Rugby Flyer (2 page)

A
fter Eoin and Dylan said goodbye to Dixie they strolled slowly back to the town.

‘I suppose Dixie is right,’ said Dylan. ‘Leinster is better than nothing.’

‘Hang on there,’ laughed Eoin. ‘Better than nothing? Like it or not, this is one of the best clubs in Europe! It’s fantastic that they even know my name.’

Dylan shrugged. ‘Well I’d NEVER play for them.’

‘Wait a minute, Dylan,’ laughed Eoin. ‘Aren’t you from Leinster originally yourself?’ he asked, remembering that his pal had actually been born in County Louth.

Dylan went red. ‘Oh… I forgot that. Well… I suppose I learned my rugby in Limerick so I can’t turn my back on that.’

Eoin smiled and held his hands out wide. ‘Well I learned mine in Dublin!’

They reached Eoin’s home and parted, agreeing to
meet again after tea. Eoin needed to think, so he slipped upstairs to his bedroom. Kicking off his shoes he lay down on his bed and stared at the ceiling. He tossed around what Dixie had said and decided that he would throw his lot in with Leinster. But he was tired from the training session and soon dozed off.

Eoin was always a bit of a daydreamer, and he was soon picturing himself diving over the try-line wearing the famous blue shirt of Leinster and being shouldered off the field by his team-mates. As he walked off the field carrying the golden European trophy he spotted his old friend, Brian Hanrahan, who called him over.

Brian was a ghost, a rugby player who had died as a result of injuries he received in Lansdowne Road almost a hundred years before. He had become a great friend to Eoin, teaching him lots about rugby and guiding him in the adventures he had got up to since he moved to boarding school in Dublin.

‘Well done, Eoin – that was a cracking try,’ he said. ‘So you’ve decided to play for Leinster now?’

‘Yes, I think so,’ replied Eoin. ‘I wasn’t sure at all, but Grandad said it was a great opportunity and I would miss out if I didn’t take it.’

‘I think he’s right,’ replied Brian. ‘I had the same
dilemma myself, you know. I was born in Munster but went to school and then worked and played for a club in Leinster. My brother Charlie lived in Cork and played for Munster and Ireland. Shortly before I died I was picked to play in a Junior Interpro for Leinster AGAINST Munster. I wasn’t sure what to do at first, but there were a few of my Lansdowne pals on the team and Charlie advised me to play. I was all set, but, well you know what happened just a week before…’

Brian had died when a scrum collapsed and had spent the years since in the Lansdowne Road stadium where the accident happened.

Eoin nodded, but he was distracted by a loud banging. He looked around the stadium and couldn’t work out where it was coming from.

‘Eoin!’ came a shout.

Eoin shook his head and realised he had been dreaming and was now back lying on his bed in Ormondstown. The call was coming from outside the front door and he recognised the voice, which sounded a little angry.

‘EOIN!!’ called out Dylan, even louder this time.

He banged the door again twice as Eoin went downstairs.

‘Alright, alright, I’m coming,’ he called before opening
the door. ‘Sorry about that, I was having a nap. Now what’s the emergency?’

‘Do you think this is funny?’ he snapped, waving an envelope in Eoin’s face.

‘What… what are you talking about?’ replied Eoin, bewildered.

‘This… this hoax letter you sent!’ Dylan growled, thrusting it towards his friend.

Eoin stared at the envelope and turned it over in his hands. It was a standard white envelope, but his eye couldn’t help but be drawn to the bottom corner, in which there was a crest with three crowns and a stag’s head, and the words ‘Munster Rugby’.

The letter was addressed to Dylan, so Eoin asked, ‘Can I read it?’

Dylan nodded.

‘So did you write it? I don’t think it’s very funny,’ snarled Dylan.

‘Scout’s honour,’ said Eoin. ‘I swear I didn’t do it. It’s fantastic news!’

Dylan stopped, not sure whether to smile or not. He had been so convinced it was a mean trick that he had never considered that it might be true.

‘Let’s check it out,’ said Eoin. ‘Come in here and we’ll ring the Munster branch.’

They dialled the number on the letter and a nice lady answered the call. Dylan explained who he was and how he wasn’t sure if the letter he had received was a hoax.

The receptionist asked him to wait and returned a minute later, laughing, to say that the letter was genuine and that he was to send a reply today.

Eoin grinned and patted him on the head. ‘And you from County Louth – I wonder do they know that at all?’

T
he friends threw themselves into rugby practice with renewed energy, going through drills they had learned in school from early morning until it was too dark to see anymore. Eoin wore out the instep on his right boot with the number of kicks at goal he took.

One afternoon during a rare break in training they lay on the grass, staring up at the clouds drifting past.

‘It’s gas, isn’t it, that we’re going to be doing the same thing but for different teams on opposite sides of the country at the same time?’ said Dylan. ‘I wonder is this leading to some sort of interpro Under 15 competition. I’ve never heard of such a thing.’

‘Nah, the Munster lads wouldn’t be let near Dublin in case they got frightened by all the traffic,’ laughed Eoin.

‘Have your laugh, Eoin,’ grinned Dylan, ‘but at least I’ll be able to wear my red Munster shirt with pride around Ormondstown after the weekend. You’ll have to
put yours in the back of the wardrobe for ever more. Don’t even think of wearing that blue one around the town!’

Eoin’s face fell. Dylan was right. He started to think how much easier it would have been if Munster had called him up. He loved the red jersey that his grandfather had bought him which, although it was getting a little tight, he wore more often than any other item of clothing he owned.

He didn’t have much time to worry about what he would be wearing that autumn, though, as they were interrupted by a familiar voice.

‘Hey, lads, you don’t look like you’re training that hard. I wonder would Leinster give me a trial too.’

Dylan and Eoin clambered to their feet to greet their best friend from Castlerock College.

‘Alan!’ they shouted together. ‘What are you doing here?’

Eoin’s mum appeared at their friend’s shoulder.

‘Alan’s mum rang me last week and said he was a bit bored with the summer and suggested we take it in turns to host you all for a few days’ sleepovers. I thought I’d keep it a surprise!’ she said.

‘Ah, that’s brilliant, Mam,’ said Eoin.

‘So what have you been up to, Alan?’ asked Dylan.

‘Not much. It’s a bit boring up in Dublin. All my mates are in Irish college or away on holidays. I was playing tennis with myself up against a wall for about three days when Mam came up with this idea.’

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ said Eoin’s mother, ‘dinner will be around seven o’clock so no visits to the chipper!’

‘Thanks, Mrs Madden,’ said Alan, ‘I’ll keep them all straight and working hard at the rugby.’

The trio laughed – Alan was an enthusiastic player but wasn’t very good at all. While Eoin and Dylan had leapt forward through the age groups and were now stars of the Castlerock Junior Cup team, he was still struggling to hold his place on the 14Cs.

They sat around the field chatting for a while, before Eoin and Dylan resumed their session. Alan was happy to help out running after balls and collecting them from the ditches as Eoin took his pot-shots at goal. It was good to be around the guys again.

With meal-time approaching, Alan kept checking his watch and Eoin got the message.

‘That’s enough for today,’ he announced, tucking the ball under his arm.

As they walked back to town they bumped into Mrs Madden, who had a kitbag in her hand.

‘I just dropped down to your mum, Dylan, and she
said its fine for you to stay over for the next few days. Here’s your pyjamas and a change of clothes for tomorrow.’

‘Ah, thanks a lot, Mrs Madden, this will be like going on holidays!’

The three devoured their dinner and started making plans for the next few days. Rugby training couldn’t be slackened off, but they had to make time for Alan too. The young Dubliner insisted he was just happy to be in the same town as his buddies.

As Alan lounged on the spare bed in Eoin’s room – with Dylan on the blow-up mattress on the floor – he spotted the ornament that Dixie had presented to his grandson.

‘What’s that thing?’ he asked.

‘It’s some sort of broken rugby ball,’ said Eoin. ‘An old Russian lad gave it to Dixie years ago and he just gave it to me. I think he was making a joke about it being blue and me playing for Leinster. I think it’s more green than blue.’

Eoin told Alan about the old house beside where his grandfather lived and the rumours that it was haunted.

‘A real haunted house? We have to go there – NOW!’ said Alan, who was a great fan of scary stories and horror movies.

Eoin looked at Dylan and nodded. ‘Well… I suppose it would do no harm. It won’t be dark for ages so we’ll be safe enough,’ he said.

The trio scurried out of the house and trotted up towards Dixie’s house. The old man’s car wasn’t in the drive so they kept going, stopping when they reached the gates of the nearest big house.

Eoin had no fear of ghosts. He knew that visitors from the spirit world didn’t wear white sheets and go ‘woooo-wooooo’ like those in films. He had encountered four ghosts around Castlerock since he started in the school and all had been just ordinary men, although some had done extraordinary things.

But even though he didn’t feel scared of what might be inside, the way the old house appeared made Eoin and his pals slow down. Although it was a bright, warm, summer’s evening, as soon as they stepped through the broken-down iron gates it seemed to grow a little darker, and a little colder.

T
he Lubov house was built with dark stone and the windows were covered with shutters that had once been white. The front door had been broken off its hinges and hung at an angle, so that the whole structure looked like a face that was slightly twisted and screaming in agony.

Dylan and Eoin exchanged glances, and Eoin could see that his friend was nervous.

‘Are you sure you want to go in, Dyl?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, sure what’s the worst thing that could happen?’ said Dylan.

‘Well, I suppose we could caught in the crossfire between Frankenstein and the Mummy,’ laughed Alan, ‘And get eaten alive by zombies as we try to escape.’

Dylan went another shade whiter, regretting all the scary films he had watched with his sister.

Eoin led the trio up the driveway, which was overgrown
by brambles, and past a dusty red sports car whose four tyres were flat and had begun to rot.

‘What a waste,’ said Dylan, ‘That was a serious car in its day.’

They stopped at the front door and peered into the hallway.

‘The floorboards might be unsafe…’ said Eoin.

He pressed his foot to the floor and found it sturdy. He clambered through the gap where the door hung and called back to his pals.

‘It’s grand,’ he said, ‘The floorboards are all in place and they seem fine. We’ll need to open the shutters to get some light in, though.’

Eoin crossed the hallway into the main room and threw back the shutters in a cloud of dust and scrambling spiders.

Alan and Dylan followed him slowly, peering over their shoulders into every dark corner.

The house had obviously been cleaned out of anything valuable, but some rickety pieces of furniture remained. There were large white spaces on the wall where paintings had once hung.

‘This must have been an amazing place when it was lived in,’ said Alan. ‘He must have been a very rich old man.’

Eoin told him the rest of the story, explaining that the little rugby ball had once been owned by the ruler of Russia. ‘Mr Lubov must have been very well connected. He certainly had some amazing stories. Grandad really enjoyed the chats they had together.’

‘I wonder is there any more treasure about the place,’ said Dylan.

‘I’d say it’s long gone,’ said Alan. ‘It looks like anything half-decent was taken away or robbed.’

They wandered into the last of the downstairs rooms, where a piano had collapsed in on itself after a chandelier had fallen on top.

Eoin opened a shutter to get a better look at the room. He noticed that something thin and flat was lying on the mantelpiece and walked over to pick it up.

‘What’s that, Eoin?’ asked Dylan.

‘It looks like a photo frame,’ he replied. ‘It’s covered in dust though.’

Eoin crossed back over to the window and wiped his sleeve across the glass that covered the picture. He stared at the photograph which was brown and stained with age, but the most surprising thing was that it was of a man dressed in a white jersey and shorts running with a rugby ball clutched to his chest under his huge right hand. His flicked-back hair rippled in the wind as he
ran, and he looked as if he was just about to touch down for a try as the opposition chased him in vain.

‘Is that an English shirt?’ asked Dylan as his friends peered over his shoulder at the picture.

‘I think you’re right, Dyl,’ replied Eoin. ‘I think I can see a rose on the chest there.’

‘I wonder what that’s doing here,’ asked Alan. ‘I thought your man was Russian.’

‘Yeah, and no one ever heard of Russia playing rugby, did they?’ said Dylan. ‘Sure the snow would make it impossible.’

‘Ah now, it’s not all snow in Russia, I believe,’ laughed Eoin.

‘And Ireland played them in the World Cup in 2011,’ chipped in Alan. ‘We won 62-12 and Keith Earls got two tries.’

Eoin and Dylan stared at their pal. ‘For a fellow that can’t play rugby, you know an awful lot about it,’ Dylan quipped.

As they moved to leave the room, Eoin stopped in his tracks and held up his index finger, pointing at the ceiling.

‘Something’s moving around upstairs,’ he whispered.

‘Probably rats, or a cat,’ said Dylan, acting braver than he felt.

‘Sure we’ve seen everything we want to see, no point delaying any longer,’ said Alan, now very keen to leave the spooky mansion.

Eoin was the bravest, however, and walked to the foot of the tall, wide staircase that led to the upper floor of the Lubov home.

It was getting darker outside, and there were fewer windows allowing light into the giant hallway. But Eoin was sure he could see some movement at the top of the stairs. He took one step upwards as a figure came into view. There on the wide landing stood a man in all-white rugby gear, with a bright red rose sewn into the chest.

Eoin called out, ‘Who are you?’

The man stopped and stared down the stairs at Eoin. Silently, he turned and slowly walked away.

Eoin considered following him, but as Dylan and Alan had both backed away quickly and were now clambering noisily through the front door, he decided against it. He looked back as he made his own exit and saw the figure raise a right hand in farewell. Eoin did the same then jogged after his pals, catching up as they reached the road outside.

‘Who was that?’ gasped Alan.

‘Was it another ghost?’ asked Dylan.

‘I’m not sure,’ replied Eoin, ‘probably. But one thing I am sure of is this – your man on the staircase is the player in that old photo.’