‘You’re better off here even if you do get drenched by those rascals,’ Willow told him. ‘I’ll keep watch in case they crawl back over. Try to get some sleep my friend. Is iad gáire maith agus codladh fada an dá leigheas is fearr ar rud ar bith.’
He hated when Willow spoke to him as Gaeilge. Another thing he’d started doing in recent weeks to frustrate him. How could Rashi intervene if the pub dipsos did more than goad or spray him with water next time? There was a dull feeling in his heart. The kind he felt the last time Lorna skipped out the door in 1989. A seeping dread he couldn’t justify. Parked in the Monarch with four others from the building site after work when the police came hoofing around looking for him. ‘You need to come with us,’ they said. Outside he resisted for a moment until they told him in swarthy tones, no no, he’d have to go with them. He really had to go. Now. It had started to spit rain. Steel grey of spring sky squalling down on top of him. Get your jacket. Get your things. They offered him a ham sandwich from a vending machine at the station in Kentish Town and a milky coffee. One of the lady officers was sheathed in peroxide and looked like Myra Hindley. They’d already spoken to the foreman Johnny. Did Lorna work part time? Was she seeing anyone else? Was there a reason she might be wandering around Farringdon Road so late? It was a good bit away from the dance school. Had she been followed before? Were there any tenants in the house that seemed a bit odd? Her crimson pointe pumps shoes pressed up against the cupboard when he got home. Half erect as if they still had tiny feet pushed deep into them waiting for Tchaikovsky to give the nod.
At night Rashi mummified himself in rope and ribbons to the upper branches so he wouldn’t fall off. The plank bed was hard as destiny and any attempt at bedding just made it worse with the perpetual rain showers. Willow serenaded him with really annoying lullabies too, as if he was four years old. You must love me Diddle Diddle cause I love you, I heard one say Diddle Diddle, Once I came hither, That you and I Diddle Diddle must lie together.
‘Come out Tarzan ye mad yoke!’ one of the men from the pub shouted over.
He woke to a big kerfuffle below. Willow teasing him downwards with the aid of his hairiest branches, into the arms of a fluffy social worker with a padded jacket and silly smile.
‘Hello!’ she said, casually. ‘We’d really like to help. This is so hard on you here, with the weather getting worse. We may have a solution.’
‘A Bachelor in the Fine Art of Interfering, the likes of her,’ Willow said, shaking coins from the upper branches onto the Guard and the barman who were mooching around like lemons. ‘Throw her a Wonderland quote: when you can’t look on the bright side I’ll sit with you in the dark. Tell her to go hassle some single mothers who can’t cope.’
‘What has happened here mohabbat?’ Lorna asked. She wasn’t being judgemental, more like softly concerned. Her pale face scrubbed with sadness. ‘This is a terrible day.’ She’d only come to him twice in all the years since. Once on a ferry bound for Brittany when a British soldier on leave from Afghanistan threatened to throw Rashi overboard for stealing his seat in the cinema lounge. Another time when he was having a fling with the Greek yoga teacher he visited in Gerakas to see the loggerhead turtles. They tried to make love on the beach out of sight of the other tourists but he kept seeing Lorna. She was standing not far off, holding a bunch of wildflowers, watching them. He lost his nerve after that.
The pot-bellied Guard began orating from a clipboard some lackey or other handed him. ‘In accordance with section 16(h) of the Residential Tenancies Act 2004 you are obliged not to behave within the above dwelling, or in the vicinity of it, in a way that is anti-social …’
‘Fuck up!’ Rashi said. ‘I’m not renting this tree. I am a free man!’
‘It’s time now,’ the social worker said in a low voice, reaching her hand out like a zoo handler.
He was exhausted running away for a living. Worn out by strangers badgering and hassling, of aimless voices following, shadows prickling.
‘Get off the grass ye mentler!’ ‘Stop scaring the kids!’ Gaggle of women from the flats in Penney’s pyjamas over-populated with cuddly bears and climbing cats. ‘You’re a smelly bollix!’
A reporter from the Evening Herald fiddled with a digital recorder. He wanted to interview Rashi about what a nation of racists Ireland had become. Did he have any opinions on Brexit? Was he homeless out of choice? Was he making some sort of political statement?
‘I want to be left alone,’ he told him. ‘All I desire in the world is a good night’s sleep.’
Some of the women became agitated when they saw the Garda mauling Rashi roughly.
‘There’s real criminals over in the pub but they might be too scary for ye?’
‘Haven’t you got tax discs to check out on the road there?’
It was not the end Rashi often dreamt about. He would just be about to doze off, resting his tender neck on a gnarl for the night. Faint buzz of white noise approaching. He’d be dosed up on Bluegreen shots. Glops of Goldschläger, gobs of Guinness. Other leftovers he ritually collected from sticky tables as last orders rang out, poured into a polythene beaker. The gang at the park gates hunching up and over. Banging the railings with sticks and bars, jokes and jars. Making their way onto his sacred mandir of grass.
‘Kick the living shite out of the fucker, the seagulls will scoff his brains by morning.’
In front of him Lorna’s dead legs doing a bunny hop. Her sapphire blue ballet dress with the white tutu she’d spent six months saving like mad for. Formerly hung in all kinds of strange twists and inclines from the self-adhesive wall knobs meant for tea towels. ‘I know it’s childish,’ she’d said. ‘But I need to feast my eyes on it as soon as I wake in the morning.’ Willow in an ungovernable rage, spurting sap in every direction, submerging half a dozen scallywags beneath the spongy ground. But even that wouldn’t stop the tormentors. They’d disco on Rashi’s entrails when he lay silent and subdued, on and on until wholly broken.
‘There on the willow trees, we hung up our harps,’ Willow whispered to Rashi as his head was pressed down into the back of the Garda car. ‘It’s a sad day to witness such a fine fellow being hauled off to the madhouse.’ Rashi stared out at the last friend he’d ever have on free land and wondered in earnest if he’d ever cared about him at all. He seemed to be bootlegging in the breeze, flinging branches about, entangled in celebration. It was not a coincidence that he chose him as a companion. Willow was riddled with black canker and didn’t have long to live. Rashi had hoped they’d sink down into the glum earth together. Like on the Indonesian island Tana Toraja, where, if a baby dies before it starts teething, the family cuts a hole in a tree and places the dead child inside. The tree regrows around the baby and absorbs it. Rain poured down as the car slid off, staining the pathways with silvery tears. Willow shouted after him, ‘Salicylic acid from my leaves is used to manufacture aspirin, remember that, won’t you? It may turn up on a quiz one day.’
Natterbean
He knew he smelt like a sardine but that’s what Polish beer does to a man on a low wage. With names like Tatra, Tyskie, and Żywiec, he may as well have been downing fermented donkey piss the night before. The smug knotty face on the bent cop who ran the off license on a privately paid-for unflappable hip made him madder than a hacksaw. To top it off he woke to Gina screaming blue butchery as he forgot the green lentils again – on a wholefood buzz since her arse went all weather balloon – he still hadn’t got around to sorting out the monkey business with her. Burrowing in his chest hair for six torturous weeks. But today it was the thoughts of Natterbeans that was pushing him comprehensively into the dark place. Swarming the roads and cycle lanes. Using his waxed bonnet at traffic lights as a fat walking stick to get them to where they didn’t remember they had to go on the other side. If he’d half a brain or a quarter of a heart he’d feel sorry for the fuckers, but they were a type of
celestial cabbage he loathed. When he passed Fanagans Funeral Home with the overflowing bottle bins slumped at its gates, bits of torn brown tights flying from the tangled railings of an aulone’s wet dream, one of them hopped in all lickety-spit.
‘Alright bro! You and me are mates aren’t we? Yer nor gonna give me no jip cos I’m having a fuck of a day like? I’ll pay ye goodo, yeah. I’ll see ye alright when I get me glasses as me old ma used to say but I never really knew what she meant. Ma’s are stone fucking mad aren’t they? You know what I’m gerrin’ at, don’t ye? I’ll shut me trap now, we’ll probably get there quicker. Isn’t that the way bud? You from around here?’
‘Where are we off to?’ he asked. Knowing that to politely remove the plank from the back seat after he’d already pressed the fare button would be undue hassle. ‘Just tell me where we’re heading to so we can make a move.’ The roads ahead slippy and slimy. He’d have to drive slow and meticulously, sunk stupid in Natterbean’s backdoor trots splattering from his gob.
‘Well I tell ye what, I’m natterbean up at the clinic and they was fucking me around cos they says I ain’t got a prescription or that I did have a yokedymadoo in anyways but I don’t no more so I’ve to head to this other gaff up around Meath Street and talk to Mr Doherty who’ll sort me out at another clinic till the Finglas one get word of where their prescription went to … One hand doesn’t know who’s scratching the nebs of the other … bunch of bleeding jokers.’
‘Look, where are we going to?’ he asked again. Not so politely this time, adding that he wanted to see the cash. ‘Out with the spondoolies, I need to know if you can sort the fare.’
‘Stall the ball there bud. Don’t be going all Donald Trump on me. Think I’m just another dopey trackie don’t ye? But here, c’mere, I’m natterbean up at the cash machine so we’re good to wangle. I’m not fucking dense. I can answer most questions on The Chase. Do ye watch dat, do ye? Fucking love that programme. Gas the way greedy bolloxes say they’re going to buy a gaff, then they go home with fuck all when them fat chasers ram them up the hole.’
He’d been stung too many times lately by the likes of him. The last Natterbean, he had to reef him back into the car through the front window by the scruff. So far gone, so wasted, so emaciated, he would’ve been able to do a runner through a cat flap if he’d had his jimminy bits about him. That particular night he drove like a gazelle with a rocket up its shitepipe, through the Port Tunnel, up past the airport. Out into the spuds and strawberries-for-sale countryside with its vulgar pretend Tudor houses and Breaded Chicken Breast With Pineapple pubs. Dumping him in a field without his Nikes or bubble down jacket. A few hard farewell slaps. Took his social welfare and medical cards just so he’d forget forever who he was supposed to be. Left him there at the hem of humanity for the dawn to deal with.
‘It’s nice to be nice, you know? Don’t be all rough bud like one of them bleeding leg breakers. Didn’t I tell ye we were going up as far as Meath Street. I’m natterbean in two Jo Maxis and they were like, the same as that. I’ve plenty of paper on me so I have. I’ll give ye extra if ye wait for us. I’ll give ye a tenner up front now, alright bud, even though yezer clock only says a fiver so far, how’s that for a bargain bucket?’
‘Do me a favour,’ he said, this time pulling the taxi over to the side of the road before they headed further into the cesspit. ‘Will ye try to shut your hoop on the way? I can’t concentrate if someone’s nattering constantly. Trying to keep me mincers on the traffic. Nothing personal. I’m sure you’re a nice fella, blah blah blah. But we’ll get on much better if we can get there as quickly and as peacefully as we can.’
He adjusted the mirror to take a closer look. Natterbean had the same mushroom pallor and knee-jerkiness as the others, but with a thin pointy face that was extra alert. Morning fox in an industrial estate looking for crane flies. His uneven shoulders and busted nose were typical. Teeth yellow as corn on the cob. Stinking of Lynx over dirt and cherry bubblegum. As he drove past Glasnevin Cemetery, he was reminded of the tour guide who supped the pints in his local boozer. He’d be beating on about how the bodies of the rich were interred in fancy private tombs but in recent times Natterbeans were breaking in in the dead of night pricking themselves and the ghosts with heroin needles. The ornamental pathways planted with Lebanon cedar, red sequoia, oak, beech and yew, were spattered with blood and empty Tayto bags. Soon they’d be in sight of the quays and he’d be rid of him, circling back to grab sure-fire fares from the airport.
‘Yeah yeah yeah yeah, what did I fucking tell ye? He’s a poxy messer. Fucking headwreck. Don’t be minding him. Total spacer.’ Whining into his blower. ‘I’m natterbean up there with Natalie this morning and she says it’s sorted. I’ve to go here first on a message, gizza buzz back in an hour.’
He was glaring at the mobile, pressing on the buttons like a reflexology tosspot would on a scabby foot. ‘Here, bud, will ye pull over there for a sec. There’s me old homey at the corner, I owe him a note.’
Homey was a fat man on one leg with a squeegee of green hair you could wash a pile of dishes with. He could hear the Honda 50 drawl of both their voice boxes building up at breakneck speed into an ambulance siren, ‘warrrhhh warrrrhhh warrrrh warrrr’, before he jumped back in the car again. Better not be messing him around. The meter was up to €14 already. He wasn’t about to bring him on a round-trip of inner city Dublin dealers in creepy car parks and lurid laneways strewn with needles, plastic cartons, banana skins, blood-soaked knickers. The one yesterday, a good-looking dolly, had the wool rightly pulled, taking him to five different chemists for ‘phy’ while robbing them of expensive wrinkle cream.
‘I’m only trying to make an honest living like you are,’ she’d said, jumping back into his car. ‘I’m natterbean in prison four times already and I’ll never go back, so relax the cacks.’
His reg was taken on CCTV and traced. He had to call into the Guards and explain himself. It’s not his job to ask questions as long as the punter pays up, but he got a fine from the carriage office regardless.
‘Can ye turn down here for a minute bud,’ he said when they hit the grey bulk of Christchurch. ‘There’s me mate Bottler, just want to say howayea. His missus had a sprog a few weeks back. They’d to sew up her piss bag an all, she’s in an awful state.’
Bottler staggered out of a doorway looking like a grade-A psycho who’d crack your toes off and use them as ear plugs for nights he was slumped under the motorway bridge unable to crawl to anywhere else. Natterbean gave him a man slap on the shoulder and limped his way back to the car.
‘That fella looks like a bit of a header if you don’t mind me saying.’ He wanted to draw his attention to the clock. ‘Just letting you know with the few stops already, it’s up to €22 now.’
‘No bother bud,’ he said. ‘Here’s another Lady Godiva. I’ll give ye the rest when we get there. He used to be a brilliant house breaker, but the Hungarians have it wrapped up so they do. Put fucking broken glass outside bedroom doors. If ye hear clatter in the middle of the night, right, ye smash yer feet right up if ye gander to see what’s going down. Filthy stuff that is. We never did nothing like that. Always straight in and out. It’s not on. Some poor oldie prick cutting his feet to ribbons. You don’t do shit like that but the Hungarians and Poles are bonkers. No bleeding respect.’
At the corner of Meath Street and Engine Alley a red hoodie made a run for the window. ‘There ye are ye mad cunt!’ he roared in. ‘I’m natterbean talking about you to Skittles and the lads!’ He held onto the boot as the lights turned green, falling over on his arse and rolling towards the drain. Natterbean was punching more digits on his mobile as the chemist came into view. He thought of Gina and her constant trips to McCabe’s for fake tan. Except she’d gotten the mangy Egyptian one, looked like runny dog shite slipping down her pins. It didn’t strike him as odd at the time either that she’d started getting her fann
y waxed into a Brazilian landing strip, whatever the bejaysisfuck that was, saying that it stopped her getting itchy. ‘It’s €28 on the clock, I’ll need paying as soon as you come out.’
He’d accidentally seen her Tinder chat a few weeks before. Gina left her pink iPhone in the newly built utility room thrown on top of some dirty duvet covers ironically enough – he hadn’t even heard of dating apps for phones – a kind of Hailo for getting your hole. It might’ve only been a series of narks with this Paul but he doubted it. She was a right goer when she could be arsed putting it out. Up to three times a day when they met first. His knob the colour of a pit bull’s nose. ‘Bonobo’ he’d called her. Always wanting it rough from behind. Hurt like fuck to know she could’ve been that lonely or desperate after twenty-two years. He’d decided not to tell her he knew but the knowing had done his snot in. Didn’t sit pretty thinking what he could do to her if she continued messing him around. He could harm her so easily. Breaking her neck like a Brazil nut. Pushing her down the stairs when she was doing her aulone’s trick of hauling two baskets of washing. Sticking ethylene glycol in her skinny mint hot chocolate to fuck up her kidneys. Now this knucklehead of a Natterbean was bashing digits just like she does with Candy Crush when she wakes in the mornings full of beans whiffing of boiled mackerel. There was probably a junkie app as well. Swaying thumb tacks on Google Maps for those desperate for a hit.
‘You can pay me what you owe and get out of the car.’
‘Don’t be freaking the beak,’ he said. ‘Jaysis I’m natterbean in a queue the size of a black man’s mickey. Fucking mayhem in there! They’re making everyone down it in front of the nurses on account of wackos keeping it in their gobs. They do be spitting the phy out into plastic cups to sell outside. Here’s a thirty spot. I need one more Cheesy Quaver over in Ringsend.’
Room Little Darker Page 10
