Call Me the Breeze (7 page)

After Mass I waited in the grounds and tried to steady the trembling in my legs. Then —
suddenly
! — she appeared in the doorway. I especially liked the way she slid her hands in the pockets of her sky blue Levis. The way she nodded to her friends when she was listening to them, especially the bank girl. I was trying to think did I know any of the other chicks who were talking to her when I got this whiff of perfume and realized — how could I have missed it! — that that very second she had just gone walking past me!

But the more I thought about it the more I realized that perhaps it was just as well I had, for I don’t think I’d have been able to speak, to be honest about it. The whole thing had happened so —

All of a sudden her voice boomed close by —
no, it was the bank chick’s
— and then it was far away like the tiniest voice you’ve ever heard.

‘Right! I’ll see you out at the lake around three!’

Before I could say anything, this shadow fell and I looked up to see one of the boys from the pub standing in front of me, smoking a cigarette and asking me something. ‘
Shut the fuck up
!’ I was on the verge of snapping. ‘
Can’t you shut up for once when I’m thinking
?’

It turned out he was asking me whether there was an extension in the pub on Friday night. ‘Yes! Yes!’ I said. ‘There is!’

‘Austie’s coining it down below, eh, Joey?’ he said. ‘Ever since starting the discos.’

I wished he’d stop tapping his foot. I wished he would piss off, whoever he was. I didn’t even bother to look at him. I couldn’t believe she was going out there. ‘Ah ha, aye!’ he kept saying, still jabbering away, his lips with a life of their own as his stupid head kept nodding away there behind the veil of smoke.

By the time I got home I was in a right state, I can tell you, but had never felt better or more … full of possibility, I guess, in my life. I stood in front of the mirror and jabbed the air with my ‘gunfinger’.

‘Yeah!’ I said. For a laugh I sang ‘Peace Frog’, imagining that I was Boo Boo somehow mixed up with Jim Morrison and there were all these people in front of the stage. I looked at them in the mirror. ‘You doin’ good?’ I said, and hooked my thumbs in my belt. ‘I’m real pleased to hear that, people!’ I said then. I attempted the Keith Carradine smile. There was a name for it. ‘The enigmatic smirk’ they called it. I tried it again. It didn’t look bad. All told, I reckoned I could do it pretty good. ‘Yip!’ I said as I lit up a spliff. ‘No acid tonight!’ I added
decisively — and had barely uttered the words when who raps on the door? That tempting little fucker Boo Boo! With two whats in his hand? California sunshines, surprise, surprise!

So you can imagine the state we were in after shoving down those!

Especially the next morning! I’d only managed to get in a little over two hours kip thanks to them skittish electrics going
swoosh
inside my bloodstream!

It must have been the hottest day of the year, and that was saying something considering what the summer had been like so far. When I got to the lake, who did I see lying out under the trees? Only Hoss and a gang of the lads from Austie’s, drinking beer.

‘Hey, Joey! Going in for a swim then, are you?’ Hoss shouted.

‘Aye! He’s going in to get rid of some of that beef! Isn’t that right, Barbapapa?’ called someone else.

There were shadows playing around me — because of what remained of the acid, of course — sharp, angular ones that jutted out all of a sudden, and then of course, on top of that, the specks going
zit zat zit
so nimble and fast that one minute you were fired up with ecstasy then, the next thing you knew, enveloped by dread.

Barbapapa was a big kids’ cartoon jelly man who was on the telly in the middle of the day — I’d seen him in the paper once described as a ‘cuddly blob of pink ectoplasm’ — and this was their private name for me. Any time they used it, they went into fits of hysterics. Hoss’s pal was even hitting Hoss now as he repeated it, squealing: ‘Did you hear what I fucking called him, Hoss? Did you hear me calling him Barbapapa?’

I think they must have been pretty far gone, regardless of what time it was, for Hoss tossed a can at me then but it missed by a mile. I wished you could make your heart go at the speed you wanted by just sitting down and concentrating. The opposite was the way it seemed to work, however. I could have sworn I heard them calling me again but I didn’t turn because if the regime was to begin it would have to start with situations like this. ‘Don’t turn around,’ I told myself. ‘Keep looking straight ahead. This is the beginning. In this place it begins. Organization total. Total Organization. Just stare straight ahead.’

The squeals of the kids as they splashed in the water began to reduce in volume as I steadied myself and stiffened in order to focus completely and diminish the acid’s power. I could feel it slowly beginning to wane.

Then, gradually, I experienced the most exquisite and gentle calm descending. Along with the tiniest reassuring hint of pride. Soon the time would come when we could talk about such emotions. But not without patience. Only through patience and discipline could that moment be delivered. I closed my eyes as I thought of her in slow motion, wading through the water. I could not — inappropriate as I felt it seemed to the moment — prevent myself from thinking what she might look like in a swimsuit. Before thinking:
Maybe she won’t even wear one
!

Perhaps go streaking right along the shore right into the trees, the way she might in California.

Except she wouldn’t, you see, for I knew she had too much class for that. I’d seen that side of her already, showing respect for the traditions of other people and cultures. I wondered whether she’d been to India, for example, the way that The Seeker had. Maybe that’s where she learnt it, the idea that if you’re in someone else’s country you showed them some respect. Not turning around, going: ‘My way — understand?
My
way’s the way — there is no other!’

I was on the verge of saying: ‘You know something, babe? You’re absolutely right!’

But I was suddenly distracted by the sound of approaching voices and looked up to see the bank chick standing close by, my heart missing a beat. I was surprised by her patchouli perfume, which suddenly smelt sweet as it went floating by, and the cheesecloth Indian-style blouse she was wearing. I guess I hadn’t expected her to be wearing that kind of gear. But then, that was what you did, I thought — pigeon-holed people. Just because she worked in the bank didn’t mean she had to be a straight.
No way
! I thought.

I didn’t know what to say when I heard her saying: ‘No, she
said
she was coming, but she had to go to Dublin!’

All that night I found it difficult to sleep. I could feel her presence hovering close by. I saw her standing on O’Connell Street, the thoroughfare on either side entirely deserted, as though there’d been a bomb scare. She was unwinding her hair and staring straight at me. ‘Joey,’ she was saying, ‘how you been?’

The swirling colours of
Abraxas
— the Santana album — were fluid and fantastic in the sky behind her. She had just got back from her travels and was wearing a sort of padded oriental jacket with embroidered motifs of shimmering gold. It looked stunning. ‘What?’ I said. ‘What, Jacy?’ I sounded hoarse as I spoke her name.

‘I’ve got something for you,’ she said.

‘Got something for me?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘A special gift for you.’

She rummaged in her bag then and smiled as she handed it to me.

‘It’s hand-sewn, embossed in gold,’ she told me. ‘I found it in a little shop in Bombay. It was just sitting there, waiting for me. And I knew I had to buy it. As a special gift for you.’

‘
Siddhartha
,’ I whispered and ran my hand across its cover.

Then I kissed it again, that sweet and lovely book she’d given me, carried all the way from India to present to me in that empty street. I felt as if I was in a truly wondrous place.

As though I’d been reborn.

The day of Rosa and Big Bertha the place was packed. There had been talk of Fr Connolly arriving with a picket but he didn’t show. I think he had enough on his plate with the Provos and their objections. Which, if you’d any sense at least, you tended to take very seriously indeed. They’d been going around drumming up dissent and tearing down his posters any chance they got, so I don’t think the girls were too high on his list. The first thing was the football club mascot that they now called Horny Harry, having dressed him up in a sailor’s uniform. The roars of them above the music! They perched him on the bar counter and every time his mickey went up — there was somebody in behind the counter squeezing a bulb or something — the place went half mad, egged on by the jukebox as it blasted out ‘You Sexy Thing’.

‘Horny fucking Harry!’ howled a man at the front. ‘If the wife got a look at that —!’

‘Maybe it’d put a smile on her face!’

‘And maybe hoors like you that can’t shut up go flying out fucking windows!’

‘Maybe they do!’

Then I heard someone calling: ‘You’re looking happy there, Joey! Old Harry must be doing the trick!’

‘Something is but it ain’t him!’ I laughed, and Sandy McGloin said: ‘You’re a good one, Joey! No mistake! He’s a good one, isn’t he, Hoss?’

‘Mr Barbapapa!’ laughed Hoss, adding: ‘I’m only kidding you, Joey! I’m just frigging around with him, and Big Joe knows it! Right, old sweat?’

‘You got it!’ I replied cheerily.

We were all in great form. During the interval, Big Bertha and Rosa sat drinking at the bar, enjoying all the attention that was coming their way, with enough drinks to quench the thirst of an army lined up in front of them. An old-timer had managed to squeeze in between them, beaming away like all his Christmases had come together. ‘And what’s your name, little fella?’ asked Bertha as she vigorously rubbed his thigh. Boyle Henry was standing by the pool table in his yellow three-button polo shirt, stroking the cue suggestively as he winked over at the boys. ‘No handling the merchandise!’ was what his wink was saying. All of a sudden he delivered a mighty kick up the hole of the old-timer and said: ‘You touchee, you fuckee — out on the streetee!’

There was a great laugh when he did that, and then it was time for the show proper to begin. They set up the ring in The Courtyard — a bit of a ramshackle affair, just tatty old canvas and breeze blocks. But it did the trick all right. They had decorated the place with pennants and flags — ‘
The games people play! At Barbarella’s
!’

The first thing Rosa and Bertha did was go down on their knees and get well stuck into Horny Harry. ‘That’s the stuff for the randy hoor!’ shouted someone from the back as the disco beat thumped. When they’d given Harry as much as he could take, they pushed his cap down over his eyes and sent him flying out into the middle of the crowd. The old-timer caught him and pretended to copulate with him right there and then. ‘Christ but he’s the dirty bastard!’ they guffawed. ‘Get up on the crack of dawn, he would!’

Without warning, Rosa got a hold of Bertha and sent her stumbling backwards against the ropes. ‘You made a big mistake there, lady!’ says Bertha and comes charging at her like a bull and gives her the father and mother of a slap there and then right into the mush. ‘Jesus!’ gasped the audience in astonishment. Such a wallop! You could hear it all over the —

Then what does she do, when she has her on the floor? Starts bawling: ‘You want it, huh? So that’s how you wannit — you wannit, lady? Then that’s what you fucking get!’

Where she produced it from, no one could say for sure. It must have been hidden underneath the canvas. I wouldn’t say too many people in Scotsfield had ever seen a dildo before. At any rate, not one that size. Next thing you know she’s pretending to give it to Rosa between the legs. Which did the trick more than anything they’d come up with yet, and all of a sudden there’s not a sound to be heard in The Courtyard. Then the fighting proper started and, before you knew what was happening, the old-timer had got stuck in between them and was climbing on top of Bertha. ‘That’s it! Ride her, cowboy!’ called Hoss as the old-timer turned to say something back but fell slap bang down on his face into the mud. Then Rosa came up behind him, hit him a smack and sent him flying back down again. This was the best yet. Some of the audience were weak from cheering. Rosa dragged Bertha past him by the hair, gave her a pretend punch in the stomach and said: ‘Come on then, baby!’

The music was sweeping about the place like a big long twirling scarf, going: ‘
Una paloma blanca! I’m just a bird in the sky
!’ when all of a sudden what happens? Bertha has turned the tables on her opponent and is slapping her hard, one, two, three, four, five times in the face. There were people turning their heads away.

‘You think you can beat me, huh?’, she snapped as she hit her, ‘You think you can take on a champion like me? I’ll show you what fighting means!’

Then she scissored Rosa around the neck and started bumping and grinding, with the sweat rolling off her. After that she banged her head a good few times against the floorboards until Rosa pretended to be passing out. But with one leap Rosa was back on her feet and Bertha was there beside her, taking a bow and blowing kisses right, left and centre. The old-timer was close to fainting at this point, covered in muck from head to toe, and I could hear him saying behind me: ‘Do you think they’ll be coming here regular? Do you think it was good? I think it was good! I hope they’ll be coming here regular!’

Boyle Henry came climbing in through the ropes and, after holding up both women’s arms and announcing: ‘Ladies and gentlemen! The fabulous Rosa and Big Bertha!’, went on to say that there would be two more shows before the wrestlers went back to England. Then he
called for a big round of applause for the sexiest women in Ireland — all the way from England, of course! The roof was nearly blown off the place with yelps and piercing wolf whistles.

But once it was all over and the women had gone back to their hotel, the mood sort of changed and conversation all but died out in the bar. You could hear nothing apart from Austie saying: ‘Well, so much for Connolly and his picket! All talk! That’s all he is — just talk!’