Eureka Street: A Novel of Ireland Like No Other

by Robert Mclaim Wilson

  He was not alone. Jimmy Eve and a coterie of Just Us celebs had flown to Washington immediately after the announcement of the first ceasefire. Despite having less than per cent of the Northern Irish vote, they ambled into the White House and hung out with the President. Chuckle briefly considered telephoning the leader of the low-polling British Liberal Democrats and charging him ten grand for the idea that if he wore a C&A suit and shot a few policemen he'd get an audience with world leaders.

  The Americans loved Eve. Several matronly Irish-American women insisted on describing him as hunky, despite his patent lack of physical beauty. The New York Times compared him with Clint Eastwood. He had a patchy beard which grew up to his eyes and a mouth like a guppy. There was no way around it, the man looked like a weasel. Chuckie was mystified.

  Eve did television shows coast-to-coast. His hairy, carnivorous smile was everywhere. He talked the language ofAmerican civil rights to interviewers too ill-educated in their own country's history to notice. He talked about South Africa. He talked about equal rights and democracy. He talked about Eastern Europe. He talked about inclusiveness and parity of esteem. One anchorman asked him when he thought Irish Catholics would be given the vote. Eve fought hard with his temptation to say something like, Never too soon, or, I hope I see it in my lifetime. But he also resisted the temptation to correct the anchorman's profitable error. He just ignored the question and started talking about what a bunch of fuckers the British were.

  However, the finest moment came when he was interviewed simultaneously with a stray Ulster Unionist and Michael Makepeace, the leader of the Ulster Fraternity Party, a collection of vegetarian middle-class doctors who did much lamenting and quite a lot of unsatirical body repairing. For twenty minutes, it was the usual back and forward. Chuckie, watching TV in a Minneapolis hotel room, had seen this hundreds of times but America obviously loved the way these guys just badmouthed each other so happily. It was like the trailers for a boxing match or like the fake badinage of professional wrestlers. It was fun.

  But then something extraordinary happened. The Ulster Unionist had persisted in claiming that the ceasefire was no ceasefire until the IRA gave up their weapons. The man obviously considered it his best, if not only, point. Finally, the anchorman put that very question to Eve. He asked him if there was any chance of IRA arms being handed in. Eve did his usual waffle about democracy and military occupation and Chuckie was about to change the channel when the anchorman turned to the Fraternity leader with his bright but sincere American smile. `And what about you, Mr Makepeace, will you, too, give up your weapons?'

  Chuckie lay back on his bed and howled like a hound. His delight was complete. By the time he regained an upright position, Makepeace's mouth was still moving but sounds still failed to issue. Chuckie heard an off-mike titter, probably from Eve, and he would always the leader of the lentil-munching, fete-giving Fraternity Party looked almost pleased that anyone would think he looked butch enough to have a few Kalashnikovs stashed.

  As the days passed and Eve received the vital presidential imprimatur, his progress took on some of the glamour and resonance of a rock tour. Chuckie saw him stand outside a Boston public building with the poet Shague Ghinthoss by his side. Both men were shaking hands, their faces turned towards the bank of cameras, their smiles wide. Journalists shouted questions but Eve and Ghinthoss ignored them until one man shouted that he was from Swedish television. At those enchanted words, both men abruptly assumed a tender, sensitive expression, their four eyes pleading and mild. Then they glanced at each other, each man calculating the unlikelihood of the other being the first to a Nobel.

  In NewYork, one dissenting protester, who carried a placard reading Stop the Punishment Beatings, was arrested and punitively beaten up by a trio of zealous New York cops. Several of the Just Us entourage could be seen casting admiring glances at the NYPD technique. Just Us were triumphant. America didn't know Protestants even existed. Many thought that Great Britain had actually invaded in 1969. A passing English historian was interviewed and mentioned that the Army had been drafted in to protect Catholics.

  `Well, you would say that,' the interviewer replied, an indomitable, investigative smile on his brave and trustworthy American face.

  It wasn't so much that real history was rewritten. Real history was deleted. Its place was taken by wild and improbable fictions. Ireland was the land of story and just Us campaigners had always been the best storytellers. They told the world a simple story. They edited or failed to mention all the complicated, pluralistic, true details. It had always been thus and the world had always loved it.

  Theirs was a narrative in which the innocent, godly CATHOLIC Irish were subdued and oppressed by the vicious English and their Protestant plantation spawn. Italian socialists, French Maoists, German Communists and the entire population of Islington swallowed it all whole, but every now and then inconvenient voices were raised. Why do you guys shoot young boys for stealing cars? How socialist is that? And that business of blowing up shops, bars, cafes, it doesn't feel enormously left wing, does it? How come you have to kill so many Irish to liberate the Irish? Although these were infrequent objections, they still nonplussed the boys and girls from just Us who had no logical riposte.

  This simply didn't happen in America. The United States presented a trusting, sentimental face for Jimmy Eve. He puckered up whenever possible. True, in America he diplomatically downplayed just Us's supposedly socialist credentials. But he hardly had to. The Americans were not going to draw any parallels between just Us and the spick Commie rebels in South and Central America. Just Us was full of white guys.That was enough.

  All this had a superbity that Chuckie could not match but he incorporated Eve's Broadway-hit status into his own spiel. He began to develop two separate personae for dealing with these businessmen. If required, he could be the ultimate croppy boy within seconds, lamenting the filthy English invasion of his land. He became the ultimate Catholic, he grew misty-eyed when talking of the Kennedy clan and blessed himself, inaccurately, before signing any documents. He even began to affect a spurious command of spoken Irish until one sharpeared Star Trek fan pointed out that the noises coming from his mouth sounded suspiciously like the Klingon for `Phasers locked and ready, Captain'.

  Alternatively, he sometimes found it useful to assume an entirely English manner. East Coast WASPs responded to this particularly well. They had a vague belief in some vestigial Northern Irish aristocracy. Chuckie knew he sounded more like Perry Mason than James Mason but they seemed to go for it.

  There had been one frightening occasion upon which Chuckie had made an initial miscalculation. He had sailed into an important meeting in Boston doing his full Mick routine. `Top o' the mornin' to yous all, now. What say we get all our aul jawin' done and then we get down to Maloney's for a few o' the fine stuff?'

  He was just about to start complaining about the health of his pigs when he noticed the frowns on the faces of the four men around the table. Then he noticed their striped ties and highly polished brown brogues, the pictures of old college rowing eights on the walls. It looked like there were fancy old WASPs in Boston too. His transition was immediate and effortless. He smiled thinly at the only man he'd met previously.

  `I do apologize, old boy. I've just been listening to some unspeakable bog-wog called Eve on the motor car wireless. They're always banging on about something or other these days. Drives me barmy, I must confess:

  He sounded dreadful. His phoney David Niven accent was mangled by his customary broad Ulster tones. He thought the men might punch him for taking the piss but, as always, it worked a treat. They gave him some more money.

  He saw many parallels between the bullshit that Eve was selling and his own success. Indeed, he began to watch each television appearance that the Irish ideologue made, and as Eve's lies and fantasies became more abhorrent and ever more stepped up the wildness of his own approaches. Chuckie Lurgan and Jimmy Eve sold Ireland long and short, begetting their mon
strous perjuries in tandem, united in an hallucinatory jubilee of simulated Irishness. Chuckie even began to feel something like a grudging affection for his hirsute counterpart.

  This uneasy twinship came to a riotous head near the end of Chuckie's second week away from Max. In Washington to tell some lies about a textile company he wanted to start in Dungiven, Chuckie had become so famous that he gave a newspaper interview. In this piece, he had mentioned that he was a Protestant. Jimmy Eve was in town for a few nights, giving head to any Irish-American congressmen who came his way. Spookily, it was the first time that he and Chuckie had coincided geographically. Eve was scheduled for another multitude of television-appearances. The producer of one network show happened to see the little piece about Chuckie and decided, uncharacteristically, that it might be a good idea if, just for once, Eve was confronted by an alternative view. He called Chuckle's hotel and booked him to appear the next night.

  Chuckie had been missing Max for near a fortnight. He felt himself growing rather grumpy. He called her every couple of hours but it didn't begin to be anything like enough. He grew mutinous and peevish.

  Additionally, on the night before his first television appearance, Chuckie failed to sleep. He was remarkably agitated. All his life, this fame business had been magical to him and now he was about to achieve some small renown on his own part. And, whatever he believed about Jimmy Eve, he could not deny that the man was becoming increasingly famous. Chuckie, veteran Protestant Pope-chum, was familiar with this sensation of reluctant awe.

  By the time Chuckie arrived at the television studios the next evening, he was so nervous he had practically stopped breathing. While in Make-up, the producers came to see him and were concerned about his evident anxiety. He could see that they were considering cutting him from the show. He was ashamed. He excused himself and sat unhappily in a cubicle in a nearby restroom.

  After a few lonely minutes, he heard footsteps. A cubicle door was opened close by. Chuckie waited, scarcely breathing. The business of defecation had always embarrassed him and he decided to wait until this invisible man had finished his task before he himself could leave.

  He grew conscious of strange noises: scrapings and small impacts. Suddenly uneasy, he looked up and saw a man staring down at him, obviously perched on the cistern of the nextdoor cubicle.

  `How ya doing?' the man asked, airily.

  `Fine. Thanks'

  'You on the show tonight?'

  Chuckie nodded.

  `Got the jitters?'

  Chuckie nodded again.

  `Hold up.!

  The man disappeared from his position. There were more scuffles and then Chuckie heard a polite knock on his cubicle door. Bewildered, he opened it. The man pushed into the cubicle beside him, locking the door behind him. He took a mirror and some small papers from his pocket. He set them on top of the cistern behind Chuckie's head.

  'Outs the way, man. I got just the thing for confidence problems.'

  Happily, he proceeded to cut four fat lines of cocaine on the little mirror. He pushed it in Chuckie's direction.'Go for it, big guy. If you get this in you, you'll be a star.You'll get a fucking Oscar.'

  He put a thinly rolled-up dollar in Chuckie's hand. Chuckie stared at the little mirror and its four tracks of powder. Now Chuckie was not altogether a drugs virgin. He'd done a little speed, he'd smoked rejected it as a thin person's vice. He was, in essence, a conservative man. But he was also an anxious conservative man.

  He stuck the tube of money in his nose and inhaled one of the lines of powder. His eyes pricked and his face appeared suddenly delicious. He felt as though he would like to eat his own lips. He put the dollar in his other nostril and hoovered up another track. This time, his very gonads grew elated. He had an ecstatic sense of simplicity. He cursed himself for never having previously investigated the Wonderful World of Cocaine.

  The man protested only mildly when he snorted up the last two chunky portions of the substance. Chuckie felt as needy and blameless as a greedy superpig and the man felt a certain evangelical satisfaction at introducing such a keen newcomer (and Chuckie pressed a fistful of money into his hand, which also helped console him).

  Chuckie straightened up and strode out of that pisser like another man, like several other men. He felt absolutely fucking tremendous as he was quick to inform the waiting TV people in the make-up room. Surprised at this new super-bullishness, the producers decided that he was ready for broadcast and the make-up artists went to work, dabbing at his sweat patches, smudging his spots, failing to damp the lunatic glitter in his eyes. When they finished their work, Chuckie leapt to his feet and strode unaccompanied into the studio, godlike, austere, filled with glorious chemical rectitude.

  Thirty-five minutes later, the interview was coming to an end. On the periphery of his vision, Chuckie could see the floor manager signalling that a countdown was imminent. He was broken-hearted. He tried to look pleadingly at the interviewer but the man paled visibly under his demented gaze. He ignored the crumpled figure of Jimmy Eve and tried to finish what he was saying before they were counted out.

  `And the other thing is that it always comes down in the end to cold, hard cash. That phrase is no accident. Those are its attributes. America, fabulous America, understands this. All you wonderful Americans out there don't need to listen to our moronic politicians.You don't listen to your own, why should ours be any different? What America understands is what I a dollar, cutting a deal. There are no nationalities, only rich and poor. Who gives a shit about nationhood if there's no jobs and no money? Bread before flags, that's what I say. I'm here in America to do a bit of business. It's the real peace. Don't listen to assholes like this.' Chuckie gestured towards the silent Jimmy Eve. `This man wouldn't know an economic policy if it came up and bit him on the bollocks. Interested Americans should invest in my country. They should give their money to men like me.' Chuckie smiled a ghastly smile.

  The tirade continued for another minute or so. Chuckie saw the floor manager counting down the seconds and he helpfully reached some notional full stop. There was a moment's dread ful silence, until the presenter managed to gasp a flabbergasted good night.

  The red lights on the cameras went dead and the men and women behind them started to bustle importantly. Chuckie removed his own chest mike, shook hands with the presenter, chucked the just Us leader under the chin, waved a cheery farewell to all and sundry and went off looking for the man he had met in the toilets.

  Jimmy Eve had said nothing during those seventeen and a half minutes of national television. He had made several attempts to speak but Chuckie had charged him down with coked-up exuberance. The politician had sat silently, pale and sweating, while the lunatic Protestant had ranted, only sporadically interrupted by the flailing presenter.

  Afterwards, Eve's entourage had been mystified. As they bundled him into a waiting limousine, they quizzed him as to what had gone wrong, why he had not performed. Eve said nothing. He looked close to tears and his forehead was cold and damp. When they reached their hotel, they called a doctor. The doctor could find nothing wrong with Eve although he manifested some of the symptoms of shock.

  This was not surprising. Something shocking had occurred. Ever since he had arrived in America, Eve had made a big event out of who would shake his hand and who would not. He had tried to discomfit British government officials and opposing Irish politicians by offering his hand whenever there were cameras around. He knew that these people could not possibly shake his hand and he knew that that looked so unreasonable on American television. There he was, making the ultimate gesture of peace and amity, and those unreasonable reactionaries continued to reject him.

  Thus when Chuckie Lurgan had surged into the television studio, Eve had offered his hand in his usual demonstrative and significant manner. He had never heard of this Lurgan guy but he knew he was a Protestant and that he was there to put for ward the Unionist position.Thus, he was enormously surprised when this excited fat man took his h
and firmly and shook it vigorously. His surprise increased when the man moved close to him and hugged him one-armed in the American fashion, putting his face close to Eve's own.

  The two men remained in that position for what seemed like a long time. The smile on Lurgan's face was so joyous and the way he murmured so intimately in Eve's ear led the producers to think that they had been set up and that these men were related. They did not notice Eve's abrupt pallor and immediate sweat. They did not remark the tremble of his hands as he regained his seat.

  When Chuckie was seventeen he had suffered a brief fad for rugby football. He began to play for the third fifteen of a club situated in the nearest bourgeois area to Eureka Street. He had not lasted long. Chuckie had not fitted in. His own team-mates disdained him and opposition players treated him with open contempt. Chuckie was neither good enough nor butch enough to reply with any on-the-pitch heroics, but he found a way to unburden himself of some of his resentments.

  He began to place himself in the front row of scrums. When both front rows locked shoulders, his face would be inches from that of another player. Chuckle would proceed to hiss nauseating and vile abuse of a nature that sometimes shocked himself. He told these nice middle-class boys that he had had sex with their mothers and sisters, sometimes their fathers and brothers as well. Sometimes he threatened to have sex with the boys themselves, sometimes he threatened them with arcane amputations and extractions: penises lopped off, bottoms burnt, testicles torn apart. Occasionally, to vary the monotony, he did this to one of his own team-mates.