‘Lord preserve us! This whole country has gone too American altogether.’
‘Well, I think it’s absolutely brilliant to see the country showing a bit of confidence,’ Mrs Fay said. ‘Three Eurovision wins in a row, could you credit it? We’ll be winning the World Cup, yet, George says.’
‘You’ll sort us out, won’t you, lads?’ Mrs Nugent said. ‘Though maybe you’ll take up the dancing too?’
‘He will not!’ Granny Doyle said.
‘They’re crying out for boys, so Clare says,’ Mrs Nugent added. ‘And you’ve a nice long pair of legs: I’d say you’d be very popular!’
Christ! Jason Donnelly said with his eyes, backing as far against the porch window as he could. That lot are even mentaller than my ma, Jason said whenever he had to spend a couple of minutes in the porch, incredulous that John Paul ever lingered there. Ah, but Jason didn’t understand. John Paul loved the craic and the chat of the porch: the jokes with Mrs Nugent and the challenge of making Mrs McGinty smile and the treat of seeing Granny Doyle happy. On her own in the kitchen, she’d be sighing and shuffling, the ghosts of the dead and the disappeared at the windows. The porch brought insulation, chat that could swaddle her, while she sat quiet enough in the middle, content to pass the day discussing the gall of Fiona Brennan (parading about in poms, as if she invented Irish dancing!) and the cheek of a divorce referendum (it couldn’t pass!) and the general goodness of John Paul (a great lad, isn’t he?)
John Paul was a great lad, at least in the porch, where he liked to see himself reflected in the eyes of the old ladies, a boy bringing presents to his grandmother, the kind of figure who might one day summon the future through smiles and dry ice, the breaths of audiences stolen clean from their bodies at the sight of such brilliance: a hero.
5
CK One Bottle (1995)
The trick was to keep distracted.
They found each other at a free gaff in Clontarf, some posh prat’s party that John Paul was only at because Jason had an in with one of the girls. John Paul hadn’t exactly forgotten about Clodagh Reynolds, but he hadn’t spent the years pining for her either. He’d gone far enough into St Anne’s Park with Emer Clancy to shake off the burden of virginity and there’d been bits of fun in various bushes by the coast but the feeling in his chest at the sight of Clodagh Reynolds was something entirely different. She’d graduated from Dior to CK One and John Paul longed to nick a bottle for himself; it was a brilliant thing, a scent that could be worn by a guy and a girl, a sleek glass bottle that could make two people one. By the end of the night he was sure he was wrapped up in some of it: Jason was up in a spare bedroom with some chick from Loreto while John Paul stayed outside freezing his balls off, a small price to pay, because Clodagh Reynolds had shared a smoke, then a whole packet, with him.
‘All right, how about heads you give us a kiss and tails I give you a kiss?’
‘Chancer. How about heads you take a long walk off a short pier and tails you take a bungee jump without a rope?’
John Paul’s turn to laugh.
‘You know it’s the season of goodwill and all that.’
‘What, think you’re some charity case? It’s the second of December, not exactly Christmas.’
‘You’ll have plenty of time to pick me a good present so.’
She was still standing there, a nod to her friends through the French doors: it’s okay.
‘If I throw three heads in a row, you give us a kiss. Whatever you want, just a Christmas peck, no pressure. Tails, I’ll leave you alone, let you go back to the conversation inside: you know, they were talking about breaking out the Scrabble and I don’t want to ruin your night.’
‘All right, hurry up though, I’m freezing to death here, seriously.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Fuck off!’
Heads. Heads. A smile between them, a spark.
Heads.
John Paul put on his best irresistible face, confident and vulnerable at once.
Clodagh examined the coin. She was sharp, a year above him in school, six As in her Junior Cert. Out of his league, but still she stood in front of him.
‘This one’s messed up: it’s heavier on one side where the crest is. It will always land on heads.’
A different face, one John Paul had never made to a girl before: yeah, you’ve caught me, you’ve got me.
‘You fucking bastard,’ she said, giving him a thump on the arm.
‘Fucking’ said softly, the thump a way of bringing them closer. He held her arm there, the two of them looking at each other in the dark. Kissing was different with Clodagh Reynolds, an activity unrelated to ‘snogging’. She controlled John Paul’s excitable tongue, slowed him down to her rhythm, the meeting of mouths somehow new, proof of the brilliance of the whole world, somehow related to the stars in the sky above.
6
Wonderwall (1996)
They didn’t know what it was; they did know that, for the other, they were it.
7
Tablets (1997)
The trick was to seize opportunities.
John Paul hadn’t been thrilled when Granny Doyle forced him into the Legion of Mary after a school report that even she couldn’t ignore, but he’d found something about the organization that wasn’t a complete fucking waste of time. John Paul skipped the meetings and the rosaries but he loved volunteering at the nursing home on Sundays. He’d turn up, chugging a bottle of Lucozade for his hangover and greeting Mrs Nugent, who was also a volunteer, not that she ever did any work. Damien worked in the kitchen, scrubbing pots with some sour face on him, but John Paul loved serving the lunch to the guests, a familiar joke for each table.
‘What’s on the menu today?’ Mrs Lacey would say, and John Paul would say ‘caviar’, and she’d say ‘in that case, fill me up’, and then they’d laugh as he put a plate of grey meat and boiled potatoes in front of her. John Paul would flirt with Miss Hardy at the next table and Mr Davis would pretend to be jealous: ‘Pistols at dawn,’ he’d say, ‘we’ll have to settle this with pistols at dawn.’ Mr Lally would say something incomprehensible in a thick Cork accent and John Paul would smile and nod, all that was required. Mrs Garvey would say how well he was looking, ask if he was ‘doing a line’ with a young one, John Paul would say he was saving himself for Sister Angela. The nuns were great craic too, teasing him about his wedding plans with Sister Angela and giving him time for a smoke break with Mrs Nugent. He had an idea, actually, that he might get a job there instead of wasting time with school (which was a conspiracy: every teacher out to get him). They could use someone strong to help move some of the auld ones, heavy as heifers some of them were. He could help out in the main kitchen downstairs: it would be a handy bit of money and he’d be able to get a place of his own soon (Clo would love that), especially with the tablet income.
The tablets were a great trick: textbook example of seizing your opportunities. It had started with Mrs Flannigan. The daft old duck kept getting lost so John Paul escorted her to her room and there she told him about all the extras she had. A favour to her; that was how it started. John Paul didn’t even keep any of the money himself, just wanted to help her because of how bare the room was and how happy she was with the frames for the photos of the grandkids. A small cut the next time, commission. It was easy enough – lots of tablets lying around, expired, no longer needed. John Paul made sure none of them were dangerous. Many of them were basically fancy paracetamol and it was a joke selling them off at schools. It was even easier at clubs; young ones would give you fifty quid for a Tic Tac if they thought it was E. Taking the tablets from the dead residents didn’t sit entirely right with John Paul. But better him than the grasping relatives, those creatures that popped up when one of the rooms emptied, when they would have been hard pressed to find the nursing home on a map before. John Paul was doing people a favour, no harm to anybody, a little extra cash for himself, his own apartment on the cards soon, a place Clo would love; he’d get her a w
elcome mat in zebra print.
*
But then some fucker called Plato intervened.
Clodagh had started at Trinity; it was inevitable that she’d have a different crowd, no matter the promises to wait for John Paul as he finished sixth year. But then she’d devoured Plato’s Symposium under a tree one afternoon, going over it with her highlighter, tracking the rungs of Plato’s ladder of love. Or, Diotima’s ladder of love, Clodagh supposed: Diotima, the woman who gave the best speech about love in the book, who had no need for a lover, who would definitely be played by Meryl Streep in the movie. Love, according to Diotima, was about transcending the physical, moving from sex to an appreciation of beautiful bodies, to an appreciation of beautiful customs, on and on, up and up, rung by rung, until you were on top of a ladder looking across a wide forest, gazing up at the beauty of beauty itself. It was related to the theory of forms, that was what the lecturer had said: there were abstract forms that were invariably superior to their cheap manifestations in the material world – no chair could be as perfect as the idea of a chair, no beautiful boy as worthy of admiration as beauty itself. Clodagh felt something stir inside her, beyond her body or mind: who needed a boyfriend when there was philosophy?
So, Plato was the cad responsible for the first sundering of Clodagh and John Paul. Or, perhaps, more prosaically, it was Niamh Rooney, the floozy from the Gaeltacht who John Paul claimed meant ‘nothing at all, Clo, I promise’.
It didn’t matter to Clodagh that she was breaking up the gang. The nights they’d spent together – Clo and J.P. and Jason and Dee, even their names in synch – were nothing to Clodagh, she probably didn’t remember the night at the Plex when they’d raced down the bowling lanes until they were kicked out or the time they did mushrooms in the Wicklow mountains until Jason swore he saw a bear, something he still hadn’t heard the last of. Or the afternoons in Clodagh’s bedroom when they lay on the bare floorboards and looked into each other’s souls. No, Clodagh didn’t care: she had her own Trinity friends, didn’t mind that John Paul could hardly hang around after Jason and Dee like some third tit.
So Clodagh was the domino that set it all in motion. John Paul might not have punched Rory O’Donoghue otherwise. The reasons were 80 per cent frustration and 20 per cent altruism; Damien would always be a stupid sap who never thanked his brother for what he did. Things might still have worked out okay – the trick was to keep moving – and the mood might have shifted, John Paul continuing on at the nursing home, looking to pick up work there.
And then Damien, fucking Damien, told the nuns about the tablets and ruined everything.
*
The trick was to disappear.
If John Paul got deep enough inside the duvet he might just manage it and his head would be free of any thoughts about the expulsion or Clodagh changing her phone number or whatever the police might do.
‘John Paul!’
Granny Doyle couldn’t leave him be.
‘Open the door, I’m carrying a tray!’
‘I’m not hungry!’ John Paul called from the depths of the duvet.
‘I’m after making rashers.’
Go fuck your rashers off a cliff, John Paul almost shouted, because all he wanted was a spliff and to disappear. If he pretended to be asleep she might just deposit the tray and shuffle back downstairs. No such luck. She was determined to get in the door and that was when it happened: the tray dropped, rashers and tea tumbling to the floor and landing atop a pyramid of clothes. John Paul clenched his eyes: if he pretended he couldn’t hear she might just fuck off.
‘Get up out of bed, would you!’
Up the duvet came, wrenched with surprising force.
Granny Doyle dropped it on top of the ruined breakfast and the clothes: what did it matter?
John Paul curled into a ball, shocked at this sudden exposure. How dare she! Barging in, while he was in boxers and T-shirt, a creature not fit for her eyes, definitely not ready for daylight.
‘Some light and fresh air, that’s all you need,’ Granny Doyle said, wrenching open the curtains. ‘Come on, now, up out of bed before I drag you!’
The tablets had broken her. Mrs Brennan’s stolen loaves and Mr Kehoe’s smashed windows could all be brushed away with boys will be boys, but here was something that she couldn’t deny. The whole street knew: Mrs Brennan fat with the gloating; Mrs McGinty shadowed with the thought that the Legion of Mary had been compromised; Mrs Donnelly keeping Jason safely inside, for her children made it through their Leaving Certs. Granny Doyle looked at the pathetic creature curled in front of her and saw him for what he was: another bitter disappointment the Lord had sent to test her.
‘Come on now, get—’
‘Don’t touch me!’
John Paul surprised himself with the rage in his voice; it was her fault though, for pulling off the duvet, him practically naked. He managed to stand.
‘Just chill, all right, there’s no hurry, is there?’
‘Plenty of things for you to be getting on with: you can start by cleaning up this mess!’
‘I will!’
‘A waste of good bacon, that is.’
‘I didn’t ask you to make it, did I?’
This hurt her more than anything: what use was she if she couldn’t feed him? John Paul wanted the words back as soon as he saw her face – he would have knelt down on the ground and gulped the tea from the carpet – but then the guilt got at him and the only thing he wanted to do was rescue the duvet and hide inside it.
‘This room is a holy disgrace!’
John Paul shrugged. Damien had moved into Rosie’s room – what was the point of keeping things tidy?
‘Once you’ve got this done we can get you sorted in another school.’
‘There’s no point: it’s all a load of bollix.’
Granny Doyle found the thunder in her voice.
‘What did you say?’
There was no use pretending any more.
‘I said it’s a whole heap of bollix and I don’t want anything to do with it.’
Granny Doyle had her hand raised before she stopped herself. He almost wished she would slap him.
‘You’ll watch your language when you’re under this roof.’
‘Or what?’
This deserved a slap, he was asking for one, standing right in front of her, taunting; if she was going to fuck around with his morning, she could learn her lesson.
‘Just mind your language.’
Granny Doyle was backing down but all John Paul could see in every direction was red flags; the fight was coming whether she wanted it or not.
‘Or what? You’ll kick me out? Two down, two to go, you’ll have the house to yourself in no time!’
These were words he definitely wanted to take back, as soon as he said them; he didn’t even need to see the collapse in Granny Doyle’s face to know that he’d gone too far. They never talked about Peg or Rosie. Usually, John Paul did the opposite, bringing home a stream of chat to keep things light. Until he’d gone ahead and shoved her face in it: she should slap him to the ground, maybe he’d disappear then.
Granny Doyle walked to the window very slowly.
‘I don’t know what’s gotten into you.’
This is me! John Paul longed to yell, but he was out of words now.
Granny Doyle yanked at the edges of the curtains. She’d already opened them, but clearly they could go further, off the poles if necessary.
‘Fresh air and a decent amount of light, that’s what you need! It’s indecent to be keeping the sun out at this hour. You’ll clean up that mess and then we’ll sort you out.’
She turned and saw him still gawping at her.
‘And get dressed, would you! And a bath! You stink.’
She couldn’t hide the disgust in her voice.
‘You’re as bad as your father, do you know that?’
This was the slap she was capable of. John Paul thought he might topple over. Rage he could take but the sa
dness of that sentence was too much: he needed the curtains shut, the duvet around him, all sound to disappear. That was the trick he hadn’t mastered – the ability to disappear – though he had an idea how; he’d do it in the bath the next day. The trick was to stay ahead of the game, to get out before you got done.
8
Nokia 3110 Phone (1998)
‘Ah no, don’t worry, love: sure we’ll say a prayer to Saint Ultán!’
Mrs Nugent tittered and went to light up another cigarette. John Paul helped her with the flame, difficult with the winter wind on Clougheally’s beach. He had another fag too; this was a rule, no limit on the amount he could light up to get through the day.
Mrs Nugent continued to extol Saint Ultán’s virtues.
‘Don’t I always say, you’re better off praying to one of the more obscure ones! Can you imagine what Saint Anthony’s phone lines are like and poor Saint Jude, I’d say the man needs a saint of his own. No, no, pick some fella that nobody’s ever heard of, says I, and I’ll tell you what, Saint Ultán has never once not found me keys! I’d say he’s glad of the work, wouldn’t you? Don’t worry, love, he’ll find your phone!’
Whatever, John Paul’s shrug said. This was another rule: not caring. To care too much was dangerous; caring could lead to razor blades pressed against skin.
John Paul pulled down the sleeves of his hoodie; if he couldn’t wear a duvet, he’d hide here instead. Another rule: always cover his wrists. You’ll have sick scars, Jason said, when he came to the hospital, aiming for the old jokes, faltering when he saw that wouldn’t work. Dee was worse, floods of tears and shite streaming out of her, Clodagh to blame, definitely, she’d turned right snobby since she’d gone to college, but Dee would be there for him – for ever! – which only made John Paul long to tell her that he’d never really liked her and that her highlights looked shit. The deep of him was dark, that was the problem. He could cover the scars with his sleeves, but there was a black hole inside him; it would swallow him, eventually.
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