t be drawn, so she changed tack.
‘I see John’s gotten great with that young Corboy,’ she said. ‘His mother’s a pretty little thing. If a bit ... affected.’
Now I was all ears. I stole down the steps, taking care to avoid the creaky one.
‘Aye,’ said my mother.
Mrs Nagle took my mother’s reluctance to elaborate as a signal to continue.
‘He’s a quare card, that youngster. I wonder if he isn’t a bit of a sissy.’
‘That’s enough now, Phyllis.’
‘You can’t be too careful raring a young lad these days is all I’m saying. Things are not like they were in our time.’
There was a lapse in the conversation, and the air seemed to almost quiver with what was unspoken. Then Mrs Nagle said, ‘How’s John been in himself lately?’
‘He’s fine.’
‘Y’know, there was talk around the village about the pair of them.’
‘People always talk, Phyllis. It’s what they do when they’ve nothing better to occupy themselves with. You know that.’
‘Aye, well, I hope that little louser didn’t corrupt your John...’
‘Phyllis—’
‘...Turn him into a molly boy or anything.’
A hand slapped the table, causing the cups and saucers to rattle.
‘That’s enough of that kind of talk, Phyllis. Whoever my son chooses to knock about with is his own business.’