John the Revelator (7 page)

Breen came at him even wilder, throwing haymakers, determined to finish the job. Maurice barely landed a punch. He threw his arms around the other boy's arms, trying to get his breath. His gloves were too heavy to lift, scalding tar in his veins. He couldn't breathe through the gumshield or see through the stinging sweat. They clung to each other like a pair of drunks trying to slowdance, then Breen disentangled himself and hemmed Maurice into a corner and unleashed a barrage of jabs and hooks and uppercuts.

The ref stopped the fight and sent Maurice to his corner.

He sat down hard on the stool and his chest heaved and burned as Andy held his head back and sponged blood from his face and said,
Good lad,
hushed as though in church. Maurice couldn't speak, all he could think of was that slow-eyed boy swaying on his feet in the neutral corner.

The referee beckoned both boys back to the centre of the ring and grasped their wrists. Maurice didn't even hear the verdict. All he could remember was the sinking feeling as the ref let go of his arm. He climbed down from the ring and hurried into the dressing room and sat slumped and dejected on the bench, trying to swallow the lump in his throat. Andy came in and undid the gloves.

‘What happened, son?' he said.

Maurice couldn't answer.

He was quiet on the long drive home. The old man appeared at the back door when he got out of the car. Maurice shook his head and the crestfallen expression on his father's face was too much to bear, so he went straight to his room and lay on his bed, head splitting, the taste of blood in his mouth.

He could still taste it now, more than thirty years later. He put the book away and tried to recall the name of the boy who died in Balinbagin. He gazed into the swirling waters of the spit-sink beside the big green leather chair. There were traces of dried blood under the rim. He removed a packet of antibacterial wipes from one of the presses.

The boy's name was on the tip of his tongue. Something beginning with O.

He set about scrubbing away the stain.

***

On the way home I decided to take a look at the new African shop Jamey had mentioned. The market square buzzed with Friday afternoon shoppers, cars double-parked all over the place. I walked down Barracks Street, Jamey's envelope tucked under my arm. The shop wasn't hard to find. There was a stepladder splayed on a spattered tarpaulin in front of the main window display. A freshly painted sign hung over the door.

 

AFRO-KILCODY SUPERSTORES
Afro-Euro-Asian Goods

 

I stepped through the doorway. A dark-skinned man in a colourful shirt stood by the till talking to an old bloke in overalls. The shop swam with strange smells, paint and sawdust and the scorched scent of grain. A drill whined somewhere. There was a table set up near the back where a few young black men in football jerseys and baggy jeans sat around an ashtray, smoking and playing cards.

Under a handwritten sign,
Afro-Caribbean Foodstuffs,
there were labelled bags of maize and pounded yam, flour and goat meat, ground rice and bunches of coal-black bananas. There was a glass display stocked with videos with names like
Panumo
and
Gazula
and
Ayefele.
A rack of newspapers and magazines:
African Soccer, African Expatriate, Black Perspective, Nigerian Trumpet.
Brightly coloured bags and prints and batiks depicting tribal scenes. Displays of trinkets and medallions and ethnic jewellery. African drums. Sculptures and statuettes in the shapes of lions and elephants. Rastafarian coloured hats and scarves. Ornamental letter openers shaped like knives, Easter Island faces carved in the handles.

The man on the counter cleared his throat.

‘Can I help you?' he called over, in a pronounced accent.

I mumbled something about just browsing and hurried back out into the freakish heat.

 

 

 

 

The moon comes out from behind a cauliflower-shaped cloud, and its super-trouper lunar beam makes the crow glow, a tiny troll dandied up in top hat, spats and cane, ruffling his wings like jazz-hands and (doing a tap dance on the road.

And he opens his beak and sings:

‘
Who's that a-writing?
'

It was the bank holiday weekend and there was a disco on in the Rugby Club. Jamey was intent on celebrating the end of his exams and insisted I come along. I waited for him at the gate to the club grounds and watched the big moon glow over the fields until he finally swaggered down the road muttering excuses.

We fell into step with the other shadowy stragglers making the pilgrimage up the long drive toward the lights of the clubhouse. The bass signature of a song boomed and throbbed from the building, growing louder as we approached, drawing us to it like a homing signal.

‘I should warn you, this place is a kip,' Jamey said. ‘Rugger buggers and bogmen.'

The girl at the booth took our money and the cloakroom attendant tore tickets from a raffle roll, pinned them to the collars of our jackets and handed us the stubs and a couple of dinner vouchers. We stepped into the commotion and heat. Disco lights flashed and blinked and fragments of light refracted off the revolving mirror balls and swam around the walls like shoals of fishes. The music was irresponsibly loud, the air thick with beery smells and body odour and an underlay of piss and disinfectant.

‘See if you can find us somewhere to sit,' Jamey yelled into my ear, then plunged into the bodies packed three deep at the bar.

The room was a split-level discothèque and lounge area. The mirrored walls were fogged with condensation and the floor sticky with spilled drink. UV light made specks of dandruff glow on people's clothes. Frugging bodies elbowed into each other. A balding man with hair grown long at the back and a woman in a yellow jumpsuit did the twist. A huge African-looking chap stood in front of the speakers, oblivious to the volume, surveying the floor like some rich rapper checking out the talent from behind a velvet rope. His skin was so black it was almost blue, shot-putter's shoulders and arms like legs and a barrel chest squeezed into a white T-shirt, hair cropped close to his head. Girls ogled him like they wanted to eat him up, and I couldn't help but feel a twinge of jealousy and awe.

I found a couple of grey stacking chairs and set them up at the edge of the dance floor. Jamey came back with a pint of beer in each hand and two more wedged between his forearms and ribs. He weaved carefully between tables laden with glasses filled to various levels, like receptacles left out for gathering rain, and carefully placed the drinks under our chairs.

The shirt was already stuck to the small of my back. I grabbed one of the glasses and gulped beer and grimaced at the bitter gassy taste and watched the dancers. A man in a swanky blazer-shirt-and-tie combo did a duck-walk. Jamey nodded at a big square-headed lump of a lad dressed in a shirt and slacks. Despite the heat, he had a jumper knotted around his neck. Car keys dangled from his belt loop like talismans for attracting girls. Jamey pumped his knee in time to the rhythms pounding from the sound system.

‘What do you think of this music?' he shouted.

Some hyperactive dance track, repetitive beats, vocal speeded up.

‘I told you, music's not really my thing.'

Jamey affected his sceptical look.

‘For someone who claims he's not interested in music, you seem to pay very close attention to it.' He shook his head in lamentation. ‘Sometimes I think you were dropped here in a Martian pod.'

Jamey was right, but I couldn't explain how I felt. Something about music seemed dangerous to me. It felt as though if I wasn't careful, it might overwhelm my senses, swallow me up.

Sunburned mountainy men slouched on the periphery of the floor, arms folded or hands thrust in their pockets, observing the action like sad silverbacks. Girls strutted and gyrated. Discombobulated lads tried to get their attention by mincing and face-making and throwing mock Travolta shapes. Jamey scrunched up his nose, obviously unimpressed by their moves.

‘You ever notice how posh people can't dance?' he said.

I didn't answer. I'd always thought of Jamey's family as kind of posh.

There was a guy with crutches sitting on a corner bench. His right leg was in a cast and his face was pinched and coated in straggly red beard. A white singlet exposed wiry arms crudely tattooed with Indian ink, and he cradled a large bottle of Smithwicks between his thighs. Every so often he used one of his crutches to hike up dancers' skirts, and they recoiled and cursed at him.

I nudged Jamey.

‘Who's the gimp?'

‘Billy Dagg. Nasty piece of work.'

‘What happened to his leg?'

‘He got impudent one night upstairs in Donahue's.'

A sort of window hatch opened beside the bar, and within seconds a queue had formed.

Jamey handed me his meal ticket.

‘Dinner is served,' he said. ‘I got the drinks in.'

I was going to ask him why they served food this late, but didn't want to appear like more of a hick than I already was. Something to do with the licensing laws I figured. I lifted my pint and hurried across the floor to get in line for the hatch. The queue shuffled towards the window like convicts on a chain gang. Somebody jostled my elbow, spilling beer over my wrist and hand. I turned and saw the big African-looking bloke towering over me.

‘Howya,' I said.

He nodded.

I wondered if any girls saw me talking to him, would they think I was his friend and ogle me too. We shuffled forward a bit more.

‘So,' I said. ‘Where you from anyway?'

He blanked me.

I made it to the front of the queue. The girl behind the hatch handed me napkins and plastic cutlery and two paper plates heaped with chicken and mashed potatoes. I ferried them back to our spot beside the dance floor and handed Jamey his plate.

The DJ, a gangly bloke with a ‘70s footballer haircut, interrupted the dance music to put on a slow song with a church organ melody. The floor cleared and just as quickly refilled with couples that began to dance close and kiss and grope each other's hair and backsides. The slow song gave way to a sort of melodramatic ballad with a really long saxophone solo. Jamey put his empty plate under the chair and wiped his mouth.

‘John-boy,' he yelled into my ear, making it whine. ‘Have you ever had a girl?'

‘Say again?'

I had heard him fine.

‘Have you ever, y'know, thrown the gob on anyone?'

‘Not yet.'

‘You're what age?'

‘Fifteen.'

He looked at me sidelong and gestured around the room.

‘We'll have to sort you out some cute Mercy bird. See anything you like?'

All the girls looked good to me, but there was one particularly pretty pale girl with red hair sitting with her friends at a table.

‘Her.'

Jamey followed my line of sight.

‘Oh man,' he said, ‘you can pick 'em. That's Rachel Cullen.'

‘She's nice.'

He grinned.

‘It's all war paint. She slow-danced with me once one night and put her head right here'—he patted his shoulder—‘next morning I woke up and found the imprint of her face on my good shirt. It was like the Shroud of Turin.'

I felt the alcohol buzz kick in, that feeling of being surrounded by a force field, like I had the gift of temporary invincibility.

‘I don't care,' I said. ‘I'm going to ask her up.'

The girl's table was at the other side of the lounge. To get there I had to negotiate an assault course of chairs and tables and feet. The girl saw me coming and broke off from her conversation. She looked even better up close. Her friends stared like they expected me to make balloon animals or something.

‘Would you like to dance?' I said, leaning across the table.

‘What?' she yelled back.

Her friends exchanged glances and smirked and looked into their drinks.

‘WOULD YOU—'

The music stopped.

‘—LIKE TO DANCE?'

Rachel Cullen covered her mouth, and the friend to her left coughed
‘freak
into her fist.

‘No thanks,' Rachel said. ‘I'm with someone.'

The music restarted. I murmured something lame and beat a retreat. Jamey was holding my pint out.

‘Shot you down?'

I tried to act nonchalant.

‘You were right. She didn't look that good up close.'

Jamey put his arm around my shoulder and leaned in, confidential.

‘See what you did wrong there, though?'

Like I needed a post-mortem to prolong the ordeal.