by David Louden
“Yeah I used to know him when I lived in Poleglass,” Paulie said “I remember there was this kid called Sixty-Six and Doug cried like a little queer when that retard died…fucking faggot.”
My skin crawled thinking of Sixty’s name on that asshole’s tongue.
“There was this girl he loved, and one day he gave her a Valentine’s card,” he laughed “and she fucking hated it!”
Their table broke into a mini-fit of the giggles which shut down the second my eyes fired across their faces.
“His dad didn’t live with them because he was such a huge fucking drunk…”
“Cool-it Paulie, his dad just died.”
“Doesn’t change the fucking facts…you remember how much of a drunk your da was Douggie?!”
I didn’t hear anything else; I lost all breath in my lungs and could feel the pressure in my head spill over. I was on my feet, the bike’s axel swatted to one side and the plinth in my hands. I looked at Paulie’s face, his old familiar and friendly tanned face and wanted nothing more than to shatter it into pieces; to break it so bad it’d collapse inside itself. I hurled the plinth at his head, he ducked and it hit off his shoulder before crashing into the blacked out window of the classroom sending a deep crack down the middle.
“Douglas what the hell are you doing?” screamed Grace.
“Taking that cunt’s head off!” I yelled before charging at him.
Gerry and four others dragged me away from Paulie who stood in shock as they forced me towards the door.
“Head Master’s office, now!” she insisted.
I marched out of the class storming across the bridge along the corridor passing Dani’s classroom. She’d come out into the corridor, my face contorted and inhumane to her.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m out of here, I can’t talk now. I’ll see you later.”
I stormed to the entrance of the Comfortable Place and could go no further. O’Reilly meant what he said, one more screw up and you were out the door and I had just tried to take Paulie’s head off with a wedge of wood. “Well,” I told myself “if I’m going out I might as well make it worth my fucking while” before turning and storming back along the path I had just blazed. I got to the bridge and I stopped, my watch gave it five more minutes. All I had to do was pace and growl and work myself up into a stupor for five more minutes before I got my hands on that loud mouthed little shit-bird.
The bell rang and I stepped out of the way of the small porthole window that sat in each of the doors. Pupil after pupil piled by, then the kids from my class, there was Gerry and then came Paulie. I grabbed hold of him with both hands, mine was the last face he was expecting to see and I didn’t want him to be able to turn tail and flee from what he was due.
“You little cunt!” I growled socking him square in the bread basket.
He doubled over and I gripped his backpack and threw it up into the air; spinning and rotating as it ejaculated all of his books into the air before gravity called them down. I hit him again and again right on the nose but the pressure in my ears was still hissing and then I lifted him and had him by both ankles dangling over the edge of the bridge. He’d scream and call for his mummy and the other kids, who were normally game for a chant fell silent. Dani appeared in the doorway; her face white with fear, her eyes massive and beautiful for it.
“Douglas put him down.”
“Oh I fucking plan to Miss, right on his smart fucking face.”
“Douglas, don’t drop him…please.”
I dragged him back to the concrete safety of the bridge before smashing my fist into his face again and releasing his wail of tears.
“You say one word about my dad ever again and I will fucking kill you.”
He shook like a shitting dog and the words were jibberish.
Dani went with me to the Comfortable Place, she sat by my side and when O’Reilly called me in she came inside with me. O’Reilly didn’t offer me a drink and when I went for my cigarettes he shook his head reflexing them out of my digits and back into my pocket. He always sat in the darkest corner of the room, his hands before his face his brow tired from dealing with boys like me day-in day-out for thirty years. My dad’s quote came to mind again and pushed a smile on to my face before I could realize how inappropriate it was.
“Mr. Morgan…”
“Mr. O’Reilly before you say anything I’d like to say a few words on behalf of Douglas. I’m sure you have been fully informed of the situation on the bridge but there are mitigating circumstances. Personal mitigating circumstances and though I’d be the first to condemn his behaviour, he is a bright student with potential and a lot more potential than that little shit who we’ve taken in because no other school wants such a repulsive little bastard on their books.”
“Agreed Miss McCormack, even with the colourful language and that’s why I’m not going to expel Mr. Morgan. It goes without saying you’ve got detention Douglas, two months starting from Monday. For the sake of order I offer a word sir. Miss McCormack has gone to bat for you, don’t make a fool out of her.”
He waved us both away, outside the small rural house that sat ill-fittingly in the middle of this urban nightmare I forgot myself and lit a cigarette in front of Miss McCormack. She shook her head and pretended not to see it smoldering in my hand. A sickly sweet extension of myself.
“Why’d you do that?” I asked.
“You are better than that nasty little shit, so behave like it.”
“You’re a real diamond you know that Miss.”
“I do alright.”
“You’re aces I could kiss you.”
She blinked rapidly, maybe even awkwardly before disappearing back towards her classroom and I breathed the breath of a Death Row lifer who has just been told his last meal was a little premature.
2
I WAS A FULLY fledged member of the after school club again. The kids were getting dumber as the years went on; I could have swore that when I first started with detention we all took it on the chin with a cocktail of defiance and irony, these ones seemed to need it. They were the disruptive lot who couldn’t get their work done in class due to the amount of distractions, ended up in trouble and spent most of their late afternoons getting to grips with algebra with the teachers who drew the short straw and it was the last straw, a few of the boys were as thick as a horse’s walt.
“What you working on Morgan?” asked Peacock.
His breath sat thick with the stench of whiskey, so thick that I could almost smell the metal from the hip flask he kept wedged down the back of his trousers.
“I’m good, don’t worry about it.”
“I asked you a question boy!”
“Don’t boy me, you ain’t my old man. I’m working on something for Miss McCormack’s creative writing class, ok?!”
“Ok,” he said backing down “well…carry on then.”
“What’s your problem now Parker?”
My eyes took to the window and I’d watch as two birds flew and dived and rolled around playfully in the sky. I was trying to work on something that would explain to her what it was that I was thinking, what I was feeling but I couldn’t do it without giving it away that it was about her. Reading it aloud would leave me open, maybe too open but maybe she’d appreciate my willingness to stand before her scars and all; vulnerable and waiting to be accepted. I had begun to see the blonde Italian Zoe, mainly at weekends though she had invited me to come along with her sister and her sister’s boyfriend to the cinema by the Westlink. Her family was very Catholic, her father could smell that I wasn’t and hated me – a fact that only brought out my signs of affection towards his daughter when we were in the family home. She had a strict no sex before marriage rule but was open to giving head, head was ok. I’d accept graciously and all the while thought of Dani, beautiful Dani McCormack. Together we could reinvent our world. Cars would run on aspirations, there’d be no word for war and the teacher-student divide would be filled in forev
er. They’d remember us, the hostilities and one-upmanship that littered every lesson, every day, every term and year, that coated the off colour walls of that beaten down institution, decommissioned forever thanks to us. I was no longer the child she first met in the Comfortable Place; I was sixteen and now stood level with her. I was broad, powerful, if she willed it I could have taken her in my arms and laid her out bare on her desk and kissed every inch of her tanned skin until she moaned from the electricity my prickly haired face was generating. She had watched me mature in that time, it was our chess match.
I wrote page after page until Peacock kicked us all out at 4:30PM and then I’d give them to the bin rather than look at them again; their honesty was painful and embarrassing. I had my bag on my back and the walk home in front of me; I lit a cigarette and coasted towards the front gate ignoring the rants of Gerry that littered the air behind my ears. I reached the gate and she was there; smiling and stood casually by the side of her car.
“I saw the time and figured if you were leaving you could do with a ride home.”
Dani had lost track of time working on study plans for her classes but I opted to believe she was telling me a lie in order to save face and I was glad I didn’t still have those five pages in my bag burning their way to freedom in her presence. I’d finish my cigarette and climb into her car, a two door Nissan, blue but dirty from neglect. She’d apologize for its condition and I’d spy a backseat littered with discarded templates for wedding invitations and brochures from various hotels and estates that stung when I considered what they meant. The car was warm and it smelt like her, with my eyes closed it could have been her bedroom but for the hum of the engine and the bump of the uneven North Belfast roads.
“How are the wedding plans coming along?” I tried masking my hatred of the idea.
“Long, busy, expensive.”
“You paying for it yourself?”
“Yeah, well me and Declan are.”
“Declan’s the fiancé then.”
“Declan is indeed the fiancé.” she seemed uncomfortable with it.
I took that as a good sign.
“How’s your dad?”
“He’s ok,” she replied “I mean he’s not great but he’s getting better. I’m sorry to hear about yours.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Is this ok for you?”
She pulled up short of my street; I appreciated that as it meant I wouldn’t have to answer any weird questions about why a teacher was driving me home. I had told Mum I had got a new job to explain my absence in the afternoons. In two month’s time I’d need to either get one or start flashing around what was left of my track money.
“This is perfect, thank you.”
Dani went to say something then thought different of it; then the air in the car changed and the atmosphere became tense with possibility. She looked at me unblinkingly and my heart raced. I matched her gaze as the blood charged furiously around my body; it would only take a moment; I willed myself to lean across the handbrake, to place my hand on her denim leg and touch my lips against hers, then she’d know; then it would be up to her to feel the same way; then I would have done all I could. All I had to do was lean across, push into her personal space and give her a choice. She blinked first and the wave that was building between us broke and my pulse calmed. I watched as the remains of that window disappeared from the car and she could read my mind and knew that I knew she could read my mind and an awkwardness settled in the vehicle that could only be vanquished by me leaving it.
She drove off tooting the horn as I cursed at myself for blowing it and simultaneously misreading the messages; either way I was determined to see the wrong I had done. Mum was hosting again when I got home and hadn’t noticed the time or the fact that her eldest son had only just come home. Tara sat in my armchair; there was always someone in my armchair. She was banged up from the first of many flawed cohabiting attempts and was being entertained by Mum and Dad’s sister with anecdotal tales of The Trouble with Living with Men. Mum had taken to playing the what-if game and applying the rules of this morbid parlour activity to her marriage. She spoke of Jack as though the man was a saint disguised as a fatally flawed and weak drunk, she spoke of their marriage as though it wouldn’t have just descended into all-out war with the victor simply outlasting the other and the spoils being Alzheimer’s so they could finally forget how rotten and pointless the whole wasted affair had been.
“It’s a pity of him.” she directed to her sister-in-law
“It is.” she agreed
“When he was sober he could be so giving…”
“He was giving.”
“…and he was a really talented musician.”
“He was.”
“Such a waste.”
“Such a waste.”
I’d roll my eyes and leave the room. Tara would leap from her seat and chase after me climbing the stairs behind me until she was confronted with the door to my bedroom, a room she had always been forbidden to enter. She put aside our youthful boundaries and came in after me as I threw on a tee shirt and sparked up a cigarette.
“Can I get one of them?” Tara asked.
I threw her the packet and she tossed it back one stick lighter.
“So you’re moving back in then?” I asked and it occurred to me that I had never had a conversation with her. We had barked at one another and we had talked of one another (largely to get each other in trouble) but we had never conversed. I wondered if she even had a personality.
“Seems that way, that is if Mum hasn’t turned by room into a shrine for Saint Jack.”
“The shrine’s in the basement, Jeff’s nabbed your room.”
“No fucking way!”
“It’s the biggest, I would have had it myself if I wasn’t in detention all fucking month.”
“What are you in detention for?”
“Who knows anymore?!” I said blowing out a smoke ring.
“I hear you’re going out with Zoe Molise.”
“What of it?”
“Nothing, she’s nice. I think Dad thought you might be a little bent.”
“Bullshit!”
“Well you never showed much attention to anyone and you were always buried in your books. You remember when you used to camp out in the backyard reading them and you’d ask Mum if you could sleep there?”
“No.”
“You did.”
“Well I don’t remember.” I insisted.
“Huh.”
“So what’s got you moving home?” I’d ask, changing the subject.
“Derek’s a drunken shit. I came home and he’d pawned my computer and I needed that for work. I’m not putting up with that.”
She sounded genuine and she would each time she said it. She made bad choices when it came to men but what chance did she stand? I lit another cigarette and lay back on my bed. Tara sat on the chair I had bought from a charity shop that was positioned directly under the skylight. In the dry evenings I would open it and allow the pot stench to float directly out of it while I slumped in my bucket seat reading my books.
“Don’t suppose you’d be up for switching rooms?”
“You don’t suppose correctly Tara, that room’s about the size of a closet.”
“Could I bunk in here with you?”
“I tend to masturbate a lot when I get high. I really don’t think that’s any better an idea than me moving into the closet room.”
“You get high?” she said skillfully side-stepping the obvious.
She’d roll us two professional looking cones; I’d pop the skylight, roll a towel out across the base of the door and light up. Tara lay on my bed flicking through my blood splattered book and coming to a new found appreciation for her little brother. I’d take a deep hit and hold it.
“Are you a dealer?” the question came out of the blue.
“What the actual fuck Tara?”
“The typewriter, the TV, the laptop…seriously there�
��s no way Mum ponied up for a laptop plus you’ve always got money and now really good bud. It’s a fair question, so are you?”
“No.”
“It wouldn’t bother me if you were.”
“Well I’m not and no I won’t hook you up.”
“So where’d the money come from?”
“Writing.”
“There’s no way you made that kind of money from writing.”
“Says you.”
“What did you write then? What did you write that was worth selling?”
“A story, you wouldn’t like it.”
I watched as her mind got fuzzy and her follow up question slipped from her grasp. I thought she was a lightweight but she surprised me and was rolling herself dessert before I had finished my first. I reached under the bed for my football boot that always carried a fresh pint. Pulling it out to find the boot empty, the bottle cleared out and most likely fed to the sink hole. I had watched Mum go through Tara’s room when she wasn’t in and disappear a bottle of red wine to a similar fate. Tara could never ask the old lady about the wine without admitting it was there in the first place, I had no issue with admitting it. The sanctity of my room had been breached and my property had been removed plus I was pretty roundly stoned by this point and would have tried to tell her the Buckerharder joke again had I thought it was a good idea.
Pushing myself up from the ground I brushed the knees of my trousers down and stormed from the room. Tara would call out “bad idea Douglas” but there was no talking to me; there’s never any talking to me when the mind is set.
I bounced downstairs and into the living room, Mum and Aunt Sal were laughing, my irritable disposition an unwelcome echo of the man they were commending. Sal had moved from the couch to my armchair.
