The Glass Bottle Factory Mystery

The Glass Bottle Factory Mystery Marc White

“The ideal phrase is that which is short and to the point.” (Arabic proverb) “Feck that…” (Liam O’Brien – aged 16)

2

Chapter 1 Ah would ye go ‘way yerself says Skin rubbing his purple hands together trying to keep warm with his words turning into steam as he speaks and I say it’s true and didn’t I see her meself with me own two eyes and him saying that she should be knowing better than to carry on like that with an oul’ fella like him more than twice her age and I have to agree that it was a bit of a surprise to see a girl like Orla Flynn from my class in school carrying on with oul’ Mr Kavanagh as owns the bottle factory in the industrial estate and the big house and the big feckin’ 3

Mercedes that’s always nearly running me down and knocking me into the ditch while I’m cycling to school in the morning as if it wasn’t hard enough these days with the frost and the bloody potholes the size of craters on the moon and him as has a holiday home in Spain where his wife lives most of the time which would explain how he can be out gallivanting on a Saturday night where I saw him with Orla Flynn in Spiders in a dark corner half hidden behind the clouds of cigarette smoke and the walls of sound blaring out of the speakers and the strobe lights flashing on the muckers in from the late shift at the meat factory spending their week’s wages or their blood money as Billy O’Dwyer calls it on watered down beer and I’m standing waiting at the bar when oul Kavanagh comes over and make those double vodkas and cokes and I’ll settle up with you at the end of the night there’s a good man and him not recognizing me because why should he having only ever seen the back of me head while I’m on me bike with my hood pulled up as he goes flying past leaving me wobbling on the edge of the ditch with all the long blades of grass frost-coated at this time of 4

year and making a crunching sound as I put my foot down to catch me balance and then he’s away back to Orla Flynn over in the corner and the barman is following him bringing the drinks over while the rest of us are piled up five deep at the bar with our tongues hanging out for a drink and this ould one with mascara panda eyes and fake tan is leaning in to me and saying you’re too young to be working at the meat factory and I grin and say I’m only here for the beer for something to say and to let her know that I’m not on the prowl for any of these ould birds that come to flock here looking to hook up with a beefy cattle killer with the smell of death and carbolic soap on him and maybe the ould ones thinking that being around all that blood and meat must make them fellas more manly and I’m still waiting to be served and she’s moanin’ about them young wans from the community college filling up the ladies toilets with their teenage gossip and did ye see yer man and the way he looked at me he’s gorgeous ah would ye go on outta that you’ve had too many Pernods and did ye not see the blackheads and the yellow headed pimples on him and the auld 5

one complaining that the girls are only bleedin’ children as shouldn’t be allowed into a place like this anyway and sure if we can’t get served we may aswell have a bit of a dancing and I’m getting all this with saliva in my ear because you have to lean real close and shout if you want to have a conversation here with the loud music which no one does anyway because you’d want to be mad to try to have a chat in here and all anyone is looking for is to get drunk or get laid or preferably both though one often rules out the other and as for dancing the music is shite anyway and the only thing that gets the meat men out on the floor is AC/DC so they do their bit of head banging and masturbating their air guitars while I’m heading back to the table with the beers where O’Dwyer says get that down ye quick and we’ll take a little walk out to the car park and he winks at me saying go on skull it and he empties his own pint like he’s Lawrence of feckin’ Arabia and hasn’t had a drop to drink for twenty years and after pushing through the crowds jumping up and down to U2 singing Sunday Bloody Sunday how long how long must I hear this bloody song how long how loooong 6

and we’re out the door after getting rubber stamped so as we can get back in and standing out in the car park with the frost sparkling on the windshields and the stars singing to me though it’s really only my ears ringing from the loud music and it being quiet outside and O’Dwyer with a grin pulling out a badly rolled joint and telling me how he scored off of this fella in the jacks as was skinning up in there and yer man didn’t have much to spare but sold him the spliff he was making and O’Dwyer hasn’t got a light so he asks this big biker looking fella in a leather jacket and long hair going by with this old wan hanging on his arm and yer man says keep them as he hands over a box of Maguire and Patterson’s finest safety matches and we watch the pair of them going through the car park and climbing into the back of a Ford Escort with furry dice hanging from the rear view mirror and by the time O’Dwyer hands me the spliff the car is rocking from side to side and the dice are swinging back and forth and then as I take a drag I’m back with the singing stars and O’Dwyer says go on and finish it I’m going back inside ‘cos it’s fecking freezing out here and it is but I take a few more long 7

slow tokes holding the smoke in for as long as I can and I’m dizzy from the nicotine buzz as much as anything else but the hash and the beer don’t go too well together and I’m bent over looking at a pool of steaming vomit noticing the bits of chips and batter burger from earlier mixed in with the beer and telling myself I really should chew my food more and never realizing how interesting vomit could be and isn’t it just amazing that all this was deep inside in my body in a place I will never be able to see and now it’s out on the frozen gravel and grit and maybe in a while it’ll be solid too like a frozen pizza puddle and I must have been squatting there for a while lost in my thoughts and listening to the stars and even though it’s freezing I’m sweating and between the cars I see oul Mr Kavanagh going by with his tie hanging sideways and the top button of his shirt undone and Orla Flynn tottering along beside him none too steady in her high heels and he’s draped his suit jacket over her shoulders and his shirt hanging out flapping over his big fat arse and he’s stabbing with a bunch of keys at the door of a sleek looking black Mercedes and misses and tries again and Orla Flynn 8

all giggling as he eventually gets the car door open and the engine revs too loud and the car lurches forward because we forgot the handbrake didn’t we Mr Kavanagh and then they’re away with a big puff of blue smoke hanging in the cold air and me wiping the flecks of vomit from me chin saying to meself well, well, well there’s a turn up for the books and wondering what that’s supposed to mean while I head back in a cloud of beer and hash haze to the warmth and noise of Saturday night fever become Sunday bloody Sunday morning at Spiders meat market

night

club

passing

three

hefty

looking

meatpackers legging it out across the carpark and one of them being the Maguire and Patterson safety match man and I laugh to myself thinking of him already finished with the old wan and him like a matchstick probably flaring up sharply but quickly burning out.

9

Chapter 2

10

We’re snickering down the back of the classroom me and Gemser and Skin with the girls tut-tutting them stupid boys but wondering what we’re laughing at and Orla Flynn looking around over her shoulder pulling her blouse tight over the most impressive set of knockers she has on her even though she’s only fifteen but her female intuition is telling her that we’re talking about her and she sees me and blushes so I’m thinking maybe she did see me in Spiders on Saturday night after all while she was with auld Mr Kavanagh of the glass bottle factory fame and she gives me a nasty look and looks like she’s just about to say something when the Knacker which is what we call the teacher because of his straggly beard and his greasy hair that badly needs a wash never mind a cut comes in the door saying right class open your books on page 92 and which one of you layabouts down the back is going to read for us today and nobody volunteering ‘cos ye don’t even if you did want to read which I do sometimes but not today because I’m still thinking of Orla Flynn’s knockers filling Mr Kavanagh’s lucky hands and things are stirring

in

my

trousers 11

so

it’s

kinda

hard

to

concentrate and I know the Knacker is going to pick me out and sure enough doesn’t he say well we haven’t heard from you in a long time O’Brien so maybe you would like to grace us with your lilting lyrical tones and read the first part and me livid and all the excitement in my underwear deflating rapidly while Orla Flynn is grinning at me over her shoulder like she knows all about it so to spite her I stare back at her picturing her breasts again imagination being a great gift or an affliction depending on the circumstances but then I take a deep breath and plunge myself into page 92 and the quality of mercy is not strained it dropeth as a gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath it is twice blessed it blesses him that gives and him that takes and I’m wondering what the fuck is that supposed to mean but I know the Knacker will ask someone else because he’s smart enough to realize that you can’t read this stuff out loud and understand it at the same time especially when you’re only sixteen and William Shakespeare is this greasy looking guy from England that we have to study even though we’re supposed to hate the English and this stuff is not even the 12

same English we speak anyway and given the way they talk on the telly especially in East Enders and Coronation Street which I’m not allowed to watch but I’ve seen the odd time at Skin’s house because he does his homework in front of the fire in the sitting room the rest of the house being too cold and Skin’s mother always has the telly on and her and Skin even eat their meals in front of the telly which we never do in our house ‘cos we sit at the table when my da comes home from work while Skin and his ma just balance the plates of fried eggs and beans on their knees which is Skin’s favourite meal of all time which explains why his farts are so smelly and anyway Skin doesn’t have to wait for his da to come home from work for dinner ‘cos he hasn’t come home since Skin was seven so there’s just him and his ma and the telly for company and come to think of it maybe he is still waiting for his da but doesn’t like to talk about it and goes all quiet whenever I ask him about it which is not often him being my friend and all and me not wanting to be upsetting him so we watch East Enders instead and we laugh at their accents and how they say auwoy instead of hello and 13

really what they’re saying is alright but the can’t pronounce their Rs and swallow up the ends of the words like they think that’s how you should speak English which as I say is nothing like this Mr William Shakespeare fella with his bleedin’ mercy pouring down from heavens drenching the poor givers and takers

below

blessing

them

like

Father

Moran

baptising babies on a Saturday morning so instead Knacker asks Orla Flynn to please explain since you seem so interested in Mr O’Brien’s delivery this morning making me sound like a milkman or a coalman or something and she’s explaining that the guy giving the speech is really a woman dressed up like a man on account of women not been allowed to be lawyers in Venice and she wants this Shylock guy to lay off of her fella’ but she can’t say it out straight ‘cos she’s pretending to be a fella’ herself and only trying to stop yer man cutting her fella’s heart out in exchange for some money he lent him which is a bit stupid because if he left him alive at least he might get a job and earn some money to pay him back but this Shylock doesn’t really care about the money ‘cos he’s loaded anyway and probably has even more 14

cash than Mr Kavanagh with his bottle factory and then Orla is blushing ‘cos that last bit just blurted out and she didn’t mean to say anything about Mr Kavanagh but he was obviously on her mind and all the class are giggling now until the Knacker shouts out quiet in a voice that would scare the bejaysus out of ye and then he says I want you all to write a one page essay on what you think this speech is about and I’ll collect them at the end of the class so we sit and chew our pens and look at each other and Skin says to me real quiet that even the translations Mrs Heaney makes us do in French class are easier than this and the Knacker says Orla Flynn I want you to stay back at the end of class and I’m wondering is it because the Knacker is thinking about the contents of her well stuffed over shoulder bolster holder like meself and most of the other fella’s in the class or is it something to do with the way she blurted out about Mr Kavanagh and the bottle factory when she’s supposed to be thinking about poor Antonio almost getting the heart sliced out of him.

15

Chapter 3 I hate football but my dad says it’ll make a man out of me though I’ve never seen him kick a ball himself in his life or at least the part I’ve been around for anyway and we’re all up in the field that Mr O’Malley lets the local GAA use for matches and we’re running up and down after the ball trying to avoid spraining our ankles in the half-frozen hoof prints or slipping in the patches of cowshite that decorate the pitch and I’m trying me hardest to avoid the ball and still make it look like I’m playing because when you get the ball you can be tackled and Gaelic Football is not like poncey soccer even though the lads on the pitch will 16

argue over whether they support Liverpool or Man United or Everton or Chelsea which are all English soccer teams who we are supposed to hate because of the famine and Cromwell and stuff like that and in soccer you have all sorts of rules to obey like not touching the ball with your hands and though no one has ever really explained the rules of Gaelic to me one thing that is clear to me is that when you have the ball you are an open target for a tackle and it’s not only the other team that’ll tackle ye but members of your own team too and few are above scraping studs across your shins which hurts like hell especially in this cold weather and you’ll probably get a punch or two in the ribs which you’ll take like a man even though I don’t and so I have to turn to hide my tears ‘cos ye have to and personally I’m no more interested in kicking or punching anyone than I am about kicking the ball ‘cos let’s be honest why would you want to unless you wanted to release some pent up anger which seems to be exactly the point of the whole game for most of the fellas and really a match is just a big excuse for a scrap and then the chance for the trainer to grab your arse after the match 17

while you’re pulling on your trousers in the changing rooms saying aren’t you a grand wee girl now and you all embarrassed and not knowing what to reply because he’s that big Mayo bastard Mr Byrne who takes up the collection in the church on Sunday morning and always sits up in the front row with his wife and daughters and sure isn’t he a pillar of the community and we could do with a few more men like him to help straighten out these young fellas and isn’t he such a credit to his family when all the time what he wants to be at is grabbing them young fella’s arses and pretending to make a joke of it with the pillar of his community rising bulging from his trousers and his fat rubber lips quivering and his breath smelling of the whiskey he nips from his hipflask while he’s getting all hot and bothered watching these young fellas in shorts running up and down the pitch sayin’ in his Mayo accent sure isn’t that a grand strong pair of legs young Rafferty has on him and that little feckin’ O’Brien fella can run like bejaysus but couldn’t kick a ball to save his life with the two left feet on him and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s one of them sure doesn’t he know that Gaelic 18

football is a man’s sport and maybe that’s why he comes up here but not to worry I’ll have a little chat with him after the match in the changing rooms in private and then he’s got his arms around me from behind pulling me in close to him so I can feel him bulging against my shorts and he has his tongue in me ear so I lean sideways and butt him in the face with the side of me head and he lets go shouting ya fuckin’ little bastard ya fuckin’ lttle queer I’ll fuckin’ teach ya a fuckin’ lesson but I’m too quick for him and slip past him running out to the car park where Skin is waiting with his ma to give me a lift home and me too ashamed to say anything as the leafless hedges of ash and hawthorn and brambles fly past the car windows and I’m thinking maybe it’s true that I am one of them and maybe I am a queer but if it really was true wouldn’t I be thinking about doing it with a fella instead of imagining Orla Flynn’s magnificent breasts so maybe I’m not and ould Byrne is the odd one out but how can he be since he’s married and has children and back home me ma asks me if I had a good match but I just give her my dirty gear to stick in the washing machine and don’t say 19

anything and head off for a shower to wash off the sweat and the cowshite and Mr Byrne’s sleazy whiskey breath.

Chapter 4 I’m cycling home from school on me yellow Raleigh Chopper with the blackbirds and robins jumping around in the hedges with the grey barked ash trees all bare now for winter and the hawthorn covered with the red berries that people ate during the 20

famine when the English kicked them off the land so all they could do was wander barefoot down little boreens like this eating hawthorn leaves and grass just to fill their bellies which must have been all bloated and distended like the children in Ethiopia that they show on the Trócaire ads on the telly and thinking about all that sets me wondering what hawthorn leaves taste like so I pull my brakes and reach up to the hedge to pull off a few leaves and stuff them in my mouth and close my eyes to understand the taste better and I see the ghosts of them poor starving children dragging along behind their skinny mammies and when I open my eyes again I see O’Dwyer’s Massey Ferguson tractor coming up the road towards me so I get off me bike because the road is narrow and stand at the edge of the ditch to give it room to pass and as it gets nearer I see that Billy O’Dwyer is driving the tractor today which he sometimes does because he has to help his dad out on the farm and he stops beside me and shouts out something about Spiders on Saturday night but I can’t really hear him so he turns off the engine and pulls off his ear mufflers and the road is 21

all quiet again except for the blackbirds and the robins singing which I like a lot but doesn’t have much to do with what Billy is telling me in a jumble all confused saying something about Mr Kavanagh and the bottle factory so I get him to start again and he explains how the gardai are looking for him though Billy says the guards which is what everyone calls the police but I prefer to use the proper Irish word and say one garda two gardai and I ask why what did he do but it seems he didn’t do anything except not turn up at the bottle factory for a few days and no one has seen him not even his wife in Spain because the gardai checked with her and now he’s reported missing and they want anyone with any information on his whereabouts to contact them which I think is a line Billy must have learned off by heart from Garda Patrol on the box and Billy is saying as how maybe we should say something to the guards about seeing Mr K in Spiders on Saturday night so tell him that it’s going to be difficult for us to explain what we were doing there what with us both being underage and all and maybe someone saw us smoking a spliff and we could get into all sorts of 22

trouble and anyway my parents thought I was staying overnight with Skin which they let me do sometimes on account of Skin not having much family or friends except his ma and me and Mrs Skin be a decent auld wan covering for me saying she used to do the same herself as a kid though she wouldn’t let Skin come with us because of some sort of argument they had and probably had something to do with them not being very rich and being a one parent family so I tell Billy that everything’d probably be fine and Mr Kavanagh would turn up soon enough so we’d be better off keeping our mouths shut and anyway Orla Flynn could tell them she was with him but then again she probably wouldn’t either because she’d probably get in trouble with her folks too so O’Dwyer climbs back into the cab saying anyway it won’t stop us going back there this weekend and me explaining that I’d spent all my pocket money and I wasn’t like him with his dad giving him extra money to work on the farm and he says he’ll see if his dad would give me a bit of work to do like mucking out the cattle or something and I make some kinda noise just to be saying something and if the truth be told 23

I’m that mad for going back to Spiders again on account of the smoke and the lousy music that they play too loud and had me ears still ringing the next morning on top of the hangover and getting drunk from time to time is a bit of a laugh but I don’t like it so much but I don’t say all this to O’Dwyer who starts up his tractor again giving me a little wave with one hand raised like them Indians in the old westerns saying how while I get back on my bike and cycle on home

wondering

Kavanagh

about

disappearing

this

business

and

half

with

Mr

remembering

something from Saturday night but then I have to swerve to avoid a pothole and the thought is gone and back home I have a ton of homework to do which makes me forgot all about it for the time being.

24

Chapter 5 It’s pissing rain outside miserable feckin’ weather as usual and I’m in the fourth year area at school during lunch break with some of the lads sitting on a low wooden

bench fixed

geography

room

and

to

the

the

wall

so

between

called

the

language

laboratory which isn’t really a laboratory at all because its just like any other classroom except that there’s a tape recorder that Mrs Heaney never uses hidden in the wooden cupboard behind her desk and I’m pouring myself a cup of tea from my flask to go with the peanut butter and gherkin sandwiches and the bag of Sam Spudz smokey bacon crisps that make up my lunch today when I see Orla Flynn coming over towards me but not looking at me pretending to be real casual even though I can see she’s a bit nervous looking and when she sits down beside me I can see that she has dark rings under 25

her eyes like she hasn’t slept for a week and she suddenly says can I have a crisp Liam taking the bag of Sam Spudz finest smokey bacon crisps without giving me a chance to say either yes or no the cheek of her and do ye think she’d like it if I suddenly said to her Orla love can I give your tits a squeeze and just go ahead and do it without waiting for her to answer not that I would ever do such a thing anyway and of course I know that there’s a world of a difference bacons

between

without

stealing

their

someone’s

permission

and

smokey sexually

assaulting a classmate although if I was really honest with myself deep down that is exactly what I would like to do and I feel my face going red at the thought of it and before I know it she’s up off the bench and out the door of the fourth year area leaving the dry chemical smell of her deodorant behind her and then Gemser leans over and says can I have a crisp Liam in a squeaky voice that’s meant to sound like a girl’s even though Orla Flynn doesn’t have a squeaky girl’s voice and sounds more like yer one with the sexy voice who is a DJ on Radio 2 so I say fuck off Gemser and we all laugh and when I’ve finished drinking me 26

tea I decide to have some crisps given as how I paid for them and all anyway and as I put my hand in the bag my fingers feel something smooth and square that isn’t a crisp so I look in and see that it’s a piece of paper folded up all small and I realize that Orla Flynn must have put it there for me to find so trying not to act suspiciously I slip it into the pocket of me trousers without any of the lads seeing me and finish my lunch trying to be casual and even passing round the crisps but all the time dying to know what’s written on the piece of paper that’s burning in my pocket and then I get up and say I’m off to the jacks for a slash and Gemser says slash me arse its Orla Flynn making you all horny and now you have to take matters in hand like a man and I say yeah right Gemser fuck off and we laugh again and I’m still smiling on my way into the jacks where I open one of the cubicles and lock the door with one hand while the other hand is already fumbling for the folded paper in my pocket and my heart is thumping and my hands are shaking as I unfold it and read meet me in the chipper’s after school which is not quite what I expected but then I don’t really know what I 27

expected and even though I’m a bit disappointed that she hasn’t signed it or written my name or anything I know it was the smart thing to do her being clever and one of the best in the class without being too much of a lick about it and it’s safer not to use names on notes because if the teachers caught you passing notes you’re in trouble and you don’t want to end up in doing your homework in detention after school especially when you have a secret meeting down the chipper’s with one of the best looking girls in the school and with no names written on the note I could just say I found it and didn’t know who it was for or from but then I think to myself aren’t ye being awful thick altogether when all you have to do is get rid of the note and I think about eating it to destroy the evidence but then decide that it’s just easier to tear the feckin’ thing up and flush it down the toilet which is exactly what I do.

28

Chapter 6 So you did see me then I say and she says well of course I did so I look at her with her face all pale and sick looking under the unforgiving fluorescent light bouncing off the white wall tiles highlighting the dark rims under her eyes but before I can say something yer man Gino leans on the counter and says ya wanna salan vinga ‘cos he’s Italian or something and that’s how they ask you what you want on your chips and apart from the Chinese at the takeaway he’s the only foreigner I know of in town though now that I 29

think of it there’s this little old French woman who comes into school from time to time to help out with the oral stuff and I guess by hearing her talking with Mrs Heaney and the way Mrs Heaney hesitates with her answers and just says oui madame a lot that Mrs Heaney’s mastery of the French language is probably not as strong as it might be and to tell the truth which I always genuinely try to I’d have to say that what I’d really like on me chips is some strong mustard because I like the taste of it and the way it bites you up high inside your nostrils and makes your eyes water but me being what you might call a fairly regular customer in the village chipper I know that Gino doesn’t have any mustard so I don’t bother asking and just say yeah with some extra vinegar please and then I turn back to Orla who I’ve decided I’m not going to call Orla Flynn anymore given as how we are together meeting outside of school and that must count for something and I say to her well you could’ve come over and said hello or something and she says well so could’ve you and anyway I didn’t ‘cos I thought you’d be embarrassed to be caught out in a nightclub with your boyfriend though 30

really that’s okay and I have nothing against it ‘cos it takes all kinds and I don’t judge you Liam so I ask her what exactly she is talking about and she says well ye know and looks down at her shoes for a bit then looks back at me kinda embarrassed and says well about you being one of them like which sets me right off and I want to shout at her but I don’t want to make a scene in the chipper or it’d be all over place in no time gossip being what it is in these parts so I pay for my chips and say maybe we can go for a walk and talk outside which is what we do and I’m glad to be out of the stuffy greasy air of the chip shop even though outside it’s cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey with a north wind blowing all the way down from the arctic that’d cut you like a feckin’ knife and its nearly dark already though it’s not even five o’clock yet and the first few stars are already out in the sky working overtime during the long cold winter months and I say to Orla d’evens fair drawn in now in my thickest culchie accent the way the farmers say it at this time of year and the words turning into little clouds of steam as I say them and Orla laughs and I see her face lit up for a moment by 31

the lights of a car coming down the main street and laughing like that she looks like a little girl again which reminds me of how quickly she’s turned into a woman while I haven’t even started shaving yet and the little trail of light coloured bumfluff across my top lip could hardly be called much of a moustache even by the most generous minded and now the car has gone past and she’s looking sad and tired again with shadows in her eye sockets walking with her shoulders hunched forward against the cold and I feel somehow like I want to protect her but I’m still a bit pissed off about what she said in the chip shop so I say he’s not my boyfriend ye know he’s only Billy O’Dwyer from the agricultural college and surely you don’t think I’m a benny do ye and she sorta tries to smile to soften the blow and says well at school they all think you are what with your hiding in the library during P.E. when the other lads are out kicking a ball around the yard and the way you’re always fiddling around with those tapes that you listen to on your walkman and the way you’re always reading books even when ye don’t have to and they’re not even school books either and I have to admit I’m a bit 32

surprised and hurt to hear all this from her and even though among the lads we tease each other and call each other Mary and bender and gaybo and faggot and limp wrist and back door specialist and all the usual sort of homophobic shite teenage boys will come up with I never thought that anyone ever really thought I was a bender for real so I let this sink in for a bit as we walk along and then I say to her have a chip they’re very good especially if you like vinegar and she says here you can have a bite of me burger if you like and for some reason something about the way she says it gives me a little palpitation somewhere in my chest and I’m glad of the long anorak I have on because it hides the massive hard on bulging out of my trousers which kinda reassures me in a way because it definitely wouldn’t have happened if I really was a queer so I say to her well just because I don’t have a girlfriend doesn’t make me gay and anyway speaking of boyfriends I think you gave me that note because you had something to tell me and she looks at me kinda strange and half starts a sentence saying you don’t think that so I pick up the bit hanging there and say well I don’t know 33

what to think but you have to admit things look a bit well ye know and she’s all flustered now and says listen Liam I didn’t want to meet you to ask you to be my boyfriend and anyway I thought you were well ye know and I says well anyway I’m not and she has me confused so I say anyway you already have a boyfriend to which she answers what are ye talking about so I say well yer man in Spiders on Saturday night I saw you with him over in the corner drinking vodka and cokes and later I was out in the carpark and saw the pair of yis getting into his car and she looks at me shocked with her mouth open and her eyes wide and says are you out of your mind and just what exactly are you insinuating so I come out with it and say well you and ould Mr Kavanagh from the glass bottle factory to which she half snorts and half laughs and says he’s me feckin’ uncle ye eejit he’s me mammy’s older brother and we were just out having a bit of a laugh ‘cos he gets bored moping around the house on the weekends since the separation with auntie Una so my parents let me go out with him and make me promise to keep an eye that he doesn’t drink too much which he wouldn’t do 34

anyway because he drives and now all the pictures in my head are being replayed and I see Mr K at the bar ordering drinks and then later putting his jacket over Orla’s shoulders on her way out to the car with the pair of them laughing and her hanging onto him for balance and I look at her again and say so he’s really your uncle then and she says well what did ye think and no don’t bother ‘cos ye told me what you thought and jaysus me with an ould fella like him ye must be feckin’ jokin’ so I say so you don’t have a boyfriend then and she goes of course not no more than you have a girlfriend and then there’s sort of an awkward silence where we look at each other and look away and then look back at each other again so I say okay then give me a bite of your burger and tell me what you really wanted to talk about so she hands over the brown paper bag all stained with shiny grease spots and points over to the low wall in front of the Spar supermarket and says let’s sit down for a bit so we plonk ourselves down on the wall with our backs to the traffic and I feel the cold creeping up from the concrete and seeping through my trousers while we’re watching the people going in 35

and out of the Spar buying their groceries which is mostly milk and bread and cigarettes and sweets and you can bet that the first thing they’ll be doing when they get back home is sticking on the kettle for a good ould mug of tea to warm themselves up which I wouldn’t half mind meself at the moment and I’m thinking it looks very lonely in the shop and it’s like some kinda brightly lit bubble floating in the night with people coming and going but nobody staying and the shoppers are all wearing their long winter coats to go with the long winter faces on them all looking as miserable as each other except for the fella with the red hair behind the till who looks the most miserable of them all and I’m thinking how lucky I am to be out here sitting like humpty feckin’ dumpty on the wall with me legs going numb from the cold with the best looking girl in the school sitting beside me finishing my chips while I finish her burger with our schoolbags on the ground beside us and the next thing I know she’s bawling crying with fat tears flowing down her white cheeks and shining in the shoplight and she sobs oh Liam hold me please and I don’t need to be asked twice even though it’s a bit 36

awkward with our bulky coats so I open my anorak and sorta half wrap it around her and pull her closer to me and luckily I have a clean hanky in me pocket so I give it to her and she blows her nose which is already red from the cold and shoves the hanky up her sleeve just like my ma does and then she takes hold of my hands in hers and her hands are freezing so I hold them between both of mine trying to warm them and after a bit she stops sobbing and says Liam if I tell you will you promise not to tell anyone so I nod and she says not even your boyfriend and then I see she means it as a joke and she smiles even though her tears aren’t dry yet and the snot is dribbling out of her nose so I cast out a line hoping for a bite and say Orla I don’t have a boyfriend and she takes the bait and answers well I don’t have a boyfriend either and I’m looking for something suave to say in reply but can’t think of anything right off the top of my head which is probably just as well and I’m thinking to myself and at the same time silently saying

to

her

with

my

eyes

well

Orla

that’s

something that we can definitely work on and I pull her in close to me again and hold her tight while she 37

tells me her story.

38

Chapter 7 There’s ice on the puddles in O’Dwyer’s yard with frozen panes of intricate crystalline patterns all delicate rhomboids and angles both oblique and acute sparkling with a fine fur of frost on top and if there was ever an artist who could capture such a thing in a painting then he would be very famous because this is just about one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen in my short life and when Father Quinn who teaches us religion at school say that god is everywhere and in everything and that there is beauty all around us if only we had the eyes to look and see it for once I am inclined to agree with the baldy old git even though most of the time I don’t really go for all that shite he talks about us all being tainted with original sin and being unclean just for being human beings and even the most innocent newborn baby who has never had the chance to see a fly never mind even start to think about harming it 39

and he explains that it’s all that fecker Adam’s fault for eating apples even though they say apples are the healthiest thing you can eat being all full of vitamins and fibre and the like and sure doesn’t an apple a day keep Doctor Dunne away which is reason enough to eat them ‘cos I wouldn’t trust that fella with his shifty eyes not even for a minute though I have to admit that he smells kinda nice and I wonder if I’m allowed to think that without being gay but sure this morning even the fresh cowshite still steaming in circular piles in O’Dwyers yard smells nice too and I suppose smells are just smells and ye like what ye like and Farmer O’Dwyer has a smell off him too as he come out of the cowshed and across the yard to say howayah Liom yir gran en erdily dis mawrn and his smell is a mix of the stale tobacco from the pipe he’s always smoking and the cowshite on his boots and the old sweat soaked and dried into his clothes and maybe a hint of last night’s whiskey still on his breath and it’s a grand wholesome manly kind of smell but I’m not sure it’s a smell I’d like to wake up to first thing in the morning and then he walks me over to the big barn with its high curved 40

roof made of corrugated tin that been painted red because that’s the only colour you’re allowed to paint a hay barn or so it seems or maybe it’s just that red paint is cheaper than other colours and I wonder why that might be and what colour would ye paint your barn anyway given the choice and he explains to me that he wants me to start bringing the bales of hay stacked up in the back part of the barn down to the front so that it’s easier for him to grab them to feed them to the cows and then he says hiv ye hed yir brekfus yit Liom and I say yes I have Mr O’Dwyer and I can feel the big bowl of warm porridge made from Flahavan’s Progress Oatlets which is a funny sort of name when you think of it and the big bag of it sitting in the cupboard at home reminding me of a little sack of cement for some reason and the porridge is sitting there in my belly like a central heating unit in my body and reminds me of those radioactive children on the telly but that ad’s not for Flahavan’s even though it should be and Mr O’Dwyer says well yi’ll hiv a cuppa melk acoz ‘tis de nicest melk in de whole wide wirdld and fresh from dem cows dis mawrn so ‘tis and I see he’s keen on this so 41

I says I’d love to which is actually true me being a devil for the truth as ye know because I’ve never had milk that didn’t come out of a bottle or a carton which sets me thinking how you see less and less milk bottles these days and wondering would that affect Mr. Kavanagh’s glass bottle factory or does he even make milk bottles at all or is it lemonade bottles or beer bottles or even jam jars that they make in the factory and Mr O’Dwyer is saying ‘tis nuttin like de melk in dem feckin’ cyartens they hiv now and I think of the milk they give us for free in school and the tiny little cartons it comes in and me da says it is the government’s way of draining the milk lake that was created by the EEC and the CAP and I don’t really know what he’s on about at all and start imagining them fellas over in Europe building their polders and dykes and filling them with Irish milk and then building mountains of butter beside them making a whole landscape coloured in tones of creamy yellow and white even though I know that it’s not true and it’s only my imagination running away with me which it does sometimes and Mr O’Dwyer is lifting the lid from a huge stainless steel drum in the 42

milking shed and it’s almost full to the brim with milk and I say well it wouldn’t take too many of these to make a lake and Mr O’Dwyer says aye and looks at me kinda strange and then one of the black and white Frisians in the stalls moos in agreement and the noise of her hooves clattering off the cold concrete floor rattles around against the low tin roof and there are clouds of steam rising off the row of cows as they shuffle about still munching on the hay in the manger in front of them and Mr O’Dwyer says de girdls is nat so yusta strangers and takes up a big old stainless steel cup and says would yi looka dat and I do and see that the surface of the milk which is almost yellow with the cream risen to the top is frozen over and the ice crystals are shorter and fatter than the ice on the puddles outside and he breaks the frozen cream with the cup and scoops out some milk mixed with some ice and says yi’ll nade a spoon ta ate dat wit so c’mawn ta da kishtin where ‘tis warm an I’ll see if the Billy’s outta de bed yit so I follow him and his manly farmy smell back across the yard with the cold cup in my hand dripping milk and making grey splotches on the frozen frosty ground 43

and Mr O’Dwyer pushes the door open and pulls the cap off of his head and hangs it up on a wooden hook just inside the door and he does it all in one smooth fluid movement like it’s something that he’s done a thousand times which he probably has and sitting there at the table in the cosy warm kitchen is Billy who nods to me with his mouth full of bread and jam and his ma helping herself to a generous serving scarped from the giant slab of homemade butter on the table and there’s a fantastic smell of burnt toast mixed with the turf burning in the old Aga range against the wall and Mrs O’Dwyer says well is it yerself that’s in it Liam and I reply it certainly is Mrs O’Dwyer because what else can ye say to a question like that and she says well don’t be standin’ dere like a gombeen and sit yerself down and will ye have a cuppa cha which is what some people call tea and anywhere in Ireland this’ll be one of the first questions you’ll be asked when you visit someone because the Irish hold great store by a cup of tea and have such a fierce thirst for the stuff that you could say that it’s the national social lubricant though others might argue that Guinness holds claim to that 44

title but in any case if you’re not offered a cup of tea within your first five minutes in the door you can be pretty sure that you’re not welcome as not offering is considered the height of rudeness though it’s alright to say ah no don’t be bothering yerself which will bring the answer sure ‘tis no bother ‘tall and you’ll say ah I’m grand and then the reply comes well I’m makin’ some for myself to which you can safely reply well sure if you’re already making some for yerself then I may as well join you and with that little ritual over the tea will duly be served but given as Mrs O’Dwyer already knows me I know I can skip all the usual etiquette and say to her I will thanks very much Mrs O’Dwyer and she says ah will ye stop with the Mrs O’Dwyer and aren’t ye old enough to call me Molly now and Billy stands up to pass me a spoon and says I see the da is serving you his ice cream today and he loves to do that for visitors sayin’ the people who drink milk from the bottles don’t know what real fresh milk tastes like and Mr O’Dwyer who is bent over in front of the Aga sucking on his pipe trying to light it from a piece of smouldering turf say between puffs well ‘tis true squinting his eyes 45

because of the smoke and Billy says I never said it wasn’t da and I say it’s lovely so it is while I’m spooning the creamy slush into my mouth and I’ve never tasted anything quite like it before though in truth I find it a bit heavy being so creamy and rich and all but of course I don’t say so and Mrs O’Dwyer puts a big white mug in front of me with a chip out of the edge of it right where you’d put your mouth and I wonder if somebody knocked their teeth against the rim of it and did the teeth suffer as badly as the mug and she says d’ye milk first and I say I do Mrs O’Dwyer still not daring to call her Molly and she looks kind of relived because there are two classes of tea drinkers in Ireland being those who put a splash of milk in the cup before the tea is poured and those who add their milk after and both have an inherent distrust of the other like people who vote for different political parties except more so and once that division becomes clear you’re never looked at quite the same again and after I put a decent splash of milk in the bottom of the mug Mrs O’Dwyer pours out a stream of steaming dark orangey brown tea from the pot that’s been sitting stewing on the Aga and 46

she says ‘tis a bit strong Liam and I say that’s grand Mrs O’Dwyer thanks very much because I like my tea strong and me ma teases me about it and says that the tea looks like tar when I make it and that was the way my granny used to make it god bless her soul and I must have inherited the liking for strong tea from her which I like to think might be true seeing as it gives me some connection to the granny I never knew seeing as how she died before I was born though only a few months before and sometimes my ma

says

that

maybe

I’m

really

my

granny

reincarnated because I’m like her in a lot of ways though she doesn’t say what ways and I’m a bit surprised at my ma talking about the transmigration of souls and reincarnation and all that especially since Father Quinn says that it’s a sin to hold truck with such ideas which sets the whole class off laughing because we’ve never heard about anyone holding truck and I have this funny image of a semiarticulated juggernaut sitting in Father Quinn’s hand like the ones that go into the meat factory full of frightened cattle and come back out empty and I’m sitting there smiling to myself sipping the tea 47

carefully because it’s scalding hot and I already burned the tip of my tongue on the first sip and when we’re finished Billy and I head out into the yard again and the wintery sun is a little higher now casting long shadows across the yard and trying to melt the frost in the places not in the shade and the air is so clear and the only sound is our welly boots slapping and flapping against our legs and the crows cawing and squawking in the bare branches of a big old tree down the fields behind the farmyard and I follow Billy into the barn and he holds the ladder as I climb up to the top of the pile of bales and I start hefting them down to him and soon the blue nylon string that holds the bales together is cutting into my hands and I remember the woolly gloves tucked into my anorak pockets and in no time I’m sweating and Billy has built up a big rectangular base of bales near the front of the barn and the pile in the back is getting lower while the pile in the front grows higher and we have our coats off now and I can feel the sweat across my back and under my arms and I’m able to work more freely without my coat and I’m throwing the bales down to Billy who catches them and arranges them 48

neatly and after a couple of hours of breathing in the sweet smelling dust of the hay harvested in the fields that stretch out behind the farmhouse Billy decides that we’ve done enough so we go to drink water from the pump in the yard each taking turns to pump while the other drinks and the water is freezing cold in my mouth and splashes over my face and hands and boots and then Billy says put yer jacket back on or ye’ll catch yer death of cold so I do and then he says with a smile c’mawn I have something to show you and gives me a big wink so I follow him back up the ladder onto the high bales at the back of the barn and he pulls a bale out of the middle of the pile and crawls into the space and disappears and then I hear his hay muffled voice calling c’mawn will ye ye eejit so I crawl in and see that I’m in a little tunnel among the bales and it comes out into a sort of room that Billy has made for himself out of the bales and there’s a low half wall in front of us that opens onto the very back of the barn and we have a view of the fields of stubble stretching out towards the hills and the woods in the distance and the clouds are all grey and banked up on the horizon like a row of 49

cauliflowers at the green grocers and it’s a fabulous view and Billy knows it and he’s sitting there grinning like the high king of Tara on this great big sofa he’s made for himself out of the bales and covered in a thick brown cloth like the stuff sacks are made of and he says well what d’ye think and sitting down beside him I say it’s brilliant especially the view and he says when it’s too windy or raining he can just build the wall a bit higher but usually the wind doesn’t blow in this direction and the overhang of the roof mostly keeps the rain off and then he says well anyway that wasn’t all I wanted to show you and he lifts a corner of the cloth from the sofa and roots around for a bit until he pulls out an old crinkly plastic bag which he opens carefully with a big grin on his face and then he hands me an old pipe that must have once belonged to his da and then he opens up a little metal box that according to the writing on it once contained Henri Wintermans cigars and Billy looks at me and I look from him to the tin and back again and I say is that what I think it is and he says yes sir it most certainly is and starts to crumble some of the green buds pulling out bits of stalk and little fat 50

seeds and then says here gimme that so I hand him the pipe and he fills the bowl like he’s done this before and then pulls out a box of matches from his pocket and lights the pipe and I suddenly say oh fuck and Billy says what’s wrong with ye and I say I just remembered something and he says well have a few puffs of this and you might remember better so I take the pipe from him and the smoke is hot but I manage to hold it in without coughing and I pass it back to Billy and sink back into the sofa which seems even more comfortable now and I look out over the fields which are even more beautiful than a minute ago and I watch the cloud shadows scudding across the stark stubble landscape and the shadows of the trees and the light coming through the winter bare branches is almost too beautiful to believe and Billy says to me well are you going to keep it secret or are you going to tell me about it and he passes me back the pipe and I take another long toke hearing the quiet crackle of the grass burning as I inhale and I try to gather my thoughts together as I hold the sour green smoke in my lungs and as I slowly let the smoke out I see the matchbox and pick it up and say 51

these are the ones yer man gave ye the other night right and Billy says yeah the biker looking fella and he looked like he was in a bit of a hurry to sort out that old wan and I say well would you remember him again if you saw him and he says I probably would but all them biker fellas look sorta the same with their leather jackets and their greasy hair and skuzzy beards and I say skuzzy and Billy says yeah what’s wrong with skuzzy and I burst out laughing and can’t stop until I start coughing and Billy looks at me half offended but I can see the smile breaking on his lips and he wants to laugh too and I say skuzzy that’s brilliant Billy and I never heard that word before but it’s perfect and describes yer man’s beard perfectly and now I can picture his face more clearly in my mind’s eye and know that I would recognize the Maguire and Patterson matchstick man if I saw him again and Billy says I remember his car better though and I say oh yeah the furry dice and he laughs and says ye mean fuzzy and that sets me off again and we’re both laughing and Billy says yeah skuzzy and fuzzy and the pair of us are nearly pissing ourselves laughing and I say that’s some great gear 52

and Billy says yeah I got it off a fella in the agricultural college who grows it in his father’s greenhouses among the tomato plants and I say does his father know about it and he says he does indeed and the crop is paying to send yer man’s sister to university and covering his own college fees and a bottle of whiskey a week for the ould fella so everyone is pretty happy with the deal and I say well that sounds fair enough to me but I’m still thinking about the Maguire and Patterson matchstick man and his skuzzy beard and I start giggling again and then I stop ‘cos what I’m about to tell Billy is not so funny and my mood has changed as sudden as a dark cloud hiding the sun and I say did you know Orla Flynn was Mr Kavanagh’s niece and he say ye mean the good looking one you were on about in Spiders and I nod and he says ye kinda fancy her yerself don’t ye and I nod again remembering the touch of her cold hands in mine and I say it’s something I’m working on but it’s complicated and Billy says what ever happened there anyway did yer man ever turn up or what and I say he did not and I take a deep breath and say Orla told me he was taken the other 53

night by three fellas wearing balaclavas who jumped out of a Ford Escort that was blocking the road and Billy says ye mean the furry dice car and I nod and say fuzzy actually and we’re laughing again though not as enthusiastically as before and after a bit Billy says jaysus that’s great stuff would ye go another pipeful and I say I would indeed and while Billy is picking out the seeds and stalks I tell him how the Escort had overtaken the Mercedes and pulled across the road and forced Mr Kavanagh’s car to stop and how one of the balaclava fellas had driven Orla back home in the Ford while the others drove off in the Mercedes with Mr K locked in the boot and Billy nods taking all this in and says so yer man just dropped her home to her folks place and I nod and Billy says and he didn’t do anything to her and I turn around and snap at him and sorta shout well what the fuck do you think and Billy looks at me and says real quiet and slow oh sweet fuckin’ jaysus and I say she’s scared out of her wits and yer man said she wasn’t to say anything except that her uncle just dropped her home or else they’d come and get her as they know where she lives and the fucker said that the next 54

time the three of them would take turns with her and when they were finished with her they would kill her and chop her up into pieces and feed her to the pigs and as I’m telling it to Billy I get all upset and angry and I can feel the adrenaline pumping round my body and the nice buzz off the grass is gone and I feel a bitter acid taste in my mouth and Billy says well I told you we should have gone to the guards and I shake my head and say the kidnappers’ll only think that it was Orla that told and they’ll come for her and we can’t let that happen to her and I look at Billy and he looks at me for a long time and finally he says with a big sigh listen Liam I know some people and I say ye mean and he says yeah and I say oh fuck and he says yeah right oh fuck but we have to do something right and I nod and say yeah we have to do something and then we sit back and silently share the pipe looking out at the dead trees and the menacing winter clouds with their sinister shadows flitting across the scarred stubble fields and it’s hard to see the beauty in such a cruel dark world.

55

Chapter 8 I’m sitting at mass in the parish church with my parents on a cold and damp Sunday morning or to be more precise I’m sitting and standing and kneeling through mass and during the sermon Father Moran starts complaining about the trucks rolling in and out 56

of the glass bottle factory at all times of the day and night and how they have the road torn up with their comings and goings and the potholes getting deeper and wider by the day and despite the letters and the petitions the county council not bothering their fat arses about spending a bit of the tax payer’s hard earned money on fixing the roads up a bit and okay so maybe Father Moran didn’t say fat arses and even if they weren’t his exact words it was still the general gist of what he was saying and then he starts going on about the state of the roads being a symbol of the moral decline of the country and if we didn’t mend our ways we’d pay for it down the road and I swear they were his exact words because I nearly burst me shite laughing but managed to restrain it into a tight smile and I really don’t think Father Moran intended the word play and looking around me I don’t see anyone else smiling so either they weren’t listening very carefully or else they were busy contemplating the inevitable hellfires that await them in the next life and I’m thinking in particular of the big Mayo bastard Mr Byrne sitting up there on the front row acting all holier than thou and my eyes are boring 57

into his back and he must feel it because he reaches his arm over his shoulder and starts to scratch himself but maybe he’s just getting hot and bothered watching the young lads serving mass up there on their knees either side of the altar and if there’s one thing to be said about mass on a Sunday it’s that it gives you a bit of time to have a long hard think about things and I’ve had a few thoughts that might not fall under the strictest definition of Christian charity concerning the same Mr Byrne and I have the germ of an idea as to how to get my own back on him for that malarkey up in the GAA changing rooms last week and I look over toward Orla standing there with her parents and think about how she can help me with my plan and her lips are moving as everyone is saying the our father or dour father as Billy O’Dwyer calls it and at the same moment she looks over at me which I take to be a good sign and I give her a big wink but I’ve been spotted because I hear this little ould wan behind me mutter shocking behaviour so I turn around and look at her and continue the prayer looking her right in the eye with a cheeky grin saying forgive us our trespasses as we 58

forgive those who trespass against us and I’m glad to see her blush and look down at her hands because I don’t really think it’s a sin to be winking at a girl during mass though I know there’s plenty would disagree with me and that’s their right too and more power to them but personally I think the catholic church is the biggest money making racket in the country and probably even bigger than the IRA who everyone knows is responsible for all the bank robberies and post office hold ups and the drug trafficking and I’m talking about real drugs not like the ones in Billy O’Dwyer’s Henri Winterman tin but the ones that can make you die and turn honest men into criminals just so as they can get a fix and I’ve eyes and ears enough to know that there’s plenty of that stuff going on and it’s not just in Dublin but in the smaller towns all over the country that people are shooting up the powerful powder of the Pakistani poppy and the money the nation’s heroes make from supplying misery and death is used to buy guns to fight a so called war that no one in their right mind wants and it’s kneel down time again and we’re on the home stretch so during the last few minutes of 59

mass I say a little prayer for all the junkies and the terrorists too because they need our prayers as much as anyone else and maybe even more so and then I ask forgiveness for the evil little plan that’s hatching in my mind and then Father Moran says mass is ended go in peace and everyone answers thanks be to god though some say it with a little more enthusiasm than is strictly necessary and now everyone is grunting their way back up onto their feet and shuffling out towards the door exchanging smiles and nods with each other and glad now that they’ve done their Christian duty for the week and dying

to

get

uncomfortable

back

home

Sunday

and shoes

out and

of

their their

uncomfortable Sunday clothes and have a grand feed of meat which might be roast beef or boiled ham and cabbage and you can be sure whatever it is there’ll be plenty of potatoes to go along with it and then there might be a snooze in the afternoon while watching the match on the telly and later down the pub for a few scoops of porter and back in time to maybe beat the wife or the kids before staggering off cursing to bed to get a good night’s rest before 60

starting the working week again in the morning and then we’re all out in the daylight leaving poor crucified Jesus hanging up there on his cross with his thorny crown to spend the rest of the week looking at the empty pews and only his ma for company and she’s not even looking at him standing over the other side of the church examining what she thinks might be a leak in the roof of the parish church and outside everyone is talking louder now chatting in little groups and how are ye missis yer looking well and if only I was feeling well ‘tis d’arthritis has me kilt so it does howayeh Mike ah not so bad Tom and yerself and some of the old fellas are adjusting their caps back onto their heads like screwing lids tightly onto jars and they probably won’t come off again until next week same time same place and I see the ould wan that was sitting behind chatting with a group of ould biddies and I’m feeling all holy and purified after mass so I go over and touch her on the elbow and she looks at me a bit startled at first and then her jaw squaring into indignation and I say to her listen missis I just wanted to say I’m sorry about what I did in there and her face relaxes into a smile that 61

reaches all the way into her eyes and she has lovely eyes for an ould wan and her smile warms my heart and she says don’t be worrying about that ye little divil ye and don’t ye know that I was your age once and for what it’s worth if I have a word of advice it’s don’t let the grass grow under your feet and I nod pretending I understand and say thanks missis and she says strike while the iron is hot young man which makes more sense to me and she gives me a big cheeky wink herself before turning back to the other ould biddies and I can feel them talking about me as I move over towards Orla who’s standing next to her parents while they are in deep discussion with another middle aged couple all with serious looks on their faces and I know they’re probably talking about Mr Kavanagh disappearing and I say howayeh Orla listen I need to ask you a big favour and she breaks away from her parents and whispers ye didn’t tell anyone did ye and I say of course not and feel bad about lying seeing as I already told Billy O’Dwyer and I say here walk with me over to that tree nodding to a big dark yew growing up close to the church near another crucifix where there’s another Jesus dying for 62

our sins just to remind ye again in case ye were just passing by the church and didn’t have time to nip in for a few prayers and we stand in front of the murdered son of god in the open so everyone including himself can see that there’s no hanky panky going on but we’ve already attracted a few looks and the ould biddies are cackling amongst themselves and casting smiling glances at us and I say to Orla listen eh d’ye have any sexy knickers you can lend me well not exactly lend because I probably won’t be able to give them back to ye and she looks at me with her mouth hanging open and says for fuck sake Liam if there wasn’t all these people watching I’d slap you across the face for asking me such a thing and us in a churchyard right after mass and have ye no shame at all at all and I realize that I need to do some explaining which I was hoping to avoid since it’s bound to be embarrassing and I see her face and she’s furious and she looks like she’s going to cry so I decide to hell with it and tell her the whole story and her face gradually relaxes as she understands what I’m explaining to her and finally she says okay you can call around to my house this 63

afternoon and then Mrs Skin who I hadn’t noticed earlier is coming over towards us and I’m racking my brain trying to think of her real name and just in time I remember and say Mrs Boyle how are ye and she says ah sure I can’t complain and anyway even if I did who’d listen to me and there’s not a lot you can say to something like that so I just smile at her and she says d’ye want me to pick you up for football this afternoon and I say yes please but d’ye mind if stop at Orla’s house on the way just for a minute because eh I need to pick up a book for a project we’re doing for school and that’s two lies I’ve told already today and me hardly ten minutes out of mass and Orla says yeah a book for a project and Mrs Skin says right ye are then and I’ll leave you two lovebirds to it and I’ll see ye later and then she turns and walks out towards the church gates where I can see Skin waiting for her and I feel kinda bad because I haven’t been spending much time with him lately and then Orla says well I better get going or the whole place’ll be talking about us and I say it’s a bit late for that ‘cos they’re already talking and she says yeah I know but remember that they all think you’re a homo and I 64

say well I already told you I’m not and she says don’t worry I believe you it’s just that you haven’t proved it yet and then she ambles off leaving me standing there wondering what’s that supposed to mean and then my da is breaking away from a conversation with Father Moran and waves over to me and its off back home for a feed of roast chicken and spuds.

65

Chapter 9 I take a quick look under B in the phone book while I’m waiting for Mrs Skin to pick me up and when we’re on our way she stops in front of Orla’s house while I trot up the path in my football studs and shorts and when Orla comes to the door she says you have lovely legs and I bet you’d look great in a miniskirt and tights and I just make a face as she hands me a history book with a little plastic bag squeezed between the pages and she says they were my auntie Una’s so don’t start getting any wrong ideas and how come you play football on Sundays 66

anyway when you’ll do anything to get out of playing at school and I sigh and say it’s my da’s idea to make a man out of me to which she just nods in silent understanding and then says good luck Liam like she means it and then I’m trotting back down the path waving back to her saying thanks Una I owe you one and then muttering to myself under my breath and by jaysus I’d give you one as well and Mrs Skin smiles knowingly as I get into the backseat of the car beside Skin and he says why do you need her history book and I say for the project and he says what project so I elbow him in the ribs and make big eyes at him and he cops on and says oh yeah the history project right I thought you meant something else and I’m sure I hear Mrs Skin smirking from the driver’s seat and a bit up the road I point at the window beside Skin and say jaysus did ye see that and Skin turns his head and says see what and that gives me time to whip the plastic bag out from between the pages and into the waist band of my shorts and I say oh I thought it was a cuckoo and Mrs Skin says a cuckoo in the middle of winter ye must be seeing things Liam and I say maybe I am and she says 67

maybe I am too and I catch the twinkle in her eyes as she looks at me in the rear view mirror and there’s no flies on Mrs Skin and Skin says what are the pair of yis talking about at all and I say I’ll explain to ye later and he just nods and then I see Mr Byrne’s car already

parked

beside

the

GAA

clubhouse

in

O’Malleys field and he nods at us and says Boyle O’Brien five laps of the field to warm up and Mrs Boyle how are you and she says ah sure I can’t complain and even if I did who would listen to me and he grunts and says tell me about it in a tone that says I’ve heard it all before and makes it perfectly clear that he doesn’t want to be told anything about anything and I say to Skin I’ll catch up with ye I’m just going to take a slash and in the toilets I pull the plastic bag from my waistband and take out the knickers which are a very sexy black silk and lace job and I wonder about what kind of woman Orla’s auntie Una is but there’ll be time for fantasizing later and I tuck the knickers back into my waistband and throw the bag in the bin before heading back outside to join the lads and then I’m off trotting around the field which is my favourite part of football training 68

because I like the freedom of running and the rhythm of my arms and legs moving in time with my breathing and not having to think about anything and sometimes I feel like I could run forever and never think about anything ever again because sometimes you can think too much and maybe that’s just the way I am because my mind is always busy with all sorts of things and if my mind doesn’t have anything to think about it starts to invent stuff and as I’ve said before imagination is a great thing but sometimes it can get you into trouble and not just with other people but even with yourself and maybe even especially with yourself and when I’m running I can just let go of all of that and on the fifth lap I see Mr Byrne wrapped up in his big coat standing on the sideline smoking a cigarette to set a good healthy example for us youngsters and as I get closer to him my legs start to go all shaky and I teeter from side to side running much slower now and someone is saying would ye look at O’Brien what’s wrong with him and then suddenly I collapse on the ground and lie there shaking and the lads all come running over to me and are ye all right Liam what’s wrong with 69

him is he having a fit or what and my eyes are turning in my head and I’m breathing noisily through my mouth and I can hear the big Mayo bastard Byrne saying c’mawn lads let me through there and now I’m saying something and Byrne leans over me and says what’s that yir sayin’ lad and I say cocococold cold I’m so cold and one of the lads says he’s saying he’s cold Mr Byrne and he snaps back I’m not fuckin’ deaf and next thing I feel him lifting me up and wrapping his big overcoat around me and I’m still shivering and with the coat wrapped around me I reach into my waist band and pull out Orla’s auntie Una’s sexy lace knickers and slip them into the inside pocket of Mr Byrne’s overcoat making sure that I have them tucked down well underneath his wallet and inside I’m cheering I gotcha ya big Mayo bastard and no fucker messes with Liam O’Brien in the changing rooms and gets away with it and he’s saying to me are ye alright lad is it the cold is it and did ye not ate yer lunch or what and slowly my eyes start to open and the shivering stops and I say I’m feeling a bit better now and he says well thank fuck for that and I feel a tiny twinge of guilt because I see 70

that he really seems worried about me and I say I think I’ll go and sit with Mrs Boyle in the car where it’s warm and she has a flask of tea and I have me anorak in there too and Mr Byrne looks relieved that he doesn’t have to take anymore responsibility for me so I wander back over to the car and Skin follows me over and says are ye okay Liam ye gave us all a bit of a fright there and I say sorry about that Skin and don’t tell anyone but it was all a big act and he says jaysus you’re terrible and you’d do anything to get out of football wouldn’t ye and I say Skin ye know me too well and he gives me a wink and says don’t worry your secret’s safe with me and runs off back to see which side he’ll get picked to play for while I head over to the club house and use the payphone to call the number I’ve memorized from earlier and when I hear a woman answer the phone I put on a deep voice and say hello is that Mrs Byrne and she says yes it is and I say it’s about your husband and she says oh Jesus Mary and Joseph don’t tell me something’s happened to him and I say no Mrs Byrne it’s nothing like and she says what is it then and I say do you know where your husband is right now and 71

she says he’s up in O’Malley’s field at the football with the boys and I say are you sure about that and she says well where else would he be and I say well you can ask him that yourself after you’ve checked the pockets of his overcoat and she says what’s this all about who are you and I can still hear her squawking as I place the receiver back on its cradle and I’m almost regretting it now that everything went according to plan and I feel dirty and guilty as I climb into the car and sit down in the front passenger seat beside Mrs Skin who is busy doing a crossword in a book full of them and I say to her I’m not going to play today ‘cos I’m not feeling very well and she looks at me hard and taps the pencil against her teeth and goes back to her crossword and after a minute she says without looking up what’s a six letter word for an act of distortion of the truth and I think a bit and say d’ye have any letters and she says first letter D last letter T and I think about it for a bit and then I say I don’t know and she taps the pencil against her teeth again and says third letter C and then it comes to me and I blurt out deceit and she spells it out and says that’s correct but she 72

doesn’t write anything down and when I look over I see that there are no blank spaces left in her crossword and I realize that I walked straight into that one and I’m telling you there’s no flies on Mrs Skin absolutely none at all.

73

Chapter 10 Skin is on spots and I’m on stripes but not doing very well today and Skin sends another ball clacking into the pocket and rumbling down into the innards of the pool table and while he’s lining up his next shot I’m watching the dust motes floating around in the diagonal shafts of sunlight pouring in through the frosted windows and listening to the music of the glass washer humming and purring its watery tune and there’s a smell of stale beer and stale cigarettes in the air and the only other people in the bar are a wrinkly

old

contemplation

fella

on

before

the his

end half

stool finished

in

deep

pint

of

Guinness and Pat Dempsey standing behind the bar with his arms spread wide and his big belly hanging over his belt leaning over the Irish Independent open on the counter in front of him and beside him he has a mug of tea with a spoon sticking out of it and a tea bag floating on top and a half smoked cigarette smouldering in an ashtray with a good inch of 74

smooth grey ash on it and when the little bell attached over the door rings the door opens and a rectangle of light appears on the worn carpet and a very familiar looking fella walks across it and over to the bar and Dempsey barely lifts his eyes from the Independent and says jaysus would ye look what the cat dragged in and the newcomer in his leather jacket says ah Pat ‘tis yerself and how’s it hanging and Dempsey says hmmpff a damn sight lower than yours anyway Shay and ‘tis a wonder yer not castrated with dem tight jeans on ye and the newcomer with his long greasy hair and his skuzzy beard says ye needn’t worry about me on that account everything down there is working just fine and ye only have to ask yer missis and she’ll tell ye the same and Dempsey say hmmpff again and what’ll it be then or have ye just come in here to cast dispersions on me wife though I’m fairly sure he really meant to say aspersions and skuzz beard aka the Maguire and Patterson matchstick man just in case ye hadn’t figured it out already says ah I can’t stay Pat and I only came in for a take out seeing as how the off licence is closed so give us a bottle of 75

Powers and six Guinnesses ye miserable shite and I see Dempsey smile at the compliment and he says and I suppose you’ll be paying for all this and the matchstick man says I will to be sure and Dempsey says but not today and yer man says yeah not today but soon and don’t worry I have a bit of overtime due to me a big bit of overtime and Dempsey says don’t forget I know where ye live and skuzz beard says I know ye do but I’d thank ye for steering clear of the place for a while and Dempsey say why’s dat and skuzz beard says ah ye know things and Dempsey looks at him and says things and yer man says ye just things and anyway I think I’ll be getting out of the feckin’ meat plant soon ‘cos amn’t I getting’ sick of the slaughter and sure don’t I see the fuckers in me dreams now with their big scared eyes mooing at me and Dempsey say ‘tis a hard way to make a livin’ right enough and skuzz face says fuckin’ right and anyway I’ll be off now and Dempsey says Shay judging by the smell off of ye you were already off long ago to which skuzz beard says cunt which makes Dempsey smile again and he still has the smile on his face as he goes back to his newspaper 76

and yer man is off out the door with another little tinkle of the bell and as the spring on the door lever does its work the rectangle of light on the floor slides from

rhomboid

to

triangle

becoming

an

ever

narrower wedge until the door finally closes with a dull thud and then Skin pokes me with his cue and says when you’re finished day dreaming there you can take your go so I line up the shot sighting along the cue and I’m back on top form now and quickly pot four in a row finishing up with the eight ball and Skin says we still have time for one more game and I says fair enough if ye feel like getting beaten again and walk over to Dempsey and say what’s the news Mr Dempsey and he looks at me like he doesn’t know what I’m talking about so I nod at the newspaper still spread out on the counter and he shakes his head and says they got three of ours in a road ambush just over the border in Armagh and I say UDA and he shakes his head so I try again and say UVF and he says nah it’s the fuckin’ RUC this time so I being a devious little git say Maggie’s a bitch even though I’ve never met her and maybe she’s really a lovely person in private and doesn’t she have a hard job to 77

do anyway but at least she has the hair for the job amazing hair but of course I don’t share any of these thoughts with Dempsey and he says you’re right there but she’ll get what’s comin’ to her soon enough and I say fuckin’ right no more than she deserves and anyway can I have the same again and he says two Lucozades is it and I say yes please and another token for the pool table and while he’s pouring the drinks from the orange plastic wrapped bottle I say ye know yer man Shay what’s his face who was in here a few minutes ago and Dempsey grunts that useless cunt what about him and I say wasn’t he in the FCA a while back the FCA being the name of the army reserve force and the letters standing for Free Clothes Association ‘cos they’ll hand out uniforms to any fecker who wants to be a weekend soldier and others say FCA stands for Fools Carrying Arms though really it means Fórsa Cosanta Áitiúil in Irish and even though it’s supposed to be part of the real army it’s a notorious recruiting ground for the paramilitaries and Dempsey says you’re too young to be in the FCA and I say of course I am but I’m pretty sure me cousin used to hang around with yer man a 78

few years back when he was a member and Dempsey says where’s your cousin now and I say he’s over the pond building walls for good money and Dempsey says the fuckers’ll take our young men away from us anyway they can and sure wasn’t Mr Shay Ryan kicked out of the FCA for bad behaviour and I say jaysus he must have done something really bad then and Dempsey say nah not really he was just a stupid fucker and tried to sell hash to one of the captains who had his own business bringing the stuff in from the Lebanon with the peacekeepers and I say well he couldn’t have known and Dempsey says well everyone else did and then I say well anyway me cousin is coming back over next month for a bit of a break and I’m sure he’d like to meet up with yer man Ryan and buy him a few pints and sing the rebel songs and d’ye know where he could find him and I think he still works at the meat factory doesn’t he and Dempsey says aye he does right enough but if he’s looking for him at home he’ll find him up in the old farmhouse round the corner from O’ Toole’s and I say the one with all the ivy growing on the wall out the front and he says that’s the one and I’m watching 79

the tiny bubbles in the Lucozade rising up from the bottom in a little curvy stream and fizzing and bursting on the surface and then he says listen I wouldn’t go up there for a while and I says sure why not I’m sure yer man’d be delighted to see me cousin again and Dempsey says tell yer cousin to leave it be for a bit and I say why and Dempsey says ah ye know things and I say things and he says yeah just things and anyway what’s your name and I’ll tell him you were askin’ for him next time he comes in and I say ah sure he doesn’t really know me it’s me cousin he knows and Dempsey says well what’s your name anyway and I say Maguire and he says Maguire and I say yeah Pat Maguire ye know like the matches and with a frown on his face he says the matches and I say yeah Maguire and Patterson and he smiles and says ah very good like the matches I get ye now.

80

Chapter 11 I’m back at O’Dwyer’s farm again shovelling cowshite and bedding straw out of the shed and piling wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of the stuff up onto the manure heap which is steaming on this cold and frosty morning because of the fermentation and as 81

the morning wears on the frost disappears and the shovel seems to be getting heavier and my back and shoulders are killing me and they had only just stopped aching from lifting the bales the week before but I’m not complaining because it’s good honest wholesome work that’ll put muscles on me and farmer O’Dwyer gives me a few bob and as much milk as I can drink and carry home to me mammy and I’ve never tasted such custard or bread and butter pudding as she made with it because the rich thick creaminess of the milk is something else again so it is and farmer O’Dwyer has explained to me that it’s because he keeps a couple of Jersey cows and even if they don’t produce as much as the Frisians do their milk is creamier and the two mixed together is the best fehkin’ melk in the wirdld as he says himself and when I’m finished with the manure heap I sit in the kitchen next to the heat of the Aga drinking dirty big mugfuls of tae with Mrs O’Dwyer while I wait for Billy to come back home and in a while after I’ve almost had my fill of tea and Mrs O’Dwyer’s gossip I hear the tractor pulling into the yard and Billy comes in and pours himself a mug of tea and without sitting 82

down says mammy I’m taking the shotgun and she says so long as you’re careful with it and make sure Liam is behind you when you shoot and he says Liam’s me best friend ma I’m hardly going to kill him am I and she says just be careful is all I’m trying to say and Billy opens the door of an old wooden wardrobe and reaches in behind the coats and jackets hanging there and pulls out a shotgun and then breaks the barrel and takes out the orange plastic cartridges from it and slips them into his jacket pocket and turns to me and says me da always says what’s the use of an unloaded gun and then he pulls another handful of cartridges from a cardboard box on a shelf in the cupboard and slips them into the pocket of his jacket too and it’s one of those green army surplus jackets that a lot of the fellas at school like to wear except that Billy’s doesn’t have H Block or AC/DC written in black biro on the back of it and there’s no black armband sewn to the sleeve and then he says are ye right Liam and I say I’m right as rain which I think must be fairly right although at the same time I’m thankful that it isn’t pissing down today like it has been for most of the past week and 83

like my da says it’s fierce lucky that the Irish are not like them disprin tablets that dissolve in water or we’d be all rightly fucked and then Mrs O’Dwyer says leave them crows alone Billy and bring me back something I can put in the pot and Billy says right ye’ are ma and I say thanks very much for the tea Mrs O’Dwyer and she says ye pup ye didn’t I tell ye not to be callin’ me dat sure isn’t me name Molly so then I say thanks for the tea Molly which makes her laugh but makes me blush a little bit as we go out the door because I'm still feeling a bit shy about using her first name and in no time at all we’re striding across the fields and I’m feeling excited and a bit nervous at the same time because I’ve never gone hunting before even though I’ve heard shotgun fire in the distance and the answering call of crows every winter for as long as I can remember and when we get a bit into the woods on the back end of the field Billy says we’ll sit here and wait for a bit and see what comes along so I sit on the trunk of a newly fallen beech tree that must have come down in the storms last month and Billy is looking around at the gnarly roots of it to see if there are any rabbit burrows in the freshly exposed 84

soil and then he says there’s nuttin’ and sits down beside me on the smooth grey bark and we stay like that for a good while listening for the sound of rustling leaves on the ground or something but the only sounds are the crows in the distance and the drone of an unseen tractor a few fields over and the occasional bleating of Conroy’s sheep and it’s nice sitting there in silence in the half shadow of the woods and the trees all around make me feel secure and protected even if I’m starting to feel the cold and after a while Billy says fuck sake we’re wasting our time here and there’s nuttin’ to kill here ‘cos this place is dead already and then he says here I’ll show you how to use this thing anyway and he takes a couple of cartridges from his pocket and shows me how to slip them into the barrels and how to lock the gun and I’m surprised at how simple the whole thing is and then he puts it to his shoulder and shows me how to hold it and he says ye just have to keep it straight and squeeze the trigger gently and make sure you don’t close yer eyes when it goes off ‘cos ye’ll miss and waste your cartridge and then he lowers the gun and breaks the barrel again and pulls 85

out the two cartridges before handing them to me and then he passes me the shotgun saying your turn now and I’m surprised at how heavy the feckin’ thing is and I repeat all the same actions he’s just shown me and then he reaches over and adjusts the butt of the gun on my shoulder and says that’s very important ‘cos it’ll buck when you fire and then I lower the gun and hand it back to him with the heart thumping in my chest and I’m glad to have the infernal yoke out of me hands and Billy says d’ye want to carry it for a bit and I shake my head and say no not really and he smiles and says we can go back if ye want and we don’t have to shoot if ye don’t want to and I say but I do and I want to know what it’s like though the thought of actually pulling the trigger kinda frightens me and we haven’t taken more than ten steps when a pheasant flaps noisily up out of a pile of dead leaves just in front of us half frightening the life out of me and Billy shouts step back which I do and he has the shotgun raised and then there’s an almighty bang that sets my ears ringing and Billy says fuck it I missed and sounds disappointed but I must admit I feel a little bit 86

relieved that the pheasant managed to get away and despite the cold I can feel the sweat running down the insides of my arms and I follow Billy through the woods with my ears still ringing until we come out the other side and then there’s a bit of a rise with grass growing on it and the low winter sun is playing hide and seek with the clouds and Billy points over at the field and says ye can always shoot one of Conroy’s sheep and laughs saying it’d be hard to miss and sure didn’t me ma ask us to bring her back something she could cook and I say ye wouldn’t would ye and he says of course not and there’d be blue murder over it if I did and we stroll on skirting the base of the rise and leaving Conroy’s sheep behind us and I’m thinking that it’s funny that murder should have a colour and why blue and not red which might make more sense and I’m not exactly sure where we are ‘cos I’ve never been down this way before and then after a few more minutes walking I realize that we’re somewhere near the back of the glass bottle factory and Billy says be quiet now ‘cos there’s a bit of a pond in that holla’ over there and with a bit of luck there might be a duck or two in 87

it but when we get to the pond there are no ducks and there’s just a big puddle of scummy looking grey water and some old sheets of polythene wrapping flapping in the breeze like the stuff that me ma puts over the leftovers in the fridge where she’ll keep them for a few days before finally deciding to throw them out and Billy picks some of it up and says it’s the stuff they wrap around the pallets of bottles to stop’em falling out when they’re loadin’ them onta the trucks and then he rolls it into a bundle about the size of a football and tosses it out into the middle of the greasy looking water and says here ye can use that for target practice and hands me the gun and so I aim carefully and squeeze the trigger and try not to close my eyes but I do anyway and there’s a massive bang again and the strength of the kick of the butt in my shoulder surprises me and sends me back a step and the ball of polythene wrap is still sitting there as if nothing happened and I say did I miss and Billy says nah I think ye hit it and it moved a little bit anyway and sure ye can try again and try to keep your eyes open this time so I do and I see the pellets stud the surface of the water for a moment and tell 88

Billy that I expected a bigger splash and I think I’m shouting at him but I can hardly hear myself because I’m half deafened with the noise of the gun and Billy says ‘tis only little lead pellets you’re firing not feckin’ explosives and I say well it sounds like an explosion to me and he says yeah it is of course but that’s in the gun and then he says here give it back to us and I’m glad to be rid of it and I watch as Billy reloads and takes two quick shots bang bang one after the other and the ball of polythene moves about a foot and is maybe a little bit more torn up than before but it still stays there floating on the surface of the scummy pond and then Billy says fuck this for a lark and let’s head back and so we go back the way we came Billy pretending to shoot Conroy’s sheep on the way saying kapow mutton stew kapow lamb cutlets but the sheep just lift their heads and look at us for a bit with their strange unmoving eyes and go back to grazing again and then we head back across the woods and over the field to the farm and half an hour later we’re sitting on the hay bale couch in Billy’s secret hay bale den sharing a pipe of Henri Winterman’s finest ganja as we look out onto 89

the fields and the gentle drizzle that has started to fall and after a bit Billy says I’ve been askin’ a few questions and gettin’ a few answers and I say whatcha mean and he says about yer man Kavanagh and then he squints his eyes as he takes another long pull on the pipe before handing it over to me and as he slowly exhales he says in a tight fuggy voice it seems that yer man Kavanagh is a Ra man and I say a what and he says a Ra man a member of the IRA and I say are ye sure about that and why would the likes of him be involved with the IRA and Billy nods and says I’m sure and sure why wouldn’t he be and I say well he doesn’t look much like a terrorist to me and Billy says what do terrorists look like den and I say I dunno maybe a bit skuzzy and we both laugh and then after a bit I say I know who the skuzzy guy is and Billy says yer Maguire and Patterson fella as ye call him yerself and I say yeah him and I found out his name is Shay Ryan and he’s staying up in that old farmhouse round the corner from O’Toole’s and Billy says how’d’ye find that out and I explain to him about Dempsey’s pub and about yer man getting kicked out of the FCA for dealing 90

hash to the wrong people and Billy says you’re sure it’s the same fella and I say I’m certain and then I say I was thinking maybe they have Mr Kavanagh with them and the three of them are hiding out in that old farmhouse and Billy says well that wouldn’t be very clever of them ‘cos if they had any sense they’d have him hidden halfway cross de country in de middle of a bog somewhere instead of holding him so close to home and then I say well I know yer man Ryan works night shift in the meat factory and maybe the other two fellas work there too and Billy says ye mean that they’re taking it in shifts to babysit Mr Kavanagh and going off to work in the meat factory at the same time and I say well they could do it that way couldn’t they and he says of course they could but it wouldn’t be very smart especially if they’re workin’ three different shifts because that’d mean that when the shifts change there’d only be one fella left guardin’ Kavanagh because one’d be starting work at the same time as d’other’d be finishin’ and then they’re gonna have ta sleep as well and I hand the pipe back to Billy and say I think it’s gone out and then I say I’m only half guessing all this ye know and Billy says 91

well it might be close enough to the truth all de same and if I tell certain people what you’ve just told me then there’d be more than just a little tin of this stuff in it for us to smoke and then I say well I don’t even know for certain that the other two fella’s work at the meat factory and Billy says but ye’d recognize them if ye saw them and I say well I’m not sure but I think I might and Billy says well ye could always go and hang around up near O’Toole’s and see if you see them passin’ on they’re way into work and I say I wouldn’t fancy that too much and that place gives me the creeps and anyway if they saw me they might get suspicious and besides it’s not like I have all day to be hanging around the place and sure don’t I have school to go to anyway and Billy nods and says true enough and I can see he’s thinkin’ hard as he prepares another pipe and then he says well then ye’ll just have to go to the meat factory and have a look around and see if ye see them fellas and I say are ye mad or what and d’ye think I can just walk in the gates of the meat factory and swan around the place without anyone stopping me and Billy says well there might be a way and I say what’s that and Billy 92

says do yer teachers ever take yis on school tours?

Chapter 12 Mrs Heaney is our French teacher meaning that she teaches us French and not that she’s a teacher who comes from France ‘cos she doesn’t and I’m not sure she’s ever even been to France at all and as well as being our French teacher she’s also our teacher for

93

something called civics even though we only ever had two classes of it at the beginning of the year and I think the idea was that it was supposed to tell us how to live in society and be nice to people and help old biddies cross the road and that sorta stuff and Mrs Heaney started talking about freedom and how some French fella once said that we should have the freedom to wave knives around the place but not to go sticking them in each other people’s backs and anyway I think none of us really had much of a clue what this civics class was supposed to be about especially Mrs Heaney herself so instead now we just do our homework while she sits up at the top of the classroom

correcting

our

homework

and

the

homework from her other classes and that suits everyone fine and anyway Mrs Heaney doesn’t really care what we do during the class so long as we’re quiet about it and some of the lads just spend their time engraving their initials onto the desks with the sharp end of a compass or drawing the names of their favourite bands on the back of their copies which for the most part is either AC/DC or U2 who we should all be proud of because they’re a homegrown 94

specialty except that their music is shite but you’re not allowed to say that because that would be unpatriotic and would also be taken as irrefutable evidence of your homosexuality ‘cos let’s face it if you don’t like U2 you must be gay because well what else could it mean and if you’re stupid enough to say at school that you don’t like the band you’ll get shoved and pushed around in the corridors and stabbed in the arse with the point of a geometry compass which hurts like fuck I can tell you and is nearly but not quite as bad as being stabbed with a really sharp pencil and having the lead break off and form a little lump under yer skin which then gets infected with yellow pus dripping out of the sore which you can’t even see unless you use a mirror and you can’t say anything about how much it hurts ye to sit down because it’s on your arse and you lay on your belly and cry at night because you’re afraid that you’re going to die of lead poisoning whatever that is except that then you find out that pencils aren’t really made with lead at all but with something else called graphite but ye still call it lead because if ye didn’t then you’d automatically be a homo for 95

using big words that no one understands and if you want to avoid having to take it up the arse for the rest of your life because of your vocabulary then it’s better to stick to simple words with only one syllable because only benders use long words and if you say that marmalade is a big word with three syllables you’ll be told to fuck off ye homo ‘cos marm lade like lem nade only has two what d’ye call ‘ems and sometimes it all makes ye want to give up and start using fuck and cunt as every second word but only at school ‘cos the one time ye said cunt at home before ye knew what it meant yer father slapped ye round the head so hard that ye had the mark of his fingers across your face for half a week and it must be great to be like the other fellas who never read books and are satisfied with just talking about football and their cousin who’s in the IRA but got caught and is up in Dublin in the ‘Joy which makes him an even bigger hero and then ye wouldn’t have to be called spacer all the time and ye wouldn’t have to be called a lick and worry about studying for your exams ‘cos you’d just fail everything and spend all your lunchtimes flying paper airplanes around the detention room 96

while some skinny little woman from the Gaeltacht with long hair and glasses stands at the top of the room screaming at you in Irish and ye could say that ye don’t give a fuck ‘cos wha’s de fucken’ hooer goin’ te fucken’ do ‘bout it anyways an’ if she’d only fucken’ speak a fucken’ langidge we c’d fucken’ unurstant ye might fucken’ lissen t’har but prob’ly fucken’ not and if you did all this then finally you might be accepted as one of the lads and ye could listen to U2 and AC/DC all day long instead of having to write war and boy on the tapes you play on your walkman which in case ye didn’t know are the one syllable names of U2 albums who obviously know and understand their fans to hide the fact that really you’re listening to Gil Scott Heron telling about how the Americans sent Neil Armstrong up to the moon to take a giant step for whitekind while all the poor blacks were still living in ghettos and bottles and his sister is getting bitten by rats and not to worry about all that stuff anyway because John Coltrane is gonna come in riding on his saxophone to wash your troubles away and ye wouldn’t have to say that your favourite song is gloria or sunday fuckin’ bloody 97

sunday when really your favourite records are some of the ones in yer da’s LP collection like love supreme and giant steps and kinda blue that are like food for your head that ye can listen to with your eyes closed and see a different world and even if Coltrane and Miles Davis were strung out on heroin half the time they made brilliant music and ye‘d have to wonder how come if there are so many feckin’ junkies in Ireland and Dublin is so famous for being the smack capital of Europe that not one of them is making music that’s even a tenth as good as these fellas and maybe it’s something to do with them being black and there being no black people in Ireland except for yer man Phil Lynnot out of Thin Lizzy who ye don’t really like either and isn't really all that black anyway compared to them other fellas but more kinda light brown like some of them Spanish students that ye might see round the place in the summer and some of them Spanish girls are gorgeous especially when they’re in a group but ye’d never get a look in with them anyways ‘cos they’ll only hang around with the other Spanish students which kinda defeats the whole purpose of them coming here in the first place 98

because they’ll go back to Spain without ever havin’ learned anything useful in English except maybe a few swear words and ye can be sure that their parents aren’t going to be too happy with them if all the English they hear out of them is effin’ and blindin’ and anyway I’m thinking about all this stuff instead of doing my homework because I’m trying to work up the nerve to say something and when I put my hand up Mrs Heaney doesn’t see me so I call out Miss which is what you call your teacher when she’s a woman even if she’s married which I think Mrs Heaney is and you have to call all the male teachers Sir even though they’ve never even met the queen of England never mind actually being knighted by her and I don’t think that there’d be many Irish knights anyways because that’d be like being a traitor and anyway for the Brits all Irish are terrorists except for Terry Wogan who they really seem to like for some reason which is strange because no one in Ireland does and he’s never on the telly here because we have Gay Byrne on the Late Late Show who is way better or so I’m told ‘cos I wouldn’t know seeing as how my parents send me to bed as soon as the Late 99

Late starts and the only time I ever get to see it is once a year for the toy show and when I see yer man he seems like an awful miserable shite who looks like he hates what he’s doing and maybe he isn’t really any better than Terry Wogan after all and it’s just that he stayed in Ireland instead of going over the pond which is what they call the Irish sea even though it looks nothing like a pond and anyway Mrs Heaney looks up from correcting the homework and she says yes Liam what is it and I say Miss d’ye think we could go on a tour and when I say this I see all the heads around me popping up from their copies surprised and interested now because they probably just expected me to ask if I could go to the toilet and Mrs Heaney says what sort of a tour and I can see she’s a bit wary but also happy to be having something else to be thinking about other than Monsieur and Madame Dupont and I say well I was thinking of something close by ye know so we wouldn’t have to put our parents to the expense of hiring a bus and then Mary McLoughlin says but if we had a bus we could go to Butlins like we did last year ‘cos that was brilliant so it was and there’s a murmur 100

of agreement which doesn’t include me because Butlins was shite and it pissed rain all day and the only good bit was the upstairs swimming pool that had these windows in it so you could see the people swimming inside and you could dive down and make faces at the people going by except you couldn’t see them and anyway if you tried to open your eyes underwater the chlorine would burn the eyeballs out of ye and Mary McLoughlin seems to have forgotten about her getting sick on the bus on the way back because she had had too much ice-cream and lemonade even though the teachers had warned us not to mix the two and Mrs Heaney says well what is there that’s close by to visit and I say well I was thinking maybe we could visit the meat factory and then Deirdre Nolan who is the class vegetarian even though she eats fish on Fridays says are ye mad or what and who’d want to visit a meat factory and I say well it could be interesting to see how they do things and she says ye mean like murdering the poor cows and cutting them up into little pieces so that people can eat their corpses and when she says it like that some of the lads start smirking and a few of the girls 101

say yuck and eugh and I have to admit it doesn’t really sound like the kinda school tour anyone’d want to go on and Mrs Heaney says well I’m not sure they’d even allow a tour of the place anyway and let’s face it it’s not exactly very nice what goes on in a meat factory Liam and I know I’m fighting a loosing battle but on account of Mr Kavanagh I have to try anyway so I say well nearly every one of us here eats meat and I think it’s important that we know how it’s made and Deirdre Nolan butts in again and says we all know how it’s made ye eejit ye have a mammy cow and a daddy cow and Sean Fogarty says they call them bulls ye eejit and she says well ye know what I mean anyway and Mrs Heaney says would yis all calm down now for a minute and then she says I think maybe it would be a good idea to have a tour of a factory to see how things are made but maybe not the meat factory and will ye put your hands up if you’d like to see if we can organize a tour of the glass bottle factory and everybody sticks their hands up so in the end I have to raise mine as well.

102

Chapter 13 In the end I decide to phone up the meat factory to find out what times the workers start their shifts and the woman on the phone explains to me that there are three different shifts with the morning crew which is the word she uses making them sound more like sailors than meatpackers coming on at seven and working until three when the afternoon lads come and they stay until eleven when the night shift begins and that the factory had ta kape runnin’

103

twintyfar hours a day a‘cos ye have to be careful with de mate an’ ye can’t be affardin’ ta have it lyin’ round half de day an’ goin’ aff and so with this information I set off on my bike which as you might remember is a yellow Raleigh Chopper which in case ye don’t know has a small wheel in the front and a big one on the back and both with nice big wide tyres and a three speed Strumey Archer gear lever on the low double crossbar and even though it’s getting kinda old and my parents offered to get me a racer for Christmas I still prefer the Chopper for a number of reasons the main ones being that the saddle is nice and comfy what with it being wide and long and having the big shiny chrome suspension springs that make it ideal for bumpy Irish roads and I also like the fact that the handlebars are high enough that ye can actually sit upright on the thing and have a decent look at the scenery around ye which ye can’t do with them racing bikes ‘cos you have to bend over so far to reach them stupid hooky handlebars that all ye can see is your front wheel and the little bit of road around it and when ye see them fella’s like Kelly and Roche on the telly doing the Tour de France you can 104

see that they’re cycling through some beautiful landscapes with all sorts of mountains and hills and fields filled with big yellow sunflowers that look like something out of the paintings on the calendar me da got from one of the companies he works with painted by that crazy Dutch fella that cut his ear off and gave it to a prostitute which is pushing it a bit even for a crazy artist and never mind the sunflowers ‘cos all that Kelly and Roche can see is their knees pedalling up and down and the surface of the road and maybe the back wheel of the fella just in front of them and to be fair to both of them that’s not too often ‘cos they’re up there near the front most of the time but they’re too busy trying to stay there to even get a chance to think about looking up at the beautiful scenery all around them which I think is a bit of a pity and on my Chopper I can look around at the fields and the hedges and the old stone walls and while the scenery might not be as breathtaking as the Pyrenees or the French Riviera it’s not bad and it’s not raining although it looks like it might in a bit though and ye can never be sure of the weather in Ireland because it might be pissing down one minute 105

and then when you least expect it the clouds’ll part and the sky’ll be lovely and blue with maybe a rainbow arching its way over the fields and ye’d be half blinded with the sunlight reflected off the wet surface of the road and as me ma says if there’s one thing you can depend on it’s that the weather will be undependable and if there’s another thing you can depend on it’s the fuckin’ potholes on the road and I’ve been too busy admiring the countryside to be paying attention to where I’m going and I slam into one of the feckers and it sends me skidding sideways so I half fall off my bike catching my bollocks on the fucking cunting Strumey Archer gear lever and what ever possessed them to put the fucking thing there in the first place where it would cause such fundamental injury and as I fall I scrape the skin off my hands into the bargain and when I try to wash the blood off in the dirty water of the pothole it stings like hell and I’ve scraped my knee as well and I’m crouched over because I’ve fair castrated myself but I see that it’s getting close to three so I can’t be affording to be standing around in the road feeling sorry

for

meself

so

I

get 106

back

on

my

bike

freewheeling most of the last half mile downhill to the meat factory trying to hold the handlebars with one hand while I cup my broken balls with the other which is not an easy thing to do and the bike is wobbling all over the place threatening to tip me off again and eventually I stop a little bit away from the factory entrance but close enough that I can see any cars coming in and out and I pretend to be pumping up the front wheel of my bike as if I’ve just had a puncture or something while my eyes are still watering from the pain in my bollocks and soon enough I see a few cars drive in towards the carpark of the factory and they’re mostly Japanese cars like Datsuns and Toyotas and I don’t recognize any of the drivers and I’m trying to remember the faces of the other two fellas from Spiders and then two fellas with caps on their heads come cycling out of the gateway on their old black bikes and as they pass me one of them asks me if I need a hand but I just shake my head and say she’s grand all she needs is a bit of air because they look like the sort of men that refer to cars and bicycles as if they were female and yer man says I c’d do wi’ha bit of feckhin’ eyur meself so I c’d 107

wha’ wid werkin’ ind’ stenk a dat place deyur and the second fella says as he’s lighting up a cigarette from a flat pack of Major’s fuck d’eir les gopher a pint and see if da cunt Dempsey’s cleaned’s lines dis week so the first one says rye char den g’luck t’ye and then they set off on their way to Dempsey’s for a hard earned pint and they’ve distracted me because just at that moment I see the familiar looking Ford Escort as it turns and follows the direction of the two cyclists and I curse myself but I’m surprised to see the Escort when yer man Ryan aka skuzzbeard aka the Maguire and Patterson matchstick man must be back at the old farmhouse either sleeping or guarding Mr Kavanagh and it’s like one of those logic questions they give us at school and ye have three men moving between point A and point B and if two of the men have to be at point A at the same time how many cars do they need and at first I think well there must be three cars and anyway I never knew for certain that the Escort belonged to skuzzbeard except that he was using it as a shagmobile that night in the carpark in Spiders but when I think a bit more about it I figure that they could still do it with 108

only two cars but then I realize I’m missing the point altogether and it doesn’t really matter if they have two cars or twenty cars and the important thing is to try and find out who’s the driver of the Escort and seeing as O’Toole’s and the old farmhouse is in the opposite direction then maybe there’s a chance that the driver’ll be off for an after work pint as well and so I wait around for a few more minutes until there seem to be no more cars coming in or going out of the meat factory and then I head off towards Dempsey’s myself though I’m a bit wary about going inside because of the lies I told Mr Dempsey the last time and when I get there I see two black bicycles propped up against the wall outside and then I see the furry dice mobile parked a little bit further up the street across the road from the chippers which is a happy coincidence if ever there was one and when Gino says to me you wanna salan vinga I say ye know Gino what I’d really love is some mustard and he looks at me and says motsa and I say yeah and he says no catch up which makes me smile and think to myself no not yet but I’m getting there and then I say no no ketchup and Gino says well we no gotta de 109

motsa so I say well just add some extra vinegar then which he does and after I’ve paid I take my chips over to the narrow counter near the window and they taste fantastic even though they’re so hot that they nearly burn the feckin’ fingers and the mouth off of me and I stand there eating slowly while keeping one eye on the door of Dempsey’s pub and the other on the car across the road which is just a figure of speech because it would be a difficult and painful thing to separate your eyes like that and Gino has Radio 2 on and I have to listen to bloody Madonna singing about how she took a holiday and then Cyndi Lauper going on about how she just wants to have fun and I think Cyndi’s the better singer even though she looks a bit strange and even though Madonna can’t sing as well as Cyndi she’s easily able to disguise the fact because she has bucket loads of charisma and sex appeal and anyway in the long run when Madonna gets old and looses her looks she’ll be forgotten and Cyndi will probably still be singing and even more famous and then I’m half way through listening to Boy George asking if we really want to hurt him and do we really want to make him 110

cry and I’m thinking there’s a fella who probably had to put up with a lot of the same kind of homophobic shite I have to go through at school when the door of Dempsey’s swings open and a big thick lookin’ fella with a red face comes stomping up the street and gets into the furry dice shagmobile and despite the condensation dribbling down the window of the chippers I get a good look at him and know for sure that he’s one of the three I saw running off across the carpark

the

Kavanagh

night

from

that

the

Orla

glass

kidnapped.

111

Flynn’s

bottle

uncle

factory

Mr was

Chapter 14 I’m still finishing my chips and thinking of calling in to tell Billy O’Dwyer about seeing the red faced fella in the furry dice car when it dawns on me that I still don’t know for sure that he stays with skuzzbeard Ryan at the old farmhouse and it looks like the only way to find out is to go up there and have a look and I should strike while the iron is hot as the ould biddie at mass said to me and that gets me thinking about Orla again and my chips are finished but there’s a different sort of hunger in me now and I’m staring into space but still looking out at the street while I picture all the things I’d like to do with her and well maybe

not

all

the

things

because

even

in

imagination you have to savour the images and take things one step at a time because if you imagine 112

everything in one go then you have nothing else left to picture and you’re just left with an empty bag which is what I’m holding in my hands and the vinegar that’s seeped through the paper is stinging the cuts from when I fell off the bike earlier and as I crumple it up and throw it in the bin I see a figure in the distance coming down the street and even though he doesn’t appear to be moving he seems to be getting closer and soon enough I recognize a fella I haven’t seen in a good while and I remember the long shaggy beard and the long grey hair sticking out from the woolly hat of the man who goes by the name of Quinn the Coat and why they call him that I have no idea at all because although he wears a coat so does everyone else especially now that it’s winter and even in summer you need to keep your coat handy ‘cos you never know when the weather might turn and anyway Quinn the Coat is the stuff of local folklore and legends and I’ve never heard anyone say a bad word against him though there are plenty of stories about him and he has many names and some call him the Walker Quinn on account of how he’s always walking and others’ll call him Johnny Walker 113

for the same reason and nothing to do with the whisky without an E ‘cos it’s scotch and apparently Quinn never drinks anything stronger than well water anyway and some people call him Fortycoats after a character on a children’s television programme on RTE which is a story about a wicked godmother and her fat eunuch godson who wears a stupid waistcoat and the pair of them live in this old horse drawn caravan like the kind that ye’d see on a John Hinde postcard and that the Dutch and French and German hippy tourists with their beards and their long hair and their little roundy glasses love to rent out during the summer to go wandering around the back roads of Connemara in the rain sitting there with pipes in their mouths smoking loads of ganja that they smuggled into the country in their little Citroen 2CVs with their nuclear power no thanks stickers written in different European languages on them and at least the one good thing about Ireland is that there’s no nuclear power though they say that that bastard Regan would love to use Ireland as a missile base so he could point more bombs at the Russians and there are some that say that when yer man Regan was 114

shot a couple of years back that he actually died and was replaced with an actor and since he was only an actor in the first place no one ever spotted the difference and anyway these German tourists when they’re not riding around in their Wanderly Wagons they’ll be down the pub and all the better if it’s a pub with a thatched roof and a turf fire and they’ll be playing the fiddle or the flute which they all do very well because being Germans they think if something is worth doing then it’s worth doing properly which is an admirable quality depending on what it is exactly that you’re doing but the less said about that the better and ye have to hand it to them ‘cos they’ll know all the words of the traditional songs better than any Irish person and they’ll only drink pints of Guinness even the women which is not something you’ll see Irish women doing so much ‘cos they’ll drink half pint glasses but god help you if as a fella you get it into your head to ask for a half pint because that will automatically turn you into a homosexual on the spot and then when the music is over and the pubs close they’ll get back into their wanderly wagons just like the evil godmother and the 115

eunuch and the pair of them seem to live together in this contraption though where they’d have the space for separate beds I don’t know and they have to share the space with a dog and a smart arse crow except the dog and the crow aren’t real because they’re only puppets and the dog who’s named Judge is the only decent one of them and even though he’s not real the evil godmother and the eunuch in the waistcoat are real enough and between the pair of them are probably responsible for three quarters of the nightmares had by Irish children and young teenagers and probably also for any mammies who watch it with their kids and personally I think it was really irresponsible of the RTE to be frightening the life out of poor innocent children by broadcasting this sorta malevolent carry on and even just hearing the theme music from this programme sends shivers up my spine and anyway its gone off the telly a little while back which wasn’t soon enough to suit me I can tell ye and anyway this character Fortycoats is one of the good guys and he’s a sorta tramp that flies around the place in a sweet shop and to be honest with you I think half them fellas up in the RTE 116

must be on drugs to be thinking up stories like that and so as I was saying people sometimes call Quinn the Coat Fortycoats and you’re liable to see him wandering the roads all over the place and there’s some say that they’ve seen him down in Cork and Kerry and there are those who say that he’s well known on the back roads of Connemara and others who’ll swear that they saw him walking down O’Connell street which is the biggest street in Dublin so probably the biggest in the country and is supposed to be even wider than the Champs Elysees in Paris though I don’t know if that’s true or not and I can’t remember the first time I saw Quinn the Coat and I can’t remember the last time either but I can tell you that I’ve seen him off and on for my whole life and there are some of the old people will say that he was wandering the roads long before they were born and there’s as many stories about him as the day is long which is probably the wrong expression to use this time of year because the days are very short and the light in the sky is already waning and some say he was a millionaire up in Dublin who went mad when his wife died and has been walking ever since 117

and there are others that claim he is the last of those who took to the roads when they were thrown off the land by the English during the great hunger and there’s even rumours that he’s really St. Patrick who loved the Irish so much that he never left and there are also those who’ll say that he’s Jesus though I can’t see how that could be so and it’s widely agreed that he possesses the gift of bilocation and has been spotted in different places at the same time and it’s said that he can see into the future and my da calls him the mighty Quinn and says there’s a song about him that was written by a great poet and when I ask him if it’s a song or a poem he says it’s probably both and there are some songs that are poems and there are other songs that are just songs and I know what he means though I’ve never heard the song about the mighty Quinn except for the couple of lines my da will sing now and then when the feeling takes him and I’m wondering where Quinn the Coat is off to now and where he’ll sleep tonight and as he passes along the street something about him makes me want to bring him home and give him a decent meal and a warm bed but I know that my ma would go 118

haywire if I did though my da probably wouldn’t mind so much and looking at the bit of change I have left in my pocket I see that I have just enough for a large bag of chips so I get Gino to wrap them for me and then I hurry down the street after Quinn the Coat and even though he’s walking very slowly and I’m running quite fast I can’t quite catch up with him and if I had known I would have taken my bike which is still back at the chipper and soon when there are just the hedges on either side of the road I call out Mr Quinn and he stops and turns towards me except that I don’t actually see him turn it’s just that he has his back to me one moment and the next moment he’s facing towards me without having seemed to move at all and I’m still out of breath from running and as I walk up to him I’m a bit nervous because I’ve never spoken to him before ‘cos speaking to old tramps is not the sort of thing you’re supposed to do but I do anyway and I say I saw ye passing by Mr Quinn and he says catch your breath first son then tell me what it is so I do and I can see he’s looking at me in a peculiar way but not in a nasty way if ye know what I mean and I kinda expected him to be 119

sorta smelly being an old tramp and all but instead if anything he smells of the sweetness of honeysuckle and the warmness of bird’s nests and the bitterness of seaweed and he smells of sawdust and straw and warm milk and the smell of fresh rain on a warm dusty road on a summer’s day but the most astounding thing are his eyes which are pale blue one moment and dark green the next and it’s like looking at the ocean reflecting the colours of the sky and there’s a kindness and gentleness about his eyes that makes me almost want to cry and there’s a wisdom and a calmness about them too and he looks as if he knows all the secrets of what makes the earth turn round the sun and what makes the grass grow and what makes the birds sing and as he stands there looking at me he seems amused and it’s like he can see right into my soul and knows all my sins and forgives me so I sorta lower my eyes half in shyness and half out of reverence and I hold out the warm paper

package

of

chips

as

if

I

was

offering

frankincense to the baby Jesus and I mutter I thought you might be hungry and he says well god bless you son and he casts his eyes up towards the darkening 120

sky and whispers something in a language I can’t understand and it might be Irish ‘cos I have to admit it’s not my strongest subject at school and it might be Latin and for all I know it could be Swahili or something else entirely and then he places his hand on my shoulder and when he does I feel like electricity flowing through me except that it’s not like that at all because electricity gives you an awful jolt and frightens the life out of you and sets your heart pounding ninety to the dozen and this is almost the exact opposite because it’s a calm soothing flow that seems to come from the palm of his hand and starts as a sort of quiet sadness and then I’m filled with a peaceful sense of wonder and awe like you might feel when you’re sitting watching a beautiful sunset or huge waves crashing up on the rocks and then he takes his hand away and nods and says I’ll be seeing you and then after he’s taken a couple of steps he turns his head back and says the darkness is drawing in now so be careful how ye go and even though I’m feeling all quiet and blissful as I head back towards the chipper and my chopper I hear Quinn the Coat’s parting warning as being about something more than 121

just the fading light and when I look back over my shoulder the mighty Quinn is gone.

122

Chapter 15 I arrive at school in the pouring rain and hang my wet rain gear dripping from a hook on the wall beside the other coats and there’s a smell of wet wool from the hats and scarves that mammies and grannies have knitted sitting by the fireside of a winter’s evening and there’s something special about a scarf that’s been knitted specially for you instead of something that’s been bought in the shops and me ma is a great one for the knitting so she is and when I was younger she used to have an endless supply of wool from one of her brothers who worked in a carpet factory and she used to knit me Aran jumpers from the undyed stuff and I’d watch her like hypnotized as her knitting needles clicked and twisted making the cable stitch and the moss stitch and the diamond stitch and the zig zag stitch and she explained to me that on the Aran islands 123

every family has their own different combination of stitches and when the fellas’d be going out to sea in their currachs they’d all be wearing the different ganseys

that

their

mammies

had

knit

and

sometimes there’d be a fierce storm and the fellas would drown and later when the bodies would wash up all bloated and battered and their faces half eaten by the fish they could still be identified by the patterns of their ganseys and each family would be able to claim their own and give them a decent Christian burial so Aran sweaters as the Yanks like to call them have their uses but when they’re made out of carpet wool it’s a different story because they don’t make carpets out of the soft smooth stuff and they only use the roughest toughest hard-wearing wool that’s almost indestructible and it had the skin rubbed raw on me especially around my neck and my wrists and even just the memory of it now sets me itching and scratching and even though I was thankful for the warmth of the jumpers I was glad when the carpet factory went bankrupt because it meant the end of rough itchy wool for me and my ma had to buy the softer stuff from the shops that 124

came already rolled in balls instead of the messy skeins of it that she’d get from my uncle which would take an age to untangle which is an activity to teach you patience if ever there was one and I was glad to see the back of that wool so I was I can tell ye even though it was a pity for my uncle who lost his job and took to the drink instead and I suppose every man should have an occupation and drinking is fine as an occasional pastime but as a full time activity to replace your lost job there’s no quicker way to loose the health of your body and your mind and your back account and there’s probably not a family in Ireland doesn’t know the high costs exacted by the demon drink and while I’m standing there thinking about ganseys and knitting and fellas drowning and alcoholics along comes Orla and I feel a sudden jolt of excitement and nervousness and lustful desire all confused together though I have to admit that the object of my passion is not looking the best these days and she still looks like she hasn’t slept well except more so and I’ve noticed by the way that she keeps hitching up her skirt that she’s lost some weight and her once impressive bosom is 125

now noticeably diminished or maybe it’s just the way she walks sorta hunched forward now as if she’s looking for an earring she lost or something and her shoulders are drawn inwards and upwards and when I say how a yeh Orla she looks at me and says fuckin’ shite what about you and I say I’m okay and d’ye wanna go for chips after school which is probably not the most romantic proposition a fella could make but I can’t think of anything better off the top of my head because there’s not a lot to do around here except maybe play pool in Dempsey’s and I’d rather steer clear of that place for the moment since I think I made Mr Dempsey a bit suspicious with all my questions about yer man Shay Ryan that works nights killing cattle in the meat factory and she says to me nah I don’t want chips which makes me kinda glad seeing as I just had some the other day and though Gino makes great chips too many of them give me spots and I don’t want to be eating them every day although I know there’s plenty of fellas who would live on chips alone and then Orla says to me I want you to come home with me and my heart starts beating faster and then 126

she says me mammy’s up in Dublin visiting her sister and my Da is working so we’ll have the place to ourselves except that I’ll have to keep an eye on me little sisters so I nod and smile feeling all full of bounce and I say rye char I’ll meet you out at the gates after school.

127

Chapter 16 D’ye take sugar Orla asks and I shake my head saying no thanks I hate the stuff and she says how could ye hate sugar and I say I don’t know I just do and she says d’ye not like any sweet things and I say well I like apples and she leans her head to one side and says apples so I just say yeah and rack my brain for any other sweet things I like and then I say I like homemade raspberry jam and the tea brack that me 128

ma makes and Christmas pudding and the brandy butter and raisins yeah I like raisins too they’re sweet aren’t they and she laughs a short sort of laugh and says you’re a strange one Liam O’Brien and I say why’s that and she says well I dunno ye just are and she brings the teapot over to the kitchen table where I’m sitting and she says d’ye prefer a mug or a cup and I say a mug’ll do grand and she says yeah I prefer a mug too but me ma always says that mugs are for thugs and she’ll only drink out of a cup so I say ah cups are grand too but ye can’t beat a mug of tae and she says indeed and ye can’t and it’s kinda strange but also nice to be sitting here in Flynn’s kitchen right across the table from the girl I dream about at night and she says what are ye smiling at and I say I’m just glad to be here with you and she says I’m glad you’re here too and I can feel myself going red and so for something to do I reach over and take the milk and pour a splash in the bottom of my cup and I say d’ye want some and she says no I put it in after and then there’s an awkward silence so I say d’ye want me to pour ye some tea then and she says nah leave it to 129

draw for a bit and then I say if you were a pot of tea what sorta picture would you draw and she laughs and says my granny Kavanagh looks at the pictures in the tea leaves to see into the future and I say what does she see and Orla says I don’t know she never says and then she lowers her eyes and I’m starting to realize that she’s almost as nervous about having me here in her kitchen as I am and her talking about her granny makes me kinda sad because it makes me think about my own granny that I never met and sometimes I miss her even though I know that doesn’t make any sense ‘cos how can you miss someone that you never even met and Orla stands up and says I just want to check on me sisters and I’ll be back in a sec and as she opens the door of the sitting room I hear the television and Orla’s little sisters are watching Bosco and he’s squeaking in his stupid little voice saying uafásach which is the Irish word for awful and horrible and I’m wondering what’s uafásach this time because Bosco is a moany little shite who’s always complaining about uafásach this and uafásach that and if ye don’t know Bosco then you’re not missing much and 130

he’s a little white faced puppet with a roundy wooden head and bright red wool for hair and no one is really sure if it’s a boy or a girl ‘cos he’s what you might call androgynous which is a great word altogether and I’ve been dying to have the chance to use it in a proper sentence if you could call this a proper sentence which ye probably wouldn’t and I had to look it up because I came across it in one of me science fiction books about this planet that’s entirely populated by androgynes and at first I though that meant that they were some sort of robots or androids or something like that but as I started to get further into the book I began to realize that they were really people and when I looked it up and found out what it meant I kinda went aha and had to skim back to the beginning again because I had gotten some of the wrong kinds of pictures in my head and I had to reimagine the characters with human faces instead of them looking like C3PO from star wars who come to think of it is maybe a bit androgynous himself even if his body is more like a man’s and anyway this Bosco doesn’t really have a body and it’s just a piece of green and white stripey 131

cloth covering the hand of the puppeteer who’s really a girl or maybe a woman and in real life is the daughter of yer man the evil eunuch from Wanderly Wagon that I was talking about the other day and in real life he’s definitely not a eunuch because he has ten children and my auntie Nora swears that he came around to her house one day and fixed her fridge for her when it broke down and she says that the poor man has his fingers worked to the bone trying to provide for the ten children and being famous on the telly isn’t enough to feed all them hungry mouths and now as well as fixing the fridges he has his daughter working too making this little Bosco say that everything is uafásach and as the saying goes truth is sometimes stranger than fiction and then the sitting room door opens again and it’s moved on to another part of the programme and Orla says did ye not serve yerself some tea and I say no I was waiting for you and so I pour the tea for the both of us and I watch her as she adds her milk and then two spoons of sugar and she looks very thoughtful as she stirs the tea and there’s just the sound of the spoon clinking against the inside of the 132

cup and I say penny for your thoughts which I think is a very English thing to say and I’ve only ever seen people on the telly say it or read it in them stupid Enid Blyton books I used to read before I knew any better where everyone is going around the place saying smashing and splendid and drinking lashings of ginger beer until the fuckin’ stuff is running out of their ears and to be honest though I despise that sorta drivel now I really enjoyed it at the time and I guess as my ma says your tastes really do change as you get older and Orla starts to open her mouth to say something and then she blushes and her eyelids sorta flutter and then she stops stirring the tea which is a good thing because the clinking was starting to get on my nerves though she didn’t seem to notice it herself and then she stands up and rinses the spoon under the tap and then dries it with a tea towel and puts the spoon away in a drawer and she’s standing there looking flustered twisting the tea towel in her hands and she says d’ye think I’m good lookin’ and I’m a bit surprised at the question but I answer of course I do Orla you’re gorgeous and I feel the tops of my ears burning and my heart pounding but 133

inside I’m kinda proud of myself for having said it and then she says really and I say of course y’are and all the lads at school think you’re gorgeous too and she says you’re teasing me now and she looks like she wants to believe me but doesn’t quite and so then I stand up and I walk over close to her and she takes a step back and bumps into the fridge and her mouth is half open and her lips are lovely and then I say Orla there’s no girl in the whole school as good looking as you and how could you not know that and she sorta bites her lip in a nervous way and I don’t know why but that gets things stirring inside my trousers and then she says nobody ever told me that and I say well I’m telling you now and you’re the best looking girl in the whole county and I want to lean forward and kiss her and yet I’m terrified to because I’ve never kissed a girl before and it doesn’t matter anyway because then she bursts into tears and I wonder what I’ve said or done and I put my hand on her shoulder and say Orla what’s wrong and she’s trying to look away from me and then I take another step forward and she puts her arms around me and still sobbing she says those are the exact 134

words that my uncle said to me the night they took him and we were driving along in the Mercedes and he turned to me and said you’re the best looking girl in the whole county and then he said there wasn’t a better looking girl in Spiders tonight and that’s when we saw the car parked across the road and the three fellas standing there with their balaclavas and their guns and my uncle said sweet fuckin Jesus and get down and climb into the back and don’t make a sound but it was too late and I hardly had the time to undo my seatbelt and I wanted to run but they had the guns they had the guns and then she starts sobbing again and holds me tight and then starts thumping my shoulder and my chest with her fist and though it hurts I still hold her tight and let her cry and I don’t know what else to do or say so we just stand like that in the kitchen for a long time and after a while she calms down a bit but she’s still sniveling and shaking and then she says yer man drove me down a lane and into a field and he held the gun to my head all the time and I was terrified and screaming while he did it and and and but the words don’t come and she starts crying more 135

violently

again

until

she

finally

stammers

out

between the sobs I missed my period and I think I’m pregnant he raped me and I’m pregnant he raped me and I’m pregnant oh god.

136

Chapter 17 I’m a little bit scared as I squelch across the fields in my welly boots and through the flat patch of rushes that grow behind the back of the old workhouse that everyone calls O’Toole’s because of the name written in large black plastic neo-gothic letters across the entrance of the front of the building and it was supposed to be renovated and turned into a hotel and some people say that it was because Mr O’Toole whoever he was ran out of money before the most of the work could be done but most people say that the hotel project was abandoned because the place is haunted by the ghosts of the hundreds of people who died there during the famine and as I get closer I can feel the silent sadness of the place and it was built to provide shelter and food for the poor and the hungry that were driven off the land by the 137

English but mostly due to lack of money and goodwill from the colonial government in London the workhouse and dozens of others across the country just like it became death traps where only the most desperate would go and the workhouses were a purgatory of misery and starvation where families were torn apart because once you went to the workhouse your children would be taken from you and

the

places

were

damp

and

dirty

and

overcrowded and became breeding grounds for all kinds of diseases and countless thousands died of dysentery and without even being washed their clothes were given to the poor who had nothing to wear and the stink of the place alone must have been something horrendous and the fields all around are filled with the unmarked shallow graves of the people who died here and things got so bad that people chose rather to starve to death while wandering the roads and die with a certain dignity rather than suffer the demeaning conditions of the workhouses and it has to have been the worst period of Irish history ever and at the time it shocked people all over the world and when an Ottoman 138

sultan in Constantinople said he would give ten thousand pounds to feed and cloth the people queen Victoria

refused

maybe

because

she

was

embarrassed that she had only given two thousand pounds herself but the sultan secretly sent ships filled with food to feed the Irish and while more than a million people died at least a few must have survived thanks to the generosity of the sultan who as far as I know had never set foot in Ireland and had no good reason to help the Irish except out of the goodness and kindness of his compassionate heart and though all that seems like it happened a long long time ago it wasn’t really that long ago at all because my granny that’s my da’s mother and not the one I never knew says that her granny was alive at the time and lived through the famine which is lucky for me or I never would have been born and I wouldn’t be standing here in front of the empty gateway in the stone wall surrounding the grounds of the workhouse hesitating with the hairs on the back of my neck standing up and there are dark clouds lurking low over the treetops and even the crows are silent although I see their black silhouettes flitting 139

about and to be honest with you I’d just as soon turn around and run away from here as fast as my legs can carry me which is pretty fast even if I say so myself but I don’t and I walk through the gateway with the watery noise of my boots squelching in the mud and the sound of my breath coming from my mouth seeming very loud and as I step into the courtyard I look up at the empty windows and the huge walls built of cold dark grey stone and the air is heavy with the bitter smell of the dark ivy that half covers the walls of the place and although my initial plan was to climb up to the second floor where I would have a good view of the back of the farmhouse around the corner I find that instead of going straight to the building my feet want to follow the narrow little muddy path that winds between the dock leaves and the nettles and leads to the holy well by the end wall and I know this place because I came here once with Skin when we were little and dared each other to go into the building but we were too scared to so we pretended that we only really wanted to see the famous well and we drank some of the water which is supposed to have healing 140

powers and as I reach the end of the trail I see that there’s someone sitting on a big long block of stone beside the well and I recognize the woolly hat and the famous old raincoat and then the mighty Quinn turns to me not a bit surprised to see me and says well you certainly took your time getting here as if he’s been sitting there waiting for me to come along and I’m glad to see him and glad for the company because the workhouse is not the kind of place you want to be hanging around on yer own especially when you tend to suffer from an over active imagination and I say how a yeh Mr Quinn and he says ah sure I’m grand and how are you yourself and I just sorta nod and shrug my shoulders and then he says does this place frighten you and I think there’s no point in lying to him because he’ll know right away and anyway honesty is the best policy and all that so I say yeah I am a bit and he says ‘tis only natural and you’d be a strange sort of young man not to feel a bit afraid of what you don’t know or understand and I don’t really know what to say to that so I sorta shuffle nervously and look over my shoulder at the workhouse and the empty windows 141

like empty eyes in a skull and then he says will you sit down by me for a bit and don’t worry I won’t eat you and he looks at me with those big kind eyes of his and I feel reassured so I sit on the cold stone beside him and we’re facing the low walls of the little rectangular well and then after a bit he says they’re still here ye know and for a moment I think he’s talking about skuzzbeard and company in the farmhouse around the corner but then he says their bodies are gone and now they are just left with their sorrow which is so great and so heavy that it binds them to this place and I still don’t know what to say so I just nod and he says you know who I’m talking about don’t you and I say I think I do and then he says forget about thinking for a minute and listen to what your belly is telling you so I do and then I say lots of people died here didn’t they and he says of course they did and in terrible torment and suffering to be sure but you don’t need to be afraid of them because they can’t touch you and I say how d’ye mean and he says you might be able to feel their presence and their sorrow but they have no power over you and all they really need is our love and a bit 142

of respect because people’s fear is not going to help them move on and leave this place and what happened to them is part of something so big and complicated that we can’t ever understand or find a reason for it and then he falls silent for a while and picks up a long slender stick that was lying on the ground beside him and then he says do you see this stick and I say I do and he says would you say it’s straight or crooked and I say it’s fairly straight and he nods in agreement and then pushes half the stick into the clear water of the well and he says and now is the stick crooked or straight and I say well it looks crooked and he says but is it and I say of course not and he says how do you know and I say because I saw that it was straight before you put it in the water and he says yes you did but if you hadn’t seen the stick already would you be so sure that it was straight and I say I suppose I wouldn’t be sure and he says you’re right you can never be sure and it all depends

on

how

you

look

at

things

because

sometimes things will appear to be straight when really they’re crooked and sometimes it’s the other way around and I nod again because that makes 143

sense enough to me and then he says it’s important to bear in mind that things are not always what they seem and then he lifts the stick out of the water and it becomes straight again and I watch the reflection of the stone wall and the weeds and the clouds shimmer and gradually become still again and then Quinn holds the stick about a foot above the surface of the water and we both watch as a little droplet gathers on the tip of it and it falls into the water forming a dozen circles of concentric waves that spread out from the centre and then Quinn says you see

how

one

tiny

drop

can

have

so

many

repercussions and another droplet is wobbling on the end of the stick and falls to the water making more circles that collide with the ripples of the first drop and then he says you see how the repercussions of one action can join with the results of an other action and form a new pattern and then he taps the stick on the surface of the water half a dozen times and the reflections are shattered with myriad little waves overlapping and intersecting with each other and rebounding off the stones around the edges of the well and travelling back in opposite directions to 144

meet and join other waves and then Quinn says you see how so many actions can create so much confusion and you can try and look for the cause or the effect but each effect will have its own cause and each cause will have its own effect and the way they interact will create countless other causes and effects and what I’m really trying to explain to you here young man is that life is a very complicated series of actions and reactions and interactions and we’re all caught up in something so vast that we can never comprehend it through thinking about it and I’m not really sure what he’s talking about but I think I sorta understand and then he says look at the surface of the water now and tell me what you see and I say well it’s calm and flat and he says yes it is and this is the way of the world because everything is seeking that balance and everything is striving for realignment even when it’s in movement and he looks at me and says do you understand what I’m saying to you at all and I say I’m not sure and he says no you’re not and that’s a good thing because the moment you think you’re sure about something is usually the moment you understand things the 145

least so I nod again even less sure what he’s talking about now and we both sit quietly for a while and I sense that our interview has come to an end and sure enough Quinn gets to his feet but not grunting and groaning like most old people would after sitting on a cold rock for god knows how long but more like a

seamless transition

from

sitting

to standing

without seeming to have moved at all and then he says have a sup of that water there ‘tis just about the best water in Ireland comes from that little spring there and they say it was blessed by the St Patrick himself so I obediently scoop up a few mouthfuls ladling the water with my hand and the vibrant coldness of it tingles down to my stomach and then when I stand back up he looks me in the eyes and says you’re a good one son and I’ll be looking out for you and you have a lot to learn but even more to unlearn and I smile kinda shylike and then he puts his hand on my shoulder and again I feel the energy radiate out from the palm of his hand and fill my whole body and mind with a wonderful sort of peacefulness and it’s miles better than the stuff Billy O’Dwyer keeps in his Henry Winterman’s 146

tin and I want to ask him how he does it and what exactly it is that he’s doing and it’s as if he can read my thoughts because he says I’m not doing anything son and I’m only like the wire that brings the electricity to the light bulb and the light bulb has to be working to show the light and then I say can you teach me and he says maybe when the time is right but you’ll have to work on untying a few knots first and I think he sees the confusion on my face ‘cos he says don’t worry and everything will come right in its own time and then a flicker of concern flashes across his face and he lowers his hand and says quietly son you’ll have to face some very difficult trying times soon and I say what d’ye mean and he say I can’t tell you that but just try not to give in to anger or hatred and then he smiles at me and he starts to turn and then says there’s one last thing it might interest you to know and I say what’s that and he says there are four men staying in that farmhouse over there around the corner and I’d say there’s one of them would rather be elsewhere because the other three make him wear a bag over his head and they have him locked up in one of the stables. 147

148

Chapter 18 Sweet mother of divine god says my mother in a horrified voice as I stumble into the kitchen dripping blood all over the new lino on the floor and with my one good eye I see her jaw drop open slack and the look of terror and confusion on her face and then her maternal instincts kick in and she rushes over to me and wraps her arms around me and I say don’t mammy ye’ll get blood all over yerself and now she’s crying and she says your blood is my blood son and I say mammy you’re squeezing me too tight and I think he broke my ribs and so she eases her embrace and takes a step back gripping me by the shoulders instead and she takes a deep noisy breath and says look at the state of you and sweet Jesus Liam you’ve lost your front two teeth which she doesn’t really need to say because I’ve already figured that much 149

out for myself and my mouth is full of the salty taste of the blood flowing out of my gums and the tears are flowing down my mother’s cheeks as she starts rolling up her sleeves like she does when she’s making bread and doesn’t want to get flour on her clothes and her jaw is set square and I don’t think I’ve ever seen her look so fierce and she’s the real lioness ready to defend her cubs and she shouts who who is the monster that did this to ye and let me at him and I swear I’ll rip him apart with my own bare hands so help me god and then she says was it the lads at school did this to ye and I shake my head which is not a good idea because it’s throbbing in a manner most painful and I feel sick and I think maybe my forearms are broken too and I say it wasn’t anyone from school mammy it was Mr Byrne and just saying his name conjures up his face again and I can see him and his uncontrolled anger and the way he raised the hurley stick over his head swinging it down again and again while I screamed for him to stop and then I can’t hold the tears in any longer and I slowly sink down to the floor and hug my knees into my chest and bawl my eyes out and taking big 150

whooping gulps of air between the sobs while my whole body shudders in spasms and I feel the snot running out of my nose mixing with the blood and my mammy is there crouched down beside me rubbing her hand over the top of me head and trying to mop the blood off of my face and it reminds me of when I was little and I’d cry when I skinned me knees or fell off my bike or any of a hundred other little childhood incidents when my mammy was there to sooth and comfort me but this is the worst ever and probably as bad as the rest all put together and now that I’ve started crying I don’t know if I’ll ever stop and I can hear a dreadful sounding howling and then I realize that it’s me who’s making the noise and I can’t help myself and after a long while the howling eventually quietens down to a whimper and at last it comes to and end and I can breath again and then there’s me and me mammy sitting on the floor with our backs against the wall and the kitchen looks very different from this angle and maybe it’s something to do with how I can only see with one eye what with the other being swollen shut and the skin feels very tender around my eye and as my fingers gently explore I 151

can feel that the flesh is torn open and the blood is thick and sticky and starting to congeal into a scab and then my mother says you’re sure it was Mr Byrne did this to ye and I nod and whisper with a hurley stick and she says sweet suffering Jesus and then she sighs and says in a quiet voice well it goes to show how you never can tell and he always seemed like such a nice man and why would he do such a thing and so I look at her with my one good eye to make sure she’s listening carefully and I say he tried to rape me mammy but I wouldn’t let him and even though it’s not strictly true it’s not far from the truth either but maybe I’m being deliberately vague about the exact chronology of events and of course I don’t say a word about Orla’s auntie Una’s silky black knickers or the fantasies I’ve being entertaining about those same knickers ever since and ye can’t always tell everything to yer mammy and she says merciful divine hour and I wonder where she gets all these phrases because she seems to have an inexhaustible supply of them and then she says well I’m calling the guards and I’ll call Doctor Dunne while I’m at it and wait ‘til yer father gets home and finds 152

out about this because he’ll be fit to be tied so he will and when she comes back from the phone she’s blowing her nose and wiping her eyes and that’s enough to start me off again and she says to me well would ye believe that when I called the guards and told them about Mr Byrne and what he did to ye they said he had already turned himself in and he thinks that he’s gone and killed you so he does and the guards have already arrested him for murdering you and as I take in this information I try to piece together the sequence of events and I remember him beating me and then there’s a sort of blank and I don’t know how long I lay there and then I remember shivering with the cold and crawling out of the ditch in the dark and when I got back up onto the road Mr Byrne was gone and his car was gone and then I sorta remember staggering home along the road which was like a dark tunnel of tall trees and there was only the sound of the branches creaking and tapping in the wind and I think I must’ve fallen over a couple of times because I remember lying there looking up at the long rectangle of stars between the black branched trees and after a bit the doorbell 153

rings and Dr Dunne comes into the kitchen with me mammy and when he sees me he goes all pale and says Jesus Mary and Joseph real quiet under his breath but in a nice voice because he speaks sorta posh like them fellas that read the news on the RTE and then he turns to my mother and he says this wasn’t a traffic accident was it and she says no it was done to him and he says do you have a camera Mrs O’ Brien and she frowns and says a camera and he says yes with a flash because it would be better to take a few shots of him now before I get him cleaned up and she says what for and he says evidence for the court and she says what court and he says well there’ll most certainly be a trial well that is assuming the gardai apprehend the attacker and she says a trial and I see he has a look on his face like he’s saying to himself is there a fuckin’ echo in this room or what and then he takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly and says I realize that this is difficult for you Mrs O’Brien but it is vital to build a good case against the perpetrator in order to ensure that the maximum amount of damages are awarded by the court and I can see that me ma is about to say 154

damages so I butt in and say I think the camera is in the cupboard in the sitting room beside the telly and she says I’ll go and get it then and while she’s out of the room Dr Dunne is checking the cuts and bruises on me face and he asks in a low voice who did this to you son and I say it was Mr Byrne and he looks at me shocked and says good heavens surely you don’t mean and I nod and quietly say he tried to rape me and the doctor says oh dear that means I’ll have to examine you more thoroughly you understand and I say I only said he tried to rape me I didn’t say that he actually did and as you can see I put up a bit of a fight and the Doctor nods biting his lower lip and then says well you put up one hell of a fight by the looks of it and you are a very brave young man Mr O’Brien and I nod and feel the tears welling up in my eyes because I don’t feel brave at all and if the truth be told I didn’t put up much of a fight at all because what kind of fight can you put up against a madman from Mayo who’s laying into ye with a hurley stick and being a GAA man knows how to use it and all I could do was keep my arms up to protect my head and try to fend off the blows which only left him free 155

to bash me in the ribs and when I put my hands down to protect my ribs he went for my head and face and now the tears are running down my face again and the doctor says there there and there’s no shame in crying and you must be in terrible pain which I am so I nod and then my mammy is back with the Agfa and a box of flashes and the doctor says well we better get those clothes off then and take a closer look at the damage and I try to take off my jumper but it hurts too much and the doctor and me ma have to do it for me and when I’m stripped to the waist I hear the doctor swallow loudly and my mother just says Christ and after the photos are taken the doctor cleans me up and the antiseptic stings like fuck and eventually when he’s finished with his swabs and gauze and tape I must look like Tutankhamen’s mummy and he says well I’ve used more bandages on you alone than I have on the rest of my patients put together and then we all go into my bedroom and he makes me lie down on the bed and he sorta smiles at me but I can see in his eyes that he’s troubled by what he’s seen and heard and I see him looking round my room taking in the shelves 156

filled with rows and rows of me books and then he says now I’ll need to take your temperature and your pulse and your blood pressure and I say to him will ye give them back to me when you’re finished with them and he gets a bit flustered and starts to explain well it’s not actually and I say I’m only joking ye doctor and he says ah yes humour vital for a speedy recovery and you’re an unusual young man Mr O’Brien and I say so I’ve been told and then he gives me some tablets to swallow and gives me an injection and says this will ease the pain and help you to sleep and I say thank you Doctor and mean it and then he steps out into the hall and I can hear him saying to my mother well Mrs O’Brien I’ve patched him up as best I can but I’m afraid you’ll have to bring him in to the hospital tomorrow for xrays and to be honest he should probably be there now already and I’m fairly sure that at least two of his ribs are broken and the ulna of his right arm seems to be broken in several places so that will need to be put in plaster and of course the nose is broken too and there are severe contusions to the ribcage and arms and he is probably suffering some 157

form concussion and a certain degree of shock though he seems to have his wits about him and you’ll have to arrange for an orthodontist for the teeth and I strongly suggest you engage the services of a trustworthy lawyer and of course he’ll be off school for a few weeks though I shouldn’t think that will pose much of a problem since he seems to be an intelligent boy and me ma says he’s the best son in the world and then she starts crying and the doctor says there there and then I hear me ma thanking him and asking how much she owes him and he says don’t worry about that Mrs O’Brien that young man in there has paid quite enough already and I mutter to myself god bless you Dr Dunne I’ll remember you in my prayers tonight and I promise never to think bad of ye again and yer eyes aren’t really all that shifty when ye see them up close and I think maybe it’s just because you’re a troubled man affected by all the pain and suffering that ye see and sure who’d want to be a doctor at all being around only sick and hurt people all the time and I think I must have drifted off because then I hear my father’s voice out in the hallway and my mother is saying ah don’t 158

disturb him love let him get his rest and god knows he needs it and my father says he’s my son too and I want to see him and she says alright then but don’t wake him and I hear the door of my bedroom opening and I feel the light on my face but I keep my eyes closed pretending to be asleep and I feel my father near me and I can smell the suit he wears and I know by the shadow that he’s leaning over me and I can hear him breathing and then the door gently closes and back out in the hallway I hear him say if I ever get my hands on that fucker Byrne I swear I’ll beat seven different kinds of shite out of him so help me god and me ma says well I’m glad to hear you say that and he says why’s that and she says because Garda Noone says he’ll give you ten minutes alone in the cell with Byrne and a blind eye’ll be turned to whatever goes on and if needs be they’ll say he tripped and fell down the stairs and my father says is that so and she says it is and then he says do ye want to come and watch and she says what ye mean now and he says well there’s no time like the present and I’d certainly sleep better for having given the fucker a taste of his own medicine and me 159

ma says I’ll stay here and watch over Liam and me da says right enough and then I open my good eye and call out da and he comes in the room and says what is it son I’m sorry did we wake you and do you need anything and I says I want you to do something for me da and he says anything anything at all and there’s a tenderness in his voice that I haven’t heard in years and I feel a lump forming in my throat and my eyes going all watery again and then I say to him I want you to leave Mr Byrne alone and he says and why’s that and I say because we’re not like him we’re not animals and he looks at me half amused and half scornful and says what’s this then ye mean turn the other cheek and I say well isn’t that what Jesus said we should do and he says well Jesus said a lot of things son and then he tosses my hair and says don’t worry about it and try and get some sleep and then he’s out the door and after a bit I hear the pair of them talking in the sitting room but I can’t make out the words and then I hear the front door open and close and then the sound of the car engine and I lie there and listen to it as it fades into the distance.

160

Chapter 18 I’m holed up in my bedroom most of the time under orders from Dr Dunne who called around earlier with a copy of the Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury and the three Foundation books by Isaac Asimov that he said were all lying around gathering dust on a shelf at home and he had noticed that I was a reader and seemed to like science fiction and he had enjoyed these books when he was a young fella not much older than meself and I can see why even though I’ve only read the first two stories in the Martian Chronicles and I haven’t even started the Foundation Trilogy yet and then he said that I wasn’t to be straining myself by moving around too much and anyway my broken ribs remind me often enough and even just yawning too deeply sends darts of pain up my side and though my body is a bit broken I’m feeling alright and as Mrs Skin would say sure I can’t complain and if I did who would listen to me so I’m 161

trying hard not to be a moany shite and I’m not going to harp on about my various physical ailments unless strictly necessary and really everyone has been very supportive since Mr Byrne took it into his head to beat the living shite out of me with his hurley stick and leave me for dead in a frosty ditch on a narrow country road and I’ve been trying hard to apply what Quinn the Coat said about not giving in to hatred and anger though it’s more than a bit hard at times and then I try to remember the feeling of Quinn the Coat’s healing energy which is what I think he might want me to do and I can’t help feeling that somehow he knew all this would happen though I don’t think he was in anyway responsible and lying here all day has given me plenty of time to mull over what he was saying about not being able to see the causes and effects of things and though Mr Byrne was probably reacting to me provoking him because he must have figured out that I put Orla’s auntie Una’s knickers in his pocket or Mr Kavanagh’s wife’s knickers if ye prefer to think of them that way and I’m not going to tell you what way I prefer to think of them and anyway I kinda wish I had never seen them feckin’ 162

knickers in the first place as ye can imagine given the state I’m in at the moment but if Mr Byrne had let me alone in the first place instead of all that carry on in the changing rooms which to tell you the truth was a bit more than what I said before but don’t ask me to go into details because I don’t want to and to change the subject if there’s one thing that been stuck here at home has shown me it’s who you can count on when your chips are down which is a phrase that probably comes from gambling but makes my mouth water thinking about a bag of Gino’s chips and I’ve made a resolution that I’m going to buy myself the biggest jar of mustard I can find and write my name on it probably with an indelible marker or maybe with a sticky label I haven’t decided yet and then I’ll give it to Gino and it’ll be my private jar of mustard though of course I’d share it with anyone who wanted some and when Gino says to me you wanna salan vinga I’ll say no Gino you know what I want and he’ll say oh yeah you de motsa boy I giva you de motsa and my mouth is still watering thinking about it but anyway I only got talking about that because I was saying about learning who your friends 163

are when your chips are down and I’ve had a surprising number of visitors over the past couple of days and I’ve learned some terrible things altogether and in a way I’m glad to be safe here at home wrapped up in nice warm blankets and me ma making me buckets of tea and good and strong just the way I like it instead of the cat’s piss she usually makes and the very first visitor I have apart from Dr Dunne with the science fiction books is good old Skin and he sits on the bed and holds my hand for a long time but not like queers and it’s only because we’ve been friends since we could barely even walk even if I’ve been hanging around more with Billy O’Dwyer of late and anyway Skin tells me he has heard about Mr Byrne and what he did to me and that half the school is talking about it and he says that he can’t understand what would possess the man to do such a thing so I explain the whole thing to him and tell him he can tell his ma everything including the bit about the knickers so that she would understand because I know she was a bit suspicious about what I was up to that day at the football and it would be better if she knew the full and true story but Skin 164

says I can tell her meself because she’ll be in to see me after work so I do and that makes her laugh and she says aren’t you an awful divil altogether to be thinking up something like that during mass when you should have been saying your prayers and then she promises that the knickers will be our secret but I’m getting a bit ahead of myself because when I tell Skin the story doesn’t he break down and start bawling his eyes out and I’m surprised that he takes it so much to heart but that’s true friendship for ye and I’m thinking that there are an awful lot of emotional teenagers around the place and thinking of poor Orla crying over how yer man raped her and at least that didn’t happen to Skin but when he finally stops crying he tells me that’s exactly what happened to him and it was Mr Byrne that raped him and made him promise not to tell and so Skin never said a word about it to anyone not even Father Moran in confession and I suppose he’s been holding it in for so long that he’s glad to tell someone at last and I tell him that he should tell his ma since there’s nothing that fucker Byrne can do now what with him still being locked up in the garda station and Skin 165

says I can’t tell her a thing like that and I say ye have te Skin ye have te and he say I can’t so I say well if you don’t tell her I will and he looks at me with his big bloodshot eyes and the snot running from his nose and he says would ye please Liam you tell her a’cos I can’t so I tell him I will which I do and Mrs Skin is not laughing now and she says I’ll kill the fucker so I will and I swear to god I’ll murder him and I can tell you there’s been a lot of high emotions in this bedroom and that’s not the half of it because when I promise Skin to tell his ma his lips start quivering again and I feel a lump in my throat just looking at him and then the pair of us have a good old cry together and if any of the lads at school could see us they’d be calling us poofters but I’m beyond caring about all that shite anymore and the more I think about it I can’t really see that there’s anything wrong with fancying fellas if that’s what ye really feel but the priests say ‘tis ‘gainst the course of nature and ‘tis an awful sin so ‘tis which I’m not so sure about ‘cos how can it be a sin to love someone and doesn’t the church teach us to be honest with ourselves and towards others and I don’t think there’s anything in 166

the bible that says ye can only be honest about some things and not others and I don’t think there’s anything written down that says you have to lie about your feelings and if you listened to everything them priests say then you’d be living your life lying to others and lying to yourself and come to think of it that’s probably exactly what Mr Byrne was doing and look where that got him and I’ve been trying to imagine myself with a boyfriend instead of a girlfriend but I don’t think it’s really for me thanks very much because the female form just turns me on too much but I can imagine that there are fellas that might feel that way when they see a fella or well I can sorta imagine it anyway and I say all this to Skin and I think he agrees with me but he’s a bit evasive as if there’s something else he wants to tell me but I don’t want to push it and then I ask him to talk to the other fellas that go to the football and tell them what happened to me but to leave out the bit about the knickers and to say that any of them who wanted to talk to me about it could come by the house and visit me and Skin must have taken it very seriously and I could hardly believe it and still don’t really want to 167

believe it because seven different fellas come to see me and I’ve been like an agony aunt these past few days and in more ways than one suffering as I am and I’ve been lying here listening to these lads stories of what Mr Byrne did or tried to do to them and I ask them to tell their parents and to tell the gardai what they told me and some of them say they will and some of them say they won’t and one of them’s father is a garda anyway so that could be two birds with one stone so to speak and there are a lot of tears and my ma says she’ll have to buy shares in the company that makes the hankies because we seem to be using so many of them in this house and I might have made a few enemies in the football club because I decide I’m on a bit of a mission and if anyone has good enough reason to be it’s me and so I sit down with the phonebook on my knee and I have a little speech all prepared and I tell all the mammies and daddies about Mr Byrne and what he did to their sons and some of them won’t believe me or don’t want to and some of them cry and some of them tell me to fuck off and not be bothering them with my stories and that I had only got what I deserved ‘cos 168

wasn’t it well known that I was a fucking queer anyway and I was probably just leading Mr Byrne on and I sit and listen to the abuse and say thank you and then call the garda station and give them the names of the fellas and explain what happened to them and me ma shouts at me because now there’s a big scandal over the entire parish and by the sounds of it there isn’t a dog or a cat in the place that hasn’t heard of my trials and tribulations and me ma shouts it’s all your fault and could you not leave well enough alone and when she says that I see red and go through the fucking roof and I’ve never cursed in front of my mother in my whole life except for that one time when I said cunt before I knew what it meant but now I do and I shout back at her saying leave what fucking well enough alone and there’s nothing fucking well enough about it and I’m gone beyond myself and screaming now and for a tiny moment I see Quinn the Coat’s eyes but I’m too far gone and I can hear my voice tear as I shout and it’s not my fucking fault that that faggot Mr Byrne shoved his cock up me arse and had me shitting blood for a week and has me fucking terrified that 169

I’ve caught this new AIDS disease they’re talking about on the telly and I’m not going to leave it alone I’m not going to leave it alone and suddenly I’m very calm now after that outburst and I say again but much quieter this time I’m not going to leave it alone mammy and then I start wailing and then me ma has her arms around me and I say I’m sorry ma I’m so sorry and she’s crying too and says that she’s the one who should be sorry and why didn’t I tell her before and that I was very brave to be standing up for all those other boys and that she’s really very proud of me and all the time I hear the undercurrent of horror in her voice as the realisation of what I’ve told her sinks in and we have a long cry together and I can tell you that this is getting to be a fierce emotional

household

altogether

and

if

there’s

something that I’m learning through all of this it’s about the merits of sharing your feelings and the incredible healing power of tears.

170

Chapter 19 There’s a limit to the amount of daytime television a fella can watch especially when there’s only one channel to choose from and there’s probably a limit to the amount of science fiction a young mind can absorb too and lately my dreams are filled with jumbled images of planets populated with Bosco droids where everything is uafásach and there are entire galaxies full of characters from Sesame Street which was my favourite programme when I was little but not so much anymore and because of Sesame Street a whole generation of Irish children brought up on images of Ernie and Bert have been subliminally programmed to believe that all gay couples wear stripy shirts and thanks to the cookie monster and some freaky cartoons that look kinda like what I imagine an acid trip must be like there are plenty of Irish teenagers like myself who can count from one to ten better in Spanish than in Irish probably because Sesame Street is fun and almost all my Irish class teachers have been a dour mouthed bunch who could be described as the complete antithesis of fun 171

which is a word from Dr Dunne’s Asimov books that I had to look up and far from making learning Irish seem like fun they seem more intent on inculcating us with nationalistic republican political values and speaking of fun that reminds me that Mrs Heaney our French teacher told us that there’s no word for fun in French

which

makes

the

French

sound

like

a

miserable crowd and in fairness in Irish there are a few different words for fun and one of them is craic except that it means something even more than fun like fun to the power of x or fun squared and being out of school is great really ‘cos all week like I’ve been thinking about stuff like this and it’s nice to get a chance to think about what I want to think about instead of the stuff at school but I notice how much time I spend thinking about stuff on the telly now that I’m watching more of it and it’s like we’re all being brain washed with all this stuff from school and the telly and it seems like they don’t want ye to think for yourself but they only want ye to think about what they want to tell ye which at the moment seems to be that we would be all be better off if we went to America though I’m not so sure that it’s that 172

great over their either and even if they do have some great blues and jazz music they’ve still got that gobshite Ronnie Regan with his finger hovering over the red button waiting to start a nuclear war which is just about the maddest thing anyone has ever thought

of

doing

and

ye

have

fellas

building

themselves nuclear fallout shelters in their back gardens and not only in America but in Ireland as well and isn’t it funny well not funny but ye know what I mean that women never want to be building fallout shelters or starting nuclear wars though that Maggie Thatcher might prove me wrong yet if that carry on in the Falklands was anything to go by but that’s the English for ye although I wouldn’t really know ‘cos I never met an English person in my whole life and anyway in school they just want us to learn about America or Australia and I could show you the courses of the Murray or the Darling rivers on an unmarked map and I can name the 50 states of America in alphabetical order and I did really well in the test we had in school on that one except that Mr Heggarty our geography teacher took a mark off me because I spelt Massachusetts wrong which isn’t hard 173

to do but the point I’m trying to make is that I couldn’t give you the name of a single English county or river though I’m fairly sure London must be one of them and it’s like it’s all some sort of plan that the government has to keep us ignorant about England and send us all to America and even Mr Heggarty says that we’re like the best Irish cattle being bred for export and that’s why the exams we’ll be doing next year are called the Leaving Certificate ‘cos with that piece of paper we can leave Ireland behind us and he says America wants more Irish because there’s too many black fellas there and then he asks us if we know what the Irish words for black man are and I put up my hand and say it’s fear gorm which really means blue man and when I asked our Irish teacher why do Irish speakers say blue when really they mean black and were they all colour-blind in the Gaeltacht I got a slap around the back of me head for my trouble and an earful of what I think must have been swearwords in Irish but Mr Heggarty our geography teacher is more likely to think about what you ask and try to answer the question instead of beating ye round the head for showing curiosity 174

about the world around you and so when I ask him why blue and not black but leaving out a bit about them being colour blind in the west of Ireland he says it’s a very good question and then spends the rest of the lesson drawing maps on the blackboard and he explains that there are these fellas called the Tuareg who live in the Sahara desert and that they call the desert reg and the tua bit means people and we all say ah ‘cos it’s the same word in Irish except the spelling is different and all spelling is mad in Irish anyway and there’s only 18 letters instead of the usual 26 so you have to be kinduv imaginative with it and then Mr Heggarty says that come to think of it he doesn’t know if there’s even a word for desert in the Irish language because even if someone went off to the middle of the Sahara and came back and said that there was a place in the world where there were no plants or lakes or rivers and it didn’t piss rain every second day no one would have believed them and I’m wondering what this has to do with calling black fellas blue but the thing I like about Mr Heggarty’s lessons is that he’ll go a long way around to explain something and by the time he gets there 175

you’ll have learned loads of new stuff without hardly even realizing it and he starts drawing lines and arrows on his maps and talking about fellas called Berbers who live in the northwest of Africa and some of them who live along the coast would be fishermen or traders and in the past maybe even pirates and some of these Tuareg fellas from the desert might have made it out to the coast and seeing all the water stretched out in front of them decided that it was another sort of desert except that it was completely wet instead of completely dry and they could have taken boats up the west of Morocco and then up to Spain and then on to the west of Ireland and to protect themselves from the sun and the sandstorms in the deserts these fellas wore and still wear apparently headscarves that cover their faces leaving only their eyes looking out and these scarves are dyed with a blue colour called indigo that these fellas wives make by boiling up bits of special plants and the dye from the cloth would come off and stain these fellas faces blue though I imagine that it must be a fairly dark blue given that the fellas are really black underneath though I don’t know if that’s Miles 176

Davis black or Phil Lynnot black and I have all these pictures in my head of these black ninja fellas in pirate ships and working on trading ships crashing over the Atlantic waves bringing Spanish wine and god knows what to Galway and when they’d take off their headscarves the people would see that they were blue coloured so it was really perfectly natural to be calling them blue men instead of black men and that was a much better answer than a slap around the back of the head and the class is almost over before we know it and ye can tell that Mr Heggarty is really interested in what he’s teaching which makes it much easier for us to be interested too and then he tells us about how some of these Berbers play instruments just like the Bodhrán and that their women keen at funerals exactly the way the old women in the west of Ireland do at a wake and he says that the word keening comes form the Irish word caoin which means to cry and that if there were blue men coming to Connemara there were probably Irish speakers going to Spain and Morocco and then he says that there probably wasn’t a place in the world where the Irish haven’t been to and that 177

we are a great nation of travellers on account of our Celtic blood and the Celts themselves being nomads only settled down in Ireland or Scotland ‘cos they couldn’t get any further and that their only choice was to turn around and start heading back the way they came from which is why the Irish have such a great wanderlust and he says that he wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few of us in the class who would go on to be great travellers and there’s something about the way he says it that makes me think that he’d rather be out travelling himself which he does every summer anyway and I remember he once gave us a class which was just a slideshow of photos he had taken while he was wandering along this long pilgrimage trail that they have in the north of Spain and all this gets my feet feeling itchy and thinking about how it must be a great thing to travel though I wouldn’t know much about that because the only travelling I ever did was to spend a wet week in a caravan in Tramore with my parents where all we did was play scrabble and monopoly and drink tea and go down to the amusement arcade which looked more fun than it really was and it was full of other 178

poor feckers like us hiding from the rain and I agreed with my parents when they said that we may as well be sitting in comfort at home instead of cooped up in the caravan so we went home early and anyway I have a tendency to get carsick which always puts my father in foul humour and I puked all the way there and all the way back home retching on the side of the road in every county we passed through until there was only green bile burning the back of my throat like battery acid and that’s the only travelling I ever did apart from going up to Dublin a couple of times to see the St Patrick’s day parade which is a laugh ‘cos ye get to see all these hundreds of Americans who fly over especially for the day and they’ll all be marching along with their marching bands and their green white and gold uniforms and there’ll be a crowd of cops from Boston or New York or Philadelphia all dressed up in police uniforms with little white gloves on and then you have the Americans in the crowds who aren’t in the parade itself and they’ll be all dressed up in green and wondering how come the Irish aren’t wearing green and are only wearing grey and black and brown and 179

blue but no one told the Irish they have to wear green for St Patrick’s day though ye might like to wear a bit of shamrock to mass in the morning and those Americans who aren’t wearing green are wearing Aran sweaters though definitely not made out of rough carpet wool ye can be sure or knitted by their mammies and grannies but more than likely bought in some tourist shop and ye can spot the Yanks a mile off because they talk differently and it’s not just the accent I mean but they way they talk loud as if they don’t care who hears them while most of the Irish mumble and mutter among themselves and then there’s the way they walk that’s different too and there’s something about how they hold themselves that seems so cocky and self-assured instead of the Irish shuffling around with catholic guilt and original sin and their shoulders hunched up around their ears trying to protect themselves from the cold even though it’s supposed to be spring and I wonder does keeping yourself hunched up like that because of the cold and the damp affect the way people feel and think about themselves and I have to say that when you’re stuck at home with time on 180

your hands and nothing much to do it’s amazing the sorts of things that ye’ll find yerself thinking about.

Chapter 20 181

Of course ye have to go to mass says me ma and I didn’t really expect her to let me stay at home because ye don’t miss mass ever and ye’d have to be dead or dying not to go and even if you were dead then they’d have a mass for yer funeral and if you were dying then the priest’d come around the house to give you yer last unctions whatever they are and even though I’m a bit banjaxed my legs are okay so I’ll be fine for an hour of the good ould sit down stand up kneel down routine that I must have gone through every single Sunday of my life and it’d be a strange sort Sunday if I didn’t go to mass and I was curious to see what it might feel like just once not to go so I chanced my arm and asked even though I knew what the answer would be in advance and so we go off in the car and my da smells of the Brut aftershave he wears once a week and if Sunday has a smell then it must be Brut and maybe over the last couple of years you could add in the afternoon smell of cowshite from O’Malley’s field and I wonder where he keeps his cattle when we’re playing football anyway and I can tell ye I’m glad I won’t be going there 182

anymore and I can spend my Sunday afternoon finishing Dr Dunne’s science fiction books and maybe I’ll see him at mass and I’ll be able to thank him again and I notice my parents aren’t talking this morning and there’s something else in the air as well as the smell of Brut and I think maybe they had a bit of a row because my da came home late from Dempsey’s pub last night but it’s not like he spends his life down there like some fellas fathers and it’s rare enough that he’ll go out to the pub at all and maybe it’s nothing to do with that at all but there’s definitely some sorta tension in the air and I can see the muscles in me da’s jaw working as his teeth clench and unclench and he probably doesn’t even realize he’s doing it and he’s looking straight ahead at the road as we drive up the last stretch of hill to the church and me ma says Jesus Mary and Joseph what is it at all and I lean forward to see and there are a few cars stopping in the road ahead of us and there are five or six garda cars parked around the front of the church and some of them have the blue lights flashing and they’ve put a line of those orange traffic cones out to the middle of the road and a big 183

garda standing there waving the cars on and when we reach level with the front of the church my da winds down the window and the garda leans down and says if it’s mass yis are looking for there’ll be none here today and I can see that there’s a rake of gardai in front of the church and Father Moran is there too looking fierce worried and there’s a few big fellas in suits talking to him and Father Moran is shaking his head again and again and me da says to the garda what is it what’s going on and the garda says we’re not at liberty to reveal details at the moment and yis’ll just have to watch the news this evening and I’m thinking it must be something pretty big if it’s going to be on the news and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many gardai together in one place at the same time and I’m looking out the window beside me when I notice something strange in the churchyard over beside the graves where they bury all the parish priests and it looks like someone has taken a load of old blankets and hung them over the big crucifix with the statue of Jesus nailed to it and I’m wondering why anyone would want to cover a statue with blankets and then the car moves off and 184

my da’s jaw is pulsing even faster now and me ma says what d’ye think that was all about and he says we’ll just have to do like the garda said and wait for the news this evening.

Chapter 21 We manage to get to a church a few miles away in the next parish but by the time we arrive mass has already started and the church is packed full of people so we have to stand near the back and people are giving me all kinds of looks what with the bruises and cuts on me face and my arm in the cast in the sling so I just smile at them frightening them with the gap where my front teeth used to be and I know that I look scary because I’ve been practicing that smile in front of the mirror all week and sometimes I made myself laugh and I must admit a few times I made myself cry and just thinking about it I start feeling sorry for myself and none of these good Christians seem ready to give up a bit of space on a pew for me to sit on probably because I look like a scary thug 185

and when I whisper to me da that I’m not feeling too well which is true and can I go and sit in the car he nods and puts his arm around me which is a bit embarrassing but nice too and he mouths something to my mother who seems to understand him straight away and sometimes it’s like they have this secret language between them and just with a glance they can know what the other is thinking and so we squeeze out through the crowd blocking up the doorway and when we step outside it’s cold enough but at least it’s dry which is just as well for the crowd of latecomers standing outside most of whom I recognize from our parish and a few of them are trying to follow the mass going on inside but most of them are muttering amongst themselves in small huddled groups with worried looks on their faces and no doubt discussing the reasons why our parish church is closed to everyone except gardai and in one of the groups is Billy O’Dwyer and I see his jaw drop as he recognizes me and takes in my messed up face and the arm cast and he says something to the fellas he’s talking to and comes over to join me and me da as we walk across the road to the carpark 186

opposite the church and he tells me how he’s sorry that he didn’t get a chance to visit me but he was busy between the agricultural college and the farm and says how his ma and da were askin’ for me and he tells me da that I’m a good worker and that I’d make a good farmer some day and my da sorta laughs and says why don’t ye sit in the car with Liam and get in out of the cold and then he says to me d’ye want the keys so ye can listen to mass on the radio and he must have seen the look on my face because then he laughs and says yis can listen to Radio 2 for all I care but maybe you might tell a little white lie to keep your ma happy so I smile and nod as I take the keys from him and watch him as he crosses the road and walks back towards the church and I notice that he doesn’t try to force his way back inside but instead joins one of the huddles deep in muted discussion outside the church and so Billy and I get in the front of the car and I try Radio 2 but it’s the Furey Brothers and Davey Arthur singing about sitting down by gravestones and sure if ye wanted to listen to that kinda stuff then ye may as well be listening to RTE One so I tune it back to the mass 187

being broadcast from the pro cathedral or some other big church up in Dublin so I don’t have to be telling lies to me ma and then I turn the volume down low and I say to Billy so what’s the story with all the gardai at the church and he says ye mean ye don’t know and I say no only that a garda said we’d hear about it on the news and Billy says jaysus I would have thought that you’d be one of the first to know about it and I say know about what and he says about Mr Byrne and I say of course I know about Mr Byrne I mean look what the fucker did to me and I pull back my lips to show him my missing teeth in case he hasn’t noticed them already and Billy says no I don’t mean about that I mean about what happened to him after and I say well what happened to him after and Billy says well there’s a few different stories going round but most people are saying that your da went down the garda station and they let him in the cell with Byrne and your da beat the fuck out of him and I let out a big sigh and say I thought he might alright though I asked him not to and he said that he got the cut on his hand from changing the tyre on the car and Billy says more like he cut his 188

hand on Byrne’s teeth by the sounds of it and then we’re both quiet for a bit until Billy says listen everyone is saying how you told the gardai and lotsa other people about how Byrne molested a load of young fellas at the football club over the years and I say yeah that’s true and I had to do it ‘cos ye couldn’t let him get away with something like that could ye and Billy says no I don’t suppose ye could and then he’s quiet again for a bit and then he turns to me and says Mr Byrne is dead Liam and I don’t know what to say and somehow I know it’s true and I think of my da beating him up in the garda station and then him coming home late last night and the way he seemed so tense this morning and I feel an awful chill creeping up through me as I begin to understand that my da is a murderer and I’m the son of a murderer and that he went and killed Mr Byrne because of a pair of knickers that once belonged to Mr Kavanagh’s wife and it’s all my fault and I might have felt something when my ma or my da had said that they’d kill him but talking is one thing and now that he’s actually dead it’s a different kettle of fish altogether and I feel my future dropping away in 189

front of me and it’s like I’m standing at the edge of a bottomless pit and I’m thinking about how me da will probably end up in prison for the rest of his life and without him going out to work how will me ma and I survive and I realize that that’s a very selfish thought to be having and I start to cry while the choir on the radio sing something sad about Jesus sacrificing himself for us and then it comes to me that the gardai musn’t know that it was my da who killed Mr Byrne or they would have arrested him at the church this morning and why would my da even go to the church if he knew that the gardai would be there and I turn to Billy who’s been sitting there feeling awkward while I’ve been crying and say how did it happen and do they know who killed him and Billy says well wasn’t one of them lads that was molested a garda’s son and I say yeah remembering how I only had to make one phone call for him and Billy says well they’re saying that Byrne’s cell door was accidentally left open and that he escaped and I say but how could he get out of the station without any of the gardai seeing him and Billy says well he probably couldn’t have could he and it must have 190

been the gardai let him escape and I say for fuck sake why would they let him escape and Billy says why d’ye think Liam because if he was going to get kilt in the garda station that would be hard to explain but if he got kilt somewhere else then the gardai could say that they knew nothing about it and I say well where was he killed then and Billy says I’m making allowances for ye but yer awful fuckin’ slow on the uptake this morning and then it dawns on me and I say at the church and he says of course and then a terrible image flashes in front of my eyes and I say he was crucified and Billy says that’s what they’re saying and some ould wan that comes early to put flowers on the altar found him hanging up there on the cross stripped naked with Jesus up there behind him and they say his body was beat up something terrible like as if he had been dragged behind a car or something and I look out the window and see that the crowds are coming out of the church now with their souls all shiny and cleansed for the week and I say to Billy again do they know who killed him and Billy says well there had to be more than one person because ye’d never get a fella up on a 191

cross on yer own and they’re saying that there’s no shortage of people who had motive enough as ye know well enough yerself and as far as anyone is concerned everyone was down in Dempsey’s pub last night and when Mr Byrne escaped all the gardai were up in the station and anyone who says any different will be risking crucifixion themselves and then he says I think they’ll have a harder time finding Mr Byrne’s murderers than they’ve had trying to find out what happened to Mr Kavanagh and then I say well now that you mention it I have a bit of news for you.

Chapter 22

192

I’ve finally got Orla Flynn right where I want her which is on my bed where I’ve spent so many hours conjuring up images of her and then she says it wasn’t much fun really and anyway I’ve seen it all before and she’s trying not to look me in the eye which is understandable given the gruesome mask my face presents with its interesting tones of purples and greenish yellows and though Dr Dunne says I’m on the mend I’m glad I don’t have to look at myself all the time so I can’t really blame Orla for pretending to be interested in the names on the spines of the books on my shelf so I say but tell me what it was like anyway and I really want to know because there are things in life that we take for granted without ever knowing or understanding how they’re made and so Orla sighs and says well ye start off with all these different powders which are mostly this fine white sand that they get from up in the Wicklow mountains somewhere and crushed up limestone and some other things I don’t remember the names of and they all get melted together in this sorta furnace thing that gets really hot and then they pour out the melted stuff and there’s this yoke that chops it into 193

pieces that are just the right size for a bottle and they get sent to the moulds and they blow hot air into them sorta like blowing up a balloon and the insides of the mould give the bottle its shape and then the bottles come out though they’re still really hot so they send them along this conveyor belt thing with flames shooting up out of it to keep the glass from cooling too quickly ‘cos if they did then they’d shatter and anyway eventually they cool down and that’s all really and it’s nothin’ special and even though Orla sounds bored telling it I’m trying to imagine what it must be like to be able to melt rock and sand like they’re lava and I think it’s really amazing how ye can make all sorts of things from glass and not just bottles and jars but windows and mirrors and glasses to make ye see better and even lenses for telescopes and microscopes and stuff and then Orla says anyway auntie Una says she’s thinking of sellin’ the place and I say why’d she do a thing like that and Orla says ‘cos she thinks me uncle is dead or else whoever took him’d be askin’ for some kinda ransom or something and she says she doesn’t want to come back to live in Ireland to run a 194

feckin’ glass bottle factory and sure why would she when she can be sunning herself on the patio of her villa in Spain and I can’t help picturing Orla’s auntie Una in a skimpy bikini beside a blue swimming pool and some dark haired fella named Manolo dressed in a white jacket bringing her drinks with ice cubes in them and I wonder why swimming pools are always blue though I can’t imagine what colour they would be otherwise and I must admit that even though I’ve never even see a photo of the famous auntie Una I’ve been having ongoing fantasies about her though lately my bedtime games of five against one have been interrupted by the thoughts of what happened on account of her knickers and images of poor Mr Byrne hung up on the cross and even if he was a fucker in every sense of the word I’m not sure he really deserved what happened to him and the news has been on the telly and in the papers all week and I don’t think the parish church has ever had so many photos taken of it and there was a little photo of Mr Byrne from a few years back because of course they’d never show a picture of a dead person in the paper or on the telly unless it was in a film and then 195

you’d know it was only an actor pretending to be dead and that the blood was really only watered down tomato ketchup or something but Mr Byrne wasn’t pretending and the newspapers say that the gardai are investigating this mysterious murder and describe Mr Byrne as a prominent member of the local G.A.A. and a regular church goer and a pillar of the local community and I say to myself ye bastards are stealing my lines ‘cos I was the one who said about him being a pillar of the community long before they’d ever even heard of Mr Byrne though I must admit that I couldn’t help laughing at the prominent member bit and wished I’d been smart enough to think that one up and the funny thing about it all is that there hasn’t been a single mention of him raping and terrorising half the young fellas in the parish or anything about him being arrested for murdering me or about him escaping from the garda station or even anything about him being hung up on the cross which just goes to show ye that ye can’t always believe what they say on the telly or print in the papers because if they told the truth they might be upsetting too many people who would rather go 196

on believing that the world is all nice and cosy and ordered which it decidedly is not as both myself and Orla have all too recently learned to our cost and that’s something that’s brought us closer in a way but not close in the way I’d like us to be and then I say to her I don’t think he’s dead ye know and she looks at me saying nothing and maybe she’s thinking about how silly I sound with these new false teeth and it’s kinda embarrassing because I talk with a lisp so I really do sound gay now which is going to be great fun when I get back to school but the dentist promised me that the lisp would disappear soon enough and I hope he’s right ‘cos I hate the way I sound and I hate the way I look and me ma says I’m like the ugly duckling who’ll turn into a swan and I don’t really want to turn into a swan like them children of Lir who had to wait 900 years for St Patrick to come along and turn them back into people again only to shrivel up and die all old and wrinkled which is the Irish idea of a happy ending because their souls were saved and they all went to heaven where they lived happily ever after and Orla says why d’ye think he’s not dead and I say I can’t tell ye 197

right now but ye have to trust me that your uncle will be alright and she says how d’ye know that and I say listen I know some people who know some people and I can’t say anything more than that or I’ll get into all sortsa trouble and right now I have enough on me plate without adding to it and she seems to accept that and sorta smiles at me and I want to tell her all about what Quinn the Coat said about the four men in the farmhouse and one of them with a bag over his head and I smile to myself thinking maybe I’d be better off with a bag over my head as well to hide my ugly face and I can’t really go telling her what some wandering madman told me by a magic well at a haunted workhouse without sounding half mad even though I really think that Quinn the Coat isn’t mad at all and I think he’s some sorta holy man or mystic like the fellas in India I was reading about the other day who give up all their worldly possessions and take to the roads wandering the length and breath of India which is a fair sight bigger than Ireland and they’re looking for their immortal selves which as far as I can understand from the book is the bit of you that doesn’t change when you get reincarnated and 198

it doesn’t matter if you come back as a dog or a bird or a woman or whatever because there’s always this part of ye that’s really part of god except that it doesn’t know it and these fellas are out there looking for this part of god that’s in them and some of them look for it on the roads and in the sacred rivers and holy shrines and others’ll sit in caves in the Himalayas for years without even a blanket to cover them while they’re looking deep inside themselves for salvation which sounds like a helluva lot more hard work than just going to mass on Sunday mornings to play the good old sit down stand up kneel down routine and maybe confession once a month and I could probably do with going to confession myself some day soon and anyway I think Quinn the Coat must be something like these Indian fellas and maybe he’s still looking for his immortal self or maybe he’s already it found and I know he’s found something in any case and if I had to go and confess my sins this minute I’d rather be telling them to Quinn the Coat than kneeling in the wooden box talking to Father Moran and smelling his minty breath and listening to the horrible sound of the Fox’s 199

Glacier Mints rattling around inside his mouth against his teeth and I wonder if Mr Byrne told Father Moran his sins and if that was why they hung him up at the church and if that’s the case what does that mean for Father Moran because he can’t tell about what he hears in confession and anyway no one will ever know what Byrne told him or didn’t tell him and even if they did I don’t think anything would really happen to Father Moran because a lynch mob might get a way with murdering a child molester but killing the parish priest would be a different story altogether and I don’t think there’d be too many people willing to risk their immortal souls or selves over that one and when Orla says are ye alright Liam I say yeah ‘cos if I say yes I’ll lisp and she says you’re awful quiet and ye look fierce worried and I say well it’s been a funny couple of weeks and she says yeah fuckin’ hilarious and then we both laugh and then I say did ye go to the doctor’s and she says how can I go to the doctor’s and I say well what’ll ye do and are ye goin’ to have it or what and she says I don’t know Liam I really don’t know and I don’t want to have it ‘cos I could never love it and I can’t murder it ‘cos 200

that’d be a sin and I can’t give it away ‘cos everyone’d know that I was pregnant and then I’d have to explain how I got raped and I say well what else can ye do and she says well I’m thinking of running away and I say running away and where would ye go and she says I don’t know maybe over to England and sure I wouldn’t be the first girl that got pregnant to make that trip and maybe I could have the baby over there and come back after a bit and we’re both quiet for a while and then I say well we could say it was mine and she says what d’ye mean and I say well we could pretend that it was me who got you pregnant and she says who’d believe that and I say well why wouldn’t they and she says because everyone thinks you’re a homo and that’s why you did what you did to get Mr Byrne killed and I say but I didn’t kill him and she says well people blame you anyway and I say for fuck sake and you don’t believe that do ye and she says as far as I’m concerned the bastard got what he deserved and I’d be happy to see the same happen to the fucker who raped me and I say no ye wouldn’t and it wouldn’t make ye happy at all believe me and she looks at me 201

kinda hard and says try me and so I say to get back to the original subject well if you said the baby was mine then people would stop thinking I was a queer and wouldn’t blame me so much for getting Mr Byrne crucified and she looks at me for a bit with her lips quivering and then the big tears start rolling down her face and she says would ye really do that for me Liam and I say of course I would but I’m not promising to be a father or anything and I’m only saying I’ll take the blame for getting you pregnant and anyway we don’t have to say anything until it starts to show and then she says warming to the idea and no one would think too badly of us if we gave it away what with us being so young and I say ah the feckers’ll think badly of us no matter what we do but at least it’d save ye having to run away to England and she says well let me think about it and I’m thinking that if I’m going to be responsible for getting her pregnant that I’d like to at least and then I let the thought go because she’d probably be too upset to do it with me and with a face like I have on me at the moment she’d be having nightmares about it for years to come and even though my mind starts 202

playing x-rated scenes again I tell myself to let it go and I think of Mr Byrne and that takes the wind out of my allegorical sails quick enough I can tell you.

Chapter 23 Dr Dunne calls round to the house to give me a check up and gives me a load more books and says 203

in his newsreader’s voice it always seems such a pity to have shelves filled with books that I’ll probably never read again and I’m glad that someone can get some pleasure from them and I’m glad he feels that way because Dr Dunne has books that they don’t have in the library at school and it’s nice to broaden my horizons and read something else for a change though since he says I’m fit enough to go back to school now I won’t have too much time for reading anything other than school books and I’ll have a bit of catchin’ up to do and I’m kinda glad to be going back to school in some ways and as I cycle along the road with the cast on my arm feeling a bit funny but alright really I’m almost glad to see the same old familiar potholes in the road and it looks like some of them have gotten bigger because of the trucks going in and out of the glass bottle factory all the time and even though it’s still winter there’s no more frost on the ground in the mornings and a few of the trees are starting to bud though ye can never rule out a cold snap that’ll set spring back a bit and when I get to the school I’m bent over locking up my bike and sliding the chain through the muddy spokes of the 204

back wheel ‘cos ye never know who might come along and steal your bike while ye’d be sittin’ in class and people around here steal all sortsa things though mainly just for their idea of a joke and there’s a strange tradition for Halloween where the fellas who work at the glass bottle factory sneak around the place in the middle of the night and steal people’s gates for a laugh but ye’ll always be sure to find them again the next morning leaning up against the church fence and I don’t know how or why it all started off but the Halloween gate stealing has been going on for as long as I can remember and everyone pretends that it’s an awful thing to be doing but I think if the fellas from the bottle factory stopped doing it everyone would be a bit sad ‘cos it’s sorta funny really and gives people something to joke and laugh and complain about at a miserable time of the year when the winter is setting in and ye’d be wondering if ye’ll ever see the sun again and if you did whether there’d be any warmth in it at all and this morning there’s a little bit of soft yellow sun throwing long morning shadows across the ground and turning the bicycle wheels into stretched out 205

oval patterns on the grass and it’s really very beautiful at least to my way of thinking and I’m glad of the sunshine though there’s precious little heat in it and I wouldn’t be half as happy about coming back to school if it was pissing rain and as I’m squatting there admiring the shadows I hear a girl’s voice say my name and I look up and there’s Orla lookin’ happier than I’ve seen her in ages and she says ye’ll never guess what and I say well if I’ll never guess I may as well not bother trying and she says he came back me uncle came back and she looks beautiful smiling like that and I’m glad to see that there’s a sparkle in her eyes that I thought was gone for good and I say well didn’t I tell ye that he wasn’t dead and when did he come back and she says there was this banging on the door at four in the morning and I could hear my parents talking in the room and the knocking just went on and on so my da got up and when he saw it was my uncle he called out to my mother and the first thing my uncle asked was if I was alright and I heard my mother saying and why wouldn’t she be though she’s been worried sick about you like we all have been and I could hear all 206

this from my bedroom so I put on my dressing gown and slippers and went into the kitchen and the three of them were standing there and I got an awful shock ‘cos there was this strange man with a beard and it took my a second to realize that it was my uncle ‘cos he doesn’t usually have a beard and his hair and his clothes were a mess and he looked awful thin and pale and while me ma made tea he told us that he didn’t know where he had been all the time and that he wasn’t even sure anymore of exactly how long he had been gone and that he had an old potato sack over his head most of the time and he showed us the cuts and the bruises on his wrists and ankles from where he had been tied up and he was shockin’ smelly so he was so me ma sent him into the bathroom to get cleaned up and me da gave him some of his clothes to wear and me ma put my uncle’s clothes into a bin bag because of the stink off of them and tied it up and put it outside the back door and my uncle spent a long time in the bathroom but when he came out he looked and smelled a lot better though it was funny seeing him with the beard and wearing Daddy’s clothes and his eyes were red 207

as if he had been crying or something and we all sat down while my ma poured out the tea and my da asked him how he had managed to escape and he said he had been lying on some straw on the floor of the barn where he had been held prisoner and he was half asleep when he heard the noise of a window breaking and there was a fella shouting and what sounded like a bit of a fight and then it all went quiet again and he heard something being dragged across the ground and after a bit there was the sound of car doors slamming in the distance and then someone came and unlocked the door of his barn and then cut the rope from his hands and his feet and a voice told him not to take the bag off his head until he heard the car leaving which he did and he said that when he got out of the barn and out onto the road he recognized where he was and from there he just walked to our house ‘cos he didn’t have the keys to his own place anymore and even if he did he didn’t want to go back to an empty house and isn’t it brilliant that he’s back and I say yes it is and then I ask her if she knows who was keeping him prisoner or why and even though I think I know the first part 208

of the answer I’ve never understood the second part as to why they would keep him and not ask for money or anything and Orla says he doesn’t know at all and he said that the only time he saw them was once a day when they’d bring him an ould saucepan of porridge and a jug of water and he says that the fella who brought the porridge was always wearing a balaclava and never said a word to him and I say did he call the gardai and she says not until this morning ‘cos my parents wanted him to get a bit of sleep ‘cos he was so exhausted and I say does he know who freed him and she says he doesn’t have a clue ‘cos he had the old sack on his head the whole time and then the bell rings for class so we head in for English with the Knacker and I’m sitting there listening to him droning on about William Butler Yeats and his obsession for this woman called Maud Gonne which doesn’t sound like a real person’s name to me at all but more like the kinda name ye’d find in one of Dr Dunne’s science fiction books and in the distance I can hear the sirens of a garda car and I’m thinking that it’s for Orla’s uncle though I don’t know why they’d use sirens for that and maybe it’s because 209

they found Mr Byrne’s killers though that’d surprise me ‘cos even if the gardai are going around asking a lot of questions I think they know well enough that they won’t be getting any answers.

Chapter 24 The place is in uproar and this time as well as the gardai there’s the army as well and I don’t know whether to hand myself in and tell them everything I know or just carry on keeping my mouth shut and I’m afraid to say anything because of the trouble it could mean for Billy and if I started telling then I’d have to explain all about Orla and she wouldn’t thank me for that either and it’s not going to look too good for me if the gardai find out that I knew where Mr Kavanagh was all along and if I had just said something back in the beginning then maybe this whole fuckin’ mess 210

could have been avoided and the three Maguire and Patterson matchstick men would be safely locked up in prison instead of being found this morning dangling from meat hooks in a walk-in freezer in the meat factory and they say that they had bags over their heads which is a bit ironic seeing as how they kept a bag over Mr Kavanagh’s head and they haven’t even been properly identified yet because each of them was shot at point blank range in the back of the head and as a result most of their faces are missing and there’ll be no point looking at dental records to identify them and anyway I don’t know if they really use dental records to identify people in real life or whether that’s just something they do in America and Skuzzbeard and Redface didn’t look like the kinda fellas that’d be too bothered with dentists anyway though ye never can tell ‘cos there’s nothing much worse in life than a really bad toothache and it’d be enough to soften the hardest of hard men and now there’s talk that the meat factory’ll close down because no one would want to buy meat from a place where they keep dead bodies hanging from meat hooks in the freezer or at least not people’s bodies 211

anyway and the thought of it makes me think of joining Deirdre Nolan in our class and becoming a vegetarian as well except that you won’t catch me eating fish on Fridays or any other day for that matter ‘cos I hate the smell and the taste and the texture of the stuff and hate is probably not a strong enough word for my true feelings about fish ‘cos if you gave me the choice of eating a plate of fish or a plateful of fresh cowshite I’d go for the cowshite every time and that’s how much I hate fish and just the smell of it makes me want to throw up and I don’t think I’m the only one ‘cos lotsa people hate fish and I’ve always wondered how come being an island surrounded by the sea and filled with rivers and lakes Ireland didn’t become a nation of fish eaters during the potato famine and I wonder is it possible that more than a million people died of starvation for want of a few fish hooks and some old nets and I find it hard to believe that no one thought of eating fish instead of potatoes at the time though as far as I can tell the history books are silent on the subject and even though I hate fish as much as I do I can’t imagine letting myself starve to death rather than 212

swallow a bit of mackerel or salmon though if it came to it I’d have to be on my last legs and they say that when you starve to death that the hunger is long gone and that ye just get so weak that ye give up caring about anything including whether you live or die and that must be a terrible stage to reach and with all the killing that’s been going on around here lately I’m starting to realize just how precious life really is and in a way I’ve always felt that I would never die and that death is just something that happens to other people and even when I was crawling out of the ditch in the dark after my unfortunate discussion with Mr Byrne’s hurley stick I didn’t believe in my own death and though I know logically that someday I will die of course it’s like it’s only my mind telling me and if I do as Quinn the Coat says and listen to my feelings instead of my thoughts I find it very hard to believe in my own death and maybe it’s because there really is an immortal self that doesn’t die when your body is finished with and maybe it goes to heaven and lives happily ever after or maybe it comes back again and again and you might be your own grandchild or a horse or a bird or 213

a ghost who can’t move on because it’s still bound to this place by its own suffering and misery and I’ve been thinking a lot about the Mighty Quinn this last while and maybe he’s thinking of me too ‘cos I see him in my dreams showing me how a tiny drop can create so many waves and ripples and explaining how our actions are all interlinked in impossible patterns that we can never understand and how everything seeks to come back to a state of clam and balance and harmony and it seems to me that everything is like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle and each of us only gets one tiny piece of that puzzle and we spend our lives trying to understand the whole picture from this tiny piece and if somehow we could catch a glimpse of what the picture is supposed to be about then we might be able to understand or make sense of where our piece fits in with the rest and all the excitement of the last while has shown me that it’s all interconnected somehow and that we all have our parts to play whereas just a few weeks ago I thought that my little piece of the puzzle was the whole picture itself.

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Chapter 25 The finished result depends on how you mix all the different elements together and you have to get the 215

proportions just right or the glass will be too fragile and the bottles will easily break says Mr Kavanagh while we’re sitting in his office after he’s shown me around the factory and I’m glad to be out of the noise and the heat of the place even if it was fascinating to see how glass bottles are made and I have Orla to thank for organizing this little private tour to make up for the fact that I missed the school trip because I was at home recovering from my clash with the ash so to speak and I finally got to see the gobs of molten glass heated to nearly 2000˚C slipping still glowing bright orange into the moulds and some of the moulds have writing embossed on the inside and when the hot air is blown inside them the glass fills out and presses into the walls of the moulds and when the bottles come out the writing is in relief on the glass and in Mr Kavanagh’s office he has shelves full of all sorts of bottles in different sizes and shapes and colours and there’s beer bottles in brown or green glass and milk bottles and lemonade bottles and a few bottles that look very old and he shows me some of the ingredients like the fine white silica sand and crushed limestone and sodium carbonate which 216

he says is the same as washing soda and I never knew that they put that stuff in glass and he says most of the ingredients can be found in Ireland but there’s some stuff that has to be imported from the continent and he shows me some lead that goes into the mixture as well and I say would ye not get lead poisoning if ye drank from the bottle and he says not at all you see glass is inert and I nod my head though I only half understand what that means and he’s a very nice man really even if he is in the IRA like Billy O’Dwyer says and I see that he’s decided to keep the beard and the grey in it makes him look a bit older and he talks to me as if he’s known me all his life and I don’t mention a thing about him nearly running me off the road on my way to school in the mornings and anyway the black Mercedes disappeared at the same time as he did and who knows where it is now and he has his secretary bring us in a pot of tea and a plate full of ginger nut biscuits which I really like but are a bitch to eat because they’re really hard and I’m not used to eating with my new false teeth so I have to dip the ginger nuts in the tea to soften them up and me ma says it’s rude to dip your biscuits in public but 217

what choice do I have and Mr Kavanagh doesn’t seem to mind one way or the other and we have a grand old chat and he speaks with a slow sadness about him and he says ye know Liam I had a lot of time to think when I was tied up in that barn and it opened my eyes to a few things and who knows maybe being kidnapped might turn out to have been the best thing that could have happened to me at this stage in my life while I can still make a few changes for the better and even though I’ve made plenty of money in the past I’ve also made plenty of mistakes and maybe more than most and to tell the truth sitting there tied up gave me a lot of time to think about all that and I came to the conclusion that the worry and the responsibility of running this place is more than it’s worth and I understand now that there’s more to life than making money and glass bottles and as chance would have it I’ve had a generous offer from a competitor that’ll give me more than enough to see out my days in comfort so I’ve agreed to sell the factory and sure everyone is moving away from glass now anyway so it’s probably a good time to get out of the game and it’s all 218

cartons and cans these days and the dairies are all giving up on milk bottles saying they’re a thing of the past and they say the cartons are more hygienic because they’re only used once and they’re lighter and easier to pack and less prone to breakage and that means big savings on transport costs and of course there’s some sense in it though it seems to me that if you can use the same milk bottle twenty times which is the average life span of a milk bottle that you could save quite a bit of packaging and even when the bottles get broken we can still melt them down and turn them back into new bottles again but now all the talk is cartons cartons cartons and it wouldn’t surprise me if they start putting beer in cartons next as if the cans weren’t hurting business enough already and anyway Liam I don’t really need to be talking to you about all this but you’re a good listener and having gone so long without being able to talk to anyone I have to watch myself now because once I get started I can get a bit carried away with myself and he sighs and after a bit he says ye know being married is not such an easy thing and being happily married is even more difficult 219

especially when you have a business to run and I don’t mind saying that I pretty much messed up my marriage so I’ve decided that when the sale of the factory goes through I’m going to move out to Spain and try to patch things up with the wife and she says that she’s willing to try and make a go of it too and to be honest I think the only thing I’ll miss about Ireland will be young Orla and I know my niece thinks very highly of you Liam and he must see me blush because he sorta chuckles and says you know we have no children of our own and my niece means the world to me and I want to thank you for standing by her through all this difficult time and then he looks at me long and hard and says she told me everything and I swallow and wonder if that includes the bit about his wife’s knickers too and then he says Orla said she’d tell you herself but sure I might as well let you know that she isn’t pregnant because her period came and maybe you don’t know but it sometimes happens that because of stress and worry a woman might miss her period and I just nod and blush some more and inside I’m relieved because I’ve had enough scandal lately not to get involved with more 220

a few months down the line and then he says I know you’ve been wondering just how much I really know and well I’ll tell you that there’s little enough goes on around here that I don’t hear about sooner or later and through mutual friends I’ve been told of your role in tracking down my kidnappers and I thank you kindly for that too and especially for keeping the gardai out of it and that kind of favour won’t be forgotten believe me and if there’s ever anything you need and I mean anything at all just say the word and just then the phone on his desk rings and he says what again well alright yes fine send him in and puts down the phone and says speak of the devil and that’s the gardai come to ask me more bloody questions and god knows I’ve told them everything about twenty times already but I suppose they just want to get their story straight and as you might know they’re not the brightest bunch and then there’s a knock on the door and in walks garda Dolan and there’s a smell of cigarettes on him and the big thick knuckles of the first two fingers of his right hand are stained yellow from the cigarette smoke and Mr Kavanagh says hello there garda you know 221

young Liam O’Brien I suppose and Dolan nods at me and says aye ‘tis a name dat’s been mentioned around to be sure and there’s something about the way he says it that makes my cheeks burn red and he continues on with venom in his voice and says de boy what made a widow out of Mrs Byrne dey’re callin’ him and dere’s more dan one or two families in de parish cursin’ dis little fecker’s name and Mr Kavanagh stares at garda Dolan and says in a very quiet and controlled voice that puts goose bumps on my arms I’ll have you remember garda that you are a public servant and guardian of the law and as such you owe this young man the respect he deserves for denouncing a terrible criminal and the compassion due to the victim of a cowardly assault and I won’t have him spoken about in this way on my premises by you or anyone else is that understood garda and Dolan doesn’t answer but instead takes out a cigarette and as he raises it to his lips I see that his hand is shaking and Mr Kavanagh says I’ll thank you for not smoking here and I see garda Dolan’s eyes get wider and his jaw tense and so I say I have a lot of homework to be doing so I better get going and Mr 222

Kavanagh says that’s probably a good idea and the garda and I will have a little chat and so I get up from my chair and say thanks for the tour Mr Kavanagh and he nods at me though he’s still staring at garda Dolan who is standing near the office door and Dolan doesn’t move so I have to squeeze past him to get out and as I step out of the office I almost crash into two big gardai who are standing out in the corridor and as I make my way out through the door to the car park I hear one of them mumble is that and the other says yeah dat’s him god love the fecker and a minute later I’m outside bent over fiddling with my bicycle lock when I see the three gardai coming out of the glass bottle factory and two of them are holding Mr Kavanagh by the arms and as they manoeuvre him into the back of the garda car I see that he has his hands handcuffed behind his back.

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Chapter 26 The field behind O’Dwyer’s barn is green with the shoots of a crop of barley coming up out of the wet dark earth and the trees are starting to have leaves now and the sparrows and swallows are back from wherever they go on their winter holidays and it must be great to be able to fly off like that and get out of Ireland once the weather turns bad and I’m sitting on 224

the hay sofa up in the bales looking out at it all and Billy has just filled a pipe and as he lights up he says so what’s new then and I say microchip technology and he says ye what and I say well you asked what’s new and it’s all the rage nowadays and they’ve even started putting computers into the school now and they’re teaching us computer programming and Billy says what use will that be to ye and I say I’m not sure really and what use is any of the stuff they teach us at school anyway and sometimes I think we’d all be better off learning something practical like you’re doing and then at least we’d know how to grow our own food and there’s the lads doing the Group cert learning how to lay bricks and how to build houses so they can go and make some money working on the building sites in England and in a year’s time they’ll be earning more than any fella that’s has his Leaving Cert and it seems to me that learning how to build a house’d be a much better thing to learn than how to do algebra which we’ll probably never use again the minute we step out of school and I hear there’s one of them fancy schools up in Dublin where ye learn how to drive and that’s a 225

great idea and there’s a far sight more people wanting to be driving cars when they leave school than there will be wanting to know the sine or cosine of a given number and the rules of the road are of more use to ye than the rules of geometry and can ye imagine back less than a hundred years ago nearly everyone built their own houses and grew their own food and I think that’d be a fantastic thing to know how to do and Billy hands me the pipe and says it’d be hard work though and ye’d have to get yer hands dirty and there’s plenty of people’d rather be sitting in an office playing with bits of paper than doing any real work but sure I suppose we need them too but they’ll be out of a job soon enough when all these computers come along and do their work for them and ye’d just need one fella there in an office to make sure that they were all plugged in properly and he’d probably spend half his time drinking tea and readin’ the paper and that’d be a good job for you so it would and I can picture ye sittin’ there in a room fulla computers and a dirty big muga tea in front of ye while ye’d be doing the crossword and ye’d probably be makin’ more money at that than I 226

would make from labouring the land so ye would and I say so ye’ll take over the farm when you’re done in the agricultural college will ye and Billy says well I wouldn’t say take over though the da says he’ll be expecting me to be doin’ a lot more of the work and him a lot less and he’s goin’ on about how the feckers over in Brussels in the E.E.C. are talking about cutting back the subsidies on the milk and how he’d bring the cows on down to the meat factory if it hadn’t closed down and he says there’s no future in agriculture in this country and I say well you’re the expert and he says well I have a few ideas alright and for sure things’ll have to change a bit on the farm but we’ve had a few long chats with me da and the bank says they’ll lend us the money to build a few growing tunnels and anyway they’re not that expensive to put up since it’s only sheets of plastic and they’re easier to build than the old grennhouses anyway and I say yeah it’s all plastic instead of glass these days and what’ll ye grow anyway and he says I don’t know if ye know them things called courgettes and I say yeah me ma wanted some ‘cos she saw this recipe for them in some women’s magazine but 227

down the shops they said they’d never heard of them and Billy says well I’m thinking we could give them a go and I Iooked into it and ye can get them up in Dublin but they’re all imported and apparently there’s not too much of a taste to them so the Irish might eat them and they sell for a helluva lot more money per kilo than ye’d get for the barley growin’ out there and sure that’d be hardly worth growing if ye didn’t get the subsidy payments on it and anyway it wouldn’t be only courgettes ‘cos I’d put tomatoes in there too and me da says he’s not too sure about courgettes but they might work and he remembers well when ye couldn’t get tomatoes in Ireland either and then I could do some strawberries as well and that’d be enough to be concentrating on in the beginning until we see how it goes and the da says the best thing about growing vegetables is that they don’t need to be milked twice a day and we both laugh and then Billy pulls out his Henri Winterman’s tin and picks out a few of the seeds and says I was thinking I might try growing a few of these too and there’s a fella in the college I was telling ye about who grows the stuff and accordin’ to him they’re not 228

much more difficult to grow than tomatos and there’s another fella he knows who’ll buy everything I can grow and it’d make a fair bit of extra cash so it would and I say well yer da won’t be too happy about that if he finds out and Billy says are ye joking me and he’s all for it and sure doesn’t he stick some in his pipe every evening now and I say real surprised he does not does he and Billy says he does to be sure and he caught me up here smokin’ one evening and he knew straight away what it was and I thought I was in for a right bollockin’ but instead he just sat down beside me right there where you’re sitting now and said here give us a taste of that and we had one of the best chats ever and he says ‘tis better than the whiskey and cheaper too and there’s no hangovers in the mornings and my ma says he’s more peaceful when he’s had a smoke and doesn’t want to be singing the ould rebel songs like when he’s had the drink taken and my da says that it’s not really drugs and that it’s probably less harmful than growing barley that can be turned into whiskey and could kill a man who drank a bottle of the stuff when all that’s going to happen to ye if ye smoke too much ganja is 229

that ye’ll fall asleep and maybe have some weird dreams and I say well to be fair you could get lung cancer from smoking it and Billy says yeah and ye could ruin yer liver with the drink and even smoking cigarettes is going to give ye lung cancer and I say I suppose you’re right and Billy says don’t get me wrong I’m not saying that it’s good for ye but lotsa people do lotsa things that aren’t good for them and it’s not like the heroin that yer man Kavanagh was smuggling into the country and I say so ye heard about that and he says well it’s in all the papers about how he was using them trucks coming in from the continent with the heroin all packaged up to look like something that they needed for putting in the glass and I say how d’ye think they found out about it and what did it have to do with him being kidnapped and Billy says well the story I heard was that the fellas who were found in the meat factory had somehow heard about how Kavanagh was bringing in the heroin probably from some fella braggin’ when he was drinking or something and their plan was that they wanted Kavanagh to give them the heroin and that in the future he would be dealing through them 230

and Kavanagh told them that there wouldn’t be a shipment due in for another month so they said they’d hold on to him until it came and once they had their hands on the stuff he’d be let loose and yer man Kavanagh was hoping that someone would find him ‘cos he’s kinda high up in the IRA and he thought fellas’d be looking for him though he didn’t expect it to be you and lucky for him that his niece is a good looking young wan or ye probably wouldn’t have bothered at all would ye and I laugh and say no I probably wouldn’t have either and Billy says what’s the story there anyway and did ye manage to get off with her or anything and I say nah sure it was the kinda thing that could never work really and after what happened to her she was only looking for a bit of comfort and wasn’t really ready for a boyfriend and anyway from the minute I saw her put the milk in her tea after it was served I knew that it could never work between us.

TO BE COMPLETED – SOON! One more final chapter to come – watch this space 231

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