Call Me the Breeze: A Novel

by Patrick McCabe

  It was when I was emerging out of a half sleep just like that that I looked over and saw Boyle Henry sitting there, I suppose no more than ten feet away from me. I glanced a second time to make sure it was him for I was surprised, to say the least. For someone like him, the local bigwig councillor, was just about the last person you expected to see. No matter how much he might be involved. But there he was, his gaze fixed intensely on the screen as a masked woman, in close-up, parted her lips and mock-lisped: ‘What is the secret of The Blue Sextet?’

  There was some kind of a party going on in a country house now and all you could hear was the vibrato organ music reaching a crescendo as the woman in the mask began to strip. During that scene — she was covering herself with a fan — I got to wondering had they ever gotten around to making a movie out of Steppenwolf.

  When I looked again Boyle Henry was gone and there was a rolled-up tissue on the ground. I wondered what Mrs Henry — his wife in her younger days had been a local beauty — would say if you posted her that as a present. Not that anyone would be stupid enough to go and do the like of that. The way I was thinking, I found myself having a certain kind of pity for him. I could see myself saying: ‘Boyle, can I tell you something?’ and explaining as best I could what it’s like to be in love. To experience the mystery. How crystal clear it makes everything seem and how it can change your life. Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion was coming on as I left, the Provo nodding as he opened the door.

  Battle of the Bands

  Well, were Boo Boo and the boys over the moon or what? I mean, invited to perform was one thing but to go and win it outright was far more than any of them had dared to dream, no matter what they might have said. And the standard was fucking high, there’s no point in saying it wasn’t, with a heavy metal band from Dublin looking like they were going to walk it and then this other crowd from Cork who did all their own amazing stuff. Turning in a scorching set and no fucking question about it. But when Boo Boo hit that stage like a man possessed you knew something really special had happened. The audience went apeshit and it really didn’t surprise you. Scaling the amplifiers in his swallowtail coat and black pipestem trousers, he was like a miniature juju man, kung-fu chopping the air and sweeping his stovepipe hat, out of his mind on something. Except he was out of his mind on nothing, apart from the desire for fame, which he’d always been honest and upfront about. How many nights in the back of the van had I heard him at it: ‘We’re gonna do it, Joey, you wait and see! We’re going right to the top, you mark my words! Right through the fucking stratosphere in our psycho mothership!’

  The judge said he hadn’t seen a band that could come close to them in years. ‘Fucking right,’ said Boo Boo, ‘and we’re going to see that’s the way it stays!’, as he hit me a karate chop right between the ribs. They won five hundred quid, a series of gigs in McGonagles, which was the ‘in’ place, and a bunch of hours studio time. All the way back you didn’t hear a word. It was like they were all in shock. But you knew they were happy. It was all over the papers after that, ‘Scotsfield’s finest!’, like they were a fucking football team, when a few weeks before they’d have lynched the band. But no one was complaining, it was all part of the bigger game. There was even talk of a record deal now, at the very least a single. Around that time there was a call from Scene, a new music mag starting up in Dublin, requesting an interview. ‘I’ll melt their fucking jackeen brains,’ vowed Boo. ‘I’ll take their heads apart.’

  The heading — on the very front page of Scene — was: Scotsfield Psychopunk Speaks Out!, with a photo of Boo sticking up his middle finger. It seemed there was nothing they couldn’t do. Songs were literally pouring out of him. He even wrote one about The Ritzy — ‘Hardcore’. He nearly wrecked the whole fucking place performing it for me in the caravan!

  A Beacon on the Hill

  Between the success of the band and the peace rally coming up, there was a great stir now in the town and everyone was glad of the opportunity to show the place in a better light. Especially Fr Connolly, droning on in the pulpit about Ireland having had enough of ‘many young men of twenty’ going out to die and why a decent, law-abiding town like Scotsfield would never collude with a minute crackpot element whose only achievement was to besmirch this country’s name in the eyes of all good, right-thinking people. That was why he had invited the ‘Peace People’ from Belfast who, he said, had informed him that they would be more than delighted to come to Scotsfield. It was going to be the most wonderful night that the town had ever seen, he said, and that as a result of it we were destined to become a ‘beacon on the hill’. But what was necessary was that everyone be seen to muck in and put their shoulder to the wheel for the press would be watching us like hawks. In the churchyard afterwards there was great excitement. It was like the sun had come out especially for Scotsfield.

  Everyone went home in great humour that day.

  Books Is Bollocks

  I used always to leave my copy of Steppenwolf lying on the counter — you could tell now that it had been read a dozen times, if not more — in case she might come in and ask me about it, just catch a glimpse of it out of the corner of her eye. But it didn’t happen. She always tended to concentrate on whatever it was she was doing at any one particular time. Whoever it was she might be meeting, or what she wanted to drink. But it didn’t matter that much, not at all in fact, for it was just nice having the book there, thinking of how she’d read it too and how when the time was right we’d be discussing it together. Properly and intelligently. Taking our time. Not the way some of them would approach it, Hoss for example, or Austie himself, flicking through the pages growling: ‘What the fuck is this? Me bollocks! Books is a load of bollocks, Tallon!’

  I had known the band Steppenwolf, of course — lead singer John Kay — who’d done the music for Easy Rider. After work one day me and Boo Boo drove out to the reservoir and the two of us started singing it — ‘Born to Be Wild’, one of their greatest hits. ‘Did you know they were named after the Hermann Hesse book?’ I asked Boo. ‘Fucking hippy cancer!’ he snorted and flicked the jay out the window. Then, half stoned, he said: ‘I’ve done a good song about Connolly, Joey.’ ‘What’s that?’ I said as I took a drag. “‘Peacenik Fuckbrain Padre”,’ he says, and the two of us doubled up with the laughing. When the mirth had subsided, I got to wondering could Bennett hear us? We were parked in the exact spot where they’d found him. His voice coming drifting on the wind, stirring the leaves as though he’d never been gone at all.

  Gig 2!

  The night of the gig, McGonagles was heaving. I couldn’t believe it myself, except that when we got talking to the punters it didn’t take long to figure out that it was for the band from Manchester, Alberto y Los Trios Paranoias, not us. But they were damn good and no question about it. Which they had to be, I guess, for Boo Boo took the place asunder again. Doc Holliday on amphetamines, hurling himself across the stage rasping ‘Psycho!’ and ‘Hardcore!’ at the audience, who couldn’t believe their ears. I’m not saying we blew Dublin’s mind but we were asked back for three encores. We had a few jars with the Albertos in the dressing room after. I guess you could say they were a sort of satirical band, taking the piss out of everyone but most especially the punks. ‘Fuck them middle-class weekend punks,’ said Boo Boo, and they laughed. ‘Scummy Dublin ponces living off Daddy’s wallet!’

  It was fucking great to be alive that night, that’s all I know. ‘Pity there aren’t more places like McGonagles,’ said Boo on the way home one night, ‘Then we wouldn’t have to do these country dumps, supporting every redneck prick from here to Ballyfuckways!’

  Idea

  The idea behind Steppenwolf was that you had so many different personalities inside the one person — any one person. It suggested that you or whoever you were, your soul — however you might like to describe it — was split into several selves and that you were like an onion, the more layers you shed the more emerged underneath. ‘Fascinating’ is not a w
ord you would have heard me using much. Usually I’d have been embarrassed, to tell you the God’s honest truth. I mean, you could imagine them if I had — you could hear them, couldn’t you: ‘Do you hear the fucker — “fascinating”!’

  The truth, of course, is that I’d always wanted to write. I didn’t know why. To discover things, or maybe to explain them. I thought it might help me find out who I was — and my father and mother. What all of it meant and who we were. It might, I reckoned, give me the answer to why I used to spend all day longing for Mona, staring out the window waiting for school to end so I could collect my primroses for her and then go around to her house for some bread and jam.

  And sit there listening to her voice for hours.

  It was in her kitchen that I first felt the urge. To write, I mean. To put it all down and examine it in some way.

  Whether I’d have done any of it in the end — if indeed I’d be writing this — if a man called Johnston Farrell hadn’t decided one day on coming to Scotsfield is literally impossible to say. All I know is — regardless of whatever difficulties we might have had later on — I definitely do owe him a major debt as far as kick-starting my ‘creativity’ goes. His writing classes opened up a whole new world. It’s just unfortunate it worked out the way it did.

  Of course, we couldn’t have known that. Indeed, I think if you’d even suggested that we would one day become warring parties in a bitter feud, I think I’d probably have laughed in your face and I dare say so would he. But that’s the way it ended up, I’m afraid.

  Mass

  It was hard to handle it when you saw her at Mass, kinda difficult at first to believe she’d be bothered. Going along to hear the likes of Connolly, I mean. He was hardly John Kay or Charlie the Gardener.

  But when you thought about it, it was obvious she wasn’t going to come to a little town in Ireland, then turn around and start making herself out to be something special. Going around thinking: Why the fuck should I do the things you do? I’m from California! Which only made her even more special, possessing that kind of insight. I did the best I could so she wouldn’t see me looking, displaying what they called in the books ‘an unmistakable yearning’ (I think it was Hesse who said that — don’t ask me where I saw it) so bad at times it was like it was physically trying to take shape so it could get out of me and touch her hair, lay its head upon her breast.

  Connolly lowered his white head and asked the congregation why. Why was it we seemed to be turning our backs on the faith of our long dead fathers, to be selling our souls to television sets and paying nothing more than lip service to the laws of Christ. ‘What would St Patrick think if he were alive today? He’d be horrified, that’s what he’d be,’ he continued. ‘It seems to me we are producing the most unloved generation of children Ireland has ever seen. Oh, our children are well fed, well treated when they are ill. But they are growing up in a foreverness of infancy spiritually. Mothers are too busy and house-proud to talk or listen to the little confidences of small children. Pleasure-seeking and money-making are the top priorities. Easy to rush off to Mass and pile off out at the end as if there has been a bomb scare. “Pull a quick one” on a neighbour, cod the taxman, lie to teachers, read filth.’

  He listed a whole load of other things that were wrong with the country, then sighed and placed his palms over his eyes and added: ‘I could go on. But I won’t. For what I want to concentrate on is the possibility of a new beginning for us in Scotsfield — no, not alone in Scotsfield but the entire island of Ireland.’ His speech was so impressive that you could see some people were quite eager to clap. I was so dizzy from trying to get a look at her — there was a fat woman blocking my view — that all I could think of, daft as it seems, was Connolly on the stage in Monterey or somewhere, stripped to the waist going: ‘This one’s for all the people over there in Ireland! It’s called “Peace Frog”.’

  After Mass I waited in the grounds and tried to steady the trembling in my legs. Then — suddenly! — she appeared in the doorway. I especially liked the way she slid her hands in the pockets of her sky blue Levis. The way she nodded to her friends when she was listening to them, especially the bank girl. I was trying to think did I know any of the other chicks who were talking to her when I got this whiff of perfume and realized — how could I have missed it! — that that very second she had just gone walking past me!

  But the more I thought about it the more I realized that perhaps it was just as well I had, for I don’t think I’d have been able to speak, to be honest about it. The whole thing had happened so —

  All of a sudden her voice boomed close by — no, it was the bank chick’s — and then it was far away like the tiniest voice you’ve ever heard.

  ‘Right! I’ll see you out at the lake around three!’

  Before I could say anything, this shadow fell and I looked up to see one of the boys from the pub standing in front of me, smoking a cigarette and asking me something. ‘Shut the fuck up!’ I was on the verge of snapping. ‘Can’t you shut up for once when I’m thinking?’

  It turned out he was asking me whether there was an extension in the pub on Friday night. ‘Yes! Yes!’ I said. ‘There is!’

  ‘Austie’s coining it down below, eh, Joey?’ he said. ‘Ever since starting the discos.’

  I wished he’d stop tapping his foot. I wished he would piss off, whoever he was. I didn’t even bother to look at him. I couldn’t believe she was going out there. ‘Ah ha, aye!’ he kept saying, still jabbering away, his lips with a life of their own as his stupid head kept nodding away there behind the veil of smoke.

  By the time I got home I was in a right state, I can tell you, but had never felt better or more … full of possibility, I guess, in my life. I stood in front of the mirror and jabbed the air with my ‘gunfinger’.

  ‘Yeah!’ I said. For a laugh I sang ‘Peace Frog’, imagining that I was Boo Boo somehow mixed up with Jim Morrison and there were all these people in front of the stage. I looked at them in the mirror. ‘You doin’ good?’ I said, and hooked my thumbs in my belt. ‘I’m real pleased to hear that, people!’ I said then. I attempted the Keith Carradine smile. There was a name for it. ‘The enigmatic smirk’ they called it. I tried it again. It didn’t look bad. All told, I reckoned I could do it pretty good. ‘Yip!’ I said as I lit up a spliff. ‘No acid tonight!’ I added decisively — and had barely uttered the words when who raps on the door? That tempting little fucker Boo Boo! With two whats in his hand? California sunshines, surprise, surprise!

  So you can imagine the state we were in after shoving down those!

  At the Lake

  Especially the next morning! I’d only managed to get in a little over two hours kip thanks to them skittish electrics going swoosh inside my bloodstream!

  It must have been the hottest day of the year, and that was saying something considering what the summer had been like so far. When I got to the lake, who did I see lying out under the trees? Only Hoss and a gang of the lads from Austie’s, drinking beer.

  ‘Hey, Joey! Going in for a swim then, are you?’ Hoss shouted.

  ‘Aye! He’s going in to get rid of some of that beef! Isn’t that right, Barbapapa?’ called someone else.

  There were shadows playing around me — because of what remained of the acid, of course — sharp, angular ones that jutted out all of a sudden, and then of course, on top of that, the specks going zit zat zit so nimble and fast that one minute you were fired up with ecstasy then, the next thing you knew, enveloped by dread.

  Barbapapa was a big kids’ cartoon jelly man who was on the telly in the middle of the day — I’d seen him in the paper once described as a ‘cuddly blob of pink ectoplasm’ — and this was their private name for me. Any time they used it, they went into fits of hysterics. Hoss’s pal was even hitting Hoss now as he repeated it, squealing: ‘Did you hear what I fucking called him, Hoss? Did you hear me calling him Barbapapa?’

  I think they must have been pretty far gone, regardless of w
hat time it was, for Hoss tossed a can at me then but it missed by a mile. I wished you could make your heart go at the speed you wanted by just sitting down and concentrating. The opposite was the way it seemed to work, however. I could have sworn I heard them calling me again but I didn’t turn because if the regime was to begin it would have to start with situations like this. ‘Don’t turn around,’ I told myself. ‘Keep looking straight ahead. This is the beginning. In this place it begins. Organization total. Total Organization. Just stare straight ahead.’

  The squeals of the kids as they splashed in the water began to reduce in volume as I steadied myself and stiffened in order to focus completely and diminish the acid’s power. I could feel it slowly beginning to wane.

  Then, gradually, I experienced the most exquisite and gentle calm descending. Along with the tiniest reassuring hint of pride. Soon the time would come when we could talk about such emotions. But not without patience. Only through patience and discipline could that moment be delivered. I closed my eyes as I thought of her in slow motion, wading through the water. I could not — inappropriate as I felt it seemed to the moment — prevent myself from thinking what she might look like in a swimsuit. Before thinking: Maybe she won’t even wear one!

  Perhaps go streaking right along the shore right into the trees, the way she might in California.

  Except she wouldn’t, you see, for I knew she had too much class for that. I’d seen that side of her already, showing respect for the traditions of other people and cultures. I wondered whether she’d been to India, for example, the way that The Seeker had. Maybe that’s where she learnt it, the idea that if you’re in someone else’s country you showed them some respect. Not turning around, going: ‘My way — understand? My way’s the way — there is no other!’