Eureka Street: A Novel of Ireland Like No Other (37 page)

`When are you bringing that sofa round?' Aoirghe asked me.

`Any time you like.'

She thought for a moment. Beads of sweat had begun to sprout on her forehead, I could see the muscles in her gonadsqueezing arm, flexed and taut. I bit my lips some more.

`Bring it round tonight. Before eight.' She smiled at Ronnie. `Empty enough for you?' she asked him pleasantly. She loosened her grip and walked away.

Ronnie dropped to the ground and measured his length there. By the time he had regained consciousness, several attractive women had passed by. No one said anything to them.

After work we all went home. No one suggested stopping off at the Bolshevik. Ronnie was still incapable of consecutive speech.

I walked home happy. Belfast was looking good. Proper summer had was August so it was about time. And it was hot. It boiled. People walked around dazed at the unBelfast balm. Men took off their shirts and decided that it looked nice to go all red and swollen. Girls wore startlingly little clothing and demonstrated many of their beauties, emphasizing the unfairness of the Northern Irish gender pact. The red, swollen men got them, and they got the red, swollen men.

I had to confess, as I walked there, that I watched these women as much as Ronnie and the others.The only difference was that I tried to pretend I wasn't looking and I kept my big male mouth shut.

Looking out my Wreck windows that week, I'd never seen the city so empty, so muted. The streets went unwalked, bars were people-free, and multi-screen cinemas played to four or five people a night. Everybody was scared. Everybody had thought that Fountain Street would produce reaction. Fountain Street had produced reaction.Three days later, there had already been four separate murders.Within a week, there had been two more bomb blasts and a betting-shop drive-by. Twenty-seven people had died in eight days. The citizens stayed in their houses, waiting for the extra bomb-and-gun stuff they felt was sure to follow.

So, up and down I drove, the city scarily free of traffic. It made me feel like I owned it even more. There was no one around but me, the police and the Army. They stopped me at roadblocks every six hundred yards. At least it was a social life.

The OTG thing was getting serious. The cops had started laying wall-watching traps to see if they could catch people writing OTG. They succeeded in nailing a few but they had been copyists with no idea what the legend meant. I'd begun to notice, immediately after the Fountain Street bomb, that the OTGs were beginning to be written with a more desperate, hurried air. I didn't ponder seemed an appropriate response.

It was like the seventies: a time when rubble scars marked the city like a good set of fingerprints. But as I drove street to street, I felt sorry for Belfast. It had a guilty, sheepish air, as though it knew it had blundered again, made its name sound dark in the world's mouth again. It was uniquely endearing to me and it chose to look its prettiest in recompense. In the unusual evening heat, I wound down my window and drove slow. The evening was light, fragrant, the air was clear. Look at all my good points, the city seemed to say.

There were many. For all my big talk, this was still a city I loved. Me and the Wreck, we sometimes toured this metropolis in a little haze of directionless benevolence. Sometimes we just drove around late at night, the old car and I, and just watched happily, listening to Heaven 17 songs, looking at all the people and wondering if they knew how multiple and beautiful they were. It never mattered what happened.

I paused as I passed Sandy Row. I stood at the foot of the Lisburn Road. I hadn't checked up on Chuckie's mum that morning. It was the first morning I'd missed. My duty was clear.

Chuckie was still in America. I'd been looking after his mother. I'd stopped looking after his soon perceived that I couldn't handle it. I went back to the Wreck. I knew it was a crap car but I felt it was more me, somehow. Hey, for that matter, I felt it was more Chuckie too.

But I was still monitoring his mother. After the first few days, Peggy appeared to be getting a little better but she still wasn't talking much. At first I'd felt only sorry for her. That Fountain Street thing had been very bad medicine and I could think of no one I'd less like to witness such an event than Chuckie's chubby mother. Poor old five-foot Peggy was half a woman as it was. She was almost the definition of the damageable human. Everything about her had always seemed frail or conditional. His mother's softness had always troubled Chuckie but I had always felt for her.

And though she was better, she still lay for hours on end, staring at Chuckie's bedroom wall. It broke my heart. Some old girl called Causton from across the street was helping look after her. They talked some. This woman had a proprietorial air aboat her care for Chuckle's mother. They had been friends since they were schoolgirls so that was fair. But she didn't like me and resented Chuckle's having asked me to hang around. It was some womanly thing, some crucial lack of the feminine in me. I resented that. My dick wasn't my fault. It didn't necessarily make me a bad person.

Notwithstanding her objections, I called in on Eureka Street twice a day or so. I even spent some entire evenings there - with my many social obligations that was such a sacrifice.

For four or five days this had continued amiably enough. Then, a week after Chuckie's departure, it began to unravel. One evening Caroline went home to spend some time with her grumpy husband. I helped her across the road with several remaining boxes of Chuckie's mad catalogue purchases. When I got back I found that Peggy had come downstairs and was clearing up. I was surprised but pleased. I said nothing and began to help. Much of the gear had been distributed around Sandy Row and definite patches of carpet were visible between the boxes and bags.

Caroline had told me that one night she'd found Peggy sitting downstairs amongst all Chuckie's purchases, picking over them and whimpering. She seemed more amused than anything now We worked for half an hour or so, Peggy even chatting intermittently like some plump, uneasy bird.

When we'd finished I sat heavily on the sofa intended for Aoirghe and puffed. To my surprise, Peggy suggested that she make us some tea. I had always particularly loathed Peggy's tea - green-grey, only partially I thought her offer was a good sign so I courageously accepted. She pottered off into the kitchen.

While she was gone I started to examine some of the boxes I'd piled near the sofa on which I sat. They contained women's underwear, reams of it. It was fairly glossy stuff, too. I knew Chuckle's catalogue had been a medium to low-rent affair but those silky things looked the business to me. As I dug further into the boxes I found Lycra high-thigh bikinis, G-strings, lurid thongs. I ran them through my fingers in amazement, horror.

`Sugar?'

I made it a few inches off the sofa without the use of arms or legs. In my shock, I had rendered myself airborne solely by buttock. I glared wildly at Chuckie's mother, who stood by the kitchen door.

She smiled.`I know! Look at those things.What was Chuckie thinking of?'Then (I swear) she giggled like a milkmaid, looked me full in the eyes, tossed her hair and said, `What use would those things be to an old woman like me?'

She tripped back into the kitchen.

I felt my skin crawl with shame. I felt sure that she had spotted it. I didn't know how long she'd been standing there, watching me, before she asked if I wanted sugar. I knew she had read the not entirely comic thought in my face.

For, unwillingly but unavoidably, I had just at that moment been wondering what Peggy might have looked like in some of those athletic skimpies.

When she returned with the tea-tray the air in was all electrons; it was thick with threat and charge. As she set the tray on the little coffee table, I could have sworn that Peggy had assumed a seductive twitch to her hips. Her ass positively waggled. It was six inches from my sweating face. I couldn't help but look.

As we drank our tea, I realized that this was the first time Peggy and I had been alone. Caroline Causton was in her own house. The sudden thought did not assist my ease of manner.

`Once we get rid of the bigger things, the house will be back to normal,' said Peggy. Her tone wasn't exactly coquettish but there was a bright nervousness in it that appalled me. `Caroline called Oxfam today and they said they'd be glad to take some.'

I nodded vaguely. I hated to admit it but Chuckie's mother did look different. It was as though she was undergoing some transmutation, emerging from some matronly chrysalis. She had shed a few pounds since the thing at Fountain Street - she'd never been anywhere near as fat as Chuckle, and I'd always been fond of the generous figure, but the loss suited her. I really hated to admit it but Chuckle's mother had become vaguely shapely.

`Margaret Balfour at said she might be interested in the last sofa. I've never really liked her much but I don't see the harm.'

It was weird. I began to have a dreadful suspicion that I was considering the possibility of fancying Chuckle's mother. I wasn't sure what age Peggy was. Fifty, fifty-one. It had never struck me before but she was a pretty handsome woman. She had a good figure for her age. And there was, I hated to confess, that business with the underwear. As she wittered on about catalogue consumer goods, the image of her new intimate apparel rented space in my mind and invited unwelcome images over for long parties. Grotesquely, I thought Peggy was beginning to notice my discomfort and guess its source. I mean, Jesus, I wasn't getting laid. I was very horny, but this - this was too much.

'Do you sleep with enormous numbers of girls, Jake?'

I spat a half-mouthful of bad tea all over the sofa destined for Aoirghe. I coughed. I choked. I sputtered.

Peggy tittered mildly.'Well?'

I was still having trouble breathing but I blurted out a response before she could say anything else I might regret. 'Jesus, Peggy. No!

She smiled beatifically. 'Why not?'

Some more coughing. Some more choking. A bit of sputtering too. `Fuck. Sorry. Ah, Jesus, I don't know.'

'I'm surprised you don't get around more.You're not a badlooking fella.'

If I'd had any tea left to spit I would have spat.

After a few minutes I managed to steer the chat into neutral space, but the rest of the evening was a nightmare. There was an obscene mutual consciousness between Peggy and me. I was no saint. I'd had that heart-shaking, dry-mouthed, deeply sexual silence with women once or twice but never with a friend's mum.

When Caroline Causton finally returned, after a dreadful two hours, I almost wept with gratitude.

So, I chose not to call in on Eureka Street just then. I was still in my work clothes, I reasoned feebly. I had to pick up the sofa for Aoirghe. That was time enough. I knew it was because I was too frightened, but I walked up the Lisburn Road anyway, concluding that I needed to have some sex. I needed to have some sex really soon.

I got home. I washed my untouched dishes and then my untouched self. I had a few hours to kill and, normally, I would have put on a suit, strolled into my supermarket and looked around to see if my teenage admirer was working. But I had stopped that. I didn't go to that supermarket any more.

How was I, then, to make six o'clock become seven o'clock if I couldn't aimlessly shop? There were other shops on my road but there are only so many cigarettes you can buy. There were plenty of cafes but I didn't have the nerve for solo snacking and, besides, I didn't want to go falling in love with any more waitresses.

I took the cat for a walk.

Poetry Street was radiant. The old lady across the road smiled at me and her Asian neighbour cast an amiable wave my way. My cat hid under the nearest car. He had no social skills. (Before he'd left for America, Chuckie in a fever of fiscal enquiry had calculated that if my cat lived to its proper natural term, then in food, vet bills and moderate fortnightly catty treats he would cost me more than eight thousand pounds before he died. Chuckie said my cat represented an unaccept ably low unit profit and advised me to hit him over the head with a brick. I was tempted.) A few paces on, the cat and I saw an attractive young woman coming towards us on our side of the street. This time the cat checked her out and I hid under a car.

Yeah, it was getting bad. I was getting close to thirty and I didn't have a girlfriend. Even Chuckle had a steady squeeze but I felt like that was all over for me now. It didn't help that it was summer and I fell in love every hundred and fifty yards. It didn't help that I felt like the kind of man that I wouldn't have gone out with.

Leaving the cat where he was (there was always a slim hope he might get lost), I headed back home. I jumped into my car and Wrecked it over to Eureka Street. I made Caroline help me stuff the sofa into it while Peggy was still into a Dayglo thong? I told Caroline I'd be round later or the next day or something, and drove off.

Having passed through that ordeal, I turned my thoughts to the one I was about to face. What had happened to Ronnie Clay that day was merely the real-time manifestation of what Aoirghe had been doing to me ever since I'd met her. No one had ever squeezed my stones like she did.

I was stopped at two roadblocks on the way to Aoirghe's. One of the soldiers wanted to rip up the sofa sticking out the back of my car. He thought it was a good place to hide a big wad of Semtex. His colleagues dissuaded him.They pointed out the absurdity of the notion of a sofa-bomb and also mentioned what a feeble fucker I looked. I drove on unmolested.

Just as I pulled up outside Aoirghe's, the radio told me that two more soldiers had been shot.The timing was inappropriate. I would have carried the sofa alone if it had been possible. It wasn't. I pushed her doorbell.

She opened the door and glared at me with her habitual lack of grace.

'Hello,' she said, without enthusiasm.

I smiled. `I'll need a hand to get this yoke in for you,' I suggested.

There was a new reluctance in her face. `I've someone here who'll help you.'

She called inside. My heart sank. What was she doing having some man in her flat? Somewhere deep in my consciousness, I must have been idly speculating about rapidly showing Aoirghe the true humanist, non-violent political path and then having her roger me to a standstill, all well before midnight.