by Donal Ryan
If them two detectives from inside in town ever came back promising justice would be done or asking if he knew anything about what Paddy done, with Jim Gildea behind them looking down at his shoes and trying to remember every detail to take home to Mary, he’d give them no hop. If any more business people arrived up with their Alsatian smiles and their auld spiel about deeds or deals or private treaties or what have you, he’d run them. He’d pull the phone from the wall altogether: no more of that auld craic. He wondered would Siobhán still want to call in and talk about the Shanleys and her mother being an awful wagon and her sisters being a smug pair of bitches and eat her apple sandwiches now that she’d had to bite a lad’s face to stop him being killed? Would she say Ah here, this lad is too much hassle for too little in the way of bravery or looks or charm or dates in big restaurants where foreign fellas with tea towels on their arms comes over to put salt on your chips for you? Would Mumbly Dave find a new friend who wouldn’t have poison thoughts about him every time he cracked a joke in front of a girl who had no more interest in him in a romantic way than in the man in the moon? There’s too many things in the world that can go wrong. There’s too many variables, that science teacher would have said. And even if you could catch all them auld variables in time, before they ballsed things up on you, everything would go bad for a finish, anyway. Interfered with or left alone, everything eventually turns rotten and dies.
ISN’T IT A PURE BALLS, Mumbly Dave said, that a man could have such luck and to have nothing only misery come of it? He used to think Johnsey was mad to be humming and hawing about selling the land, but now he knew what it really was: Johnsey had loyalty. Why else would he defend the Unthanks, and they feeding him with one hand and trying to pull out his guts with the other? It’s a great quality in a man. He was loyal to his family, even though they were all gone from him. He wouldn’t sell the land that kept them. He wouldn’t allow concrete to be poured on their years of toil. He could see past big auld plans for cinemas and shops and matchbox houses, and sure who’d benefit in the long run only the same few fat fuckers that was running the show all along and making pure-solid fools of the whole country? It’ll all come out some day, boy, that you was the only one to call a halt to all the auld grabbing and greed and that no money would pay you to sell out your auld home.
Siobhán said nothing, only bit back her broken nails and filed them with her elbow sawing madly back and forth and tutted and cursed those stupid inbred rednecks and the anger sparked off of her and it was impossible to know was she cross with the Penroses or the newspaper or Johnsey himself for causing so much upset just by being alive. It was hard to figure anything out about Siobhán, in all fairness. She was an unknowable thing, a solid mystery, like the black pool above on the side of Ton Tenna that Daddy said goes the whole way down to the centre of the earth and if you gave a few seconds looking at it you wouldn’t be able to turn your eyes away from its still darkness and you’d feel a mad attraction to it even though it struck terror into your heart and before you knew it Daddy would be saying Come on will you, what the hell are you at, and he’d have found the auld wandering heifer for the old boy who’d rang him for a digout and twenty minutes would have passed.
SIOBHÁN SAID he’d be an island of grass for a finish. The sudden way she spoke and the words she used made his brain stall for a few seconds and his heart jump. They’ll just build around you, love. And she moved over to his end of the long couch and put her hand on his forehead and ran her fingers back through his hair that he should have gotten cut ages ago but it’s quare hard to sit in that chair below in the barbers when that lady that works there now is pushing her big chest into the back of your head and you’re afraid to look into the mirror even in case she thinks you’re staring at her and you’re praying to God you don’t strike a horn and you know your face is gone purple and all she wants to know is are you going on any holidays. Auld Mugsy Foley never gave one shite where you were going on your holidays once you sat down and shut up and listened to him telling you what he’d do if he was the Tipp manager while he sheared your head clean of hair. Johnsey could see Mumbly Dave was watching all this and he wondered did Mumbly Dave think he was a right baby for getting knocked so easy and being saved by a girl from Junior Penrose’s boots while Mumbly Dave fought like a lion to keep Patsy Penrose from lamping him with his hurley? Did he even say thanks to Mumbly Dave? What was wrong with him at all? Where were the words in him?
Love, she called him. But sure, in all fairness, that auld wan that used come around with the breakfasts and the lunches and the dinners inside in the hospital used call everyone love. She even called Doctor Frostyballs it one day. She banged her trolley into the backs of his legs as he stood beside Johnsey’s bed and said Oh sorry, looove, and she winked at Johnsey as much as to say she wasn’t sorry at all, really, and Doctor Frostyballs only looked at her down his brown nose and barely moved for her. All them townie wans calls everyone love. But Siobhán wasn’t exactly a townie wan; she came from a big house out towards Clonbrien that Mumbly Dave showed him one day and he’d felt like a right sneak going out there at all to stare in through a row of trees at Siobhán’s home but he couldn’t stop himself imagining her bed inside in that big house, covered in the smell of her, and all her girly things lying around, and drawers full of mysterious, delicate, frilly things! Would he ever see that room for real? What would he even do in there, besides creep around like a sneak? It’d be like putting a shit in a perfume bottle, leaving the likes of him in there.
Mumbly Dave said he’d head away and leave them at it but Siobhán said they weren’t at anything, he had an awful cheek, but Mumbly Dave didn’t laugh, only stood at the door with a puss on him. She told him he couldn’t be going down around the village when all the peasants were so riled up – they’d be out around the place with torches and pitchforks next! But Mumbly Dave said he wasn’t afraid of the Penroses or anyone else, and he was used to ignoramuses giving him abuse, sure you had to grow a thick skin to be pals with that fella, and he cocked his thumb towards Johnsey and it was only then that Johnsey realized how easy it had been for him to sit up here like a gom, waiting to be entertained and carted around the country and told stories and shown hookers and saved from misery, and not once did he say thanks to Mumbly Dave for anything or even offer him a few bob for petrol for his yahoo car. He said Please don’t go ’way, Dave, and Mumbly Dave looked a bit embarrassed but he said Grand so, and he sat back down near the window like a soldier on guard duty and Siobhán stayed running her hand through Johnsey’s hair and once or twice she kissed his shoulder and the awful heaviness he’d had in his stomach since the Unthanks left with their tears began to lighten and Mumbly Dave started telling about the smell off of Pissypants Patsy Penrose’s underarms and how he thought there was creatures living under there as yet unknown to science.
SIOBHÁN SAID no more about him becoming an island of grass nor gave any opinion about the land again, only called in as usual and ate her quare sandwiches and Mumbly Dave started to stay when she called and that bit of crossness that had been between them for a while melted away like spring hailstones in the yard. Johnsey stopped feeling that stupid jealousy like he owned her and even when one day she leaned right over to get her fags out of her handbag and Mumbly Dave made a shape like he was mar dhea going to slap her arse, and he winked over at Johnsey with that old wicked smirk, he was able to smile back and laugh so that Siobhán straightened up and caught him and said What are you laughing at, and she swung around and caught Mumbly Dave smirking out of him and she knew well he was at devilment and she called him an ignorant bogtrotter and he called her a snobby auld bitch and Johnsey wondered how was it he couldn’t say them things like Mumbly Dave and make Siobhán open her eyes wide and cover her mouth as if to say she couldn’t believe her ears and laugh and slap him on the arm and just be easy and funny and normal. Why was he such an oddball?
December
WHO’S TO SAY a man and a woman has to do certain th
ings in a particular order? Do you have to first meet and then go around together for a while and hold hands and kiss and then get engaged and get married and build a house and have children and live out your days as snug as bugs? Sure that’s nearly all done away with now, surely, that holy sequence that meant you were respectable and doing things right opposite the neighbours and God. People have unconventional relationships these days. You’d hear talk on the radio about men marrying men and women marrying women and men and women not marrying each other at all, only living together in the one house and sure what about it? Our Lord surely had bigger fish to fry these days besides going around worrying about who was doing what in bed with who, what with all them madmen going around trying to kill everyone in His name.
There was no point in thinking too much about Siobhán or what she wanted, or if she wanted anything other than someone to listen to her giving out while she ate her sandwiches. If something is meant to be, it’s meant to be. Is that really true, though? If it is, couldn’t you do anything you wanted and never be held accountable? You’d just say Jaysus sorry about that, but it was meant to be, don’t you know we’re all slaves to fortune? Like them Punch and Judy puppets that used be pucking the heads off of each other inside in their little tent in Dromineer on summer Sundays. A fella with ropey hair and a girl with long dark hair and blackness in her eyes and sandals on her feet controlled them and if you saw her before the show all you could think about was her, unseen inside in that little tent and the darkness and the beauty and the mystery of her. And no matter how you screamed and roared at the puppets to watch out, the same thing would happen every single time. The ropey-hair fella and the dark girl controlled everything, like two gods, and they wouldn’t be swayed from their course by a flock of screeching children.
MUMBLY DAVE started to do a line with a girl from the city. Woo hoo, boy, I’ll be right for the Christmas, lads! This wan is mad for me! Siobhán would smile at him and look at Johnsey and roll her eyes to heaven and Mumbly Dave would be hunched over his mobile and he’d be click-click-clicking away ninety and smiling to himself and he’d laugh now and again, high and giggly, like a woman. He’d met this wan while he was doing a bit of tiling inside in a school. She was a teacher, imagine! He had to be quare careful about the nixers these days, auld Timmy Shake Hands was mad trying to catch him out. Wouldn’t you think the prick would leave it go; it wasn’t out of his pocket the claim was coming. It was the insurance company would be paying out. What odds to Timmy, in all fairness? The bitter auld bollix.
Siobhán kept asking when would they get to meet her, this big love of Dave’s? Was she one of these smart city ones that think they’ll spontaneously combust if they come too far out from town? What does she teach, anyway? Braille? And Johnsey was glad that he got it straight away – she was saying your wan must be blind to like Mumbly Dave – but Mumbly Dave had to think about it for a few seconds, and he spent the few seconds looking out of his mouth at Siobhán and then said Oh ya, ha ha ha. But there was no laughter in his eyes, and Johnsey was pure-solid ashamed for egging her on inside in his head to make little of Mumbly Dave. What kind of a fella wants his friend’s feelings to be hurt?
MUMBLY DAVE loved him. He knew it before Siobhán said it, but didn’t know he knew it. How’s it he couldn’t live up to it? It’s an awful burden, being loved. Even by a little fat man. Imagine if Siobhán loved him. He’d never cope with that. That was a worry to join the rest of his worries inside in the room in his brain where he tried to keep them all together with the door locked on them. It was no good, though, they squeezed through the keyhole and flowed out through the jambs and took their shape again outside like the yoke in Terminator 2 that was made of liquid and could become anything it wanted and could sneak around the place letting on to be a puddle and all of a sudden it’d be running around stabbing people. Paddy Rourke was in that room, and Eugene Penrose and his stump and the Unthanks and Aunty Theresa and the newspaper people who thought he was a woeful bollix and the neighbours who thought he was a rotten greedy fecker and the whole village who blamed him for calling a halt to progress and Mother and Daddy, both dead and he never having done one thing his whole life they could boast about and it’d soon be Christmas and should he buy a present for Siobhán? And if he even managed to walk in the door of one of them girly shops inside in town and the girl asked him who was the present for, what would he say? A nurse who gave me a handjob one time and now comes to my house to eat sandwiches and give out?
People can be an awful dose. If you only had to look at them on television, everything would be grand. When they wanted to buy your father’s land and say things about you in newspapers and make little of you below in the village and be your friend and be your nearly girlfriend and shoot lads over what they done to you or really over what was done to them and look out of their mouths at you for a reaction or an answer or a laugh or a digout or an action of which you’re not capable in a million years, they’d wear you out. They’d go through you for a shortcut. They’d wreck your head, the townie lads would say. Isn’t it a noble thing all the same, loneliness? There’s dignity in it, at least. You can’t make a show of yourself when you’re on your own. You can’t sound stupid opposite nobody. People are better inside in your head. When you’re longing for them, they’re perfect.
THAT AULD CROSSNESS came back around the start of December. Siobhán said to Johnsey that Mumbly Dave was only a user. Mumbly Dave said Siobhán was only teasing him. Siobhán said Mumbly Dave was a right weirdo. Imagine, a man in his thirties hanging around with young fellas, driving around in his Johnny-go-fast car, with everyone laughing at him! Mumbly Dave said you’d be as well off give that wan the road, I’m only saying it for your own good, she’s waiting until you haven’t a drop of blood left in your brain because it’s all holding up your horn and you’ll ask her to marry you and she’ll bleed you dry. Siobhán said she couldn’t believe that thing with Mumbly Dave and the barn and he’d make some balls of that job and leave you in the shit, don’t even dream of it, no one would want to live in a crappy apartment in a smelly old cowshed. Mumbly Dave said she only wants you selling everything up so she can give the rest of her days going out foreign and buying expensive shite inside in Brown Thomas like all them wans that thinks they’re bigshots. Siobhán said Mumbly Dave was probably a closet gay. Mumbly Dave said Siobhán was a sneaky little bitch. Then he got kind of sorry and said Yerra lookit, women don’t be in their right mind half the time, with their periods and what have you.
He wasn’t even sure when they had started to read each other so violently behind each other’s backs. It sort of built up over a couple of weeks: a little dig laughed off was brought up when the digger was gone; a smart comment ignored at the time was repeated indignantly when the commenter was in the toilet. They started to change the air when they shared a room. They made it harder to breathe: you’d be aware of your lungs filling and emptying and you’d try not to make noises breathing because that drove Siobhán mad and she’d want to know why you sounded like a fucking respirator and Mumbly Dave would say Leave the man breathe any way he wants, and she’d say Mind your own business, and he’d say it was his business if she was tormenting his friend and she’d say Oh really? And he’d say Yes really. And she’d take a pull of her fag and blow the smoke hard in his direction and he’d tell her she was a classy bird all right and she’d say Are you still here, David? Have you not got a hot date? And she’d make that snorting noise at the back of her nose like she thought he was no more going on a date that night than the man in the moon and he’d say I have actually, and she’d say You’d better run along so, and he’d say I’ll see you, Johnsey, and Johnsey would only say See you, and he never even got up off of his hole to walk as far as the yard with him any more, only sat looking at Siobhán and smelling her and hating himself. Mumbly Dave said he was pussy-whipped. What the hell did that mean? It was some kind of a weakness, like some kind of a sex thing that only a fool would get involved in.
If he couldn’t ask Mumbly Dave what he should buy Siobhán for Christmas, who could he ask? He knew if he went down to the bakery the Unthanks would give a whole hour at least talking about it with him. Himself would suggest something silly like a pound of sausages and Herself would tell him don’t be daft and she’d laugh and he’d laugh and nudge Johnsey when she wasn’t looking and they’d warm him with smiles and fill him with fresh bread and buns and tea. But he’d be afraid then they’d want to tell him they were sorry they hadn’t told him about the consortium and he’d say it was grand, what about it, weren’t they perfectly entitled? And they’d say about how they didn’t know what way it would work out and it was no treachery and Jackie knew all about it. And what if he started crying like an eejit? It’d be out of sadness over their sadness and the mention of Daddy, but it’d only make everything worse, and Herself would start crying again and she’d stand at the sink, knotting a tea towel in her soft old hands, saying everyone invested with them, Johnsey, everyone thought it was a great idea, everyone …
SIOBHÁN SAID they were going to go out properly at Christmas. She hadn’t had a proper night out since her going-away do with the fatarses from the hospital. And that was crap, because only three of them came and they were as dry as shites. They talked about babies all night! Who wants to spend a whole night out talking about babies? God, like. Two fellas come over at one stage and they were really funny, and one of them, God he was gas, was messing around and he just rubbed his hand sort of by accident really off one of their arses and she screeched like a banshee and the bouncer came over and told the fellas to get out and like, so what if he did feel her arse, he was a fella, that’s what they do, he wasn’t trying to rape the silly bitch and she should have been grateful, anyway, that anyone wanted to put their hand on her scabby old arse, never mind a ride of a fella. God, like.
