White Lies (10 page)

OD

Saturday morning. Grand opening of the new town park. ‘Grand' wasn't the word. It has one letter too many and the other four are the wrong ones. There was a daft-looking ribbon on the gate – not the new wooden gate, which never arrived, but the same old creaky metal thing that had been there on our first morning at the site. A platform and some chairs stood near the cabin. There was even a microphone and a dicky little speaker. Unfortunately, no-one showed up except Snipe and his crew. Not the Town Clerk, or the local TD, or even a photographer. Snipe was devastated. After an hour or so of hanging around, we were getting uneasy. Snipe looked like a statue made of wax – and the wax was melting. Even I was worried about the purple colour in his cheeks. We started drifting towards the gate eventually. There was nothing to wait for. We'd been paid off the evening before. Snipe was in the cabin, on the phone. It was a long conversation and it wasn't going well for him.

Johnny Regan was the first to reach the gate but Snipe looked up just before he scooted away.

‘Don't go anywhere!' he yelled, not even bothering to put his hand over the phone.

Johnny gave him a two-fingered salute and left. All of the others followed except Beano and me. I only stayed for Beano's sake, not wanting to leave him on his own. We sat down on the chairs at the little platform that was basically a few timber palettes thrown together. I thought about telling Beano about my poem, but he was so lost in himself I knew I wouldn't get through to him. Every so often, a convulsive shiver would shake him and he'd clench his jaw in pain.

‘You want to get someone to look at that ankle, Beano,' I said.

‘Naw, it's fine.'

I might as well have been talking to myself – it was like talking to those standing stones in the poem I'd thrown away. I looked around, trying to think of some way to cheer him up, and the microphone on its rickety stand gave me an idea. I got up and stood behind it. I found a switch on the side and gave it a try.

‘Testing one, two, three,' I said. The screech of it nearly blew my ears off.

In his cabin, Snipe was gesticulating madly at me to leave it alone.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,' I continued regardless, ‘now comes the moment you've all been waiting for here at the Academy Awards. Hold on a minute now and let me open the envelope for the nominees in the Best Actor category.'

While I pulled out the stub of an old cinema ticket from my cord jacket I sneaked a glance at Beano. He was getting interested.

‘Here we go,' I announced. ‘First, there's Johnny Regan – for impersonating a human being.'

Beano grinned and clapped softly and I was away.

‘Mr. Mick Moran for his starring role in
The Turd.
Seanie Moran for
Invasion of the Bodysnatchers
.'

Beano was getting enthusiastic. I was getting bitter. I had to cool it down.

‘And last, but not least, Jack Nicholson in
Farce at the Park
,' I declared, ‘And the winner is … is … Jack Nicholson! Come on up here, Jack!'

Beano looked towards the cabin and thought about it. He got up slowly and came towards me. He wasn't smiling any more. He leaned in to the microphone and staring across at his father – who was still stuck on the phone and past caring about our antics – he said, ‘I have no one to thank.'

Then he walked away. He was out the gate before I got over the shock. I went to follow him, but as I passed the cabin I heard a noise like a chair or something being knocked over. First thing that came to my head was that Snipe had had a heart attack. I moved to the door and pushed it in.

The place was wrecked inside. The desk had been upended; plans, old copies of
The Sun
, paper clips, biros were strewn around all over the ground. Snipe himself stood at the back wall, tearing posters down and crumpling up every bit of paper he could lay his hands on.

‘What's all this in aid of?'

He spun around, holding a fistful of paper like it was a grenade with the pin pulled out.

‘Get out,' he yelled.

‘You're wrecking the place because they wouldn't take your photo?'

‘They made fools of us, OD,' he said in utter desolation. ‘They treated us like dirt.'

‘They? Who do you mean?'

He sat down on the upended desk. His rugby tie was all over the place but he didn't seem to care.

‘This must be some kind of record,' he said. ‘A town park that opens and closes on the same day.'

‘You mean … they're not going to use the park … after all our …'

‘They sold it. While we were slogging away here, they sold it to Mick Moran for a private housing estate. Some bastards, what, OD?'

‘The surveyors …'

He nodded. The penny was beginning to drop with me. He picked himself up and went past me. The way he straggled out to the gate, he must have felt like he did in his last game of rugby.

‘Will I lock it up?' I called after him.

‘I don't care if you blow it up,' he shouted. He kicked the gate for good measure as he left the site.

I searched among the debris for the keys. I was on automatic, not letting myself think about the futility of it all. Under a pile of wasted betting slips I found not one, but two bunches of keys.

The first bunch was familiar, since I'd so often locked up the cabin and gate. The second had one of those key-rings with a family crest on it. The family name was Moran. I looked out at the JCB over near the gate. I put the keys in my pocket and thought, You'll never see these again, Moran. Then I went home to get my gear together for the afternoon match. The second last of the season.

Jimmy was in bed when I got to the house. He never got up in the mornings now so that was no surprise. I'd left my boots in a plastic bag with the mud still stuck to them. I scraped off the sludge into the bag and threw it on the fire grate. Only then did I notice that the ashes had been cleared out – and my poem, on its brown envelope, with them. I didn't care. It was only crap anyway.

I realised that Jimmy must have been up earlier after all. I was going to bring a cup of tea up to him but then I got thick over him throwing out the poem. Which was brilliant logic – I thought it was rubbish but I resented him treating it as rubbish.

The Farce in the Park
was followed that afternoon by
The Farce in the Dressing-Room
. Mahoney never showed up. Which was like the universe being turned on its head. Mahoney didn't do things like that. He bawled us out for doing things like that, for God's sake.

I nearly didn't make it myself. I don't know if it was relief or defeat at being finished with the non-existent park, but when I sat down in front of the fireplace, I dropped off to sleep. I woke at ten to three. The match was starting at three. I got to the dressing room at five to and found Seanie handing out the jerseys. He'd got to number seven. The place went silent when I came in. Seanie looked at me like he'd seen a ghost.

‘There's no sign of Tom,' he said. ‘We had to pick the team ourselves.'

‘And I'm too late?'

I looked around at the others but they pretended to be busy getting togged out. I turned to Seanie again.

‘So, I'm not in?' I demanded to know.

‘I didn't say that, OD.'

Brian O'Toole, our centre-half, peered out from behind his scraggy red hair.

‘What do you expect? You weren't here, right?' I wasn't getting any support and I made for the door. Then I heard Seanie's voice, low but deliberate.

‘If OD is out,' he said, ‘I'm out.'

There was a general murmur of annoyance. Naturally, I thought they all had it in for me – until I realised they were looking at the fellow who'd been given my place, Sammy Dunne. Sammy was all right. I felt bad about depriving him of his chance to start a game for a change, and I took it out on Seanie.

‘I don't need your sympathy, Seanie,' I snapped. ‘Sammy should play. OK, Sammy?'

Sammy shrugged. For him, football wasn't the major deal it was for me.

‘Hey,' he said, ‘the number nine is yours. Put it on.'

Seanie threw the jersey at me. I'd never seen him look angry before that day. I had more than enough anger to fling back at him.

‘Did you know about the park? About the houses your old man is putting up there?'

‘I tried to tell you but you wouldn't listen.'

I'd always had this sneaking suspicion that Seanie was afraid of me. Now I felt I'd been wrong.

‘You and your old man are chips off the same dirty block,' I said. ‘Gangsters and thieves.'

‘I never did anything to you, OD.'

‘No? Does the name Nance ring a bell with you?'

I was really making an ass of myself and in front of a spellbound audience.

‘I'm not going out with Nance and I never was,' he said. ‘We're friends, if that means anything to you.'

He wasn't lying, I could tell. In fact, he looked like the one who'd had something stolen from him. Was it possible that Nance had handed Seanie off because she wanted to give me a second chance? Even if it was, the way back wouldn't be easy. I'd have to change, and what did that mean? Going back to school? Giving up the drink? What else? Stop thinking about myself and all my own troubles?

It was the first time I'd considered the idea of starting all over again. Maybe if the circumstances had been different I might have made a decision there and then. That would have saved me, and a lot of other people, a lot of hassle.

I started the game badly and all through the first half I didn't get any better. If Mahoney had been there I'd have been a goner. Seanie was having a bummer too. Just before half-time I missed a sitter. I got away from the sweeper and had only the keeper to beat. The bad knee had nothing to do with the way I fluffed it. The keeper couldn't believe his luck when the ball rolled tamely into his arms.

At half-time, we sat around in a circle complaining as usual about the referee and the bumpy pitch. When I heard Beano's manic voice from somewhere in the distance, I was glad of the diversion and glad he'd shaken off that awful quietness that was so hard for me to deal with.

‘Move your goddamn butts!' he yelped. I knew he was on some kind of high because this was Jack Nicholson belting out the orders in
A Few Good Men
.

He came over and squatted beside me. His red eyes were gaping like he'd taken one of his mother's uppers – or one of Johnny Regan's. You could hear his whisper at the other end of the pitch. Seanie certainly heard it, because his head snapped away when I looked over at him.

‘Can you believe it, OD? That stuff about the houses in the park. My father just told me.'

‘Forget it, Beano,' I said, loud enough for Seanie to pick up. ‘They're real scum.'

‘No way will I forget it, OD,' he said. ‘We can do something about it. I just had this incredible idea.'

I got to my feet and pulled him away from the others, who were all listening in now.

‘Did you take something, Beano?' I asked angrily.

‘OD, you're always saying that,' he muttered. ‘I hate when you always say that. Just because Mammy …'

‘I'm sorry. Look, Beano, leave it, all right? There's nothing we can do. Get that into your skull and put it down to experience.'

‘There is something,' he insisted. ‘My father was telling us at home what happened and …'

The referee blew his whistle for the restart.

‘ … and he told us that Moran's men were going to level the site on Monday morning with that JCB that's parked up there.'

‘So?' I said, impatient to get back into the game.

‘So? So we built it, OD,' he declared. ‘Why should we let someone else demolish it?'

First thing I thought was that we didn't need any more trouble. Then I started to see his mad logic was dead on. The site was going to be levelled anyway, so why not do it ourselves? Why should we let these people walk all over us? It would just be another admission that we were pow erless and had no voice or were too brain-dead to raise whatever whimper of a little voice we had.

‘Beano,' I said, ‘you're a genius.'

‘We'll have to get a few shovels and crowbars and things to wreck it with, won't we?' he suggested.

I was standing at the edge of an abyss, getting ready to jump. I knew I might never make it out again, but I was already in free fall when I answered Beano.

‘I can go one better than that, Beano,' I said. ‘I have the keys of the JCB.'

I went to the centre circle for the kick-off feeling dangerous but in control. I scored two goals in the second half and Seanie volunteered to go off and let Sammy on. He just couldn't get it together, not like I seemed to have. We won 2-0. We were four points ahead of St. Peter's now and they were playing later in the evening. If they lost, the league was ours.

Even as me and Beano left the soccer grounds, I felt like the game wasn't over yet – and that I was on for a hat-trick.

NANCE

When Seanie dropped me off in the centre of town, the place was crowded as it always is on Saturday afternoons, but I'd never felt so alone. OD was gone from my life and Seanie would soon be too, I supposed, after the brush-off I'd given him for his trouble. Tom and May might as well have been living on a different planet from me – or rather, two separate planets. As for Chris Mburu, I'd lost him almost as soon as I'd found him, along with my mysterious natural mother. Though my instincts had been wrong before, I couldn't believe that the American hippie was my natural mother. Maybe I just didn't want to believe it because of her wasted look and Heather's verdict on her and her boyfriend – ‘a bad lot'.

I didn't feel angry with Heather Kelly. After all, she'd told me so much I could see she had to leave something for Tom and May to tell. I suppose she thought that the final piece of the puzzle might offer us a way to start talking again. And, in a way, my natural mother's identity was hardly even important now. She was dead. I could never meet her. The only prospect was that I might be able to visit her grave and, maybe, meet some of her family. And there were complications there too. Had they even known of my existence? Would they even want to know? Somehow, all of this seemed a small reward for all I had gone through.

Heather Kelly might have thought that my mother's identity was the final piece of the jigsaw, but I didn't. No, the big question for me was why Tom and May hadn't told me they knew my natural parents. Extraordinary as the whole situation had seemed when I started out, it had turned out to be quite ordinary and very close to what they'd always told me. Why would they lie over this one detail? I still cared about them enough to believe they would only do that to protect me. But from what? And, in any case, I was old enough now not to need protecting. Wasn't I?

There was only one way to find the answers to these questions, and that was to take Heather's and Seanie's advice. It was time to talk, however painful that might prove to be. Or it would be time in a couple of hours. I reckoned Tom would be at the soccer grounds, and I didn't think it was fair to confront May alone.

I didn't want to meet anyone and have to talk so I got myself out of the Square. I thought about going down to the river again, but it was cold, so instead I wandered up Friary Street. Turning right at the top, I walked along the sweeping crescent of Blackcastle Avenue and passed by the local library building. I decided, for no particular rea son, to go inside.

I almost expected to see Heather Kelly at the desk when I came in and drifted down to the Travel section. I picked up a book on Kenya; another one came to hand in the history section. I didn't take them to a table, preferring not to have anyone see what I was reading. I looked up the Samburu in the index of both books and flicked back and forth among the pages.

The Samburu were a wandering, pastoral people from Northern Kenya. The name meant ‘butterfly', which seemed right for them. With their slender builds and re fined features, one book said, the Samburu appeared deli cate, but the impression was deceptive.

There was a photograph of a Samburu girl. She might have passed for my cousin, if not my sister, though her hair was almost completely shaven – unlike my own ragged mop, which I never bothered to do anything different with. Maybe now I will, I thought.

The girl wore a headband of beads and large button-like earrings, not too unlike some of the things May made. Her upper arms and wrists were decorated with a series of tight coils of some white material. She looked very proud and very beautiful, and I felt a kind of pride too at having come from such a people.

It would have been easy to have built up a perfect, rosy picture of some lost paradise I'd missed out on. But the fact was that the Samburu world was, in the end, very much a man's world. Women were good for carrying heavy loads and having lots of children but had no power over their lives.

I left the library more determined than ever to have my questions answered. Down in Friary Sreet again, I passed the Galtee Lounge and remembered the wasted hours I'd spent there with OD and all that hopeful talk of the ‘future' I'd bombarded him with, a future I couldn't make him believe in. I thought I'd stopped believing in it myself for what had seemed a very long time. But I remembered what the book said about the Samburu: ‘they appear delicate, but the impression is deceptive'. I realised I was strong; stronger and more single-minded than I'd ever imagined.

It had seemed at times as though the future meant nothing to me, but that had never been true. I was back in school only days after giving it up ‘forever'; I had taken my own way, not OD's ‘drop-out' scheme. And I really was study ing, not just pretending. And I wasn't just doing it to get my mind off my troubles. That was rubbish. I'd never had any intention of ‘throwing it all away'.

Knowing all this, I felt as ready as I was ever likely to be to face Tom and May. ‘Don't let it wait,' I heard Jimmy say all those weeks ago. Ever since Seanie had mentioned that he wasn't well I'd known I had to go and see him. I had another half-hour to spare before Tom got home, I thought, so I went up to De Valera Park. OD would have gone straight to the Galtee Lounge once the match was over. When I reached the house the signs weren't good. There was no radio or television noise from inside and, for a few minutes after I knocked at the wreckage of a door, there wasn't even the sound of a footstep. When he finally opened the door I imagined Jimmy had been standing there in the hallway all along, his approach was so silent and unexpected.

I was shocked. His face was sickly and grey – the colour, I thought instinctively, of poverty.

‘I'm not feeling the best,' Jimmy said, as if he knew I needed an explanation, as if I deserved one. ‘Will you come in?'

The hallway and the kitchen were beginning to look neglected again, but I tried not to let him see I noticed.

‘Is it the flu,' I asked, ‘or something like that?'

He dropped into his battered armchair by the cold fire-place.

‘Naw, I'm just bushed,' he said. ‘But I'm still on target. For the old trumpet, you know. I'll have the money together in two weeks.'

He was looking straight at me but his eyes were spinning. I was close enough to have smelled alcohol if he'd been drinking, but he hadn't. I knew there was something badly wrong with him but I couldn't figure out what it could be. All I could think of to do was offer to make some tea.

‘Grand,' he said. ‘That'd be grand.'

As I searched for some teabags I noticed there was even less food than usual in the presses. In fact, there was nothing that was still edible.

‘You need to do some shopping,' I said, only half-joking.

‘One of these days,' he answered vaguely. ‘We miss hav ing you around, you know.'

‘Yeah, right,' I laughed. ‘I bet he talks about me all the time.'

‘Never a word. That's how I know he misses you – like he misses his mother. He never talks about anything that matters.'

‘He never really talked to me either, Jimmy.'

‘Yeah, he bottles it all up,' he said. ‘And one of these days it's going to blow sky high. I can feel it coming, Nance. Ever since you two split up, I been feeling it.'

I made the tea and thought to myself,
Don't blackmail me, Jimmy, don't pass the blame onto me
. Jimmy, in any case, was busy blaming himself.

‘I let him down badly,' he said quietly. ‘It's a tough game being a father, or a mother for that matter. No one tells you how to do it right, and you always seem to find out when it's too late.'

I felt like saying that all you had to do was try to be honest, but I didn't believe I had the right to preach.‘

‘I often look at people like your own mother and father,' he went on. ‘Nice, decent people, minding their own business. And they give their kids every chance. What kind of clown am I, Nance? Why couldn't I get it even half-right?'

‘You shouldn't compare yourself, Jimmy,' I said. ‘No one ever gets it right.'

He picked up a matchbox from beside the big gin bottle on the mantelpiece and held it up.

‘I don't know much,' he said. ‘You could squeeze everything I know into this box and still have room for thirty matches. But I know this much. Tom and May are the salt of the earth. And you're the living proof.'

‘Why are you telling me this, Jimmy?'

He grinned wistfully and took a long sip of tea.

‘Because I have a notion it's something you don't want to hear. And usually the things you don't want to hear are the things you need to hear.'

Then he laughed out loud and his teeth clicked nervously out of control. ‘Did I say that!'

The tension evaporated then and I joined in his laughter – until we heard the front door open. Both of us froze like cats caught dipping into the cream.

OD stood, framed by the kitchen doorway, trying to look cool in the face of the unexpected. I realised I hadn't laid eyes on him for over a month. It hardly seemed possible for two people who'd been living in each other's pockets for so long. And it wasn't as if this was New York or some other big city where there were so many streets to hide in and so many people to hide behind. He hadn't changed much; he was a little untidier maybe, and certainly colder.

‘How's the form?' he asked nonchalantly.

‘All right,' I said. ‘How're you?'

‘Yeah, I'm all right too.'

Jimmy struggled to his feet and moved to the door. OD didn't stir and Jimmy had to squeeze past him. He kept staring at me as if his father wasn't even there.

‘I'm off for a kip, Nance,' Jimmy called from the hallway. ‘See you when I see you, girl.'

‘I'd better go too,' I said. OD stood aside to let me pass.

He was still at the kitchen door, staring back inside, when I got to the front door. You won't even try, will you, OD? I thought.

‘It didn't work out with Seanie, so?'

‘No,' I said, holding the door and not looking back at him.

‘Just as well,' he said. ‘He's a bastard like his old man.'

I turned slowly and he was turning too. Our eyes met. He looked sad, not hard like the words he'd spat out. I felt myself softening towards him. But not much.

‘When are you going to stop feeling sorry for yourself?' I asked him. ‘When are you going to get up off your knees and do something better than whinge?'

‘Soon. Real soon. You'll see.'

‘Yeah, right, and pigs will fly. Look at the way you treat Jimmy just because he's trying to do something. You're afraid he'll succeed and that'll make you an even bigger jerk.'

‘Go ahead and slag me off,' he muttered. ‘I'm used to it.'

‘I couldn't be bothered. I've enough troubles of my own without wasting my time on yours.'

His loud snigger really got my back up. I walked steadily across the hallway and stood within inches of him. It was the closest we'd been for a long time, and the furthest apart.

‘Everybody's life is perfect except yours, is that it?' I raged. ‘Poor little OD Ryan, the boy the world forgot.'

He was still grinning stupidly so I didn't stop there. I'd wipe that smile off his face no matter what it took.

‘Your teachers threw you out of school. Tom wants to throw you off the team. Snipe Doyle treats you like shit.'

‘Shut up,' he said.

‘Your mammy ran away. Your daddy took back the only pound he ever gave you. Seanie Moran stole your girlfr–'

‘Shut up, you black …'

I stepped back to give myself room to swing my arm. He knew it was coming and he didn't try to defend himself. The slap sounded like an explosion; I watched as the faint red outline of my fingers appeared on his pale skin.

‘I'm sorry,' he said.

‘White trash.'

The hallway seemed longer on the way back to the front door. I slammed the door behind me. It didn't seem possi ble that the pain could get any worse.