Sandra was bulling. Jesus, she said. I’ve enough on my hands with the kids without having to go off and skivvy. Though if she’d brushed up on the typing, she could have got something good. Even tempwork would have been better than nothing.
Because that’s what was in store for him. Pushing thirty with not a skill to his name outside the forklift. Nothing for it but to head off to the Navan Road and sign on the scratcher. Hatch Two, 10 a.m., Tuesdays.
He was entitled to Benefit, which was more than what he’d get these days. You wouldn’t get pin money now, and at the same time they’re still handing out all class of stuff to you-name-it. He’s not a racist, never has been, but he can’t help thinking there’s the government talking about this new recession and austerity measures, and you have all these people that weren’t even born here, with God knows what diseases and a rake of kids and their mots up the stick with another one to make sure they don’t get turfed out, and the powers that be are still tripping over themselves to give them a luxury apartment and a tidy little pay packet. And for what? For your man to sit on his arse, getting up to all sorts with his robber pals. Ritchie hates it when he talks like that: Da, you can’t be saying that stuff. You’re generalising. And he knows that’s true, to a point, but once he starts, he can’t stop. Yeah, Ritchie, but most of them have police records back there. No smoke without fire. You have to ask why they’re on the run. Our own kids, hard-working, not able to buy their own home, or if they do, mortgaged to the hilt, having got to live off seventy odd quid a week, if you’re lucky. You know what I mean, Ritchie. And the fuckers in power are telling us to tighten our belts?
Ritchie can never say much to that, though his wife, sour-faced young one, always stares over at Des when he talks like that, like she wants to kill him.
In many ways, it was better then, even though they’d be queuing for hours, all the men with strong backs and strong hands and no university degrees, while beside them, the young ones with their babies would be up two at a time to get their Unmarried Mothers. In and out like a relay race. Des’ hatch was cursed with a slowcoach culchie from Donegal, thick as two planks and she had it in for the jackeens. Laid on the mucker accent twice as strong, just out of spite.
He had time, though. Even if, like most young men, he had no idea of its worth. The games of poker at Holy Joe Fenton’s on the Tuesday after the scratcher, the pints in the Hut. The films on a Wednesday, him in his jocks and vest, watching Lauren Bacall blow a kiss at Bogey. And he loved getting up late, though Sandra was always at him.
It was her who drove him into it. He would have been happy enough just getting by. He wouldn’t have picked up that paper and he would swear on his bollocks he would never have looked twice at that ad. It’s funny. He can still remember every word, though the number’s gone clean out of his head.
He’d been three years on the rock’n’roll. Sandra was up the pole again, with Jason. And, like every time before: Nag nag bleedin nag.
Why don’t you look at the jobs pages again, Dessie? We need to get the kids their books and uniforms. There has to be something there, Dessie. Part-time, nixer. We can’t survive on that welfare. Is it you don’t want to look, Dessie? Is it that you don’t want to be a good father to your kids? Is it you’re thinking you’ll keep heaping the pressure on me and I’ll break?
Pressure? Break? Fucksake, he’d thought. But anything for a quiet life, so after the midday pint, he picked up a copy of the Herald. It was the first thing he saw.
Strong experienced driver needed for deliveries, house removals etc. Must be willing to work late. Cash in hand.
Underneath, a number. Southside.
He gave them a bell. No choice, he told himself, not with Sandra breathing down his neck. While in his mind Southside was whispering, drawing him. She wouldn’t be able to keep tabs on him from the other end of the city.
A husky voice answered, a woman’s, with a touch of the foreign to it that was unusual back in them days before the migrants started. She asked a few questions and that was that. Afterwards he would think it was lucky it was he who rang, because they might have been landed with some ignoramus who’d have walked straight into it and then maybe taken it all wrong.
Near the end of the call she asked: Are you of open mind, Mr Maguire?
Funny question, but he put it down to her being foreign. Open mind, he thought. Christ, love, he wanted to say, I’m open to anything that’ll put a few extra pound in my pocket and get the missus off my back.
Of course, I am, he said, using the good voice he used at interviews. No worries there.
The line went a bit funny – P&T, useless at maintenance – so he couldn’t catch what she said next.
Yeah, great, no problem, he said anyway. Thinking: any job’s better than none.
Only afterwards he copped she’d been talking about Christo.
They lived in Sandymount, in a lovely little place on the seafront; dainty from the outside, though it went down deep at the back. There were just the two of them. Isabella and Christo.
The van was in Christo’s name, so it would look like he was the one taking care of business. But it was Isabella who did all the book-keeping and handled the orders. She was Italian, she told Des. Used to be an opera singer. She’d come to Ireland before the war and fell in love with a doctor. Had Christo, stayed on, never went back. The Communists, she said, with a sad smile, though Des hadn’t been about to ask why. He never found out what happened to the doctor.
A nice lady, he thought. Not wealthy, but grand in her own way. Very. And glamorous was the word that came to him later, when he was making his way back to Cabra on the 122.
Jet-black hair, eyes like Sophia Loren, an ivory silk dressing-gown barely clinging to her shoulders.
She was upfront – he had to hand it to her.
My son is a depressive, she told Des. He is a good boy but he has problems. He can be moody. It is influenced by the weather.
Uh oh, thought Des, but she was staring at him with her Sophia Loren eyes and her cleavage was moving with her breath like God himself had put it there.
It’s just, she said, and paused.
Uh oh, thought Des again.
Her black eyes flickered, made a decision.
Sometimes, when his mood is not happy, he likes to dress up. That’s why we need…
No worries, said Des, interrupting, feeling his teeth stretch in a smile. Didn’t ask: Dress up as what, Missus? Just added something about the world being a boring place if we were all the same and all God’s creatures, and she smiled, and even laughed, showing her own teeth, beautiful as a row of pearls.
He hasn’t thought about it for years. Not hard, the past is the past. But there was a programme on the box the other evening that had flashed up while he was looking for the Arsenal match. It’s very difficult, they were saying to the presenter, to get the hands and the chin right.
He didn’t realise how hard he was staring till:
Jesus, Da, said Triona, over for the Sunday dinner, never would have pegged you for—
Huh, he said, and zapped. That’s just wrong.
With Christo, it’s not that he didn’t notice, or wasn’t bothered. You’d want to be blind back then not to take a second gawk at a young lad wearing tights and a handbag. He didn’t look brutal, exactly. When he wasn’t dressed up he was good-looking enough. Twenty odd, slim. His hands were small for a fella, but that programme was right; they did look wrong when he was dolled up. And a bit too narrow in the hips for a real mot, though from the side he was grand. Long legs, shapely. Like an ad for stockings. That part was alright. But the make-up. Christ on a bicycle. And even without that, Des would have never mistook him for anything real. The chap would never have inspired him to – you know.
You’d wonder sometimes why he’d stayed on once he knew. He’d only done a couple of jobs by then, so it wasn’t as if he owed them anything. There was no contract. They’d no rights. Even before Christo came down that morning, Des hadn�
��t felt too easy around him. The lad was very shy. But you can put that to one side, can’t you? A job’s a job. And when he appeared that first time on the landing, in the green dress like an Aer Lingus trolley dolly, with the wig and the slap, even though it was a shock – Des felt a bale of bricks land on his chest, his gob slack as a halfwit’s, down at his knees, because what was it, exactly, that he was looking at? – he was somehow able to put that to one side too.
There was the money, of course. And Sandra.
It was awkward. You couldn’t deny that. Des was bothered not so much on his own account, but more how was he going to explain Christo to the customers? That first time, they were booked to do a removals job for an old doll living near Leonards Corner on the South Circular. She was moving out to Ballinteer to live with her niece, and it was a worry, he’d admit that, how she’d react. Heart attack, he kept thinking. Whatever about the niece.
Before they set off from Sandymount, Christo went down the road to sort out the van. Des was hanging on behind, standing on the front steps of the house, having a fag, catching his breath after the shock. Then Isabella came up behind him. She’d headed out of the hallway before Christo had come downstairs. Afterwards Des realised she’d wanted to see what he would do – a runner, or stay put? Now she was just inside the hall door. He could hardly see her, they kept it so dark inside, with all those green plants like a jungle. But he could smell her perfume, and hear the rustle of what she was wearing, another satin dressing-gown, black, very classy.
She leant over to him so he could feel the breath on his neck, and put her hand on his arm. It was then he figured out why she’d left him on his own with Christo. He’d never been into any of that psychic crap, but it was like one of those premonitions, that déjà vu Sandra was always banging on about.
All Isabella said, though, was a whisper: Keep him in the van, Mr Maguire.
So that’s what he did. All day, kept Christo inside the back door of the van, loading and unloading while he did all the carrying. He found it easy and that surprised him. No, no, he’d say, there’s a load of work for you to be doing here. I’m grand, son, not a bother. Hardest day’s work he ever did but in a strange way, it was worth it. The old doll wandered out a couple of times, worried about her china but, God bless her, she was no Inspector Morse. Couldn’t tell a green light from a red one, let alone a not too bad-looking young fella in a dress from a real mot. And on the other end, the niece was a lazy dose, stayed inside her semi-d the whole time, said she was down with the flu. Normally Des wouldn’t have taken that guff, but that day he’d have been prepared to offer up a novena to keep the waggon inside. So in the end, they were right as rain.
They found their groove. Little rituals, warning signs. Isabella used to give him black coffee and cucumber sandwiches on the days Christo wasn’t feeling too good. That was how she put it.
Christo isn’t feeling well.
Looking at him with her sloe-black Sophia Loren eyes, the eyeliner at the edges peeking up, little cats’ tails, and Des would nod, eager almost, like it was their secret together.
She never waited for Christo on those days. Always skedaddled, leaving Des on his tod, as if everything was alright as long as she and her son weren’t in the same place at the same time. She didn’t want to have to see it, and he could understand. Someone else gawking at her boy when he was like that. If she didn’t see him witnessing it, she could let on that everything was AOK. And Des found he wanted to help her keep pretending, God knows why, but he did.
03:56
That fucking McFadden one.
Up to a couple of weeks back, she was grand, bearable at least. Then, coming up to the pre-test, she told Des her ‘partner’ had shown her how to steer. Oh, you’re all the same, he found himself thinking. Coming here looking for help, trying to weasel all my little tricks out of me, acting grateful, making me feel king of the world. Then you start picking up a few tips from your fucking ‘partner’ and before you know it, it’s all gone to the dogs.
He told her as much: You know, Miss McFadden, he said, I’m not doing this for the good of my health. I’m doing this to impart information, to protect the safety of the public, and your own.
Not even a thank you.
The other day, she turns to him at a traffic light, ready to go into first.
Mr Maguire, she says, I wonder if you could tell me what to do with the steering wheel instead of moving it for me the whole time.
He looked at her. Her skin was shiny over the make-up, like her stockings. Her mouth in a round ‘o’ shape like she was about to kiss someone. He smiled.
Of course, that’s absolutely fine, Miss McFadden. Sure we all have to learn by doing, don’t we?
She nodded and before the nod was even halfway over, he was off.
And into first, foot on the clutch, let it up. Mirror. Mirror. MIRROR. Wheel to me. My side. Hold the clutch. Hold it, hold it. Handbrake down. Wheel, your side. More revs, more, hold the clutch – ah – No.
The car shook, stalled.
He heard himself tut, a grannyish sound like Sandra started making after the change.
Her pink mouth a tight line. Still annoys him now, even after today, just thinking about that. And he knows he was being a fucker, but he was Jesus-damned if he was going to let that little bitch think her so-called partner could teach her things he couldn’t.
He began to call her Isabella Loren. Not to her face, but to himself. She looked like the movie star in her prime, lush and ripe even though she was pushing forty-five. Forty-five. Now that’s youngish. But he always thought of Isabella as the Older Woman. Because he was hanging around mostly with Christo, probably, and he was a good bit younger.
Hanging around at work, now. It wasn’t like they were pals. He had plenty of his own compadres: Arthur Regan, Holy Joe Fenton, his cousin Eddie. The odd poker game on a quiet Tuesday, the Hut or Doyle’s most evenings. And Christo was so shy, even on his good days, it was an effort to be around him. Des felt he had to be doing all the talking. That would wear anyone out. You wouldn’t call someone like that a pal.
Though he did grow on him, especially once the summer started. That was how it worked, Christo’s depression: it changed with the weather. It didn’t have a name back then, but only recently, Des saw an article about a young one who had the same thing. Poor young one. She’d topped herself on account of it.
There was a photo of her and she kind of reminded Des of someone but he couldn’t figure it out at first, because she was different, of course; a young one for starters, and a stunner. Not obvious, but she’d get to you, dark and miserable like Winona Ryder. It was her eyes that made it click into place. They were just like Christo’s. Big and sad.
Seasonal Affective Disorder. They call it by the initials, the article said.
Gas, thought Des, having a sickness that’s called what it means. Instead of, say, pneumonia. What’s that – Scotch Mist? But SAD, that’s like Ronseal.
The summer lengthened. Christo was doing A-One-Ball by then, going weeks at a time without dressing up. Fine by Des. Meant he could get him out of the van and carrying more, saving the stress on his own back. As the sun shone brighter, he started opening up as well. Not exactly chatty, but not so clammed up.
Then this one day, they were driving along towards Clonskeagh, at the junction of Milltown and Eglinton Road. They were just about to take a right, when they spied an old fella on a bike. He was wearing a dirty old cap and a mac, belted round with a piece of string, shoes falling apart, and his bike had no jaysus tyres. Christo said something then, out of the blue – for the life of him, Des would never remember – and it cracked Des up no end.
It was the first time he’d heard the lad make a joke, and he realised he was laughing as much for that as for the joke itself. Christo seemed very pleased, a pinky colour on his cheeks, and he gawked down at the dash, still shy, like he was knowing Des was looking at him and laughing, not at him but with him, and it was then Des saw—
/> Him, he supposed.
His eyes were half-closed, those long lashes just resting on his cheeks. The sun was shining off his hair, making it a silvery colour – he was browny-haired but went blond in the sun – and: Fuck me, thought Des, this young fella doesn’t need to dress up to look like a young one, he’s got it already. He’s more like a mot the way he is now than with all the slap and high heels.
He wasn’t thinking anything sick, like that he – you know. Just that, of a sudden, he could see why Christo did it, going to all that bother with Isabella’s make-up and the wigs. Except he also saw Christo didn’t need to do it at all. And he knew then why he got so low with the SAD. It was because he thought he was never going to look like what he felt on the inside, he was only able to be a – the word stalled, then burst inside Des’ mind – a mockery.
Christo looked up then and Des would have sworn there were tears in his eyes. They were probably just from laughing, on account of the joke. But in that moment he wasn’t so sure. So he looked back at the road and beeped at some woman driver – probably frightened her off the road for life, too fucking easy to do that with the mots – pretending she’d cut in front of them. He kind of knew Christo saw what he was doing, that he was letting on he hadn’t – you know – but somehow it didn’t bother him.
He was surprised it didn’t get more awkward after that. On the contrary. Christo made a few more jokes and they weren’t bad, and Des didn’t mind thinking of things to say to him in between. Christo seemed to be listening to him, like whatever Des said was spot-on, pure expert, and what’s more, he’d a few things to say himself, like about the diesel tanks they use on old Fiats in Italy and how Bonner would work out as a goalie in the European Cup. It was a nice afternoon, very sunny, and they went for their first pint after, to the Horse Show House in Ballsbridge.
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