The Gamal (45 page)

Not really sure what all that stuff you just read was about really. Was awful tired last night and was fierce upset and went a bit rambly. Anyhow. Yeah. Sinéad became unwell. Could delete all that stuff I wrote last night but I won’t cos it’s a lot of words and I’ll need them all to make a book if you don’t mind.

Tell Sinéad

Sinéad was put back in hospital after her thing at the grotto. I did a lot of thinking then. Whether to tell Sinéad what I knew or not. Or whether to just tell the gardaí. That I found out what happened to her in the toilet in Roundy’s. That the Little Rascal did what he did. That Dinky had known all along. That Dinky had stolen the Afghan scarf to destroy them. That the whole thing was rotten and rigged. I just wanted her to be able to decide what I should do. She deserved the say isn’t it?

In the end she came back out of hospital after a month or six weeks. I still didn’t know if I should tell her what I knew or not. I was afraid it would be the end of her. Then I was thinking there wasn’t much of her there now anyhow. We sat on the river bank, the two of us, one evening then.

—But like . . . how could he believe that I’d be capable of doing it? she goes.

—There was silence for a long time cos I knew no answer. She asked what was going on in his mind. I told her about his sufferings.

—I dunno, I goes.

—But he must have said something to you Charlie.

—He just thought like. Same as the music. You needed to try things. To taste the world. We didn’t really know what was in your head.

—Did you not tell him it was ridiculous Charlie? Taste the world? Did you not tell him it was stupid?

I didn’t say anything so she asked again so I answered.

—Yeah.

There was silence then for a bit and then she goes,

—It was that scarf. Why did I say my mother stole it and lost it? Why did I say that to him?

Silence then again for a long time.

—How did the Rascal get his hands on my scarf Charlie?

After a while of staring at the water she looked at me. I wondered was there a chance she thought I robbed it? That the Rascal put me up to it. I got sickened in my stomach thinking that she could think that. Could she have? Her brain was in a bad state if she did. It was then I realised that I had no right not to tell her the truth. Only question was when she’d be strong enough to hear it. Dunno if humans ever get strong enough for the like of that. I just stared at the water and let the silence eat my broken thoughts. After a while she spoke again.

—Surely you told him I couldn’t have cheated on him. I loved him. I loved him so much. It doesn’t matter about tasting the world. He was my whole world. My whole world. All I ever wanted.

Her voice broke into a cry and we both cried silently and hard for a long time and I never felt so useless. She tried to talk a few times over the next while but she couldn’t. She was just sitting there all hopeless on the gravel beside me and she was wringing her hands with a weird force as if she was trying to rub her own skin off. Her head was down like a bold shamed child the whole time. I was just looking at the river that was all the wetter and unmerciful with the tears in my eyes. It was starting to get dark then and I goes,

—I heard someone talking Sinéad. Dinky stole the scarf from Roundy’s when you weren’t looking.

She didn’t say anything, just kept staring out at the water. So I just went on.

—I heard Dinky telling Teesh. Dinky knew everything. The Rascal told him what he did to you. I was in Snoozie’s one night pretending to be asleep and I heard Dinky talking to Teesh.

I told her the whole thing. And how I never caught up with James on time to tell him and then he was gone. She just sat there still looking at the sky’s darkness on the river. I was ready to grab her in case she ran into it. But she didn’t. After a bit she just straightened up her back and turned to me and goes,

—Can we meet again Charlie? Maybe tomorrow evening when you’re finished work.

—OK. You won’t do harm to yourself tonight sure you won’t? I said.

—I won’t Charlie, no, she said quietly, already getting up to walk back to the village.

Next evening I walked up to her house and I could see her in the living room standing looking at me. She’d been waiting and was coming out the front door by the time I’d reached it. She said,

—Hi Charlie, and she had a kind smile on her face.

—Hi, I said.

She walked faster than I was expecting so I’d to speed up a few steps to catch up.

—Where we going? I said, the river?

—Yeah. Will we? she goes.

—Yeah, I said.

We spoke about lots of stuff. Some of it was private and some of it wasn’t. We were there for hours and hours. I’d told her earlier how I’d kill Dinky, that I didn’t think the gardaí would take care of it right. She wouldn’t let me kill him. You might think it’s only talk but she knew I’d do it if she wanted. I think the world is made up of people who think that the police and judges can be trusted to get fair play. And then other people who don’t think that. I think the only thing wrong with the death penalty is that you’re not allowed to torture them for a bit first. She held my hand for most of what we spoke about. She asked me one time when I was crying, she goes,

—Would you do anything for me Charlie?

and she starts crying herself then too, but like kinda smiling too and looking at me nodding, and I was crying mad and I goes,

—Yeah,

and she squeezes my hand real tight for a long time and we both crying and then she hugged me and I hugged her. Then later on a lot of what she was talking about was what I could do with my life after. After going away I mean. She said America was probably the place to go cos America was always good to music.

I’m still having problems talking about the happy memories. You might have realised this yourself at this stage. It’s just that they’ve lost something along the way. Meaning or something. Or reality. They’ve lost realness I think. Those memories. Something happened to the happy memories when the shit happened. They got a spattering of it too. Stench of hurt.

Pallet of Blocks

’Twas around this time I went up to the building site of the new houses where I was doing jobs only to be told that there was no work today. I says will I get paid and the foreman told me to go away and have a good shit for myself. I asked him why there was no work and he says there was an accident now fuck off home out of it.

I looked up and I seen a garda car and an ambulance up at number three. All the houses had numbers even though most of them weren’t even half built yet. I could hear the foreman inside cancelling a delivery of concrete and then he came out and walked up towards number three where the boss was talking with a couple of gardaí and two other fellas in suits.

—Are you gone yet? he said.

—What happened? I said.

—Go home now Gamal if you know what’s fucking good for you.

I watched him go but he turned around and walked back towards me. I said I’m going and took a few steps back but he walked back into the portacabin and came back out wearing a shiny yellow hard hat.

—Where’d ya get the grand new hard hat? I asked him and he walking up towards number three again. No answer.

So no more building or singing or raping for the Little Rascal. Justice is mine said the Lord. It is in my hole. If there’s a life after this one Rascal better hope he doesn’t end up in the same place that James is or he’ll be wishing he was alive and not after pulling a pallet of blocks down on top of himself and smashing his earthly skull.

I like to think Sinéad thought it was the ghost of James who knocked those blocks down on top of the Rascal. In a way I suppose it was. We never spoke about it. But the inspectors from the health and safety crowd figured he pulled them down on top of himself. He slipped off the ladder and grabbed a rope but the rope was tying twenty-four blocks together in a nice heap so grabbing the rope only slowed down his fall for a little bit but then his weight pulled the twenty-four blocks down so when he landed on his hole on the ground the blocks rained down on top of him. Nice surprise for him at seven o’clock in the morning.

Only other thing was that they put the little fucker in a child’s coffin and ’twas the talk of West Cork.

Nobody

Nobody had the heart for nothing after James died you know. Nobody. And then life goes back to normal. A match. A wedding. Some accident where a local farmer got his leg taken off by a combine harvester. Someone else got cancer. Someone else’s marriage went on the rocks. Someone won the Lotto. News. That’s the way it happened. That’s how I remember it anyhow. People found their heart again. Misneach isn’t it?

Moonlight Runner

In Ballyronan about fifteen years ago a horse called Moonlight Runner won Cheltenham or the Grand National or some big massive horse race that was from Ballyronan or the owner was from Ballyronan I’m not sure which. There was a free bar in Roundy’s and The Snug for two nights running. There was TV cameras and news crews and radio people and the whole lot sure. In our own little Ballyronan. Old Master Higgins was on the six o’clock news on RTE. Roundy was on BBC radio talking from Roundy’s where half of the village were fully legless. The Snug had the other half legless over in his own place. The whole village was happy. Even after it sobered up. For a long time. Spring in the step isn’t it? But now the whole village was gone gaunt and sickly. Made the horse racing seem like the village’s childhood memory. Made the happiness seem awful silly.

Ballyronan was in the news again now and it wished the world never heard of it. Just wanted the old days back and to be left alone. You might think what does a place know? But a place gets to know its people doesn’t it? There’s nothing worse than someone being made to see that their happiness is silly.

I remember watching my cousins when I was small. I was sitting on the windowsill outside my cousins’ house at a birthday party. I usen’t play with them at all. Just watch them and tell them fuck off if they came near me. But my cousin Séamus anyhow was playing house. He was the same age as me. About nine or ten. So he’s playing house with the other cousins. Three girls and two boys all between about three and seven. Next thing his older brother and cousin who were about twelve came along. They started laughing at Séamus for playing house. Séamus went red and said that he wasn’t really playing house, that he was just minding the younger ones. He left the house made of boxes then and followed his older brother and cousin around the place instead.

—I was only helping them to make it cos the boxes were too big for them.

—Oh really? Were you the mammy or the daddy?

—The daddy, said Séamus and went all red again.

One of the younger ones kept trying to follow Séamus around then until Séamus gave him a dead leg and told him to fuck off.

The village became bitter of the world. Embarrassed that they were watching them when they were being so childish. Runs deep what people think is good and what you think is good yourself. In life.

Sometimes I think James and Sinéad did this to Dinky and Teesh and Racey and them. Just by being. That they did that. Made the merry happiness in the pub seem silly. And all the posturing and the laughing at the laughable. Sinéad and James made it all seem like children’s play. Caused a kind of wild seething fury and gave Dinky and Teesh terrorists’ eyes cos I seen pictures of terrorists’ eyes. Be careful your existence doesn’t insult anyone’s way of life.

So anyhow back in Cape Clear island once James sang this one. This is called a flashback Dr Quinn tells me. Gives out to me when I don’t tell things in order. Says I must make it clear. Flag it he says. Flag that it’s a flashback. I’m flagging now. We do need a song. And James sang this one on a night on Cape Clear one time. James seemed to only get angry when he was singing an angry song. Like ‘Country Feedback’ he sang that time. He sang it shit but no one cared. They still enjoyed it.

People love to look at each other when they’re laughing. Oh I find that very funny and so do you, the two of us are the same, not like that silly clown we’re laughing at. You know it’s true. You know it. Wolves hunt in packs and people laugh in packs.

Sinéad and James sang this song in a strange kind of harmony. Give you the holy spooks.

There were two sisters walking down by a stream

Oh the wind and the rain

The older one pushed the younger one in

Oh the dreadful wind and rain

Pushed her in the river to drown

Oh the wind and the rain

Watched her as she floated on down

Oh the dreadful wind and rain

And he made a fiddle from her own breastbone

Oh the wind and the rain

The sound could melt a heart of stone

Oh the dreadful wind and rain

The only tune that fiddle would play

Oh the wind and the rain

The only tune that fiddle would play

Oh the dreadful wind and rain

Sinéad played us a Bob Dylan song once that she said was like it. About a fella whose friend killed people by accident in a car crash. Turn, turn, to the rain and the wind, it goes. He says he stood up fierce slow cos the room was gone funny. That’s shock. You’d know what that meant if you were at the court case I was at. Everyone who was there would know. People stood up slow after hearing parts of it. Knees go shaky isn’t it?