John the Revelator (21 page)

And she cupped her hands against her mouth.

‘Ollie!'

The boy came running. She held out her hand, but he ignored it and tugged on my shirt. I bent down to his head level and he put his mouth to my ear.

‘Cuckoo,' he said into my ear. I could smell crisps on his breath.

‘What?'

He grinned and tapped his nose.

‘Cuckoo.'

 

Having Mrs Nagle around to keep an eye on my mother freed me up a bit, but the house was no longer ours. Everywhere reeked of her rotten fruit and fly-spray stench. Her big loud voice shook the dust from the rafters. She made the kitchen into her nest, hanging girdles and tights and all kinds of old lady garments on the clothes-horse by the fire. The fridge was permanently stocked with boxes of chocolates, but I was forbidden to touch them. Her dentures floated in a glass of water placed on the kitchen sink. Dinner was served on the dot of six every evening as the Angelus struck on the wireless. It still tasted burnt.

The only time Mrs Nagle left the house was to get Mass. At night she sat by the fire and stuffed her face with sweets and complained bitterly about there being no television in the house. She slept in the armchair under a quilt, head thrown back, nose in the air, wind whistling through her sinuses, but after a while she complained of her back and took to slipping into bed beside my mother.

‘You wouldn't have an old woman sleeping in an old armchair, would you, John?' she said. ‘Hah?'

I was exasperated. I'd never met such a bossy woman. It took all my effort to meet her flinty eyes when she spoke, and her voice set my teeth on edge. I couldn't bear her eating noises, the way she chewed with her mouth open, the rasping sound as she scrunched up sweet wrappers and put them in her pocket. Sometimes I wished she'd choke on one of her chocolates, or have a heart attack mid-snore. I fantasised about stuffing a sock in her mouth while she slept and watching her face turn blue.

 

My mother had rallied a bit by the end of October. She sat up in bed and began to eat a little. Rather than being pleased, Mrs Nagle was noticeably put out. She'd gotten used to running things her own way. The better my mother felt, the more Mrs Nagle fussed around her, keeping me at bay, as if determined to prove how indispensable she'd become to the upkeep of the household. Saucepans constantly boiled on the cooker and the presses were kept stocked, all out of her own pocket, she wouldn't accept so much as the price of a box of teabags. And she had the legs run off me doing messages.

When the weather suddenly turned stormy, blustery winds that rattled the windows and whistled through the eaves, it was with great reluctance that she left to check everything was battened down in her cottage. After she'd gone I sat by my mother's bed, homework spread across my lap, but I'd barely gotten started when the power went out. My mother instructed me to get out the old paraffin-oil lamp from the cupboard under the stairs and showed me how to put a match to the wick without blowing us all up. I screwed the glass chimney in place and set it on the bedside locker and twiddled the knobs until the flame grew tall, creating a magic shadow show on the bedroom wall.

My mother stared at those shadows, and the ghost of a smile played across her face.

‘I never told you about the time I saw a giant,' she said quietly.

I put my homework aside. I'd missed her stories.

‘Go on.'

‘You were still only a scut.' Her voice was faint, but her eyes bright. ‘It was a getting dark one evening, I was coming home from work and I saw a shape coming up the road towards me. It was about ten or twelve feet tall, like one of the Tuatha De Danaan. The closer it came, the more anxious I got. My boots were stuck to the road; I was like a scared little rabbit. Then I saw what it was, and I felt like such a gom.'

‘What was it?' I said. ‘Put me out of my misery.'

She chuckled a little.

‘It was two giants, one of them sitting on the other's shoulders.'

 

My birthday fell on the day before Halloween. My mother was well enough in herself to come downstairs and take her meal at the dinner table. It was the first time she'd been out of bed in weeks, and even though her breath rattled and her movements were so slow it was hard to look at, her spirits seemed improved somewhat.

‘Not so sweet sixteen,' she said and winked when she sat down to dinner. She managed to eat most of a plate of watery colcannon and even indulged in a bowl of ice-cream for dessert. Mrs Nagle bustled around the kitchen in a sullen fury, muttering about how a woman in her state should be in bed. My mother threw her a filthy look, and Mrs Nagle's mood abruptly improved.

‘Sure what kind of birthday party is this at all?' she exclaimed. ‘Let me pop down to the cottage and see what I can find.'

She returned a few minutes later with a box of chocolates and a set of Christmas crackers.

‘Now,' she said with forced heartiness. ‘This is more like it.'

We ate the chocolates, Mrs Nagle flinching every time I took one. My mother was so weak she could barely pull a cracker, but she placed an orange paper party hat on her head and forced a smile. Mrs Nagle cleared the dinner things away and began the washing-up, and my mother asked me to take her back upstairs. After I'd helped her into bed, she instructed me to open the top drawer of the bedside locker.

‘Now,' she said, her voice barely audible, ‘take twenty quid from my purse. I want you to go out tonight and have a bit of fun.'

I began to protest, but she wouldn't hear it.

‘It's your birthday for heaven's sake. You've been stuck in this house for weeks with only a pair of old women for company. Go out and have a drink on your mother. Not too many, mind. Phyllis will look after me. Let her earn her keep.'

The prospect of a night out was too tempting to refuse. I waited until my mother was settled and went downstairs and put my coat on. Mrs Nagle was up to her elbows in suds.

‘Where are you off to at this hour?' she said.

‘Out.'

 

The village was alive with Halloween sounds and smells, bonfires and smoke, bangers like pistol shots. Packs of children roamed the square, ecstatic with the dark, yelling
trick or treat.
I bought a naggin of whiskey from Hyland's off-licence and sat on the monument and took it all in, alcohol spreading outwards from my stomach to my fingertips.

A car pulled up and a girl got out of the passenger's seat. She was wearing a sort of fairy costume, a glitter-studded mask strapped across her eyes. She brandished a wand over me, thrust a flyer into my hand and stuck a few more under the wipers of parked cars and took off.

 

Halloween Ball
Afro-Kilcody Superstores
Adm €5

 

I stuffed the naggin in my coat pocket and set off towards Barracks Street. The air was thick with coal slack smoke, the odd firework going off with a sound like stitches ripping. Music boomed from the Superstores and jack-o'-lanterns flickered in the windows, candles guttering behind their gap-toothed grins. The front door was open, people spilling onto the step. The bouncer on the door was wearing a Frankenstein costume. I stepped past him and paid a girl sitting on a keg, a biscuit tin full of change on her lap.

Figures milled about in fancy dress, pirates and ghouls and vampires. The walls were draped in bats and bones, the ceiling hung with fake cobwebs. A sluggish beat throbbed from a sound system set up on a raised platform of pallets. Sub-bass and smoky vocals. The DJ was dressed in a Day-Glo one-piece skeleton suit, working the faders on a mixing desk. Some guy in a white coat squeezed by me, stethoscope swinging around his neck.

‘Hey,' he yelled into my ear. ‘The homeless look. Original.'

I pushed my way through the packed room. A girl threw her arms around my neck and kissed my cheek. She was poured into shiny black PVC pants and wearing a cat mask that covered her eyes.

‘Finnerty!' she shouted over the music.

‘Have we met?' I said.

She blinked. Her breath was industrial.

‘Sorry. Thought you were someone else.'

Tucked under her arm was a whip.

I squeezed sideways through bodies squashed rush-hour tight. The room blurred with harlequin faces and beatific smiles. Everything had that mellow faraway look. Projected high on the back wall was an old black-and-white 1950s monster film. Huddled in a corner, a guy in a full-face Reaganstein mask snorted a rail of powder off the back of his hand. He pinched at his rubber nostrils and rubbed the surplus powder on his gums.

I gulped whiskey, exhilarated by the strangeness of it all, and found an empty fruit crate and turned it on its side. Someone handed me the biggest, fattest blunt I'd ever seen. I sucked deep, the sweet smoke burning in my lungs. My head grew heavy and lolled like an infant's. I took another drag and rested the back of my skull against the wall and closed my eyes. Someone removed the blunt from my fingers. I groped for the naggin and took a slug and swam inside the deep, bass-heavy throb of the music.

 

‘Hey. Sleeping beauty.'

A young black man was crouched before me, short and slim, with delicate features and huge almond eyes. The party had thinned out and the music was chilled and spacey, the beats slower.

‘Looked like you were having a nice dream.' The young man smiled. He had on tailored trousers and pointy-toed boots with Cuban heels, a packet of cigarettes stuffed into the sleeve of a skinny-fit white T-shirt. His arms were whipcord wiry. ‘You all right?'

My head reeled a little, a weird field of insulation around my skin, but I was OK, no spinnies, no nausea. The naggin was gone.

‘Somebody stole my whiskey,' I said.

The young man jerked his head.

‘Come into the back room. You look like you could use some air.'

Groggy and uncoordinated, I followed him into the part of the shop that used to be the hair salon, stepping over empty bottles and beer cans and paper plates blackened with stubbed-out butts.

The back room was empty but for a few chairs and a table strewn with cards. There was a mini-bar fridge in the corner. The young man took two cans of lager from it, pulled the ringtabs and handed me one.

‘Sit,' he said. ‘It's cool: I work here. What's your name?'

I collapsed into one of the chairs and told him. The beer can was blissfully cold. I rolled it across my cheeks and forehead.

‘I'm Jude,' he said, and took the opposite chair.

I spluttered a bit.

‘Udechukwu?'

He pulled a face.

‘You read the paper.'

I wiped beer from my chin.

‘I thought you'd disappeared.'

He pursed his lips.

‘What else did you hear?'

‘Nothing. It was probably bullshit.'

‘Tell me anyway.'

‘I heard Gunter Prunty attacked you. Something to do with his girlfriend.'

Jude lit a cigarette.

‘I knew Maggie,' he said. ‘Nothing happened. I don't go with girls.'

He raised an immaculate eyebrow, picked up the cards and began to shuffle them.

‘She got me into a lot of trouble. But I couldn't stay mad at her. My mistake was going to the Guards. I got my boss into trouble. He had to let me go.'

He began to lay the cards out on the table. It was a Tarot deck, illustrated with Day of the Dead designs, skeletons and flowers. I nodded at the cards.

‘It said in the paper you were wrapped up in some sort of voodoo stuff.'

He pulled a face.

‘They made that up.'

‘Who?'

‘Gunter and his friend, the Guard. They told the reporter what to write. It was a cover-up.'

‘You're joking.'

He grinned, showing freshly capped teeth.

‘I wish.' His voice was melodious, almost sing-song.

‘That doesn't make sense,' I said. ‘Why would he do that for Gunter?'

Udechukwu shrugged.

‘Smokescreen.'

And it was then I realised that the stories Jamey had written were truer than the ones printed in the paper. It was Canavan that Maggie was seeing on the sly, of course. She had lied, and Canavan had gone along with her lie. Udechukwu read my thoughts.

‘People don't care if a story is real or not,' he said. All that matters is if they believe it.'

He scrutinised the cards, looking rueful.

‘Have you ever heard the story of the fool and the skull?' he said.

I shook my head and gulped from the can. It was way late.

‘Don't think so.'

He reshuffled the cards.

‘A young man was walking a path through the desert. He found a skull and poked it with his staff and said, “Foolishness killed thee.” The skull replied, “Foolishness killed me, but I will kill thee.” The young man returned home and told the old men of the village what happened, but they didn't believe him. They'd passed that skull many times but never heard it speak. So the young man said, “We'll go back to the place of the skull and I'll strike it with my staff, and if it doesn't speak, you can cut off my head.”

‘So they retraced his steps to the skull, and a crowd followed them. The young man struck the skull with his staff and said to it, “Foolishness killed thee”, but the skull didn't answer, so he struck it a second time, and still no answer. The crowd grew angry and accused the young man of telling lies and they fell upon him and cut off his head. But then the skull spoke. It said, “Foolishness killed me, but I killed thee.”'

Udechukwu went back to his cards. I got to my feet and made my way through the debris. There were maybe a dozen stragglers sitting around, bright eyed and red lipped and pale from drinking. I pushed the front door open. The new day was breaking, the sky a gorgeous scarlet, the kind of sky that could break your heart.

***

By December my mother was confined to her sickbed, still wouldn't eat anything more substantial than soup. Most evenings I sat at her bedside and read from one of her Westerns, a yarn about some salty old shooter name of McLean who embarks on one last sojourn across the border to retrieve his trusty horse, Horatio, from the bunch of no-good Mexican bandits who'd rustled him from the livery while McLean was sleeping off a bender in the local cathouse. The story ended with the shooter, having plugged every last bandit and rescued Horatio, bleeding buckets from a gut-shot wound as he sat atop the stoic old horse, who wouldn't rest until he'd ferried his dying master back across the border. My mother's eyes sparkled.