The Spinning Heart

by Donal Ryan

  AREN’T YOU LUCKY to have a job? That’s the stick that’s being used to beat us all now. Like, you can’t say one word about anything now, or you have that shit thrown at you. George sacked the cleaner. Then he started looking at me! The bastard. I was like, NO WAY, there’s no way I’m hoovering here as well as at home in my parents’ house because Mam is still sick with her mystery illness that not one doctor can diagnose in the whole country. And what about the goddamn toilets? Those horrible old biddies all shit like fat cows. There’s no way in a million years I’m scrubbing their skidmarks. For anyone or anything. No job is worth it. So I had to kick and scream and cry until it was agreed that a rota would be drawn up among the secretaries for the cleaning, and everyone would have to do a day every three weeks. Then I had to scream that it was unfair; the apprentices and junior solicitors should have to as well. So George made the solicitors go on the cleaning rota to shut me up – he knows I know things about him, he’s just not sure how much I know – but the sneaks always have an excuse: stuck in court all day, had to meet a client for early dinner, blah blah blah. So I’m stuck doing it most of the time anyway. For forty euros a week less than I used to get. But aren’t I lucky to have a job? Ya, like, I’m really lucky.

  Seanie

  I DON’T KNOW in the hell where the name Seanie Shaper came from. I remember lads starting to call me it in secondary all right, but it didn’t seem like a bad thing to be called so I let them off to hell. Like, some lads got landed with awful doses of nicknames. Your man of the Donnells from Gortnabracken got called Vomity Donnell on account of he threw his guts up one time on the bus going to a Harty Cup match; a lad from town got called Johnny Incest because his parents were cousins; a fella that went with a wan that was in First Year in the convent when we were doing the Inter got called Kiddyfiddler forevermore. Another poor bollocks was caught pulling himself in the toilet in the gym one lunchtime and everyone called him Wankyballs from then on. There was a lad called Fishfingers because he was forever taking wans from the convent down the castle demesne at lunchtime and he’d give the rest of the day smelling his fingers. There were about fifteen lads from the real boondocks called Mongo. It was the townie boys mostly who gave out the nicknames, and we all went along with them like goms. When all was said and done, Seanie Shaper didn’t seem so bad a name to be called.

  I was always a pure solid madman for women. I couldn’t stop thinking about them from when I was a small boy. I used to chase girls around the estate out the Ashdown Road, trying to pull up their skirts. I used to try to bribe them for a look at their knickers. When I was thirteen, I got my first proper feel of a tit, off a wan from Dublin who was down visiting her cousins in the estate, down past our house. Your wan was sixteen. Her tit felt small and smooth, her nipple was hard. She wouldn’t let me see it, only feel around under her T-shirt. I had a pain in my balls. She wanted to know did I want a go of her fanny and I only stood there looking at her, speechless. I panicked and ran. I wouldn’t have known what to do with her fanny. Then I got sorry and ran back, but she was gone. I never saw her again; her cousins told me she was gone back to Dublin. It was three years before I got near a fanny again. I should have gone for glory that day behind the Protestant church.

  I SUPPOSE that’s where Seanie Shaper came from – I was forever fixing my hair and throwing auld smart shapes for fear there’d be girls along the road. I used to take a bit more care about myself than the other apes. I used to change my shirt every day, a thing unheard of in my circle. Some lads’ shirts would be stiff with the dirt before it’d occur to them to look in the hot press for a fresh one. We used to sit on a wall across from the convent every day at lunchtime and the odd day a little ugly wan would come over to know would someone, usually me, go with her friend. I seldom refused. I even gave the little quare wans a go, in fairness. I went off with hunchbacks, lispers, smelly wans, lesbians, the whole lot. I went with a wan one day who had a hearing aid and no front teeth. I got called a spastic-fucker for a few days after that but I didn’t give one shit. God loves us all, in fairness. Them wans needed a bit of a good time too.

  For a finish though, my lack of discernment began to damage my prospects. The desperate and demented began to rely on me for sexual initiation while the good-looking wans with the lovely blonde hair and long legs and flaking tits began to view me as a bottom-feeder, a bit of a dirty pervert, and, eventually, an untouchable. I started to hang around the Tech then and things improved again. I still believe I did good work at the convent with those unfortunate young ladies; I made them feel good about themselves and showed them how to give a handjob without rupturing a man’s helmet. That’s a valuable lifeskill. That’ll have stood to them, I guarantee you.

  WHEN I got older and started to do serious damage, I was always as careful as could be when it came to rubber johnnies. I always, always wore one, if not two. That Réaltín made an awful ape out of me. She told me she had an allergy to latex. She said she was on the pill. She scratched the back off of me. She went all night. She nearly killed me. I loved her. The first day I saw her, we were pulling a drain job inside in town, and she came out of an office across the way with her friend, that Hillary. She was shiny, dazzling, full of that scary confidence that some of them townie women have. Your wan Hillary looked like a browny-grey blob beside her. I was standing inside in a hole, gawking over at her like a redneck rapist when she actually pointed over at me. Then she turned to her friend and laughed, and the friend looked at me and smiled and looked away and I kind of knew then how girls must feel when we ogle them and pass remarks at them and laugh and whistle as they walk past us. She was in the Lobster Pot that night, talking to a right-looking wanker in a pair of slacks. I was full of bravery after a feed of pints and accidentally on purpose dropped a curried chip on his nice clean pants with the creases on them. Oh for Gawd’s sake, he said, in his posh accent. What? I said. Are you throwing shapes there, boy? No, the poor prick said, and ran off like a little bitch. I took her back to the digs Pokey had sorted out for us and by the next morning, I was in love.

  I got her up the duff and all, not long into the whole miserable thing. I think she wanted me to, like, she done it on purpose. She asked me a rake of questions about my family’s medical history the night before the night she made me go bareback. Then she seemed to kind of get sick of me. She asked me to know if she moved out from town would I look after them and I said of course I will, and she bought one of Pokey’s houses and all and I was kind of happy for a while, calling to see the small boy, but she seemed to get sick of looking at me or something and she started sniping and picking away at me and for a finish she fucked me off altogether and next thing I found out Bobby was tapping her, the two-faced prick. Bobby denied everything; he said he only went up to the estate to see was there any C2 boys above finishing off because we heard a rumour the NAMA crowd were after giving Pokey’s da a rake of money back to do the rest of the houses and all, and she was there, and he hadn’t a clue who she was and she asked him to know would he do a few jobs for her and it was only after about the third time he went over there that he realized who she was, and sure by then the whole village had it that he was riding her and I could believe what I wanted. And what could I say to that?

  Bobby was the only one of us used to always go home after work, in fairness. He’d never stayed in the digs. He was pure solid wrapped in Triona, always. He’d never met Réaltín. I’d never said too much about her moving out here or anything. I don’t know why I didn’t. Maybe I didn’t want to jinx it. My family was always into the whole mad Irish country thing of keeping secrets anyway. It’s nearly like a kind of embarrassment, not wanting to say anything about yourself for fear you’ll be judged or looked on as foolish.

  I don’t know in the name of God which way is up now. Bobby is after doing away with his auld fella, and Réaltín won’t leave me inside the door, and her father, who’s a quare sound auld skin, says I’m as well off leave her be for a while. Fuck that, though. He’s m
y young fella too, like. I’m no good to him, though. What good am I?

  I NEVER THOUGHT I’d ever be depressed, really. It’s quare easy fall into that hole. You can kind of lose yourself very quick, when all about you changes and things you thought you always would have turn out to be things you never really had, and things you were sure you’d have in the future turn out to be on the far side of a big, dark mountain that you have no hope of ever climbing over. I was never idle a day since I done the Leaving. I got just enough for the apprenticeship and done my time as a steel fixer and Pokey gave us all jobs when his da handed over the whole works to him. We done everything: roads and houses and formwork and plant and drainage and the whole lot. Pokey tendered for everything. He took on a rake of Polish subbies and screwed the poor pricks and we all thought it was a laugh. That whole subbie thing was a right con job. Then he screwed the rest of us and we laughed on the other side of our faces. I still went around laughing and messing and joking and all, though. I’d never let nobody see how I was panicking.

  Everyone thinks I’m gas, that I don’t give a shit about anything. I never told anyone about the blackness I feel sometimes, weighing me down and making me think things I don’t want to think. It was always there, but I never knew what it was until every prick started talking about depression and mental health and all that shite. I’m not a mentaller, like. I’m not. I just can’t see for the blackness sometimes. It’s always there, waiting for a chance to wrap itself around me. I often wonder why I was born at all, why my mother had to suffer to give me life, why my father bothered his bollocks with me, working his arse off to pay for things for me, everything I wanted, just about. I think of the ma and the da and how good they always were, and how they always encouraged me, even though it was pure obvious I was the waster in the family, and how they were so let down when I got Réaltín up the duff and they not even having met her and how they met her then and thought her shit was ice-cream, and they were nearly proud of me for a while, and they even thought I might marry her, and how they’re solid heartbroken now over never seeing the child and all. It’s all gone to shit. That’s all my doing, how they’re upset like that. Sometimes I feel short of breath and my heart pounds and I feel a whooshing in my ears and I double over and put my head in my hands and a few times lately my hands have been wet with tears when I’ve taken them away from my face. No fucker knows that, though, nor never will. I’ll be grand in a while. I have no right to feel like this.

  I think of the young fella, little Dylan, and how gorgeous he is, and how I always go about things the wrong way with Réaltín and accidentally look at her tits and she ends up pissed off with me and I always react like a right stones. I can’t hold myself together at all, I gets pure wicked with her and tells her to fuck off and I can’t tell her properly how I want things to be because I can’t really think under pressure, when she’s standing there, waiting for me to be a proper man. When I found out the other week that Bobby was above doing jobs for her I flipped the lid altogether; like, why couldn’t she have asked me to do them jobs? But by then Bobby was after flipping his own lid and lamping his auld fella with a plank of wood across the poll. Instead of being reasonable and asking her what was the story, I charged up like a bull and started roaring out of me like a jackass and I frightened the young lad and her auld fella had to get thick with me and I took off over as far as Castlelough and sat on the low wall in front of the grass before the little pebble beach and looked out at the dark lake and thought about the bottomless hole that’s meant to be out there in the middle of it.

  A FEW years ago, a load of women from the same village up above in the back of beyond drove their cars to Castlelough and parked up and walked out into the lake. One at a time, over a few winter months. Them women all had husbands and children and all. I remember laughing about them women at the time, making stupid jokes about how all the boys up that side must be no use in bed and how I’d have cheered them up in no time and ha ha ha. Jesus. I laughed and I felt sick. I knew the feeling that drew them down from the mountain to the low, dark lake. There’s a tug from that water. There’s an end in it, under those little waves. Drowning is easy, I’d say. You only have to breathe in a lungful of water and you’re gone, floating away to nothing. How come I can’t be like everyone thinks I am? I’d love to really be Seanie Shaper. I’d love to not be here again, sitting looking at the water.

  Kate

  ONE AWFUL THING that happened since the recession started was Dell closing. Like, it nearly finished us. They were bloody all Dell. Dad said a few times I had all my eggs in the one basket, but I only told him to shut up and mind his own business, laughing at his little worried face. It does be all scrunched up when he’s worried, the poor little pet. He was right to be worried, though – after Dell closed, I was paying more in wages than I was taking in for about three months – but I was never even close to giving in. You can’t give your time whingeing and blaming, you have to just fight back. I made up a load of flyers on the PC and went to every single door in every single estate on this side of town, and covered a big part of the rest of town as well. I went over as far as Castle-troy and Annacotty. Aren’t they only out the motorway now? I didn’t stop going for three weeks. My rates are the best anywhere. I promised to save people money. I prayed the HSE inspector didn’t call for the three weeks, because my child-to-minder ratio was a bit off while I wasn’t there. I made it back every day for the parents, though. I’m always there for hometime.

  One good thing that happened since the recession started is people will work for less than the minimum wage. The minimum wage is a joke, like. Who has the right to tell me what to pay someone? Dad says there’s no such thing as a free market while crazy laws tether employers to big huge salaries for their staff. He says Ireland is regulated into the ground. Like, the red tape! You wouldn’t believe it. So I called all the girls into the kitchen one evening a few weeks ago and I told them straight out they’d all have to take a cut or I’d have to leave two of them go. Nuala, the little bitch, started straight away with the bullshit: You can’t actually, you’re right down to the lowest ratio as it is – we can’t even take our breaks! That one. She spends most of her day on a break. I’d have given her the road last year but I know well she’d have me up in front of the tribunal. So I said, actually Nuala, I’d have to bring in my sister and my mother to help for a while, and you don’t have to pay family members anything, so … And that shut her up.

  THINGS ARE GOING great now again, thank God. This free childcare year is going to be the making of us. And better again, I got a Montessori teacher for feck-all – a fella walked in here with his CV and references who has a degree in childcare and a post-grad in Montessori teaching, with my ad in his hand. I know you’d never put a fella with that job, but he’s not very masculine; there’s a real soft look about him, and he has a lovely, gentle voice and nice blue eyes. Trevor, his name is. Imagine, I hadn’t even to pay to put an ad in the Limerick Leader. I decided to give my window-ad a week and it paid off. Once I have his references checked, I’ll let him start. He whispered to me that he wouldn’t expect minimum wage, he’d do anything to be working, he’d take seven euro an hour, cash. I could gross up his wages to look right. He knew the lingo and all. Jesus, he’s a godsend. To top it off, the Trevor fella arrived only two days after a girl called Réaltín called in with a lovely quiet child called Dylan. She’s working in a solicitor’s office inside in Henry Street. It’s a big firm, too, and she said there’s a couple more from there out on maternity leave. Having their firsts. She’ll recommend me, surely. The way things are going I’ll have to start refusing people again shortly.

  Denis thinks I’m mad for taking on a fella as a Montessori teacher. But then he realized he used to know your man’s father years ago; he was a dentist or something like that, near where Denis grew up, but they were real bigshots anyway, with a big high wall around their house. I’d say your man just wanted a job where he wouldn’t have to be near manly men, spit
ting and farting and talking about their balls and making each other feel like shit about themselves. Why do fellas do that? They’re always slagging each other and calling each other queer and trying to outdo each other like fools. Men working together shouldn’t be allowed. Anyway, it’s none of my business, I don’t care what happens, I have my lovely Montessori teacher and I can take on kids for the free preschool year and everything is rosy in the garden.

  Sometimes I think Denis is a bit raging that my crèche took off like this. Isn’t that awful? Like, wouldn’t you think he’d be delighted? That’s men, though; they can’t bear to be second to a woman in any way. The time of Dell closing, Denis had nothing going on at all, there wasn’t an electrical job or a carpentry job to be got anywhere, but we lived off the profits I had built up in the crèche account, and it nearly killed him. I felt sorry for him at the start, I suppose it was weird for him, but for a finish I just wanted to slap him and tell him to take the puss off him and just get on with it. He just has to do the small jobs again that he wouldn’t have dreamt of doing five years ago. Hard luck, like. Build a bridge and get over it. God, Denis hates that phrase. He’s some worker, though, I have to give him that. He just pretends there’s no crèche now, we can’t really talk about it. He doesn’t mind the money shoring us up, though. God, like, I have to pick my steps around him these days. Why has he to be so sensitive? We haven’t even had sex in about four months. He better not get any ideas about having a look around for himself. I’ll cut it off of him. I’ll cut it. Clean. Off.