Jammy Dodger (6 page)

 

Outside, we regrouped, swapping cigarettes and stories like refugees from some terrible occurrence which, in a way, we were.

‘Early yet,' chirped Monroe after a while, rubbing his hands together. ‘What about a jar at the Arts Club?'

‘Not for me, Boyd,' I said. ‘I'm gonna call it a day and grab some sleep.'

‘Artie, Artie …' His voice was thick with rebuke. ‘
What hath night to do with sleep
?'

‘No, seriously. I need some decent shut-eye.'

‘Artie, you're a young man, have some respect for that fact.'

‘Boyd, I'm going home and that's final.'

On the way to the Arts Club we commandeered the poet Dylan Delaney and his companion, the leader of the undergraduettes. Afterwards we ended up back at Delaney's flat where we settled down to an unmarked bottle of firewater from his latest travels in Bohemia. Later, Monroe began reciting
The Faerie Queene
and I closed my eyes momentarily, the better to enjoy it.

 

*

 

I awoke to the sound of a woman having a baby. There was music in the background and she was being chivvied along by her birth partner, Van Morrison, who was also, from time to time, counterpointing the shouts and groans prompted by some of her more violent contractions. I was bolt upright in an armchair. A silver thread of drool, as though spun by a large spider, connected my chin to my shirt. The sunlight, which was streaming through filmy orange curtains behind me, was illuminating, on the collapsed sofa-bed opposite, the fully-dressed figure of Boyd Monroe, one arm across his chest, the other outflung, like an opera singer in mid-aria. Glasses, ashtrays, cassette cases and books crowded the carpet where one shoeless foot hung down. A fishing-line of saliva glistened on his jowl. The music and the child-birth noises, I now ascertained, were coming from the bedroom and, as a more realistic explanation for them dawned, I identified the album as
Astral Weeks
.

There was no coffee or bread in the poet's kitchen so I closed the door softly behind me and tiptoed into the street. It was another fine June morning with just a hint of cool, and the residents of Stranmillis village, perched proudly on its hill overlooking the Gardens, were just rising to greet the sun – no doubt with freshly-perked, sweet java and hot, yeasty loaves, straight from the oven. A faint breeze riffled through the trees. Birds were singing … I felt like shit. Bloody Monroe.

I burst into the first bakery I could find.

‘Oh, Holy God, would you look at the state of that! Have you a wee hangover son?'

The little old lady in her crisp apron was so full of concern I had to resist the urge to cry.

‘I'm fine.' Bloody Monroe.

‘What'll you have? A wee sausage bap? A wee bacon & egg soda? Or maybe just a wee doughnut?'

‘Um … not sure.'

I surveyed the cholesterol bombs and lard grenades behind the glass. I wanted all of them.

‘What about a wee eclair? Or a wee tray bake? Those wee vanilla slices are lovely, so they are.'

I was starting to sweat.

‘Where were you, at a wee party?'

‘No. Yes. No. Kind of. Stayed up too late.'

‘Oh that'll be it alright. I have to say, you're looking a wee bit peaky. Eileen – ' she called over her shoulder and a moment later another, slightly older, old lady in an apron appeared from a doorway.

‘Eileen, look at this wee lad – doesn't he look a wee bit peaky?'

Eileen agreed that I did indeed look peaky.

‘Has he had a wee feed of bad drink?'

‘I think he has. And he stayed up too late.'

‘And now he feels rotten.'

‘He does. He feels rotten. Look at his wee eyes.'

‘I know. All pink. Like a wee rat's.'

‘And his hair. Look at his hair, it's mad.'

‘And his wee purple teeth.'

I again fought the urge to cry.

‘Give me five sausage rolls!' I shouted.

Bloody Monroe.

 

A few minutes later, finding it difficult to chew and walk at the same time, I sat down on a bench in the grounds of the university. The cool breath issuing from its stone-flagged interior was soothing. My heart was trying out a distressing new reggae-style rhythm and my face was sticky with a sheen of food and alcohol sweat. Why couldn't I have just said no and gone home last night? I'd be refreshed and reading the newspaper over a nice cup of coffee by now. I drew another sausage roll from the paper bag: greasy pap of pastry enclosing molten pink slurry. Don't think about it. Good and peppery though. Essential. Never understood why white pepper fell from grace. Great in mashed potatoes too. Didn't Christopher Columbus stumble upon the New World while in pursuit of peppercorns? Nearby, a gardener was trimming the edges of the lawn with a long-handled clipper, humming to himself.
Spanish Ladies?
In front of the main building a couple of tourists were photographing each other. A man and a woman in their mid sixties. Americans, by the look of them: pastel windcheaters, battenberg trousers, peanut butter shoes. Man approaching.

‘Hi there!'

Sunglasses. Fishing hat. Scrabble tile teeth.

‘Hello.'

‘We were wondering – say, are you okay, you look a little …'

‘Fine thanks.'

‘We were wondering if you could direct us to the mail depot.' He pronounced it dee-poe.

‘I'm sorry?'

‘The dee-poe? The big mail dee-poe?'

I had to think about it. His wife followed him over and stood smiling at me.

‘Ah, the post office. Yes, there's … well, the big one is in Tomb Street. It's a bit of a walk though …'

‘That's okay, we got time.'

I gave the best directions I could in the circumstances. His wife took a photograph of me.

‘That's very kind of you, we appeciate it. And let me say, you have a very beautiful country here, you should be very proud.'

I had to think about this too.

‘Thanks,' I said.

As I watched them disappear along University Road I polished off the last sausage roll and began to feel slightly better. In my mind I assumed an aerial view and imagined them moving through the city. I wondered what they'd make of its all too human scale compared with where they'd come from, its mish-mash of grandeur and desolation. Did they have any idea where they were? (It fleetingly occurred to me that they might be looking for the GPO in Dublin.) I panned out a little, so I was at the height of a bird or a helicopter, say, and then ascended a little further until I could discern the shape of the land mass.

On the points of the compass, a line drawn directly north would pass through the bank, church and newspaper quarter, over Cave Hill and eventually traverse the Antrim coast road into the North Channel on a latitude, roughly, with Moscow in one direction and Edmonton, Alberta in the other. Taken south, it would plunge through County Down, over the Mourne mountains, and pop out into the Irish Sea, parallel with Port Erin on the Isle of Man, and Morecambe on the Lancashire coast beyond. West would slice across the Falls Road, under the shadow of Black Mountain and end up in the moiling waters of Lough Neagh, a basin formed, as legend would have it, by the giant Finn MacCool scooping out a missile to lob at his Scottish enemy. East takes us past the parliament building of Stormont Castle, along the top of Strangford Lough, through the upper arm of the Ards Peninsula and once more into the waves –

I was brought back to earth by a sudden flurry of wingbeats and the arrival on the lawn in front of me of a pigeon, joined almost immediately by two others. This villainous-looking trio (one of them had a scabby head, another a calcified foot) proceeded to strut around in a near-parody of nonchalance, all the while edging closer to where I was sitting. I glanced down. Pastry crumbs. That's what they were after. I shook the remaining flakes from the bag and the breeze stepped in and deposited them on the pathway nearby. The birds, emboldened by the safer distance, deigned to try a few. I resumed my bird's-eye daydream …

To the northeast, Belfast port communes with the lough that gave birth to the city. Here's the source of our current metropolis: a wet quickening on a sandbank beside confluences of fresh and salt water, the Farset River joining the Lagan and meeting an inwash of the Irish Sea. A ford. A toehold. A place to trade. The ships weigh anchor: sweet Ulster beef and butter go out; fine liquors from Bordeaux and Cadiz come in, sugar and tea from the Indies, tobacco from the Americas. This
river-straddling, hill-rimmed town
begins to swell, with Scots and English, with westerners from Donegal, with fleeing Huguenots bringing knowledge of weaving. The industries grow: brewing, cigarettes, rope-making, ship building, heavy machinery. And linen, with the Farset powering the water mills and supplying rinse for the heavy acres of cloth on the bleach greens. The merchants raise their solid, handsome homes, and bring craftsmen in from Italy to tile the floors and carve pineapples on the newel posts.

The buildings – the Grand Opera House (which the Americans should be passing shortly), the Linenhall Library, the Customs House, the Palm House, this majestic university – tell you all you need to know, really, that this place hit its high water mark in the surge and clamour of the nineteenth century and everything since has been a falling away. The ghosts are everywhere; in the deserted wharves and map-rooms, the drawing offices and vaults. If you listen you can hear them whistling in the marketplaces and along the towpaths; you can smell their pipe tobacco in the evening air outside the churches. The laughter of the mill-girls echoes in the entries … Falling away? Eating itself, more like: bombs and incendiaries taking bites out of it; gap after gap refilled, built up again. So much scar tissue.

 

When I arrived at Oliver's he was busy in his kitchen. On the milk-napped table, amongst half a dozen Sunnyland Farm cartons and most of his
batterie de cuisine
, was a copy of
Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management
open at Creams, Whips and Custard Puddings. There was a strong smell of scalded lactose in the air and a sense of something fermenting somewhere. Something malevolent.

‘I've got a gallon of ice cream in the freezer, two junkets in the fridge, and a bucket of Angel Delight on the windowsill,' he announced. ‘And a rice pudding about to come out of the oven.'

I told him about Winks' impending visit.

‘Oh shag it.'

I hit the shower while Oliver rooted out the file marked ‘Accounts', which he'd brought home to work on six months ago and flung in the bottom of his wardrobe.

It wasn't pretty. We were looking at a dozen tea-stained pages of indecipherable symbols and random numbers. I stood up and started to pace the room. The sausage rolls were wearing off.

‘What the fuck are we going to do? Winksie'll shit a brick if we hand this to him.'

Oliver, who was still wearing his bikini-ed breasts apron, suddenly sat up straight and clapped his hands together.

‘I know!'

I stared at him, more in surprise than expectation.

‘Let's have some rice pudding, while it's hot. It'll make us feel better.'

We ate in silence. Apart from a ghostly, and unexplained, undertow of garlic, it wasn't actually too bad (how can you mess up rice pudding?) and as I spooned it down, the conglutination of sugar, milk, and starch began have a warm, unifying effect on my shattered system.

There was music coming from somewhere, a heavy, tamping beat, a see-sawing drone of accordion – Paul Simon singing
Boy in the Bubble
. It was drifting up through the floorboards. I listened for a while, sifting through my small mental cache of Rosie McCann images. And then it struck me.

‘Holy shit!'

Oliver spat out a mouthful of pudding.

‘Oliver, didn't you say Rosie – the woman who lives below – was final year accountancy?'

‘Yes, she is but …' His face lit up. ‘Bingo!'

‘It's worth a try.'

 

Strangely, Rosie wasn't falling over herself to help. It took ten minutes of intense, spaniel-eyed begging before she caved in and admitted me to her flat.

‘I'm playing squash in an hour,' she warned as I slunk past.

While not the tidiest female living space I'd ever seen, it was a paradigm of cleanliness and order compared to the midden above. It contained the usual girlie stuff: scarf-bedraped lamps, striped ‘throws' from Habitat, bowls of sinus-searing pot-pourri, a collection of gauzy panties drying on a radiator. On the wall above the television there was a poster of Terence Trent D'Arby smirking from behind his bead curtain of hair.

‘Nice place,' I commented, but there was something underlying the masking scent of dried frangipani and cloves that … What was it?

Rosie noticed me sniffing.

‘I know. A sour … sickly kind of smell? It's driving me mad. I've searched everywhere but I can't work out where it's coming from.'

We both stood there interrogating the air like meercats. Overhead I could hear the Milky Bar Kid clumping around singing to himself (the clarity of the accoustics was startling and it occurred to me that before too long Rosie would come to dread the night).

‘Right, show me what you've got,' she said, hopping onto the sofa and folding her legs under her.

She was wearing black tracksuit bottoms and a white aertex tennis shirt. Her hair was tied back and her face free of make-up. Her eyes were greener than I remembered from earlier in the week, and she seemed shorter.

After a few minutes of staring incredulously at our ream of hieroglyphics, she stopped to massage her temples.

‘I'm pretty sure I'm going to regret asking this but do you have a record of income?'

‘Er …'

‘Do you have a record of your outgoings?'

‘Well, you see …'

‘Have you saved your VAT receipts?'