Bend for Home, The (12 page)

Hold on to me! Sheila shouted.

I’m holding you, I said.

You’ll let me go.

No, I won’t,

Yes you will, she shouted, I just know you will.

I pushed off through the snow.

Dermot! she screamed.

We slid the length of a field the far side of the Gallows Hill on our bellies on the upturned bonnet of a car, her left hand gripping my right, cheering. Great cant! We piped a furrow, her dress rose, I saw the town coming and we stopped just in time with a swerve.

I thought my heart would burst, she said.

We climbed back up and came down one more time and then she had to go home. I stayed up there looking. All of Cavan is white and everywhere the lakes are frozen.

Mother goes to England with Aunt Nancy. The two were wearing large red hats and fur coats.

Be good, you, she said.

I waved her off and spent most of the day in the Central Café with the gang.

I went off t’night to a hop in the Central Café, great! and jived Mary but then Sheila came in and she stood at the jukebox glaring and soft-eyed, and I went over to her. Your looking ojus well, I said, but she was extremely jealous.

I saw you, said Sheila.

You saw what? I said.

You know, she said. You know only too well.

I don’t know what you’re talking about, I said.

Oh but you’re some boy, she said.

Come on and dance.

No, she said.

Why?

I’m going home.

I’ll leave you home.

No, she said, stay just where you are. I don’t think I want to be with you any more.

So she left just like that. Then Dermot and myself stole a cop’s bike from outside the Garda barracks and planted it behind the Farnham Gardens. Birds were walking across the frozen Kinnypottle. When we skidded stones they went for miles up river echoing, Thump! Thump! Thump!

Did nothing exciting.

Sat with Mary at the pictures.

Cut out the continental stuff, someone shouted. The two twins, George and Phildy O’Rourke, patrolled the cinema with their long torches. Quiet, they shouted, the lot of you!

Everywhere throughout the town frozen pipes.

Got a great feed and a great laugh with the lads, then t’night off to the hop in the shed at the back of the Railway Hotel. The record player was jumping as we jived, then when they were playing Del Shannon part of the stairs collapsed and Tony Coyle who was on the door went flying.

On way home I break it off with Sheila over the phone. There’s laughter and tears.

You just want to go with Mary, she said.

I do not, I said.

Well, if you don’t, why are you breaking it off with me?

Because you asked me to.

Well that’s not what I want any longer, she said, and started giggling.

So what do you want?

I don’t know.

I was about to say something else and then my penny got stuck.

Stole Mary into the house. Great court! We lay out on the bed. Then Aunty Maisie went past. Mary hid on the floor under the bed.

Maisie looked in. What are you doing? she asked.

My homework, I said.

Ask me another, she said.

Afterwards I left Mary home in the rain twice. It was teeming. Then we walked into Sheila and she crossed to the far side of the street with her head in the air. Then she ran. After I’d left Mary home I went looking for Sheila and found her standing in the rain under Woolworth’s.

Desperate weather, I said.

Piss off, she said.

You’re very narkey.

I have every right to be.

What’s wrong? I asked.

Nothing that concerns you.

Do you want to make up?

No, never, she said.

That’s fine by me.

Right, she said.

We stood a while longer there.

Can’t we just be friends? I said after a while.

No.

We stood there watching for maybe an hour, just looking, and then said goodbye. Tomorrow she goes back to Loreto as a boarder.

I went up the town and met Johnny who had knocked off a mission box. Come on with me, he said. We ran into Ollie McNally from
Virginia who was on his way back to college and we all went down to the side room in the Railway Hotel. The Smiths keep a piano in there and children’s toys and old broken chairs and one brown driving seat from a Volkswagen car.

Ollie sat into a pram and started choo-choo-chooing. Dermot Burke arrived and began playing Benediction tunes on the piano. Andy ate two hardboiled eggs with his bottle of stout and Ollie walked back to the college.

See you tomorrow, I said.

We all sang Salutaris and drank 7 bottles of Smithwicks each. Then a black doctor, who works in Lisdarn hospital, looked into the room to see who was singing.

I went back to college today on the bar of Finbar Reilly’s bike. We fell at Saunderson’s on the ice. None of the dayboys spoke in the bicycle shed. We smoked a fag, watched the Belturbets arriving and put everything off till the last. As we came up the drive the boarders leant out the windows to shout down at us.

Go home to the Half Acre!

Go back to Mullahoran, you cunts, we roared back.

We had free classes to begin with, the walls were fusty and running. The seats were damp, there were yells, we told lies. Then one by one the doors to the classrooms closed and the corridors quietened. The snow fell on the trees, soundlessly. We said a prayer in Irish. The priests were alien like men who had been away for years. Now that they’d come back there was no one here they knew. Old fears surfaced. And Socrates called us gentlemen. Imagine, gentlemen, he said and his ginger eyebrows rose merrily. Packie the Case slapped his briefcase on the desk and opened
A
Tale
of
Two
Cities
at where we’d left off in a previous life. Benny wrote a line of algebra on the blackboard as if it were a death sentence. He smelt of wine from early morning Mass. Smigs smelt of sherry. Fairy sang sadly. Then at last the radiators came on and our trousers steamed, drips ran across the wooden floor. The town lads rode home for dinner; the country lads drank cold milk and ate ham sandwiches along the high windows and talked of Celtic Rovers; the boarders streamed into the refectory.
A connor had his head flushed down the lavatory. The barber, Henderson, cut hair with a soft tick onto a cement floor. A Latt man sat in the chapel. A few boarders smoked behind the alley, which was filled with snowdrifts. Others kicked a football on the frozen pitch. Lads with gloves shot basketball and dribbled across the white court.

Fellows walked the Half, kicking up frost and talking about Christmas. The radiators went off in the afternoon and everyone wanted to go to the bog. The shit smell from the clatty toilets seeped through the disinfectant and wafted high and animal down the corridor. Some classes we just sat there leafing through books and trying to keep our hands warm. In Greek we went down to Hades.

Then t’night I slipped up Keadue Lane with Mary. Over and in behind the power station. Terrible smell of old piss.

Don’t, she said.

Why not?

Because.

She fell and started laughing.

What’s going on in there, someone called from the road.

Oh Christ, said Mary.

We took off over the Cathedral grounds. They were white with snow. Then later I knocked off money from out of Maisie’s handbag. She was in the downstairs toilet and her bag was on the shop counter. I stole in and took her purse out. I took 8 shillings and went down to the Railway Hotel. The black doctor joined us.

The best drink is gin, he told us.

We all got pissed and Dermot played tunes from Gilbert and Sullivan. This is the life. Got 3rd in Latin, 5th in Greek and 2nd in Science. Only 6% of us passed everything in Maths.

Mary went back to college. Had hand shandy twice today. Once in the trees behind the bicycle shed, then under the dinner table.

I miss Mary and I miss Sheila as well.

Were you at my bag? Maisie shouted t’night.

No, I said.

Well someone was. She smashed her hand into her fist. And whoever it was will pay dearly.

Are
you
reading
about
the
good
old
times?
asked
my
mother.

I
am,
I
said,
wincing.

Aren’t
you
glad
I
kept
it?
she
said.

Oh
yes,
I
agreed.

After college Josie handed me a letter from Sheila. She’s sorry we broke up and thinks we should start all over again and be together for as long as we can, but I told Josie to tell her that I did not want to go with her any more then I went home and done nothing exciting. Then I was sorry to have told Josie that so I went out and rang her.

Say nothing to Sheila, I said. Forget what I said.

All right, she said.

I only said those things to hurt her, I said.

All right, she said, I know that.

How do you know?

That’s easy, she said.

Up at Swellan Lake on a sleigh with Andy and Hickey. The lake is all frozen over to a depth they say of two foot. We came right down the hill flying and hit the ice with a bang then went about thirty feet across. The lake thundered. I cut my hand and later broke into the bus station. Eilish had a heart attack. We smoked and talked in the Dublin Bus of going to the Jersey Islands. Maybe the Isle of Man. The bus was coated in snow. In the hotel the black doctor stamped snow off his feet, put a pound into my hand and winked. I bought a round. Then Dermot fell off the piano stool onto Kate.

When I opened the door of the Breifne Aunty Maisie was in the hall.

If this continues, she said, I’ll take your key.

Another letter from Sheila.
I
have
to
see
you,
she wrote.
Will
you
be
able
to
come
out
to
Loreto
some
night?
The
best
time
is
between
8
and
9
when
we’re
at
piano
lessons
on
the
ground
floor.
I
don’t
want
to
get
you
into
trouble.

What do you reckon? I asked Andy.

Dead on, he said.

Got sick after last night. Felt very bad this morning. When I fell asleep the room was going round and when I woke it hadn’t stopped. Dreamt that there was a lump of stuff was made of nothing that kept swirling round and would turn into a face and back again. There was an arm ended before it begun. And behind that, all the wrong trees. I tried to wake but couldn’t and my teeth hurt. I tried to pull out my teeth, but couldn’t. Woke soaked and the bells were ringing for Mass.

Then I saw Mary D. going to the toilet through the keyhole. Boy!

I wrote to Sheila in double talk and said I’d be seeing her soon. X! X! X!

Myself and Andy went out the railway lines to Loreto. The only lights were on the second storey. It was hard to see because of the size of the flakes that were falling. I climbed a fir tree on the lawn and stood at the top looking for any sign of the girls. Snow fell every side of me. Then a nun switched on a light in a small white room and looked out directly at me. She was bald I thought. I fell off the tree through the branches and more branches, yelling, and ran. Andy came after me. As we went under the railway bridge we heard the squad car going overhead.

That’s the bloody cops, said Andy.

The lights came on all over the convent and people began looking out windows.

Come on, said Andy.

We ran back to the town over sleepers packed tight with frost and I had just scaled the roof and climbed in the window when Una looked into my room to see if I was there.

First Useless, Smigs called.

Yes, said Sean White from Arva.

Are you awake?

Yes, Father.

Good, good, he said.

Then Smigs leant in close to my face so I could see the grains of chalk on the hairs of his nostrils.

Good morning, Second Useless, he said.

Good morning, Father, I said.

Should I see what young Healy has in his pocket? he asked the class.

Yes, said Jimmy McInerney from Redhills.

Fuck you, Jimmy, I whispered.

Smigs tapped my side pockets.

Take out what you have in your trousers, he said.

I took out a box of matches and sixpence.

Now your inside pocket, he continued.

There’s nothing in there, Father.

Let me be the judge of that, he said.

He went to reach in. I caught his hand but he moved so fast he had the pages out.

What are these? he said, backing away. He scrutinized them by the window.

Are these poems by any chance? and he started to laugh.

I reached for them but he lifted them over my head.

Sit down, Second Useless, he said.

He read out the poems to the class, and then he put them in his pocket to show them to the President.

Oh Second Useless, he said, I see you in the town of Cavan talking to the Loreto girls. Isn’t that right?

No, Father.

Oh yes, Second Useless, I’m afraid it is.

He took my ear between his thumb and forefinger.

Isn’t that so?