Gurriers (28 page)

“Thanks Charlie.”

He started his engine. “I think some of these cunts realise tha’ they’d be happy wi’ half of the wages we bring home an’ jus’ fuckin’ delay us ou’ a spite. Take it easy, man.” He put his bike into gear and was away.

“Fair play to ye, Scaldy Cock.” I mumbled as I got on my bike. Then I giggled like a schoolboy who has just said something rude and fired up my engine.

As soon as I called him from Leeson Street with both on board, Aidan despatched a pick-up in Rathmines going to Templeogue to me, sending me even further west into unknown territory. He told me to give it five in Dublin 2 before heading to
Rathmines to see what else I could get going that way, but one cigarette later I ended up leaving the city centre with just two on board and one to pick up on the way. I was determined, with the help of the street finder, that my optimum route was Rath-mines, Churchtown, Rathfarnham and finally Templeogue.

The Rathmines address was on Rathmines Road Lower and was easy to find by following the street numbers. I found my way to Churchtown handy enough by using the map, even though I was on roads that I was quite sure I had never been on before. I wasted time on myself, however, in a bout of confusion between Landscape Road and Landscape Avenue that had me driving frantically round in circles for 15 valuable minutes. I was so frustrated by the time I was finally delivering to the correct address that I didn’t attempt to turn the radio down when I heard the Channel Two beep. I hoped for something vulgar to come from my radio at high volume to shock this man for having the audacity for living somewhere that I had trouble finding. The courier on Channel Two was Nineteen Naoise telling Seven Mick that he had that few quid for him and asking him if he was in “two”. I felt a distinct pang of shame at my nasty sentiment as Mick Channel Two’d Naoise to meet him in five at the bank on Baggot Street. I had wanted to punish this innocent man as he signed for the letter on his own doorstep because I had trouble finding his house. That was so wrong on so many different levels.

I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed with myself, as I took out my map and opened the index page across the top of my petrol tank. I was delighted to see that Whitehall Road in Rathfarnham was only around the corner from Landscape Avenue in Churchtown and was in good form as I memorised the address. It didn’t take a whole lot of memorising, seeing as it unnervingly consisted of only

HB Ice Cream, Whitehall Road, Rathfarnham.

The post room man in Young’s had told me I couldn’t miss it when he saw me frowning at the sparse information on the envelope and I had put my faith in him that I would succeed in
finding it with what I had, but now that I was here in this totally alien place, I began to have my doubts.

I had passed an office building at the start of Landscape Road, but since then there had been nothing only houses lining every street I had driven down and occasionally, due to bad navigation, back up again.

If HB’s offices were in a house or even a conversion of two neighbouring semis, I figured there was a distinct possibility that I could miss it. I found my way onto Braemor Road and took the correct turn off it onto Whitehall Road when my heart sank as my worst fears materialised. Stretching ahead of me in a straight line was a street, possibly up to half a kilometre long, totally flanked by houses on each side. They were big and attractive looking houses but sadly they were all similar.

“Can’t miss it, my arse!” I grumbled.

Bitterly as I set out on my slow journey, slow enough to scrutinise the pillars of all the houses on each side of the road, as I crawled my way along. Each gateway that my rapidly oscillating head deduced was not HB, depressed me that little bit more. I considered driving up the street scrutinising just the houses on my left and then get the far side on my way down, but an element of laziness within me posed the question, “What if it’s the next house on the right?” and I continued wrenching my head from side to side to cover the whole lot in one journey, suffering the plight of the lazy man’s load as well as the misery of the courier unable to find his destination.

By the time I had reached the top of the road, a right angle to my left, I was close to tears. I was also torturing and tormenting myself with parallels between the misery of my situation here and the misery of my life. A gullible fool who believed that he couldn’t miss this poxy address was the same gullible fool who believed that a woman who loved him would put him before everything else, even her career.

I braked and pulled over towards the kerb to radio the base for help. An impatient looking motorist in a new Volkswagon who had been too close to me and who therefore also had to brake, beeped his annoyance at me as he swerved to be sure of
not hitting the back of my bike. Despair seemed to instantly transform into raw rage and explode from within almost without me having any control over it. Before I knew it, I had lashed a vicious kick, which connected, at the car while screaming more abuse than I thought I would ever be capable of at the top of my lungs.

“Fuck off, you ugly cunt! Fuck, fucking spastic bastard. Dickless cocksucker!”

He braked and turned sideways in his seat, to throw abuse back at me presumably, but this meant that kicks two, three and four also made crunching contact with his car as my abuse erupted itself into incoherence.

“Fugga raah cock fuck baa…” Kick number five also made contact with the car but it was only a light blow due to the motorist deciding to flee from the explosive venom of rage that had obviously taken him by surprise. Him and me both! I was left in a shock-like-state for several seconds after the offender-turned-victim’s hasty departure.

I was still heartbroken and depressed and verging on the suicidal, but now there was a fire inside – albeit a fire greatly dampened by shame at my unjustifiabe actions. My bottom lip quivered uncontrollably and I barely managed to contain the welled up liquid in my tear induced sparkling eyes. My heart felt as if it wanted to break free of my ribcage and my knees were like jelly. I knew I was well shaken up but it still surprised me to see how much my hands shook, as I rooted out and lit up a cigarette. I was going to have to pull myself together before calling Aidan to help me locate this ungodly place.

“Four Sean.”

“Yeah, go ahead.”

“Do you know what number HB is on Whitehall Road?”

“HB?”

“Yeah, there’s no number on this envelope and I’ve driven the full length of Whitehall Road without finding it.”

“You can’t miss it, Sean – it runs halfway down the side on your right coming from the lights down towards the two bends.”

Can’t miss it – those three stinking words again! Then it hit me: lights…two bends. I had come straight up the road from the lightless junction on Braemor Road. Oh!

“Four Sean, if you’ve come up from the Braemor Road end of it, ye have to turn left at the top an’ then follow the road to your right an’ it’ll be on your left comin’ up to the lights a’ the Rathfarnham road.” The radio instructions came just as I had figured it out for myself and followed the road. I leaned my machine into the second bend mere seconds after the directions had been given and there it was, beginning about halfway up the half kilometre or so continuation of Whitehall Road and stretching all the way to the traffic lights at the top. Even at this angle I could see that the gatehouse alone was bigger than any of the houses I had passed on the other section of Whitehall road. There were roughly twelve flagpoles all with flags bearing the HB logo fluttering in the gentle summer breeze. I could see a yard full of delivery vehicles of all sizes from cars, vans to articulated lorries. Three ten ton trucks, all emblazoned with the same logo, sat across the road from the main gate declaring proudly that that was where they had come from. The only thing that occupied the mind on this street was HB. I had never before witnessed such an obvious place of business in my life, and I had asked my base controller for directions to it. I felt like a complete gobshite.

Being in strange surroundings and knowing that your purpose was to find specific places as quickly as possible, had a much more pronounced negative impression than I had previously expected. It’s one thing to lose your way on a journey somewhere and have to ask directions to correct your path or else guess where you went wrong and attempt to compensate, but when finding places is your job and you know that immediately after finding one location the quest for the next one will begin – quite possibly under extra pressure depending on how long it took you to find this one – the hardship endured enters into another dimension altogether. It can almost appear as if each destination has a separate voice inside a person’s head that just keeps nagging and nagging until it is finally exorcised by
delivery/collection. I found this aspect of the job to be particularly draining on an emotional level since my wretched misery seemed to rear its ugly head so readily under pressure. It was as if my misery was a predator, which attacked me when I was at my weakest. The only way that I could account for my violent and despicable reaction to that Volkswagen was that I was in misery’s relentless grasp at the time when the pressure of the job was at its greatest and that the explosion of violence was actually a release mechanism activated in my defence.

I had never erupted in that way before but I had never been so heartbroken, so lost or so under pressure before either. The deduction helped me deal with my guilt but, nevertheless, by the time I had located and dropped the private address in Templeogue I had decided that I was better off going back to what I knew to help me battle my way through losing Saoirse without the added hardship of learning this job. This time I was finished for sure as a courier.

When I radioed in free in Templeogue I was a bit surprised to be despatched a run from Woodies in Tallaght going to Lucan, Blanchardstown and Coolock but I had to leave the Sandyford one there. Even though I had been moving west all afternoon my brain had still categorised Tallaght as being a totally different area, but a quick look at the map determined it to be less than three miles away. It also determined that my delivery destinations all lay within a mile of various parts of the M50 motorway as it curved north away from Tallaght, thus practically plotting my course for me. By the time I picked up in Woodies at The Square Retail Park in Tallaght, I had been despatched a pick-up in the Cookstown Industrial Estate going to the airport to go with them.

Cookstown was a pretty big industrial estate on the Belgard Road in Tallaght, but they had a large detailed map at the entrance and the consecutively numbered units were easy to follow. I could hear Seven Mick being despatched the job in Woodies going to Sandyford as I scrutinised the map – closely followed by two company names that I didn’t know, both going into town. He was going into town first and then south,
presumably picking up all the work along the way as he went while I had to follow the M50 with my run. He had been given the better run over me.

I complimented myself on my powers of deduction. I doubted if many brand new couriers could calculate the runs so well after doing the job for less than a week. I could feel a wry little smile spread along the right side of my face, as I told myself what little consequence that held considering that I was finished with this job today.

As it turned out I did get more work. When I was dropping Woodies in Blanchardstown, Aidan despatched a pick-up in Gateway 2000 in Clonshaugh Industrial Estate in Coolock to me going as far as Palmerstown – a step further back towards Tallaght. I was cursing my luck when Aidan told me to hang onto it until I had all the rest dropped, that it would probably get me finished for the day.

As it happened, I was kept waiting for over 20 minutes by a spotty geek when I eventually managed to get through a whole rigmarole of security nonsense at the entrance of Gateway 2000. It was after five when I furiously radioed the base that I had been delayed there for half an hour altogether. Aidan seemed to sense my frustration over the air.

“Don’t worry about it, Sean – I’m putting forty-five on it for ye. I know wha’ they’re like in there.”

“Roger,” I was placated.

“Tha’ jus’ leaves you wi’ Coolock an’ tha’ Palmerstown on board, yeah?”

“Roger.”

“Well, that’ll probably finish you for the day, bu’ keep yer radio on.”

It’ll finish me for more than the day, Fatso! I thought.

The mention of somebody finishing for the day sparked off the Channel Two Friday chorus; couriers in high spirits at the end of their working week with back-to-back potential on their radios letting the world know that they’re feeling good.

As I passed the security gates of Clonshaugh Industrial Estate a cow moo loudly erupted from my radio. Then it was
off to join rush hour traffic as monkey screeches turned heads. Then came some sort of scream. Then Tarzan . Then “Gay bikers on acid.”...

Monday 8.45 a.m.

The highlight of the dull weekend had been a dreary Sunday dinner with very concerned parents during which I had barely managed to contain the ever increasing frustrated irritation that had been welling up inside me since the worrying mother’s gaze had greeted me through the triangle of glass exposed by the displaced sitting room curtain.

My father produced a variety of advertisements for technical jobs that he had been cutting out of the newspapers since he first saw me sporting a bag and radio, which succeeded in preventing him being told that I was no longer a courier.