The Thing About December (19 page)

The Lovely Voice, in his house. Imagine! And Mumbly Dave, spouting smartness and doing his best to show off, and she laughing at his auld spiel; it was an almost unbearable pleasure. But now he couldn’t sit there dumbly and listen and feel the mad mixture of laughter and jealousy bubbling in his stomach like he had in the hospital; he had no blindness or sickness or weakness to hide behind, he’d have to try and be a proper person who throws out whole lines of conversation, all casual and cool and without making people lean closer and look embarrassed and ask him to repeat himself. He might as well try and sprout a pair of wings and fly about the yard.

Mumbly Dave was telling Siobhán all about Johnsey being a
property tycoon
and how he was sticking to his guns for his twenty mill and letting them all go and shite and Siobhán looked at him and tutted and said it was a shame they were let say what they want in newspapers, there should be some kind of law about telling lies about people like that, and Mumbly Dave said Sure what lies, isn’t it true that Johnsey’s a bad yoke, sure look at him, he’s the worst kind of a blackguard, he’d sell his granny to the highest bidder and Johnsey knew what that was – it was
sarcasm
– which Daddy had often told Mother was the
lowest form of wit
.

Sometimes it was hard to tell if someone was saying good things or bad things when there was
sarcasm
involved, but Johnsey was fairly sure that by calling him a blackguard and saying he’d sell his granny, Mumbly Dave was actually saying that the opposite was true and that all the stuff about him being a greedy divil and holding the poor developers over a barrel and destroying the whole village’s future was lies. Why is it at all that things can’t be said simple?

Siobhán said she had to go; she had to see about a job looking after an old couple in their house out towards Rooska, seeing as that fat cow was due back from her maternity leave in a few weeks. Mumbly Dave said Yerra Jaysus, she hadn’t even been asked had she a mouth on her, and Johnsey jumped up from the edge of the couch and offered to make tea and cursed whatever slowness was in him that stopped him knowing to do these things without having to be told by Mumbly Dave. There wasn’t as much as a barmbrack or a cut of tart in the house. Why had he to eat everything as soon as he got it? Should he offer her a proper drink? He said there was a bottle of red wine there if she’d like a glass, it wasn’t in the fridge, though, and Mumbly Dave laughed all shrill like a little girl and looked at Siobhán and asked had she ever heard the bate of that? Red wine in the
fridge
, ha ha ha, and Johnsey thought again about the two rats who got on the finest until the girl rat came along and isn’t it a fright to God to say a man could have violent thoughts about his only friend over a bit of a slagging that wouldn’t cost him a thought normally, but delivered in front of Siobhán was like a stab into the heart?

Siobhán said she was grand, she’d have a drink the next time she called – the roads were crawling with guards lately. If she got this job looking after these two auld geriatrics in Rooska she could call loads, because it’d be on the road out. Mumbly Dave told her to call any time, as if it was up to him to be telling people to call
to Johnsey’s house. They walked her out to the gate and Mumbly Dave laughed at her car and called it a nun-mobile and Siobhán laughed as well and looked back at Mumbly Dave’s yahoo car and said Little willy, big exhaust, and Mumbly Dave, who could talk a dead man back to life, just stood there with a wounded face on him and a fake smile painted across it, and Johnsey knew he was thinking about how Siobhán had probably actually seen his mickey inside in the hospital, and her slagging therefore had an edge to it like a new razor, and Johnsey caught himself enjoying Mumbly Dave’s torment and felt ashamed. She wrote a number on a tissue from a plastic packet with a little black pencil that she had in her handbag and handed it to Johnsey and said Send me a text or whatever and we’ll arrange something, and Johnsey took it and his hand was shaking a bit as he reached for it and he wondered did she notice the shake and if she did, did she know he was shaking with nerves just from being near her and did she think he was an awful weirdo?

Mumbly Dave was quiet for a while after Siobhán had gone. When he eventually came back around to being himself, he told Johnsey how Siobhán must have the hots for him big time. Why else would she have called to his house and gave him her phone number? You didn’t see her calling to
his
house, did you? She didn’t give
him
her number, written with an eyebrow pencil, which every fucker knows is a way women have of telling a fella they want to ride them. Why would someone like Siobhán want to be hanging around with a fella like Johnsey? Mumbly Dave told him not to be thinking too much about her reasons – if you won the lottery would you ask the crowd above in Dublin what their reasons were for having a lottery in the first place? You would in your hole; you’d snatch the big cheque off of them, hand and all. A wan like Siobhán bothering with you without having to be begged – for a lad like you, that’s like winning the
lottery. Seeing as you’re determined to refuse all them millions on offer from Herbie and the gang, you may as well take what’s offered in other departments. Big land deal or no big land deal, you’re still a farmer, kind of, anyway, and that counts for a lot with wans of a certain age and inclination. It’s not your sultry good looks is after attracting her, that’s for sure.

Mumbly Dave told Johnsey there was no sense trying to do a line with a girl in this day and age without a mobile phone.
Texts
are the new tool of seduction. And you, my friend, are a tool, he said, but not one skilled at seduction. You could have a wan all warmed up and gagging for action before you met her at all with a few nicely worded text messages. He said not to worry; he’d look after that side of things. You also need a couple of them nice shirts that you don’t tuck into your pants. And pantses are out – you has to wear jeans,
boot cut
jeans – not them fuckin Lees or Wranglers from the eighties. And boots are out; you has to wear nice slip-on shoes. But not black ones, they has to be brown and pointy-looking. And you has to make your hair look as though you don’t bother your hole combing it. And you can’t be going around in a big puffy jacket with a hood or a duffel coat; you has to get a nice blazer or a leather jacket, but not one that looks new; like it has to
be
new but look old. And some lads only pulls their trousers halfway up their arses so you can see the tops of their jocks, but you had to wear right cool jocks in that case, with
Calvin Klein
written on them – the old three-pack Penneys Y-fronts wouldn’t do. Yerra, forget about that anyway, you’d probably get bate up again if anyone saw you.

IF SIOBHÁN WANTED
to
arrange
something, like coming back to Johnsey’s house without Mumbly Dave, and if she was going having a drink, and if she was worried about how the roads were
crawling with guards lately, and if she lived miles and miles away, and if she was a saucy strap of a lady like Mumbly Dave said, then she could very easily have it in her mind to stay over in Johnsey’s house for the whole night and God alone knows what else she might have inside in her mind. Imagine what Mumbly Dave would say if he knew about the thing with his mickey! It’s possible for a thing to give you half of a horn and make you feel sick with worry at the same time just by thinking about it. What would Mother and Daddy think if Johnsey let sin happen under their roof? What would the spirits of his ancestors say to each other? The IRA great-uncles would probably be egging him on, seeing as they had to swear to God never to go near a woman the rest of their born days after they joined the priesthood. Daddy would probably say Well … good … man … Johnsey … begod. And Mother would slap him and tell him he was a fright to be praising the boy for being dirty and making a solid fool of himself.

He probably was going to make a fool of himself, in fairness. It was one thing to give every minute of the day thinking about how much you love a person and to have fine romantic thoughts when all you have to do is lie down like an old sheepdog and listen to their voice and sneak the odd look at them while they’re foostering about with tablets and drips and sheets and what have you. It’s another story to have to actually do things like give them something to eat and drink and decide how close beside them to sit and try to think of things to say and then to organize the words properly so that they come out through your mouth in the proper order and at a manageable speed. How is it you can’t be given warning of things that’s going to happen, like the newspaper bollix and the Unthanks being in the consortium and Siobhán arriving and making him sweat with delight and fear and desire and shame at allowing his friend to be hurt? How is it you can have no say in what happens you? Probably because he’d choose
for nothing to ever happen him and he’d live out his days behind the window, looking out, wondering.

MUMBLY DAVE
said if a woman wants you she’ll ride you into submission. That’s how women gets their way, apparently. Balls full, brain empty. Balls empty, you don’t give a shite, anyway. But if you’re going to be led around by your lad, it may as well be a flaker like Siobhán doing the leading. Johnsey didn’t like that kind of talk about Siobhán. How would Mumbly Dave know anything about anything? All them auld stories about all the sex he’d had and all the other brilliant things he’d done were just made up. He was only raging that Siobhán had called to Johnsey and not down to the house Mumbly Dave lived in with his two brothers who he doesn’t bother with on account of they’re a pair of pricks and his father who goes every day to the pub and the bookies and pisses away what money he gets from the dole and what he can scrounge off of people and what Mumbly Dave’s wrinkled, scrunched-up mother gets for cleaning the school and the few bits of offices below in the village belonging to the bigshots.

Isn’t it a solid fright to say a man can have such mean auld thoughts about his only pal? He’d want to have a word with himself, in all fairness. How’s it he couldn’t keep a howlt on his own badness? He was turning into an awful bad yoke.

THE MILKING WOULD BE
getting light by October. You might be down to the one milking a day by then. Daddy wouldn’t take his ease, though. He might do a third cut of silage, or he’d tighten up around the place in preparation for the winter, or he’d be still going off doing block-laying jobs. The cattle would go back in to the slatted house to shelter from the cold, and they wouldn’t settle for ages but Mother would look in and say Ah, the auld dotes, come on now, auld dotes, curl up and be warm, and it was hard to believe when she talked like that to the cows that she had a tongue on her that could cut a man right in two.

Daddy used to love Halloween. He’d put tenpences into flour inside in a big pan and you had to try and get them out with your teeth, and if you did you could keep them. And he’d hang an apple off of a piece of string at the back kitchen door and you had to try and take a bite out of it with your hands tied behind your back and everyone would be roaring laughing. And he’d take Johnsey out around the yard and they’d both wear scary masks
and Mother would let on to be frightened of them when they came to the kitchen window and Daddy would point up at the sky and say There’s the witches, Johnsey! This is the only night they’re allowed fly around on their broomsticks!

And you could nearly see the witches, soaring around the moon, and hear them cackling, and the fear would feel lovely in your spine. And he’d make a big huge pantomime out of the cutting and eating of the barmbrack with the ring in it, saying the one to find the ring would have a long life and eternal luck, and it was always Johnsey that found it, and Johnsey could never know how Daddy made sure it was always him found it, but daddies know magic tricks that they’re taught when their children are born and Johnsey wondered would he ever know them tricks.

PADDY ROURKE
shot Eugene Penrose in October. Then he went home and swallowed all his tablets together. He was on rakes of yokes for his heart and his bones and his liver and God only knows what else. Minnie Wiley found him in his bedroom. Minnie the Mouth, people called her. She used give Paddy a hand a few days a week to tighten up the place and do a few jobs, so she had her own key.

Men like Paddy should die noble deaths, like them Spartan fellas that fought the million Persians and saved the whole western world, or else they should live in health and happiness well beyond a hundred, and die in big, huge, comfortable beds, surrounded by crying women and strong, admiring men, looking at the ground to hide their tears and telling each other handed-down stories of feats of strength and bravery beyond words. But Paddy died alone in his cold old house, in a room that smelt like piss, with his pyjamas half off of him, covered in vomit.

EUGENE PENROSE
had to have his left leg amputated. That means cut clean off. Paddy didn’t go with the duck shot for a finish – he gave Eugene a barrel of heavy lead. The Unthanks beat Mumbly Dave up to the house to tell Johnsey about it. No one knew about poor Paddy at that stage; Minnie the Mouth hadn’t yet found him in his stinking deathbed and run to tell every yapping auld biddy in the village about it. Mumbly Dave said later wasn’t it a grand excuse for them two to stick their noses back in? Did he ask to know how is it they never told him they were in league with Herbie Grogan? Did he ask to know how was it they had the neck to face in to the hospital all them times to sit and bullshit about how great it was that all this building was to be starting up
mar dhea
they was only ordinary punters when all along they had every penny they had, and them two had a fair whack of shaggin pennies, have no fear, they had their Communion money, you can be guaranteed, stuck in with the rest of the bigshots that was trying to grab his land off of him? Johnsey knew Mumbly Dave was only put out he wasn’t the one to tell Johnsey about Paddy shooting Eugene Penrose, but did he have to be so disrespectful? Johnsey still loved the Unthanks no matter what. Their shame pained him. What about it if they gave Herbert Grogan a few pound to invest for them? How’s it he couldn’t find words to comfort them?