Call Me the Breeze: A Novel

by Patrick McCabe

  With, of course, poor old Mangan getting the brunt of it again! ‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘tell me honestly right here and now: do you think if I ran I’d have a chance of getting in?’

  He stared at me and stammered for a minute, like it was some major oral examination that would end in total disgrace if he flunked it. Then he started picking at his nail and going: ‘How would I know, Joey? Sure I know nothing about councils or politics or the like of that!’

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, you must have an opinion!’ I snapped. I could be really ratty with old Mangan at times.

  But by the time the light failed, standing there in that rickety old caravan or mobile home or whatever you want to call it, I had made up my mind. What? I thought as I looked at the paper — Bono was on the front of it wearing this stupid-looking Fidel Castro jacket and army hat. So it’s OK for Mr ‘Streets Have No Name’ not only to go over to America blathering shite about Martin Luther King when he’s not even from that country but now start acting like he’s black and knows all about hip-hop music?

  I suppose how I saw it was as another tiny little ‘eureka’.

  ‘Yes!’ I went as I fiddled with my mobile phone. ‘It’s OK for him to go off doing things like that, but when the ordinary Joe from Scotsfield comes up with a little project of his own, all of a sudden it’s a problem? Well, somehow I don’t think so!’

  I don’t fucking think so, Joey Tallon!

  The House of the Living Dead

  Having made the decision, I started work on my campaign in earnest. Now that the word was out!

  Except that saying ‘the word was out’ is like saying: ‘That Martin Luther King, he demonstrated some potential as a politician.’

  For it had got to the stage now that I couldn’t go up the street without someone calling: ‘I say there, Joey! Good luck now in October!’ and me starting to get like the rest of them in response.

  Like the rest of the politicians, I mean, of course! For a start, going straight into the barber’s and getting myself a haircut!

  ‘No Mohawks this time then, Joey?’ he said, and I wished he hadn’t. Because it reminded me of the bad old days. It brought me back to …

  I just wished he hadn’t said it, that’s all.

  ‘Just cut it short and decent,’ I said as I leafed through a magazine. Guess who was in it? ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake — Bono!’ I said. This time appealing for peace in Northern Ireland.

  Although I had to admit it was a very good cause. Who knew? Perhaps I’d meet him if I got elected. Chat about old times and the Breakaway festival.

  ‘The trouble I had chasing after you, Bono, my man!’ I’d say, and we’d have a laugh and head down to Lillies Bordello for a chat and a coupla shots of Jack Daniels.

  But then it would be on to more serious matters. Maybe he could write a song, to be played on the inaugural night. ‘The Temple Song’ maybe, or ‘The Achilles Lament’, after the poem by Michael Long-ley that I had included in my manifesto. Who knew — it was just an idea.

  After that, I went from strength to strength, everyone telling me how good they thought I looked with my neatly trimmed hair and, of course, all the weight that I’d lately lost. I had bought a suit — actually, the truth is, the St Vincent de Paul Society had assisted me with its purchase but I didn’t want anyone to hear about that — and once I’d donned it, in its charcoal grey I looked every inch the up and coming politician, even if I say so myself.

  The man with his finger on the pulse!

  The caravan was full of newspapers now, and you couldn’t look out your window but there I’d be, chatting away to people as they told me all their problems. I really was beginning to become excited — no, not just excited, empowered — by this new-found direction. It seemed so real! So practical and of … value that I don’t know on how many occasions — after talking to a farmer about, maybe, a sick calf or to a housewife about, say, a housing extension grant — I was on the verge of going — no, not going! — running! - back to the caravan and gathering up all my so-called ‘paraphernalia of enlightenment’ — St John of the Cross, Rabindranath Tagore, Hermann Hesse and Siddartha, Abraxas — …

  And making a great big pyre of the whole fucking lot!

  Before returning once more to the square, barking through my loud-hailer (which I regularly used to assist me with my speeches, whether in the square or anywhere else): ‘No! Living is not about thinking! It’s about engaging for the good of others! About grabbing life by the hasp of the arse and going: Yes! Yes, I say! Let’s … do! Not think, my friends, but do!’

  I spoke every Saturday and, bit by bit, the crowds began to get bigger. What was gradually becoming plainer to me was that I had stumbled by accident upon my destiny. It was the most beautiful, rewarding feeling, particularly because of the way it had happened —with a simple, unassuming letter to Scotsfield Urban Council.

  ‘Yes!’ I said one day in Doc Oc’s. ‘All your life you think you’re one thing! And then you discover …!’

  What did I mean by that? I reflected. Then I slapped the counter, saying (privately, however, not to the patrons!): ‘I mean that, all along, I have seen myself as being outside the establishment! Which is really a load of delusional nonsense! For I belong inside! And that realization is my “coming home”! The rebirth that I’ve been awaiting all along!’

  I literally beamed at my reflection in the mirror as I adjusted the thin knot of my spotted grey tie.

  I walked home that night. I had cut down dramatically on my drinking; all of that belonged in the past, and as for spliffs? Marijuana —nothing more than the crutch of a sad, Charles Manson-type jailbird who’d been looking in all the wrong places for ‘the answer’. ‘If only Eamon Byrne could see me now,’ I mused as I stepped along the road. ‘He really would have himself a laugh!’

  The great thing was that now I slept like a top. The old days when I’d been unnerved through thinking about Boyle — they might as well have belonged to another age.

  I looked out the window to see a great big sun like a slice of blood orange coming peeping over the hill, and it really did feel like the new beginning to end them all.

  Pride in the Name of Love

  I just could not wait to get into those chambers, take my seat on the council and get down to the nitty-gritty of helping ordinary Scotsfield citizens with the management of their day-to-day lives. Which I made sure to make clear in the Scotsfield Standard. I couldn’t believe it when they called me up and asked me. They had got my number from LLR. ‘Would you be prepared to do an interview for us,’ they said, ‘dealing with your policies and your attitudes to living in Scotsfield town generally?’

  Nervous as I was, I was happy with the way that it went. I reckoned I looked pretty snazzy, smiling out from the very front page in my executive suit with, very much to the fore, the words ‘New Spring Manifesto’ clearly visible on the the poster.

  I don’t know how many times I read the interview while sipping coffee at the bar in Doc Oc’s, having decided now to turn my back on alcohol, this time for good. Definitely. With not even so much as an alcopop passing my lips. Absolutely nothing. Come hell or high water, I was going to stick to that.

  The number of people who clapped me on the back as they came and went was absolutely unreal! All I kept thinking as I sat there reading was: Boy! Wouldn’t they all be proud of me now! (I could see me telling Bono how like his song ‘Pride [In the Name of Love]’ it all seemed. Because that’s what they all said to me: ‘We’re proud of you, Joey, because of what you’re doing — in love’s name!’)

  Meaning my love for Mona, of course, and my mother and father, as well as those old pals The Seeker and Bennett, all of whom I saw in my dreams that night. Again I had slept like a lamb, and I can’t tell you how good it felt to be experiencing that at last! ‘A noise outside? Oh, don’t be ridiculous,’ I’d say. ‘Those “noise-imagining” days are gone forever!’

  As my eyes closed over and I stood with those old pals in the h
ush of a sylvan glade. With the temple already built — even more imposing than I ever had imagined — my father Jamesy beside my mother, bawling through the loudhailer: ‘Come on up here, Joey! Come on up here to the temple and talk to your old friends and us — the lovebirds!’ Beaming as he squeezed his beloved wife’s hand.

  The massive oaken door creaking open as one by one they started appearing in the Great Hall — not only my friends, but also many others who had lived in the town at one time or another. But every one, without exception — it was wonderful! — all looking fresh as daisies!

  ‘Yes! It’s him we have to thank for building our house!’ barked Jamesy. ‘This Temple of the Living that commemorates the dead!’ as this great big smile cracked from ear to ear.

  It was going absolutely fantastic. I could have sworn I caught a glimpse of the salesman flitting about inside and was about to call his name: ‘Campbell Morris!’

  But then something happened and I …

  I was so disappointed when I woke up and found myself covered from head to toe in that familiar old sweat. Then I heard something moving outside and ran over to the window.

  I could make out Mangan shuffling back from the pump, pulling his old coat around him as he climbed the step into his caravan, closing the door behind him.

  I sat slumped by the window and tried to make out how it had happened … that I should wake up all veined and sweaty like that.

  Then the dream started returning again, and I remembered how everything had been going so well, until I’d seen the salesman in the shadows.

  I wished now I had forgotten the details, which began to reconverge as vividly as if I’d been filming them myself in Technicolor Deluxe —the palmprint of blood plainly visible on the Doric column and the streak on the white wall behind the salesman as he stumbled, his voice not a voice at all but a strangled gargling so similar to the one I remembered from that day long ago when myself and Bennett stood outside Willie Markham’s window. The dying man blurred but visible through the glass, his body convulsing as his wife fell across him, hopelessly trying to console him. But none of it doing any good, his choking worsening as his relatives went on sobbing helplessly.

  Bennett turning to me and using the same words as the salesman did now, staggering like a drunk man down the spotless white temple steps: ‘The bouse of the living dead,’ he groaned fearfully, ‘the house of the living dead.’

  Then, in the dream, Mona bursting out crying and Jamesy through the loudhailer barking ‘No, no, no.’ But ‘Yes’ said Campbell Morris as Bennett emerged, his face not a face but a writhing embroidery of black-headed earthworms engorging and mutating repulsively out of the circular black pit of his shirt collar. His voice, however, the very same as it had always been — no rattle, no nothing, but affirming, almost matter-of-factly, what the salesman had said: ‘Yes. That’s what it is. It’s that all right. The House of the Living Dead. And it’s us that’s done it, everything bad that happened around here — it’s us that has done it. Nobody else — us!’

  He stood right in front of me and smiled. Then began to change into someone very familiar as the worms slowly faded, and The Big Fellow pushed back his fedora to sigh, with just so much weary exasperation: ‘We did it all right. We’re guilty. But you know that, Joey, don’t you? Oh, Joey Tallon knows it all right, for there’s no one more guilty than him.’

  It was after that — and I cannot emphasize enough just how much of a state I still was in, even after calming down, having rationalized it all as best I could — that I decided to make it clear that I had been focusing excessively on the misdeeds of others as a means of exonerating myself. Avoiding the consequences of my own, every bit as grave, past actions.

  I went over to Mangan at once and explained myself — not wearing my suit, but attired in nothing apart from my underwear — laying my heart as bare as it is humanly possible to do. And trying my best to sit still but unfortunately not being able to achieve the desired level of calmness, smacking my palm with my fist as I proceeded vehemently: ‘No! I know what I did to Jacy, Mangan! Nobody is more aware of that than me! I understand the trauma she went through and the suffering it must have caused her! And I hate myself for what happened! I really and truly do! For yes, I am as guilty as anyone! No, Mangan! I’m not as guilty as anyone! I am twice as guilty! You see those who murdered Tuite? Detective Sergeant Tuite of the Heavy Gang long ago? Do you remember him? So you remember who dumped him in the tannery pit? Who carved and branded his flesh with initials? I’m as guilty as them! As guilty as everyone who laid a hand on the salesman, on poor old Campbell Morris! As guilty as them all and make no mistake!’

  I whirled, puncturing the air with my finger. Mangan stumbled backwards — I think he must have thought I was going to hit him.

  ‘Except … far more guilty!’ I pronounced, almost with a hint of triumph.

  The last thing I had intended to do when I’d finished all that was weep. But I did.

  Mangan was very understanding. He told me to take the day off school (I was glad he encouraged me in that as I’d been absent a lot of late on account of the campaign. And, to tell the truth, was reluctant to get involved in any more rows with Carmody about it or anything else. The campaign, I mean. Even Eddie the supervisor seemed to have given up on me, giving me the cold shoulder whenever we’d meet on the street.)

  Mangan suggested that maybe I ought to stop thinking about things for a little while. While leading me to the door he placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder and said: ‘Maybe you shouldn’t write any more letters, Joey. And maybe stop all these phone calls for a few days,’ he advised, adding, almost apologetically: ‘Them auld politicians! Sure they’re only out for all they can get! Forget about them, at least for a little while! Put them out of your mind — for today, anyways! It might be better for yourself! It’s all only making you upset. You’d be far better taking some time off to rest.’

  I was glad he had said all that, for I needed some advice. Some solid practical advice that had nothing to do with ‘thinking’ or ‘considering one’s options’ or endlessly trying to work things out. I lay on the bunk bed and decided — the relief was absolutely immense — that I didn’t care any more. For everything that Mangan had said I knew to be absolutely right. Spot-on guidance. That that was exactly what I needed to do. Forget for a while about politics and ‘thinking’, plans and politicians. Everything.

  ‘Forget about everything, Joey,’ I said. Then I just drew the curtains and fell back down on the bunk, only this time not on my own but lying in the arms of Mona. She was wearing her floaty skirt and gazing at me with the saddest eyes. As I parted the black curtain of her hair and lay there sucking my thumb, my head resting on her stomach, a cold hard fact got a grip of me and would not let go till I faced it squarely. And that was to accept that soon — for definite, this time! -this would have to come to an end. That I’d have to burn her wig and skirt and the old-fashioned floral-patterned apron. Even her ear-rings would have to go in the bin.

  ‘But not yet, Mona,’ I whispered. ‘Not yet, Mona of Dreams,’ sucking away there (tttht! tttht!) on the moon of her belly as my heavy eyes closed (I had taken a sleeping tablet) and I tried not to see them, the fluid symbols swirling at the edge of my vision: POLITICAL CANDIDATE’S SECRET FANTASTIES!

  At first an indeterminate newsprint grey that gradually began to bleed into the most fantastic colours, the rubrics assuming a life of their own as in the manner of laboratory plasma they melted in and out of each other, like living liquorice flicking out across the cosmos before reassembling almost decorously, annotating in the most fastidious and elegant of calligraphies the observation: ‘It was established today that Joseph Tallon, the Temple of Colossal Dreams Candidate in the forthcoming council elections, has been for a considerable period of time — on and off over the past twenty-five years, in fact — engaged in an intimate relationship with an inanimate object, i.e. a life-size doll of synthetic rubber, of the type normally associated with perv
erted and bereft old men for whom any normal type of intercourse, be it social or sexual, with the female gender is, generally speaking, impossible.’

  I was so disappointed when my sleep was broken again. I could have sworn I heard something …

  But it was nothing, I knew that in my heart. Just Mangan and his bucket again. I sat on the edge of the bunk and buried my face in my hands. I looked at Mona and my stomach turned over. Her head was tilted sideways with her wig about to fall off. Her lipsticked mouth was hanging open and her glassy eyes were empty. Sometimes they said: ‘I love you’ but other times they said: ‘You’re afraid, aren’t you, Joseph?’

  The only person who knew about them, these deep-rooted fears, psychosexual anxieties or however you might wish to describe them (chief among them bundling Mona into a box every time you heard the slightest sound!) — apart from Mangan, of course — was Bonehead. In the end — when we moved in here, especially — we told one another everything. And I really do have to say it: the old fucker could be so understanding!

  He’s always had this gift of making a joke out of the most horrendous events. He’d be chuckling as he pulled yet another meal out of the oven (what a fantastic cook he turned out to be — ‘Kedgeree!’ ‘Tagliatelle!’ ‘Fajitas, Joesup!’ — the place full of recipe books!), grabbing the dish with the oven glove and running over to the table as he said: ‘Well, all I can say is, that’s what you get for wanting to be famous, Joesup!’, always then adding something light-hearted like: ‘Boy but this pasta looks the business!’ or ‘Taramy-salata! Just the fucking job!’

  He’s right, of course — it is what I get. Although a poorly lit, hamfistedly shot ten-minute sex video called The Lovebirds was hardly what I’d had in mind when it came to becoming famous!

  ‘The Showdown’ or ‘The Incident’

  The funny thing is — and I’ve often heard it said — that when you’re reviewing your life, trying to take stock, evaluate or whatever — especially when in your heart you know only too well what you think of that idiotic itinerary — it’s as though it’s not yours at all but belongs to somebody else. Not quite a stranger; more, perhaps, a distant relation. And that everything that occurs does so at one remove, as though being observed through the frame of a viewfinder. That’s the way I’ve begun to see it now, especially those last few months leading up to the election. But not, however, in the style of Cassavetes. No, no cool black and white this time, I’m afraid. That would be much too clinical! Too clinical by far and hopelessly untrue to the spirit of the time. Which was wild, really, pulsing at all times with possibilities that seemed limitless.