Ghosts and Lightning (7 page)

—Did yeh hear about this séance thing?

Ned looks at me for a sec, eyebrows furrowed. —Séance?

—Yeah. Pajo’s gonna be doin one at the house. For Paula, like. She says the place is haunted.

—Haunted?

—Yeah. A ghost house, she calls it.

Ned shakes his head.

—Tell me about it, I say. —Expect a shout from Pajo, anyway. He said he wants to get a few of us together. So there yeh go, yiv a dinner and a séance to look forward to.

—Never a dull moment, wha?

—No fuckin chance, Ned.

*

—Don’t tell me. Yeh robbed it, didn’t yeh?

Maggit shrugs, closes his Nike bag and looks at his watch. We’re waitin for the 78a out o town. Been here fuckin ages, like, standin outside the Boots on Aston Quay. Least it’s stopped rainin. There’s a stale chemical smell comin up off the Liffey across the road and some mentalcase Cork chap’s rantin and ravin about eternal damnation and all sorts o shite down near O’Connell Bridge. He’s a good hundred yards away and I can still hear him. Psychos, those fellas. Wired to the fuckin moon, like, spittin and splutterin and wreckin everyone’s head. Where do they get the neck? Well, from God, I suppose. Or that’s wha they’d say, anyway. Divine gift o the Hard Neck or some other shite. Must be weird to have that kind o faith. Like a suit of armour, yeh know? Yer bulletproof, like. Or yeh think yeh are, which I suppose brings its own dangers.

I turn back to Maggit. He’s diggin a finger into his ear and workin it round in sharp little circles.

—I betcha yeh did, didn’t yeh? I say.

Maggit inspects the greasy brown smudge on his finger, then sniffs it.

—And yer point is? he says.

There are loads o potential answers to this, o course. The first would be that accordin to the Bible and all that bollix, robbin is inherently and soul-compromisinly wrong. Hell and damnation awaits. Pitchforks, worms for yer dinner, Whitney Houston on the radio twenty-four seven, the lot. Another more practical reason would be the couple years in Mount Joy Maggit could end up with, given his previous. He did a few months for bein caught with a shitload o Tommy Power’s hash while Tommy was in Venezuela a couple years ago. I remember visitin him
and some cunts from Mayo had given him a hidin after a hurlin game on the telly. His eye was out like a rotten golf ball.

—Yeh don’t give your only son a robbed fuckin … wha is it?

—Some kind o … hang on … He looks into his bag.

—Some computer yokeybob. Playstation is it? Lookit.

He pulls apart the lips o the bag and sticks it under me nose. There’s some grey box thingy with wires and buttons inside. I’ve never bothered with computer games and that kind o thing, really.

—Wharrever, I say. —It’s robbed. That kid looks up to yeh. Which leaves him fucked if yeh ask me.

Maggit clutches the bag closer to him and knits up his eyebrows. He fiddles with the little silver cross hangin from his ample left ear.

—Sure Ned was just sayin about games and that, I say. —Yeh could o got one off him instead.

—They’d still be robbed.

—Not always. Sometimes he just gets them cheap.

—Wouldn’t be beholden to that cunt, says Maggit.

—Wha d’yeh mean beholden? He’s a mate for fuck sake.

Maggit spits. I shake me head and lean back against the wall. There’s a gaggle o bus drivers to our left, on their tea breaks. Standin in the middle o them there’s this mad fella I always see around here. He’s kind o like a silent counterbalance to the ranter by the bridge. He looks like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man and he’s always wearin the same shabby suit. I reckon he’s obsessed with buses and bus drivers. Every time I’ve ever waited for a bus he’s been
here, smilin, hangin out with the drivers. I wonder where he lives? Probably in some sort o care home or wharrever, yeh know, one o these houses where loads o mad people live and they’re watched over by nurses and that? Hope he doesn’t, though. Hope he has some sort of independence, some little flat say, filled with bus timetables and notebooks packed with odd insights into the secret codes o bus routes. It’s mad, isn’t it, the weird obsessions people have?

—You bought that dodgy mountain bike off Tommy Power so you can say fuck all, says Maggit.

I shrug. I’m not lookin for an argument, like. And I’m not tryin to paint meself as some saintly character anyway. It’s just like I said, foolish thing to do given his criminal record. And he’s got a son and I don’t.

—Yeh sound like Bernadette, says Maggit, goaded by me silence. —Where’d yeh get this, where’d yeh get that? Fuck sake. Rather chop me bleedin ears off. It’s only a bleedin computer, Denny. He won’t even know it’s robbed.

—Without a box? No even manuals or anythin?

—I’ll say it was on display or wharrever. The last one in the shop.

—Gerra grip. Anybody’d know that was robbed. Sure it’s got fuckin stickers on it and everythin.

—I’ll peel them off.

—And wha about the kid who owned it? Is he not gonna miss it?

Maggit thinks about this. He looks into the bag again, like he might o robbed the answer as well by accident.

—Fuckim, says Maggit. —Why should my son have to do without?

The bus lurches round the corner towards us.

—Cos yiv no fuckin job and no intention o gettin one, ever?

Which is rich comin from me. Maggit surprisinly avoids the obvious comeback and instead just points at his arse. Maggit was shot by a Triad marksman in London a few years ago. Well, so he tells people, anyway. I was there and in reality it was the ancient fuckin owner of a Chinese takeaway that shot him, with an antique musket or a blunderbuss or somethin, in Liverpool, after that crappy Spurs game at the end o the season where Gustavo Poyet scored against us and ruined any chance we had o catchin Arsenal. Still finished ahead o United, like, but anyway, Maggit broke into the place after we were thrown out earlier that day for actin rowdy. Well, it was Maggit and Tommy Power who were actin rowdy, me and Ned were just standin there, waitin on our beef curries and chicken balls. The fella that shot him was about fuckin ninety and we had to make a nappy for Maggit out o tea towels to stop him bleedin all over the place on the ferry home.

—I’m fuckin disabled, he says.

The bus pulls up to the kerb and the doors open. The driver’s a woman. Youngish, about me own age and … actually, she looks dead familiar … the small features, the slightly pointy chin. I think I might o gone to school with her. Can’t remember her name though. Sonia, was it? Susan? Sarah? Fuck, it’s gone.

—Great to see a few colleens behind the wheel, says Maggit, who obviously hasn’t recognised her at all. He winks at her and she gives what must be the most tired and practised smile in Dublin. I drop me change into the machine and try not to make eye contact. I hate forgettin people’s names, needless embarrassment for all concerned,
like. Me ticket peels out o the machine and I take it and head upstairs, feelin slightly grubby, and we grab the seats at the back, which are me least favourite but almost ritually significant with Maggit.

After a couple o stops the bus is practically full. A gang o people in shirts and ties take their seats, starin blankly ahead or out the windows, off from work and stuck in traffic, heads full o numbers that won’t go and the prices o laptops. A few seats up a Chinese student-type is talkin dead loud and quick into a tiny mobile phone. Crazy language Chinese, harsh and singsong at the same time. Makes me think o yer man that shot Maggit; that clangy, bell chime quality. A handful of oldies get on as well, faces aged and lined, the grannies speakin quick and clipped, the oulfellas winkin and laughin deep, and then a couple o local Neilstown bogies hop on and sit across from us. I know them to see but not by name. The fuckin head on yer man, the one at the window, like; spudheaded, bald and battered. Big puffy red and blue jackets. They’re mates o that mentalcase racist freakjob Slaughter, I think; yer man that battered the Nigerian student outside Trinity College. Left him spittin teeth or so the story goes. The bus kicks into life again outside Frawley’s on Thomas Street and yer man with the head turns for some reason and his small eyes are on mine and he’s seein a gangly ghoul, I suppose, a state scrounger wallowin in his labour and in his mind’s eye I’m battered, bloodpumpin, and then his mate nudges him and whoop-laughs and I turn me head away. Maggit has the Nike bag on his lap. He picks absentmindedly at a ‘No Smoking’ sticker on the window as the bus trundles on.

—I’ll get him one at some stage, he says.

—Wha?

He turns to me. —Buy him one, like. When I’ve a few quid.

—Yer foolin yerself, Maggit.

He looks at the bag and then stares out the window again, at town passin by, the cars and bikes and people with bags o shoppin. People I’ll never know, I’ll never see again.

*

Maggit rings the bell and a little youngfella in a stripy Dennis the Menace-style jumper answers the door. There’s cake mashed all over his face and into his hair, makin it stand up in little jammy tufts and spikes.

—Wha? he says.

Maggit hunkers down. —Is Anto’s mammy in? he says.

—Wha?

—Anto’s mammy, Bernadette. Is she in?

The youngfella looks over his shoulder and back down the hall. I can hear music and laughin from inside. The little fella’s obviously dyin to get back in.

—Who’s Anto? he says.

Maggit rolls his eyes.

—Ant’ny, he says. —Me son. The little blondy fella; Anto. I’ve a present for him.

The youngfella picks his nose. —Ant’ny, he says.

—It’s Ant’ny’s birthday today.

Maggit shakes his head. He stands up and looks at me.

—Fuckin hell, he says, under his breath. —Dense, wha?

—He’s only a kid.

I ring the doorbell again, and look down at Cakeface.

—Yiv a bit of jam on yeh there, I say.

He looks up at me and starts wipin at his forehead, mashin the cake all over the place.

—Birthday cake, he says, grinnin.

I’m about to ring the bell again when Bernadette comes walkin down the hall and the little fella legs it back inside, squealin. Bernadette’s wearing a pair o faded jeans and a pink strappy vest. There’s a party hat on her head, perched lopsidedly on her blonde braids. A fierce, righteous look comes into her eyes when she sees Maggit. She stops in the doorway, plants one hand on her hip and lifts the other to her lips, takin a long pull on her cigarette.

—Yer late, Colm, she says, lookin at Maggit. —As per usual. If yid left it any later he’d be seven.

—I know, I know, says Maggit.

He sniffs, then looks at the ground and scratches his ear.

—Sorry, he says.

Maggit looks at me.

—The bus took ages, didn’t it?

—Yonks.

Bernadette shoots me a look and I feel like a fuckin beetle or somethin. Somethin small and nasty. Which is fair enough, in a way: if yid got a kid with Maggit yid tend to have a fairly poor perception o men in general. Fuck all to do with me, like, the ins and outs o their relationship, but I feel dead bad for Bernadette sometimes. Ah well.

—He didn’t think yeh were comin, says Bernadette. —This is the only sixth birthday he’s gonna have, by the way. Yeh do know that, don’t yeh? They don’t do a repeat
on the weekend, fuckin omnibus edition, it’s only once a year and all yeh have –

—Sorry, Maggit says, again.

I don’t know why I came up here with him. Ned was right; this is fuckin embarrassin, and me bein here seems kind o inappropriate.

I can hear children whoopin and laughin inside. I look up and down the rows o bare, unhappy gardens and put me hands in me pockets. There’s a little park across the road, but yeh wouldn’t want yer kids to play there, it’s junkie city, like. Yeh can tell Bernadette wants to tell us to fuck off but she won’t.

Maggit pats the Nike bag slung over his shoulder.

—Here, I got him a computer game thing, he says. —A dear one, like.

He looks at me again.

—It’s a good dear one, isn’t it Denny?

I shrug, then look at Bernadette lookin at Maggit and Maggit lookin at me. Such moments man, brief and forever, fuckin intolerable. I just nod.

—He’ll love it, says Maggit. —Can I come in? I’m sorry I’m late. Fuckin Dublin Bus like.

Bernadette takes another drag.

—Yeah, she says, and stands aside. —Right. I suppose so.

*

There’s kids runnin all over the place in the kitchen, bangin spoons off pots and jumpin off chairs, one swoopin past us with his arms out, makin spluttery machinegun noises. There’s a big sheet o paper thumbtacked to the
wall (actually it’s loads o small sheets taped together) with HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANTHONY written in red and blue and yellow marker. Balloons as well, and scrunched up wrappin paper in piles by the sink. The remains o the cake are on the drainin board, next to a pile o plates. Three young, Bernadette-aged women are sittin by the open back porch, smokin, their legs crossed and chins raised just far enough that they can eye me and Maggit down the lengths o their noses. Again, I know the faces but not their names. I must be sufferin the fuckin early onset o senile dementia or somethin. The women are all wearin party hats as well but they don’t look too happy, although to be fair me and Maggit probably have a lot to do with that. Bernadette taps her cigarette into a Bob the Builder mug.

—Where is he? says Maggit, scannin the horde o demented kids.

—He’s up in the toilet, says Bernadette. —He has the runs.

There’s brief eye contact between the mothers, some kind o secret signal unreadable to males. They look at us again, heads still tilted. We hover in the kitchen doorway and the youngfella with cake on his face and another fella with big glasses and ginger hair walk over to us. They start jerkin their shoulders and heads, and kickin out their feet. They both have these serious, set expressions.

I look at Maggit, then back at the kids.

—What’s that? I say to them. —A dance?

Redser nods his head. The two o them start makin choppy movements with their hands.

—Are yiz havin a fit? says Maggit. —Spazzos, are yiz? He elbows me and laughs.

—Breakdancin, says Cakeface, lookin up at the ceilin, his shoulders jerkin up and down.