The Ballad of Mo and G (12 page)

I was always racking my brain for the big idea.

My buddies had visions of an internet start-up they would eventually sell for 124 million and it wouldn't even have even been hard work with everyone coming in to the office in baseball caps turned back to front and playing basketball into the net hanging over the bosses' desks to get ideas and everyone being caring to fellow workers and high fives and huge bonuses and toy trains running all over
the office and cancelling Mondays and hugs and the bosses showing up at meetings with merchant bankers in sandals and surfer's shorts and hairy legs and two-day stubble and having staff think-ins at Electric Picnic.

It became a national obsession with us young guys when the bust came. Getting the big idea to take you out of here and into rich countries like China where the money was burning a hole in their pockets, just like it did to ours.

If the
DoZoPop
idea didn't work I had another plan.

The Irish are mad for funerals. We cash in on that. The Irish spend a fortune on coffins and even have horse-drawn hearses with men dressed in Charles Dickens black suits with high hats and black silk cummerbunds and white faces, even more deathly looking than their clients.

It beats me how it is undertakers were always so pale. Maybe they put on Factor 50 all year round to show empathy with their punters. I remember when my Dad died the undertaker looked so fucked, I was going to take the old man out of the coffin for a while so the funeral director could have a lie down.

That was the day I had the idea. He died at six in the morning. I was asleep on the floor beside his bed. The doctor told us he could go that night so we took turns staying up, but we dozed off, exhausted after several nights staying up minding Dad.

Mam woke us. ‘He's breathing very fast and heavy. I think he's going to go.' We hustled the twins out of their bunk beds. The poor fellas were full of sleep and rubbed their eyes hard in unison.

‘Come on twins hurry up. We have to say goodbye to Dad.'

‘Why, where's he going?' asked Al.

‘Heaven'

‘Is he going to die?'

‘Yeah probably.'

‘But he is going to heaven?'

‘For sure. Yeah. Guaranteed.'

The twins were too tired to cry, too young to see their Dad die. I was too young to see my Dad die. I needed him for a good few more years, just as I need him now.

The day before he died I met up with Mame Moran in our local shop. O'Brien's was a real shop with shovels for sale beside underpants, no three-for-the-price-of-two useless things the hypermarkets couldn't sell or unethical prawns in satay, or crap you didn't need. It was nearly out of date packets of biscuits, tins of pears, cream paint and the just hanging on to their business and being deadly nice to everyone and not only for the money. Everything tastes different in O'Brien's.

I thought Dad might be able to eat baby food and bought a couple of small bottles of mashed-up vegetables or some such shite they make the babies eat.

Mame sensed what I was thinking.

‘For your dad?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Is he in pain?'

‘Yeah Mame. Not too bad, but sort of bad enough at the same time. He's on stuff. For the pain. But he wants to go off it. So he knows what's goin' on.'

‘I hope you don't mind me saying this but he'll
know when it's time to go, G.'

I was listening carefully because Mame was a smart woman. I knew what she was telling me felt right.

‘I often sit up with the neighbours. The ones who have no one when they are dying or if someone needs a break if they are too tired. They're hanging on for dear life but most in pain want to go. They have to be told, it's okay to take their leave. Your Dad is mad about you. He'll know it's you, even if he is very bad, and only barely conscious. Tell him, G. Tell him and he will understand.'

He came round a bit later that day and even ate a spoon or two of the baby food.

The four of us were by the bed.

‘Dad, you'll be fine,' I said.

‘You were always a desperate bad liar.'

‘We're all here with you, Dad'

His long greying hair was flat and limp where there had been curls. I squeezed his hand and he summoned up enough strength to squeeze back. We kissed him. Our Dad who kissed his boys like he was a friggin' Italian or something. Our Dad who was the only Dad around the village who kissed his sons.

Mam was on the other side of the bed. She didn't hold his hand but she did nurse him through the last few months with absolute efficiency.

The twins were silent. Even Al, the talking twin. Their spokesman, Dad called him. They were well old enough to know what was going on but I think there some sort of tacit acceptance it was my job as the oldest to send him on his way, even though the truth was I was no more than a boy myself.

I took on the responsibility. I didn't want Mam and the lads to hear for fear they wouldn't understand what was going on between us.

I whispered in his ear again. ‘You can go now, Dad. We're all here with you. Mam and me and the twins.'

It took him a few minutes to shut down. He gave out a few last breaths and he died with all his family there beside him.

We stayed in the room for a while without speaking. A ray of light came in the bedroom window and shone like a spot on a photograph of Dad. He was smiling in the photograph and I, in my emotional and exhausted state, thought he was actually alive in the frame telling us he was okay. Sometimes though I think it really was a sign but I never told anyone except Mo, who didn't take much notice after all she had heard about death from Maureen and accepted what I was telling her as normal. But there was something going on out there in the vastness or smallness of wherever it is we go when we die.

There I was sitting on my bed, dressed up for the road home with my ear bandaged up like a work of art before it's unveiled, thinking of the old man's death, in a hospital where there probably four or five people ready to breathe their last that very day. I felt so small and powerless up against the vastness and scale of all that was going on in the world. The world is too big. I'm too small.

Mam and Mo were coming to get me.

It was good to be going home, even if I was in pain. Good to get back to visiting my Dad up at the grave. Good
to get out of the hospital where they woke you for breakfast at seven and lunch was served at twelve, which was breakfast time for me after I lost my job. Good to get back to hisbrotherwasworse.ie.

hisbrotherwasworse.ie would make me rich. The big idea. And I was thinking of another less quirky name like sorryforyourtroubles.ie, which was the standard line when you met the bereaved.

hisbrotherwasworse.ie came from a story the old fella told me. I think he got it from a DVD made by the actor Eamon Kelly. Dad kept on playing it until he had every word off by heart.

It goes like this and it happens at the funeral of this truly horrible and deeply unpopular dude. No one can think of anything good to say about him. Back in the old days it was the custom to praise the dead, even if you cut the livin' shite out of them when they were alive.

The funeral goers scratched their heads and went through the back catalogue of the dead man's deeds, but not a good word could be found in praise of the deceased. Then one of the gang at the funeral comes out with the best eulogy he can manage: ‘His brother was worse.' And that's where we got the name.

I had been in touch with a web designer and a couple of buddies who were journalists and couldn't get work. The orders for obituaries would roll in from all over Ireland and then the world. There would be ads on the site for undertakers and whoever was working in the death business like embalmers, ambulance-chasing lawyers, mass card printers, florists, bereavement counsellors, headstone sculptors, grave diggers, dating agencies and mediums.

The loved ones would be praised and made blessed.

‘Our darling Dad was loved by one and all. He was a generous man. Dad killed a ram every Christmas and gave his nuts to the poor.'

We were going to publish and write all the obits on hisbrotherwasworse.ie.

Then we would set up a page like Facebook for the dead. A book of condolences. Like the Egyptians, with drawings and wise words. There would be little tributes by people who couldn't make the funeral and a MyPics of the deceased with links to anything he did on YouTube. That sort of thing.

We couldn't lose. When I say we, I mean Mo and me. She was in for 50:50, even though it was all my idea, but that was the way it was going to be from now on. Halves in everything including and especially our baby, when the time was right.

The banks wouldn't lend us a cent. The manager decided it was too high-risk.

He tapped a pencil on his desk as he told us the bad news.

It drove me nuts.

Then he stopped tapping and asked, ‘Anything else?' Which really meant your time is up, now get outta here. Five years earlier they would have given us ten million and ask have you enough in that?

‘Do you have any rubbers?' Mo asked before we left.

‘Rubbers?' asked the thrown bank manager.

‘Yeah,' said Mo, ‘for the bottom of your pencil.' He was lucky she left at that and didn't wish him dead.

Mam and Mo hooked up and came to the hospital
together. My mother fussed over me while Mo looked on quietly, afraid my Mam would say something that would hurt her. It was a bit like when the old boss is still clearing her desk and the new boss is waiting on her to move out. My mother interrogated Mo in the car on the way to the hospital. Asked her about the status of her divorce and how would she pay her way if she didn't have any money and what if any were her job prospects and there was always McDonald's.

Mo carried my bag and Mam took my laptop.

The hospital was really busy. The entrance narrowed into a bottleneck, at the point where the coffee shop and the bustling reception area intersected.

He didn't seem to notice us at first. Dermo had lost a lot of weight and his eyes were grey. It looked as if the mad squatters in his head had left for another host.

It was pretty shocking for Mo. After all, she was married to him. You would just have to feel for him and then again you wouldn't.

Dermo's nurse took the wrapping off a bar of chocolate. Dermo broke off a piece. We stood and watched from behind a large pillar, without which the hospital would have fallen down. Every now and then our view of him was blocked by passersby. A hospital helper sneezed three billion molecules of deadly germs into the air. Two
one-legged
men passed each other in the corridor without so much as a hello. A lost young girl who looked to be about thirteen months' pregnant looked up at the signs for directions to the wards, here in the very hospital where Mo lost her baby.

Dermo blinked several times. He sneezed and wiped his
nose with his sleeve. The sneezing started up again and with such violence Dermo's head recoiled each time in a whiplash movement. The nurse cleaned his nose and face. Dermo looked up over the cloth as if he were peeping over the top of a yashmak.

He threw himself from the wheelchair when he saw Mo peeping out from behind the pillar. Dermo crawled quickly across the floor in our direction.

‘You tried to kill me with a hammer. Your poor husband what is only ever mindin' everyone. A man what never done nottin to no wan.'

Mo ran.

The nurse picked up a kicking and revolving Dermo with the help of a security man who wheeled him away.

‘You're all dead. Dead. I swear to God. Dead fucking dead, dead, dead. I swear to God I'll get ye.'

‘You, you!' he screamed at me. ‘She's my wife. Mine. Give her back. You fucking wife robber you!'

His voice trailed off as he was pushed into a lift at the end of the corridor. Mo had to sit down. My mother got her a drink of water and rubbed her hands. Mo was shaking. Her face was pale and her legs were so weak she couldn't stand up. I put my arms around Mo and told her I would always mind her.

Maureen said she would die of loneliness if Mo left.
Mo was adamant she was going to leave and soon. As it was, there was no danger from Dermo who was wheelchair-bound for now, and would be sent to prison for four years, or even more according to Timmy. Our Garda family friend.

Maureen asked Mo to give up her marital property claim to the Compound in favour of Dermo. Maureen was sure Dermo would need constant care ‘near his old mammy, when he was wished better, or came out of the hospital, and the prison, eventually.' Mo was relieved in that she saw the signing over as part of the process of leaving her husband.

‘I just want to be shut of him forever.'

Maureen was sure Dermo would be less likely to look for revenge if Mo signed the house over. And then she corrected herself quickly by saying, ‘That's if he ever do come around to his full senses.'

‘Ah but he's very bad and maybe someday when he do get better and I'm sure he will, God willing, ye might be
friends again when he's back to hisself. With the help of God and his blessed mother.' Maureen was truly beginning to annoy her.

The solicitors took a while to sort out the paperwork for the transfer of Mo's share of the house. Then there was Maureen's sixtieth, which took up another week. Maureen was trying her best to cling on to Mo for as long as possible.

Maureen issued almost daily bulletins on Dermo's progress.

‘He's not able to speak too well after the three mini-strokes but theys giving him speaking therapy. Teachin' him to talk all over agin the poor cratur. The angry things weren't him at all. All the doctors said that. Even the foreign wans. It was the accident. He ate shepherd's pie today.' Probably with a shepherd in it.

In the end Mo told Maureen, crossly, she didn't want to hear another word about Dermo, and she didn't care if she ever saw him again. About a week before Mo was due to leave, Maureen, as a treat, purchased a sixtieth present for herself, and a goodbye to the Compound present for Mo. It was a surprise trip to the Canaries

Mo refused the holiday but she gave in when Maureen showed her the brochures. It was cold for early spring and the bitter north-east wind blew through the Compound for days on end. Mo longed for sun and blue light.

The hotel was on Gran Canaria. A themed African village with tall, thatched huts and an azure lagoon.

‘It's a girl's trip. Tanning, shopping, cocktails. That sort of thing.'

Maureen was now resigned to Mo's leaving the Compound for good.

‘I'm sorry about trying to fix up you and Dermo. It's just that I love you like the daughter I never had.'

There were floods of tears. Mo painted Maureen's bitten finger nails. Mo said Maureen's nails were like little islands surrounded by acres of rosy flesh.

‘Trip of a lifetime. I'll be like a cooked chicken when I come back. The white meat will be the best,' said Mo, who couldn't wait for the holiday. She was never anywhere farther away from her flat than one of the seaside towns near the city and only then for a day out. It was her first plane trip. I was happy for Mo and Maureen too.

We made love on the night before she left, several times, ‘Just in case I get tempted over there. You know what Irish girls are like on their holliers.'

Irish women, around my age and younger, went a bit on the wild side when they went away on holidays. Most of the girls didn't see sex as any big deal. Especially on holiday. I trusted Mo but when it came to sex, she just didn't take it seriously enough. ‘It's only natural,' she said, ‘and anything natural is good.'

One night we were out for an American ride, in the car, and she said something that stuck in my mind when we pulled in to a lay-by, for the real ride.

‘I think like a man.'

I wasn't quite sure what she meant.

Maybe it was that Mo needed sex more often or that she didn't need to be emotionally involved. Mo had sex with a good few different guys in college and before. That was the way it was with most of the young ones. I had this idea of me and her and no one else, even in fantasy. I felt that bond kept us together to the exclusion of all others.
Not that in any way I felt I owned Mo. It was a sharing.

I was going to say something before she left for Spain but I didn't want to hurt her feelings. It wasn't as if we were just casually going out with each other. We were about to become life partners.

Mo loved sex.

She used vibrators while I was watching. It was a huge turn on but I eventually resented the Rampant Rabbits. The constant drone was a pneumatic drill in my head. I was jealous of a machine. She parked the Rabbits in a drawer in her bedside locker. ‘The warren,' she called it. Mo told me she would get rid of her collection, if that's what I wanted. Mo found it impossible to get to sleep without some sort of sexual activity.

I gave an okay. ‘Better to be counting Rabbits than eating sleeping tablets.'

For my Mo, pre-sleep sex was a bedtime book.