The Runners (6 page)

‘Why do they speak like that, Jay?’

‘I don’t know. Land a punch in their mouths and it will shut them up.’

Bobby was more nervous about sleeping in the same bed as Jay than he was about the fight. He did everything Anto told him. Kept his composure, kept using his jab. He knew he would win after the first thirty seconds. He was able to avoid the punches thrown at him with ease. He landed some brilliant punches that had all the Ballybough boys cheering.

Anto wanted you to fight a particular way. If you went off the script, he went mad. He knew what it took to win fights. Jay decided not to listen to Anto. He came out of his corner all guns blazing. Everyone in the hall could hear the bollocking Anto gave him after the first round. Jay listened and won the next two rounds without trying to knock his opponent out with one punch. He avoided the punches thrown at him, and landed most of the ones he threw.

Anto was proud of all the boxers. He hated losing more than anything. All but one of the Dublin boxers won, but what Anto focused on was Jay’s behaviour. He talked about listening and discipline. Bobby knew what he meant. All successful sportsmen were disciplined. Bobby knew he had what it took to become a champion.

‘Bobby, are you ever going to go to sleep?’

‘I’m not tired.’

‘It’s half two in the morning. And you’re watching shite on the telly.’

Bobby had come up with a simple tactic. Stay awake all night. His eyes grew heavier and heavier. He knew he wouldn’t be able to resist the urge. He felt himself drifting off to the place that caused him more pain than anything else in the world. Bobby never woke when he started peeing, only when the last drop came out did he feel himself lying in a puddle. Even though the bed was bigger than anything he had ever slept in, Bobby could still feel Jay’s presence beside him. He hung on to the side of the bed, hoping if he did pee, that it would be as far away from Jay as possible.

As usual, Bobby woke on his back, with the puddle beneath him. The clock beside him said it was twenty past four in the morning. He took his pyjamas off and hid them in his bag.

He snuck into the bathroom and took one of the big bath-towels down from its peg. He wrapped it around himself and took the other one down. He folded it in four and tried to place it gently over the wet patch. He looked at Jay’s eyes, which were closed. The towel covered the offending area. Bobby lay back down on top of it and pulled the duvet over him. Jay didn’t budge. In the thousands of times Bobby had wet the bed, he had never done it twice in one night. The thickness of the towels stopped any of the liquid penetrating through. Bobby stayed awake, dreaming of the day God would give him the ability to stay dry.

One thing Bobby knew was that Jay wasn’t thick. He didn’t know, or care, what certain words meant, but that didn’t make you thick. Pee smelled. And Jay could smell it. Jay looked at the towels. All Bobby could picture was Jay calling him a piss-in-the-bed.

Jay pulled the towel back and stared at the yellow patch. He turned to Bobby and smiled.

‘I won’t tell Angela.’

‘Piss off, I don’t fancy her.’

‘I pissed in the bed for a while when I was younger.’

‘How did you stop?’

‘I just grew out of it.’

‘My ma says I will too.’

‘Of course you will, when you grow up! Don’t worry about it, hurry up and get in the shower.’

Bobby showered for as long as Jay would let him.

‘There’ll be no hot water left.’

‘It’s a hotel, they have unlimited hot water.’

Bobby loved the feeling of a hot shower on his skin. If he had a shower in his house, it would make his life so much easier.

They sat on top of Ballybough Bridge facing Croke Park, with their trophies and cans beside them. There was a set of traffic lights on the brow of the hill. When they saw the 23 bus coming, Bobby pressed the button. The lights turned orange and then red. As soon as the bus came to a stop, they pulled down their trousers and showed their backsides to whoever was on the bus.

Willo was crossing at the lights. He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a hammer. He raised it in the air and smashed the passenger window of a Ford Cortina that had stopped at the lights. The lady driver started screaming. Willo grabbed her handbag from the seat. He ran at Bobby and Jay and threw the bag down onto the railway tracks. Willo sprinted off into the flats. Bobby and Jay looked down to see Git running off with the bag. The driver of the bus got off to console the woman.

‘What the hell was he doing?’ asked Bobby.

‘He’s a junkie.’

‘A what?’

‘A druggie. That’s why Anto said to stay away from them.’

Jay placed the ball in the middle of the road, directly in front of the boarded-up window of the unknown house.

‘A pound says you can’t hit it.’

‘You’re on.’

Jay took aim and just missed the metal window.

‘My turn.’

Bobby took aim and hit it direct. Willo stuck his head out.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’

‘Having a bet to see if we could hit the window,’ answered Bobby.

‘Give me a shot at that.’

Willo climbed out and Jay placed the ball for him in the middle of the road. Willo lined up to kick it. He pulled his leg back and just as he was about to kick it, Jay pushed the ball out of the way. Willo fell flat on his bum. Bobby and Jay started laughing. Angela was part of a small crowd who were looking on. Willo ran at her and screamed in her face.

‘What are you laughing at, nigger?’

‘Shut the fuck up,’ said Bobby.

‘Are you a nigger lover?’ Willo hit back.

‘Shut up you fucking junkie,’ said Bobby.

‘What did you say?’

‘You’re a druggie.’

‘Leg it,’ shouted Jay.

The two of them sprinted off towards Anto’s house. Angela ran off crying. Willo climbed back into the unknown house.

‘I have someone I need you to drop off a video to later. I need to show you where it is first.’

Anto walked with them to Sean MacDermott Street, past the swimming pool to a block of flats behind the church. More of the flats were boarded up than occupied.

‘Are you sure he has a video recorder? These flats are in bits,’ asked Bobby.

‘Of course he does.’

They walked into the first block, up the stairwell, which was much darker than Ballybough. The church blocked any light getting in. The flat was right at the end of one of the landings. The door was brown. Anto knocked on the door five times, then a gap, then four times.

‘Anto, how are we doing, son?’

Bobby knew Anto wasn’t his son. Some innercity people called everyone son, and didn’t know their singular from their plural. Bobby’s mam would correct him if he spoke like that.

‘Micka, these are my video delivery boys. Bobby and Jay.’

‘How are we doing, my sons?’

Maybe he did know his plurals.

‘I’ll send them down in a while, and I’ll see you later.’

‘Nice one Anto, son, nice one. Tell them to do the five and four.’

Bobby thought Micka looked like a bit of a mad thing. And so did Johnny for that matter.

‘Lads, this is my most precious video. It’s Joe Louis, the Brown Bomber, fighting James Braddock for the heavyweight title in 1937.’

‘They didn’t have televisions in 1937,’ joked Jay.

‘Now they can put all the old fights on video. Drop this down to Micka.’

When they got there, three people were blocking the entrance to the stairwell. They all had jackets on, even though it was a warm summer day. One of them was Gringo. Bobby got a knot of fear in his stomach. They hadn’t seen him since Anto had nearly thrown him off the balcony.

‘All right, lads, what are you doing down here?’

‘Doing something for Anto,’ said Jay, knowing the mention of Anto’s name gave them protection.

Jay remembered the knock and banged as hard as he could.

‘We have the video for you.’

‘What is it?’

‘It’s Anto’s most precious video. The Brown Bomber, Joe Louis,’ said Bobby.

‘I love the Brown Bomber. Come in for a minute.’

The flat was much nicer than Johnny’s. There was a really big television, with videos in front of it on the floor. It was clean. And it had more than one couch. Micka took a tenner off the table and handed it to Jay. He handed a video to Bobby. It had no cover on it.

‘Bring this back to Anto and tell him it was perfect.’

Bobby loved running with Jay and Anto, but when he ran on his own he could dream without any distractions. He used each section of his lap to dream about Angela. His record time for the 2,300-metre lap was just under nine minutes. He had a digital watch, which he used to time himself. Eight minutes, fifty-six seconds, and seventy-seven hundredths of a second. 8:56.77. He scraped it on the headboard of his bed. He had the number imprinted on his brain but he always dreamed about running faster.

To the top of the bridge into Summerhill Parade was five hundred metres. He would dream about holding Angela’s hand walking up Ballybough Road. It was harder to run uphill at the start, but athletics were run in a clockwise direction, so Bobby’s lap had to be, too. He could have started at the Sunset House, but that meant finishing there,
and it was farther away from his house. It also meant running along in front of the flats for the last bit of the lap. He liked running that bit at the start when he had more energy, just in case he saw someone he knew. When he got to the Sunset, he looked at the watch; he knew he wanted it to be just under three minutes. It was just under a third of the way. He looked at the watch, 2:40.

Brilliant, thought Bobby. Get to the corner of Jones’s Road in just under two minutes. He would focus on Angela kissing him at the Sunset, and pick up the pace slightly, accelerating again when he turned the corner at Hogan’s pub. He looked at the watch, four minutes exactly.

Bobby took a few deep breaths and tried to work out how fast he could run the five-hundred-metre stretch behind the Hogan Stand. It was fifty metres longer than the last bit, but it had a long downhill stretch. Angela would let him touch her breasts on the outside of her top. He got to the top of the bridge and accelerated down. He focused on the gates of Holy Cross College.

When he turned onto Clonliffe Road he looked at the watch again, 5:32. He worked out that he had to run the final six hundred and fifty metres in 3:24 to beat his record. His legs were beginning to feel like they weighed ten stone each. It was time to think of touching Angela breasts on the inside of her top, but instead he imagined he was Eamonn
Coghlan catching the Russian athlete in Helsinki at the World Championships in 1983. Coghlan was so confident he was going to win that he glanced at the Russian athlete and smiled. He was Ireland’s first ever athletics world champion. Dig deep for one final effort. He counted the sixteen single-storey redbrick houses as he passed them. He was halfway along the final stretch.

His lungs were burning but it didn’t slow him down, he just focused on being Eamonn Coghlan. When he got to the end, he stopped the watch. 8:30.01. Twenty-six seconds faster. It gave him a sick feeling in his stomach, but it made his brain feel good.

Bobby’s mam watched every news programme on the television. Even if the headlines were the same on the six o’clock news and the nine o’clock news, she still watched them both. It wouldn’t be on the news unless it was bad news. Watching it never made you happy. It was always about explosions in Northern Ireland or England. Bobby couldn’t understand why she wanted to watch bad news.

The noise the door getting kicked in made was like an explosion. It wasn’t the first time that the house had been targeted. But now Bobby knew it was his fault. He ran out onto the stairs and saw the hall door lying on the floor. It had come clean off the hinges. It had been happening for years. Normally in the dark of winter, the older lads in the flats would throw stones at the windows. At Halloween they would throw fireworks in the letterbox. It upset Bobby’s mam more than anything. She wanted to leave the area. People had come to view the house and were interested in buying, but Bobby’s mam felt guilty that they would have
fireworks put in their letterbox. She couldn’t bear to pass on that situation so she decided to live with it, as hard as it was.

‘Will you run and get your dad?’

Bobby had to step on the door to get out. He knew she was sad that his dad loved the pub more than the house. Bobby had heard the words ‘one for the road’ so many times he had lost count. He still loved going to the Sunset to get him though. Bobby felt bad; he knew it was Willo who had kicked the door in. It was his fault for calling him a junkie.

It only took him two minutes to get to the Sunset if he sprinted down the main road. He decided to take his alternative route. He pretended he was escaping from the Black and Tans.

Down Ardilaun Road, up the railings at the end, onto the railway tracks. Up onto the grass bank that ran between the railway tracks and the canal. Up the wall that led to the top of Ballybough Bridge
.

The stones that made up the wall of the bridge were large grey blocks. There was a gap big enough between the blocks for Bobby to put his size-three runners into. He could haul himself up bit by bit until he reached the top. It was a long way down. About fifteen feet. Bobby had counted the blocks. There were eighteen from top to bottom. They were each nine inches high. Eighteen times nine is a hundred and sixty-two. He also
knew there were twelve inches in a foot. His ruler for school was twelve inches long. Or thirty centimetres. One hundred and sixty two divided by twelve was about thirteen. There was also cement in between each block. Bobby reckoned that made it fifteen feet high.

‘Dad, mam wants you,’ Bobby said, panting, having just escaped from the Black and Tans.

‘Do you want a Coke?’

‘Mam said she needs you.’

‘John, get the young fella a Coke, please.’

The barman in the Sunset had been there for as long as the pub. He moved really slowly due to his old age, and walked with his back hunched forwards. Bobby poured the tiny bottle of Coke into his glass of ice, deciding the news could wait a few minutes. The cold Coke going down his throat was the nicest taste in the world. He took a small sup at a time, to get as much value out of the small bottle as he could.