by David Louden
The old man had stood me up. Mum explained how it wasn’t my fault, how he was ill…of sorts and that his illness made him very selfish and difficult to be around but that he loved me, she was sure of that – she was lying, as sure as she was that he was really looking forward to seeing me again. The drive to the office just outside of Lisburn was a nervous one, Ronan’s dead pools stared at me when I closed mine and life was becoming more complicated, less certain, there was simply too many emotions being thrown forward and they were demanding to be dealt with and all by a boy who wanted nothing more than to build a tree house with a patriarch.
There was no waiting this time, Jack had got there early. He must not have slept long, his eyes hung low and deep in his skull and he’d had a busy night as I smelt the thick, warm day glow of an Irish whiskey on his graying chin but he was there. Mum almost wet herself when she saw him, when he said her name. She left once the social worker arrived – he would sit silent, motionless in the corner of the room. It was just me and my dad. He had brought along a blue plastic bag full of things he thought I might like. Years later I’d know that this was probably the same plastic bag that housed his hooch the night before as he stumbled home drunk from the off license but that morning it carried action figures and comic books. He had listened when he was told about my interests, Batman paraphernalia was the key to this boy’s heart and he had picked the lock before we could even sit down.
He was older than Mum, physically not by many years but his true love had worn him out faster, rode him harder than even he was able to accept. His hair though still entirely there was now a mix of black, grey and white. His two day stubble prickled at each hug and was speckled with black, grey, white and tell-tale tabs of ginger – the Irish signature. The colour was long washed from his cheeks which themselves had seen better, fuller days. Even his hands looked small and fragile as the weight lost from years of drinking had picked clean most of the good meat that was left on the bone. He was a shadow of the man that once intimidated us out of our home, a shell of a human being, a fragment of a father.
“So the social worker tells me you’re a United man Doug.” he said with a level of fondness he had been practicing.
“Yeah.” I replied reluctantly, unsure of his allegiances.
“They’ve not done much in years, what makes you support them?”
“I watched them with Ronan.”
“Who’s Ronan?”
“You remember Ronan, he lived across the street.” side-stepping the fact he was the guy who had schooled him.
“Do you know who George Best is?”
“Yeah.” I bragged, proud of my historic knowledge.
“I saw him play once, did you know that?”
I shook my head, I was becoming slowly amazed by the number of facial qualities we shared…though I didn’t know how to express this.
“Have you ever been to a football match son?”
“No.”
“Would you like to go see a match?”
I smiled. It was enough of an answer as a tear leapt from the old man’s eye.
“Can I take you?” he blurted before the tears took hold of him sending his voice up to the gods.
I climbed out of my seat and fearlessly approached the former assailant and wrapped my arms around the weathered old bastard as best I could. He delayed but only for a moment and then he hugged me back.
The drive home must have been hard for Mum. I was full of the joys of discovery and bragging. Bragging and blowing hot air of all the things me and my dad were going to do together, all the football matches and fishing trips and days at the zoo and the tree houses and parks and all the other shit I had jealously watched and secretly coveted from other kids I knew. She simply smiled, she seemed pleased for me. She had even allowed Jack to write to me when he pulled a low down dirty trick and asked her in front of me, knowing all too well that she couldn’t say no…not to me. We wrote to one another constantly during the month between visits. I told him about my friend Joe and his pet tortoise and the fact that I was going to be like Arnold Schwarzenegger and live in Hollywood when I grew up. He told me to listen to my mum and always do my homework the second I got home so I could have time to myself after dinner and that he would teach me how to play the banjo. No, that he would teach me to be the best banjo player in Ireland. Our next meeting I didn’t see him, I’d sit in the room for twenty minutes before Mum would come in – barely hiding her lack of composure and shepherd me out the side door. I’d overhear later how Jack had turned up late, drunk and demanding to be able to take me with him. The fifth visit he stood me up again and then the letters stopped.
PART II
1
IF YOU GO into any bar in Belfast, any bar in Northern Ireland, any bar on the Koala island of Ireland you’ll either bump into or overhear the story of a promising footballer who could have had trials for Manchester United but through bad luck, poor decision making or the unexpected baby bump had the gladiatorial world of competitive sport stolen away from them but they’re all bullshit artists. The fact of the matter is we were all there once. You swap out football for whatever the person’s passion is and there you have it, someone too shit scared to follow their dreams. My secondary school was filled with people like that and that was just the teaching alumni. Scared and bitter borderline whiskey-heads who were intent on choking off the dreams of the young the way theirs were snuffed out all those decades before.
I wasn’t a bad footballer, I wasn’t great but I had skill and I had pace, my major problem was my inability to take orders. “Fucking head strong” was what Mum called it; she was the same – we can smell our own. I never tried out for the school team, largely because I never wanted to fail, the same went for writing. My love affair with the written word had become even more secretive than it already was – to the point where even I didn’t know it existed anymore. By the age of fourteen my beloved typer made its way down the line and within a week was broken beyond repair.
“Oooh fucking Iron-Hands strikes again!”
Smoking had become my new hobby. I was rooting around in boxes at the back of the built-in wardrobe that sat in my room in our house on the Oldpark Road for somewhere to hide my cigarettes so that Mum, or Tara, or Jeff or the hundreds of other people that seemed to pass through our house on a daily basis wouldn’t find them when I came across them again. My books…Ronan’s books. I took them out for old time’s sake.
Chapter One
One night last September my brother phoned from San Elmo to report that Mama and Papa were again talking about divorce.
That was all it took. I was hooked all over again; his words were my sweetest addiction. I lay on the my bed not caring who discovered me and I smoked cigarette after cigarette and I read and I played with the serious idea of taking up wine. I knew a few kids at school whose dad’s were winos. It was frowned upon. Even amongst alcoholics there was a pecking order; it went whiskey, beer, wine – you were supposed to be able to handle your wine. It would take more thought on my part before I settled on a tipple of choice.
My school was a two mile walk from the house. In the first few years it was a bully minefield, one of my friends would throw himself into a duck pond to stop them from beating on him then just head home. He spent half the school year in his living room eating ice cream and watching old episodes of BJ and the Bear; they left me alone an account of how tall and wide in the shoulders I was.
I stood smoking a cigarette by the side of the pitch during PE class and read my book. Our PE teacher didn’t go in for the rounded physical experience it was football when he was slightly hung-over and running laps when he was really busted. That day was one of his better days. Our class was an odd number meaning he’d opt to play too in order to make up the numbers or at least that’s what he’d tell us but this was his way of beating down on the fragile spirit of youth the way his was beaten down.
“Morgan!” he barked from mid-field “Put that fucking book down and get in the g
ame.”
I’d tuck it back into my bag and run on to the pitch. The ball came straight to me; I trapped it, spun on it and went to move it across field in order to spread out the opposing team when I was floored with a two-footed tackle. It was high, dangerous as fuck too and coming from that two hundred and seventy-five pound grown man. It almost broke my leg but only almost and I limped it off quickly enough. I ran the left flank, I’d cut in and drew my marker out of the game; got the ball, played it out of feet quickly before getting it back on the edge of the penalty box and was immediately muscled off it by that sunglass wearing dump-truck. I picked myself up off the grass, his blonde mop of hair had fallen down over his stressed brow to reveal where he was losing the war against male patterned baldness; his blackout glasses hiding what was surely two blood-shot piss-holes in the pale snow of his face. I left my position and began tracking him, keeping in tight with Mr. Peacock, ninety minutes of legal bullying from him for the past two years, once-a-shitting-week. He had his coming to him. The ball came high to him, he controlled it with his chest and went to take it down but I was on him. I came through the air smashing shoulder first into the side of him as the ball sprang free and he ate the green. Taking it down on the knee I’d volley it forward before he’d come charging up to me, shoulders squared, head down.
“You dirty little fucker!”
“Me dirty? You’re the one going two-fuckin-footed all over the fucking place!”
“Don’t you talk back to me!”
“Or what?!”
He’d square up to me, my leg was still throbbing but I refused to back down. A smile broke across his face and he’d pat me on the shoulder.
“You need to try out, we could do with a holding midfielder.”
“I kinda like doing my own thing.”
“Think about it.”
“I’ll think about it while I’m skinning your ass all over the pitch.”
“Bring it you little turd.”
We’d retreat to our positions and I’d watch as Peacock would drift towards someone else he was able to muscle around. He’d never admit it but I always got the impression he was pleased with the kickings I took from him and the ones I dished back his way. Other teachers were less enamoured with my independent streak.
My form teacher sent a register with an appointed head boy to make sure we all attended every class. That head boy usually alternated between two or three little brown-nosers who they deemed trustworthy. I don’t know whether it hadn’t been thought of before or simply was never trialled but one day I told them to give it to me.
“What for?”
“I want to see it for a moment, gimme it.”
Patrick handed it over, his thin bony fingers reluctantly releasing Walker’s list. I scanned it momentarily as though I was looking for some clue to one of the school’s hidden mysteries before tearing it up into twenty pieces and raining them down into the bin.
“Why’d you do that?” Paddy asked, borrowing Walker’s attitude.
“Because Patrick I need to go somewhere and I can’t be expected to get away with it when you’ve got that snitches list.”
I left the period before lunch, grabbed myself a fresh pack of smokes and walked towards Belfast Zoo where I’d sit surrounded with nature, suck down tar and read. The following day I’d learn that word spread about the missing list and by the last class of the day all that was left to participate in French Language were Walker’s prim little band of brothers. She’d sit me down in a battered form class. What little light the room caught was kept at bay by the metal mesh on the windows that gave the school the general cosiness of a medium security prison.
“You took the class register yesterday.” she stated.
“Did I?”
“You know you did.”
“Says who?”
“Says me.”
“So you were there to witness this theft then, correct?”
“I’m not getting into this with you, report to the Head Master’s office.”
I went to leave but she wasn’t done with me.
“I’m very tired of you Douglas, you’ll see shortly how much of pain in the ass I can be if you keep it up.”
The Head Master’s office was a small detached bungalow to the rear of the school just past a beaten down old path. It had an Irish name that meant “comfortable place” and always had a peat fire burning in the living room which sat as a makeshift waiting room. I’d never been sent to his office before, it was nice, comfortable and as warm as a senior’s nursing home in the middle of summer. I kept my book tucked into my back pocket at all times; it afforded me stolen moments with it when I was at a loose end. My head would ascend from the page as his door opened and the five foot goblin-like frame of Harold O’Reilly appeared quickly accompanied by a tall brunette. She towered over him by a foot with a figure I’d only ever seen linked to the arm of Roger Rabbit; she wore denim with the knees frayed and a leather jacket over a white shirt that betrayed the slightest hint of a patterned bra.
“It was a pleasure meeting with you Dani, we’re all very much looking forward to you starting with us.” Harold said shaking her hand trying his best not to drool over himself.
She’d return the compliment and he’d notice my presence.
“Miss McCormack this is Douglas Morgan.”
“Pleasure to meet you Douglas.”
I stood and shook her hand, I could feel the Head watching me and this time it was my turn to try not to drool as I got lost in her beautiful smile.
“Pleasure is all mine.”
“Douglas here is one of a more interesting students, I’m sure you will have plenty of encounters with him once you get started.”
“Looking forward to it,” she added “and again Mr. O’Reilly thank you for the opportunity.”
She’d glide out of the Comfortable Place, a wave of testosterone sweeping out behind her. We’d both watch uncaring of what the other one thought. Eventually he’d bring me in and sit me down across his large oak desk. Harold would sink into his high back chair and interlock his fingers in front of himself.
“Would you like a drink?” he asked, pointing to the brandy decanter.
“I’m fine.”
“A little early for you, huh?” he’d say getting to his feet to pour himself one.
“I’m fourteen, sir.”
“Bollocks,” was his opinion of that statement “I was out of school and working as a man at thirteen Morgan, you kids today…”
“With our protection laws and anti child labour acts.” I added.
“You see it’s remarks like that which does you no favours and explains why Walker hates your guts.”
“I wasn’t too sure it had gotten to the gut hating stage yet, thanks for that sir.”
“Yup, hates them. And you still have three years here to go.”
“What can I say I’m an overachiever.”
“That could be true,” he dropped back into his chair “so what’s brought you here then son?”
“She seems to think I took the registry sheet.”
“What would make her think a thing like that?”
“Because I took the registry sheet.”
“And why would you do a thing like that?”
“Because I didn’t want to have to suffer through another history class where Jim Collins showed us a video, or a French class where nobody shuts up long enough for me to hear what was going on. Look Harry, can I call you Harry?”
“You can call me sir or Mr. O’Reilly.”
“Walker thinks I’m a thick kid, she thinks I’m here to kick around until I’m sixteen and then leave to break my ass pounding nails into the snow…”
“Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
“Fucking Ay…but that’s not me. The reason I left was because I’m sick of getting stiffed with a piss-poor education. I don’t see the point watching a documentary on the Nazi invasion of Poland especially when I watched it when it was originally air
ed. I don’t really care about conversational French but I care a little more than knowing who Tommy McLean’s mum’s grinding on these days…FYI it’s some cat from the pool hall named Hank. I want to learn and I can’t learn in these fucking classes with these kids.”
“Well that’s certainly an answer.”
“So will you tell Walker to climb down from my ass?”
“No. She’s likely to crawl up mine. You made this bed sunshine, it’s all yours to fucking lie in it but I’ll have a look at the classes, see if we can’t shake something up.”
“Do you mind if I smoke in here?”
“Only if I can have one.” he said.
We’d enjoy a cigarette together, it would be the first of many and I was welcome back down to the Comfortable Place to hang out as long as no teachers were around to bust my balls.
For the rest of that year I towed the line and went to every class but I had broken the dam when it came to the registry list. It was getting boosted almost every day and Walker always gave me the shit for it.
“So we have no register from yesterday, you know what that means don’t you Mr. Morgan?”
“Do I win something Walker?”
“It’s Mrs. Walker and yes you do. Come on up to claim your free detention.”
“Don’t suppose I could opt out?”
“Come get it now please.”
The class would clap as she handed it to me. On the way back to my desk a kid with a scar the shape of a Zippo lighter on his forehead called Gerry told me he thought I was a wanker and that he was going to get me one day outside of school. He promised a lot of kids this demise, one or two took him at his word so much that they either moved class or left and went to another school entirely but I knew he was full of shit. I had no idea if I could beat him, mainly because I’d never seen him in a fair fight. He was always slapping down kids half his size or younger than him. I was the same height as him but I was broader and would be able to take and give back bigger wallops than he’d ever encountered. A part of him knew this and though every once and a while he’d promise to knock my fuck in he never stepped up to see if he could do it.
