by Tony Black
“You’re codding. Ye don’t know?” said Pat.
Marti shook his head.
“Man alive, it’s a sheltered life ye had in Australia. Lookit, it’s when a woman’s after drying up down the way.” Pat pointed to his mickey and Marti laughed. “Do ye want to stay ignorant of the ways of the world?” said Pat.
“Sorry,” said Marti.
“All right so, but you better listen, for it’s for your benefit I’m telling,” said Pat. He was very serious and making all the hand movements to show how serious he was. Pat said the old change of life business was when the whole plumbing goes dodgy after a while and it turns the woman a bit mad because she cannot have any more children.
The old change of life business made Marti worried. Aunt Catrin was mad enough already and if she was to get much worse like Pat said then there could be all manner of troubles ahead. If it happened to all women like Pat said then couldn’t Mam go well and truly beyond the beyonds when it was her turn. It didn’t sound good at all and he wished he had never asked Pat because there were some things in this world that were better not knowing about.
“What the feck was that?” said Pat.
“I don’t know,” said Marti. “Someone is shouting.”
“I know it’s shouting,” said Pat. “Shit, I’ll bet it’s the guards. Someone will have seen smoke from the fire.” Pat started to kick soil onto the fire and there was lots of smoke and then there was coughing and hacking at the smoke that came up from the fire.
“Come on, Pat. We should run,” said Marti. The shouting got louder and louder and then Pat spotted Guard O’Dowd down the way, waving his fist and shouting.
“Stop. Stop. Stop where ye are.”
Guard O’Dowd had his hat off and was holding it in his hand, and Marti could see his shiny bald head bobbing up and down when he tried to run through the thick grass and the ferns and the bramble bushes down the way.
“Come on, Pat, leave the fire and run now. Come on,” said Marti. There was still lots of smoke coming from the fire when Marti got hold of the bicycle and started to push it along the old railway tracks. Pat ran behind and when Marti started the pedalling fast Pat jumped on the seat.
The bicycle wouldn’t go very fast at all on the old railway tracks, and there was lots of shaking and swaying and the noise of Guard O’Dowd shouting.
“He’s very close,” said Pat, and Marti said he was going as fast as he could but the bicycle didn’t like the railway tracks. Pat said they would be better running and Marti said there was a hill down the way and wouldn’t they be fine if they made it there and got a bit of a speed up.
“Go. Go, Marti. Go for the hill,” said Pat. He pressed hard into the pedals and there was rocking and swaying to get the speed up. “We’re nearly there, quick,” said Pat, and there was more rocking and swaying and Marti pressed harder into the pedals but they would only spin very fast this time, and the bicycle was thrown out of control when they went over the hill.
“Oh, Jaysus, Marti,” said Pat, “we’ll be killed entirely.” Marti couldn’t talk at all with the bicycle racing out of control. There were branches and bushes flying past very fast and he gripped onto the handlebars as hard as he could. The basket started to crash and clatter about and then it went flying up into the air and when it came down there was a loud crash as it went bouncing on very fast right to the bottom of the hill. Everything seemed to move very quickly and there was a green blur from the grass and a blue blur from the sky and then there was the noise of the bicycle reaching the bottom of the hill and thumping into a mound of earth. Marti and Pat landed on their backs, and when Marti looked at Pat there were daisies in his hair and he started the laughing.
“Ha-ha, look at the flowers,” he said.
“What about you with the brown face? Aren’t ye like a grotty old knacker.” There was hard laughing and then Marti noticed the bicycle had a buckled front wheel and the handlebars were all pushed to the side.
“Oh, Pat, look at the bike.”
“Ah sure it’s banjaxed.”
Marti sat looking at the bicycle and he felt the sadness because he knew he had been bold and would be in trouble again. He wanted to run away very far and never have to see anybody in Kilmora ever again, and then he started to hear Pat shouting, “Run, Marti, run,” but it was too late when Guard O’Dowd reached down and grabbed him round the neck with his very big hand.
15
Joey couldn’t take it anymore. The strain was too much. Another whiskey was called for. It wasn’t Jameson but it tasted fine enough – it could have been the crystal decanter it came out of. The cabin was luxury all right, sparkling it was, even the ceilings looked like they’d been polished. The air conditioning was wafting out a cool breeze that filled the place, but Paddy Tiernan was sweating, the sky blue of his shirt turning to black where sweat soaked the fabric.
What had he done, thought Joey. This Paddy fella was as crooked as two left feet, sure he was. Holy Mother of God, gambling the last of his money away, did it get any worse? If the money was lost, what then? Jaysus, it didn’t bear thinking about. He closed his eyes tight and tried to shut out the scene in front of him.
“Raise,” said one of the card players. Joey opened his eyes and looked at a man of forty with wiry little glasses, the air of a bank manager, an eye like a stinking eel.
“Jaysus, I’m folding,” said Paddy. He was scanning the deck and shaking his head, sweat gleaming on the wet ends of his hair.
Joey stared at Paddy. He looked like a bogtrotter that was lost in the city, way out of his depth, so he was. “Paddy, would ye get out?” he said.
Paddy’s face was beaming, beet red. “Deal me in, fellas,” he said. “Deal me in.”
Joey’s heart pumped so hard he wondered would it burst out of him. He turned his back on the game. He couldn’t watch another hand. There was more laughter at the table, another quick hand had finished. He looked over his shoulder to see the man with the look of a bank manager scooping money from the middle of the table towards him. He thought he recognised some of his curled-up notes sliding across. They were the same notes he had carried, tightly bound and close to his chest, for days. It was the money from the house sale, all he had to find Marti, all he had to sort out the mess his life had become. Without the money he knew he was finished, done for entirely.
“Right, that’s enough,” said Joey. He swung Paddy around on his chair. “The game’s over. I’ll have what’s left of my money.”
“Joey, man. Calm down,” said Paddy.
“I’ll give ye calm down. Having a rapid time losing my money, are ye?”
“Is there some problem here?” said the salt. He stood up and fastened the brass buttons on his jacket. It was a look Joey had seen on many a doorman, many a time.
“And you can feck off, ye bollix,” he said.
Paddy stood up. “Tis all right, tis all right. Joey, come on now.” Paddy placed an arm round Joey’s shoulder and walked him away from the card game towards the door of the cabin. “Joey man, ye cannot be disrupting a game like this. They’ll have us both chained up for the rest of the voyage.”
“Paddy, you’ve spun me some wide shite here …”
“I cannot deny I’ve had a bit of a losing streak – tis the luck ye take. These fellas are good, so they are.”
“How much is left?”
“Not much. It doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t matter. Get what’s left of my money.”
“I cannot, that’s what I mean. I’m in till I’m out – tis the rules.”
Joey felt his stomach start to turn over. “Christ above, Paddy, what have ye done to me?” He slumped in the jamb of the door and Paddy placed a hand under his arm for the support that was needed. Joey saw him glance over his shoulder at the game as he did it. Wasn’t the man hooked entirely. He couldn’t get the game out of his mind for a second even.
“Joey, I’m still in there, sure,” said Paddy. His voice was rising. He had no cl
ue at all of the circumstances they were in. “Go back to the cabin and calm yeerself down. I could be back with some winnings yet.” Paddy’s face was shining and he was breathing hard, but he placed both his hands under Joey’s arm and eased him out the door. “My luck is bound to change, losing streaks never last long.”
“Don’t kid yeerself,” said Joey, but he could tell Paddy never heard a word of it. He was miles away, imagining himself some grand hero of the green baize, piles of winnings stacked up before him. The cabin door closed shut and Joey heard a key turned in the lock. He fell back on the wall, slumped to the ground, his stomach turned over once more, and then he vomited.
The smell was vile, tinged with whiskey, and forced him to his feet. He walked through the ship’s corridors – wasn’t it desperate entirely, he thought. It was headed for poor street, he was, for sure. His hopes were destroyed. He’d been a bloody fool, an eejit, what the Irish call, an omadhaun. Taken in by Paddy he was, a Dingle redneck that anyone with half a brain in their skull could see was as wide as a gate. Oh, it was a grand plan, was it not, the gambling. Double your money, triple it maybe and rock back to Kilmora like he was the cat’s whiskers. It was blown now, so it was. Wouldn’t he be going back in a worse state than he left. Penniless, with a wife deserted him and a son, ruined already, probably.
He kept the cabin light off and lay on his bunk in the darkness for what seemed like hours. He was looking at some trying times ahead, so he was. Jaysus, had there been any other class of times, he wondered? It was never supposed to be like this. He tried to think of good times from the past, before Marti even. There had to be some, it wasn’t all like this was it? Shauna had said life was what you made of it. They would have grand times together, so they would. She had told him this when they were younger, when they had only their hopes, and hadn’t they plenty once. Joey could still see Shauna, the way she was before their hopes were dashed and the Black Dog caught up with her.
He managed a smile when he thought of Shauna, sitting on the wall outside Gleesons Bakery, waiting for the whistle to blow and himself to come running. He would stride with his chest out and raise her off the wall and she would shriek and scream when the flour got onto her dress. The young lifter boys were all mad jealous, nudging and pointing when they saw her waiting at Gleesons with the wide smiles and the long black hair. Even the old men who worked the ovens were forever cracking toothless grins and saying, “Tis a fine mot ye have found for yeerself, young Driscol, a fine mot indeed.”
He had wondered why Shauna would choose him when she could have chosen anyone at all in the whole world. He wondered why she would be interested in him at all, with only the job at Gleesons, got for him by his father, the great hurling player, who thought his son was fit for no better. He wondered if Shauna would leave him eventually and he decided then that it was only a matter of time before she did. He could still see his picture of Shauna in his mind, the way she was. It was still so real he felt as if he was with her yet. Why did she never leave him, then? Why did she wait until it was least expected, after they had been through so much together that he thought she would never leave him now.
The ship’s swaying made Joey feel like he had arrived at some strange place between the past and the present. He knew he couldn’t hate Shauna for leaving him and taking Marti away from him anymore. There was too much had passed between them for that, but wasn’t it all a mighty saddener. He tried not to think about what her reasons might be for leaving now because there was no reason at all. It was the Black Dog was to blame surely, and the cause of that was something Joey could do nothing about.
He rummaged through his things for Shauna’s diary. There would maybe be some hint there, some kind of pointer to what she was thinking. He wanted to understand her. He wanted to know what could make her think taking Marti from him was the answer. He found the little leather book and skipped a few pages from the last entry he had read:
Dr Cohn thinks I have issues with everything, he thinks I want to just hide from them all, but he’s so wrong. I want to face them down. Joey’s way is to run, to hide from everything, he locks things away in his head and thinks they don’t exist anymore. But they do. They always do, and I’m sick of hiding from them …
Joey knew what Shauna was on about, the thing she wanted them to face, but he couldn’t. It was all a shock to him seeing Shauna’s thoughts for the first time. The picture he had in his mind of her vanished. He felt like he was getting to know her all over again and she wasn’t the same person. He didn’t want to know this person. This person was a stranger. Shauna was ill sure, and this person was trying to blame Joey for it.
As he threw down the diary, the cabin door started to creak slowly open and Paddy crept inside. He carried with him a smell of whiskey, sweat and smoke.
“Tell me,” said Joey.
“We lost,” said Paddy. “Joey, I really am very, very …”
“Save it. I don’t want to hear your voice.” He turned over in the bunk – wasn’t he worthless like his old fella had said. He buried his face in the pillow, but Emmet Driscol’s words came with him. Worthless he was. He’d amounted to nothing, right enough. That’s what his father had told him when he left for Australia with Shauna, fleeing the scorn of the whole village, and now wouldn’t he be back in just the style to prove him right.
Joey felt like he was a boy still, facing the prospect of his father’s disapproval again. He could see his father’s eyes, the large whites and the darkness of the centres that looked into the marrow of you. Emmet Driscol never flinched when he set his eyes on anyone and Joey could feel the power of his father’s glare still watching him, still disapproving, still judging him lesser than himself.
When he woke in the morning the air of the cabin was thick and odorous. Joey’s head throbbed. He thought for a moment he had gone to Hell, and then he saw Paddy sitting over him, perched like a gargoyle waiting for him to waken. “I’m so sorry. It was the money for yeer boy,” he said.
“It’s gone now.”
“I feel like such a …”
“Loser?”
“Worse.”
“Well, join the club.” Joey sat up in the bunk, touched his head and found the bandage still in place.
“Joey … I expected you to be roaring like Doran’s Ass, at least giving out at me.”
“What would be the use?”
“Look … I’ve decided. I’m going to pay you back, every penny.”
Joey laughed in Paddy’s face.
“I mean it, Joey, every penny.”
“How will you manage that, a loser like yourself?”
“I don’t know, but I grant ye this: I will stick by your side till this debt is paid. I can help ye get your boy back too.”
Joey looked at Paddy with disbelief. Was this man a complete and total mentaller? He knew he should be angry with Paddy, should be belting him round the head, knocking sense into him, but wasn’t his type beyond learning. He was somewhere between a child and a dumb animal, a hapless kind and as ignorant as a bag of arses, for sure and certain.
Joey stood up. The air in the cabin was making it hard to breathe. He wanted out. He was already fully dressed, sleeping in his clothes like a right knacker. He reached for the door handle and brought in the morning light. “I want nothing more to do with you. Save your promises for the next eejit ye can con into handing over his last penny.”
“Joey, come on, you don’t mean that.”
“I do.”
“No ye don’t. I can tell you’re a good fella, aren’t ye just a bit messed up?”
“I was fine before I met you.” He walked through the door of the cabin. Paddy followed him into the corridor. “I have enough worries without a jinx like you following me around. Now would ye ever feck off and find someone else to annoy.”
“Joey, stop, would ye. I feel bad enough. Don’t I only want to make it up to you.”
“You cannot.”
“I can. Sure, I can get yeer money back with in
terest. I just need a bit of time. Let me help you find your boy, sure aren’t two heads better than one.”
“Usually, I’d say they were, but in this case I think I’d make an exception.” He strode back into the cabin and pulled down his bag.
“What are ye doing?” said Paddy.
“Packing. Tis you or me.”
“No, ye can’t do that. The ship’s full. They’ll not allow it.”
“I’ll sleep in the corridor, then.”
“Joey, see sense, man. You’ll be chained up – haven’t they your card marked already for yesterday’s showing.”
He lifted his bag and Marti’s Superman picture was placed gently under his arm. “I’m outta here.”
Paddy stood in front of him and stretched his arms apart to try and block the way, but Joey barged past and he was nearly knocked over. “Joey man, I thought we were friends.”
“Friends like you I can do without,” he said, and kicked the door shut when he left.
16
Guard O’Dowd said he was marching Marti up the road to Mam, where if there was any sense left in the woman she would belt the b’Jaysus out of him with a riding crop or some manner of painful strap. Guard O’Dowd still had his very big hand on Marti’s neck when he walked. When Marti didn’t walk fast enough there would be a squeeze on his neck and the guard would say by Christ it’s a whipping such as never was seen in the world I’d deliver if ye were a son of mine. The bicycle made a squeaking noise from the buckled front wheel and Marti could hardly steer at all with the handlebars all pushed to the side. He felt bad when he looked down at the bicycle, but Guard O’Dowd made it hard to look down at all when he was forever at the squeezing with his very big hand.
There were far too many boys about the place acting the giddy goat for Guard O’Dowd’s liking and wasn’t his job like throwing apples into an orchard morning, noon and night on account of their antics. It would never have been countenanced in his day, said Guard O’Dowd, when a man would be thanked for giving a young cur a wrap in the snot locker and the streets were a quieter place and safer entirely. These days it was desperate, verging on the diabolical, with all the carryings on about the place making old ladies scared to come out of their homes, afraid of a mouthful of cheek or worse. Guard O’Dowd squeezed Marti’s neck hard when he said a mouthful of cheek, and then there was a shove and a jolt and he was told, “Move yeerself.”
