Gurriers (39 page)

I was also taking the laissez faire attitude to the establishment for granted, and was totally unprepared for the verbal onslaught that greeted my request for a knife.

Jimmy broadsided me with a loud angry speech about taking the piss out of his good nature and ruining a good thing chopping and dealing in his pub that ended in exasperation with, “… an’ it’s your first fuckin’ nie in here! Wha’ the fuck am I lettin’ meself in for!”

“Look, Jimmy, forget the knife. It wasn’t for dealing, it was for charity. This is my first week’s wages and one of the lads was going to cut a bit off his ‘cause I can’t afford to buy any, but it’s Okay. Forget it! Nobody’s dealing anything upstairs.”

I wasn’t giggling going back up the stairs with the drug dealing knife in hand that had even been accompanied by an apology.

“Jesus, Sean, you are turning into a courier!”

The lads were almost ready for another drink when I got back to the table and it was my round! I took another large slug of Guinness while Mick heated and chopped the hash, feeling every gulp add to the growing tingle of drunkenness that I was enjoying. I shouted for four pints over the banister just after receiving the knife and hash, and then drank some more while they were being pulled.

Vinno approached with a joint and a whisper. “You are goin’ to get Al one, aren’t ye?”

“Cheers! Of course, man! I’ll order the cider when the Guinness is ready so it’s not lying there going flat while our pints settle.”

“Cool!”

I bought a packet of skins while collecting the round, finally becoming an independent hash smoker, and celebrated by making a joint without having to ask anybody for anything. Things got a bit foggier after that.

“All right, yiz two wheeled freaks, you’ve got twenty seconds to get yisser fuckin’ machines into the yard. The owners of any bikes left outside the yard will not be served anymore gargle. Yiz won’t be fuckin’ killin’ yourselves on my fuckin’ shift!”

I had forgotten about that bit. I had also forgotten exactly where my jacket was, I had even forgotten if my keys were definitely in my jacket pocket. While I was busy pondering what I had forgotten, the boys were busy moving. Everybody seemed to know exactly where their stuff was and the best way to it. Several of them had bustled past me and out the door when Vinno saved the day.

“Lookin’ for this, Shy Boy?” He brandished my jacket in his raised left hand.

“Cheers Vinno.” I shoved my right arm into my sleeve while he held it there and then straight into my pocket that I usually kept the keys in. They were there!

Instead of taking the keys out of my pocket and removing my arm from the sleeve before proceeding, I decided to put on the jacket on the way to the bike instead.

I followed Vinno down the stairs in my futile attempts to sleeve my left arm on the move with my right hand – still in my pocket – doing its drunken best to select the keys to my locks.

The first engine roared to life before I even got to the bottom of the stairs. Despite engines two and three joining him as I wrenched myself from the building, I had to stop and take the time to put my jacket on properly. This time meant that I was the last one to reach the bikes, but I had my first lock off before Naoise, who had wasted valuable stoned seconds fidgeting with his keys. He was lockless before I got my second lock off
though, cursing myself for not following the lead of my compatriots when we arrived.

Just as I started the bike, I heard the unmistakeable sound of a crash into a large metal gate, followed by Jimmy’s increasingly familiar angry roar. “Ray, ye little bastard! I’ll fuckin’ bar ye!”

Every engine revved loudly as if to shout back at him, including mine once I realised. Jimmy was still shouting but now I couldn’t hear a word. I wrenched hard on the throttle to add more voice to that of my brothers while stupidly, drunkenly and picking the very worst of moments to decide to put my drunken disorientated left foot on the peg. The peg beside the gear selector – the thing you do not want to be going near when you’re in neutral, revving your bike with no clutch engaged. Of course, my foot hit the gear selector and I was catapulted into a wheelie across the road and, of course, this sent me straight for Jimmy.

Thankfully I had two hands on the bars, and the left foot had made purchase on its peg as the front wheel had risen. In an instant, I managed a successful kick at the back brake with my right foot whilst hoisting myself upwards and killing the throttle. The front wheel came down quickly and full brakes stopped the bike a good two feet short of the now pale and silent barman. The spectacle had momentarily silenced the revving engines enough for me to be heard.

“Sorry about that, Jimmy, my hand slipped off the clutch just as I put it into gear.”

“I’m fuckin’ watchin’ you, pal!” He croaked with an odd combination of menace and terror in his voice, before the noise and smell of a back tyre being spun in the yard sent him to shout at somebody else.

Somehow I managed to squeeze the bike into the cramped space without damaging it or others, but I slipped and fell head first after standing up on my saddle to climb over the bikes that I had squashed between to park. God looks after the drunks they say, and my forehead bounced almost painlessly off the saddle of Leo’s bike, two down from mine, giving my right hand the millisecond it needed to find the petrol tank to slow my de
scent. The left hand then grabbed the top box to steady my fall even more. The bike toppled over, of course, but by then several strong arms were on the scene to prevent disaster.

“Fuck’s sake, Shy Boy!”

“Now I know why he put the fuckin’ jacket on!”

“Are ye alrie, man?”

“Grand, grand – no bother!”

“C’mon, yez cunts – out yez go, I’ve a whole fuckin’ pub full o’ people to take money off!”

“Ger owa tha’ yard, jimmy!”

“Yeah Ray, an’ close the fuckin’ ga’e after ye! An’ Shy Boy – you just remember the eye is on ye!”

“Yee haw, Shy Boy. Ye have an admirer!”

“Fuck off. Go on, out!”

I was laughing with the lads on the way back around to the front door, but I had never had the eye on me before. I paused at the doorway as the smile drained from my face. I hadn’t intended to piss Jimmy off. I thought he was cool actually. I would make an extra effort to get back into his good books. I wasn’t a bad person. That night I just felt as if I was freed from….from… well, I don’t know what but I was just having a laugh.

“You alrie, Shy Boy?”

I hadn’t noticed that Vinno had been waiting a few steps up the stairs.

“Never better man! Let’s get back to the pints!”

The atmosphere upstairs was noticeably different to me on my return. The eruption of class A drugs was blatantly loud, energetic and happy. Dance music blared, people danced everywhere, everybody was laughing; pale, sweaty, wild eyed, frenzied and laughing – screaming even at times.

A stranger would have been terrified. I, however, was thrilled. I was also drunk though and as the electric atmosphere picked me up and carried me along with it I drank faster and made more joints.

Looking back though, the thickening fog only offers snippets of the rest of the night: singing with Daymo; having my nose
mushed into my face by Ray; handing the Gizzard Al’s crutch instead of a cue to play pool and losing to the bastard anyway; laughing with Naoise; tug of war with Al and his crutch and Leo getting me into a headlock after bestowing many welcomes into the group upon me. Happy incidents with good people, many of them – incident after incident – laugh after laugh, joke after joke, drink after drink, smoke after smoke. All the way up to four slippered feet.

Four slippered feet.

Come on brain – get a handle on this!

Four slippered feet.

Eyes try harder

Four slippered feet on a familiar patterned carpet; two male and two female.

Okay, Sean, time to move, I thought, get feet to ground.

Moving my feet made me realise two things. They had been in an elevated position, despite me lying face down and they still had motorbike boots on. As my feet slid off the arm of the sofa, I pushed my hands to help me painfully achieve a seated position.

Squinting my eyes helped me to distinguish the look of horror on both Eoin and Marie’s faces as the full extent of the marks left by my motorbike gear on their cream leather sofa became apparent. I eased myself to my still drunken feet slowly, apologising all the way.

“I’m so sorry, I don’t even remember getting here. I’ll clean everything up. Don’t worry about a thing, man, I’ll sort it out for ye. Have to wash – back in a bit.” It intrigued me that there hadn’t been a word out of either of them as I wobbled towards the bathroom.

The second I laid eyes on my face I understood their silence. There were three skins stuck together attached by the sticky bit to the top right of my forehead. The tobacco and burnt up hash belonging to the skins littered the whole side of my face from there down to my jawbone. I had fallen asleep in my filthy clothes on their lovely furniture while making a joint on the arm of the sofa, so drunk that my face had landed in the joint,
leaving it like some bizarre accessory on the swaying red- eyed creature before me.

After observing this figure for several seconds I croaked a solitary word at it from my parched throat. “Courier!”

Chapter Eighteen - Free MOTs

Every day as a courier brought its own lessons from learning new locations, to driving in the manner in which the job is best done, to the many time saving tips including police dodging.

I remember my second Wednesday afternoon, about an hour after lunch, when I was heading along the coast on the way in from Blackrock, I heard a call on the radio that I had never heard before.

“Free MOT’s on the Morehampton Road, lads; Donnybrook for free MOTs.”

Aidan announced loud and clear enough to make sure we all understood him.

I was perplexed. Free MOTs? I knew that MOTs were the road worthiness test that vehicles had to undertake in England but why would anybody come over here and give them out free? Why in Donnybrook? Why was Aidan telling us about it? This I had to see for myself, even though it was going to take me a mile or so out of my way.

Instead of heading straight I swung left onto Nutley Lane to bring me up past RTE and then right for Donnybrook. I was still trying to figure it out as I drove slowly through Donnybrook, keeping my eyes peeled for anything unusual at the roadside. I had come up past Madigans and on as far as the AIB without seeing a thing. I carried on my bemused way when all of a sudden a motorcycle cop, minus helmet but still in motorbike gear, appeared from behind one of the big old oak trees that line this particular part of Morehampton Road. He pointed at me and then made a signal to pull over onto the footpath.

I was nearly on the path before I saw his bike and a garda car hidden on the wide expanse of the path behind a bus shelter.

“Have ye goh tax on dah ting?” he enquired in a loud and
abrupt Midlands accent.

“Just here,” I replied pointing to my left passenger footrest where I had bolted the holder on.

“Take off yer helmet and give us a look ah ye. Tha’ back tyre’s gonna need replacin’ soon!”

I now realised that this was the free MOT I heard over the air. The garda were here to check everything just like an MOT, but it was something to avoid. Hence the clear radio warning. I took off my helmet and placed it on my mirror while he scrutinised my tax disc.

I was so busy kicking the shite out of myself that I was slow to react when I heard the Channel Two beep and when I did get my shaking hand to the radio, I pressed the corner against the Velcro as I scrambled to get to the volume button.

This garda was going to get the beginning of whatever it was at full volume for the couple of seconds it was now going to take me to get the dammed thing turned off.

I was totally and absolutely at the mercy of whoever it was. It was Tarzan.

“Yaaw. I–yaw, i-yaw, i-yaaaw!”

Fuck you, Tarzan! I thought. By the time I had the volume turned right down, the garda was standing beside me menacingly glaring down at me from his full and considerable height. I could feel my face turning red, as I weakly pointed at the radio.

“Messers!”

It seemed an age before he spoke and what he did say took me aback.

“Have ye goh courier insurance?”

I didn’t know I needed a different insurance to do this job. I knew that this could mean trouble and I didn’t know what to tell him.

“Well?”

“Sorry garda, yes I do. I have er… courier insurance.”

“Have ye goh ih wih ye?”

“Er…no. The er…the rain, ye know yerself what it does to paper. It’d get destroyed if I carried it around, wouldn’t it? I
mean, the licence is laminated so that’s Okay, but the….er insurance….em….isn’t.”

“Where will ye produce ih?”

“Where?”

“Ye have ten days to produce courier insurance ah a station of your choice. Where will ye produce ih?”

“Er….em….Lucan.”

“I’ll be checkin’ ih meself personally an’ I’ll be on yer case if ye don’t produce- rieh’?”