Shay shook his head, grinning. “Ah, no, no, no. Sorry, man; no such luck. I’ve got a plan.”
“You always do. And how far have any of them ever got you?”
Jackie sighed noisily. “Lovely weather we’re having,” she said to me.
Shay told Kevin, “This time’s different.”
“Sure it is.”
“You watch, pal. Just you watch.”
“That sounds lovely,” Carmel said firmly, like a hostess hauling her dinner party back under control. She had pulled her stool up to the table and was sitting very straight, a ladylike pinky lifted off her glass. “Would you not tell us about it?”
After a moment Shay’s eyes moved to her, and he leaned back in his seat and started to laugh. “Ah, Melly,” he said. “You always were the only one could put manners on me. Do yous lot know, when I was a great lump of a teenager, our Carmel slapped me round the back of the legs till I ran, because I called Tracy Long a slut?”
“You deserved it,” Carmel said primly. “That’s no way to talk about a girl.”
“I did. The rest of this shower don’t appreciate you, Melly, but I do. Stick with me, girl. We’ll go places.”
“Where?” said Kevin. “The dole office?”
Shay shifted his focus back to Kevin, with an effort. “Here’s what they don’t tell you,” he said. “In boom times, all the big chances go to the big fish. The workingman can make a living, but it’s only the rich who can get richer.”
Jackie asked, “Could the workingman not enjoy his pint and have a nice chat with his brothers and sisters, no?”
“When things start going bust, that’s when anyone with a brain and a plan can pick up a big old handful of the pieces. And I’ve got those.”
Hot date tonight, Shay used to say, crouching to slick back his hair in the mirror, but he’d never let on with who; or Made a few extra shekels, Melly, get yourself and Jackie an ice cream, but you never knew where the money had come from. I said, “So you keep telling us. Are you going to put out, or are you just going to keep cock-teasing all night long?”
Shay stared at me; I gave him a big innocent smile. “Francis,” he said. “Our man on the inside. Our man in the system. Why would you care what a renegade like me does with himself?”
“Brotherly love.”
“More like you think it’ll be crap, and you want that nice warm feeling that you’ve beaten me again. Try this on for size. I’m buying the bike shop.”
Just saying it brought a faint red flush onto his cheekbones. Kevin snorted; Jackie’s high-up eyebrows shot up even farther. “Fair play to you,” she said. “Our Shay, the entrepreneur, wha’?”
“Nice one,” I said. “When you’re the Donald Trump of the bike world, I’ll come to you for my BMXs.”
“Conaghy’s retiring next year, and his son wants nothing to do with the business; he sells flash cars, bikes aren’t good enough for him. So Conaghy gave me first refusal.”
Kevin had surfaced from his sulk enough to look up from his pint. He asked, “Where’re you going to get the dosh?”
The hot glitter in Shay’s eyes made me see what girls saw in him. “I’ve got half of it already. I’ve been saving for this for a long time. The bank’s giving me the rest. They’re tightening up on the loans—they know there’s trouble ahead, same as Lavery does—but I got in there just in time. This time next year, lads, I’ll be a man of independent means.”
Carmel said, “Well done,” but there was something in her voice that caught my ear; something like reserve. “Ah, that’s great altogether. Well done.”
Shay took a swig of his pint and tried to play it cool, but there was a grin pressing at the corners of his mouth. “Like I told Kev, there’s no point spending your life working to fill someone else’s pockets. The only way to get anywhere is to be your own boss man. I’m just putting my money where my mouth is.”
“So?” Kevin asked. “If you’re actually right and the country’s going down the tubes or whatever, you’re still going with it.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, mate. When this week’s rich pricks find out they’re in the shit, that’s when I get my chance. Back in the eighties, when no one we knew had the money for a car, how did we get around? On bikes. As soon as the bubble bursts, Daddy’s not going to be able to buy his little darlings BMWs to drive the half mile to school any more. That’s when they show up at my door. I can’t wait to see the faces on the little cunts.”
“Whatever,” Kevin said. “That’s lovely, that is. Really.” He went back to staring into his pint.
Carmel said, “Will it not mean living above the shop?”
Shay’s eyes went to her, and something complicated passed between them. “It will. Yeah.”
“And working full-time. Your hours won’t be flexible any more.”
“Melly,” Shay said, much more gently, “it’ll be all right. Conaghy’s not retiring for a few months yet. By that time . . .”
Carmel took a tiny breath and nodded, like she was bracing for something. “Right,” she said, almost to herself, and lifted her glass to her lips.
“I’m telling you. Don’t be worrying.”
“Ah, no, you’re grand. God knows you deserve your chance. The way you’ve been the last while, sure, I knew you’d something up your sleeve; I just didn’t . . . I’m delighted for you. Congratulations.”
“Carmel,” Shay said. “Look at me. Would I do that to you?”
“Here,” Jackie said. “What’s the story?”
Shay put a finger on Carmel’s glass and moved it down so he could see her face. I’d never seen him tender before, and I found it even less soothing than Carmel did. “Listen to me. All the doctors said there’s only a few months in it. Six, max. By the time I buy, he’ll be in a home or in a chair, or anyway too weak to do any damage.”
“God forgive us,” Carmel said softly. “Hoping for . . .”
I said, “What’s going on?”
They turned to stare at me, two identical pairs of expressionless blue eyes. It was the first time I’d seen them look alike. I said, “Are you telling me Da still hits Ma?”
A fast twitch like an electric shock went round the table, a tiny hiss of indrawn breath. “You mind your business,” Shay said, “and we’ll mind ours.”
“Who elected you spokesgobshite?”
Carmel said, “We’d rather there was someone around, is all. In case Da has a fall.”
I said, “Jackie told me that had stopped. Years back.”
Shay said, “Like I told you. Jackie hasn’t a clue. None of yous lot ever did. So fuck off out of it.”
I said, “Do you know something? I’m getting just a tiny bit sick of you acting like you’re the only one who ever had to take Da’s shit.”
Nobody was breathing. Shay laughed, a low ugly sound. He said, “You think you took shit from him?”
“I’ve got the scars to prove it. You and me lived in the same house, mate, remember? The only difference is that me, now I’m a big boy, I can go an entire conversation without whingeing about it.”
“You took fuck-all, pal. Sweet fuck-all. And we didn’t live in the same house, not for a single day. You lived in the lap of luxury, you and Jackie and Kevin, compared to what me and Carmel got.”
I said, “Don’t you ever tell me I got off easy.”
Carmel was trying to look daggers at Shay, but he didn’t notice; his eyes were fixed on me. “Spoilt rotten, the whole bloody three of yous. You think you had it bad? That’s because we made sure you never found out what bad was like.”
“If you want to go ask the barman for a tape measure,” I said, “we can compare scar sizes, or dick sizes, or whatever the hell has your knickers in a knot. Otherwise, we’ll have a much nicer night if you keep the martyr complex on your own side of the table and don’t try to tell me what my life’s been like.”
“Cute. You always did think you were smarter than the rest of us, didn’t you?”
“Only
than you, sunshine. I just go with the evidence.”
“What makes you any smarter? Just because me and Carmel were out of school the second we turned sixteen? Did you think that was because we were too thick to stay?” Shay was leaning forward, hands clenched on the edge of the table, and there was a patchy fever-red flush coming up on his cheekbones. “It was so we’d be putting our wages on the table when Da wasn’t. So you could eat. So the three of you could buy your schoolbooks and your little uniforms and get your Leaving Certs.”
“Christ,” Kevin muttered, to his pint. “And he’s off.”
“Without me, you wouldn’t be a cop today. You’d be nothing. You thought I was just mouthing off when I said I’d die for family? I damn near did it. I lost my education. I gave up every chance I had.”
I raised one eyebrow. “Because otherwise you’d have been a college professor? Don’t give me the giggles. You lost bugger-all.”
“I’ll never know what I lost. What did you ever give up? What did this family ever take off you? Name me one thing. One.”
I said, “This fucking family lost me Rosie Daly.”
Absolute, frozen silence. The others were all staring at me; Jackie had her glass raised and her mouth half open, caught in midsip. I realized, slowly, that I was on my feet, swaying a little, and that my voice had been right on the edge of a roar. I said, “Leaving school is nothing; a few slaps are nothing. I’d have taken all that, begged for it, sooner than lose Rosie. And she’s gone.”
Carmel said, in a flat stunned voice, “You think she left you because of us?”
I knew there was something wrong with what I had said, something that had shifted, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. As soon as I stood up, the booze had hit me right in the backs of the knees. I said, “What the hell do you think happened, Carmel? One day we were mad about each other, true love forever and ever, amen. We were going to get married. We had the tickets bought. I swear to God we would have done anything, Melly, anything, anything in this wide world to be together. The next day, the next bloody day, she ran off on me.”
The regulars were starting to glance over, conversations falling away, but I couldn’t get my voice back down. I always have the coolest head in any fight and the lowest blood-alcohol level in any pub. This evening was way off course, and it was much too late to salvage it. “What’s the only thing that changed in between? Da went on a bender and tried to break into the Dalys’ gaff at two in the morning, and then the whole classy bunch of yous had a screaming knock-down-drag-out row in the middle of the street. You remember that night, Melly. The whole Place remembers that night. Why wouldn’t Rosie back out, after that? Who wants that for in-laws? Who wants that kind of blood in her children?”
Carmel said, very quietly and still with no expression at all, “Is that why you never came home? Because you’ve thought that all this time?”
“If Da had been decent,” I said. “If he hadn’t been a drunk, or even if he’d just bothered to be discreet about it. If Ma hadn’t been Ma. If Shay hadn’t been in and out of trouble every day of the week. If we’d been different.”
Kevin said, bewildered, “But if Rosie didn’t go anywhere—”
I couldn’t make sense of what he was saying. The whole day had hit me, all of a sudden, and I was so exhausted that I felt like my legs were melting into the ratty carpet. I said, “Rosie dumped me because my family was a bunch of animals. And I don’t blame her.”
Jackie said, and I heard the hurt in her voice, “Ah, that’s not on, Francis. That’s not fair.”
Shay said, “Rosie Daly had no problems with me, pal. Trust me on that.”
He had himself back under control; he had eased back in his chair, and the red had faded off his cheekbones. It was the way he said it: that arrogant spark in his eyes, that lazy little smirk curving around the corners of his mouth. I said, “What are you talking about?”
“She was a lovely girl, was Rosie. Very friendly; very sociable, is that the word I’m after?”
I wasn’t tired any more. I said, “If you’re going to talk dirt about a girl who’s not here to fight her own corner, at least do it straight out, like a man. If you don’t have the guts to do that, then shut your gob.”
The barman brought down a glass on the bar with a bang. “Hey! Yous lot! That’ll do. Settle down now or you’re all barred.”
Shay said, “I’m only complimenting your taste. Great tits, great arse and a great attitude. She was a right little goer, wasn’t she? Zero to sixty in no time flat.”
A sharp voice somewhere at the back of my brain was warning me to walk away, but it reached me fuzzy and vague through all those layers of booze. I said, “Rosie wouldn’t have touched you with someone else’s.”
“Think again, pal. She did a lot more than touch. Did you never smell me off her, once you got her stripped down?”
I had him hauled up off his chair by his shirtfront and I had my fist pulled back for the punch when the others swung into action, with that instant, clenched efficiency that only drunks’ kids have. Carmel got in between us, Kevin grabbed my punching arm and Jackie whipped drinks out of harm’s way. Shay wrenched my other hand off his shirt—I heard something rip—and we both went stumbling backwards. Carmel got Shay by the shoulders, sat him neatly back down and held him there, blocking his view of me and talking soothing crap into his face. Kevin and Jackie caught me under the arms and had me turned around and halfway to the door before I got my balance back and figured out what was happening.
I said, “Get off. Get off me,” but they kept moving. I tried to shake them away, but Jackie had made sure she was stuck to me tightly enough that I couldn’t get rid of her without hurting her, and I was still a lot of drink away from that. Shay shouted something vicious over Carmel’s shoulder, she upped the shushing noises, and then Kevin and Jackie had maneuvered me expertly around the tables and stools and the blank-faced regulars and we were outside, in the rush of cold sharp air on the street corner, with the door slamming behind us.
I said, “What the fuck?”
Jackie said peacefully, like she was talking to a child, “Ah, Francis. Sure, you know yous can’t be fighting in there.”
“That arsehole was asking for a punch in the gob, Jackie. Begging for it. You heard him. Tell me he doesn’t deserve everything I can dish out.”
“He does, of course, but you can’t be wrecking the place. Will we go for a walk?”
“So what are you dragging me out for? Shay’s the one who—”
They linked my arms and started walking. “You’ll feel better out here in the fresh air,” Jackie told me reassuringly.
“No. No. I was having a quiet pint on my own, doing no harm to anyone, till that prick walked in and started causing hassle. Did you hear what he said?”
Kevin said, “He’s locked, and he was being a total dickhead. What are you, surprised?”
“So why the hell am I the one out on my ear?” I knew I sounded like a kid whining He started it, but I couldn’t stop myself.
Kevin said, “It’s Shay’s local. He’s there every other night.”
“He doesn’t own this whole bloody neighborhood. I’ve got as much right as he has—” I tried to reef myself away from them and head back to the pub, but the effort almost overbalanced me. The cold air wasn’t sobering me up; instead it was slapping at me from all angles, baffling me, making my ears buzz.
“You do, of course,” Jackie said, keeping me pointed firmly in the other direction. “But if you stay there, he’ll only be annoying you. There’s no point hanging around for that, sure there’s not. We’ll go somewhere else, will we?”
This is where some cold needle of sense managed to pierce through the Guinness fog. I stopped in my tracks and shook my head till the buzz faded a notch or two. “No,” I said. “No, Jackie, I don’t think we will.”
Jackie twisted her head around to peer anxiously into my face. “Are you all right? You’re not going to be sick, now?”
“No, I’m not going to bleeding well be sick. But it’ll be a long, long time before I go anywhere on your say-so again.”
“Ah, Francis, don’t be—”
I said, “Do you remember where this whole thing started, Jackie, do you? You rang me up and convinced me that I wanted to get my arse over to this godforsaken dump. I swear to God I must’ve slammed my head in a car door somewhere along the way, or I’d have told you just where to shove that genius idea. Because look how it’s turned out, Jackie. Look. Are you pleased with yourself, yeah? Are you getting that lovely glow of a job well done? Are you happy now?”
I was swaying. Kevin tried to get a shoulder under mine, but I shook them both off, let my weight fall back against the wall and put my hands over my face. A million little flecks of light were heaving behind my eyelids. “I knew better,” I said. “I bloody well knew better.”
Nobody said anything for a while. I could feel Kevin and Jackie glancing at each other, trying to make plans by eyebrow semaphore. Finally Jackie said, “Here, I don’t know about yous two, but I’m freezing my tits off. If I go back in and get my coat, will yous hang on here for me?”
Kevin said, “Get mine as well.”
“Grand. Don’t be going anywhere, yeah? Francis?”
She gave my elbow a tentative little squeeze. I ignored her. After a moment I heard her sigh, and then the perky clip-clop of her heels heading back the way we had come.
I said, “This poxy fucking bastarding day.”
Kevin leaned against the wall beside me. I could hear his breath, puffing a little against the cold air. He said, “It’s not like it’s exactly Jackie’s fault.”
“And I should care about that, Kev. I really should. But you’re going to have to forgive me if, right this minute, I don’t give a damn.”
The laneway smelled of grease and piss. Somewhere a street or two away a couple of guys had started shouting at each other, no words, just hoarse mindless noise. Kevin shifted his weight against the wall. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “I’m glad you came back. It’s been good, hanging out. I mean, like, obviously not all the Rosie stuff and . . . you know. But I’m really glad we got to see each other again.”