Mondo Desperado (23 page)

If you had informed anyone back in Barntrosna of what transpired next, employing perhaps the words: ‘Can you believe it – Mrs Tiernan hitting the sister superior a box?’ you
simply wouldn’t have been given any credence. As indeed, why ought you, for up until this moment Mrs Tiernan had never hurt anyone in her life, never mind sisters superior and people in
authority. Indeed, nobody was more surprised than the fifty-year-old woman herself when she slowly raised her small, weather-beaten fist and planted it fair and square in the middle of the hirsute
nurse’s jaw. The nurse who now, whitefaced, fell back onto a pile of gravel directly behind her with her skirt billowing up around her waist in the manner of a landed parachutist. A trembling
Mrs Dolores Tiernan stood over her, tentatively rubbing her bruised knuckles. Pobs McCue leaped forward, his eyes on fire. ‘It’s what you deserve, you heartless thug!’ he
tremulously cried, placing a protective arm around the shoulders of his courageous long-time neighbour.

Eustace De Vere-Bingham, intoxicated by the vehemence of Mrs Tiernan’s response, was then astonished to find himself leaping forward and standing over the perplexed hospital employee,
crying: ‘Ha, ha! Die! Yeah – you heard me! You got that, whore? Ha ha! Hee hee! Ha ha!’

As he often reflected – fearfully, indeed – for many years after, while hypnotized by the beguiling light of the cathode-ray tube, it was the mercy of God that he did not, at that
moment, have a machete or screwdriver or ordinary garden tool at his disposal. (The hurt Alicia – and, by extension, the entire race of females – had caused him was still a vibrant,
living thing.)

Even Fr Luke found it difficult to restrain himself. But, undoubtedly, the greatest effect was that which it had on Pobs, who now raced forward and hit the stumbling nurse an almighty kick in
the flank, crying belligerently, ‘That’s for Noreen!’ as he retreated, stunned, as though some powerful unnamed drug had, out of nowhere, somehow managed to shoot itself directly
into his bloodstream.

*

If perhaps they had experienced any success whatsoever in locating Noreen in the early stages of their campaign the psychological adhesive which bound the earnest investigative
team together might never have begun to soften and ultimately melt away as it did. They did not, however. And in the to them alien city of London, this was ultimately to prove fatal. For, adrift
from the emotional moorings which had inextricably bound them to the beloved town and hinterland of Barntrosna, it was not long before a deep uncertainty began to manifest itself within each
individual. And which, as it inevitably must, led to the fractious, confrontational behaviour which became such a feature of the investigative party in the latter days. Perhaps if Fr Luke had not
– quite by chance – been approached by an emaciated youth who clutched feverishly at his arm and begged him to hear his confession, the cracks might not have begun to appear – at
least with such alacrity – and they could have continued to function for somewhat longer as a happy unit. But appear they did and when Fr Luke, after admittedly quite a tortuous wrestling
match with his conscience, announced one night whilst they were all consuming cans of Pepsi around a tar-smelling bonfire that he now considered his duties lay elsewhere, the die was cast. As Pobs
realized, his can suspended before his chalk-coloured face, it was truly the beginning of the end.

The old priest looked sadly at the pale farmer, and lowering his head as if it was an unbearable weight, softly, to the question, ‘Does this mean what I think it means?’ provided the
answer: ‘I’m afraid it does, Pobs.’

Now Pobs McCue had never sworn at a priest before in his life but this was clearly more than he could bear. ‘You mean to tell me,’ he began chokingly, ‘that we have come all
this way to look for Noreen and now you’re just going to race off with some fly-by-night drug addicts you met on the street?’

This choice of words incensed the priest. ‘They are
not
drug addicts!’ he snapped indignantly.

‘Well, go on, then!’ retorted Pobs. ‘Go on! For if that’s the way you feel about it we don’t need your help anyway!’

Perhaps if they had called him back as he wound his way into the black, smoky London night, he might indeed have returned. Who knows? And who can say that it was not meant to be that way and
that after a lifetime of venial sins and hopelessly innocent escapades that could hardly be called sins at all he now had tales told to him in confession about murders and robberies and rapes and
what have you, subjects of which heretofore he could only longingly dream.

One thing was certain – as far as the minibus shuttle of nocturnal investigations was concerned, irreparable damage had been done. Now Mrs Tiernan, overwrought by emotion, was prone to
bursting without warning into tears – something which would have been utterly unthinkable before. No matter where they went in London, they began to perceive people laughing at them.
‘What? See her? In a city of ten million people? You’ve just got to be out of your mind, mate! Bladdy ’ell! Takes all kinds, don’t it? Farking missing nurses!’

Such seemed – indeed
were
– the responses of myriad petrol-pump attendants and saloon bar keepers.

*

Poor Pobs was heartbroken. He had begun to fear now that he would never see his loved one again. As he declared hoarsely one night, having consumed enormous quantities of ale,
‘She could be dead! Murdered! Dumped in a godforsaken bin somewhere!’

Which, of course, she wasn’t, because right at that very moment she was climbing into a brand-new pair of leather trousers (stolen, of course!), and preparing herself for yet another
profitable night on the town, as her soul mate and partner in crime adjusted a brass nose ring and winked at her from the triptych mirror, smiling as she said: ‘You all right, then, Noreen
Pussycat?’

Yes, Noreen Tiernan was all right. No doubt about it! Would that the same could have been said for her mother, who was as far now from a discerning, capable investigator as it was possible to
get, perilously close indeed to what might be described as a crushed and broken remnant of an Irish country housewife. After the others had taken their leave of her and vanished somewhere into the
bowels of the pulsing city, she would remain alone in the minibus, thinking back on fields full of buttercups through which Noreen would come running towards her in a lovely little print dress,
ecstatically crying: ‘Mammy! Mammy! Mammy!’ Her body would shudder then as she sat there thinking of how stupid she had been to come over near this cold and heartless place! How could
she ever have believed she would find her daughter in this vertiginous landscape of kaleidoscopic madness? How could she – a poor, simple, round-shaped, unassuming woman – ever have
hoped to triumph in an alien culture? People did not listen to small curly-haired women in plain, unassuming clothes and furry boots, most of all, consider them – how could they? –
detectives. No doubt, had she been a burly, uncompromising man with a half-eaten hamburger or a polystyrene cup things would have been different, had she hurled files and snapped into handsets,
threatening to go ‘right up to City Hall!’ if nothing was done. But Mrs Tiernan couldn’t do that. She didn’t even know where City Hall was. No, she now knew (and the
realization stung her – she would never make a detective. She would never be anything more than a poor stupid worthless – and now daughter-less – lump of a housewife stuck in the
cab of a minibus in a nightscape of no names and broken dreams.

Or so she thought. And indeed might have been absolutely right and gone on being just that if Pobs McCue, in the Piccadilly area of the city, had not found his way into a certain late-night
dancing club (Madame Pork’s!) – a truly extraordinary achievement considering the amount of Tuborg he had consumed over the course of the day – and there encountered one Augustus
‘Gus’ Halpin, celebrated manager of the Barntrosna branch of the First National Bank, emerging from a velvet-draped cubicle, not in his customary sober grey suit, but in a bias-cut
burgundy gown that reached right down to his knees! Not only that, but clutching a tortoiseshell cigarette-holder!

‘Gus!’ gasped Pobs in astonishment as he fell back against the wall.

*

What exactly was happening inside the body of Pobs McCue as he slow-danced now beneath the rotating mirrorball, placing his large freckled hand on the shoulder of the
transformed bank manager who was now smiling wryly – and not a little hungrily!? Something which he, for certain, had never before experienced. It was as if every red corpuscle in his
bloodstream had received a klaxonlike command to make at once for the immediate vicinity of his cheeks, followed by reinforcements whose responsibility it was to serve the area in the upper back
and neck region. With the result that when the smiling, lip-glossed and seriously heavily made-up employee of the Barntrosna branch of the First National Bank turned to flicker her eyelids and coo
‘sweet nothings’, what met her gaze was not a handsome, copper-haired youth but a livid, scarlet-complexioned man in his late twenties who appeared to be on the verge of a nervous
breakdown and a heart attack at the same time. And, perhaps in a small way, it did indeed disappoint her. For he was no Tom Cruise, that is for certain, and what girl, politically committed
feminist or otherwise, does not harbour a secret desire to be spirited away to the murky fastness of some dark Prince Charming, there to be seriously tackled until the dawn breaks? But there are
too other important things in life – things such as love, for example. For how long can such unbridled physical ravaging continue before beginning to pale? Which was why Augusta pushed back
the tumbling copper curls, and throwing caution to the winds, flung her arms around his neck and sank her tongue deep into the unsuspecting Pobs McCue’s mouth.

*

The concept of ‘clubbing’ was one quite unknown to Pobs McCue, and when Augusta gripped him by the arm and cried excitedly, ‘I know what we’ll do, Pobs,
darling! We’ll go to the Ring of Feathers Club! What do you say?’ he simply hadn’t the faintest idea how to respond. And compliantly followed her lead as she cooed: ‘Ooh!
What a good idea!’ chuckling tipsily as they fell out into the night, the bank manager hoisting her skirts as she inserted two fingers in between her pink lips and whistled shrilly for a
cab.

What fun they had on the way over! Augusta just could not get over the sheer coincidence of meeting – in London, a city of ten million people, for heaven’s sake! ‘Oh
now!’ Pobs repeated – a little nervous still, it has to be admitted, as the bank manager kept squeezing his leg and fluttering her eyelashes at him, ‘sure you wouldn’t think
it would happen in a million years!’

Any more than you would think what happened next would be within the remotest bounds of possibility. Somehow, between the cab and the Ring of Feathers (which was only a matter of twenty yards
away), they managed to become separated and just at the point when Augusta was about to call, ‘Wait for me!’ she found herself roughly grabbed from behind and the cold steel of an open
razor glinting from the shadows pressed coldly to her neck. ‘Take that!’ cried Stephanie Diggs as she laid the flat of her hand on Augusta’s cheek. ‘See how you like that,
honey!’

The former nurse stood back as the bank manager’s blonde wig fell into the gutter.

‘Help me! Help me, Pobs!’ squealed Augusta, cradling his heavily made up face in his hands.

‘Oh no! Oh my God! Noreen!’ cried Pobs as the blood began to drain from his cheeks, the woman he loved so much standing staring at him for the first time in what had seemed to him a
century!

‘Who’s this? Huh?’ demanded Stephanie Diggs as she manhandled him disdainfully. ‘You hear me? Who is this? What’s your name? You deaf?’

There are some things you simply cannot explain. Actions of men for which no rationale can ever be found. What followed next is such an action. That Pobs’s countenance should pale to the
shade of the whitest of flours is to be expected. That he should tremble and stand aghast, also. But that he would suddenly bellow, ‘Don’t fucking push me! Don’t you fucking push
me, Hatchet-Face! I’m Pobs! Pobs McCue! And I’m not going to take it any more!’ square his fist and hit Stephanie so forcefully on the chin that she collapsed in a dead faint on
the street beside him simply could not have been foreseen.

Or indeed what transpired next: Noreen bursting into tears, casting the razor from her as if somehow in that instant she had suddenly been awakened from some black induced hypnosis to cry out,
‘Pobs! Oh Pobs!’ peppering his red, meaty face with innumerable kisses, as she wept: ‘Oh, Pobs! How I’ve missed you! Darling, how I’ve missed you!’ her eyes
lighting up once more as Pobs and Augusta gave her a little wave of solidarity and she found herself crying: ‘It’s you! Pobs! You’re all here! All my old friends! The old
Barntrosna friends I should never have left!’

*

Can you even begin to imagine the exultation which swept through Noreen’s mother’s being when she looked up and through bruised and red-rimmed eyes perceived the
sight that was before her? ‘It’s happened,’ she repeated wearily, ‘I’ve finally lost my mind!’ It was as if she had indeed done so and been magically spirited
away to some glorious Elysian fields where everything would now be as her heart desired it. Except perhaps, without Eustace De Vere-Bingham, who, having spent the entire night in the video shops
and basement striptease parlours, had, it would appear, indeed crossed a ‘line’ of some kind, bringing him as far from the Elysian fields as could possibly be imagined. For now he
writhed, trouserless, in the back of the minibus, tweaking his private parts and repeating foolishly: ‘So you thought I was gonna give you a ride to Sausalito, did you baby? Seems to me like
you went and made a big mistake then, honey! A big mistake, Alicia baby! Ha ha! Ha ha! Hee!’ with tears of hopeless laughter rolling down his face.

Mrs Tiernan could not contain herself as she flung open the door of the minibus and went racing towards her firstborn.