He panicked.
Without doing any work, without producing anything, he had amassed all that money and had the promise of nearly as much again every month for the next five months. It was dreadful. It was frightening.
Chuckie knew that something bad was going to happen. He would be found out. The world would come to its senses and take back all those pounds it had given him. Justice required it. Likelihood dictated it.
Meanwhile, the besuited salesmen had clustered round him again. They were eager to amuse and please.
`Well, Mr Lurgan. She's ready for you now.'
`Who?'
The men laughed indulgently. At the reception desk, the sharp girl laughed too, although she could have heard nothing of what was said.
`Your X series:
Chuckie looked vacantly at the man's broad, straining face.
`Your car, Mr Lurgan, the one you've just bought'
`Yeah, right enough.'
The men looked genuinely impressed by Chuckie's patently unfeigned abstraction. A man who could absent-mindedly pay cash for a Mercedes was the kind of man they dreamt of, about whom they masturbated. The receptionist's eyes flashed at him.
They led him out the back way to a side-street where his new car was parked. It was blue, shiny and very big.
`It's taxed for eight months and we took the liberty of call ing our insurance company. They've covered it in the meantime and they'll be sending you their literature over the next few days' The man smiled, his voice was heavy with significance, with drama. `She's all yours.You can take her away.'
After an emotional farewell, Chuckie opened the door and sat in his glittering new purchase. The salesmen still lingered on the pavement, obviously intending some valedictory waves as he drove off. Chuckie sat mutely looking at the sleek dashboard. Chuckie did not know how to drive.
He pushed a button. The passenger window slid into the door with a marvellous electric hiss.
`Listen,' he called out to the salesmen, `you go on in. I just want to be alone here for a while.'
The men both nodded their complete understanding - Chuckie could have sworn that they had lumps in their throats - and went inside. He paused. Then he started the engine.
By some quirk of town planning (typical of Belfast's most unpaternal City Fathers), the monotonous ghetto in which Chuckie lived was only about eleven hundred yards away from the car saleroom. Belfast low-income areas often pressed ass to ass with its more prosperous slivers. Admittedly complicated and lengthened by a series of complex one-way streets, it was still impressive that it took Chuckie twenty-five minutes to drive the eleven hundred yards back to Eureka Street.
By the time he had pulled up near his house, he felt confident that he could master most of the difficulties that driving presented. Unable to park the monstrous machine, he abandoned it in the middle of the road, vaguely close to He got out. He stood on the pavement. He looked at his car.
It was Austrian or Bavarian or something. He liked that. He had to admit that it looked pretty Nazi, wallowing hugely there in the middle of the dwarf terraces, a car that cost more than most of those houses put together. Parked on Eureka Street, it looked extraordinary, freakish. It looked like the miracle of money.
Some of the kids who lived on the street had come out of their houses at the advent of the monster motor. They obviously expected John Long or some such plutocrat. When they saw Chuckie emerge, their jaws dropped and their eyes bulged. Some of the mothers came out too. They drew their children back with expressions of fear and bewilderment on their faces.
Blissfully, Chuckie beckoned one of the Eureka Street tenyear-olds. The boy approached uncertainly. Chuckie smiled patronizingly. He held up a five-pound note.
`Here, son. Keep an eye on the wagon, would you?' He gave the boy the money and walked to his own front door, a faint ripple of stunned applause breaking over his shoulders. He hoped it was not excessively childish of him to enjoy this moment. He had lived a long time on Eureka Street, chiefly remarkable for his girth and his Catholic acquaintance. He had earned the right to make this splash. He had earned the right to enjoy.
Inside, he found his mother staring through her front-room windows at the massive car that bisected her street. The small boy was now sitting squarely on its expensive bonnet.
He had not seen her for a week. He had been sleeping over at Max's flat and that morning, when he had returned home, she had been out. It was only when he saw the ghost of himself reflected in her grey eyes that he understood how far he'd come, how much had happened.
His mother lifted her hand towards him in a weak and untypically Irish action. Her face was full of fear and pain. `What's happened, Chuckie?' she breathed. `What's going on?'
Chuckie felt congested, he felt a traffic jam in his heart. His fearful week, terrifying month welled up in him. His face heated and crumpled. He felt tears prick at the backs of his eyes.
`Oh, Ma,' he said anxiously. `I'm fucked if I know.'
Peggy Lurgan understood Chuckie Lurgan as no one could. As no one really wanted to. Flesh of her flesh, she knew the extent of his limitless proletarian shame and fear. She knew how this small city in which they lived could expand or contract at will, leaving them feeling claustrophobic or agoraphobic as paranoid circumstance demanded. As she had aged, her own life had constricted chokingly to its present confines. She lived in a tiny house on a little street with a fat son who didn't talk to her. She only slept with chemicals.Ten years of nitrazepam had warmed her life and made it more than the sum of its parts. But she knew her life was a small, small thing. She had been terrified when Chuckie had started to change. She had been relying on an unaltering, unalterable future. Futile, tedious but gladly unsurprising. Her son's mutations threatened her precarious equilibrium and she needed to know what was worth that risk.
But even after Chuckie had told her about all the money he had made, she was still unsure of how he had done it, not realizing that so was he. But she fully sympathized with his naked panic and terror, the feeling that, soon, the police would come to arrest him. She hoped that it would be only the police.
The weeks since Chuckle's big idea had passed bewilderingly for her. She was confused by her son's sudden suits, the mysterious international phone calls and the glistening fax machine in her scullery.
Chuckie tried to explain things to her. He tried to explain the ease of raising money. He saw the blankness of her look. He kissed her sweetly on the cheek. Which was going too far for Peggy. Which, for her, was much too much to take.
`Cut that out, Chuckie,' she snapped. Just cut that out.'
He asked her what was wrong.
`You've changed, son. Something terrible has happened to you.' Her eyes filled with tears. `When did you get to be so nice?'
Half past eight the next night, Chuckie sat in the Wigwam on Lower Crescent. The boys were there: Jake, Slat, Donal and Septic Ted. He had called them all an hour ago.Telling Max that he had to see the boys after so long, he had slipped brokenly out of her flat. Eight o'clock and she'd boffed him twice already. The day before, Chuckie had noticed that, for the first time in his adult life, he had lost some weight. Four pounds gone.With Max around, he suspected he'd be on vitamin boosts and meal supplements before too long. He was managing the idea of himself rich and horny but the notion of a skinny Chuckie might be too much for anyone to bear.
The Wigwam was a theme cafe near the university. Bad food and good coffee. Small groups of attractive, intelligent young women seemed to dine there regularly. Naturally, Septic Ted had discovered the place a month before and had been, more or less, camped out there since.
`What do you fancy, Chuckie?' he asked, with a proprietorial air.
Small, dark-haired women with big hips, thought Chuckie. But a waitress glided up and prevented the comment. Septic Ted bristled up and ran his fingers through his hair, which was too short to be significantly altered by the process. Jake gave the waitress his order, Deasely told her what he wanted and Sep
tic confessed his desires. She turned to Chuckie.
`What would you like?'
`What's nice?'
`The chicken's good.'
Chuckie smiled dismissively. `I'm sorry,' he said. `I don't eat anything beginning with the letter C.'
The waitress blanked this completely but the boys were delighted.
`Nothing at all?' queried Donal.
`Nah,' replied Chuckie. `Courgettes, cabbage, cauliflower, carrots, celery, cucumber, celeriac, Cos, cheese, coffee, cereals, chicken, candy, crackerbreads of any type. I wouldn't touch any of those bastards.!
'What Septic Ted pronounced a coarse synonym for female pudenda.
The waitress didn't bother to blush.
`You're a charmer, Septic,' said Jake.
`What's the fish?' asked Chuckie.
`You wouldn't like it,' said the waitress.
`Cod?'
`Yup'
'OK, gimme a salad but can I have extra chemicals in that? If it doesn't come wrapped in plastic, I don't eat it'
The waitress sidled off, uncharmed.
Jake gave Septic some lip about sleazing the waitress.
`Relax,' retorted Septic. `From what Chuckie tells me, you've a bit of a weakness for the serving classes yourself.'
`Blow it out your ass.'
`Witty.'
Chuckle smiled fraternally upon his friends, bickering and unbickering. He felt better with them. Somehow, the panic and strangeness of his new success was rendered harmless by their presence.
He was closest to Jake but fond of the other three to varying degrees. Slat Sloane was the only socialist that Chuckie knew. He was a lawyer who worked for city community groups and charities. He was better educated than anyone Chuckie had ever met and probably earned less money than the waitress here. He was big on dignity and contribution. Chuckie suspected that Slat just wanted to be Swedish. He'd been in Sweden a couple of times and it seemed to have made a lasting impression. Jake had told him that Slat had not bought his own toilet roll in the ten years since he'd left home. Slat did his own ironing, cooking and cleaning but he was just too fastidious to buy toilet roll. Apparently he didn't want the check-out girls in supermarkets to suspect that he defecated. His mother bought it for him. Slat never had any girlfriends.
Donal Deasely worked for the Government. He dished out all the money that flooded in from the European Community, the International Fund for Ireland and all the other pass-thehat agencies the Irish loved so. Deasely earned quite a lot of money and spent most of it on fashionable clothes, haircuts and obscure books about science and medicine. He was always reading about something genetics, thermodynamics, prime numbers or swanky astronomy. That's why he'd bought all the clothes and haircuts. He said he really wanted to be a himbo. Donal never had any girlfriends either.
Septic Ted had plenty of girlfriends. Septic Ted had too many girlfriends. Septic Ted sold insurance so his erotic success was that bit easier to bear.
`Guess who I saw today,' Donal challenged.
`Marilyn Monroe,' suggested Chuckie.
`Fyodor Dostoevsky' said Slat.
`Spiderman?' hinted Septic.
`Nah, Ripley Bogle.!
`Who?' asked Chuckle.
'A guy we were all at school with,' explained Slat. `He was some kind of tramp or something but he went away to England. Cambridge, I think. Haven't heard of him for years. Smart guy.'
`A tosspot,' said Septic.
Then Chuckie remembered their stories of this boy who slept rough in the grounds of Belfast Castle through the last of his unElysian schooldays. Apparently Jake had met him once in London where he had been homeless also. Bogle had told him that he had spent a night sleeping in the Blue Peter garden. Jake had considered this a class act.
`Where'd you see him?' asked Jake.
Donal became unsure. `I think it was him. I saw some bum down near the City Hall. He was reciting Mallarme in French for fifty p a go.'
`That's him,' said Slat.
`He's a bum again?' asked Chuckie.
`He was made to be a bum,' said Septic. `A bum from a bum family. Somebody told me his ma used to work the docks for brown money.'
`Brown money?'
change.'
`Fuck, Septic,' bellowed Chuckle. 'Brown make this stuff up.'
'Nah, traditional Irish rhyming rhyme.'
There was some faint guffawing; the five men made their stab at bonhomie. Chuckie was fond of his friends. He was the only Protestant there and still, after ten years and more, that felt like a proud claim, a distinguished thing. When he was seventeen Chuckle had been beaten up for these people.
They'd been friends on and off for twelve or thirteen years. They had mostly gone away and come back. Slat had gone to England to read law at Manchester. He had come back and started fighting fights for the deracinated proles of his hometown. Deasely, bizarrely Francophile, bizarrely polyglot, had lived in Bayeux for a couple of years, then Bremen, then Barcelona. He too had come home. Septic had worked a couple of North Sea rigs and lived in Scotland for a few years. He had come back. Jake had truly disappeared. He had gone to America and no one thought they would ever see him again but he had left America for university in London and had come back eventually. Chuckie? Eureka Street to Eureka Street, Chuckie had never left. They'd gone away, they'd come back. It used to be that Northern Ireland's diaspora was permanent, poor denuded Ireland. But everyone had started coming back. Everyone was returning.
Girls, too, had come and gone in their lives but there they still were, still together, still doing the old stuff. They had history. Mostly a history of wasting their time in each other's houses when their parents were away, bogus sophisticates, drinking instant coffee and discussing platonic love.
The waitress brought their drinks. No one commented on Chuckle's ostentatiously alcohol-free mineral water.
'Salut.'
' Prost'
'Slainte'
'Beat it down ya.'
They sucked their drinks with ceremony.
`Heads down!' hissed Deasely. `There's Tick:
All five started examining their fingernails, coughing into their chests, tying their laces.
`Where is he?' asked Slat.
`Up at the front by the till.'
They looked round furtively. An old tramp had come into the cafe. In the distance, he could be seen hassling the waitress for money.They were all, except Chuckie, vaguely fond ofTick. They had named him so when he had told them proudly that he was the only Northern Irish indigent ever to have been fitted with a pacemaker. Several medical research bodies had (in print) declared that Tick could not actually exist, that the success of such a procedure was not compatible with Tick's highoctane lifestyle. But Chuckie dreaded him. Tick reminded Chuckie of his father. Tick had always reminded him of his father. In the seven or eight years since Chuckie had first encountered Tick, he must have dished out about six or seven hundred pounds to the old clochard. On Chuckie s then limited resources, this had been a strain. But whenever he saw the guy, he couldn't help but think of his father. He couldn't help but dip his hand.
Septic tittered. `Haven't seen him in a while. He looks pretty shit.'
`He's never dazzled exactly,' said Jake.
'Uh-oh, here he comes: Deasely blatantly ducked under the table.
`What's the bets it's the Kennedy one?' hazarded Septic.
`A fiver says it's not,' rumbled Deasely, from under the table.
`You're on, said Septic.
They were referring to Tick's spiel. Chuckie used to think it was charming that Tick had a spiel. None of the other pissed old farts around town bothered much with such finesse. But Tick had dozens of spiels. Propping up the downstairs bar in Lavery's, he used to tell the gullible that he was an out-of-luck songwriter who had written most of Elvis's hits. He charged iop for a joke. He did'GuessYour Star Sign'. He sang a crackly chested version of the'Fields ofAthenry' until people gave hint pounds to go away. He had even earned good money for a couple o
f years down the markets by eating fleas for bets.
'Gentlemen!' he barked thickly. He looked penetratingly at Jake. Septic mouthed the words as Tick spoke.' Where were you when Kennedy died?'
'I was being conceived in a cheap rut in a damp alley off the 1)onegall Road,' replied Jake.
'Son!' cried Tick, as he never failed to do.
'Father!' wept Jake, as he always did.
It was an ancient exchange, oft-repeated, much-loved. The second time it had happened, Jake had even embraced Tick extravagantly. Tick's almost visible stink had prevented a repetition of that particular move.
'My five pounds, please,' said Septic.
As he looked at the old tramp, Chuckle saw that Septic was right. Tick looked dreadful. Dirt and sweat marked out the craquelure of his ancient face and the whites of his eyes were completely unwhite. He looked like a Rembrandt. He looked hundreds of years old.
'Hey, Tick,' asked Septic, 'what are you drinking these days? Furniture polish? Windolene? Toilet cleaner?'
'Cut it out, Septic,' warned Deasely.
Tick stared hard at all their faces. Touchingly, he recognized them. 'Ah well, fuck the health advice, lads. just gimme some money. I'm gasping.'
A man approached from behind him and laid a hand on his shoulder. Tick swivelled round to face him.
'Right now, leave my customers alone and be off with you.'
'Eat my bollocks,' suggested Tick.
The manager grabbed him two-handed and started shoving him. There was a chorus of protest from Chuckle and his friends. Jake stood up silently and laid a firm hand on one of the manager's arms. The man stopped and looked uncertain.
`He's our guest,' said Chuckie.
`He's that man's father,' said Septic, pointing out the silent, grim-faced Jake.
Tick smiled beatifically at the man. He gestured at Jake. `Can't you see the family resemblance?'
`Don't push it, Tick,' warned Jake.
The manager gave up. All the firmness fled and he looked uneasily around for an exit.
`We'll take care of it, thank you very much,' said Jake.
Eureka Street: A Novel of Ireland Like No Other Page 14