A Mad and Wonderful Thing (6 page)

‘Hi,' I call to her.

‘Hi,' she replies. She is a good-looking girl. Isn't the world full of them?

I push the low gate open with the front wheel, and rest my bicycle against the ashen-grey pebbledash of the side wall. I straighten the Dunn & Co, and run my finger and thumb down the length of my scarf, tidying it neatly parallel to the open coat. I walk to the front door, where two small brass numbers — a one and a six — are high over the central panel. I take a deep breath, and knock.

Bob

THE DOOR OPENS.

‘Hello.' A boy stands in the doorway.

‘Hello, is Cora in?'

There is a brief silence as the boy examines me. ‘So you think you're Johnny Donnelly?'

‘Eh, yeah. So they tell me.'

‘So you do exist after all. She's been blabbering on about you for ages. We all thought she just made you up.'

‘Right.'

Unwilling to let me stray from his gaze, the boy throws a shout over his shoulder, ‘Cora, you're wanted.'

At the rear of the hallway a door opens and a woman hurries to the front, clipping the boy as she passes.

‘Cormac, give over,' she says. She is an attractive woman. Her red hair is tied behind her, and her eyes are the lightened green of an August meadow. ‘Come in, come in,' she says. ‘I'm Fionnuala. I'm Cora's mammy.'

‘Hello, Missus Flannery. It's very nice to meet you,' I say, stepping into the narrow hallway. I feel my breath quicken as I move inside the door. Suddenly I am unsure how to stand. I stand straight, I lean forward, I put my hands in my pockets, and I take them out. I settle on a partial forward leaning, and I clasp my hands low in front of me. The boy watches me.

There are footsteps on the staircase. It is Aisling.

‘Hi, handsome.'

‘Hello, Aisling.'

She approaches, kisses me on the cheek, and takes my hand. ‘Listen, Johnny,' she says, ‘there's still time to change your mind. Me and you, what do you think? We could be great lovers.'

I add a burning face to my struggling breath and my awkward stance.

‘Mammy, quick, get her off him,' Cora calls, running down the stairs and pushing her sister away. The two girls laugh.

‘Well, it was worth a try,' Aisling says. ‘Right, I'm off. I'm meeting the girls. See you later, handsome,' she says, running her hand through my open coat as she leaves.

‘Hey, you,' I say to Cora.

‘Hey, you, yourself,' she answers, a blush ripening in her pale face. She leads me to the end of the hall and opens a door. ‘Give me five minutes?' she asks, and disappears.

I push through the door. It opens to a kitchen. A large, ivory-coloured range stands against the opposite wall, and to the right of the range the back wall has been removed, and through a broad arch is an extended dining and living area. There is a long couch against the far wall of the extension, and sitting on it is Bob, a folded newspaper resting on the lap of his green overalls.

Isn't this just lovely?
he says.

It was when I started my apprenticeship in the engineering works that I met Bob Hanratty. He was alive then. The old man was a caretaker in the machine workshop, and would spend one half of each day lubricating the various machines with his diverse collection of oilcans and grease guns. The other half-day he would empty the scrap bins and sweep the floors. At work breaks, Bob took his newspaper and ate alone at his workbench, preferring the peace and solitude of the oil store to the bustle and raucous banter of the works' canteen. He intrigued me, and I watched as he pushed his trolley to each machine, one after the other, lubricating the controls and levers, oiling the motors and greasing the machine beds, wiping each handle, point, and nipple, before and after, with a large, red rag that hung from the pocket of his green overalls. It was the old man's calm, methodical work and his quiet refrain from the coarse taunting of the factory floor that plucked my interest.

For weeks I observed him until, one Monday morning, I walked towards the centre of the workshop as Bob, pushing his trolley, approached the central intersection from the side. Grimes and McArdle were two buffoons who worked the inspection booth opposite the clerk's office. McArdle was unkempt — a slight frame in a dirty work coat, with a pitted weasel face under oily, brown hair. Grimes was clean, but he was a monster — a huge bulk of a body under a pink head.

‘Did you ever get the ride, Bob?' Grimes shouted as the old man neared. ‘There's still time. Is there life in the ould sausage yet? Are you still keeping palm busy?' he guffawed, leaning forward and signalling the motion with his hand. ‘Hey, Bob, I gave it to her up the junction last night, like this,' he roared again, as he turned sideways and held his hands out and demonstrated. ‘Then I went home to the wife,' he said, laughing loudly, slapping the table, punching McArdle, and turning to include all who could hear him. ‘What about those lovely neighbours of yours, Bob? They'd love a fit man like me.'

I saw the flicker of rage that crossed the old man's face.

‘Leave that man alone.' The words flew from my mouth before a consideration to speak was given thought. An abrupt silence tore across the workshop, and uncertainty hung in the hiatus of its tearing. Curiosity gripped the surrounding workers. Suddenly the thing was one big drama. And I was on stage, front and centre.

‘What the fuck is this?' Grimes turned his pink face towards me. ‘Who the fuck are you? You little cunt.'

Well, that just pissed me off. I knew Grimes could tear me to pieces in a struggle, but so what? To walk away would open the door for this arsehole to humiliate me every time I walked past his booth. I couldn't let that happen.

‘A cunt,' I suggested, ‘is the female genitalia. But you obviously don't know much about that. Are you sure it was a she last night? Did you look?'

There was a loud cheer and clatter, with the workers laughing and slapping hands and mallets on the side of their machines and benches. Men tend to do that — they love making noise and throwing verdicts down from the grandstand. Anyhow, Grimes's pink face reddened and his eyes filled with fury, and they bore into me with all the dangerous threat of an enraged and wounded bull. But he had no answer.

‘Everything all right there, chaps?' A head popped out of the clerk's office window.

‘C'mon, son, that's enough of that,' Bob said, leading me away. When we reached the end of the workshop, he turned to me. ‘I don't approve of that abrasive language and bravado, young man.'

‘I understand, Mister Hanratty,' I replied, surprising him.

Bob Hanratty paused and placed a hand on my arm. ‘Those brutes have me tormented, son. But that's all they are — brutes, empty vessels. Grimes and McArdle haven't a brain between them. Give them no heed; it isn't worth it.'

I patted the old man on the shoulder and turned to go.

‘And, son,' he added, ‘thank you.'

The next day I approached him as he greased the tracks of a machine near the rear wall of the workshop.

‘Excuse me, Mister Hanratty?'

‘Yes, son,' he answered, turning and wiping his hands with the red rag.

‘Why do you do this job here, amongst all this? You seem to be, you know, better than this?'

‘Better than this does not exist, young man. I'm here because I'm here, and it's a fool's game for me now to think different.' He let his words stall for a moment and then continued. ‘Maybe once, but that was long ago,' he said, as he slowly wiped each finger with the red rag. ‘That's just the luck of the draw.'

‘But you seem content here. What's the secret?'

‘There's no secret, son. Look around. Most here spend all their time ducking and diving, and it only increases their misery. Whatever you do in life, even the simplest task, do it to the best of your ability. In that, there is a kind of happiness.'

I nodded to the old man.

‘And, son, no more Mister Hanratty. It's Bob.'

The next day I took to the oil-store bench for my meal breaks, and Bob sacrificed his reading for our daily conversations — the two of us finding a common enjoyment in the transfer of what once was and what could yet be.

Cora returns and enters the kitchen, and is followed by a man I guess must be her father.

‘Well, well. What have we here?' he asks. ‘Cora Flannery, what have I told you about bringing home stray animals. Where on Earth did you find this thing?'

‘Found him at the disco, Daddy. What do you think?'

‘I think you must be mad.'

‘I am mad.' Cora laughs. ‘We're all mad in this house.'

I agree, but I say nothing.

‘Gerry Flannery,' her father says to me, introducing himself and taking my hand. ‘I hope we don't get the weather you're expecting.' I get this a lot from people — it comes with the coat. Usually I tell them to piss off, but not this time.

‘You know something, Johnny,' he says, holding my arm as he points to a wall-mounted photograph of Cora, Aisling, and their mother. ‘I have the three most beautiful girls on God's Earth. What do you make of that?'

‘I'd say you're a lucky man, Mister Flannery.'

He nods his head solemnly, as if the comment was some sort of revelation to him. ‘Some boy, isn't he?' he says to Cora after a time. ‘He's some boy.'

Cúchulainn's castle

‘OKAY, LET'S GO,' CORA SAYS, CLOSING THE DOOR AND SKIPPING TOWARDS
the front gate. ‘Come on, Donnelly.'

I run after her. I'm relieved to have the introductions over without mishap. ‘Hey, hold them horses, Flannery,' I call, catching up and taking her hand. We stand on the pavement, momentarily lost for direction.

‘I know where we'll go,' Cora says.

‘Let me guess?'

‘What?'

‘Well, I think I know where you want to go.'

‘You think you know where I want to go. What kind of a weirdo are you at all?' She gives me a questioning look. ‘Well, then, lead the way, Johnny-boy,' she relents, teasing me as we take the footpath west to the edge of town.

‘Cúchulainn's Castle.'

‘Cúchulainn's Castle,' she replies, holding to the vertical struts of the wrought-iron gate and looking through to a shaded lane. ‘How did you know?'

‘Just a guess.'

‘Just a guess, Johnny?'

‘Yes, Cora. Just a guess.'

‘My boyfriend is a genius. All right to call you my boyfriend, Mister Donnelly?'

I mean, sometimes life is just so good you have to let out a big laugh. I don't.

‘All right?' I answer. ‘Can I have that in writing?'

We are standing at the gateway to Castletown Mount, a hilltop ruin on the northwest edge of Dundalk. This mound is the location of the legendary fort of Dealga and the birthplace of Cúchulainn. Later the Normans settled here and built a motte-and-bailey stronghold, but local heads still call it Cúchulainn's Castle. Across the entrance, two high metal gates hang between round stone-pillars, and a padlocked chain secures them together. To one side of the gates, a stile is cut into the stone wall, and I hold Cora with both hands as she climbs it.

‘That's a very fine arse you have there, Miss Flannery.'

She laughs as she turns, and offers her hand to steady me as I jump down from the wall. I take two thin broken branches from the ditch and I clean them of twig and growth. I give her one of the branches, and with my own I swipe in front of us as we walk, attacking the low weeds and grasses on the dark path.

‘It's not the jungle,' she suggests.

I raise the thin branch forward, parallel to the ground, and hold it out chest high.

‘En garde. A fair lady approaches.' I call. ‘My lady.' I bow and swoop and beckon her forward.

‘My knight,' she replies.

‘On-ye on-ye,' I tease when I get her in front of me, tapping her very fine arse with the stick.

We climb the mound clockwise on the stone path. Below us, a wide fosse is dark under beech; sycamore, ash, and hawthorn are scattered in the outer ditch.

‘You know, Cora, that ruin at the top?'

‘Yes?'

‘Well, Cúchulainn was a Gael, and Gaels didn't have castles. Castles came with the invaders.'

‘I know that, Johnny-smarty-pants. But this hill was Cúchulainn's home. This place is older than the English or the Normans, or the Vikings, or any of them. This is ancient Irish ground, a special place, a place before our history, a place before the Celts, a place before the modern Irish. This is a place of the Tuatha Dé Danann. And it's a place of magic.' She stops. ‘If you listen very carefully you can hear their song. I believe that here, on this hill, is the gateway to Tír na nÓg.'

I, too, stop and listen, but I can't hear anything. There is only silence. ‘You can't know those things,' I say.