The Place was winding down for the night. A telly threw stuttering flickers on the Dwyers’ wall; music was seeping faintly from somewhere, a woman’s sweet wistful voice aching out over the gardens. In Number 7 multicolored Christmas lights and pudgy Santas sparkled in the windows, and one of Sallie Hearne’s current crop of teenagers screamed, “No! I hate you!” and slammed a door. On the top floor of Number 5, the epidural yuppies were putting their kid to bed: Daddy carrying him into his room fresh from the bath in a little white dressing gown, swinging him into the air and blowing raspberries on his tummy, Mummy laughing and bending to shake out blankets. Just across the road, my ma and my da were presumably staring catatonically at the telly, wrapped in their separate unimaginable thoughts, seeing if they could make it to bedtime without having to talk to each other.
The world felt lethal, that night. Normally I enjoy danger, there’s nothing like it to focus the mind, but this was different. This was the earth rippling and flexing underneath me like a great muscle, sending us all flying, showing me all over again who was boss and who was a million miles out of his depth in this game. The tricky shiver in the air was a reminder: everything you believe is up for grabs, every ground rule can change on a moment’s whim, and the dealer always, always wins. It wouldn’t have startled me if Number 7 had crumbled inwards on top of the Hearnes and their Santas, or Number 5 had gone up in one great whoof of flames and pastel-toned yuppie dust. I thought about Holly, in what I had been so sure was her ivory tower, trying to work out how the world could exist without Uncle Kevin; about sweet little Stephen in his brand-new overcoat, trying not to believe what I was teaching him about his job; about my mother, who had taken my father’s hand at the altar and carried his children and believed that was a good idea. I thought about me and Mandy and Imelda and the Dalys, sitting silent in our separate corners of this night, trying to see what shape these last twenty-two years fell into without Rosie, somewhere out there, pulling at their tides.
We were eighteen and in Galligan’s, late on a Saturday night in spring, the first time Rosie said England to me. My whole generation has stories about Galligan’s, and the ones who don’t have their own borrow other people’s. Every middle-aged suit in Dublin will tell you happily how he legged it out of there when the place was raided at three in the morning, or bought U2 a drink there before they were famous, or met his wife or got a tooth knocked out moshing or got so stoned he fell asleep in the jacks and nobody found him till after the weekend. The place was a rat hole and a firetrap: peeling black paint, no windows, spray-stenciled murals of Bob Marley and Che Guevara and whoever else the current staff happened to admire. But it had a late bar—more or less: no beer license, so you chose between two types of sticky German wine, both of which made you feel mildly poncy and severely ripped off—and it had the kind of live-music lottery where you never knew what you were going to get tonight. Kids nowadays wouldn’t touch the place with someone else’s. We loved it.
Rosie and I were there to see a new glam-rock band called Lipstick On Mars that she had heard was good, plus whoever else happened to be on. We were drinking the finest German white and dancing ourselves dizzy—I loved watching Rosie dance, the swing of her hips and the whip of her hair and the laugh curving her mouth: she never let her face go blank when she danced like other girls did, she always had an expression. It was shaping up to be a good night. The band was no Led Zeppelin, but they had smart lyrics, a great drummer and that reckless shine that bands did have, back then, when no one had anything to lose and the fact that you didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of making it big didn’t matter, because throwing your whole heart into this band was the only thing that stopped you being just another futureless dole bunny moping in his bedsit. It gave them something: a drop of magic.
The bass player broke a string to prove he was serious, and while he was changing it Rosie and I went up to the bar for more wine. “That stuff ’s poxy,” Rosie told the barman, fanning herself with her top.
“I know, yeah. I think they make it out of Benylin. Leave it in the airing cupboard for a few weeks and away you go.” The barman liked us.
“Poxier than usual, even. You got a bad batch. Have you nothing decent, have you not?”
“This does the job, doesn’t it? Otherwise, ditch the boyfriend, wait till we close up and I’ll take you somewhere better.”
I said, “Will I give you a smack myself, or will I just leave it to your mot?” The barman’s girlfriend had a mohawk and sleeve tattoos. We got on with her, too.
“You do it. She’s harder than you are.” He winked at us and headed off to get my change.
Rosie said, “I’ve a bit of news.”
She sounded serious. I forgot all about the barman and started frantically trying to add up dates in my head. “Yeah? What?”
“There’s someone retiring off the line at Guinness’s, next month. My da says he’s been talking me up every chance he gets, and if I want the job, it’s mine.”
I got my breath back. “Ah, deadly,” I said. I would have had a tough time getting delighted for anyone else, especially since Mr. Daly was involved, but Rosie was my girl. “That’s brilliant. Fair play to you.”
“I’m not taking it.”
The barman slid my change down the bar; I caught it. “What? Why not?”
She shrugged. “I don’t want anything my da gets for me, I want something I get myself. And anyway—”
The band started up again with a happy blast of drum overkill, and the rest of her sentence got lost. She laughed and pointed to the back of the room, where you could usually hear yourself think. I got her free hand and led the way, through a clump of bouncing girls with fingerless gloves and raccoon eyeliner, orbited by inarticulate guys hoping that if they just stayed close enough they would somehow end up getting a snog. “Here,” Rosie said, pulling herself up onto the ledge of a bricked-up window. “They’re all right, these fellas, aren’t they?”
I said, “They’re great.” I had spent that week walking into random places in town, asking if they had any work going, and getting laughed out of just about every single one. The world’s filthiest restaurant had had a kitchen-porter gig open and I had started getting my hopes up, on the grounds that no sane person would want it, but the manager had turned me down once he saw my address, with an unsubtle hint about inventory going missing. It had been months since Shay let a day go by without some line about how Mr. Leaving Cert and all his education couldn’t put a wage on the table. The barman had just taken the guts of my last tenner. Any band that played loud and fast enough to blow my mind empty was in my good books.
“Ah, no; not great. They’re all right, but half of it’s that.” Rosie motioned with her wineglass to the ceiling. Galligan’s had a handful of lights, most of them lashed to beams with what looked like baling wire. A guy called Shane was in charge of them. If you got too near his lighting desk carrying a drink, he threatened to punch you.
“What? The lights?” Shane had managed to get some kind of fast-moving silvery effect that gave the band an edgy, sleazy almost-glamour. At least one of them was bound to get some action after their set.
“Yeah. Your man Shane, he’s good. He’s what’s making them. This lot, they’re all atmosphere; knock out the lights and the costumes, and they’re just four lads making eejits of themselves.”
I laughed. “So’s every band, sure.”
“Sort of, yeah. Probably.” Rosie’s eyes went sideways to me, almost shyly, over the rim of her glass. “Will I tell you something, Francis?”
“Go on.” I loved Rosie’s mind. If I could have got inside there, I would happily have spent the rest of my life wandering around, just looking.
“That’s what I’d love to do.”
“Lights? For bands?”
“Yeah. You know what I’m like for the music. I always wanted to work in the business, ever since I was a little young one.” I knew that—everyone knew that, Rosie was the only kid in the Place who
had spent her confirmation money on albums—but this was the first time she had said anything about lighting. “I can’t sing for shite, but, and the arty stuff wouldn’t be me anyway—writing songs or playing the guitar, nothing like that. This is what I like.” She tilted her chin up at the crisscrossing beams of light.
“Yeah? Why?”
“Because. That fella’s after making this band better. End of story. It doesn’t matter if they’re having a good night or a bad one, or if only half a dozen people show up, or if anyone else even notices what he’s at: whatever happens, he’ll come in and he’ll make them better than they would’ve been. If he’s honest-to-God brilliant at what he does, he can make them a load better, every time. I like that.”
The glow in her eyes made me happy. Her hair was wild from dancing; I smoothed it down. “It’s good stuff, all right.”
“And I like that it makes a difference if he’s brilliant at his job. I’ve never done anything like that. No one gives a toss if I’m brilliant at the sewing; as long as I don’t make a bollix of it, that’s all that matters. And Guinness’s would be exactly the same. I’d love to be good at something, really good, and have it matter.”
I said, “I’ll have to sneak you in backstage at the Gaiety and you can pull switches,” but Rosie didn’t laugh.
“God, yeah; imagine. This here is only a crap little rig; imagine what you could do with a real one, like in a big venue. If you were working for a good band that goes on tour, you’d get your hands on a different rig every couple of days . . .”
I said, “I’m not having you go off on tour with a bunch of rock stars. I don’t know what else you’d be getting your hands on.”
“You could come too. Be a roadie.”
“I like that. I’ll end up with enough muscles that even the Rolling Stones wouldn’t mess with my mot.” I flexed a bicep.
“Would you be into it?”
“Do I get to road test the groupies?”
“Dirtbird,” Rosie said cheerfully. “You do not. Not unless I get to ride the rock stars. Seriously, but: would you do it? Roadie, something like that?”
She was really asking; she wanted to know. “Yeah, I would. I’d do it in a heartbeat. It sounds like great crack: get to travel, hear good music, never get bored . . . It’s not like I’ll ever get the chance, though.”
“Why not?”
“Ah, come on. How many bands in Dublin can pay a roadie? You think these lads can?” I nodded at Lipstick On Mars, who didn’t look like they could afford their bus fare home, never mind support staff. “I guarantee you, their roadie is someone’s little brother shoving the drum kit into the back of someone’s da’s van.”
Rosie nodded. “I’d say lighting’s the same: only a few gigs going, and they’re going to people who’ve already got experience. There’s no course you can take, no apprenticeship, nothing like that—I checked.”
“No surprise there.”
“So say you were really into getting your foot in the door, right? No matter what it took. Where would you start?”
I shrugged. “Nowhere around here. London; maybe Liverpool. England, anyway. Find some band that could just about afford to feed you while you learned the trade, then work your way up.”
“That’s what I think, too.” Rosie sipped her wine and leaned back in the alcove, watching the band. Then she said, matter-of-fact, “Let’s go to England, so.”
For a second I thought I had heard wrong. I stared at her. When she didn’t blink I said, “Are you serious?”
“I am, yeah.”
“Jaysus,” I said. “Serious, now? No messing?”
“Serious as a heart attack. Why not?”
It felt like she had set light to a whole warehouse of fireworks inside me. The drummer’s big finishing riff tumbled through my bones like a great beautiful chain of explosions and I could hardly see straight. I said—it was all that came out—“Your da’d go through the roof.”
“Yeah, he would. So? He’s going to go through the roof anyway, when he finds out we’re still together. At least that way we wouldn’t be here to hear it. Another good reason why England: the farther the better.”
“Course,” I said. “Right. Jaysus. How would we . . . ? We don’t have the money. We’d need enough for tickets, and a gaff, and . . . Jaysus.”
Rosie was swinging one leg and watching me steadily, but that made her grin. “I know that, you big sap. I’m not talking about leaving tonight. We’d have to save up.”
“It’d take months.”
“Have you got anything else to be doing?”
Maybe it was the wine; the room felt like it was cracking open around me, the walls flowering in colors I’d never seen before, the floor pounding with my heartbeat. The band finished up with a flourish, the singer whacked the mike off his forehead and the crowd went wild. I clapped automatically. When things quieted down and everyone including the band headed for the bar, I said, “You mean this, don’t you?”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you.”
“Rosie,” I said. I put down my glass and moved close to her, face-to-face, with her knees on either side of me. “Have you thought about this? Thought it all the way through, like?”
She took another swig of wine and nodded. “Course. I’ve been thinking about it for months.”
“I never knew. You never said.”
“Not till I was sure. I’m sure now.”
“How?”
She said, “The Guinness’s job. That’s what’s after making up my mind for me. As long as I’m here, my da’s going to keep trying to get me in there, and sooner or later I’ll give up and take the job—because he’s right, you know, Francis, it’s a great chance, there’s people would kill for that. Once I go in there, I’ll never get out.”
I said, “And if we go over, we won’t be coming back. No one does.”
“I know that. That’s the point. How else are we going to be together—properly, like? I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my da hanging over my shoulder giving out shite for the next ten years, wrecking our heads every chance he gets, till he finally figures out we’re happy. I want you and me to get a proper start: doing what we want to do, together, without our families running our whole bleeding lives. Just the two of us.”
The lights had changed to a deep underwater haze and behind me a girl started singing, low and throaty and strong. In the slow spinning beams of green and gold Rosie looked like a mermaid, like a mirage made out of color and light; for a second I wanted to grab her and crush her tight against me, before she could vanish between my hands. She took my breath away. We were still at the age when girls are years older than guys, and the guys grow up by doing their best when the girls need them to. I had known since I was a tiny kid that I wanted something more than what the teachers told us we were meant for, factories and dole queues, but it had never hit me that I might actually be able to go out and build that something more with my own hands. I had known for years that my family was fucked up beyond repair, and that every time I gritted my teeth and walked into that flat another little piece of my mind got strafed to rubble; but it had never once occurred to me, no matter how deep the crazy piled up, that I could walk away. I only saw it when Rosie needed me to catch up with her.
I said, “Let’s do it.”
“Jaysus, Francis, stall the ball! I didn’t mean for you to decide tonight. Just have a think about it.”
“I’ve thought.”
“But,” Rosie said, after a moment. “Your family. Would you be able to leave?”
We had never talked about my family. She had to have some idea—the whole Place had some idea—but she had never once mentioned them, and I appreciated that. Her eyes were steady on mine.
I had got out that night by swapping Shay, who drove a hard bargain, for all of next weekend. When I left, Ma had been screeching at Jackie for being such a bold girl that her da had to go to the pub because he couldn’t stand to be around her. I said, “You’
re my family now.”
The smile started somewhere far back, hidden behind Rosie’s eyes. She said, “I’ll be that anywhere, sure. Here, if you can’t leave.”
“No. You’re dead right: that means we need to get out.”
That slow, wide, beautiful smile spread right across Rosie’s face. She said, “What are you doing for the rest of my life?”
I slid my hands up her thighs to her soft hips and pulled her closer to me on the ledge. She wrapped her legs around my waist and kissed me. She tasted sweet from the wine and salty from the dancing, and I could feel her still smiling, up against my mouth, until the music rose around us and the kiss got fiercer and the smile fell away.
The only one who didn’t turn into her ma, Imelda’s voice said in the dark beside my ear, rough with a million cigarettes and an infinite amount of sadness. The one that got away. Imelda and I were a pair of liars born and bred, but she hadn’t been lying about loving Rosie, and I hadn’t been lying about her being the one who had come closest. Imelda, God help her, had understood.
The yuppie baby had fallen asleep, in the safe glow of his night-light. His ma stood up, inch by inch, and slipped out of the room. One by one, the lights started to go out in the Place: Sallie Hearne’s Santas, the Dwyers’ telly, the Budweiser sign hanging crooked in the hairy students’ gaff. Number 9 was dark, Mandy and Ger were snuggled up together early; probably he had to be in work at dawn, cooking businessmen their banana fry-ups. My feet started to freeze. The moon hung low over the roofs, blurred and dirty with cloud.
At eleven o’clock on the dot Matt Daly stuck his head into his kitchen, had a good look around, checked that the fridge was closed and switched off the light. A minute later, a lamp went on in a top back room and there was Nora, disentangling her hair elastic with one hand and covering a yawn with the other. She shook her curls free and reached up to draw the curtains.
Before she could start changing into her nightie, which might make her feel vulnerable enough to call Daddy to deal with an intruder, I tossed a piece of gravel at her window. I heard it hit with a sharp little crack, but nothing happened; Nora had put the sound down to birds, wind, the house settling. I threw another, harder.