Charlie Savage

by Roddy Doyle

  –We’ve come a long way, love.

  She eventually nods.

  The doorbell goes.

  –That’ll be them.

  I go across to the fridge, take down the iodine tablets and throw them on the table.

  –Just in case, I say.

  39

  I see her the first time when I’m out walking some of the dogs.

  The fact is, the dogs walk me. I’ve both hands full of leads, both arms pulled out of their sockets; I’m trying to hang on to four nappy bags full of dog poo and stay upright at the same time.

  The dogs love going for their walk but they wait till we’re nearly home before they get really excited. They scratch and pull at the ground to make the house come closer to them. You’d swear they were emigrants coming home for Christmas.

  –They miss their mammy, I tell the wife.

  –Don’t we all, she says.

  She pretends she doesn’t care about the dogs but I’ve seen the look on her face, the soft, dreamy expression, when she’s gazing out the kitchen window at them.

  –They’re great, aren’t they? I say.

  –What?

  –The dogs.

  She takes her glasses from the top of her hair and puts them on her nose. She looks out the window again.

  –Oh, yeah, she says. –There they are.

  Anyway, I’m nearly home, just across the road from the house, when I see the woman in the car. It’s actually the kids I see first, a gang of them in the back behind her, looking out at the dogs and waving and knocking at the side window. I’m in a hurry – well, the dogs are in a hurry – so I make a face at the kids and keep going, across the road, under a bin lorry, and up to the house.

  I’m on my way out again a few hours later. Every couple of weeks the wife looks at me.

  –Oul’ lad’s hair, Charlie, she says.

  She’s telling me to go to the barber, so that’s where I’m off to. I’ve never told her she has oul’ one’s hair. But that’s probably because she never does – not even first thing in the morning when even children can look a bit ancient, especially if it’s a schoolday.

  Anyway, I’m shutting the front door and I see that the car is still there, across the road – and the woman and the kids. There’s something – I don’t know. I go over and tap on her window.

  She rolls it down.

  –Are you alright? I ask her.

  She looks a bit nervous – like she’s been caught or something. I regret tapping on the glass now. I don’t want to make her feel bad. I should have left her alone.

  She nods.

  –I’m grand, she says. –Thanks.

  One of the kids – I think there’s four of them in there – waves out at me. I wave back.

  –Okay, I say.

  I step away from the car and continue on my way.

  I usually enjoy going to the barber. I like the wait and the chat. The barber’s a Turkish lad but he sounds like he’s been getting elocution lessons from Conor McGregor. And he never shuts up. I think he supports every football team in the world – he loves everything. But this time, walking home, I can’t even remember if I actually got my hair cut.

  I’m thinking about the car and the woman and I’m hoping she won’t be there when I turn the corner.

  But she is.

  The car’s there and she’s still in it with the kids. I cross the road before I get to it and go on to our front door. I’ve the key in my hand – and I stop.

  She sees me this time, before I tap her window.

  –Is the car broken, love?

  She shakes her head.

  –No.

  She smiles.

  –Thanks, she says. –I’m just waiting on Lizzie.

  Lizzie and Keith live in the house behind me. They moved in a few years back. They’re half my age and I love watching their kids playing football in the front garden.

  I look back at the house.

  –Is she in there?

  –Yeah, says the woman. –She’s put a wash into her dryer for me. I’ll be gone when it’s done.

  The penny drops, like I knew it would. She has nowhere to go; she’s homeless. Her and her kids. I can see now: she’s been watching me cop on.

  –The kids are quiet enough, I say.

  –They’re getting used to it, she says.

  I don’t ask her what ‘it’ means; I know what ‘it’ means.

  –D’you want a cup of tea? I ask her.

  –No, she says. –No, thanks.

  I want to ask her if she has somewhere to go tonight. But I don’t – I can’t. I don’t. I’m afraid she’ll say No. And what will I do then?

  –You sure about the tea? I ask.

  –No, she says. –Yeah. Thanks. I’ll be heading off soon.

  –Okay.

  I go home. I make myself busy. For an hour, two hours.

  It’s dark. I go to our bedroom window.

  The car is still out there.

  40

  What gobshite decided that serving tea in a glass was a good idea? I’m not sure if there are any references to tea in the Bible but I’m betting that Jesus and the lads had theirs in mugs. And his holy mother – with a name like Mary she definitely drank hers from a cup and she went down to the Irish shop in Nazareth for the milk. And a packet of Tayto for Joseph – salt and vinegar.

  Anyway.

  I’m not mad about tea; I rarely touch it. When I was a kid, about fifteen, I was in Dandy Mulcahy’s house. We were playing records, chatting about the local young ones, and deciding whether we’d open one of his da’s bottles of Smithwick’s.

  I was very keen. It wasn’t my house; it wasn’t my da.

  –Go on, Dandy.

  –No.

  –Go on, I said. –He’ll never miss it. I’ll smuggle the empty out.

  –Okay.

  Then his ma came in and asked us if we wanted a cup of tea. And Dandy changed. My best friend turned into an oul’ lad right in front of my eyes. The mere mention of tea and he forgot all about the mysteries of bottled Smithwick’s and the much more promising mysteries of Eileen Pidgeon.

  He sat up and clapped his hands.

  –Tea! he said. –Rapid!

  He instantly became a lad I didn’t know. His face, his expression, changed completely. One minute, he was my blood brother and we were all set for a life of beer and women. The next, he looked like someone from the audience of the Late Late Show – you know the ones I mean – and he was baying for tea and a Goldgrain.

  Bloody tea – I haven’t trusted it since.

  But I’m not giving out about tea. It’s the clown who decided to serve it up in a glass – that’s my gripe.

  Myself and the daughter are in town with her little lad. She has that look in her eye: she’s going to make me try on a metrosexual pair of trousers. So I head her off at the pass and suggest that we go for a coffee and maybe a muffin, if her conscience, which I’m betting wears Lycra, will let her.

  –You’re hilarious, Dad, she says. –I don’t think.

  But anyway, we go into this café place that she’s found on her phone. It’s a bit intimidating but I tell her I want a black coffee and she translates that for the tall lad with the beard behind the counter. He nods, raises his eyes to heaven, and starts knocking the bejaysis out of his machine.

  The daughter’s ordered black tea – it’s good for something or other – and she gets it in a tall glass. And the little lad is having a Coke. She only lets him have one Coke a month. The poor kid is only three and doesn’t even know what a month is, so he’s like a starving dog in front of a sirloin. I have to hold him by the collar and loosen my grip when he’s calm enough for another sip.

  But, anyway, we get chatting, me and the daughter, and I must have let go of the little lad’s collar. Because the next thing I know, he’s screaming and clutching his throat.

  –What’s wrong?!

  I’ve had two heart attacks so far, and I think I’m after biting half an inch off my to
ngue.

  He looks fine; there’s no blood.

  He’s after mixing up the tea and the Coke, that’s all, because they’re both in similar glasses. And he’s furious.

  –T’aum-a-tise!

  –What did he say? I ask the daughter.

  I can usually understand him but this is a new one.

  –He’s traumatised, she tells me.

  –Did he say that?

  And he says it again.

  –T’aum–a–tise, G’anda!

  His eyes have gone into the back of his head and I’m half-expecting his head to start spinning. I pick him up and put him on my knee. It usually works, and it does now, once we let him clutch his glass – the one with the bloody Coke in it. He holds it on his knee.

  –Where did he learn that? I ask the daughter.

  But I know already – the radio, the telly, everywhere. I was traumatised, myself, this morning when there was no honey for my porridge. He must have heard me but I was only joking – kind of.

  –Listen, I tell him now. –If you want to know if you’re really traumatised, just put ‘Joe’ at the end of the sentence. Are you with me?

  He’s full of sugar and taking in every word.

  –Say after me, I tell him. –‘I was traumatised, Joe.’

  –T’aum–a–tise, Doe!

  –That’s the ‘Joe’ Test, I tell him. –If there’s a ‘Joe’ at the end of it, it’s not really trauma.

  –T’aum–a–tise, Doe!

  And he knocks back his Coke.

  41

  We’ve gone mad for the box sets, me and the wife. I’m beginning to really understand what the word ‘addiction’ means. If I don’t see Helen from The Affair at least once a day I come out in a rash; red blotches start crawling across my neck. It’s not that I fancy her; I don’t. Well, that’s a lie. But I worry about her. It’s nearly like watching football; I want to shout at the telly. You could do a lot better than him, love!

  So anyway, I wake up in a sweat at three in the morning, worried sick about Helen. I know I won’t get back to sleep, so I slither downstairs, to have a sneaky look at the next episode, to see how Helen is getting on – and I find the wife there ahead of me, gazing at Don Draper in Mad Men, Season 7.

  We’d watched the other six seasons in a day and a half. That’s seventy-eight episodes in thirty-six hours, which is actually impossible – but we still managed it. We work well as a team, me and the wife. We kept each other awake and when one of us went out to the kitchen or the jacks, the other would shout out what was happening. By the time we got to the end of Season 6, we were dehydrated and probably insane. But the sense of achievement – Jesus. We felt like the two young lads from Cork who do all the rowing.

  –Keep the eyes wide open and pull like a dog!

  Anyway. There she is. Sitting in the dark, lit only by Mad Men. She gives me a quick glance but her eyes go straight back to Don.

  –He’s such a bollix, she says with more affection in her voice than I’d heard in – well, ever.

  –Tell me honestly, I say. –What does he have that I don’t have?

  –Breaks for the ads, she says.

  She puts Don on pause.

  –Don’t worry, Charlie, she says. –It’s only telly.

  But I’m not sure it’s only anything. The box sets are consuming us. We’re doing nothing else. I missed Match of the Day last Saturday because we couldn’t get away from The Leftovers. I didn’t even know it was Saturday.

  I wish we could go back to the good old days, before videos and remote controls, when you had to wait till the following week to see what happened next. I loved Colditz when I was a kid but I could ignore it most of the time because it was only on on Thursdays. As for Tenko, I’d never have been able to live a normal life if it had been on more than once a week. All those women sweating away in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp – nothing could have got me away from the telly.

  Anyway, I’m thinking about doing a google, to see if there’s an addiction counsellor in Dublin who can help wean us off Sky Box Sets, when something happens that helps me put the madness into perspective.

  We go to her sister’s house.

  Simple as that.

  But not that simple. We have to get away from our telly first. I give the remote control to one of the sons and tell him not to give it back to me till the next day, not even if I beg or threaten him, or try to bribe him. He’s been through a bad Sopranos binge himself, and he missed the last World Cup and the birth of one of his kids, so he’s sympathetic. He heads off to Liverpool for the weekend and takes the remote with him.

  Anyway, we make it to Carmel’s house. We’re shaking a bit and the wife whimpers when she sees their telly. But we make it to their kitchen, and sit. She pats my hand under the table; I hold hers.

  –It’ll soon be over, I whisper.

  She tries to smile.

  But everyone’s talking about bloody box sets. It’s agony. We’re like alcoholics at the bottle bank; we can smell the drink but there’s none left.

  I notice something. They’re all trying to outdo each other; that’s all it is. Naming a series they’re hoping no one else has seen. Something Albanian, or a crime series from Greenland, hidden deep in the bowels of Netflix.

  Then the wife pipes up – the first time she’s spoken all night.

  –Have yis seen Bread and Adultery? she says.

  That shuts them all up. She taps my ankle with her foot; she’s having them on, making it up.

  –Who’s in it? Carmel asks.

  –Your man, says the wife. –You know – from that other one.

  –Oh, says Carmel. –Him?

  –And the girl from the ad.

  –I think I’ve seen an episode of that, says someone else. –It looked brilliant.

  The wife squeezes my hand. We’ll be fine.

  42

  The wife says she wants to go to Dunkirk.

  –What’s wrong with Skerries? I ask her.

  –You’re gas, she says. –The film.

  –The new one about the Allies landing in Normandy?

  She stares at me.

  –Charlie, she says.

  –What?

  She’s still staring at me. But it’s one of those concerned stares, like she’s auditioning for a part in Casualty.

  –Did you hear what you just said? she asks.

  –I think so.

  –You said Dunkirk’s about the Allied invasion.

  –Yeah.

  –You’re the history buff, Charlie, she says. –You fall asleep every night with a book about the Second World War parked on your head.

  It dawns on me while she’s still speaking.

  –Christ, I say. –Am I after mixing up Dunkirk with D-Day?

  –I’m afraid so.

  –Oh God.

  I have to sit.

  It’s one of those terrifying moments. I was once in a car crash – or, nearly in a car crash, if that makes sense. The car ended up on the path, my heart was expanding, contracting, expanding, expanding, expanding. It was minutes before I knew what had happened. I’d nearly been killed – I’d very nearly died.

  This is worse.

  –It could happen to a bishop, says the wife.

  –Fuck the bishop, I say. –It happened to me.

  I look at her.

  –I know what happened at Dunkirk, I tell her. –Blow by blow. I know it like the names of the kids. Please, God, I pray, don’t let her ask me to name the kids!

  –I know, she says.

  –I know the difference between an invasion and – what’s the opposite of an invasion?

  –Evacuation? she says.

  –Is that not what you do before a colonoscopy? I ask her.

  She knows: I’m messing. We’re back to normal.

  But we’re not. Well, I’m not. I need reassuring. I go through lists in my head, the dates of battles and surrenders. I manage to remember all the kids’ names, and most of the grandkids, without resort
ing to Google. I look out the kitchen window and name all the dogs, and their breeds. Rocky, half-poodle, half-boxer; Usain, half-dachshund, half-greyhound; Donald, half-schnauzer, half-gobshite. I name them all and I’m feeling a bit better, a bit sturdier in myself, after a day or two.

  And anyway, we go to Dunkirk. We go in on the bus.

  –Over a million men died at the Somme.

  –Charlie.

  –What?

  –You can stop now.

  –Okay.

  –You’re grand.

  –I know. Still a terrible loss of life, but.

  The film is shattering. I haven’t been to the pictures in ages but this is more like being on the Dunkirk beach, in the water, under the water. The things they can do with a camera these days, and the noise – I’ve never experienced anything like it. There’s just a few moments when you can remind yourself that you’re only at the pictures. That’s whenever Kenneth Branagh’s head is on the screen; neither of us can stand him.

  He’s up there now, talking shite, so I take a quick look around me.

  I nudge the wife.

  –There’s no one snogging, I tell her.

  –Jesus, Charlie, she says. –It’s not a bloody rom com.

  –We got off with each other during The Exorcist, I remind her. –I don’t remember you objecting.

  –That was different.

  –How was it?

  –Shut up, she hisses. –It wasn’t a war film.

  –We were wearing each other so much during Full Metal Jacket, we never found out who won the Vietnam War.

  –Shut up!

  Sir Kenneth is gone, so it’s back to the chaos on the beach, in the air, and on the sea. At one point, she grabs my arm and doesn’t let go.

  She grabbed the wrong knee once. Years ago, during the first of the Die Hards. She meant to grab mine, she told me, after she’d apologised to the lad on the other side of her – and his mott. We watched him limping out later, when the lights went up, but I don’t know if he’d brought the limp in with him.

  –You’ve maimed the poor chap for life, I told her.

  –Count your blessings it wasn’t you then, she said. –Did you see the puss on his girlfriend, by the way.

  That was the thing: going to the pictures was always a bit of gas. It didn’t matter how serious it was, between the couples kissing, the noise of the sweet wrappers, and the curtain of cigarette smoke, you never forgot that it was a just a film.