by David Louden
I spent a lot of hours after school in Walker’s eternal detention hell. The teachers would take it in turns to supervise it; every once and a while I’d get one of the younger teachers who didn’t like Walker and who, like me, thought she looked like a spiteful little rat and they’d spot me a cigarette and walk me down to the gates twenty minutes before they should have. But a lot of the times I had to suck it up for the full hour and on the days Walker sat in during detention that hour was closer to ninety minutes. She’d deadeye me from the front of the classroom, all but daring me to mention the time and how we should be heading home. Any excuse to try and hit me with another detention but I’d sit and smile knowing it was fucking her off more than being late for dinner was bothering me and eventually she’d let me go.
At the end of that school year O’Reilly announced he was mixing up the classes in order to “give everyone the best opportunity at a full education”. It meant I got rid of Walker; she’d snarl at me during the announcement and I’d flip her off when I knew nobody else was looking. She’d give me one last detention but it was worth it. I sat there for close to two hours making sure I didn’t so much as lift a pencil to even attempt her assignment.
“We can wait here as long as it takes Mr. Morgan.”
“I’ve got all summer Walker…all fucking summer.”
“I can have you back in here on Saturday, would you like that?”
“You can’t do shit. You’ve been able to blame me all year for shit you knew had nothing to do with me but not anymore. So take an hour or two from my life. It’s all in-fucking-front of me anyhow. You’re only wasting your own miserable existence, I’m more than happy to sit here and do fuck all.”
We sat in silence, even the janitor had left. It was the edge of summer and all of life lay ahead of me.
2
OUR HOUSE on the Oldpark Road was a world away from Poleglass but by this point Poleglass was no longer Poleglass. They were throwing up cheap to build housing all over Belfast like they were expected another baby boom. Our house had enough rooms that none of us needed to share and not an inch of green anywhere near it. The top of the Oldpark Road was Catholic, Republican really. It sat under the shadow of a police tower in the old Park Picture House and was a complete dive. The Protestants kept the lower half of the Oldpark in relatively good condition but at my end you couldn’t even erect a bus shelter without some little turd taking a flame to it just to watch it burn.
“You can’t give these fucking animals anything.” Mum would spit.
And she was right.
The Oldpark was affectionately known by those who resided in her as “The Bone” most probably because that’s where life’s little comforts were cut down to for those living there but I never asked what was with the nickname and nobody was ever forthcoming with an answer so I can’t be sure. It was right around then that Jeff seemed to be threatening to fall in with the wrong crowd. Mum read him the riot act. He got on like he’d just had the ass whipped off him; he got off lightly; I had pioneered the boundaries she would encounter.
“I’m not going to pick your friends Jeffrey but I am telling you that you won’t be hanging around with those ruffians.”
He would anyway and then one day during the summer he’d come home with his face plastered all over the place. Mum was out; Tara was spending every waking hour at her boyfriend’s house. It was just me to deal with the matter.
“What the fuck happened to your muthafucka?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“Yeah your face screams nothing. Who the fuck did that?”
“Frankie McIntyre.”
“Why?”
“Don’t know.”
“So Frankie McIntyre just came and decided to paste your puss all over your head.”
“I guess.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
“Fuck Jeff, you need to tell me what you did. If I’m to go fix him I need to know if he reacted fair enough or what…so what the fuck did you do?”
“He lent me a tenner.”
“And you ain’t paid him back?”
“I’m eleven-fucking-years old where the fuck would I get a tenner?”
“You’re eleven years old, what the fuck did you need a tenner for?”
His answer would be piss and it would also be the beginning of Jeff’s temperamental love affair with money. What chance did he stand with our old man? Frankie McIntyre was turning seventeen at the end of that month; he lived with his parents in the street that ran behind our house meaning we shared an alley. I marched round to his house and knocked on the door. His mum welcomed me in and pointed upstairs towards his room “Frankie’s upstairs son”. I’d march up to his door and as I entered I drew the belt from my waist and wrapped the tongue of it around my hand before firing and recoiling and firing the buckle at Frankie who lay sleeping one off on his bed.
“You touch my brother again and I’ll kill you!” I screamed as I whipped at him.
When I stopped he was in tears, I knew the feeling but his tears wouldn’t soften me. I got worse and at a younger age than him, fuck him. His mum stood at the foot of the stairs in awe as I descended. Mum would scream blue bloody murder about Jeff’s Picasso face until I assured her I had sorted it but a few days later Frankie and his friends would catch me up and give me a licking it would take weeks to recover from.
Money was tighter than ever so when my National Insurance card came through the post a few months before my fifteenth birthday it was like a gift from God. I’d be able to get out there and earn a crust of my own, bring home that bacon, like a real man. There wasn’t much call for fourteen year old barmen and as the we’re not hiring pushed me further and further down the acceptable areas I found myself edging towards school and most promisingly the dog track.
3
THE JOB paid £1.85 per hour and didn’t involve a whole hell of a lot. I’d have to report to the kennels an hour before the first race to meet the owners and give the greyhounds their exercise after they were weighed and then help load them into the starting traps. After that I could sit around waiting for the next race and some of the ticket attendants would let me bet even though I was nowhere near eighteen. Most days the track would end up with most of my wages back and I’d have little to show for a days work other than a few chapters read and the smell of unfamiliar dogs on my clothes.
After a week in the job I started to get to know some of the regulars and the older ones would pay me a few quid to run to the booths and place their bets for them. I bought a notebook in order to keep track of the first-second and to wins I was being held responsible for. I’d hit the ticket sellers fifteen minutes before the race so I could make it back to the kennels and give the dogs their lap around the outer track before boxing them in and waiting for them to chase the rabbit. The last race that day the dog on the inside track, a silver looking hound by the name of Chelsea’s Choice, caught the motorised hare just beyond the finishing line. Nobody won that day and I never saw Chelsea’s Choice again.
I started at 11AM. I got let in through the staff entrance that sat on the edge of the local park and climbed the piss stained concrete steps into the dog stadium. I got into the kennel.
“Ok kid, number one and four won’t be racing in the first race. Five is out of the third and the sixth is missing two and three.”
“Got it.”
“The dogs are inside being weighed once they’re done take them out for a turn around while the front of house guys open her up.”
I took the dogs on their walk, one-by-one parading them in front of the drunk, the desperate and the clueless. As I got back to the kennel I handed them over and made my way out into the bleachers to do my routine walk around collecting bets. Gerald Clarke was one hundred and four if he was a day; claimed he couldn’t walk the distance to the ticket booths but somehow was always the first in and last out of the track each day and stood to attention the entire time. As far as I knew he had nev
er won a god-damn race, even I had picked up a couple of winners though on a weekly basis I was still way down.
I had ten bets in the book, all the same guys as the day before, all natural losers. I placed eight of them and pocketed the last two figuring it would be money they’d never have coming back to them in the first place. One bet came through but it was one I’d placed and I went back to collect my fee for placing the bets. That day I shied off placing six bets and made an extra few days money out of it. The following day I’d pocket another six but the day after that a winner I hadn’t placed would come through and wipe out the previous two days and most of that week’s wage playing the canine futures market.
I was sitting in the back by the dogs that were up the race after next, reading my book. They were waiting on being weighed and taken out when one of the owners started shouting at his round little son in a thick Dublin accent.
“For goodness sake child, how many times have I told you don’t be feeding the fucking dogs before a race?!”
The kid started crying but the dad didn’t seem to give much of a shit, instead turning to a man standing nearby for support.
“These fucking children. They’ll have me a beggar before I’m forty for sure.”
The man nodded and then slinked off when the Dubliner’s attention shifted back to the dog and I returned to the pages of my book.
4
MRS. MARTIN’S VOICE must have been ringing in the old lady’s ears because she was sitting in our living room in the armchair by the marble fireplace waiting on me when I got in from work. I stank. My feet were like slabs of cement and I needed nothing more than a warm bath and some time curled up resting the old bones with my book but she had other ideas.
“Douglas, come here a moment.”
“Can it wait Ma I’m just in the door and my flats are screaming.”
“It’ll only take a minute.”
I humoured her, taking a seat at the other side of the room next to our sleeping and farting old excuse for a dog.
“What’s up Mum?”
“Where are all your friends these days son?”
“They’re around.”
“Around where? Why do you never see them anymore?”
“I’m working Ma, I got myself responsibilities and when I have time I’ll go chase them down, see what they’re up to but it’s no big deal. It’s not that important.”
“It’s important to me son, you spend too much time alone.”
I wanted to scream at her. I spent nothing but time with people. In the morning I had her and Tara and Jeff to contend with. I walked to work and always bumped into someone who was going that way who felt required to talk to me whether I was open to conversation or not. Once inside the track I had the kennel master, owners, trainers, not to mention my regular punters and the ticket sellers all to deal with. The only time I managed to get to myself was when I was walking the dogs and that amounted to about an hour a day if I was lucky. I spend too much time alone do I? Fucking far too much time alone huh?! I wanted to scream at her, to shake her and then to produce an hour-by-hour breakdown of my god-damn day.
“I see plenty of people, I’ll go hang out with the guys when I feel like it.”
“Your friends will think you’ve abandoned them, go and spend some time with them. Spend some of that money you’ve been saving.”
“I’m saving it, it’s kind of the point to not spend it.”
“And what would you be saving it for?”
“My birthday’s coming up, I was going to buy myself a banjo.”
“I can buy you a banjo, go spend some time and money with your friends.”
“Can I at least wash my face before you throw me out the door?”
“Hurry up about it.”
She’d send me from the room and I’d be given sufficient time alone to wash my face and my teeth and dunk my plums in the sink with some soapy water before I’d be pushed out of the house and encouraged to be young and reckless.
I found Joe playing football down by the abandoned flex mill at the bottom of a slope of overgrown green bushes; a cigarette hung from the corner of his dried-up lips.
“Well stranger.” he’d say, catching the ball as it flew towards him.
“Sup muthafucka?”
“Fuck all, where the fuck have you been?”
“Working.”
“Slave to the man.”
“Everyone’s got to eat.”
We kick it around for an hour or two before heading up to St. Catherine’s Girls School who had a hall on their grounds they opened up at weekends and during the summer for a local disco. The school sat at the top of the Oldpark and was known for always having a few girls in fourth and fifth form who were pregnant tarring the entire educational institution with the nickname “The Whores on the Hill”. I bought two packs of smokes and a pint of whiskey to smuggle in, thinking we’d have a few drinks, loosen the crowd up and maybe get our dogs dipped but the truth was it was the furthest from that notion of sexually frustrated Catholic school girls. The supervising sisters worked those quivering libidos; the nuns would make sure that no two boys and girls spent any more than one, two dances max together. Textbook vagina cops wherever you looked. It didn’t bother me one bit. None of them had anything I was interested in. Two girl’s schools sat at the rear of my school at the top of the Antrim Road. For them to access their schools from the main road they had two choices, walk around the grounds of my school (which would add twenty minutes to their journey) or cut through the grounds and deal with the raging hormones of adolescent boys who would literally ejaculate in front of them. It wasn’t the most appealing option but it got them there in two minutes meaning there was always a steady flow of beautiful, physically mature Protestant girls to tease the tip of the beast into waking up first thing on a Monday morning. These girls had mystery, I found myself longing for a glimpse of thigh or chest when they walked by; just the slightest hint of sexuality to make the sausage-fest bearable. None of them were present though.
“I’m getting out of here man.” I said, tucking a cigarette behind my ear.
“Come on mate, the night’s just getting started.”
“You’ve got more chance of watching two of these nuns frig off each other than getting to within a whiff of some cookie. I’m not wasting any more cigarette or Beam on them.”
“Will you give it ten more minutes?”
“Ok but you’re going to have to leave subtly at the door because nothing’s biting.”
We stayed another hour and flatlined the majority of that time. I met a girl there called Niamh who lived on Brookvale. I’d pass her house every day on the way home from school and on days when Walker had me in detention she had been home, had her dinner and was out on the street hanging out with her lady crew as I inched home starving and frustrated. I always made a point of saying hello because, besides everything to the contrary, my mum raised a gentleman or at least someone who struggled with the notion of being one. I gave her two cigarettes and two bashes on the pint in exchange for some mints that would hopefully mask the stench I was collecting from the old lady.
“So how come you’re always passing my house after five?” she asked.
“I’ve a lot of after school obligations I’ve to meet.”
“You get detention?”
“I get profiled.”
“What does that mean?”
“That doesn’t really matter does it? Take another hit.”
We both tapped the bottle sucking in a mouthful.
“You always say hello.”
“I’m polite as fuck like that.”
“How come you never talk to me properly?”
“You’re always with that gang.”
“Do my friends scare you?”
“Scare’s not the right word for it. The odds aren’t great is all.”
“So if I wasn’t hanging around with all those girls…”
“I’d stop by and say hello.”
S
he smiled but the whiskey had taken affect.
“I better get going, I’ve got work in the morning.”
“What age are you?”
“Almost fifteen.”
“And you’re drinking whiskey and working in the morning.”
“I live in Victorian England, you should drop by and say hello sometime.”
I left on the laugh, snuck into the house and was able to wash my teeth before Mum got back from her friend’s house.
5
MY FIRST HANGOVER visited me the next morning. I passed on breakfast, tucked my lunchbox into my bag as usual and headed to the dog track. I walked by Niamh’s house and kept an eye out for her but there was no sign and my stomach turned over on itself echoing down by a cold abandoned row of brown terrace houses on a slope towards the park.
The first race was a full card. I walked all six at the slowest pace possible as the whiskey churned its way through my virginal system. As I walked the last one back to the kennels I saw the Dubliner again and remembered the screaming match he had with his son. I had been working on my system of making money. Bet skipping was ok but the profits were meagre and the risk of bankrupting yourself on a rank outsider was ever present. I had tried studying the form guide since day one and couldn’t work out the system. I was going to need one of my own. During the third race it came to me. I pocketed my two white bread ham sandwiches as I walked the first dog around the track and fed him a good third of it while I was out of sight from everyone. I did the same with the second through fifth dogs leaving only a sliver of a miserable sandwich for myself and the sixth dog alone. As the race started I put £4 of my own money on the sixth dog who was a 16-1 for the win. It came through and I pocketed £68 without even breaking a sweat. As I returned to the kennel I expected all eyes to fall upon me; I expected the kennel master to take a shovel handed swing at me, I expected the Dubliner to have to be dragged away from me but none of this happened. Nobody even batted an eyelid other than the trainer of the favourite and all she did was shrug her shoulders, look at her dog and say “Ah well boy it just wasn’t your day”. I played it straight for the rest of that day and had the following day off but the two shifts after that I went to work with enough lunch to feed half the staff; played it swifty and left the building those nights with so much money I looked at everyone on the way home as a potential mugger.