‘I believe you Mr Grundy.’
‘Let me prove it. Ask away. Anything you want.’
‘I can’t really think of something to ask.’
‘Please mister. I won’t rest easy till you ask.’
‘I don’t know,’ Tom thinks for a moment. ‘Do you have any kids?’
‘I don’t have any kids mister. We did have a Gobshite though.’
‘What?’
‘Gobshite, that was the name of me dog. He’s the closest thing to a child I’ve ever had. I know what’s going on in that head of yours. You’re thinking to yourself, what’s this daft old mentaller doing giving his dog a name like “Gobshite”. Well, you’d be right in thinking that. I am a bit of a mentaller. But only when I don’t take me tablets. That being said, it’s a long time since I forgot me tablets. I have a note to remind me. I stick it to me glasses before I go to bed. That way I see it as soon as I put on me glasses. And if you’re thinking to yourself, what if the old mentaller forgets to put on his glasses? Well, I’ll tell you mister. If that happened then Frank Grundy wouldn’t be able to see a damned thing. Now, what did I ring you for again?’
‘I rang about the wigs.’
‘Jaysus, of course ye did. Sure half the buttons are missing from this phone. I wouldn’t even be able to ring ye if I wanted to. Yes, you were asking about the dog. Gobshite really was a Gobshite. I’ll tell ye what I told everyone else. There was something seriously wrong with that mutt. I mean in the head compartment. Ye hear about these things with humans, ye know, someone thinking that they’re Napoleon Bonaparte or Cleopatra or some other fecker who just happened to be on the television the evening before. Ye hear about it with humans all right but I’d never heard of it with animals until I met Gobshite. The dumb bastard thought he was a bird.’
‘Look, Mr Grundy,’ Tom interrupts. ‘If I could just get your address I’ll drop over and get the wigs.’
‘The dog would drag everything in the garden into the corner,’ Grundy ignores him. ‘Exactly like a nest. Then he’d sit right down on his fat behind and start howling. I’d swear the thing was trying to sing. Of course the vet didn’t agree with me. She says it’s impossible for a dog to think it’s a bird. She said that their brains aren’t wired up the same as humans. She said that if she was being honest, dogs don’t even know that they’re dogs. They don’t analyse themselves like us. They just do things by instinct. I says to her, sure could he not instinctively do things like a bird? She couldn’t answer that one. But it wasn’t even just the nest and the singing. Gobshite had a tendency to jump off the wall. And I’m telling you this for a fact, he’d be trying to wiggle those hairy legs of his on the way down. Answer me that Mrs Big-shot vet, I said. Answer me bloody that.’
‘Can I get your address Mr Grundy?’
‘Of course,’ he rattles off another cough and then gives Tom the address. ‘The afternoon suits me,’ he says.
‘Grand,’ Tom mutters, knowing that he will have to ask for a half-day in work.
‘Just a word of warning. Don’t use the bell. I hooked it up to the mains a few months ago and it did something with the bell tone.’
‘Grand Mr Grundy.’
‘Just use the knocker.’
‘Okay.’
‘Give it a good bang now.’
‘See ye.’
‘A good bang.’
‘Bye,’ Tom hangs up the phone.
Chapter 13
Tom’s grandfather often said that he wanted to live beside the sea. That’s why they ended up in Howth, parked next to the pier, fellow trucks beside, bare trailers and a blue Volkswagen van with tartan curtains drawn across a window on the side, the words ‘WASH ME YA LAZY BOLLOX’ smudged into the grime on the rear. It was the latter part of June and yet it rained constantly the first night they arrived. That, combined with the fact that his grandfather had decided to give up the drink following the Fortress Bar incident, resulted in a whole new dimension of claustrophobia in the horsebox. Tom could almost feel his grandfather’s reserve as a pressure in the air. Between long bouts of silence he would suddenly clear his throat and shuffle from one end of the horsebox to the other. After a couple of hours of this Tom braved the weather just so he wouldn’t have to look at his grandfather any longer.
His clothes were soaked by the time he reached the shops which hugged the Harbour Road. A phone booth outside a chip shop offered some relief from the rain. The interior smelled of plastic and wet dog, graffiti was etched into the door. Tom dropped a coin into the slot and rang one of the lads from the estate. The call was answered by the mother of the boy, who informed him that she hardly sees her son any more and advised Tom that the only way he’d reach him was if he was living in the knickers of her son’s new girlfriend. Tom wished he knew what to say to this and wished he had the nerve to draw out the conversation. He wanted to ask her what was happening on the estate and he wanted her to tell him about her day, to complain about her husband, to give out about the neighbours or the kids or the economy. He wanted her to talk. Just talk. And he would listen, for the rest of the night if he could. Just listen. But the line went dead and he was left with the sound of the rain pelting against the roof of the booth. Eventually he opened the door to the cold.
There was an arch, head-height, in a wall next to a bus stop. Tom stood inside the arch and clumsily removed a cigarette from his pack of ten. His clothes were itchy with damp and the top of his head was so cold it pained. Tom sat on his hunkers, curled into a ball and lit a cigarette. His wet fingers made the tip soggy and pretty soon he could no longer get a drag on it. A bus came and went and Tom wondered how long it would take to get a bus into the city centre and then a bus to home before he remembered that his home was parked on a load of old fish guts beside the pier. He dried his hands on the inside of his jacket and smoked cigarette after cigarette, pulling so hard it hurt his chest. When he eventually stood, his joints were painfully tight and the clothes he wore felt like a burden. His grandfather was asleep on a chair when he arrived back at the horsebox, a bucket next to his feet. Tom would fall asleep to the steady sound of water dripping from the roof into that bucket.
The next day was a dry one. And with sobriety his grandfather’s interest in the truck was renewed. He spent a whole day cleaning and waxing the cab so the paint shone like the skin of an apple. Tom offered to help but his grandfather was used to working alone. In his own way his grandfather was always alone, even when he was with other people.
Howth quickly grew on Tom. He would sit at the top of the embankment beside the pier and stare at the water, the breeze as soothing and luring as a drug. The rats would come out as it darkened, scurrying about the boulders on smash-and-grab food missions. The rigging on the boats in the harbour clinked and echoed constantly. There was magic in that sound. It was calming, as a mobile is calming to a child. His grandfather seemed calm too.
Tom didn’t know whether it was the sea air or the absence of drink but there were signs that his grandfather was returning to his old self. After a week in Howth he even decided they should visit the graveyard where Tom’s grandmother was buried.
‘You ever been on a boat?’ he asked as they drove along cramped, bumpy roads.
‘No,’ Tom said.
It took so long for his grandfather to reply that he wasn’t sure he had heard him over the noise of the engine.
‘We should rent one out, ye know, when the weather picks up a bit. Maybe we could try a bit of fishing.’
‘Can you fish?’ Tom asked.
‘I don’t know. I’ve never tried.’
The springs on the chairs creaked and the truck groaned as the surface of the road became more uneven.
‘It can’t be that hard,’ his grandfather said. ‘All you’re doing is feeding the fish really. Isn’t that right?’
‘I suppose,’ Tom said.
‘What?’
‘I said I suppose,’ Tom shouted.
‘Sure that’s all they do, those fish.’ His
grandfather controlled the vehicle with small movements of the steering wheel. ‘They eat and eat. Christ, they don’t know when to stop eating. Don’t ye hear about goldfish that eat so much that they burst or something? If ye hide the hook well enough I’d say ye could catch hundreds of fish.’
‘Yeah,’ Tom agreed.
‘We’d better make sure we get a big boat then.’ His grandfather looked to him and smiled.
Tom wasn’t expecting it and by the time he returned a smile his grandfather had his eyes on the road again.
The graveyard was a place of savage brambles and chalky pathways. An ancient chapel sat at the entrance, grey and humble, built at a time when buildings were designed to complement their surroundings. There was a frail-looking hotel adjacent to the graveyard, fractured front painted a stale pink colour with a wooden sign affixed to the side wall. The Bedford was parked in the car park next to the hotel beside a beat-up old hatchback and a fat oil cylinder.
The freshness of his grandmother’s plot stood out against the other weed-ridden and collapsed ones beside. Tom felt okay with this. He couldn’t explain it at the time but he felt some comfort in the idea that death was not a new phenomenon. He blocked out the brightness that shone through the branches overhead with his hand and he listened to the movement of that place. When he closed his eyes he felt freedom.
He soon heard a voice coming from the distance, an accent noticeable for its neutrality.
‘Hey there. Who owns this truck?’ The voice was angry in a reserved way, the way a parent might be if their child is misbehaving in public. It was coming from the hotel direction and when Tom looked up he saw a man exiting the car park and walking in their direction. He wore a white shirt, so clean it seemed to radiate light, contrasting with a pair of dull slacks on stumpy legs. Tom’s grandfather muttered in the way that he usually muttered, and moved from the grave towards the hotel. Tom hung back, hoping that the distance would save him from getting involved.
The man was a chinless, fat individual, his small legs looking out of proportion to the balloon shape of his top half. His hair was thin and greasy so it seemed to be pasted to his head.
‘Does this thing belong to you?’ he asked Tom’s grandfather, nodding his head in the direction of the truck.
His grandfather answered with a grunt.
‘I want it out of here,’ he said. ‘Now.’
‘I’ll move it,’ his grandfather muttered.
Taking the acceptance as proof he was in the right, the man began to badger Tom’s grandfather about the difficulties in running a hotel, about how he didn’t need people making it more difficult by parking ugly lorries in his car park. Tom’s grandfather quietly walked past the man to the driver’s side. He took one last look at the graveyard before heaving himself into the cab. Tom climbed into the passenger side and they left that place in silence.
As soon as he parked the truck in Howth his grandfather went to the pub to pick up from where he had left off in the Fortress Bar.
Some days later Joe O’Donnell appeared on the scene, a small, squat man with a tangle of dark hair which he liked to sweep from one side of his head to the other in an effort to hide the balding middle. He claimed he was in Howth to fish but he would never have any fishing gear with him and he would avoid talking about fishing when asked. But Howth attracted the likes of Joe O’Donnell, the sea called the drunks and the bums. They would arrive in the morning with a bag of beer cans or a bottle wrapped in brown paper, full of notions of freedom and adventure. The sea offers the illusion that it is easy to escape your life, that happiness lies just beyond the horizon. Perhaps this is partly the reason why so many people have jumped on a boat to England only to find themselves alone and homeless in a city so big they feel even more insignificant. Tom could spot them a mile off, walking from one end of the pier to the next in filthy coats, blooming with the many layers of cardigans and jumpers underneath, possibly believing that they looked no more inconspicuous than the other tourists that visited the place.
Joe stank. It was this undercurrent of drink and sweat, old rotting newspaper and soil. It made Tom think of smell as being a living, breathing creature, one that slumbered on O’Donnell and was disturbed into action every time he moved. And he was creepy. He reminded Tom of an unwanted magician at a kid’s party, the type with a dead flower hanging out of a lapel, the big coat with the many pockets. Tom could imagine children crying at his approach and parents shooing their offspring away from him. Tom imagined he could make things disappear without anyone noticing. He could certainly make things appear. He magicked a bottle of whiskey onto the table and drank the whiskey from a ceramic mug along with Tom’s grandfather.
For days they got drunk together in one of the local pubs and then announced their approach with an off-key rendition of ‘Spancil Hill’, trying to sing over each other the way drunks do. Tom would watch them, his grandfather’s frame angled backward as though he was walking up a hill even though the pathway was level. Frequently he would totter sideways until he met a wall or lamp-post for support. Tom would help his grandfather into the back of the lorry but he was afraid to touch O’Donnell so he let him awkwardly climb in by himself.
They would play cards, poker, with a deck that didn’t start out as a single deck of cards. Tom’s grandfather had compensated for missing cards from one deck with cards from another so some of the cards had a red pattern on the reverse side while others had a blue one. Two Jokers remained in the pack but the number two and a crude spade-shape had been drawn on one Joker in black pen while a six and a diamond had been drawn on another in red pen. One evening O’Donnell began to talk about upping the stakes. Tom became suspicious. The fact that his grandfather had been winning every hand up to that point was another cause for suspicion.
Tom’s grandmother had been the card player in their house. She learned how to play from her father, who worked night security in a large biscuit factory on the south side of the city. They would play cards to make the shift go quicker. Unfortunately he had the gambling gene, that curse that compels a man to risk everything he has on a game of cards. He was one of the breed who believe in luck and see life as one big game of chance. And it excuses their actions, this belief, because in a way it doesn’t matter how hard you work at something or how long you think about your options because if lady luck is not on your side you will never achieve anything, in their minds at least. There were times when he lost his whole weekly wage on one game of cards. Tom guesses that seeing the devastating consequences of gambling was why his grandmother only allowed herself to play cards on one day a year, Christmas Eve.
The table would be covered with a green tablecloth, coppers were retrieved from the money jar under the sink, cards were removed from on top of the cabinet and the lamp was moved from the front room to the kitchen. They would play cards up to eleven at the latest or up to the point when his grandmother won all the money, whichever came first, usually the latter. His grandmother would share all her expertise with Tom, knowledge that was passed on from her Dad about shuffling and dealing, flushes and blues and straights and full houses. Her knowledge was impressive and as she flicked cards in front of each player with confident ease and skilfully shuffled the cards so they were a blur, joked about her winnings. It was easy for Tom to imagine her a different person, not a grandmother or mother or wife but an individual with hopes and dreams that didn’t revolve around the family environment.
Some of his grandmother’s knowledge served him well. Tom was soon aware of what O’Donnell was up to. He began by talking excessively, mostly when it was his deal, go off on a rant about the police or the government, shuffling the cards clumsily so that a clump of them would fall onto the table, face-side up. He would then slowly collect them and put them at the end of the deck. Tom knew he was putting all the best cards at the bottom of the deck and then dealing them to himself. Tom considered getting his grandfather aside and alerting him but he was probably too drunk to listen and even if he did, God
knows what it would have led to. Tom just watched and hoped O’Donnell would make an obvious mistake.
His grandfather’s luck must have been in or his drunkenness was clouding his bad card-playing because he was winning at least every second hand, one of which had a nice big pot.
‘I told you,’ he’d say. ‘You can’t win a winner.’
He always fancied himself as a card player and a gap of a year between games at Christmas seemed to reinforce this belief and push all the lost games out of his head from the previous Christmas. Because that’s what would happen. He would lose game after game to Tom’s grandmother, drink too much whiskey and sulk until he went to bed. Then, the following year, he’d be at the table again, rolling his sleeves up for the first game and repeating the words, ‘You can’t win a winner’.
This was the first time his words made any sense.
Tom could see that O’Donnell was getting pissed off with the way the night was turning out and he was constantly proposing that they play a different game, like Acey-Deucy or Three-card Stud, a quick way to win a big hand and a lot easier to cheat on. Tom’s grandfather refused. He still had enough sense to stick to a game he was winning at.
‘Do ye know of those fellas in Las Vegas that remember all the cards?’ O’Donnell gripped the mug by the handle, held it out for a refill.
‘Yeah,’ Tom’s grandfather blinked a number of times before sloshing whiskey into the mug.
‘That’s some living, isn’t it?’
‘I guess so.’
‘Some fuckin’ living,’ O’Donnell took a mouthful of the whiskey and squeezed his eyes tightly before placing the mug on the table. ‘That’s some fuckin’ living isn’t it?’
‘Yeah,’ Tom’s grandfather picked up his cards. His head dipped and his eyes partially closed. He suddenly bolted upright and took a deep breath. ‘Christ. How long have we been playing? What time is it?’
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