The Thing About December (11 page)

He had felt like he was getting special treatment. It was out of pity, he knew, but she never made that obvious. You could fool yourself into believing you were the only one whose ear she whispered evil jokes into about the ward sister or the old boy in the other bed or Doctor Frostyballs or Aunty Theresa or whoever came within range of her wit. He didn’t want to have to share the Lovely Voice, especially not now that he was nearly finished on the painkillers and his eyes were healing up the finest and his bruised kidneys had come round a bit and he’d very soon be given the high road home. He could picture the newcomer: a big builder lad, probably, with muscles and blond hair and a jaw on him like Desperate Dan. Even with his broken face and nare a
tooth that was known, that lad would most likely put Johnsey in the ha’ penny place.

THE UNTHANKS
knew him well, of course. Ah, Dave, is it yourself, you got an awful hop, we nearly heard the bang below in the bakery, ha ha ha, is this fella looking after you, sure you’re both in the same boat, talk about the blind leading the blind, ha ha ha! Herself had to tell him be quiet and come away and leave the man alone. She had to take him in hand every now and again. Mumbly Dave didn’t seem to mind. His mumbles back to Himself sounded happy enough. Some people loved the bit of attention.

There was
big news
. The whole village had it. Herself had got it off the ICA. They had all rang her one by one, each thinking they would be first with the news. Himself had got it above at Mass that morning. Himself went every morning, to Mass. He went to confession too, at the required intervals. Religiously, he went. Was there any other way to go to confession? What did he tell the priest? Surely he had to make sins up. Wouldn’t that in itself be a sin, to be told at the next confession? A fine, eternal circle of sinning and contrition.

Mumbly Dave was doing awful mumbling beyond, as if to encourage the speedier telling of this big news. And the Lovely Voice would be on in a second as well; he could hear her abroad in the corridor, laughing as usual. You could easily judge the direction she was heading. She pushed a wave of fun and devilment before her and left a trail of it in her wake. She would hear the big news too, if the Unthanks ever got around to telling it.

The council inside in town had been to-ing and fro-ing and fighting and arguing for years and had finally made a big decision. A load of the land to the west of the village had been
rezoned
. That meant that instead of being simply fields of grass for tilling or grazing, the land the council had marked out with a red marker and put on display on a map for all to see inside in the civic offices was now land on which houses, shops, hotels and what have you could be built. That land included all of Daddy’s, and nearly all the Creamers’, and half of Paddy Rourke’s and a bit of the McDermotts’.

They were as excited as wasps around an open bottle of Fanta about this big news, so it seemed only polite to try to join in. He nodded a good few times and said Begod that’s great and Oh really and waved his good hand about a bit. He preferred when the Unthanks were their usual selves; this much talk out of them, and the two of them talking over each other, and the speed they were talking at – it wasn’t right somehow. It could make you feel a bit nervous, like if a grand, quiet old dog was asleep by the fire at your feet and all of a shot, for no reason you could fathom, leapt up and began barking and going mad about the place.

Anyway, this apparently was the best thing that could ever happen to any small village, according to everyone bar the few usual moaners who’d object to their nose to spite their face. It would be a new lease of life for the place. Even those who had been gone but years might reconsider their positions in life and return, if there was something to return to in the line of a job doing all this building and what have you. Sure hadn’t a pile of young lads only left recently, sure they’d turn the planes around if they heard this news. They’d nearly jump overboard off of the boat and swim back. There had been fierce speculation for the last few months, but it was as though people were afraid to jinx it by saying it out as a certainty. Once it’s used right, now, that’s the important thing. People will have to keep a close eye on applications going in and protest if they think something is going to go up that will do more harm than good – the likes of discos
or fast-food shops or what have you, with any luck they will be excluded from the plans.

PACKIE COLLINS’S
yard and it full to bursting with blocks and timber and bags of cement. Dermot McDermott’s offer to buy the land. Eugene Penrose’s talk of Johnsey’s millions. They had all been a mile and a half ahead of the Unthanks. Mother had always maintained that the auld sneaky ones always had news before anybody. Some, the cuter ones, would keep it to themselves and more would go around telling all they knew to anyone who’d listen. They’d spread news that wasn’t even news yet. If there was nothing to tell, they’d make something up.

Like the time years ago the whole place had it that Paddy Rourke had belted the head off of Kathleen and she only after getting a black eye from a rejected calf she was bottle-feeding who butted her by accident. Once a thing was said, it could never be unsaid. Paddy was blackened after that in many minds. Some people believed what they were told regardless of who it was doing the telling and wouldn’t be waiting around for hard evidence. The Unthanks weren’t that way; this was officially true and therefore could be discussed as fact. You couldn’t be ruining it for them by telling them that it didn’t matter one shite if Our Lord Himself wanted to buy land off of Johnsey to build houses and hotels and shops on – Johnsey’s land did not belong to Johnsey – it was not his to sell or to allow people to build things upon.

MUMBLY DAVE
was more inclined to talk properly after a few days. They put a hinge in that auld wire in his jaw and gave him a new mouth of temporary false teeth in case the world missed something important out of him. After a small bit of practice, the
mumbling was replaced by a non-stop flow of words. Johnsey had envied him his wired-shut jaw; there was no pressure on a man with a wired-shut jaw to be saying things to people. How well it was his eyes had been broken and not his jaw. Then he could see the owner of the Lovely Voice instead of just imagining her and he wouldn’t have to be trying to think of things to say back to her. Not even being kicked in the head could go right for him.

Mumbly Dave felt no such pressure in the talking department. In fact, talking seemed to be his way of releasing pressure. It was as though thousands of words were squashed up together inside in his head and couldn’t wait to rush out of his mouth like a crowd out of the tunnel under the stand below in Semple Stadium after a Munster final. He thought it was a great big laugh that neither of them could see a screed in front of them. Mumbly Dave would say, I used to see no evil, speak no evil, now I only
see
no evil, ha ha ha! Hey, did you hear that, youssir, I said I used to …

He was all talk about the big news about the rezoning of the land. He wanted to know how many brown envelopes Johnsey had left inside in the civic offices, hoo hoo hoo. He wanted to know was Johnsey related to Oliver Cunliffe beyond in Latteragh, Oh are you not and Oh sure your father was Jackie, I knew him, he used to hurl with my father, sure they played Junior B until they were gone fifty, ha ha ha, they were tough yokes, Oh that was your mother so who died not long ago, sorry for your trouble, go on anyway, how much did you leave inside with that shower of crooks?

Was it you got the hiding off of Eugene Penrose and that fella from town and those other two apes? Penrose got an awful fright, you know. He nearly shat himself apparently, when your man went to town on you. He doesn’t know who he’s mixing with, there. That lad is deadly dangerous. He’s a pure knacker. He wore
a pool cue off of one of the Comerfords and you know how tough them boyos are. Penrose is like a child with a new toy whenever a bigger knacker than him turns up. Do you work below in the co-op? Oh ya, I was thinking. You get dog’s abuse there some days off of Penrose. I seen him at it a few times. And the other two fools with him. If Penrose opened his mouth you’d see their four cod eyes looking out at you, they’re so far up his hole.

Begod Packie Collins wasn’t long about replacing you! That feckin Polish lad was in like a fly on shit; I’ll tell you one thing, you can’t turn your back on those boys, they’d take the eye out of your head, I can’t wait till this swelling goes down and I can open my feckin eyes, I’d say that nurse one with the nice voice is flaking, hoo hoo, hey youssir, I said I can’t wait till this swelling goes down and I can open my feckin eyes, I’d say that nurse wan is flaking, I can’t wait to get a good look at her, whoo boy I could sure do with a ride, ha ha ha, sure she sounds like she’s gorgeous but we have to be prepared for an awful shock, she could have a face like a bag of hammers, ha ha ha, sure any port in a storm, maybe we’re as well off if she’s a right manky-looking yoke, not to be lying here with two horns on us every time she walks in, hey, how does that work with these tubes in our mickeys, anyway? Have you a tube in your mickey too? Isn’t that an awful liberty? I don’t know about you, boss, but them nurses can take as many liberties as they want with
my
mickey, ha ha ha ha ha!

MUMBLY DAVE
made the Lovely Voice laugh. That was the thing about Mumbly Dave that really tormented Johnsey. How well he had to go and fall off his ladder and break his stupid face. How well he couldn’t have broken his neck instead. How well they couldn’t have left that old clamp on him another while. He was full of old sugary shite, that Mumbly Dave. Sure, he was a gas
character. Ha ha fucking ha. How could he have a new joke or bit of smartness ready
every single time
the Lovely Voice came near them? You’d be heartsick, pretending to laugh. If he didn’t hear a laugh out of you, he’d say the same stupid thing over again, only louder. He’d wear you out, so he would. If this was the alternative to loneliness, he’d sooner be lonesome forever. People could be quare hard work. He’d never known that before.

Another thing about Mumbly Dave was he kept
farting
. Johnsey had a pain in his stomach most days from trying
not
to let off. He had his arsecheeks clamped shut half the time. It had gotten to the stage where the farts didn’t even bother trying to escape any more; they got as far as his hole and turned back. Then they’d be all knocking around his insides and fighting with each other for space. It couldn’t be good for a man having all this pressure building up inside. Anything was better than filling a room with fumes, though, and having the Lovely Voice or one of the other nurses walking into a stinking cloud. Mumbly Dave thought it was the height of craic. He’d let rip day and night and then for devilment he’d put the blame on Johnsey. Once or twice his great big smelly farts coincided with the Lovely Voice entering their room and just as she did the rotten fucker’d say Jaysus, Johnsey, you’re a bad yoke, would you not try and hold it in and a lady in the room and then he’d
mar dhea
apologize on Johnsey’s behalf, the dirty, rotten bastard! The Lovely Voice would laugh and say Don’t worry, I’ve smelt worse, and there was nothing you could say then; you couldn’t be denying the fart and sounding like a young fella in primary school. Then after she was gone Mumbly Dave would be woohoo-ing and laughing away to himself and saying Jaysus, youssir, I caught you a beaut, and all you could do was lie there and imagine yourself sneaking over to his bed in the night and ramming a stolen fork into his mouth with all your strength. That’d soften his cough.

Some days the Lovely Voice would come in and close the door to the corridor and sit down and she’d tell them Say nothing, Sister is on the warpath, I’m safe in here with the blindman buffs, God I’m knackered; so boys, any news? And Mumbly Dave would be out with something smart straight away like asking was she out the night before and was she up late or what and the two of them would take off laughing and it felt like they were ganging up on him and he hated Mumbly Dave more than he’d ever hated Eugene Penrose or Dermot McDermott or Packie Collins or the townie lad who’d kicked his face in or any of the cool lads who’d mocked him in school. Why did Mumbly Dave have to come along and wipe his eye? The Lovely Voice was
his
bit of pleasure; she used to have private jokes with
him
, it wasn’t fair that the first proper woman to ever whisper in Johnsey’s ear and send a bolt of electricity down his neck and along his arms and into his balls and down his legs as far as his toes was now being taken over by a big, fat, stupid bullshitter.

JOHNSEY AND MUMBLY DAVE
got their eyes back on the same day. Mumbly Dave woke up that morning and said Bejaysus you’re uglier than I thought you’d be, hey I said you’re even uglier than I thought you’d be, hey, hey, youssir, you’re a sight for sore eyes, ha ha ha ha ha, and Johnsey could only lie there and look blindly in the direction of the guffawing donkey and think this is the end of it now, he’ll take one look at her and fall in love with her and he’ll carry her off like Richard Gere in that film where he’s in the navy or something and he has a big fight with a black lad and takes off on a motorbike and into the factory where the good-looking wan is working and he’ll pick her up like that in his arms and carry her off and all the other nurses and doctors and the few patients around the corridor will stop what they’re doing
and laugh and clap and cheer and Johnsey will be left here alone with the cranky old ward sister and his langer stuck to the side of his leg and his big baby tears queuing up behind his bandages.

Your swelling is gone right down, that’s the anti-inflammatory, it takes the swelling right down, isn’t it lucky you’re on my ward; I give out all the best drugs, ha ha ha. Then Mumbly Dave, her new pet. Ha ha ha you’re a gas ticket, bejaysus, I’ll tell you one thing, though, the swelling is gone from my face but tis starting somewhere else ever since you walked in, ha ha ha. Then the Lovely Voice: You dirty fecker, ha ha ha, and she
mar dhea
giving out to him. He had some neck, that Mumbly Dave, he had some front, that fella, with that dirty talk out of him, and she laughing back at him, and wouldn’t you think she’d tell him call a halt to the smut now, but thick ignorant fuckers always get ahead in life, Daddy always said that, and he was right. Then she was saying As for
you
, your bandages will come off today for good according to your chart, unless Doctor Frostyballs changes his mind, and he realized she was talking to him and he said Oh, oh, right, cripes that’s great, and she was gone in a sweet breeze and there was no big laugh and joke for him the way there had been for Mumbly Dave.