The Runners (3 page)

‘What do you think the flap is for, Jay?’

‘I haven’t got a clue.’

Jay got down on his hands and knees and looked under it.

‘The smell is disgusting.’

‘What can you see?’

‘Metal shelves with all sorts of stuff on them. I can see red sauce, brown sauce and orange juice.’

By the time Jay got to ‘orange juice’, all Bobby could see were his legs. Bobby held on to his foot.

‘You’re not going any further.’

‘OK, let go!’

Bobby released his grip and Jay disappeared under the gate. Bobby’s heart was pounding. He got down to see what Jay was doing. As he did, a box of orange juice came out the flap, followed by another one.

‘Hide them behind the pallets.’

Bobby hid the cartons of juice behind wooden pallets that were in the yard of the paper factory. They always had a huge stack of pallets. They were brilliant at Hallowe’en for the bonfire. And for leaning up against the trunk of a tree. If Bobby and Jay couldn’t reach the first branch, they borrowed
a pallet from the yard. It was a permanent borrow, but when there were hundreds against the wall, one or two wouldn’t be missed.

Bobby got back to the flap and looked in. Jay was inspecting one of the metal shelves. Bobby could see that the shelves were in an open yard with the indoor part of the factory a little bit further back. Jay reached in to a shelf and lifted out a tray of red sauce. The bottles were red with a yellow label on them. The tray was sealed in plastic. Jay ripped it open and pulled out two bottles. He slid them along the ground to Bobby. Jay pulled out another two and put one in each pocket. He looked at Bobby and put his hands down by his side.

‘Don’t move,’ said Jay.

He pulled the bottle of sauce out of his pocket like it was a gun, opened the cap and squirted it at Bobby. Bobby covered his head with his arm, and when he looked up, he could see a man in blue overalls approaching Jay. He was walking quietly. Bobby could see a smirk on his face.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he roared, frightening the shit out of Jay. Bobby slid backwards and held the flap up. Jay came out head first with the bottle of sauce still in his hand.

‘Leg it,’ shouted Jay.

Bobby knew what ‘leg it’ meant. They were the words the sketch-keeper or look-out used when
they robbed orchards to alert the robber that someone was coming. It should have been Bobby saying it to Jay but he couldn’t get the words out. It required nerves of steel to rob. Jay had them. Bobby was always the sketch-keeper.

They ran through the yard of the paper factory, up the hill at the back and into the grounds of Holy Cross College. It was a training college for priests. They must have spent all their time inside praying and reading the Bible because Bobby and Jay never saw any of them walking around the amazing grounds. A narrow pathway with huge trees on one side and the back wall of the paper factory on the other led to the Tolka River, which ran all the way along the back of the college.

Jay had his favourite horse chestnut tree for climbing. When they got to it, Jay flew up, putting his feet in exactly the same spot on each branch that he had done hundreds of times previously. Bobby followed, watching the soles of Jay’s runners getting further and further away, until he dangled from the branch he always sat on. Jay was laughing with excitement. Bobby was laughing nervously, looking behind him to see if they were being chased.

‘Come on, slow coach!’

Bobby had heard that before. No matter how hard he tried, he could never climb as quickly as Jay. Bobby felt something cold hitting his head.

‘A bird just shit on your head!’

Bobby didn’t want to touch it, because he didn’t want bird poo on his hand, and he didn’t want to let go of the branch. He looked up at Jay, who had the red sauce pointing down. He was gently squeezing the bottle, letting one drop out at a time.

‘Give it over!’ squealed Bobby.

‘You’ll have red hair by the time you get up here if it takes you any longer.’

The two of them sat on the branch, looking back down the pathway. If anyone came after them, they were safe. They were invisible amongst the branches of the tree.

‘Do you want to have a red-sauce fight?’ asked Jay.

‘Here?’

‘No, beside the waterfall.’

‘My mam will kill me if I come home covered in red sauce.’

‘You won’t get it on your clothes.’

‘Just aiming at the head?’

‘No, you dope, we’ll take our clothes off. And then wash ourselves in the Tolka.’

Bobby loved getting into the Tolka, even though it was freezing. At the top of the waterfall, the water was perfectly calm and clear. Every other part of it looked as filthy as it was. They covered each other in red sauce. Bobby didn’t try to escape from the squirts and neither did Jay. When the
sauce ran out, they dived into the water to clean themselves. They ducked themselves under the water and had swimming races, which Jay always won no matter how much of a head start he gave Bobby.

They had orange-juice drinking competitions every day for the next week, even though the juice became more disgusting the longer it stayed behind the pallets. It made them feel sick, but they had fun feeling sick.

Bobby couldn’t always swim. He had nearly drowned when he played for the Ballybough United under tens. They were playing a night of indoor matches against the boys from the School for the Blind. All the Ballybough United lads thought this was hilarious. How could they see the ball? See it they did. And they also heard it. The ball they played with had what sounded like bells inside it. Bobby had never played against a team as aggressive as the blind boys. It was like they had something to prove. The minute the whistle went, they kicked lumps out of the Ballybough boys. They won four out of the five games.

The School for the Blind had a swimming pool as well as an indoor gym. The dressing-rooms were four times as big as the ones in Sean MacDermott Street swimming pool. And they were clean. Sean Mac was verruca city. A killer verruca meant no
football. Jay got a disgusting verruca when he was ten. It took over the whole sole of his foot. Jay would pick at the skin and throw it at Bobby.

Most of the lads were already on a huge floating tube when Bobby took his two tiptoe steps through the cloudy, shallow, disgusting, disinfected pool. He hated it touching his feet. He tried to jump over it one day and wrecked himself. He ran and jumped straight on top of the tube, knocking Jay off as he landed. Jay swam to the side and climbed out of the pool. He launched himself at the tube, landing in the middle. Bobby got splashed in the face but managed to cling on. One of the strong lads from the Blind team was next to launch. He was twice the size of Bobby. As Bobby thought he was going to get squashed, he let go, thinking his feet were inches from the bottom. He was in the deep end. He sank straight to the bottom. He could see four pairs of legs dangling from the tube. He pushed himself off the bottom and when his head hit the air, he took a deep breath and sank again. Bobby hadn’t even learned how to tread water. From the bottom, he could see someone crash onto the tube. He pushed himself up again, this time slightly sideways. He took another big breath in, sank again, and repeated the sideways push up six more times before he made it to the side of the pool. He clung on there for what seemed like an eternity
before making his way to the empty shallow end. It was the first time he realised what could happen if you couldn’t swim. He had never been in the deep end in Sean Mac when he was ten. He had been in the Irish Sea a few times when he was younger, but just to paddle. He stayed in the shallow end looking at all the swimmers having the best time of their lives. Jay hadn’t even noticed. Bobby was determined to learn how to swim. He told Jay on the way home what had happened.

‘I’ll teach you how to swim.’

‘Do you think I’ll be able?’

‘It’s easy, you won’t drown in the shallow end of Sean Mac.’

Over the next few weeks, Jay taught Bobby how to swim. He wasn’t as good as Jay, but he could swim. That was all he needed. He knew he would never be afraid of drowning again.

Bobby thought about death a lot. He knew what suicide was. He had heard about people hanging themselves and sticking their heads in gas ovens. The thought entered his head sometimes as to what would happen if he walked in front of the number 23 bus. He knew he would die, but what happened next is what he thought about. Some people had thrown themselves into the River Liffey and drowned. He never thought about doing that. He didn’t want to die when he was on the bottom of
the deep end, but an eerie calm had come over him. He knew everything was going to be all right. He didn’t know if Jay thought about death like he did. He was afraid to ask. It was a secret he had to keep to himself. So was wetting the bed. If he didn’t wet the bed, maybe he wouldn’t think about death any more.

Bobby was surrounded by old people. His neighbours on one side were a couple in their seventies called Eileen and Ned. They had a dog called Smartie who made it his mission in life to jump over the back wall into Croke Park. The wall was seven feet high. He would jump up continuously for five minutes and then take a break, panting at a hundred miles an hour while he lay on the ground. When his breathing became slower and his tongue went back in his mouth, he would start jumping again. Then he would do it again, and again, all day long. Bobby had seen him cling to the top of the wall twice. He barely managed to glance at the freedom on offer before he slid back down into his small yard. Eileen said Smartie had bad hips. It didn’t matter what you said back to her as she was stone deaf.

His other neighbour was Michael Dunne. He was ninety-six. He drank a naggin of whiskey every day, except Sundays when he drank two. Bobby couldn’t understand why he didn’t buy a large bottle as it would save him a fortune. Bobby
would be sent to the Vine Tree off-licence on Ballybough Road to make the purchase. He was allowed keep the two pence change, out of which he would buy two penny golfball chewing gums.

The Vine Tree’s busiest day was when the Dubs played in Croke Park. Dublin’s Gaelic football fans were either normal people or skinheads. The skinheads drank flagons of cider before matches. They hung around on the street outside Bobby’s house, smoking cigarettes, singing songs and pissing up against the walls of the houses. Nobody said anything to them because they were skinheads; you didn’t mess with skinheads. Some of them had the word ‘skinhead’ tattooed on their lips. Others had spiders’ webs tattooed on their heads. One really fat skinhead had a shrine for every year Dublin won the All-Ireland tattooed on his back. 1891, 1892 … all the way to 1983. Bobby knew he would be getting 1985 on his back in a few months’ time. Barney Rock was on fire and Dublin would get their revenge on Kerry for defeat in the 1984 semi-final.

Every Saturday morning Anto brought Bobby and Jay on a sixty-minute run. Out past Fairview Park and along the coast road to Clontarf and the wooden bridge that Bobby always thought was going to collapse. Jay would bounce up and down, holding on to the side of the bridge, trying to make
it shake. It would give Bobby a horrible, nervous knot in his stomach.

‘Running is great for the cardiovascular system,’ Bobby would explain.’

‘The what?’ asked Jay.

‘The heart.’

‘Then why didn’t you just say that?’

‘Because that’s what it’s called.’

Anto liked the quiet and breathing in the sea air as he ran.

‘I’m sick of listening to the two of you, will you shut up and concentrate.’

Anto knew how to shut them up. He would pick up the pace of the run to a point where they were just about hanging on and unable to speak.

‘I’m moving into a house on Foster Terrace. It’s number 8, four houses down from Ballybough Road,’ announced Anto. ‘Call over when you get back.’

Anto sprinted away from the two of them with a few miles left. Bobby stared at the size of the muscles in his legs as he disappeared into the distance.

Foster Terrace was parallel to Sackville Avenue. Ardilaun Road, where Bobby lived, joined the two roads together.

‘I’ll need a hand moving some of my stuff. The garden is in bits too, so I’ll have some work for the two of you.’

‘Now Jay will call you a poshie!’

Jay would slag Bobby, saying he was a poshie because he lived in a house. He couldn’t have really meant it, because his flat was bigger than Bobby’s house, and his mam worked and was on the social welfare, whereas Bobby’s dad was just on the social welfare. Bobby hated it when he called him a poshie. Kevin was a poshie. He had oxblood Doc Martens and a fringe. The one thing Bobby didn’t want to be was a poshie. He wanted to be a Ballybough boy, just like Jay.

Bobby’s mam said that the people in the flats were different. Bobby didn’t think they were different, he wanted to be like the people in the flats. He thought all people were the same. Some just had more money than others.

From the front balcony of Anto’s house you could see the houses on Foster Terrace, and all the way down Ballybough Road to the Tolka River. You could see four of the seven pubs in Ballybough from the front balcony and the other three from the back. That was an average of one pub every one hundred metres.

Inside the house, Anto had all his stuff in boxes. One was marked ‘Boxing Videos’.

‘How many boxing videos have you got?’ asked Bobby.

‘So many I’ve lost count. I have all the classic fights.’

Bobby didn’t have a video recorder. Neither did Jay.

‘Can we watch a few of them?’

‘You can watch them all if you get these boxes around to the house and bring this video up to a friend of mine.’

Anto handed them a video with the
Thriller in Manila
written on the side. It was in a snap-shut box and had a picture of Ali with the world title belt on the front and back.

‘Here you go. Johnny is another boxing fan. He lives in number 19 in the Strand flats.’

Bobby hated everything about the Strand flats. It was rival territory. He felt safe in Ballybough flats. Jay was fearless and Bobby kept his agitation to himself. The stairwells were the same as Ballybough flats. They had the same smell. It was a lingering smell of urine, mixed with boiled cabbage and the rubbish bins that overflowed from the shop at the entrance to the stairs.