I use the term ‘conversation’ in its loosest possible sense. We were all stoned and pissed at this stage, and standing in the middle of a heaving crowd didn’t help matters one little bit. Plus it was my round and I had to elbow my way close enough to the bar to shout our order to the barman and then collect it when it came.
“I’m not sure we’re goin’ to have too much luck with this lot.”
“Fuck it.”
“The bride-to-be would be a nice prize.”
“You wouldn’t do that, would ye? Shag a girl the night before her wedding?”
“Fuckin’ sure, an’ anyway, she’s not getting married tomorrow. Look at the fuckin’ state of her.”
Spud was right, she was leading a chorus of ‘Eternal Flame’ by the Bangles, trying to stand up and in the process knocking over a lethal looking cocktail with her strap-on. Which was probably a good thing, the cocktail was a sickly greeny-blue and was only short of having smoke come out of the top of it.
I’ve no idea why, but I bummed a bit of dope and a couple of skins off Tony and went to the jax to skin it up. This was a bad move. I ended up spending, I don’t know, at least twenty minutes sitting in a stinky cubicle fumbling with all the shit, trying desperately and mostly unsuccessfully to put dope to flame, tobacco to knee, tongue to paper and all I had at the end was a filter-less abomination of a joint that looked more like a small snake that had just eaten a large rabbit.
I went back out to the lads and there they were, exactly where I left them ... gone. At least my pint was where I’d left it, but by now it was warm and had a yellow concaved head. I sank it back and felt the ends of it dribble down my chin. I went outside to see if they were having a smoke. They weren’t, so I had one. I sparked up the spliff, well, I lit it half way down and managed to get a couple of drags out of it before it became pretty much unsmokeable then I went back inside.
I surveyed the shop with one eye closed to aid focusing and limit double-vision, then I staggered around through the merrying throng. My situation was looking pretty fuckin’ desperate until I spied Spud sitting behind a pillar chatting to some quare one.
“There ye are! For fuck’s sake, where are the lads?”
“Eh, dunno. They said they were goin’ somewhere.”
“WHA? Goin’ where?”
“Dunno. Tony told me they were headin’ somewhere … hey, this is Annie Ryan, she’s from Dublin ...”
But when he turned around again Annie Ryan from Dublin had already done likewise and was tentatively embroiled in a semi recognizable version of ‘I-I-I Will Always Love You-oooo-oo-oo’.
“C’mon let’s go look for them.”
Spud turned to Annie Ryan from Dublin and shouted “I’ll be back.”
“OK ... see ye later, terminator ... ye fuckin’ gobshite!”
Yep, she was from Dublin alright.
Now, hindsight can be a wonderful thing, but given that, by this stage, we had both imbibed the bones of two gallons and a few shorts each and were in possession of neither hindsight nor foresight, any discussion on the matter would be purely academic.
We headed outside, took deep breaths of fresh Galway air and reached for our fags.
“Where did they say they were going?”
“I dunno! Tony came over to me and said they were headin’ somewhere but I was tryin’ to get busy with yer one ... (suppresses stomach action and indicates with head) ...”
“ ... Annie Ryan,” I suggested.
“Yeah, Annie Ryan, an’ ... I dunno.”
Spud was hardly a fountain of useful information at the best of times but right now it was like trying to extract teeth from hungry bear with a headache. Suddenly I remembered what century I was in and reached for my mobile. I pressed some buttons and called Brian. The connection made, the phone started ringing.
“C’mon Brian, feel the vibrations,” I mumbled to myself knowing bloody well he was in a pub somewhere and wouldn’t be able to hear it. Then I heard Brian’s voice.
“HELLO?”
“BRIAN? FOY! WHERE THE FUCK ARE YIS?”
“WHA’? WHO’S THIS?”
“FOY! FOY!!!! WHERE ARE YIS?”
“FOY? IT’S BRIAN, WHERE ARE YIZ?”
“I KNOW IT’S YOU, I JUST CALLED YE! Ye fuckin’ eejit.”
“WE’RE IN THE PUB! WHERE THE FUCK ARE YIZ?”
“WE’RE LOOKIN’ FOR YE. WHICH PUB? WHERE ARE YIZ?”
“HELLO? FOY? WHERE ARE YE? DID YOU FIND SPUD? WE TOLD HIM ... beep beep.”
My phone had been on for about thirty six hours. Another ten seconds was all it needed to fulfil its purpose, but the screen had gone blank.
“SHIT!! ... Here, give us your phone,” I said to Spud.
“Wha’ phone?”
“What phone? Your mobile phone, I hope you have credit and batteries for a call.”
“I ... I haven’t got a mobile phone, Ha Ha!”
“Oh, COCK!!” Who the fuck doesn’t have a mobile phone? We were supposed to be crashing in Paul’s gaff for the night, shit! ... We could ... effectively ... be homeless in a strange city, with none of our wits about us.
The only thing we could think of was to continue on our original trail. This place was a dead loss so they probably headed on up to the ... the ... emm ... what the fuck was it called? ... the ... the PRIORY, that was it, but where the fuck was ‘The Priory’?
We tried to approach a girl walking down the road but we must’ve looked like fuckin’ zombies ‘cos she crossed the street and half walked, half ran away from us. The next guy we approached was a little more accommodating, actually, a lot more accommodating. He didn’t know where ‘The Priory’ was but he stopped a couple walking nearby. The other guy didn’t know either but his girlfriend did, she told him, who in turn told our guy who relayed the information to us. This was no time to be playing Chinese whispers but it sounded close enough and seemed fairly straightforward.
The next thing I know, we’re in a pub and I’m hoping it’s ‘The Priory’. We shuffle through the crowds, back and forth, to and froing, heaving and ho-ing, but no sign of the lads. It felt like it was approaching closing time so we had only one option left.
“Fuck it, I’ll have a short as well. There are sorrows to be drowned.
Here, wait, actually, you stay here, there’s no fuckin’ way you’ll get served. Look at the fuckin’ state o’ ye,” said the pot to the kettle.
The next thing I remember is waking up, cold and uncomfortable. I raised my hand to my head to caress my throbbing ceann and was jolted into the world of the living by a sight that made my eyeballs bulge and my hair stand on end.
My hand was covered in blood, mostly dried and flaky but some fresh as well. A broken bottle fight? Had I glassed someone? A car accident? Good Christ!!! Had I killed someone? My life flashed before my bulging eyes, or had I been stabbed? My heart thumped and pumped my blood like iced water through my veins.
I sat up and looked around. Spud was beside me, my shirt was in ribbons and there was blood and broken pieces of glass all over it, we were in Brian’s van ...
“Spud, SPUD!! Wake up, the fuck ...”
I shook Spud as violently as I had to to rouse him from his semi-comatose state and looked around. The back window of the van was broken.
“SPUD, ye cunt, wake up! What the fuck? I’m covered in blood ... what the fuck happened?”
Spud arose dazed and confused.
“Oh Jaysus ... yeah ... do you not remember? ... We had to break the window to get into the van,” he said as he lay back down as if he was going back to sleep.
I pulled up my shirt and saw my stomach all scratched and torn. There was no pain as yet but I knew there would be.
Suddenly, Spud both woke and sat up.
“Jesus Christ man, look at the fuckin’ state of ye.”
“I FUCKIN’ KNOW! What the fuck happened?”
As I asked the question it answered itself through flashback and I filled in the gaps myself.
I remembered drifting off in the last pub we were in.
I remembered being woken up by someone very determined to wake me up.
I remembered staggering around for what felt like an eternity.
I remembered being at the van.
I remembered being dragged, or pushed, in through a small broken window. Apparently I hadn’t killed anyone but I was pretty fuckin’ sure that Brian was going to kill me.
Being hungover wasn’t even an option yet. Things had to be sorted first and I was in a state of near clinical shock.
Luckily my weekend bag was in the van, with a clean tshirt and more importantly my phone charger. We assessed my wounds and ascertained that I was not in need of emergency medical assistance, the wounds not being too deep and the bleeding having stopped. After we had considered all our options we opted to change out of my bloody rags and go find a socket somewhere and have a coffee or something.
There was a pub on the corner, in sight of the van which we didn’t want to leave unattended with the back window gone. So I changed and we headed to the pub. I went to wash up and Spud ordered two large coffees and a large glass of milk. On returning I asked the barman if they had any sellotape and a cardboard box, which they did and which I offered to pay for but the unusuality of the request seemed to negate the need to pay for it. Spud sat and sipped his coffee while I went back to sort out the van, pausing only briefly to knock back my milk. I tore up the cardboard and used all the sellotape to affix it to where the window had been.
“Whose bright idea was it to break the fuckin’ window anyhow?” I asked Spud when I’d returned.
“Yours ... we were going to find a park somewhere or get ourselves arrested or somethin’ so’s we could kip down somewhere but then you had a better idea and elbowed in the window. It took us fuckin’ ages to get through the bleedin’ thing.”
“Bleedin’ is right ... bleedin’ shockin’.”
That all sounded about right. The coffee had paradoxically calmed me down a little bit and my brain had stopped producing panic chemicals which only served to make me aware of the pain in my head, stomach and elbow.
I again troubled the barman for a socket for my charger so’s I could find Brian and again he obliged me. Nice guy.
“Are ye down for the match?” he asked me noticing my Dub accent.
“Match? ... Oh, the football? No, we’re musicians, down for the jigs and the reels.”
“Ha Ha Ha, looks like ye had more than one session last night.”
“Yeah, one too many,” I replied with the deepest sincerity.
With the phone connected, I called Brian’s number and after a while he picked up.
“Jesus H, man where the fuck are yiz? What happened? Are yiz wrecked?”
“Long, sad, sorry story, man. I’ll tell ye later. I don’t think you’ll like it.”
“Why? What happened? Where are yiz? In a PUB? It’s only noon.”
We arranged to meet in the first pub we had been in the night before at two or thereabouts and hung up. I was up shit creek.
We let the phone charge up for a sufficient amount of time and had a couple more coffees then went back to the van to get some kip for an hour or so. Only when we arrived at the van did we remember that we were actually locked out of the fuckin’ thing. We stood there dazed and confused, dazzled by our own gobshitery.
“Déjà vu.”
“Let’s break another window,” said Spud, which under different circumstances might’ve been funny.
We went to get some easily digestible food and more coffee then did what we should’ve done the night before and went to a park and laid ourselves down on neighbouring benches.
We managed to rouse ourselves about two-ish and headed towards the pub. We eventually found the pub nearer three, and still feeling like SHIT for a variety of reasons we entered and found the lads, minus Paul, sitting there waiting with Coke and tea in front of them. This would have to be broken gently.
“YE WHA’??? Please tell me you’re fuckin’ jokin’.”
“I wish I could man, but don’t worry, we’ll pay for a new window.”
“Fuckin’ sure yiz will.”
“What do ye mean ‘we’? You broke it.” I felt like a sinking ship as three dirty looks came at me from all angles.
“C’mon Brian, I feel bad enough as it is. The window is boarded up and I said I’ll pay for it.” Tony tut-tutted, Brian glared at me and Spud picked his nose, satisfied that any guilt on his part had been passed to me ... cunt.
We sat in silence for a couple of minutes. The football game was on the telly and the customers were shouting at it sporadically. The barman came over to clear the table and wipe it with a wet rag.
“Ooooh, nice tackle,” came a voice from the end of the bar.
The barman looked at us from under his eyebrows, “that’s what the Bishop said to the alter boy,” he whispered with a wry grin.
We all started breaking our bollixes laughing, and with the atmosphere cut to fuck Spud decided that might a nice way to be.
“Could I get a pint of Bulmer’s please?” he asked.
“Hardy man.”
“Everything in moderation ... especially moderation. Would you concur master Spud?”
“?”
“Anything else?” asked the barman.
“Yeah, fuck it, I’ll have a Guinness,” we all nodded at each other.
“Go on. Eh ... a Bulmer’s, two Guinness and a Bud please.”
It seemed we were all in need of a curer.
“What the fuck happened to yiz last night? Why did you leave me with this spalpeen? He said you’d gone but didn’t know where.”
“Yeah, Shakespeare said yiz were goin’ somewhere but I couldn’t remember where.”
“We transferred ourselves to a more salubrious location. A recently vacated table in the alcove, adjacent to the bar.”
I slowly turned my head and glared at Spud.
“What did he say?” he asked puzzled.
“He said they NEVER ... LEFT ... THE FUCKIN’ ... BAR, ye fuckin’ eejit!! They got an empty table, ye gobshite!! Jesus Christ.”
All that shit for nothing.
We hung about to sup our pints and then headed out ‘n’ about. We checked out the van and re-parked it with its back to a wall so’s not to tempt any passing knackers, then we wandered around town. There were Guinness and oyster offers here, there and everywhere which we would avail of shortly, but first we soaked up the ambience on the main strip, with mime artists, jugglers and jazz bands entertaining the aimlessly perambulating Sunday afternoon strollers.
The lads filled us in on the night before. They’d got talking to a couple of guys in the pub and ended up going to a club with them after closing time. One was from Galway and the other was a German business man who owned a couple of Irish pubs in Germany. The lads sensibly pitched themselves for a couple of gigs and got a somewhat positive reaction. They were coming to see us later. Cool!
We eventually got round to getting some Guinness and oysters, the former being much more in need than the latter, I was already as horny as fuck. Being hungover always seemed to make me rock hard all day and by now, with the oysters on top I was giving myself a bruise on my inner-thigh.
We headed back to Paul’s gaff at about six. He was cooking us up a big pasta which would soak up the few pints we’d had along the way and anyway, I needed a shower, a shave, a shampoo, a shite and a sit down.
“Who are these guys coming tonight anyway,” I asked Brian.
“Ah, sound heads. The Irish guy, Kevin used to manage one of Helmut’s pubs.”
“Helmut? That’s his name?” squealed Spud delightedly.
“Yeah, as in Helmut Kohl.”
“FUCK’S SAKE!!! Ha Ha! I’ve heard of helmet cheese, what the fuck is helmet coal?”
“Helmut Cheese? Who the fuck is that?”
“One of his imaginary friends.”
“Helmet cheese is a colloquial term for smegma ... smegma
is the waxy substance found ...”
“STOP! We’ll be eating soon, I don’t think I want to know.”
‘Waxy substance’ wasn’t what I needed to hear right now.
“Anyway, Helmut has a couple of pubs over there. Fuckin’ sound head. He was buying us rounds all night.”
“No way!”
“Yeah, he’s fuckin’ filthy stinkin’ rich. Wait ‘til yiz meet him,”
“Fuck’s sake,” sighed Spud wistfully, “I wish I was filthy stinkin’ rich.”
“Keep going, Spud,” I said, “you’re already two thirds there.”
HA HA HA HA HA!
“Wha’?”
We arrived in ‘The Black Horse’ at about half-eight. The boss was there and asked us about the previous night as we collected our instruments from behind the bar.
“Grand, yeah. They were up dancing an’ everything. Good craic. There’s a few lads coming down tonight to see us too, so it should be another good one.”
Expertly done by Brian, the punters had a good time and we were bringing in more tonight. Just what a bar manager wants to hear.
“Very good,” he replied, “but listen, I’m going to have to put a limit on your drinks for tonight. I have you down here for twenty five pints last night.”
“Twenty five? Jesus, we didn’t drink that much, did we?”
“Well, apparently yiz did. So I’ll give you three each tonight and call it quits. How does that sound?”
“Fair enough, I suppose, cheers.”
Brian joined us at our table and broke the news.
“Only three pints each tonight lads, I’m afraid. It seems we overdid it a little bit last night.”
“By what?”
“We drank twenty five ...”
“EACH?”
“... and I didn’t mention that I’m pretty sure we paid for a couple of rounds too.”
“Sure, Paul was drinkin’ on the house as well. That’s only five each ... me arse, three pints ... sure we can get our own in after that.”
“Ah yeah.”
We got settled in to the first of our three rounds and then lashed out three rounds each of the ... thing in ‘D’ and then the ‘G’ one ... whatsitcalled? ‘The Bird Set’ again ... ‘The Blackbird’? ... No, ‘The Skylark’ and ‘Bird in the Bush’ that’s it!
The Good Servants Page 9