Breakfast on Pluto

by Patrick McCabe

  Chapter Forty-Five

  A Great Day for Bonzo

  Pat McGrane (old classmate) is as happy as Larry. He has just knocked off from his job in Tyreelin Frozen Meats and discovered that he has been given an extra ten pounds in his wage packet, payment for the seven hours he’d worked three weeks previously and completely forgotten about. All he could remember was the foreman asking him would he be able to work extra some week, replying: ‘Aye, surely’, and then completely forgetting about it. Making those few green notes all the sweeter. Jimmy Hanlon who worked with him on the assembly line went past wiping his hands on his rubber apron and flicking his towel across his shoulder. ‘Hello, Pat,’ Jimmy said, as Pat acknowledged the greeting with a smile. Folding his pound notes, he placed them neatly in the pocket of his wallet, glowing warmly. Partly because of the infinite possibilities with which the extra remuneration now provided him but more specifically the awareness that it could not have come at a better time, a Thursday evening when he was due, as always, to visit his girlfriend across the border and take her to the Arcadia ballroom where they would dance to Gene Stuart and the Mighty Avons. Whom she loved. Why, he could not for the life of him understand, for as far as he was concerned, Gene Stuart couldn’t sing a note. A contention which was the cause of many arguments between them, of course – and ones which Pat always regretted. When they had abated, he would always inwardly chide himself and say: ‘Why did I have to contradict her? Why can’t I let her alone and allow her to like Gene Stuart if she wants to!’ A solemn bond which he would make with himself, only to go and break it all over again the next time she would look up from the paper and say: ‘I see Gene Stuart and the Mighty Avons are playing in Forkhill tonight – will we go, Pat?’ Hardly would the words have left his lips than he’d find himself saying: ‘Gene Stuart? What on earth do you want to see him for?’

  He felt an idiot when he did it. But he did it every time! Now, as he motored along in his Anglia, raising an index finger from the steering wheel to acknowledge the passing of Fergus Killen, a neighbour, on his bicycle, he established eye contact with himself in the mirror and committed himself firmly to a reformation of his ways in this respect: ‘If Sandra wants to go and see Gene Stuart, then Gene Stuart she shall see. There’s going to be no big deal about it, OK?’ It would make for a far better night for everyone. In any case, as his conscience insisted, if you weren’t prepared to make small compromises like this, what hope was there for a marriage surviving the way it ought to? It was just that he didn’t like her kind of music, that was all. ‘If only I wasn’t such a big Creedence Clearwater Revival fan,’ he said to himself As if there was any hope of that happening!

  For Pat simply loved Creedence, and until the day he died would never understand how people could ever even begin to accept bad versions of their songs by the likes of Gene Stuart. It was because he liked them so much that he had adopted, practically down to the tiniest detail, the style of dress of the lead singer, John Fogerty. Every Thursday night, on would go the lumberjack shirt and denim jeans and what with the identical, collar-length hairstyle (almost Beatlish) and the tiny bootlace tie which he had lately taken to wearing, you would have been hard pressed not to leap to the conclusion that somehow John Fogerty, the lead singer and guitar player of Creedence Clearwater Revival, had arrived in Tyreelin. Over a few pints in Mulvey’s, before he went to collect Sandra across the border, Pat’s pals would often say: ‘Oho, you can traipse about like John Fogerty now, but come your wedding day she’ll soon put a stop to all that, I can tell you!’ To which Pat might reply: ‘Would you go away to fuck out of that!’ or ‘Do me a fucking favour, lads!’

  Driving along now, he smiled as he considered it – knowing in his heart how silly it was. For, whatever about him and Sandra rowing over Gene Stuart, he knew, it would be a long time before she started ordering him around in terms of telling him what to wear and so on. Because, as she had said, God knows how many times, she liked him just the way he was. Loved him, in fact. She had said that too. Playing with the silver clasp on his bootlace tie she had sort of looked away from him as she said it: ‘I love you, Pat.’ To which it wasn’t hard for him to find a response. Because he had been dying to say it all evening, of course. ‘I love you too, Sandra,’ he said.

  Getting ready, he hadn’t been able to make up his mind where they would go before the dance. A lot of the time they went to Hughie’s, which was in the middle of the market square in her hometown of Dunkeerin, but of late he had been getting fed up with it and, he suspected, so had she. Hughie’s idea of running a pub seemed to be to pack them in and throw any sort of old slops at them. In the middle of the week, it was fine, but on Thursdays it could be a madhouse. Then there was the Spinning Wheel – but that was the opposite. The most exciting thing that happened in there on a Thursday or any other night was someone flicking over a table mat or playing games with matchsticks. It catered more for the bank and teaching crowd – pub grub, soup and sandwiches during the working week, that sort of thing. Then there was Walter’s, where you were liable to be taking your life in your hands once you went inside the door. But which could also be worth it if you got in with the right crowd. All the same, Sandra wasn’t keen on it. ‘No doubt it’ll probably end up being McLarnon’s again then!’ Pat had sighed as he buckled his Levi’s belt. Which didn’t bother him in the slightest, actually, for they always ended up having a good time there. Sometimes they had good music too – one night a band from Belfast did the most amazing version of ‘I Heard It Through the Grapevine’. It had astonished him, in fact, and for weeks after Sandra would say: I never seen you looking as entranced, Pat – I really didn’t.’

  Unfortunately, however, that particular band were nowhere to be seen that night and he and Sandra ended up sitting beside one of the speakers as the singer banged a tambourine and sang: ‘Tra la la la la la – triangle!’ hopelessly out of tune. But once they got out into the night air, Pat didn’t care. He put his arm around Sandra and kissed her on the mouth. She hooked her thumb into the back of his belt as they walked along. The dance was surprisingly good too and he had even begun to consider had he been unfair to Gene Stuart. Especially when he did a cover of ‘Bad Moon Rising’. As they danced, he stroked Sandra’s hair and said: ‘Come back. Gene Stuart – all is forgiven.’

  It was a bit early yet to be talking about the wedding but all the same, there were one or two things which it was no harm to think about – just so as they’d be out of the way. He agreed with her about that. The more they had done beforehand, the easier it would be whenever the planning truly started in earnest. Sandra’s mother joined in for a while when they were chatting about it all, and actually ended up agreeing with Pat about Gene Stuart – who turned up again in the conversation, completely out of nowhere!

  I can’t understand what our Sandra sees in him!’ she said and cupped her hand around the blue-striped mug. ‘Oh, will you two ever ...’ hissed Sandra and for a split second, Pat was sure she was going to lose her temper. But it passed, her fleeting moment of irascibility, and by the time it was coming towards three, they had been embracing for so long there, Pat thought he had better do something or he’d be there until morning. And that wouldn’t look so good in the quiet, law-abiding town of Dunkeerin! So, adjusting his clothes and his Ben Sherman shirt, Pat coughed and said: ‘I think I’d best hit the road, pet. Otherwise I’ll never make it.’

  At the door, under the porch light, Sandra gave him a last kiss and told him how much she had, first of all, enjoyed the evening, and, secondly, was looking forward to the wedding.

  Which Pat smiled as he thought about now, driving home listening to the radio, and trying to keep his eyes open which wasn’t proving easy. But he’d make it all right, he knew. As he cruised along the avenue of sycamore trees which since the war started had been dubbed Rosary Row by Tyreelin folk, because of the number of people who had been attacked or murdered there, Pat didn’t give it a second thought. He’d travelled it so often, it never
even occurred to him to do so. Not even when he saw the lamp swinging to and fro in the darkness up ahead for he knew it was probably just the UDR who, although they might give him some annoyance, would only delay him for a couple of minutes at the most and that wasn’t going to bother him.

  But it wasn’t the UDR. Although they were, in fact, attired in military dress. But that was just to hoodwink drivers like Pat. Who didn’t know what was happening until he received a solid blow from a wheelbrace across the head.

  How long he had been awake, Pat didn’t have the faintest idea. The problem was that he kept walking and passing out again. Where exactly the garage was – or if it even was a garage – he wouldn’t have been able to say, but he felt it was miles and miles away from where he had been picked up. He really wished they would do what he knew they were going to do in the end anyway, because it was as clear as day he was never going to see Sandra again. Which suited them fine, of course, because they didn’t like him associating with protestants – or ‘their’ kind as they put it. After reviving him with a bucket of cold water, they told him that they didn’t mind him ‘riding taigs’ or ‘screaming wee Catholic witches’ but when it came to clean, God-fearing protestant ladies, they could not stand by and countenance Catholic cocks squirting the poison of Rome into their spotless, untainted vaginas. It just wasn’t right. It wasn’t right, they said. Whose idea it was to start chipping at him, Pat didn’t know. Of all the tortures so far, he would say it was the worst. It turned him into a solid block of flesh, a sculpture they kept tapping away at with seemingly infinite patience. How many wounds – half-inch nicks – were there on his body when they tired of it? Approximately three hundred. Then they brought out the knives – just an eight-inch at first – and carved some lines right down his back – parallel tracks all the way down.

  There was a late-night film on the black and white portable so they watched that until he passed out. It was called A Great Day for Bonzo. In his fleeting moments of clarity Pat managed to remember his name and imagined himself running with the children and the dog across the lush and rolling fields of the English countryside. In the final, brief seconds before he felt the Magnum placed against his temple, Pat wondered whether he and Sandra would have had a dog. He thought perhaps Sandra might have been against it but they would have agreed in the end.

  Perfume: 1,000,000 v. Stench: 0

  How wicked to laugh within such dreams but apparently I did! Wallis even told me! ‘You were thrashing about like a facking maniac!’ he said. ‘What was going through your head?’

  ‘Perfume,’ I said. ‘Perfume to take the smell away! Perfume one million! Stench – nothing!’

  ‘You’re a right one you are!’ he goes and says then with a smile.

  Quite nice in the end, old Wallis was – I think I rather fancied him!

  Even sponging my head as off again I silky-floated, tumbling wild from moon to moon, as sweat it rolled (ugh!) and body it jerked and spasmed.

  *

  ‘Write it for me,’ Terence said. ‘Write it as best you can – it’ll help me understand.’

  Which it obviously did! Help him understand that the best thing he could be doing with himself is applying for a transfer to another hospital, away from this sad nutty fairy!

  Chapter Forty-Six

  A View from the Hill

  Who now finds herself planked upon a smallish mountain in the shadow of which she grew up, eyeing it viciously with narrowed, kohl-rimmed eyes.

  It is almost eleven-thirty in Mulvey’s Bar, and Dessie Mulvey the owner is at his wit’s end trying to clear the house. ‘Ah, for God’s sake, lads!’ he repeatedly cries. ‘Do you want to have the guards on me or what!’

  As if the guards would come into Mulvey’s at that hour, causing trouble! For, as Dessie well knows, they have far too much sense! Why, the last time they came in trying to throw their weight around, it had practically ended in a riot! Especially when the sergeant committed the cardinal sin of saying something cynical under his breath about the IRA, which you just don’t do in Mulvey’s – because it is a Provisional IRA pub, of course! And more especially still when one of their number who was well known in the bar had been taken into custody by the very same policemen and savagely beaten. It was silly of the sergeant and, almost as soon as he’d said it, both he and his colleagues knew it. But it was already too late, for Jackie Timlin and the Horse Kinnane had risen from their seats and were giving him looks that did not exactly say: ‘We understand your predicament, sergeant. If you’ll just give us one or two more minutes?’

  Only for Dessie’s adroitness in playing peacemaker that night, there might have been a lot more broken than the window in the toilet which Horse put his fist through, cursing: ‘Pigs! Fucking pigs!’ as the golden arc of his urine irrigated practically every spot on the wall in front of him, bar the chipped white section of it marked Armitage Shanks. It was particularly fortunate that they didn’t arrive on the scene on this evening too because, on account of a new arrival home from Portlaoise prison, where the volunteer had been serving five years for membership of an illegal organization, spirits were higher than usual, with any number of ‘The Boys of the Old Brigade’, ‘The Broad Black Brimmer’ and the current favourite, ‘The Sniper’s Promise’.

  The volunteer concerned was understandably overjoyed at the welcome he received, for the solitary in which he’d been placed for an attack on a prison officer, had come close to driving him clean daft. As he observed to the Horse and Jackie who had just bought him a triple vodka and were insisting he drank it, ‘It’s good to be home.’ Which prompted Jackie and the Horse to toast: ‘Cheers!’ after which they lapsed once more into what a keen-eyed observer, whose perceptions were not dimmed by either alcohol or euphoria – as those of the volunteers most certainly were – might have termed ‘a sullen silence’. The cause of which no one, apart from themselves, could possibly have known, simply because it wasn’t the sort of thing you could tell to anyone, possibly even for as long as you lived. ‘It was sad,’ ran the thought through Horse’s mind, ‘having to kill someone.’ But particularly when you liked them.

  And Horse liked Irwin Kerr, all right. So did Jackie. They had gone to school with his brother. Knew the whole family, for God’s sake. But what could they do? Already they had lost three valuable volunteers because of his informing and were likely to lose God knows how many more if it were allowed to continue. Not to mention God knows how many arms dumps. They supposed that he possibly knew what was going to happen to him. All sorts of hints had been dropped by other volunteers (down to ‘The Dead March’ being hummed one night when he got up to go to the toilets) and he had been warned more directly on a few occasions by Jackie. ‘If they are putting pressure on you,’ he’d said to him, ‘the cops – whoever . . . tell us. Tell us, OK? Don’t let it go until it’s too late.’

  But he had and now he was going to die. Jackie and the Horse truly wished the job had been given to someone else but they were both the top local men so that was that. They decided to have one more drink. ‘Before the cops come!’ they laughed, and then headed out to Carndonagh Lake where the job was to be done.

  It was a beautiful night – an unblemished moon hanging over the steely water like a child’s wondrous toy. What made it worse was that when Irwin arrived – or the ‘tout’ as they forced themselves to call him now – he insisted on cracking stupid jokes as if they’d all gotten together to go on a fishing trip. ‘Did you hear about the Cavan man who went on holidays . . .?’ as Jackie barked: ‘Shut up!’

  After they had tape-recorded his confession, they put the black plastic refuse bag over his head and brought him off. By now he was wetting himself and defecating. Jackie was on the verge of getting sick as he took out the pistol. Horse looked away when he did it and out of nerves Jackie attacked him. ‘I thought you were going to do it!’ he screamed. The trickle of blood mixed with the sound of the water lapping as he tried to drown it out with even more shouting. What he was dreading
was lifting Irwin and putting him in the boot, having to drive to the quarry to dump him, which was why he cried out again and started flailing at the air and clutching his throat as if for him too now the stench was no longer bearable.

  Die, Daddy!

  Which it certainly was for Puss as now upon her prison settlebed she shrieked: ‘I’ve come for you! You see I’ve come for you at last and you’re going to pay now! Just like him, you’re going to pay!’

  Meaning Father Bernard, of course, her own dear father whom she could not forgive!

  ‘You’re going to die, Daddy!’ she squealed. ‘You and all of you who brought the poison to the valley! I’m going to burn your church with you inside it! You think I won’t! But I will, you see, I’ve got all night and till I’m finished I won’t stop!’

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Vicky Likes Salmon!!

  A wicked fairy squealing as havoc she would most definitely wreak! But nonetheless a little nervous now as Big Vicky opened the door and stood back to view his visitor. ‘O pray God that I look luscious!’ Pussy said to herself and raised her skirt a tiny bit. Big Vicky was the only one looking at her because the others were too busy cleaning up the mess after their torture victim had expired – not Pat McGrane, but a neighbour who lived not far away from him, in fact. And, as usual, they were cursing and complaining about all the hosing and whatnot they had to do each and every time they went out on a job. They were still at it when Vicky drew his flak-jacketed arm across his mouth and sank his tongue in his cheek as he said: ‘Say, boys. Looks like we’ve got a visitor.’ Now it really was a wise precaution for a cute little Pussy to have chosen the most expensive underwear one could find because you could tell by the exasperated comments regarding the tiresome nature of the night’s work that these were men whose patience could be tried very easily (‘Fucking Big Vicky! Fucking, fucking Big Vicky – always ordering us about!’) and Pussy didn’t want that, ending up being hung from the rafters by the tootle with all those nasties poking blades into her pale white flesh!