Ghosts and Lightning (22 page)

—Right, lads, says the oulfella. —I want a nice clean fight, yeah? No bitin, no pokin, no loafin and nothin below the belt, yeah? And no kickin, either. This is a boxin match, not fuckin Hulk Hogan shite.

I assume he’s sayin all this for Maggit’s benefit. Franno looks to be itchin for the fight to start. His head is twitchin and his tongue is flickin over his lips.

—Shake hands, lads, says the oulfella.

Franno offers his hand and Maggit takes it. They shake for fuckin ages, like in a film, each pair of eyes, Maggit’s pale blue and Franno’s dark brown, starin directly into the other before they finally let go.

And then the oulfella steps back.

—Fight!

Immediately Franno lunges forward and Maggit barely has time to throw up his guard and take the wild right on his forearms. Pajo flinches beside me and closes his eyes and Franno hops backwards, his surprise attack foiled. He shuffles from one foot to the other, his head low and his eyes peerin at Maggit from over his bunched fists. Maggit rubs his arm before liftin his fists to just under his chin. He takes a step towards the centre and Franno flies forward, his feet actually leavin the ground as he launches himself from his half-crouched position. His wide right-hander catches Maggit on the ear and he stumbles back, takin a flurry of rights and lefts to the stomach and chest before he throws his arms around Franno, huggin him to his winded body.

—Fuckin hell, says Ned. —He’s gettin battered.

—Will I stop it? I say.

Ned shrugs. I think o Bret Hart wrestlin Bob Backlund, years ago, and Bret’s brother Owen gettin his ma to throw in the towel when Bret was caught in the crossface chickenwing. Bret went mad at Owen for doin it, so maybe I should leave it.

Maggit shoves Franno away from him. Shouts and laughter from the crowd.

—He’s doin well to stay standin after that, says a fella beside me. —Decent chin on the cunt, I’ll credit him that.

—Givvim stitches Franno! a little gyppo kid shouts.

—Bate im Franno! Bate im!

Franno circles Maggit, who’s shakin his head from side to side, turnin on the spot to keep the gypsy in front of him. Franno throws a couple o feints and Maggit ducks back, his guard high. Then Franno steps forward quickly and
launches a couple o quick left-handed jabs which Maggit partially takes on his arms before Franno fires off another wide right which again gets in, this time thuddin right on Maggit’s cheek. His neck snaps back and Franno wades in again, jabs to the body and chest before he connects with another right hook, this time on the chin.

—Watch the fuckin right, Maggit! shouts Ned.

Dazed, Maggit half turns towards Ned and takes another right to the side of the head. Maggit stumbles and falls to one knee.

—Shurrup yeh fuckin eejit, I say to Ned.

—Yer man’s after hurtin his hand, says Pajo.

I turn and sure enough, as Maggit pushes himself to his feet Franno is shakin his right hand and flexin his fingers with a grimace. There’s a thin trickle o blood runnin from just under Maggit’s eye socket and his face is blotchy and red but he comes forward on jelly legs, his fists bobbin in front of him. Franno comes to meet him, head snakin from side to side. He feints again but Maggit keeps his eye on him and when the right hand comes he steps back, then launches forward with a straight right of his own that catches the traveller right in the face. Franno’s head whips to the left and blood flies from his face in a red spray.

—Take that yeh cunt, says Ned.

When Franno straightens himself his face is covered in blood, his nose mashed. Maggit follows up immediately with another right which bashes aside Franno’s guard, leavin him open for a left to the head. Maggit yowls and grits his teeth as a second left catches Franno on the top of the skull.

—Yer batterin im! C’mon! Ned shouts.

Maggit lands a couple o meaty body shots on the reelin gypsy and then pulls his arm back for a massive right. Franno twists out o the way though, takin the blow on the shoulder. Maggit whirls to get him centred again and comes at him with his guard loose.

—Get yer fists up, Maggit!

And a torpedo of a right catches Maggit dead on the chin. It’s a fuckin beauty, as perfect a punch as yeh can possibly imagine. Maggit’s head shoots back, spit flyin as the crowd roar, and he stumbles and falls, the greyhound howlin as he crashes into the dirt in a plume o dust and that’s it, that quick; he’s fucked, knocked out, dead, who fuckin knows. The oulfella starts a count. The dog is still howlin.

On five Maggit stirs.

—Stay down, Colm, someone says. I think it’s Niamh.

—Fuck the car, says Pajo.

On seven his legs and arms are workin uselessly on the dirt, and on eight his elbows are propped behind him and his head is raised a couple of inches …

Then Franno sways and pitches forward, his body thuddin off the ground.

So quiet up here, isn’t it? Well, there’s the wind, but there’s no city sounds like cars and that. I remember someone sayin that if yer still enough yeh can hear the voice o God in places like this. The Dublin Mountains. Even though it’s windswept and barren it’s a gorgeous place; yeh never really realise that there’s such beauty on yer doorstep. I look back over me shoulder to Sinead’s car. It’s parked off the road, a huge cliff risin behind it, little skeletal trees on top, black against the empty blue. The land falls away on this side. Plummets and then rises up in humps and mounds. Tiny silhouettes o birds wheelin in the sky. Pajo and Paula are sittin on the car’s bonnet, Paula with her shoulders hunched up, Pajo with his legs crossed meditation-style and his eyes closed. Teresa’s huddled in the back seat, her nose buried in a copy o Heat magazine. Paula’s hair is whippin madly in the wind. She keeps tryin to stick it behind her ears but it’s no use, not up here, this place o wind and vastness; cold, stingin wind heavy with salt and a patchouli tang.

—Isn’t it deadly? I shout over at them.

Paula squints her eyes and smiles and nods.

—Gorgeous, she shouts, the word caught in the wind and flyin past me. She’s humourin me, like; Paula hates the
outdoors. Even when she was a kid she was a househatcher, never out of her room. Now the only times she’s outdoors are the brief dashes between pubs and clubs, giddy and drunk beneath a fellow waster’s jacket or umbrella. I cup me hands round me mouth and shout again.

—Wha d’yeh think Pajo?

He looks at me and grins. Sticks up his thumb.

—Deadly, he says.

—Any sign o the rest o them?

Paula shakes her head. Her hair flies up, likes she’s touched one o them electric ball yokes, or she’s underwater; a bobbin blonde nimbus round her head. Ned, Sinead, Maggit and little Anto got the bus to Tallaght, and they’re gettin a taxi to Johnny Fox’s. The plan’s to have somethin to eat up there, then get to the Hellfire Club. We had a few people round last night and Sinead wasn’t the better of it so she let me drive her car. It’s mad drivin a new car; a proper car with power steerin and a massive stereo. After the fight with Franno I left me own car at the haltin site. Technically the fight was probably a draw but since Franno ended up in hospital with a bad concussion I just thought fuck it, it’s not worth it, and left it there.

I actually forgot all about Shane’s letter for a bit, with all the shite about the car and that, but it’s back on me mind now. I’ve had a few missed calls from Shane today. I’ll give him a shout tomorrow, maybe. I’m turnin me phone off, though. I have this horrible feelin gnawin at me. Somethin weird and hard to pin down. Why can’t stuff just be straightforward? I had a dream about that girl last night, the one in the Adidas tracksuit, and we were talkin in a bar. Just talkin. I can’t remember wha about, but it was nice. Just dead simple and nice. The only mad thing about
it was that Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher were workin behind the bar, wearin their Liverpool jerseys. When I woke up I was cryin. Mental.

—Yeh alright?

I turn round. Paula’s beside me, smilin. She puts her hand on me elbow.

—Yeh OK Denny? Away with the fairies, wha?

—Nah. I’m grand. Just thinkin like.

—Wharrabout?

—Don’t know. Nothin.

—Ma?

This surprises me. Dunno why, like. I look at Paula.

—Ma?

—Yeah.

—No. I just … just stupid things, like. Nothin.

Paula scrunches up her nose. She grabs a sheaf o hair in each hand and pulls it under her chin like a bonnet. She looks at me.

—D’yeh think about ma much? she says.

—D’you?

—Yeah.

I look back out at the mountains. Then over at Pajo who’s still on the bonnet, his eyes closed and hummin, and then back to Paula.

—It’s nice up here, isn’t it? I say.

—Fuckin fuh-fuh-freezin, she says, grinnin.

—Yeah but yeh know wha I mean. The scenery and that. And the feel o the place. It’s nice like.

—If it was a bit warmer. Yid die o hypothermia up here.

—Yeah.

—Yeh hungry?

—A bit.

—We head to Johnny Fox’s?

—Sound, yeah.

I press me heel into the ground. It’s spongy. I twist it and feel it give. I shout over to Pajo.

—Yeh right Gandhi? Soon as the rest o them get here we’re off to the pub.

*

We don’t stay in Johnny Fox’s — the hidden pub in the mountains, the one Michael Collins and the IRA men were supposed to drink in while they were on the run — for too long. The temptation’s there, like, to just sit here all day and drink and make merry. Specially with the thought o Shane’s letter on me mind. But in the end we all just have a Sunday roast and a couple o jars each. Cept Anthony, obviously, who’s too young for drink and too fussy for a proper dinner.

—Yeh won’t grow up fit and strong like yer da if yeh don’t eat it all, says Ned, smilin. He winks at us in an over-the-top way. —Did yeh know yer da used to be a wrestler?

—No he didn’t.

Ned looks at us. —He did, didn’t he?

We all nod, serious and solemn. Maggit took a few wrestlin classes in Birmingham years ago, when he was a teenager. He went through this mad phase where he told everyone he was gonna become a professional wrestler. Never worked out like, but he was serious about it for a while. One o the fellas he trained with is on telly now.

—He battered Hulk Hogan in Wrestlemania III, I say. —The main event.

Really the main event o Wrestlemania III was Hulk Hogan versus André the Giant. Everyone loved Hogan when we were small, but I hated him. I didn’t think a world champion should wear yellow trunks, and I thought it was stupid-lookin that, even though he wasn’t that old, he was bald. I still remember Undertaker beatin him in 1991 for the belt. Undertaker hit him with a Tombstone piledriver onto a steel chair, which was pretty hardcore at the time. I fuckin loved it; I still thought wrestling was real and I jumped around like a lunatic, spillin me 7-Up all over me.

—Did yeh, da? says Anthony.

Maggit downs his pint. He nods quickly, then says —D’yeh not like cabbage, Anto?

Anthony shakes his head. —Horrible. Were you a wrestler, da?

—Don’t mind them, says Maggit, surprisinly unwillin to go along with the charade. —Are yeh not eatin any o that? What’s wrong with it?

—It’s very good for you, says Sinead.

—Nutritious, says Pajo.

—Horrible, says Anthony. He sticks out his tongue.

—Here, says Maggit. —D’yeh want some Monster Munch?

Anthony beams. —Yeah.

Maggit twists in his chair and leans backwards, rummagin through his rucksack. He pulls out a six pack o Monster Munch.

—Tell yer ma yeh et yer vegetables now, yeah? Maggit says, and hands Anthony a packet. —Hear me? Don’t tell her yeh were eatin these, OK?

—Yeah.

—Giz a packet, says Pajo.

—Fuck off, says Maggit.

Pajo looks hurt. He sinks back into his chair.

—This dinner smells like the funeral for Pajo’s chickens, says Anthony.

Everyone laughs.

—Well done, says Maggit to Pajo. —Yer after puttin him off chicken, now. There’s fuck all he’ll eat as it is.

—I didn’t mean to.

A woman comes over and leaves the bill on the table. Sinead picks it up and scans it.

—Where to now, Captain Oates? Ned says to me.

—Montpellier Hill, I say, swallowin the last o me Guinness. —Hellfire Club, like. Yiz up for it?

*

Fuckin hell man, I’m wrecked. Uphill all the way, like; windin gravelly roads and dirt tracks, fir trees bobbin. I haven’t been up to the Hellfire Club in absolute donkeys. Not since I was a kid, when I came up with me ma and Paula. I’m dead excited about seein it again. I can’t believe some o the rest o them haven’t been up here at all.

Teresa and Paula are holdin hands. They’d never do that in Clondalkin, like. Too fuckin dodgy. Pajo starts complainin about his destroyed quadriceps and Ned tells him about a machine he got cheap off a chiropractor. The view from Montpellier Hill is cool. Yeh can see right out
over Dublin and into the Irish Sea, a giant swathe o grey that stretches out to Liverpool, eventually minglin with the Mersey somewhere in all that mist. It’s always terrified me, the sea; the thought o somethin that immense, like, that deep … all manner of unknown and unknowable creatures powerin through the depths, eyeless and nameless and pale-skinned. Scary fuckin shit, man. Compounded o course by the fact that I never learned to swim. Or maybe I should say related to the fact; my never learnin to swim the inevitable outcome o this immense dread o the sea.

Pajo and the girls are laggin behind. Sinead and Pajo are swingin Anthony along between them, his runners skimmin over the dirt. He’s laughin and squealin.

—Wha does Sinead study? says Maggit to Ned. —Business or somethin?

—Art.

—Art, says Maggit, eyes on the trail ahead. —Does she wanna be an artist?

—Yeah. A painter.

—Yeh can’t study to be a painter though, can yeh? Yiv got it or yeh don’t.

—And you’d know all about paintin, obviously.

—I’m just sayin. If yer good yer good. What’s there to learn?

—Loads, says Ned. —All the history and that. That’s important. Yeh need to know yer place, what’s been done already.