Skippy Dies: A Novel

by Paul Murray

‘That’s my kind of woman,’ Geoff says approvingly.

  ‘Isn’t that your mom, Mario?’

  ‘Fuck you, Hoey.’

  ‘Fuck you, you can’t see anything properly on your stupid phone.’

  ‘Well, don’t look then, and the rest of us will enjoy this porn.’

  ‘She’s hot… like it’s hard to tell, but I’d say she’s hot.’

  ‘Shut up, he’s about to – here it comes… oh yes! Take it, bitch!’

  The money shot, cheers mixed with disappointment: ‘Why didn’t he do it on her face?’ ‘Some of it went on her face.’ ‘Yeah, but I’d totally do all of it on her face.’ ‘Oh sure, when you’re a hundred years old and you finally crack open your penny jar and you go down to some skank on a street corner, is that it?’

  ‘Play it again, Mario.’ The crowd around the phone now swollen to take in everyone in the room, shouting encouragement as the grainy face, no bigger than a fingernail, tentatively sets to work again.

  ‘Hey –’ someone – Lucas Rexroth – extends a finger ‘– what’s that there in the background?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘There, right there in the corner, see? That ring thing?’

  ‘I don’t know, a sign or something?’

  ‘It looks sort of like…’

  But here comes the messy denouement again, and the boys cheer like they’re at a Senior Cup match and Seabrook has just scored a try.

  It was eleven years ago tonight that Guido LaManche, Hawaiian-shirted pariah of Seabrook’s graduating class, came into Ed’s Doughnut House and advanced his proposal.

  ‘They call it the “Bungee Jump”,’ he said. ‘They’ve been doing it in Australia for years.’

  ‘Why?’ Farley asked.

  ‘What do you mean, why?’

  ‘Why would you want to throw yourself off a cliff with elastic tied around you?’

  The Doughnut House had opened just a few weeks before; the lights made Guido’s olive skin shine, as he turned to Tom and his entourage at the next table – Steve Reece, Paul Morgan, and a trio of soft-haired St Brigid’s girls who looked like they’d just been taken out of their packaging – with a scoffing, palms-up gesture. ‘Because it’s exciting, that’s why. So that when you’re a grey-haired old fart drooling into your soup, you’ll have at least one thing to remind you that you were alive. Seriously, you’ve never felt a rush like this. It’s like sex to the power of a thousand – that’s a good thing, by the way,’ he glosses for Farley’s table, winning a laugh from the jocks.

  ‘It sounds dangerous,’ one of the cashmere-clad girls said dubiously.

  ‘You’re damn right it’s dangerous. What’s more dangerous than jumping off a thousand-foot drop? But at the same time, it’s one hundred per cent totally safe, because of the elastic rope and the harness, see? I’ve personally tested it out fifty times, and it’s absolutely foolproof. Although perhaps it’s not for the ladies.’ He directed another sly, theatrical glance at where Farley sits with Howard and Bill O’Malley. ‘Or all of the gents.’

  Guido LaManche, though he’d failed every exam he ever sat, was a bona fide genius when it came to the psychology of the adolescent male: even when you knew he was playing you, it was nearly impossible to resist. ‘Well, where is it, so?’ Farley said, bringing his Coke down on the table with a thunk. ‘Why don’t you show it to us, instead of just sitting here talking about it?’

  At this Guido became demure, folding his hands like a chaplain. ‘If anyone thinks he is ready for the ultimate challenge, I will bring him to it personally right now. All I ask for in return is a small contribution towards expenses – say, twenty pounds a head?’

  ‘Twenty pounds?’ someone spat incredulously. But Farley was already on his feet.

  Howard grabbed his arm: ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I want to see this thing,’ Farley replied.

  ‘Are you mad?’

  ‘It’s not like there’s anything else going on. We’re just going to sit here all night and, let’s face it, not talk to any girls. Anyway, you guys don’t have to come.’ Turning away, he fished around in his pockets till he found a twenty-pound note. ‘I’m in,’ he said, slapping it into Guido’s palm

  ‘All right!’ Guido said. ‘At least there is one brave man here tonight.’

  Tom, Steve Reece and the others looked at each other in consternation.

  ‘Don’t go now?’ a blonde voice pleaded. ‘It’s like the North Pole out there.’

  But the shame of being out-faced by a nerd was too great; already coats were being put on, scarves wound around necks, and the next thing Howard knew he was wedged into the back of Tom’s Audi with two of the blonde girls, cruising down the dual carriageway after Guido’s moped.

  In spite of his reservations, he couldn’t suppress a wave of excitement. Earlier in the week, Tom had scored four tries in the Paraclete Cup match against St Stephen’s; Howard’s own father, who rarely showed interest in any aspect of the world not preceded by a pound sign, had come home raving about this ‘boy wonder’ everyone was talking about, and his prospects of ending Seabrook’s five-year dry spell in the Cup Final next month. Even sitting half-asleep in a dingy classroom, Tom exuded prowess, vitality, the sense that something was about to happen; he moved in broad, bold strokes, sweeping through the complications and dithering that for most people constituted life. Howard thought of him as a kind of anti-Howard, a bolt of lightning to Howard’s ever-dissipating fog. And now Howard was in his car!

  He would have been happy simply to stay here for the rest of the night; it was warm, and his thigh was welded hip to knee to the blonde girl next to him – her name, he thought, was Tarquin, and she was, or had been, Tom’s girlfriend. But after ten minutes the red eye of the moped turned off the dual carriageway, and down a series of darkened, narrowing roads; then it passed through a gateway and now puttered to a halt in an unlit car park surrounded by storm-blown trees. Dismounting, Guido, rendered silver by the headlights of the cars, removed his helmet and with a little comb began arranging his hair into its customary nest of swirls.

  ‘Everybody ready?’ he inquired chirpily, when the second car had pulled up and everyone had disembarked. Farley was acting nonchalant, smoking one of Steve Reece’s cigarettes. Howard tried to picture him hurling himself off a cliff. Maybe he could still be talked out of it if it was done right. Years of careful self-attendance had taught Howard that there was a back door to most situations, through which the prudent man could slip discreetly.

  ‘It’s fucking freezing,’ a caramel blonde from the other car said, wedging her hands under her armpits.

  ‘Where are we, anyway?’ Tarquin asked, looking around disgustedly at the accoutrements of Nature.

  ‘Killiney Hill,’ Bill O’Malley told her.

  ‘Come on.’ Guido had already half-disappeared into the shadowy band of trees. Cursing, the party followed after him.

  In the distance, on the crest of the hill, the silhouette of the obelisk protruded like the nib of a fountain pen, inscribing a clouded signature on the tenebrous contract of the night sky, a secret pact between world and darkness. When he was younger, Howard used to hear stories about Satanists coming up here to perform black masses. Tonight he couldn’t hear much more than the wind, and the damp crunch of twigs under his feet.

  They reached a fork and pursued the coast northwards, out of the park and into the compact wilderness around it. To the right the sea foamed blackly beneath a static, ominous overhang of cloud. The track climbed steeply upwards until the trees fell away to grass and rocks and heather.

  ‘Dalkey Quarry,’ Guido announced, raising his voice over the wind. ‘A sheer vertical drop of about three hundred and fifty feet. It’s not the Grand Canyon, but believe me, you’ll find it plenty high enough.’

  En masse, they peered over the edge. The rockface dropped swiftly into shadows, long before it reached the ground.

  ‘You cannot be serious,’ the platinum blonde said.

&n
bsp; ‘I told you, it’s one hundred per cent safe!’ Guido interjected irritably, huffing as he hauled a metal harness from under a brake of gorse. ‘I’ve jumped in it myself like twenty times.’

  ‘You told us in the pub you’d tested it fifty times,’ Tarquin said icily.

  Guido rolled his eyes. ‘I wasn’t there counting it, Jesus Christ. It was a lot of times, okay? Just trust me.’

  She stared at him, arms folded, for a long moment, while Guido pretended to be engrossed in untangling the rope; then she tottered away to Tom, who’d been listening to this exchange with a mirthful expression as he smoked a cigarette and looked back over the lights of the Southside, the exclusive postcodes sparkling back from the seafront – his world, Howard thought.

  ‘I’m just worried you’re going to do something crazy,’ she wheedled, stroking his chin beseechingly.

  ‘It’s just a bit of fun,’ Tom said. ‘Chill out.’

  ‘Heads up, Tommo!’ Something glinted through the air: a hip flask, tossed over by Paul Morgan. Tom took a swig, gasped, threw it on to Steve Reece.

  ‘Well, I’m not hanging around to watch you kill yourselves,’ Tarquin, displeased, decided. ‘I’m going back down to wait in the car.’

  ‘Me too,’ the platinum blonde said.

  ‘Fine!’ Guido shouted, kneeling by a tree trunk with the rope. ‘Go!’

  ‘Wait!’ The caramel blonde tripping after them as they marched off down the path.

  Farley stood at the edge of the quarry, contemplating the abyss with an indecipherable expression. Peeping over the brink again, it seemed to Howard the drop had grown even steeper. ‘Are you absolutely sure you want to do this?’

  ‘Hey, Farley, heads up!’ called Steve Reece. Farley looked round just in time to clasp the flask to his stomach. He gazed at it blankly a moment, weighing it in his hand. Then, opening it up, he pulled from it until he was overcome by coughing. ‘Give some to those guys too,’ Steve Reece instructed.

  Gasping, Farley handed the flask to Howard. ‘I just think it would be fun,’ he said, in a whiskey falsetto.

  ‘We’ll do it too,’ Bill said heavily. Howard’s throat had seized up from the alcohol: all he could do was nod his head.

  They trooped over to where the others were waiting for Guido to complete his preparations. Metallic objects clinked in his hands. ‘Nearly ready…’

  ‘What are you doing?’ Tom called amusedly over his shoulder. Howard turned to see the outline of the girls bunched at the end of the path.

  ‘We don’t want to walk through the woods on our own,’ the squeak came back. ‘We’re just going to wait here.’

  Tom let out a belly-laugh. ‘Birds,’ he said, flashing his teeth at Howard.

  ‘Yeah,’ he returned shakily.

  ‘All set.’ Guido, holding in his hands what looked like a strait- jacket attached to an orange rope, rose to his feet, to dutiful whoops of excitement from the huddle of boys, which the wind seemed to swallow before they had even left their mouths. ‘Before we continue, I will be needing your contributions, please, gentlemen.’ The famously serpentine eyes darting from one face to the next. ‘Twenty pounds each.’

  Checking their wallets, Bill and Howard realized that they didn’t have enough money. For an instant, Howard saw a lifeline. Then Tom stepped in, offering to cover him. Steve Reece did likewise for Bill. ‘Thanks,’ Howard mumbled. ‘We can settle up later in the week.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Tom said.

  The notes disappeared into Guido’s back pocket. ‘Okay.’ In his voice Howard thought he heard the trace of a quaver. ‘Who’s going first?’

  No one said anything. Howard occupied himself with gazing down into the drop, much in the same way he’d examine his fingernails when the teacher put a question to the class, until it started making him nauseous and he had to step back. Guido shifted from foot to foot.

  ‘What’s the matter? I’m telling you, this is a hundred per cent safe. They’ve been doing it in Australia for years. But no problem, if you’re too afraid, you can go and wait with the girls.’

  Still no one responded. The sea crashed; nightbirds cried; the wind hollered mockingly.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Guido exclaimed. ‘What’s the problem? Are you all faggots?’

  ‘Fuck it –’ Tom stepped forward and grabbed the harness. At exactly the same moment, however, Steve Reece had the same idea, and now a new and vociferous argument broke out over who would go first.

  Finally it was decided that the fairest solution would be to draw lots for the privilege.

  Taking an expensive-looking pen from his jacket, Tom wrote out their six names on a flyer for an Indian restaurant. Even in his careless handwriting the list had the look of something fraught with destiny; no one spoke as he passed it to Guido, who tore it into strips, curled the strips into balls and dropped them into his helmet. Closing his eyes, he reached in and plucked a single ball back out. Each of the boys arranged his face into an attitude of yawning indifference. Guido untangled the strip of paper and extended his palm so that everyone could see it.

  HOWARD

  ‘Great,’ Howard said tightly.

  Guido picked up the jingling harness.

  ‘Good luck,’ Bill O’Malley said. Farley nodded dumbly, staring at Howard with an almost parodic expression of guilt.

  The others punched his shoulder and said in terse voices, ‘Good man, Fallon, fair fucks.’

  In a daze, Howard raised his arms and the harness was strapped around him. Beside him Guido issued last-minute instructions: ‘… elasticated… last second… adrenalin…’ But he was aware only of his numb fingers and the frenetic clamour of his heart, the wind charging about below like a wounded beast, and the bleak, stony faces of the other boys, uncomfortably resembling the front row of mourners at his funeral…

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Guido intervened in his field of vision again. ‘Nothing can possibly go wrong.’

  Howard nodded and, in the manner of a man who has just stepped out of the deep freeze, lumbered up to the brink.

  The chasm at his toes yawned and seethed, a single undifferentiated blackness that bore no relation to anything earthly, but rather resembled some terrifyingly literalized condition poised just beyond the edge of human apprehension –

  ‘Ready…’ Guido at his shoulder.

  – resembled, it hit him in a flash, his own future –

  ‘And… go!’

  Howard did not move.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ Guido asked.

  ‘Nothing, I just need a second to…’ He bent his knees, a caricature of a diver.

  ‘You want a little push?’ Guido advanced. Involuntarily Howard sidestepped away from him, raising a hand in defence. ‘What?’ Guido appealed. ‘Are you going to jump or not?’

  ‘Okay, okay…’ Howard went back to the brink, shut his eyes, clenched his teeth.

  The wind in the trees, on the rocks, like a siren’s song.

  ‘What’s going on?’ The girl’s voice sounded like it was coming from the other side of the world.

  ‘Fallon won’t jump,’ Steve Reece said. ‘Come on, Fallon, for fuck’s sake, I’m freezing my bollocks off.’

  ‘Yeah, Fallon, come on.’

  ‘He doesn’t have to jump if he doesn’t want to,’ he heard Farley say.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ Steve Reece repeated heavily – and then a hand dragged him back from the precipice.

  ‘I’ll go. Jesus Christ.’ Tom was unstrapping the harness; Howard let him, gulping in air like he’d just been hauled out of the sea, then, freed, stumbled away on jelly legs to collapse on a tussock of grass a safe distance away, still too disoriented to be ashamed.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Fallon,’ Paul Morgan said. ‘You fucking pussy.’

  ‘Howard the Coward,’ Tom said, shrugging on the harness.

  ‘Howard the Coward!’ Steve Reece laughed delightedly.

  In the distance he heard the girls’ laughter like the chirr of woodland
animals, and he blazed with disgrace, feeling like he’d been at long last unmasked, outed, shown for what he really was.

  ‘Is anybody going to jump tonight?’ Guido was playing up the incident as a personal affront. ‘Maybe I should just take you home now?’

  ‘Chill the fuck out, LaManche.’ Tom had buckled the harness belt and now stepped forward to survey the void. ‘Everything’s ready?’ Guido assented. ‘Right,’ Tom said crisply, and hurled himself over the edge.

  The others leaned out to witness his descent, his brawny body in a matter of seconds dwindling to a little toy as it dropped through space, straight down, not twisting or turning, and hit the ground with a flat thud.

  For a moment no one reacted: they simply remained craned over the chasm, looking down at the tiny prostrate dot of colour motionless at the bottom. Then Guido mouthed, ‘Oh, shit.’ And from their position over by the edge of the trees, one of the girls began to scream.

  Eleven years later, two hours after his last class, Howard is still haunting the school. First he attends a meeting about the upcoming Father Desmond Furlong Memorial Concert, to which he contributes mostly by way of nods or ambiguous throat-clearing noises; then he installs himself in the staffroom where, taking advantage of the silence, he corrects a class’s worth of essays on the Land Acts, appending meticulous individual critiques and advice for future projects. He has moved on to potential questions for the fourth-year Christmas exam when the cleaner starts hoovering pointedly under his feet; accepting defeat, he slinks for the door.

  It’s Friday, and Farley has been sending regular texts from the Ferry, which Howard has ignored; Tom is bound to be there, and tonight of all nights he would prefer to avoid him. When he reaches his car, however, he realizes that even the prospect of being beaten to a pulp is more appealing than another night in his lonely house. Perhaps he can hide out in a corner without being seen? It’s worth a shot: pocketing his keys, he turns in the direction of the pub.

  The time is after six, and most of his colleagues are, in their own parlance, ‘well-oiled’. To Howard’s dismay, Farley is talking to Tom, conspicuously flushed and laughing too loud. He salutes them curtly and heads for the snug, where a little crowd has gathered around Finian Ó Dálaigh, the restored geography teacher, who’s in the middle of a diatribe about the bastards in the Department of Education: ‘Those bastards do nothing but sit around in their fine government buildings playing battleships, I’d like to see them supervise four hundred maniacs running around a gravel yard…’