White Lies

by Mark O'Sullivan

  When I looked at Johnny, I felt sick – sick with myself. This past year, since Johnny got into the drugs, I’d been protecting Beano from him. I knew he’d already turned some of the lads on to the stuff and Beano was an easy target. Now I was the one who’d led him astray and it made me feel lower than Johnny, if that was possible.

  I had a bad feeling about the fact that Beano and Snipe were so late but, for the moment, I concentrated on Seanie.

  ‘He’s a lazy bastard,’ someone said. We all agreed – all except Johnny, who was busy getting the last drag from his joint.

  ‘Moran’s only on the team because he’s Mahoney’s star pupil,’ someone else muttered.

  ‘Too busy studying,’ I said, following the stupid logic and taking a look back at the cabin to see if the padlock was off it yet.

  Johnny Regan chuckled and said something under his breath as I watched Snipe come in by the gate at the front of the site. When I turned back to the lads to tell them, they’d gone silent and were gaping at Johnny. Then they all looked at me. I picked up a shovel.

  ‘Snipe’s in,’ I told them. ‘What did you say, Johnny?’

  He started backing away, keeping an eye on me as his boots crunched on the pebble path. In his hand was a crowbar.

  ‘I said Moran’s a busy lad, for sure.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘You said he was too busy studying. I said he was a busy lad, full stop, amen, so be it, end of story.’

  I took a step in his direction and he stumbled. The crowbar fell to the ground and he went down on one knee. He looked like he was praying, but the sneer was still on his face.

  ‘What’s on your mind, Johnny? Besides that greasy hair.’

  Still on the ground, he picked up a fistful of pebbles and shuffled them around in his hand. ‘Moran’s mind isn’t on his game ’cause he’s in love, OD.’

  I was holding on to my shovel like it was a piece of wreckage after an explosion. ‘You saw him with Nance?’

  ‘Yep, up at her house. And yesterday he took her for a ride – in his car.’

  I’d accepted the fact that I’d been dumped, but the idea of being dumped for Seanie Moran was too much to handle. I swung the shovel at Johnny and he just about made it out of the way. The blade slashed through the pebbles and dug out a wound of clay. He scrambled like the rat he was on to the grass verge and, lifting himself slowly, spat the pebble dust out of his mouth.

  ‘You’re mad, Ryan. It runs in the family.’

  He legged it as I pitched the shovel at him, but I wasn’t aiming for a hit. I just wanted to get rid of him. I looked around the site trying to figure out what to do next. After a few minutes of standing there like a statue I went over to the cabin to find out where Beano was.

  Snipe wasn’t reading The Sun. He seemed preoccupied and when he saw me he started shifting some papers around his desk.

  ‘Yeah?’ he said.

  ‘Where’s Beano?’

  ‘Were you with him last night?’ he demanded.

  That brought out the Judas in me, or the other fellow who said ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’

  ‘No,’ I lied and slid away – like a snake.

  Beano was hungover and probably pretending to be sick; it was as simple as that, I told myself. I went to work, glad to lose myself in the mindless drudgery and keeping well away from Johnny Regan.

  At lunchtime I skipped Super Snax. I didn’t feel hungry. Instead I went up to Beano’s house. Snipe would be down at the bookies.

  Beano’s mother answered the door. Eventually. She was a small woman with a distracted, half-wild look, but her voice was soft. Behind her the house smelled of disinfectant.

  ‘Could I talk to Beano, Missus?’

  ‘Beano?’ She seemed to be having trouble remembering who Beano was. She hadn’t opened the door all the way and now she was inching it closed.

  ‘He has the flu.’

  Looking beyond me, her eyes were watery, not with tears but with a kind of cloudy mist. I knew from Beano that she was on some kind of tablets for her nerves. That day she must have taken a double dose, she was so far gone.

  ‘The flu … he can’t walk. Talk, I mean; he can’t talk … or something …’

  She was losing me now. She retreated into the hallway, forgetting to shut the door fully. I called up the stairs from the door, hoping Beano would answer and put my mind at rest.

  ‘Beano? Beano? Is everything OK?’

  The only sound was from the telly in the front room. She was turning up the volume, drowning out the noise of the world.

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ I called, feeling a right jerk shouting into the empty hallway.

  I had time to spare before getting back to the site so I dropped in home for a few minutes. I thought I’d grab a cup of tea and read a bit in my room. I’d picked up a biography of Dylan Thomas in the library a while before, but the way things worked out, I hadn’t really got down to reading it. I wanted to understand those poems of his better; I thought if I did, I could write something myself. I’d failed at everything else; it seemed like the only thing left to try.

  I went upstairs to get the book. From the kitchen I could hear Jimmy’s comings and goings, and I passed on the tea. Stretching out on the bed, I forgot the pain in my knee and Beano and Seanie Moran and Nance and all the others. Everything, including time itself.

  Dylan Thomas was already eighteen and moving from his native Wales to London when the door of my room opened. It wasn’t Jimmy Ryan, not the Jimmy Ryan I knew. His long, oily slick of hair had been shorn to the roots. His tooth-filled grin was no longer ridiculous. He almost looked young. A touch of face-paint to cover the little purple veins on his face, and some padding on the slouched shoulders, and he could have starred as himself in the film of his early years.

  ‘Are you on a half-day or what?’ he asked pleasantly.

  ‘No,’ I muttered, too stunned to say any more.

  ‘Some morning I had, OD, I can tell you.’ He came over and sat on the windowsill by my bed. ‘First, the haircut. They could have stuffed a mattress with the clippings!’

  It didn’t seem to matter to him that I was pretending to read again.

  ‘Then, in I goes to the Sound Centre. “How much,” I says, “would a second-hand trumpet set me back?”’

  He stopped and I couldn’t help looking up at him. When I did, I could see the shadow cross his face. Now his voice wasn’t filled with false cheerfulness. It had an edge to it that really surprised me.

  ‘Some little prat from Cork owns the place. Do you know him? Murray?’

  The name came out sounding like ‘slurry’.

  ‘He says, “Too much,” and goes back to stringing an old wreck of a guitar. “I could pay by the week,” I says, and he shakes his head.’

  I could just imagine Jimmy standing there being ignored by this Murray fellow who I knew well. I’d ordered an early Van Morrison album, Astral Weeks, from him a while before. Murray could keep his Astral Weeks. Mad as I was at Murray, I was even madder at Jimmy for making little of himself.

  ‘So I ask him what has he got in that line, and he puts down the guitar and he’s about to throw me out. I ask him again what has he got and how much is he looking for.’

  I put down the book. I didn’t like the way this story was going. It sounded like it was going to be another of his hard-luck stories. I wanted to put an end to it.

  ‘What time is it?’ I asked, sharpish.

  Which was a waste of breath. He was still at the Sound Centre.

  ‘I leaned in over the counter and I says, “Show me the trumpets, son.”’

  All of a sudden, the tension was gone and he was chuckling to himself so much his false teeth slipped and the illusion of youth was broken for a split second. He laughed it off and, secretly, I was glad he’d been able to. I found I was grinning too. His face lit up when he saw that.

  ‘I think it must have been the skinhead haircut, OD. Murray was wetting himself. Out come the tru
mpets. Two duds, one beauty – a bit knocked up but shining, boy, shining. I smacked the old lips, got ‘em ready.’

  He stood up, acting out every move, miming the hand-over of the trumpet, the fingers testing the stops, raising it up and clearing his throat.

  ‘How much?’ I asked.

  He puffed out his cheeks, pulled in a big breath, and let it go.

  ‘Sounded like a bull with diarrhoea. There was a phone at the far end of the counter and Murray was looking at it and thinking about scrambling for it. But I got myself between him and the phone and I blew again and I gave him …’

  ‘Jimmy! How much?’

  ‘You should’ve seen his face. If only I had one of those Scamcorder yokes, OD …’

  ‘Camcorders,’ I snarled.

  ‘Yeah, those things. If I had it on tape I’d watch it for the rest of my life. He thought I was a chancer, OD, but I showed him what I really am. A musician. Anyone can sell records. I can make music. I can make music with this boozy old mouth and this … this …’

  He was looking at his hands. They were supposed to be holding a trumpet. Only he really believed in the pretence.

  ‘How much will it cost, Jimmy?’

  The trumpet that wasn’t there vanished. He folded his arms very tightly.

  ‘Don’t matter,’ he said. ‘It’s mine. Murray’s holding it for me until I get the money together. I gave him a £10 deposit. It’s mine.’

  NANCE

  My first day back at school and I was on my way to the principal’s office. But, no, I wasn’t in trouble. I’d sat quietly in class all morning and not been asked one question, and that annoyed me. I wondered if Tom had asked them to go easy on me. Now I was going down to meet him and collect the books he’d got together for me. The principal was out so Tom was in charge. I knocked on the yellow-painted door and the sound echoed along the empty corridor.

  ‘Come in,’ Tom called from inside and, for the first time in days, he looked pleased to see me.

  ‘I have all your stuff here except …’ he began.

  ‘Why are the teachers steering clear of me?’ I asked. ‘Is that your doing?’

  ‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘But they’re not fools. They add one and one and get two, that’s all.’

  ‘I’m sorry I embarrassed you,’ I said without feeling.

  He put on his hurt father face. I don’t know what kind of face I had on but it had only one meaning for Tom.

  ‘Why all this sudden hate, Nance? If I don’t know what I’ve done wrong, how can I put it right?’

  ‘I don’t hate you,’ I said, but I was looking at the file cabinet beside him when I said it and not into his pleading eyes.

  ‘Did you talk to your mother?

  ’The question made me dizzy until I realised he was talking about May.

  ‘Talk to her about what?’ I said, acting the dummy.

  ‘Surely you can tell her what’s wrong? I know you can’t tell me.’

  The filing cabinet was grey and shiny. That was all there was to know about it. But I kept on staring at it anyway. His long sigh told me he’d given up trying to get through to me for now. I turned for the door, forgetting why I’d come in the first place.

  ‘Are you taking the books?’ he asked.

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘Look, Nance,’ he said wearily, ‘I don’t know why you did what you did last week. And I don’t know why you came back to school. But I’d prefer if you’d decide one way or the other. Otherwise, I’ll have to make up your mind for you.’

  ‘So what’s new?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Making up my mind for me. You always do that anyway,’ I said.

  ‘You know that’s not true.’

  His hands, which had been moving aimlessly around the cluttered desk, settled on a letter-opener, a miniature Samurai sword. I was thinking of how enthusiastic he’d been when I’d said I wanted to be an engineer. He got books for me and photocopied the pages from the prospec tuses of the different colleges. It seemed to me now that he’d found a target for me and was determined to get me there.

  ‘I don’t need anyone making up my mind for me,’ I told him.

  He raised the letter-opener and held it out to me. I didn’t know what he was at but it felt scary. I hoped the school secretary or one of the teachers didn’t come in and find him like that. He stabbed his finger in the middle of his chest.

  ‘Take it,’ he said, ‘there’s a soft spot just here. If you push this in hard enough you’ll kill me. It’s sharp enough.’

  ‘I’m going back to my class,’ I said.

  ‘I’m sorry, Nance, that was silly, bloody silly. If you don’t want to go back in, don’t.’

  Not wanting any more of this weirdness I let it rest, gathered up my new books and left him. The rest of the morning passed without incident and I spent most of the time trying to figure out what I’d say if I found Heather Kelly. But my mind kept drifting back to those few minutes spent in the office with Tom.

  It wasn’t the business with the letter-opener that bothered me. When he’d asked if I’d talked to May, I’d thought nothing of it. Now that there was time to think, I wondered if he really didn’t know whether I’d spoken to her. If he didn’t, did that mean they’d already stopped confiding in each other? I hadn’t expected to drive a wedge between them so quickly. I couldn’t help thinking that if it could so easily be sundered, then their relationship couldn’t have been as perfect as it had always seemed.

  Seanie offered me a lift home at lunchtime and I accepted only because I was afraid I’d put him off the idea of helping me. On our spin the day before, we hadn’t talked very much. We’d driven down to the Glen of Aherlow and sat in the car for an hour looking out at the view of fields dotted with farmhouses and sheep and cattle. It was so good to feel that you were somehow above all the little problems down there in the world.

  Later, we’d dropped into a coffee shop in Tipperary. As we sat drinking coffee and minding our own business, this small kid of three or four came and stood staring up into my face. I smiled at him but he just looked goggle-eyed at me for all of a minute. Seanie got uneasy. He finished his coffee and stood up to go.

  ‘It’s getting late.’

  Just then, the child ran back to his parents who were sitting nearby. ‘That girl is all brown,’ he yelped.

  They tried to hush him up but he went on enthusiastically.

  ‘And her hands is all brown on the back and all white on the front!’ he cried. His parents pretended to tie the child’s shoelaces. It was almost funny how they got in each other’s way, as they ducked for cover.

  ‘He’s just a dumb kid, Nance,’ Seanie whispered.

  I didn’t like his hushed, secretive tones. I didn’t like being reassured. I didn’t like the look in his eyes that said he was suffering on my behalf. ‘Seanie, I don’t need anyone to tell me not to take this kind of stuff to heart,’ I said. ‘I know the story. The story never changes.’

  I felt sorry for that couple as I remembered the incident, and I felt sorry for having been so hard on Seanie. I knew it wasn’t fair to be so silent as he drove me home but I had nothing to say to anyone. We pulled up at the front gate and I opened the car door.

  ‘Will I collect you on the way back?’ he asked over the sound of REM on the car radio.

  ‘“Night Swimming”,’ I said, ‘what does it mean? That song?’

  ‘I haven’t a clue,’ he answered, ‘but it sounds good.’

  Then I realised I wasn’t asking Seanie the question. I was asking OD. He always had a theory about every song, film, book you mentioned. I’d usually disagree just for an argument – the kind of argument that kept us together, not the other kind that drove us apart. We could sort of show off to each other and prove we weren’t just another lovestruck couple, interested only in kisses and sweet nothings – though we had plenty of those too. It would never be like that between Seanie and me. None of that talk, none of those kisses.


  I looked over at him. Good-looking as he was, I wondered how I could have led him on – though, of course, deep down I knew well why. I couldn’t wait until Wednesday, when I wouldn’t have to keep up this pretence with him any longer.

  There was a moment of panic when I imagined he was moving towards me but he was just turning the radio volume down. He didn’t seem to have noticed my scram ble to get out.

  ‘We’ll find her, Nance,’ he said. I could almost hear the handcuffs clicking on my wrist – we were in this together now, that was how he saw it.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Will I collect you after lunch?’

  ‘No, I’ll walk,’ I said. ‘Clear my head.’

  I waited for the Morris Minor to pull away out of sight before turning from our front gate and heading for De Valera Park. Passing by OD’s house, which I could have avoided but didn’t, I wondered if Jimmy had made any progress with his big comeback plan. I hoped he had, though the evidence of the still overgrown front lawn and the unrepaired front door wasn’t promising. OD, I supposed, had got to him and shaken his new-found confi dence. The thought was almost enough to turn me back from Beano’s house.

  I was going there because I wanted to tell Beano – and, through him, OD – that Seanie wasn’t the cause of our split, that there was nothing between Seanie and me. I didn’t want OD believing the rumours that were sure to have spread. Not because I wanted to get back with him, but because I didn’t want him or anyone else thinking I was some kind of bimbo, running from one fellow to the next.

  The nearer I got to Beano’s, the less sure I was that this was the real reason and the less sure I was of what I was going to say. Maybe I’d just ask how OD was. Maybe that was all I wanted to ask.

  I’d have walked right by the house if the front door hadn’t already been open and if I hadn’t heard what my ears could scarcely believe. Mrs. Doyle was at the door before I got to the knocker. She didn’t look well. In the background, Beano was crying out loud.

  ‘What do you want?’ she screeched. ‘Will ye all just shag off and leave us alone!’