Creature of the Night (7 page)

I was out by the hayshed having a smoke when Coley
Dooley landed in. He came across the fields and climbed
over the wall behind the house.

'You're back,' he said.

'I am,' I said. 'Are you still allowed to talk to me?'

'Probably not,' he said. 'My father isn't too happy
about the Skoda.'

'Why not?' I said. 'I moved it for him, didn't I?'

He laughed and looked back up towards his house.

'Why did you take it?' he said.

'I wanted it. Quickest way to get to Dublin.'

'Where is it now?'

'In the garda pound probably. My friend crashed it.'

'Did he?'

'Yeah,' I said. 'Then he kicked a fella half to death.'

He looked at me and I could tell he didn't believe
me. I didn't blame him. Things like that didn't happen
down here in fairyland.

'If you were so keen to go to Dublin why did you
come back?' he said.

'I didn't want to,' I said. 'The guards brought me.'

'That's what Mrs Grogan's telling everyone,' he
said. 'I didn't believe her.'

'Who's Mrs Grogan?'

'She lives in that yellow house on the way into the
village. She sits beside the window all day long, watching
who's going up the road and who's going down the
road. She doesn't miss much.'

I lit another smoke and offered him one. He shook
his head.

'Do you want to see the forts?'

'What forts?'

'The fairy forts.' He pointed across the road. 'One
over there on Kevin Talty's land, and the other
one behind you on that little hump. That one's on our
land.'

I looked where he was pointing. I couldn't see much
in either direction.

'This house was built between them. That's why it
always had bad luck, according to my grandmother.
That's why you have to put out the milk and a bit of
cake for the fairies.'

'Cake?' I said. 'I don't remember anything about
cake.'

He was laughing again. 'And a bit of roast chicken
on Sundays,' he said.

'Fuck off!' I said, but I couldn't help laughing
with him.

We went out the gate on to the road.

'Aren't you going to tell your mother where you're
going?' he said, just like last time.

'No,' I said. 'Do you always tell your mother where
you're going?'

'I do,' he said. 'Or my father. They want to know.
Doesn't your mother want to know?'

'She can ring me if she wants me,' I said.

To me a fort was a place with walls and battlements and
gun turrets. The ones Coley showed me were disappointing.
They were just circles in the fields with a
grassy bank and a few bushes.

'And?' I said to him.

He shrugged and laughed. 'I just thought I'd show
you,' he said. 'So you'd know.'

'Know what?'

He laughed again. 'Where the fairies are supposed
to live.'

We were standing in the first fort, the one on his
land. It was on a useless-looking field over to the left of
the two big meadows between my house and his. There
was nothing much to see.

'There's supposed to be an old cave under there,' he
said, showing me a muddy hole in the ground. 'And a
tunnel. It comes out on the other side of the hill near the
river.'

'What kind of a cave?' I said.

'My grandfather says it's big enough for you and me
to stand up in. He used go down into it when he was a
young lad. Do you want to go in?'

In my book that was a challenge, but I didn't like
the look of that hole. It was just about big enough to
crawl into but you'd have to lie down and slide in on
your belly, head first into the darkness.

'Why not?' I said. 'After you.'

'No way,' he laughed. 'It's only badgers use it now.
If you met one of them lads down there he'd take the
face off you. Specially if he had pups.'

'He would not,' I said. There were badgers in my
old videos that I used to watch when I was Dennis's age.
They were furry and wise.

'He would,' he said. 'If you go out walking in the
fields at night you have to put a stick down your trouser
leg, because if a badger gets hold of you he won't let go
until he hears the bone snap.'

'Bollix,' I said.

'Try it then,' he said. 'Go in backwards and let him
have your feet.'

'I will,' I said. 'After you.'

We had to practically wade through mud to get to
the other fort, past a cattle feeder where Kevin Talty's
cows had ploughed the land with their feet.

'He isn't the best farmer in the world,' Coley said.
'By rights he ought to harrow this and level it off. But
you didn't hear that from me.'

The other fort was pretty much the same as the first
one, except the bank was a bit higher.

'There's supposed to be a cave under this one as
well,' Coley said, 'but the way in is lost now.'

'Any treasure in them?' I said. 'Gold? Silver?'

'I wouldn't start digging in this one anyway,' he
said. 'Kevin Talty wouldn't be too happy about that, and
he has a fierce bad temper if you get on the wrong side
of him.'

He looked at his watch. 'I'd better go back for my
dinner,' he said.

'Can't you just have it when you want?' I said.

'I could.' He laughed. 'But I'd want a better excuse
than this. My mother just sent me down to see if it was
true, what Mrs Grogan saw.'

'Well it is,' I said. 'So you can run home and tell
her.'

He nodded. 'Did you really crash the car?' he
asked me.

'I didn't. My friend did.'

'How bad is it?'

'Side's bashed in. It's a write-off, I'd say.'

He thought about this for a minute. Then he said:
'My father thought you had just taken the car and hidden
it down a borreen or something. Just a prank, like.
He'll probably throw you all out, now.'

'Good!' I said. 'Exactly what I was hoping for.'

I expected him to laugh, but he didn't.

'You shouldn't have taken it,' he said.

'Why not?' I said. 'He wasn't using it.'

That was one of our big jokes, me and the lads. But
Coley didn't find it funny.

'I'm not using my bike,' he said. 'Doesn't mean I
don't need it.'

A fuse started to blow in my head.

'He's gone, isn't he? This Lars bloke? If he
wanted his car so badly why didn't he take it with him?'

'It doesn't matter,' Coley said. 'You shouldn't have
taken the car. It didn't belong to you.'

He turned and walked away across the field. That
was when I noticed he was wearing his wellies. I looked
at my own feet. My trainers were filthy and soaked right
through. I swore, and I nearly called out after him to tell
him what I thought of him.
You shouldn't have taken it.
It didn't belong to you.
He must have been soft in the
head or something, to think life was as simple as that.

PJ Dooley called in on his way home from work. When
I heard the knock on the door I legged it upstairs. My ma
was watching TV with Dennis. I heard her tell him to
stay where he was and not dare move, so she knew as
well as I did there was trouble coming.

She went out and let PJ into the kitchen. I stood on
the top step and listened. He didn't hang around to pass
the time of day. He said: 'I'm sorry now, but I'll have to
ask you to leave.'

'Oh, no,' my ma said. 'We can sort it out. I'll pay
for the car. And I have your deposit, look.'

I knew where she kept her large notes. In an
envelope inside her bra. I could see it in my mind's eye,
what she was handing him. A crumpled brown envelope
with one end slightly damp from being too near her
armpit.

'The car didn't even belong to me,' said PJ. 'I have
no way of claiming for the insurance on it or anything.'

'We'll pay for it,' my ma said, and I could hear that
little husky squeak in her voice that always came along
with the waterworks. 'We'll pay it in instalments. I'll
give you the first one as soon as I get my dole.'

My ma's whole life was paid for in instalments.
Clothes, the telly, the washing machine, birthdays,
Christmas, everything. Two different money-lenders
came to the door every Friday morning. She never had
enough to pay both of them, and the debts just kept
getting bigger and bigger. I wondered what they would
think when they found she'd moved out of the flat.

'You will have to pay for it,' PJ said. 'We'll have to
see about doing it through the courts.'

'Oh no, please!' she said. She was in floods of tears
now. 'Don't put us out. He's not a bad lad, honest he's
not. Bobby!' It came out high and shrill. 'Get down
here!'

I didn't move. PJ started to say something but she
barged on straight over him.

'He got mixed up with the wrong kind of lads. Even
the cops said that. He was being bullied by the fella that
crashed your car. That's why I brought him down here.
To get him away from them.'

'All the same,' PJ said, but she was yelling up the
stairs to me. 'Bobby! Come down and tell Mr Dooley
what happened!'

I held my breath.

'Look,' said my ma, and I heard her rustling a newspaper.
She had showed me that earlier, after she came
back from the village. There was a picture of the two
cars up on the roundabout and a story about the fella
who was beaten up.

'See?' she said. 'There's the car, see? And look what
it says.'

She left PJ looking at it and flew up the stairs. I
backed into the bedroom but she came in after me, her
face all blotchy with fury and tears. She knew better than
to try and grab me. I'd hit her before, more than once.

'Please, Bobby!' she whispered.

'Fuck off!' I whispered back.

'Just tell him!'

'No way!' I said.

'All right,' she said. 'You can go to Dublin at the
weekend if you tell him. I'll give you the bus fare.'

I had her now.

'Fifty quid,' I whispered.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then she
nodded. I had no idea why this place was so important
to her. She went down and I followed her. PJ looked up
from the newspaper.

'That's the car, isn't it, Bobby?' my ma said.
'This fella made Bobby steal it and bring it up to
Dublin. He was making him do bad stuff for years,
wasn't he?'

I nodded. Long face. My best victim look.

'That's why I moved down here,' my ma said. 'To
get Bobby away from those lads. Bad influence. He's a
good lad underneath it all, aren't you, Bobby?'

I kept my eyes down and my face straight.

'And that fella's in jail now,' she said. 'Mick Kilroy,
his name is. They'll put him away for years after what he
done. They said so, didn't they, Bobby?'

'They did,' I said.

'So he can't threaten him no more. Bobby needs
another chance. Even the guards said that, didn't they,
Bobby?'

I nodded again.

'Please don't throw us out, Mr Dooley,' my ma said.
'It won't happen again, honest.'

PJ looked around the kitchen. My ma hadn't
washed up since we got there. She never washed up until
there was nothing left to eat off. There was half a tomato
trodden into the floor and a big dirty splash of tea where
I knocked over a cup. I was an idiot to agree to fifty
euro. After all, I wanted to be thrown out, didn't I?

'I was just about to clean up,' said my ma. 'The
water's on to heat.'

PJ said nothing. He seemed to be stuck to the floor.
My ma helped him along. She pushed the soft brown
envelope into his hand. He stood looking at it like he
had no idea what it was.

'There's eight hundred there,' my ma said. 'Four
hundred deposit and a month in advance. Is that all
right?'

I looked at my ma. Where the hell had she got eight
hundred euro from?

PJ stood still another moment and then he turned
and looked at me.

'Do you really want another chance?' he said.

In all honesty I had no idea what he was talking
about. The only second chance I wanted was another go
at getting back to Dublin. Everybody was always on
about second chances, but what did they mean? A
second chance at what? And what was the first chance
supposed to be, and how had I missed it?

But I nodded anyway, because I knew it was something
I was supposed to want.

'Then this is what we'll do,' PJ said. 'I'll find out the
book price for an eight-year-old Skoda. And you can
come up and work for me on the farm until you have it
paid off.'

My jaw dropped. My ma's jaw dropped, too. In the
front room Dennis giggled at something on the TV, and
I wanted to laugh, too.

'Doing what?' I said.

'Whatever needs doing,' he said. 'You can work
with Coley. He'll show you.'

'He'd love to, wouldn't you, Bobby?' my ma
said.

I stared at her.

'It's up to you,' PJ said. 'But we'll have to sort it out
one way or another. You can't just get away with taking
a car and wrecking it.'

I opened my mouth to say I never wrecked it, but
my ma was in first. She was beaming with gratitude.

'He'll do it, Mr Dooley,' she said. 'And thanks a
million!'

He left, taking the brown envelope with him. I
turned to my ma and held out my hand.

'Fifty quid.'

'The weekend. I said you could have it at the weekend,'
she said.

'You said I could have the bus fare at the weekend.
I want the fifty quid now.'

'Well I haven't got it,' she said. 'You can have it
when my dole comes through on Friday.'

'Thursday,' I said. 'You get your dole on Thursday.'

'Thursday then,' she said.

I grabbed her bag and opened her purse. There was
a crumpled fiver and some loose change. I picked out the
fiver.

'Leave that!' she said. 'That has to last me the
week!'

There were three packets of fags in there as well. I
never knew my ma to let herself go short. I took one and
put it in my pocket.

'You little bastard!' she said.

I threw the whole lot on the floor. Coins and lipsticks
and keys scattered everywhere.

'You should know,' I said, and I went out for a
smoke.