‘OD, you’re always saying that,’ he muttered. ‘I hate when you always say that. Just because Mammy …’
‘I’m sorry. Look, Beano, leave it, all right? There’s nothing we can do. Get that into your skull and put it down to experience.’
‘There is something,’ he insisted. ‘My father was telling us at home what happened and …’
The referee blew his whistle for the restart.
‘ … and he told us that Moran’s men were going to level the site on Monday morning with that JCB that’s parked up there.’
‘So?’ I said, impatient to get back into the game.
‘So? So we built it, OD,’ he declared. ‘Why should we let someone else demolish it?’
First thing I thought was that we didn’t need any more trouble. Then I started to see his mad logic was dead on. The site was going to be levelled anyway, so why not do it ourselves? Why should we let these people walk all over us? It would just be another admission that we were pow erless and had no voice or were too brain-dead to raise whatever whimper of a little voice we had.
‘Beano,’ I said, ‘you’re a genius.’
‘We’ll have to get a few shovels and crowbars and things to wreck it with, won’t we?’ he suggested.
I was standing at the edge of an abyss, getting ready to jump. I knew I might never make it out again, but I was already in free fall when I answered Beano.
‘I can go one better than that, Beano,’ I said. ‘I have the keys of the JCB.’
I went to the centre circle for the kick-off feeling dangerous but in control. I scored two goals in the second half and Seanie volunteered to go off and let Sammy on. He just couldn’t get it together, not like I seemed to have. We won 2-0. We were four points ahead of St. Peter’s now and they were playing later in the evening. If they lost, the league was ours.
Even as me and Beano left the soccer grounds, I felt like the game wasn’t over yet – and that I was on for a hat-trick.
NANCE
When Seanie dropped me off in the centre of town, the place was crowded as it always is on Saturday afternoons, but I’d never felt so alone. OD was gone from my life and Seanie would soon be too, I supposed, after the brush-off I’d given him for his trouble. Tom and May might as well have been living on a different planet from me – or rather, two separate planets. As for Chris Mburu, I’d lost him almost as soon as I’d found him, along with my mysterious natural mother. Though my instincts had been wrong before, I couldn’t believe that the American hippie was my natural mother. Maybe I just didn’t want to believe it because of her wasted look and Heather’s verdict on her and her boyfriend – ‘a bad lot’.
I didn’t feel angry with Heather Kelly. After all, she’d told me so much I could see she had to leave something for Tom and May to tell. I suppose she thought that the final piece of the puzzle might offer us a way to start talking again. And, in a way, my natural mother’s identity was hardly even important now. She was dead. I could never meet her. The only prospect was that I might be able to visit her grave and, maybe, meet some of her family. And there were complications there too. Had they even known of my existence? Would they even want to know? Somehow, all of this seemed a small reward for all I had gone through.
Heather Kelly might have thought that my mother’s identity was the final piece of the jigsaw, but I didn’t. No, the big question for me was why Tom and May hadn’t told me they knew my natural parents. Extraordinary as the whole situation had seemed when I started out, it had turned out to be quite ordinary and very close to what they’d always told me. Why would they lie over this one detail? I still cared about them enough to believe they would only do that to protect me. But from what? And, in any case, I was old enough now not to need protecting. Wasn’t I?
There was only one way to find the answers to these questions, and that was to take Heather’s and Seanie’s advice. It was time to talk, however painful that might prove to be. Or it would be time in a couple of hours. I reckoned Tom would be at the soccer grounds, and I didn’t think it was fair to confront May alone.
I didn’t want to meet anyone and have to talk so I got myself out of the Square. I thought about going down to the river again, but it was cold, so instead I wandered up Friary Street. Turning right at the top, I walked along the sweeping crescent of Blackcastle Avenue and passed by the local library building. I decided, for no particular rea son, to go inside.
I almost expected to see Heather Kelly at the desk when I came in and drifted down to the Travel section. I picked up a book on Kenya; another one came to hand in the history section. I didn’t take them to a table, preferring not to have anyone see what I was reading. I looked up the Samburu in the index of both books and flicked back and forth among the pages.
The Samburu were a wandering, pastoral people from Northern Kenya. The name meant ‘butterfly’, which seemed right for them. With their slender builds and re fined features, one book said, the Samburu appeared deli cate, but the impression was deceptive.
There was a photograph of a Samburu girl. She might have passed for my cousin, if not my sister, though her hair was almost completely shaven – unlike my own ragged mop, which I never bothered to do anything different with. Maybe now I will, I thought.
The girl wore a headband of beads and large button-like earrings, not too unlike some of the things May made. Her upper arms and wrists were decorated with a series of tight coils of some white material. She looked very proud and very beautiful, and I felt a kind of pride too at having come from such a people.
It would have been easy to have built up a perfect, rosy picture of some lost paradise I’d missed out on. But the fact was that the Samburu world was, in the end, very much a man’s world. Women were good for carrying heavy loads and having lots of children but had no power over their lives.
I left the library more determined than ever to have my questions answered. Down in Friary Sreet again, I passed the Galtee Lounge and remembered the wasted hours I’d spent there with OD and all that hopeful talk of the ‘future’ I’d bombarded him with, a future I couldn’t make him believe in. I thought I’d stopped believing in it myself for what had seemed a very long time. But I remembered what the book said about the Samburu: ‘they appear delicate, but the impression is deceptive’. I realised I was strong; stronger and more single-minded than I’d ever imagined.
It had seemed at times as though the future meant nothing to me, but that had never been true. I was back in school only days after giving it up ‘forever’; I had taken my own way, not OD’s ‘drop-out’ scheme. And I really was study ing, not just pretending. And I wasn’t just doing it to get my mind off my troubles. That was rubbish. I’d never had any intention of ‘throwing it all away’.
Knowing all this, I felt as ready as I was ever likely to be to face Tom and May. ‘Don’t let it wait,’ I heard Jimmy say all those weeks ago. Ever since Seanie had mentioned that he wasn’t well I’d known I had to go and see him. I had another half-hour to spare before Tom got home, I thought, so I went up to De Valera Park. OD would have gone straight to the Galtee Lounge once the match was over. When I reached the house the signs weren’t good. There was no radio or television noise from inside and, for a few minutes after I knocked at the wreckage of a door, there wasn’t even the sound of a footstep. When he finally opened the door I imagined Jimmy had been standing there in the hallway all along, his approach was so silent and unexpected.
I was shocked. His face was sickly and grey – the colour, I thought instinctively, of poverty.
‘I’m not feeling the best,’ Jimmy said, as if he knew I needed an explanation, as if I deserved one. ‘Will you come in?’
The hallway and the kitchen were beginning to look neglected again, but I tried not to let him see I noticed.
‘Is it the flu,’ I asked, ‘or something like that?’
He dropped into his battered armchair by the cold fire-place.
‘Naw, I’m just bushed,’ he said. ‘But I’m
still on target. For the old trumpet, you know. I’ll have the money together in two weeks.’
He was looking straight at me but his eyes were spinning. I was close enough to have smelled alcohol if he’d been drinking, but he hadn’t. I knew there was something badly wrong with him but I couldn’t figure out what it could be. All I could think of to do was offer to make some tea.
‘Grand,’ he said. ‘That’d be grand.’
As I searched for some teabags I noticed there was even less food than usual in the presses. In fact, there was nothing that was still edible.
‘You need to do some shopping,’ I said, only half-joking.
‘One of these days,’ he answered vaguely. ‘We miss hav ing you around, you know.’
‘Yeah, right,’ I laughed. ‘I bet he talks about me all the time.’
‘Never a word. That’s how I know he misses you – like he misses his mother. He never talks about anything that matters.’
‘He never really talked to me either, Jimmy.’
‘Yeah, he bottles it all up,’ he said. ‘And one of these days it’s going to blow sky high. I can feel it coming, Nance. Ever since you two split up, I been feeling it.’
I made the tea and thought to myself, Don’t blackmail me, Jimmy, don’t pass the blame onto me. Jimmy, in any case, was busy blaming himself.
‘I let him down badly,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s a tough game being a father, or a mother for that matter. No one tells you how to do it right, and you always seem to find out when it’s too late.’
I felt like saying that all you had to do was try to be honest, but I didn’t believe I had the right to preach.‘
‘I often look at people like your own mother and father,’ he went on. ‘Nice, decent people, minding their own business. And they give their kids every chance. What kind of clown am I, Nance? Why couldn’t I get it even half-right?’
‘You shouldn’t compare yourself, Jimmy,’ I said. ‘No one ever gets it right.’
He picked up a matchbox from beside the big gin bottle on the mantelpiece and held it up.
‘I don’t know much,’ he said. ‘You could squeeze everything I know into this box and still have room for thirty matches. But I know this much. Tom and May are the salt of the earth. And you’re the living proof.’
‘Why are you telling me this, Jimmy?’
He grinned wistfully and took a long sip of tea.
‘Because I have a notion it’s something you don’t want to hear. And usually the things you don’t want to hear are the things you need to hear.’
Then he laughed out loud and his teeth clicked nervously out of control. ‘Did I say that!’
The tension evaporated then and I joined in his laughter – until we heard the front door open. Both of us froze like cats caught dipping into the cream.
OD stood, framed by the kitchen doorway, trying to look cool in the face of the unexpected. I realised I hadn’t laid eyes on him for over a month. It hardly seemed possible for two people who’d been living in each other’s pockets for so long. And it wasn’t as if this was New York or some other big city where there were so many streets to hide in and so many people to hide behind. He hadn’t changed much; he was a little untidier maybe, and certainly colder.
‘How’s the form?’ he asked nonchalantly.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘How’re you?’
‘Yeah, I’m all right too.’
Jimmy struggled to his feet and moved to the door. OD didn’t stir and Jimmy had to squeeze past him. He kept staring at me as if his father wasn’t even there.
‘I’m off for a kip, Nance,’ Jimmy called from the hallway. ‘See you when I see you, girl.’
‘I’d better go too,’ I said. OD stood aside to let me pass.
He was still at the kitchen door, staring back inside, when I got to the front door. You won’t even try, will you, OD? I thought.
‘It didn’t work out with Seanie, so?’
‘No,’ I said, holding the door and not looking back at him.
‘Just as well,’ he said. ‘He’s a bastard like his old man.’
I turned slowly and he was turning too. Our eyes met. He looked sad, not hard like the words he’d spat out. I felt myself softening towards him. But not much.
‘When are you going to stop feeling sorry for yourself?’ I asked him. ‘When are you going to get up off your knees and do something better than whinge?’
‘Soon. Real soon. You’ll see.’
‘Yeah, right, and pigs will fly. Look at the way you treat Jimmy just because he’s trying to do something. You’re afraid he’ll succeed and that’ll make you an even bigger jerk.’
‘Go ahead and slag me off,’ he muttered. ‘I’m used to it.’
‘I couldn’t be bothered. I’ve enough troubles of my own without wasting my time on yours.’
His loud snigger really got my back up. I walked steadily across the hallway and stood within inches of him. It was the closest we’d been for a long time, and the furthest apart.
‘Everybody’s life is perfect except yours, is that it?’ I raged. ‘Poor little OD Ryan, the boy the world forgot.’
He was still grinning stupidly so I didn’t stop there. I’d wipe that smile off his face no matter what it took.
‘Your teachers threw you out of school. Tom wants to throw you off the team. Snipe Doyle treats you like shit.’
‘Shut up,’ he said.
‘Your mammy ran away. Your daddy took back the only pound he ever gave you. Seanie Moran stole your girlfr–’
‘Shut up, you black …’
I stepped back to give myself room to swing my arm. He knew it was coming and he didn’t try to defend himself. The slap sounded like an explosion; I watched as the faint red outline of my fingers appeared on his pale skin.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘White trash.’
The hallway seemed longer on the way back to the front door. I slammed the door behind me. It didn’t seem possi ble that the pain could get any worse.
OD
I really blew the big reunion with Nance. There I was at the front door, ready to smash the world to pieces, and as soon as I heard her easy laugh inside, a switch turned in my head. I was all reasonable again, full of good intentions. They didn’t last more than a couple of minutes.
She gave me one of those cold, proud looks and I was on the defensive straight away. Everything she said was short and sharp, and then she was heading for the front door and I lost it. That word slipped out and I took what was coming to me. The slap brought me back to that terrible night when Mam and Jimmy laid into each other. By the time she left, I was on for bringing the JCB down to Moran’s fancy house and levelling it, never mind finishing off the park.
I changed into a pair of old jeans, flinging stuff all over the place as I charged around my room. When Jimmy called me, I knew why I was making such a racket. I kicked his door open and found him lying on his bed.
‘What d’you want?’ I asked him gruffly.
‘Nance is under pressure,’ he said. ‘Go after her.’
‘We have nothing to say to each other, me and Nance. And anyway, it’s none of your business.’
‘You might listen for a change. It wouldn’t do you any harm.’
I charged over to the bed, caught him by the shirt front and lifted him into a sitting position.
‘Don’t you tell me what’s good for me, Jimmy,’ I shouted. ‘You lost the right to do that years ago.’
‘I know,’ he said.
I pulled him closer. His shirt was ripping between my fingers and I grabbed harder.
‘I lost my mother because of you.’
‘I know.’
I was filling up. The words were catching in my throat. ‘We have … we have nothing. We have less than nothing …’
‘I know.’
‘Stop saying that. Stop saying you know. You know nothing.’
‘I – ’
‘Shut up, Jimmy!’ I screame
d. ‘You bum; you empty, selfish, sick bum. My life is in bits and it’s your fault. Everything that’s happened to me, all your fault!’
He was looking into my eyes. I realised he was having trouble breathing. I looked down at my hands. They were on his throat. I pushed him away from me and he fell back on the pillow, gasping.
‘Brass is back,’ he moaned. For a second I thought he was trying to provoke me to finish him off, put him out of his misery. ‘Brass is back,’ he repeated. With what seemed like his last ounce of strength, he raised himself on one elbow.
I backed away, frightened by what I’d done, terrified by the look on his face.
‘Save yourself, OD,’ he said in a strangled whisper. ‘No one else can do it for you. Save yourself.’
‘How?’ I said, gagging on the words. ‘How the hell can I?’
At the Galtee Lounge, Beano and me got well and truly smashed. At least this time he was drinking before I even got there, but of course I didn’t try to stop him. Some of the lads from the team were there waiting for a phone call from the St. Peter’s game. We stayed on our own. I couldn’t make myself feel excited about the prospect of that call. I was too busy trying to forget what had happened up at the house and building up some Dutch courage for the task ahead.
Beano’s big line for the night was another Jack Nicholson – the Joker in Batman again: ‘You can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs.’ He said it so often I asked him if the record was stuck.
Johnny Regan hovered around for a while, but I warned him off. Even when Beano was at the bar getting another round, I was watching.
‘What did Johnny say to you?’ I asked when he came back.
‘Nothing.’
‘He was talking to himself, was he?’ His eyes were flickering madly, as they always did in the smoky atmosphere of the Galtee.
‘You’re on about the drugs again, OD,’ he said, more loudly than he’d meant to. ‘Why do you always treat me like a kid … like I can’t think for myself?’
We finished our pints in silence. It was a quarter past nine. Time to make a move.
‘Beano,’ I said, ‘let’s go break some eggs.’
White Lies Page 11
