Eureka Street: A Novel of Ireland Like No Other (22 page)

Unfortunately, the Bolshevik was commonly dubbed the Bullshit by the citizens and was mostly frequented by reactionary Protestants of the most decided kind. There were no revolutionaries and Rajinder never joined us. Ronnie was always immensely happy in the Bolshevik. He and the other colonists felt that this was their kind of place, their kind of fate.

There was some old chat with my workmates, some old crap. They chided me again for my imminent journey on the Peace Train. They grew serious. They lamented their lot. They talked the talk of Protestant fear and conspiracy. Catholics were moving in everywhere, including across the table from them if they but knew. The Fair Employment Commission was putting them in the workplace. They were then getting enough money to buy property in good Protestant areas where the houses had no shit on the walls. The RUC weren't allowed to shoot them any more and if any good Protestant took a couple of the dirty bastards out, he was, appallingly, sent to prison just as though he'd committed a crime. Bar the tits and the university education, these guys reminded me of Aoirghe. I didn't mention this.

I was, as you'd expect, bored pissless with this. Belfast hatreds were multiple but unvarying. I'd heard them all before, the details and the emphases never changed. You could sing along if you Iiked.These fulminations were faded and dog-eared with age.

The tragedy was that Northern Ireland (Scottish) Protestants thought themselves like the British. Northern Ireland (Irish) Catholics thought themselves like Eireans (proper Irish). The comedy was that any once-strong difference had long melted away and they resembled no one now as much as they resembled each other. The world saw this and mostly wondered, but round these parts folk were blind.

Interestingly enough, hardnien would still routinely and joyfully beat the shit out of Catholics/ Protestants even if those didn't believe in God and had formally left their faith. It was intriguing to wonder what a bigot of one faith could object to in an atheist who was born into another. That was what I liked about Belfast hatred. It was a lumbering hatred that could survive comfortably on the memories of things that never existed in the first place. There was a certain admirable stamina in that.

I sat in the grimy bar and listened to those boys, happy but mistaken in the belief that I was a Protestant. In my early years, I had often hoped that the future would be different. That from out of the dark mists of Ireland's past and present a new breed would arise. The New Irish. When all the old creeds and permutations in people would be contradicted. We would see the Loyalist Catholic. The liberal Protestant. The honest politician. The intelligent poet. But, as I sat and listened to my workmates, I decided I wasn't going to hold my hand in my arse waiting for any Utopia.

The flow of debate was halted when a skinny, grubby kid approached our table with an armful of newspapers. He softly ululated some mysterious phrase which, though it sounded like Oyoyillooiiethkckooiy, we all knew meant, `Would you like to purchase the latest copy of the Belfast Telegraph newspaper?' At least the kid did this quietly as a concession to being indoors. Out on the streets his (sometimes extremely mature) colleagues belted out these Nordic challenges with some gusto.

Nobody wanted a newspaper so Ronnie told the kid he had no sale. The kid stood where he was, wiped his nose with his sleeve and said: `All right, ten p for a joke, then.'

One of my workmates, Billy, groaned. `Ah, fuck, it's not you, is it? I didn't recognize you. Had a bath this year or something?'

The kid's murky chops grew murkier. `Does your dick reach your arse?' he asked.

I stared.

`What?' said Billy.

`Does your dick reach your arse?'

Billy was unamused. `What do you mean?'

`Well, if it does you can go and fuck yourself easier.'

Billy slapped the kid hard across the face. The child dropped his newspapers. He bent to pick them up, snuffling, trying to cover his face with his hands.

I put my glass down.

`What did you do that for, you dumb prick?' Ronnie inquired mildly of Billy.

'None of your business, wankstain,' he riposted.

The dirty kid looked up briefly, a bright look amidst his tears. Obviously he had not heard that bon mot before and was now carefully committing it to memoryYou could almost see his lips move as, imperfectly, he spelled out the letters.

Billy lifted his hand as though to take another swipe at the boy.

`Touch him again, and I'll break your fucking skull,' said Ronnie.

Billy was a sparky enough young man and might have gone for it but Ronnie had surprised us all so much. Billy was smart enough to make no ungenerous assumptions about anyone's pugilistic skills. Wisely, he decided that experience was always an unknown quality and let it go.

The kid picked up his papers and moved off, sniffling.

'Aye, Ronnie, you're my fucking hero.'

`SuperClay.'

'You fancy him, do you?'

`Ronnie wants to fuck the wee snotbag, right enough.'

'I'm sure he'll let you for a fiver.'

I drank up and got out. Outside the Bolshevik, the kid was picking up his papers again. Reasonably, the landlord had thrown him out for getting hit in his bar and the papers had spilled. I helped him.

'They're pretty fucked, son. Nobody will buy them now. I'm sorry.'

`Bollocks,' he replied.

'What?'

'Forget it.'

A window rapped behind us. I looked round. Ronnie Clay and his pals were hooting and jeering at us, obscenely pantomiming a variety of sexual acts. Ronnie was back to normal, I was glad to see. I didn't want to have to start liking him.

`Let's move on,' I said to the kid.

We walked on, no doubt confirming the delighted predictions of my workmates.

`Hey, kid, what's your name?'

He skipped further away from me, his dirty coat flapping. `You're not going to fruit me up, are you? You're going to try and fuck my bum, you dirty poof. Help!' he started shouting to passers-by. `Help. I'm being raped. Help!P

`Jesus, kid. Stop it.You're safe.'

'Help, help! Rape!'

To my panic and horror several concerned citizens looked like they were thinking of stopping and rescuing the poor child, sorting me out into the bargain.

`Fuck up, you little shit,' I hissed. `I wouldn't fuck you with somebody else's dick.'

The kid stopped abruptly. The same calculating and memorizing expression spread over his face. Having stored the phrase, he decided he liked it, and thus he believed me.

`Roche,' he said.

`What?'

`My name. Roche.You asked me my name.'

We walked on through Cornmarket. The passers-by walked on, evidently concluding that he was my younger brother or that he had decided it was OK if I raped him. Either way it wasn't their problem and they moved on.

Needless to say, I wasn't so keen on his company now but I felt I had to keep the conversation going until our way could part. `Do you often get smacked like that?'

`Aye sometimes.' He stiffened and drew himself to his full half-height. `Usually, I smack the fuckers right back.!

`You didn't just now'

'Aye, well, there were six or seven of you. Sometimes I just piss in their beer when they're not looking. I can piss at will. It's handy.'

'What age are you?'

'Fifteen.'

I looked at his tiny, wizened face and his little boy's physique.

'Aye, right,' I said.

'OK, fourteen.'

I laughed.

'Thirteen?'

'If you don't know, kid, who gives a shit?'

'Twelve'

'Why aren't you at school?'

'It's half past five, you dumb fuck. What school did you go to?'

I began to think that Billy had had the right technique for dealing with this youngster. I glared.

'Ah, don't be so fucking humpy. It was a stupid question,' he chided.

'A great man once said there's no such thing as a stupid question'

'He didn't have a lot of conversations with you, then.'

'Watch your lip'

'Why, what's it doing? Tricks?'

I gave up.

'Stop,' he screamed at me.

I froze. He bent down and picked up a coin from almost underneath my foot.

'Fifty p,' he said.'Magic'

I walked on. He tripped along beside me.

'Do you ever think about anything other than money?'

'I'm a businessman. I've got to get along.'

'You remind me of a friend of mine.' I laughed.

'What's his name?'

'Chuckie'

'Is he a fat ugly character with a big fuck-off car?'

`Yeah.You know him?'

`I copped a fiver for looking after his motor a few days ago.'

`Where was this?'

`Up the Falls.'

`Where?' I asked, surprised.

`Falls Road, dimwit.!

Chuckle had a lot of Catholic friends but I couldn't see him being too comfortable in that most unUnionist heartland. But then I was beginning to understand that Chuckle's greed was ecumenical. He would go anywhere to make money.

'What's the big deal?' asked my young companion, `Is he a Prod? I knew he was a Prod.!

'How?'

`He didn't have any rhythm.'

`I presume you do have rhythm, then.!

`Aye, don't you?'

'Only intermittently.,

`Speak English, you fancy bastard,' said Roche huffily. He seemed sensitive to words in a variety of ways, this prodigy.

'Now who's being humpy?' I chided.

`Aye, well, don't use stupid fucking words you don't even know yourself.'

I let that go and we walked on in silence. I didn't know what delicate emotional corns I had trodden on with this child but I was growing less interested. Near the City Hall I stopped at a right turn. `Listen, kid, I don't know where you're going but I'm going up this way. I'll see you around!

I was just moving off when the kid put an indescribably begrimed hand on my sleeve and stopped me. `Hold on,' he said. `Have you been to college?'

'Yeah'

He looked hard at me for a minute. `C'mere'

He pulled me up a side-street. Briefly, I began to consider the possibility that he shared Ronnie Clay's suspicions about me and was going to offer me a cut-price blowjob or something. The world was certainly getting more complicated that way.

We pulled up at the blankish wall of a multi-storey car park. He pointed at it.

'What's that?' he asked.

`A wallT

'You're not funny,' he snapped.

'So people say.'

`What's that?' He pointed to a small clutch of graffiti four feet up the wall (optimum reading height for the stunted little fucker). It was small and closely written. I moved nearer.

OTG, I read. OTG.

`What does that mean?' asked Roche.

'Listen, kid, I don't know. Nobody seems to know. I've asked around. It's been in the papers.'

`Read out the letters, you tossbag.'

'Read them out yourself, you cheeky little shit'

He stared hard at me.

Ah, right, that's it, I thought. He can't read. `OTG,' I said - me and my bleeding heart.

'Again'

'O-T-G. Can you

'I can read fine, fuckface'

I turned on my heel and walked on. He had charm, sure, but it was so obscure. Before I got to the end of the street I heard him call after me. I stopped and turned round.

He stood amidst a clutch of homegoing office girls. 'Hey, does your dick reach your arse?' he shouted thinly in the distance.

Not yet, I thought, not yet.

By the time I'd walked half-way home, the city was weary from all its work. Belfast had quickened and slowed. The traffic was quieter now It was six o'clock. The homebound workers were now all home and the streets had thinned of people. Though bright, the light had softened. The sky was wispy and vague, a moderate effort.The sky looked distinctly underwritten up there.

I crossed Shaftesbury Square. Though early, the Lavery's overspill was already out on the street. Groups of unusually dirty youths lounged on the pavement with beer glasses in their hands. As I passed the bar, stepping over their outstretched legs, a warm, urinous waft hung in the air outside the doorway. I hated Lavery's. It had to be the dirtiest, most crowded, least likeable bar in Western Europe. Consequently, it was enormously popular. Very Belfast. Einstein got it wrong. The Theory of Relativity didn't apply to Lavery's. Lavery's time was different time. You went into Lavery's one night at the age of eighteen and you stumbled out, pissed, to find you were in your thirties already. People drank their lives away there. Lavery's was for failures. I was working as a tile layer and I couldn't get into Lavery's because I was too successful.

I walked up the Lisburn Road and passed the Anabaptist double-duckers as we called South Belfast Gospel Hall, the Windsor Tabernacle, the Elim Pentecostal, the Methodist Mission, the Presbyterian Presbytery, and the Unitarian Church of Protestant Mnemonists or something like that. At the door of all the adjacent rectories, broken pastors stood, staring at me with grim expressions. To the old law, they held true. You crap on my grandfather, you crap on me. I found these guys infinitely more frightening than Crab, Hally or Ronnie Clay. I tried not to look like a Catholic. I tightened my Bible belt. I thought they were convinced.

I crossed the junction of Elmwood Avenue and glanced down its treeful length. The Bolshevik fiasco and the business with the crazy kid had depressed me unaccountably. It didn't feel good to be going home on this blue evening. I didn't want to face my empty flat. I didn't want to face my empty evening.

Home, I showered, I ignored my cat, I put on my suit and I headed down to the supermarket. The girl who liked me might be there and I could think of nothing better. I knew I was sad, buying groceries I didn't need just to meet some adolescent girl whom I wouldn't even chat up. I was sad but I was happy that way.

I bought another load of mushrooms. I couldn't think of anything else. The girl who liked me wasn't there. I fell in love anyway. I was served by a spotty seventeen-year-old boy with geeky red hair and amazing, award-winning acne. It was obviously his first week at the job. He couldn't get anything right. He just mumbled inaudibly and blushed collar upwards. He blushed at the till, he blushed at the bananas, the baguettes and the fromage frais. He blushed infinitely more than my regular girl. I don't think he was blushing because of any passion for me. When he turned his red head I saw the hearing aid nestling behind his ear, unhidden by his hair. This kid just blushed because he thought he was generally a crap idea, a big mistake. It made me want to kiss his lumpy neck. It made me want to die of love.