When Love Comes to Town (17 page)

Neil Byrne is queer

Neil Byrne is queer

Eee-yyy-adio Neil

Byrne is queer

All the bright schoolboy faces are demonic now. Up in the west stand, Gary and Trish are clutching each other in hysterics. Everything goes foggy. He can’t see if his mum and dad are joining in the deafening Lansdowne Road chant.

Neil Byrne is queer

Neil Byrne is queer

Eee-yyy-adio Neil

Byrne is queer

His teammates move away from him, nudging one another, exchanging nods and winks. He searches for a friendly face, but there is none. He stands alone.

“Neil.”

The clouds of sleep retreated.

“Neil.” His mum was shaking him from his slumbers.

“Hah?” Neil woke with a start.

His mum smiled. “You were talking in your sleep again.”

Neil rubbed his stiff jaw, hoping that his sleep talk was indecipherable. He glanced out his bedroom window and saw that it was still bright. But what day was it? The book he had been reading lay on the sheet beside him. And not for the first time during his two-week convalescence, he felt completely disoriented.

“There’s someone else here to see you.”

He sat up and rubbed his eyes. “Who?”

“A fellow called Shane.”

The words trickled out like honey. Neil’s heart started to thump. His head started to swirl. A warm glow filled his insides. When his mum asked who Shane was, he wanted to tell her how madly in love he was and how his life had changed since they had met. Instead, as prearranged, he told her they had met on the Cooperation North weekend he spent in Belfast during the school term.

“What’s this?” Shane smiled as he picked up the teddy bear sitting on top of the chest of drawers.

“Blame my mum,” Neil muttered, blushing profusely, and Shane ruffled his hair.

“A fresh listen,” Shane said, leaving a tape down on the bedside table.

Neil grinned and held out his hands seductively, his eyes speaking louder than words. Shane took hold of his hands and leaned forward. They kissed for the first time. Neil’s lips tingled and any lingering shadows of sadness melted from his heart. His misty-eyed lover caressed his chest gently. Time seemed to stand still. Like a sleepy, golden storm. No forced kisses in Hollies could compare. The hand tickled as it crossed his stomach. Lost in a dizzy haze, he felt the hand slip beneath the sheets and gently cup the mounting bulge, squeezing ever so delicately. Outside the birds sang on the tree house, the glorious sun emerged from behind a cloud, rejoicing the kisses, deep and warm. Then they heard footsteps. Hastily, the hand was withdrawn and their lips uncoupled.

Both of them were blushing when his mum handed them the glasses of Coke. Neil sensed his mum’s slight bafflement. He wondered if the scent of stolen kisses still lingered in the air. Maybe it was all a dream, a blissful mirage in his emotional desert. Maybe he was still in a coma. Or maybe he had been given a momentary glimpse of heaven.

An avalanche of get-well cards poured in through the mailbox during the next week. But the visits from Shane ensured his speedy recovery. Neil even managed to look disappointed when his dad told him that his pal Charlie Dunne had to give the office job to someone else.

Neil’s dad was pleasantly surprised by his son’s sudden interest in his vast collection of classical records. Every day, when Neil’s dad arrived home from work, Neil had to face a barrage of questions on the latest composers he had discovered. But Neil could tell that his dad enjoyed being pestered. It gave them a common interest, breaking down the invisible barriers that had arisen between them over the past few years, barriers that his dad could never understand. Neil also knew that his dad secretly enjoyed it when he got enthusiastic about anything. He would sit back and smile while he listened to the words tumble from his son’s mouth, so fast that they almost tripped over one another. Often, the pair of them would be so engrossed in their listening that they wouldn’t hear the calls for dinner, and then Neil’s mum would come into the room. She’d stand there with her hands on her hips, shaking her head slowly in mock annoyance, wagging her finger at Neil, who would be sitting on the floor with his legs tucked beneath him, and then at her husband, who would be squatting down alongside his son. “How many times do I have to call you two? Your dinner is frozen!”

But Neil could see that the new development pleased her more than anyone. All his loneliness seemed to have disappeared. Her little boy was Mister Happy again.

A minor heat wave hit the country and Neil took to sitting out in the back garden. The wiring had been removed from his jaw, his bruises were fading, and he wanted to replace them with a suntan. One afternoon, he was trying to kick a football through the tire hanging from the tree house, when Shane dropped by. Neil laughed when he saw his cycling gear. “Sexy,” he whispered, pointing to the cycling shorts.

“Job requirements,” Shane told him.

“What?” Neil was puzzled.

“Bicycle courier,” Shane explained.

“You!” Neil spluttered.

“Speedy deliveries, that’s our motto.”

Neil laughed. “You need a law degree to do that?”

“Helps with the compo claims,” Shane replied, removing his cycling helmet. Neil smiled as he watched Shane awkwardly attempting to kick the ball through the tire. He hadn’t an ounce of soccer talent. Each time they met, he learned something new. He felt a bit like a magpie, gathering up all these snippets of information to pore over that night. But it was so difficult to extract all the details he wanted. Maybe it was all the years of living in fear that made Belfast people hold their cards so close to their chests.

“Love the tree house,” Shane said, sitting down beside Neil.

“Don’t look now, but we have company at ten o’clock.” Neil had spotted Gary’s mother watching them from her bedroom window next door.

“Huh?”

“The neighborhood watch is at her gun turret,” Neil whispered, staring down at his runners, a wide grin on his face.

“Should I kiss you?” Shane teased.

“Piss off.”

“Just a little cuddle?”

“You do, and I move to America.”

“She’d probably enjoy watching us.”

“She’d have us burned at the stake.”

“She’d fit right in in Belfast,” Shane said as he jumped to his feet and began to climb up into the tree house.

Neil turned to watch him. “The first time I went up into that tree house, I couldn’t get down again.”

“When was this? Last year?”

“How d’you guess?”

“I can see into the future.” Shane was sheltering the sun from his eyes, looking out across the neighborhood

gardens.

“What d’you see there?” Neil called.

“I see a wee fellow called Neil…and,
mein Gott
! He’s burning at a stake!”

“What did he do to deserve that?”

“He was caught molesting an older man.”

“The dirty pervert.”

“Yo! Byrner!” Gary shouted.

Neil’s heart missed a beat. Gary and Trish were strolling up the garden path. How much of the conversation had they heard? Then they spotted Shane, and Neil smiled to himself as he saw them raising their eyebrows in unison.
Like lovers, our eyebrows will always rhyme
. Shane swung down from the tree house Tarzan-style, and Neil thought quickly as he performed the awkward introductions, telling Gary and Trish that he had met Shane in the hospital.

“What were you in for?” Gary asked, slapping Shane’s shoulder in his friendly way.

“Can you not tell?” Shane opened his eyes wide in mock surprise. Gary was smiling as he and Trish shook their heads.

“Mental instability,” Shane told them in a mischievous voice.

“Well, you’d want to be nuts to pal around with this spacer,” Gary joked, pointing at Neil.

“Here, Neil, we got you these,” said Trish, handing Neil a cheap pair of mirrored sunglasses.

“Tack-y,” Neil said, putting the sunglasses on and grinning at everyone. “But I like them.”

“You look like Tom Cruise,” Trish smiled.

“Tom who?” Neil joked.

“Great for hiding red eyes,” laughed Gary.

As soon as Shane headed back to work, Gary delivered the verdict, “Dead-on bloke.”

“One of the best,” Neil nodded in agreement.

“Good-looking bloke too; saw you giving him the eye,” Gary teased Trish.

Oh God, how obvious can he get
, Neil thought. If anyone was giving Shane the glad eye, it was Gary. He wondered if Trish ever noticed these things. She probably did, but chose to ignore them. And in about thirty years time, with four or five kids in tow, Gary would break the news to her, and go on the scene. And all the younger crowd would probably call him Uncle Sugar…

Neil sighed and turned his attention back to the conversation.
What are they talking about now? I don’t believe it; they’re planning what everyone’s going to do the night the final grades come out. And they’re not due out for a month. Sad. Nothing better to talk about, and they’re the ones who feel sorry for you. Your hospitalization has been the highlight of their summer so far. Fake the pain in the head routine.

Better go now, folks, I need a lie-down.

Neil needed to get his daily fix of Shane. He felt like a drug addict. Hearing his voice on the phone was a small fix, but seeing him was a major fix. Then, inexplicably, three days passed without contact and Neil began to suffer withdrawal symptoms. His parents noticed his edginess. Anytime the phone rang, his heart leaped. But it sank down below his knees again when it wasn’t Shane. He rang Shane’s house and left numerous messages with the girl who lived in the flat below. He could tell that she was getting fed up with him begging her to pin messages to Shane’s door. The one phone in the house was in the hallway, and Shane had warned him that he often didn’t receive his phone messages. He began to imagine things. His obsession had been knocked down. He was lying immobile in some hospital bed. Maybe he had gone back to Belfast; maybe someone in his family had died. Maybe he himself had died. Or worse than that, he had met someone new. By the third night, Saturday night, Neil couldn’t take it anymore. Against his mother’s wishes, he cycled into town. His hand was trembling when he pressed Shane’s doorbell. There was no answer. He chose another bell at random and rang it. A girl with long straggling hair opened the door. She told Neil she had seen Shane going out with some friends about half an hour before.

“Try Hartigans,” she suggested when she saw the look of intense disappointment that clouded Neil’s face.

But all his worries disappeared as soon as he spotted Shane. He was sitting in a corner of the crowded pub with another guy and two girls. Neil stood watching the four of them chatting. They were all around Shane’s age. College friends, he presumed.
But why didn’t he phone me?
Neil wondered.
Better go home now, you’ve seen him, you’ve had your fix. C’mon, will you? You can’t stand there staring. He’ll get the message that you called to the flat and he’ll phone you tomorrow. I have to talk to him. Don’t be silly, you’ll embarrass him in front of his friends. They’re all about five years older than you. I could say that I work with him, my bike’s outside the door, isn’t it? Wake up, dopey, the barman’s asking you what age you are. Show him your ID. How embarrassing, everyone’s looking at you.

“Made it by the skin of your teeth,” the barman jokes, handing back his ID.

Better order a drink. “Soda water and lime please.”

Last of the big spenders. More like last of the big benders. Light up a cigarette and try to look relaxed. Feel like an undercover agent. No, you feel like a dork, everyone thinks you’re here alone. Well, you are, aren’t you? Why doesn’t he see me? Because he’s engrossed in conversation with his friends, like everyone else in the pub. Anyway, even if he does see you, he’ll probably just ignore you. No, he won’t. I’m going to wait over here till he goes to the Jacks, then I can talk to him on his own. You could be waiting. I don’t mind. And what are you going to say to him? Are you going to tell him about the hours you spent waiting by the phone? How you’ve been afraid to leave the house in case you missed his call? If you did, he’d just think you’re pathetic, and he’d be right. Oh God, he’s seen me! He’s waving me over. And he’s smiling, he’s delighted to see me. His friends are looking around now. He’s calling me over.

“This is Neil, the kid brother of an old girlfriend of mine,” Shane told his friends, patting Neil’s back as he squeezed in beside him.

“Shane the heartbreaker,” the girl sitting on the other side of Shane said with a forced laugh.

“An amicable split-up,” Shane turned to Neil. “Wasn’t it?”

“He treated mah sister fine,” Neil said in his American drawl. The others laughed. Everything was fine again. He could tell that Shane’s pals liked him, especially the two girls.

He had guessed right, they were college friends of Shane’s. One of the girls and the other guy were a couple, who were heading off to work in London soon. The second girl, Geraldine, obviously had romantic designs on Shane. She kept grabbing hold of his arm, but she didn’t realize who Shane was playing footsie with under the table. The drink took effect quickly on Neil, and he blurted out that Becky was coming home for the weekend, bringing inquisitive looks from the others.

“She’s my girlfriend,” Neil told them, and very nearly cried out when Shane pressed his mountain boot down firmly upon his runner.

“She’s au pairing in France,” he explained.

“I hope you treat her better than Shane treats his women,” Geraldine joked, but Neil could tell that she was being deadly serious. Her expression reminded him of the confused look he had often seen on Yvonne Lawlor’s face. But, in his excitement, Neil was making a lot of stupid comments, and he could tell that Shane was embarrassed by him.

At closing time, Shane and his three friends went nightclubbing on Leeson Street. Neil headed off home, despite the girls’ attempts to entice him into the nightclub. He wanted to scream as he cycled off. It had been impossible to speak privately with Shane. He thought that Shane might have wrangled some way of sneaking him into his flat, but the awful thing was that he could tell that Shane didn’t even want him coming to the nightclub. He felt worse now than he had earlier. It was foolish coming into town. He wanted to get knocked down, nothing serious, just enough to get back into hospital again and then Shane would be back the way he was. And when he got out of hospital, he’d behave more maturely; he’d read up about law and he’d impress Shane’s friends with his comments. There’d be no more childish remarks from him. If only he could turn back time.