Headbanger

by Hugo Hamilton

  They were all so desperate to live on. Old women talking all the time about how long they had to wait. As though they had something urgent to do somewhere else. One of them urged Coyne to read something in Hello! magazine.

  See how the other half live, she said. There’s Burt Reynolds. He’s coming to collect me after I’m finished here. Then she threw back her head like a young girl, closing over the dusty pink dressing-gown and shaking with laughter; Jesus, you’d think she was holding back a chainsaw.

  Coyne found no soul mates in Hello! Healthy bastards. You’ll be coughing up daiquiris, you’ll be spitting up Bailey’s on ice one of these days, you fuckers. Burt, you big dickhead. Who do you think you’re codding? You and your missus will be in for tests any day now.

  Then St Patrick got up and shuffled in with his mobile crozier and there was a kind of hypnotic peace attached to the sound of his forerunner wheezing away to the chant of Nurse Proctor’s voice. Proctor? Who Proct her?

  Put your mouth around the nozzle for me, like a good man, and blow out all the way. Now take in a deep breath and blast it out – all the way, all the way, all the way, all the way. Excellent. When it came to Coyne’s turn, he blasted all the way like a bricked camel. He was showing off, sending the indicator crazy, numbers on the computer spinning out of control trying to keep up with his carbon output.

  But in the end he still came up with no more than a sixty per cent capacity. How did things get so out of hand? There was a lot of bronchial scarring on the lungs, the consultant tried to explain, pointing to pathetic white shadows on the X-ray. We’re going to have to put you on an inhaler, and Coyne felt the elation of imminent death. I’m dying, he said to himself like a celebrity who had gained instant recognition.

  There is no need to panic, the consultant said. Nobody is a hundred per cent. And people function perfectly on much less than sixty per cent. However, you’ll need the inhaler to reduce the inflammation.

  For fucksake. Coyne felt he had been cheated. He was going to live after all. Whereas he wanted to go out in glory. Wanted to have something really serious, something that would make them all look up and take notice. Something terminal that would make his audience hiss. Not the same old half-arsed lung ailment that he would carry around for the rest of his life until he was walking around in pyjamas with a tube up his fucking nostril. In the middle of the action, Coyne would be stopping to puff on his little blue pipe. Vlad the inhaler.

  Then he joined the gym. He was going to be as fit as a raver. He was going to be Keanu Reeves from the neck down. Carmel had been echoing his concern for his health, saying it was about time he started getting into shape. And there was nothing more irritating than somebody telling you what you’ve already made up your mind to do.

  Do you want me to go down with you? she asked, maybe just to give him a bit of moral support.

  Yeah, hold my hand.

  I’m only asking. Just thought you’d like the company.

  What’s this, the first day at school or something? Come on, Carmel.

  There were odd moments like this when Coyne became so embarrassed of his own family that he disowned them completely. As though they might blow his cover. Wanted only to be an individual, a lone ranger with a clean slate and an unquantifiable past. Even wondered if he had suddenly ended up just like his father and would one day overlook his own son in the street. As though his family was in danger of destroying any slender sense of mystery that might have been attached to him. Coyne the family man, they’d be saying. Whereas Coyne was a much more complex figure. A man of many permutations. Didn’t even want anyone to know he was a Garda, and let on to the girl with the orange face at the desk that he was in advertising, like Vinnie Foley.

  Done any trainin’ before? the instructor asked bluntly.

  Sure. I’m just out of the habit.

  I thought so.

  But it was obvious he hadn’t a clue. Made the mistake of pointing to his chest when the talk was of deltoids. Got the biceps right and luckily didn’t say anything about forceps. But from the way he eyed the gym equipment it was clear that Coyne anticipated some kind of human mousetrap that would fold up on top of him as soon as he touched it.

  We’re going to have to develop that chest, the trainer said after measuring him. He’d already used his first name about seven times. And Coyne kept looking down with a sense of awe at the trainer’s industrial-size build.

  Good job Coyne had chosen a quiet time of the day. There was a man at the end of the gym, letting out a terrible grunt every now and again. Agony beyond human endurance. He wasn’t even doing very much, just looking at these barbells and flexing his fingers like he was going to get metaphysical on them. There were two more men working themselves to death on the machines. One of them suddenly began to beat the shite out of an invisible enemy in front of a mirror. The other walked around in circles shaking a leg. Girl I’m going to make you sweat on the sound system. Smell of armpits everywhere.

  Punch my chest, the trainer commanded.

  But Coyne was far too much of a gentleman. Didn’t see what the point was.

  Go on, Pat. Punch me. Like, hard as you can.

  Coyne slapped a gentle fist against a faded picture of James Dean and dutifully pretended he had hurt his hand.

  Know what I’m sayin’?

  What?

  This is you in four weeks. Guaranteed. On this machine alone. It’s called the Pec Deck, Pat.

  Coyne sat into the machine and couldn’t help a little self-conscious smile. Here’s me on the Pec Deck. Wondered what it would sound like if his name was Declan – here’s Deck on the Pec Deck.

  He looked at the poster of a girl on a similar machine, except that she was smiling and making it look like it had suddenly inflated her breasts. Coyne was out of breath within seconds. Broke into an instant sweat. Wanted to grunt like the man at the end of the gym but wouldn’t let go of his dignity. He furtively puffed on his blue pipe and it took no less than twenty minutes before he was completely exhausted and sat slumped on a bench.

  The trainer had talked about a high. Coyne felt nothing but low and inadequate looking at one of the other men pulling himself up on a chinning bar, issuing a kind of abbreviated Fu… every time his body was hauled up. Afterwards, Coyne saw him walking towards the Pec Deck, keeping his legs apart as though the exertion had forced a little accident in his track suit pants. Then he started using the Pec Deck on his neck.

  Strange, Coyne thought, and secretly called him Neck Deck. That machine is meant for the chest, you thick fucking Neck Deck.

  Coyne didn’t last long. He gave it four weeks and felt nothing but intense claustrophobia each time he went there. It was clear that exercise in a confined space caused a delirium of sorts, along with an unexplained hatred for people he hardly knew. The same kind of irrational hatred he felt at school when he stared at the pronounced twin barrels at the back of O Ceallaigh’s neck in front of him. Always had a passionate desire to chop the side of his hand down on that neck for no reason.

  Carmel tried to persuade him that it was only a matter of getting used to the place. You’ll soon be grunting like the rest of them, she said, laughing hysterically.

  I’m sorry, Pat, she said, trying to calm down. It’s just the idea of you on the machines, grunting. Then she collapsed again, out of control. Breaking her shite laughing at nothing.

  Coyne gave it up. It wasn’t the exercise that got to him at all, but the other shapers. What made up his mind finally was the night he walked into the changing rooms, totally exhausted, and found none other than Neck Deck, carrying on with his exercise in the nude. The last few toe-touchers, with his hole staring up at everyone coming in the door. Coyne’s timing was all wrong and he ended up having to sit in the sauna with him. Even having a nice conversation, talking about the new ferry, until some of the other lads started coming in and the place was suddenly packed out.
Then it came, just as Moleshaver had forecast: some bastard farted.

  I wouldn’t put it past you, Neck Deck, you sly bollocks.

  Oh Jesus, they all said, fleeing through the narrow door. The smell was like superglue at boiling point. If it had a colour, this was deep aquamarine with curling yellow streaks. The problem was that Coyne was the last out and so, inadvertently, became the culprit, stared at by all the others. It was the story of his life – always got away with the ones he did, always got blamed for the ones he didn’t.

  Coyne did make one more attempt to get fit. Cross-country running. At least he wouldn’t have to put up with a pack of grunters with rubber buttocks. So he took the whole family with him out to the Phoenix Park for a picnic. The children could go to the zoo while he was doing a long distance around the fifteen acres.

  Oh no, he said in the car. We forgot to bring Gran. Wasn’t she meant to go back today?

  What’s that supposed to mean? Carmel huffed.

  And Coyne was playing to the gallery again. Hoping his children were on his side at least. Turned round and told them that Gran Gogarty came from the zoo. She was let out on parole. Coyne had to go into the zoo and sign a document saying that he would be responsible for her.

  Very funny, Carmel said. That’s Garda humour, is it?

  Coyne ran like a maniac around the Phoenix Park, staring down at the grass and the mud and chestnut leaves. Whenever he looked up he saw the Pope’s Cross, stuck like an ugly big stake through the heart of Dublin, and the voice of the Pope echoing in his ears. People of Ireland – I loff you. Let us pray together for piss.

  Coyne ran back to his family as though they were all he had. He joined them sitting on the grass near the Wellington spike eating sandwiches and apple boats. Little bars of Crunchie and KitKat. Zoo shrieks in the distance and a giant bottle of Fanta standing like a monument on the chequered green rug surrounded by white plastic beakers. He was thirsty as a dog. And Jennifer kept looking at his steaming forehead, tracing a line through the beads of sweat with her finger, saying: I like the smell of Dad.

  You could never really be a hard man in Ireland anyway, because sooner or later somebody close to you would give the game away. Coyne would remember his own father and succumb to some hereditary softness, some underlying regret which tugged away at the heart, pulling the rug from underneath. You could act the brick all you liked until somebody started singing ‘Dirty Old Town’. Then you were fucked.

  And you could not avoid a little self-irony too. Get a bell for that bike, and all that. Do you think I’m not a fool? Third Policeman stuff. You had to pre-empt derision and be aware of the vulnerability of your own country and its people. As a Garda, Coyne knew he was an open book, so he had to play it cool: eager but calm. Tough, but not outside the humour of the moment. Surfing somewhere between commitment and contempt.

  The Rod Steiger–Gene Hackman school of authority, chewing the same piece of gum into eternity, didn’t come off right in Ireland at all. Not enough heat. You could hardly wear those big, steel-rimmed reflector sunglasses in the rain. And you couldn’t stand with your legs apart because people would only be asking themselves if you had nappy rash or something. A truly hard man had a way of reflecting great anger, yet would still be ready to look a woman up and down. Don’t fuck with me, chiselled into the frown. All it took was one more pestering fly to change the delicate balance. You had to be able to stop chewing suddenly, grimace, blink twice in rapid succession like a series of warning signals. One false move, pal.

  A truly hard man turned his back on Ireland, buried his tragic past, slapped his fist and said something like: OK, any blood donors here? Do you like hospital food? They’ll be reconstructing your face from old photographs. Coyne had developed his own brick qualities, like showing sudden curiosity for minute details. He could pretend he was highly interested in knowing where the underground drainage ran. Measure distances between blades of grass, between knuckles. He had a look that made people remember their prayers. Moved with slow precision, as though each blink was being recorded contemporaneously. Sweet suffering Jesus, hold me back.

  But ultimately, the mask was flawed. The hard-man image would turn porous because he would remember his father, whom he had never really been able to get close to. Never managed to communicate with him or build up any real warmth until it was too late. When Coyne got married to Carmel, he finally became an equal, inviting his father to the christening of his son Jimmy. And shortly after that, just when they began to like each other, he died. Killed by his own bees. Every weekend, Coyne’s father went out to check his beehives. Dressed with a square cage around his head, he was out there with his smoker calming the bees, taking out the frames, clipping the queen’s wings. He had taught Coyne all about bees and chosen him to take over. But it was no way to get close to your father, with that lethal humming all around. And over the years, the bees had turned vicious through inbreeding.

  The neighbours hated the bees even more than the Irish language. And every once in a while, when Coyne was a boy, there would be a scream from the garden as his mother or his sister, or one of the kids next door, ran wildly into the house with a tormented bee buzzing in their hair. Coyne was the one who would usually take the tea towel and crush the bee with a soft little crack, before it managed to get as far as the skull. Coyne remembered nights with bees all over the house, buzzing up and down the window frames. Bees coming alive again out of nowhere at night and flying madly with intoxicated light-fury around the naked bulb in the middle of the room.

  And one Saturday morning, they got his father. Got under his protection. Stung him in the ear so that, when he dropped the frame full of bees to stop the immediate pain with his hand, he inadvertently allowed more and more of them to get in. All over his neck. Under his arms. All the children had left. Only Coyne’s mother was in the house at the time, and in the panic of their lonely marriage, they battled with bees, aggravating everything, running out into the street shouting, until one of the neighbours eventually came to help and brought him to the hospital.

  At crucial moments Coyne was exposed to memory. And guilt. There was nothing you could do about that.

  Carmel announced that she had been invited to Sitwell’s studio. Sitwell had been urging her to come and join his workshops. He had been full of adulation for her work, telling her she had exceptional talent.

  Pat, I’ve been asked to take part in a workshop, she said.

  A what?

  A workshop. You know, artists getting together and painting.

  Ah, here we go again, Coyne muttered. What, like all painting each other, is that it?

  It’s just a few of us, she said, rubbing cream on herself. The art teacher is giving us a chance to use his studio. The ones with any talent.

  Coyne looked her up and down. Once again she had turned herself into an artwork with white markings under her eyes. Two white blobs of cream clinging to her elbows waiting to be distributed. Against premature ageing, she had explained once. The elbows get older faster than any other part of the body.

  Talent? Coyne questioned a little maliciously.

  Don’t look so surprised, Pat.

  But he had reverted once again to his own fatalism, reading disaster into everything. He sat up reading The Great Rivers of the World and heard the noises coming from next door. Click, flush, mumble, bump. Then silence; the echo of Coyne’s own mute intransigence. While outside, the wind was pushing against the glass and shaking the life out of the trees.

  Bum, bum, bum, Carmel said, staring up at the ceiling for a moment while she rubbed cream into her neck. Coyne looked at her with horror. What was this bum, bum, bum business all about, he wanted to know. She had the kids repeating it all the time around the house. Even Mrs Gogarty was cracking up laughing as though they were inventing some arcane gypsy language that Coyne wouldn’t understand.

  Bum, bum, bum, what? Coyne demanded.
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br />   Bum, bum, bum, nothing, she said. It’s only what Mr Sitwell says all the time. He’s got this real Anglo-Irish accent and keeps saying things like that. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just like saying ‘now’ for no reason. Or you know when people are trying to think of something and they say, ‘well – eh’. He just says ‘bum, bum, bum’.

  Big fool.

  Everybody laughs at him, Carmel went on. Do you want to know what he says at the end of each class? Boom-she-boogie. That’s how everybody knows the time is up.

  Boom-she-boogie, Coyne repeated, squinting at her.

  Yeah. Boom-she-boogie, Carmel said once more in a Royal tone. Then she laughed and Coyne stared at the great green flow of the Amazon pulsing by silently through his hands.

  Carmel arrived at Gordon Sitwell’s house on Saturday morning, full of apprehension. Even going in through the gate, she hesitated, but then forced herself onwards, like a friend was pushing her in the back. Go on, what are you scared of. You’re bursting with talent.

  Darling, so glad you could make it, Sitwell gushed.

  She found herself being led through the hallway, through a dining-room and into a large extension at the rear of the house.

  Welcome to my studio, he said, ushering Carmel into a tall, spacious room which had sunlight streaming in through the skylights. Other people were busily painting away and hardly stopped to look up at Carmel, concentrating only on the slightly obese model, stretched out naked on a chaise-longue at the end of the room.

  Natasha has kindly agreed to model for us today, Sitwell said. A medieval beauty.

  Natasha smiled and shifted to contain the ache of immobility, setting off a chain reaction of movement along her body. She was a perfect subject, with lots of folds. Full of generous shadows and contours to work on. She seemed to be constructed in shimmering rings – double chin, neck, voluminous breasts as well as two or three stomachs, under which the pubic area seemed to disappear gracefully without any effort at modesty. Hard to say where it was under all those layers. Androgynous almost. Like Thelma and Derek rolled together into one big human waterbed of undulating flesh, legs and arms wobbling like buttermilk.