Eureka Street: A Novel of Ireland Like No Other (19 page)

`What do you fancy, Chuckie?' he asked, with a proprietorial air.

Small, dark-haired women with big hips, thought Chuckie. But a waitress glided up and prevented the comment. Septic Ted bristled up and ran his fingers through his hair, which was too short to be significantly altered by the process. Jake gave the waitress his order, Deasely told her what he wanted and Septic confessed his desires. She turned to Chuckie.

`What would you like?'

`What's nice?'

`The chicken's good.'

Chuckie smiled dismissively. `I'm sorry,' he said. `I don't eat anything beginning with the letter C.'

The waitress blanked this completely but the boys were delighted.

`Nothing at all?' queried Donal.

`Nah,' replied Chuckie. `Courgettes, cabbage, cauliflower, carrots, celery, cucumber, celeriac, Cos, cheese, coffee, cereals, chicken, candy, crackerbreads of any type. I wouldn't touch any of those bastards.!

'What Septic Ted pronounced a coarse synonym for female pudenda.

The waitress didn't bother to blush.

`You're a charmer, Septic,' said Jake.

`What's the fish?' asked Chuckie.

`You wouldn't like it,' said the waitress.

`Cod?'

`Yup'

'OK, gimme a salad but can I have extra chemicals in that? If it doesn't come wrapped in plastic, I don't eat it'

The waitress sidled off, uncharmed.

Jake gave Septic some lip about sleazing the waitress.

`Relax,' retorted Septic. `From what Chuckie tells me, you've a bit of a weakness for the serving classes yourself.'

`Blow it out your ass.'

`Witty.'

Chuckle smiled fraternally upon his friends, bickering and unbickering. He felt better with them. Somehow, the panic and strangeness of his new success was rendered harmless by their presence.

He was closest to Jake but fond of the other three to varying degrees. Slat Sloane was the only socialist that Chuckie knew. He was a lawyer who worked for city community groups and charities. He was better educated than anyone Chuckie had ever met and probably earned less money than the waitress here. He was big on dignity and contribution. Chuckie suspected that Slat just wanted to be Swedish. He'd been in Sweden a couple of times and it seemed to have made a lasting impression. Jake had told him that Slat had not bought his own toilet roll in the ten years since he'd left home. Slat did his own ironing, cooking and cleaning but he was just too fastidious to buy toilet roll. Apparently he didn't want the check-out girls in supermarkets to suspect that he defecated. His mother bought it for him. Slat never had any girlfriends.

Donal Deasely worked for the Government. He dished out all the money that flooded in from the European Community, the International Fund for Ireland and all the other pass-thehat agencies the Irish loved so. Deasely earned quite a lot of money and spent most of it on fashionable clothes, haircuts and obscure books about science and medicine. He was always reading about something genetics, thermodynamics, prime numbers or swanky astronomy. That's why he'd bought all the clothes and haircuts. He said he really wanted to be a himbo. Donal never had any girlfriends either.

Septic Ted had plenty of girlfriends. Septic Ted had too many girlfriends. Septic Ted sold insurance so his erotic success was that bit easier to bear.

`Guess who I saw today,' Donal challenged.

`Marilyn Monroe,' suggested Chuckie.

`Fyodor Dostoevsky' said Slat.

`Spiderman?' hinted Septic.

`Nah, Ripley Bogle.!

`Who?' asked Chuckle.

'A guy we were all at school with,' explained Slat. `He was some kind of tramp or something but he went away to England. Cambridge, I think. Haven't heard of him for years. Smart guy.'

`A tosspot,' said Septic.

Then Chuckie remembered their stories of this boy who slept rough in the grounds of Belfast Castle through the last of his unElysian schooldays. Apparently Jake had met him once in London where he had been homeless also. Bogle had told him that he had spent a night sleeping in the Blue Peter garden. Jake had considered this a class act.

`Where'd you see him?' asked Jake.

Donal became unsure. `I think it was him. I saw some bum down near the City Hall. He was reciting Mallarme in French for fifty p a go.'

`That's him,' said Slat.

`He's a bum again?' asked Chuckie.

`He was made to be a bum,' said Septic. `A bum from a bum family. Somebody told me his ma used to work the docks for brown money.'

`Brown money?'

change.'

`Fuck, Septic,' bellowed Chuckle. 'Brown make this stuff up.'

'Nah, traditional Irish rhyming rhyme.'

There was some faint guffawing; the five men made their stab at bonhomie. Chuckie was fond of his friends. He was the only Protestant there and still, after ten years and more, that felt like a proud claim, a distinguished thing. When he was seventeen Chuckle had been beaten up for these people.

They'd been friends on and off for twelve or thirteen years. They had mostly gone away and come back. Slat had gone to England to read law at Manchester. He had come back and started fighting fights for the deracinated proles of his hometown. Deasely, bizarrely Francophile, bizarrely polyglot, had lived in Bayeux for a couple of years, then Bremen, then Barcelona. He too had come home. Septic had worked a couple of North Sea rigs and lived in Scotland for a few years. He had come back. Jake had truly disappeared. He had gone to America and no one thought they would ever see him again but he had left America for university in London and had come back eventually. Chuckie? Eureka Street to Eureka Street, Chuckie had never left. They'd gone away, they'd come back. It used to be that Northern Ireland's diaspora was permanent, poor denuded Ireland. But everyone had started coming back. Everyone was returning.

Girls, too, had come and gone in their lives but there they still were, still together, still doing the old stuff. They had history. Mostly a history of wasting their time in each other's houses when their parents were away, bogus sophisticates, drinking instant coffee and discussing platonic love.

The waitress brought their drinks. No one commented on Chuckle's ostentatiously alcohol-free mineral water.

'Salut.'

' Prost'

'Slainte'

'Beat it down ya.'

They sucked their drinks with ceremony.

`Heads down!' hissed Deasely. `There's Tick:

All five started examining their fingernails, coughing into their chests, tying their laces.

`Where is he?' asked Slat.

`Up at the front by the till.'

They looked round furtively. An old tramp had come into the cafe. In the distance, he could be seen hassling the waitress for money.They were all, except Chuckie, vaguely fond ofTick. They had named him so when he had told them proudly that he was the only Northern Irish indigent ever to have been fitted with a pacemaker. Several medical research bodies had (in print) declared that Tick could not actually exist, that the success of such a procedure was not compatible with Tick's highoctane lifestyle. But Chuckie dreaded him. Tick reminded Chuckie of his father. Tick had always reminded him of his father. In the seven or eight years since Chuckie had first encountered Tick, he must have dished out about six or seven hundred pounds to the old clochard. On Chuckie s then limited resources, this had been a strain. But whenever he saw the guy, he couldn't help but think of his father. He couldn't help but dip his hand.

Septic tittered. `Haven't seen him in a while. He looks pretty shit.'

`He's never dazzled exactly,' said Jake.

'Uh-oh, here he comes: Deasely blatantly ducked under the table.

`What's the bets it's the Kennedy one?' hazarded Septic.

`A fiver says it's not,' rumbled Deasely, from under the table.

`You're on, said Septic.

They were referring to Tick's spiel. Chuckie used to think it was charming that Tick had a spiel. None of the other pissed old farts around town bothered much with such finesse. But Tick had dozens of spiels. Propping up the downstairs bar in Lavery's, he used to tell the gullible that he was an out-of-luck songwriter who had written most of Elvis's hits. He charged iop for a joke. He did'GuessYour Star Sign'. He sang a crackly chested version of the'Fields ofAthenry' until people gave hint pounds to go away. He had even earned good money for a couple of years down the markets by eating fleas for bets.

'Gentlemen!' he barked thickly. He looked penetratingly at Jake. Septic mouthed the words as Tick spoke.' Where were you when Kennedy died?'

'I was being conceived in a cheap rut in a damp alley off the 1)onegall Road,' replied Jake.

'Son!' cried Tick, as he never failed to do.

'Father!' wept Jake, as he always did.

It was an ancient exchange, oft-repeated, much-loved. The second time it had happened, Jake had even embraced Tick extravagantly. Tick's almost visible stink had prevented a repetition of that particular move.

'My five pounds, please,' said Septic.

As he looked at the old tramp, Chuckle saw that Septic was right. Tick looked dreadful. Dirt and sweat marked out the craquelure of his ancient face and the whites of his eyes were completely unwhite. He looked like a Rembrandt. He looked hundreds of years old.

'Hey, Tick,' asked Septic, 'what are you drinking these days? Furniture polish? Windolene? Toilet cleaner?'

'Cut it out, Septic,' warned Deasely.

Tick stared hard at all their faces. Touchingly, he recognized them. 'Ah well, fuck the health advice, lads. just gimme some money. I'm gasping.'

A man approached from behind him and laid a hand on his shoulder. Tick swivelled round to face him.

'Right now, leave my customers alone and be off with you.'

'Eat my bollocks,' suggested Tick.

The manager grabbed him two-handed and started shoving him. There was a chorus of protest from Chuckle and his friends. Jake stood up silently and laid a firm hand on one of the manager's arms. The man stopped and looked uncertain.

`He's our guest,' said Chuckie.

`He's that man's father,' said Septic, pointing out the silent, grim-faced Jake.

Tick smiled beatifically at the man. He gestured at Jake. `Can't you see the family resemblance?'

`Don't push it, Tick,' warned Jake.

The manager gave up. All the firmness fled and he looked uneasily around for an exit.

`We'll take care of it, thank you very much,' said Jake.

The man walked away, just slowly enough to be dignified.

Tick licked his lips and spoke. `Did I ever tell you boys that I wrote "Jailhouse Rock"?'

They all laughed.

`Fuck's sake, Tick,' said Septic. 'Remember who you're talking to.'

`How much money do we have to give you to make you go away and leave these people alone?' asked Jake.

Tick, entirely unoffended, adopted his business expression. He frowned, calculated, did a brief headcount of their table and smiled. `Five of you at a pound each is not, I think, unfair.'

`That's extortionate," complained Deasely.

`But you know how unpleasant I can be,' Tick explained simply.

`There's a point,' said Slat.

Chuckie stood up. `I'll sort him out,' he explained hurriedly. He shepherded Tick out of the cafe. Once on the pavement, Tick, suspecting he was about to be deprived of a multiple contribution, complained so loudly that he could still be heard clearly inside the cafe. The other boys saw Chuckie give the old tramp something that reduced him to silence. They could have sworn that they saw Tick briefly lose consciousness. When Chuckie came back one of the others asked him how much he'd given Tick. Chuckie lied.

They drank their drinks. They talked about Chuckle's girl. They talked about Chuckie's money.They talked about Chuckie. His friends cajoled him affectionately. Chuckie knew that he should have loved it, that this praise from his friends might have been something that he valued, but his recent sense of unease had returned. Tick had made him feel uncomfortable.

Septic's head was swivelling monotonously, like a bodyguard beside a president. Chuckie looked around the cafe and saw the various tables of women that Septic was `scoping'. Septic Ted was obsessed with sex. He was marvellously adept at getting it. He had made his discovery when only seventeen or eighteen. Septic just pratted about whenever there were any girls around. He knocked things over, he stumbled, he wore unfashionable clothes and blushed when he said stupid things. He got a bad haircut. Most of all, with thrilling success, he told girls he was crap in bed, useless, embarrassing.

It always worked. His friends suffered a tortuous form of collective amazement to see the lines of girls lie on the pavement before him, begging, moist, absolutely, completely seduced.

Stirred by Septic Ted's massive turnover, Chuckie had tried this line a few times himself. Unfortunately, when Chuckie told girls that he was crap in bed, they believed him. But for a decade the line had continued to work for Septic Ted. Chuckie had to hand it to Septic. Everybody else did.

The only hitch Septic ever faced was when girls asked him why his male friends called him Septic. He always told the truth. Only some of them liked it.

(Septic, more properly Edward Gubbins, had been so named when he was fifteen years old. An inveterate and publicityseeking masturbator, Septic had delighted in giving his schoolfriends updates every day on the progress of his campaign of self-abuse. He told them of new record diurnal aggregates, new fantasies, new techniques. Towards the end, he started experimenting by including a variety of moistures in his onanistic efforts. He robbed his mother's make-up bags and bathroom cabinets of a melange of ointments and unguents. Next day, he would pass lordly verdicts on the qualities of Nivea, Pond's, and Vaseline. But one fateful night Septic had absent-mindedly swiped a tube of Immac hair-removal cream from one of his mother's drawers. Blithely, he spread the astringent substance over his eager penis.

It had taken ten or twelve seconds to really make itself felt. Septic always refused to talk about those following moments, but over the next few days, he was happy to appal his schoolfriends with brief flashes of his mutilated organ. Several boys fainted at the sight. Looking so like a mutant raspberry, a nuked strawberry, it had only been a matter of days before Edward Gubbins had become Septic Ted.)