And the birds kept on singing

by Simon Bourke

  “Open up, ya bitch! Open up!”

  He turned around just in time to see Pascal Tiernan hurtling in his direction. This time it really hurt, and when he hit the ground he had no desire to get up.

  He stayed like that for some time, buried face-first in the grass with Mr. Tiernan on top of him. If he’d been able to speak, he would have told Mr. Tiernan that he’d learned his lesson and was ready to go home now. All he could manage were a series of muffled grunts, each of which saw him pinned harder to the ground, so he stayed quiet and waited for his ordeal to be over. He heard footsteps and voices, deep manly voices. This didn’t sound good. There was a blue flashing light too. What was the significance of that? He knew it meant something, but it was hard to think straight with thirteen stone of Tiernan on his back. He wriggled around, trying to get a look at the light, and Mr. Tiernan released him, just like that. The blue lights were obviously a good thing, some sort of rescue team probably. He got to his knees, eager to thank his liberators. But then more arms came, and these ones were very unfriendly; they belonged to the owners of those deep voices. He felt cold, clinical metal on his wrists and wondered what kind of rescue team this was. He was lifted off his feet and carried down the drive. It was nice not to have to walk any more. He’d done enough walking for one night. The car was nice and cosy and he was more than happy to lie down on the back seat. Hopefully they were going somewhere nice. A nice, long drive; that would be great. The sooner he got away from all this madness, the better.

  32

  His throat was dry, so dry he could barely swallow. There was a glass of water nearby, he was sure he’d seen one, but in order to get to it he would have to wake up. He didn’t want to wake up. He liked it where he was. If he could stay asleep, everything would be okay.

  “How are you feeling this morning, young man?”

  It was one of those deep, manly voices again. He didn’t want to talk to its owner, so he sank deep into his dreams, away from the voice, away, away.

  But the voice persisted.

  “Wake up, you little shit. You’ve got some cleaning up to do.”

  He felt a foot on his arse, kicking him gently, almost playfully. Still he resisted, desperately hanging on, forcing himself back down to his dreams, away from manly voices and playful feet. But the foot returned, shaking him forcibly until he had no choice but to respond. He opened his eyes, back to reality, and the first thing he felt was pain.

  “Ha, I’m not surprised you have a sore head, the state you were in.”

  Seán closed his eyes; the light intensified the agony. He curled into a ball, searching for sleep once more, but there was no escape.

  “I want you out at the front desk pronto, sunshine. There’s some paperwork to be done. But first ...” Seán heard the sound of sloshing water “... you have to clean up that puke.”

  The voice departed. Relief. He could go back to sleep now.

  “GET UP!”

  Another voice, a different one, but no less manly than the last. And then banging, the clank of metal upon metal. There was no more sleep to be had here. He rose gingerly from the bunk and looked around him. He was in a prison cell, a stark, dimly lit prison cell. There was puke on the floor, presumably his, and what looked like piss on the walls, owner unknown. Alcohol had been at work here. He’d been drinking and landed himself in a bit of mischief. Why had he been drinking, though? And what kind of mischief had he landed himself in? It hurt his head to think, but he had to try to unravel the mystery. They’d been in the woods, lots of them; Pegs, Murt, Ginty, the whole class. Exams, that was it. But there was more; it wasn’t just the exams he was celebrating. Someone was coming, someone special: her. She was coming. The pain intensified, but this time it was different. It was more than a headache or an upset stomach. It came from deep within his soul and threatened to tear him apart.

  She had come. Leanne had come. The most beautiful girl he’d ever seen, and she had come to see him and be with him. They had been together, finally, after all that waiting. He’d been so sure it would go wrong, but it hadn’t. It had been amazing. They’d gone to the secret place, walked across the bridge, sat in the look-out and gazed up at the stars. It had been romantic, just as he’d planned. It was love. He’d been in love. And then she’d done something amazing to him: his first ever blowjob. A momentous occasion, and what then? They’d returned to the party and danced by the fire. He’d held her close, not wanting to ever let her go. Then Alice, and Murt. He was running toward them, stopping, realising what was happening. He tried to push the memory away, but to no avail. It came roaring back vividly, mocking him. The shame, the sorrow and the guilt. He’d watched them go, his heart disappearing with her, and knew life would never be the same again. That was when the pain had started, but it was also where his recollection of the night ended.

  How had he ended up in here? He clearly hadn’t returned home to lick his wounds and ruminate on the strangeness of love. Maybe he’d been fighting, taking out his anguish on another drunken reveller? That sounded like something he might do. He remembered faces, angry, sneering faces, and then walking to what he thought was salvation. Had the guards picked him up on the side of the road, asleep? Roaring at traffic in the time-honoured fashion of a seasoned drunk? No, there was more. Something so terrible, so unspeakably bad that his brain was doing its best to prevent him recalling it. He looked at his hands, which were cut to shreds. His face hurt, too. He rose to his feet, head spinning and body aching. There was a mirror above the sink. He went over to it, resting his hands on the basin, head bowed. He knew he wasn’t going to like what he saw, but he had to do it. He lifted his head. It was far worse than he’d imagined. Both eyes were heavily swollen with ugly, angry bruises, flaring purple and blue, ready to pop at any moment. His lips were caked in blood. Cuts and scrapes of various shapes and sizes adorned his cheeks and forehead. His left ear was swollen in the manner of a prop forward after a day of hard scrummaging, and his nose! Oh, Christ, his nose. Could you even describe it as a nose anymore? It pulsed and throbbed, blood oozing out of the nostrils, forming a crusty discharge on his upper lip. Fuck! He tried to cry but no tears would come.

  No matter how bad this was, he knew the worst was yet to come. The guards hadn’t picked him up on the side of the road; that was wishful thinking. He’d done something awful, and it involved Leanne. He searched his mind, afraid of what he might find, but there was nothing coherent there, just a mass of images, sounds and feelings – all of them bad. It didn’t matter, though; they’d tell him what he’d done. That was what they did here.

  A voice called out from the corridor. “Have you cleaned that up, young man?”

  He tried to reply with something witty, something that would show them he wasn’t afraid, but all he could manage was a pitiful croak. He picked up the mop and stared at the mess at the floor. This was something he could fix. He’d fucked up everything else beyond repair but this puke, which came from his body, could be cleaned up. He tackled it with as much gusto as he could manage until it was all gone, each movement sending a spasm of pain shuddering through his body. As he squeezed the mop and propped the bucket against the wall he noted, for the first time, that he was being held here against his will. The door of the cell was firmly shut, its iron vastness making escape impossible. There was a window high on the wall opposite, but it had bars in front of it. Sunlight poured in, forming a small rectangle in the middle of the floor, his only connection to the outside world. The fresh air and open skies that he’d always taken for granted were now out of reach. It was just him and this tiny room; he was a prisoner. Panic set in.

  “Hey,” he shouted, finding his voice. “I’m finished. Let me out!”

  He went to the door and began pounding on it frantically, his bruised hands no longer a concern. “Hey! I’m finished. LET ME OUT!”

  By now his hangover, deformed features and lost love were of secondary concern; his desire
for freedom outweighed everything else. He had to get out of here.

  A panel shot open in the middle of the door and a face appeared at the other side.

  “What’s up with ya, boy?”

  Seán stepped back sheepishly, suddenly ashamed of the fuss he was making.

  “I’ve cleaned that up, like you asked.”

  The guard peered in through the hole. “So you have.”

  “Can I come out now?”

  The guard looked at him blankly, as if he’d never been asked such a question before. Seán knew exactly what he was doing, it was always the same with these types; they loved the power, lived for it. He probably wanted Seán to beg, get down on his knees and plead for mercy. Well, he’d be waiting a long time. Seán stared back at the guard, almost willing him to leave him there but secretly praying he wouldn’t. Realising there was no more fun to be had, the guard paused a moment longer before unlocking the door and swinging it open. Seán casually stepped out into the hallway.

  “You said something about paperwork?”

  33

  It was his grandparents that came, both of them. He didn’t remember giving the Garda any contact details, but they probably knew who he was and that meant they knew who his grandmother was. Everyone knew who she was. At least it wasn’t his mother and Daryl that came; that would have been much worse. His grandfather didn’t even bother coming in, opting to stay in the car while his wife dealt with the nasty business inside. Seán was waiting outside the sergeant’s office when he heard her voice. She was a few rooms away; they were separated by at least four layers of brick and mortar, but he could hear her. He couldn’t make out what she was saying, but he could decipher the tone. It wasn’t what he’d hoped for. There was no sense of outrage, no ill-advised threats; she sounded contrite and apologetic, like someone eager to atone for sins they might have committed. He knew then that he was alone. If his greatest backer, his one true ally, didn’t have his back, then no one had. The voice came closer and suddenly she appeared, flanked by an officer with whom she was deep in conversation. He looked at her and their eyes met briefly before she looked away, but he’d seen enough to know that he was no longer her favourite grandson. She went to the front desk, signed a few forms and continued into the sergeant’s office, leaving Seán to wait outside. After a couple of minutes, he was called in to join them.

  “Sit down there, Seán,” said the sergeant.

  He did as he was told, taking the chair beside his grandmother, and waited for his penance to be passed down.

  “Now, Seán,” said the sergeant, “what have you got to say for yourself?”

  Great, one of those open-ended questions designed to capture the victim in their own web of lies. Well, he wasn’t going to fall for it. He would play it safe.

  “Well, Sergeant, I’d been drinking and I had too much and ... things just got out of hand.”

  Patricia snorted in derision. Seán turned to look at her, scarcely able to believe how quickly she’d jumped ship, but she refused to meet his gaze and stared ahead impassively.

  “You left quite a trail of destruction, so you did,” said the sergeant. “Let’s see: common assault, criminal damage, trespassing, breach of the peace, under-age drinking, abusing a police officer ...”

  He trailed off, letting the words hang in the air. Seán could feel the sergeant’s eyes boring into him, this was serious now. He’d thought it would be a rap across the knuckles and ‘on your way, you little scamp’. With this list of offences, however, there was no telling the outcome. He could end up in one of those juvenile detention centres near Dublin. There were proper hard lads in those places; he wouldn’t last a day.

  “Luckily,” the sergeant continued, “Mr. Tiernan has decided not to press charges. You will be expected to pay for the window you broke, of course.”

  Mr. Tiernan? A broken window? Jesus, it was worse than he’d thought. There were no charges being pressed, though, the sergeant had just said so. There was a chance yet that he’d end the day a free man.

  “The damage to his daughter’s reputation isn’t going to be so easily fixed, unfortunately.”

  Ah yes, his greatest crime of all: slander. Assault and criminal damage they were used to, just young lads acting the maggot; but a fella spreading lies about a poor innocent young wan? He was the lowest of the low, the kind of person they put in a separate wing alongside the nonces and the rapists.

  “Listen, Seán,” the sergeant said, revealing an unexpected compassionate side. “I know what it’s like being a teenager. It’s not that long since I was chasing girls, breaking hearts and getting into fights with fathers.”

  Seán looked at him doubtfully.

  “But one thing I never did was spread lies about a girl, and especially not one as nice and innocent as Alice Tiernan.”

  That was his cue. He needed to show them both how deeply sorry he was.

  “It was a horrible thing to do, and I regret it immensely.”

  “Yes, you do, I can see that.”

  “If Mr. Tiernan would permit it I would like to formally apologise to Alice, and Leanne too if possible.”

  Anything to see her.

  “Oh, no, Seán, that won’t be happening,” the sergeant chuckled. “Mrs. McLoughlin, over to you.”

  Patricia cleared her throat and glanced briefly at Seán before she spoke.

  “You can’t live with us any longer, Seán. I’ve spoken to the Tiernans, and we all agree that it would be best for everyone if you returned to your mother’s. And I don’t want you in and around our avenue either, at least not until Leanne has gone to college. What those girls have been through ...”

  Seán sat in stunned silence; she was washing her hands of him, just like that. It was her manner that hurt the most, cold and clinical. He had become a problem that had to be dealt with, and her way of dealing with that problem was to send him back like a broken toy; send him back to the place he hated more than any other, back to live with Daryl.

  34

  He lay on his old bed in his old room in his mother’s house. The tightness in his chest was back, the anxiety too, and now they were accompanied by a deep mourning, a sense of loss. Not only was he right back where he had started, but now he had to live with the thought of what might have been. If he hadn’t told that stupid story about Alice, who was nice and innocent and didn’t deserve any of this, he wouldn’t be here now. He’d been weak and stupid and had got precisely what he’d deserved. Of course, the irony was that he had ended up with the older, hotter sister and had got far more than an imaginary hand-job, but nobody cared about that now. The whole affair was shrouded in shame. He couldn’t even revel in the glory of having a seventeen-year-old girlfriend, not that he would have revelled. It wasn’t like that, Leanne wasn’t some slut he’d coerced into sex, she was his first love. And now she hated him, detested him, probably regretted going anywhere near him. He wasn’t the nice boy she’d imagined; he was a sick pervert who went around telling lies about innocent young girls. He was disgusting and the thought of his cock in her mouth made her sick. Sick.

  When he awoke, it was dark. He was still in yesterday’s clothes, but someone had put the covers over him and taken off his shoes. Light filtered in from the hallway; someone was still up. He was thirsty and he hadn’t eaten all day. Was it safe to go to the kitchen? Had Daryl gone to bed? He went out into the hall. The living-room door was shut, but he could see the light of the television filtering through the transom window. The kitchen door was shut too but there was a light on inside. His mother must be in there. She often went to the kitchen at night to read a book and smoke a fag. Once he had got up for a drink of water at half four in the morning and there she’d been, engrossed in a crime novel, chugging away on her cigarettes. He edged the door open and tentatively peered into the room. She was there at the table, smoking a fag, but there wasn’t a book in sight.


  “Hi, Mam.”

  She looked at him sadly. There was no anger there, just deep sadness, and it killed him. He didn’t mind if she got mad, he deserved it, but he never wanted to disappoint her. Now, not only had he disappointed her, he’d failed her too.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked.

  He recognised her tone; it was the same one his grandmother had used at the station.

  He couldn’t handle any more of this coldness. Get angry. Scream at me. Do something, for fuck’s sake.