Skippy Dies (56 page)

He would have been happy simply to stay here for the rest of the night; it was warm, and his thigh was welded hip to knee
to the blonde girl next to him – her name, he thought, was Tarquin, and she was, or had been, Tom’s girlfriend. But after
ten minutes the red eye of the moped turned off the dual carriageway, and down a series of darkened, narrowing roads; then
it passed through a gateway and now puttered to a halt in an unlit car park surrounded by storm-blown trees. Dismounting,
Guido, rendered silver by the headlights of the cars, removed his helmet and with a little comb began arranging his hair into
its customary nest of swirls.

‘Everybody ready?’ he inquired chirpily, when the second car had pulled up and everyone had disembarked. Farley was acting
nonchalant, smoking one of Steve Reece’s cigarettes. Howard tried to picture him hurling himself off a cliff. Maybe he could
still be talked out of it if it was done right. Years of careful self-attendance had taught Howard that there was a back door
to most situations, through which the prudent man could slip discreetly.

‘It’s fucking
freezing
,’ a caramel blonde from the other car said, wedging her hands under her armpits.

‘Where
are
we, anyway?’ Tarquin asked, looking around disgustedly at the accoutrements of Nature.

‘Killiney Hill,’ Bill O’Malley told her.

‘Come on.’ Guido had already half-disappeared into the shadowy band of trees. Cursing, the party followed after him.

In the distance, on the crest of the hill, the silhouette of the
obelisk protruded like the nib of a fountain pen, inscribing a clouded signature on the tenebrous contract of the night sky,
a secret pact between world and darkness. When he was younger, Howard used to hear stories about Satanists coming up here
to perform black masses. Tonight he couldn’t hear much more than the wind, and the damp crunch of twigs under his feet.

They reached a fork and pursued the coast northwards, out of the park and into the compact wilderness around it. To the right
the sea foamed blackly beneath a static, ominous overhang of cloud. The track climbed steeply upwards until the trees fell
away to grass and rocks and heather.

‘Dalkey Quarry,’ Guido announced, raising his voice over the wind. ‘A sheer vertical drop of about three hundred and fifty
feet. It’s not the Grand Canyon, but believe me, you’ll find it plenty high enough.’

En masse, they peered over the edge. The rockface dropped swiftly into shadows, long before it reached the ground.

‘You
cannot
be serious,’ the platinum blonde said.

‘I told you, it’s one hundred per cent safe!’ Guido interjected irritably, huffing as he hauled a metal harness from under
a brake of gorse. ‘I’ve jumped in it myself like twenty times.’

‘You told us in the pub you’d tested it fifty times,’ Tarquin said icily.

Guido rolled his eyes. ‘I wasn’t there
counting it
, Jesus Christ. It was a lot of times, okay? Just trust me.’

She stared at him, arms folded, for a long moment, while Guido pretended to be engrossed in untangling the rope; then she
tottered away to Tom, who’d been listening to this exchange with a mirthful expression as he smoked a cigarette and looked
back over the lights of the Southside, the exclusive postcodes sparkling back from the seafront – his world, Howard thought.

‘I’m just worried you’re going to do something crazy,’ she wheedled, stroking his chin beseechingly.

‘It’s just a bit of fun,’ Tom said. ‘Chill out.’

‘Heads up, Tommo!’ Something glinted through the air: a hip
flask, tossed over by Paul Morgan. Tom took a swig, gasped, threw it on to Steve Reece.

‘Well, I’m not hanging around to watch you kill yourselves,’ Tarquin, displeased, decided. ‘I’m going back down to wait in
the car.’

‘Me too,’ the platinum blonde said.

‘Fine!’ Guido shouted, kneeling by a tree trunk with the rope. ‘Go!’

‘Wait!’ The caramel blonde tripping after them as they marched off down the path.

Farley stood at the edge of the quarry, contemplating the abyss with an indecipherable expression. Peeping over the brink
again, it seemed to Howard the drop had grown even steeper. ‘Are you absolutely sure you want to do this?’

‘Hey, Farley, heads up!’ called Steve Reece. Farley looked round just in time to clasp the flask to his stomach. He gazed
at it blankly a moment, weighing it in his hand. Then, opening it up, he pulled from it until he was overcome by coughing.
‘Give some to those guys too,’ Steve Reece instructed.

Gasping, Farley handed the flask to Howard. ‘I just think it would be fun,’ he said, in a whiskey falsetto.

‘We’ll do it too,’ Bill said heavily. Howard’s throat had seized up from the alcohol: all he could do was nod his head.

They trooped over to where the others were waiting for Guido to complete his preparations. Metallic objects clinked in his
hands. ‘Nearly ready…’

‘What are you doing?’ Tom called amusedly over his shoulder. Howard turned to see the outline of the girls bunched at the
end of the path.

‘We don’t want to walk through the woods on our own,’ the squeak came back. ‘We’re just going to wait here.’

Tom let out a belly-laugh. ‘Birds,’ he said, flashing his teeth at Howard.

‘Yeah,’ he returned shakily.

‘All set.’ Guido, holding in his hands what looked like a strait-
jacket attached to an orange rope, rose to his feet, to dutiful whoops of excitement from the huddle of boys, which the wind
seemed to swallow before they had even left their mouths. ‘Before we continue, I will be needing your contributions, please,
gentlemen.’ The famously serpentine eyes darting from one face to the next. ‘Twenty pounds each.’

Checking their wallets, Bill and Howard realized that they didn’t have enough money. For an instant, Howard saw a lifeline.
Then Tom stepped in, offering to cover him. Steve Reece did likewise for Bill. ‘Thanks,’ Howard mumbled. ‘We can settle up
later in the week.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Tom said.

The notes disappeared into Guido’s back pocket. ‘Okay.’ In his voice Howard thought he heard the trace of a quaver. ‘Who’s
going first?’

No one said anything. Howard occupied himself with gazing down into the drop, much in the same way he’d examine his fingernails
when the teacher put a question to the class, until it started making him nauseous and he had to step back. Guido shifted
from foot to foot.

‘What’s the matter? I’m telling you, this is a hundred per cent safe. They’ve been doing it in Australia for years. But no
problem, if you’re too afraid, you can go and wait with the girls.’

Still no one responded. The sea crashed; nightbirds cried; the wind hollered mockingly.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Guido exclaimed. ‘What’s the problem? Are you all faggots?’

‘Fuck it –’ Tom stepped forward and grabbed the harness. At exactly the same moment, however, Steve Reece had the same idea,
and now a new and vociferous argument broke out over who would go first.

Finally it was decided that the fairest solution would be to draw lots for the privilege.

Taking an expensive-looking pen from his jacket, Tom wrote out their six names on a flyer for an Indian restaurant. Even in
his
careless handwriting the list had the look of something fraught with destiny; no one spoke as he passed it to Guido, who tore
it into strips, curled the strips into balls and dropped them into his helmet. Closing his eyes, he reached in and plucked
a single ball back out. Each of the boys arranged his face into an attitude of yawning indifference. Guido untangled the strip
of paper and extended his palm so that everyone could see it.

‘Great,’ Howard said tightly.

Guido picked up the jingling harness.

‘Good luck,’ Bill O’Malley said. Farley nodded dumbly, staring at Howard with an almost parodic expression of guilt.

The others punched his shoulder and said in terse voices, ‘Good man, Fallon, fair fucks.’

In a daze, Howard raised his arms and the harness was strapped around him. Beside him Guido issued last-minute instructions:
‘… elasticated… last second… adrenalin…’ But he was aware only of his numb fingers and the frenetic clamour of his heart,
the wind charging about below like a wounded beast, and the bleak, stony faces of the other boys, uncomfortably resembling
the front row of mourners at his funeral…

‘Don’t worry.’ Guido intervened in his field of vision again. ‘Nothing can possibly go wrong.’

Howard nodded and, in the manner of a man who has just stepped out of the deep freeze, lumbered up to the brink.

The chasm at his toes yawned and seethed, a single undifferentiated blackness that bore no relation to anything earthly, but
rather resembled some terrifyingly literalized condition poised just beyond the edge of human apprehension –

‘Ready…’ Guido at his shoulder.

– resembled, it hit him in a flash, his own future –

‘And… go!’

Howard did not move.

‘What’s the problem?’ Guido asked.

‘Nothing, I just need a second to…’ He bent his knees, a caricature of a diver.

‘You want a little push?’ Guido advanced. Involuntarily Howard sidestepped away from him, raising a hand in defence. ‘What?’
Guido appealed. ‘Are you going to jump or not?’

‘Okay, okay…’ Howard went back to the brink, shut his eyes, clenched his teeth.

The wind in the trees, on the rocks, like a siren’s song.

‘What’s going on?’ The girl’s voice sounded like it was coming from the other side of the world.

‘Fallon won’t jump,’ Steve Reece said. ‘Come on, Fallon, for fuck’s sake, I’m freezing my bollocks off.’

‘Yeah, Fallon, come on.’

‘He doesn’t have to jump if he doesn’t want to,’ he heard Farley say.

‘For fuck’s
sake
,’ Steve Reece repeated heavily – and then a hand dragged him back from the precipice.

‘
I’ll
go. Jesus Christ.’ Tom was unstrapping the harness; Howard let him, gulping in air like he’d just been hauled out of the
sea, then, freed, stumbled away on jelly legs to collapse on a tussock of grass a safe distance away, still too disoriented
to be ashamed.

‘Jesus Christ, Fallon,’ Paul Morgan said. ‘You fucking pussy.’

‘Howard the Coward,’ Tom said, shrugging on the harness.

‘Howard the Coward!’ Steve Reece laughed delightedly.

In the distance he heard the girls’ laughter like the chirr of woodland animals, and he blazed with disgrace, feeling like
he’d been at long last unmasked, outed, shown for what he really was.

‘Is
any
body going to jump tonight?’ Guido was playing up the incident as a personal affront. ‘Maybe I should just take you home now?’

‘Chill the fuck out, LaManche.’ Tom had buckled the harness belt and now stepped forward to survey the void. ‘Everything’s
ready?’ Guido assented. ‘Right,’ Tom said crisply, and hurled himself over the edge.

The others leaned out to witness his descent, his brawny body in a matter of seconds dwindling to a little toy as it dropped
through space, straight down, not twisting or turning, and hit the ground with a flat thud.

For a moment no one reacted: they simply remained craned over the chasm, looking down at the tiny prostrate dot of colour
motionless at the bottom. Then Guido mouthed, ‘Oh, shit.’ And from their position over by the edge of the trees, one of the
girls began to scream.

Eleven years later, two hours after his last class, Howard is still haunting the school. First he attends a meeting about
the upcoming Father Desmond Furlong Memorial Concert, to which he contributes mostly by way of nods or ambiguous throat-clearing
noises; then he installs himself in the staffroom where, taking advantage of the silence, he corrects a class’s worth of essays
on the Land Acts, appending meticulous individual critiques and advice for future projects. He has moved on to potential questions
for the fourth-year Christmas exam when the cleaner starts hoovering pointedly under his feet; accepting defeat, he slinks
for the door.

It’s Friday, and Farley has been sending regular texts from the Ferry, which Howard has ignored; Tom is bound to be there,
and tonight of all nights he would prefer to avoid him. When he reaches his car, however, he realizes that even the prospect
of being beaten to a pulp is more appealing than another night in his lonely house. Perhaps he can hide out in a corner without
being seen? It’s worth a shot: pocketing his keys, he turns in the direction of the pub.

The time is after six, and most of his colleagues are, in their own parlance, ‘well-oiled’. To Howard’s dismay, Farley is
talking to Tom, conspicuously flushed and laughing too loud. He salutes them curtly and heads for the snug, where a little
crowd has gathered around Finian Ó Dálaigh, the restored geography teacher, who’s in the middle of a diatribe about the bastards
in the Department of Education: ‘Those bastards do nothing but sit around in their fine government buildings playing battleships,
I’d like to see them supervise four hundred maniacs running around a gravel yard…’

‘H-bomb.’ Farley materializes at his elbow. ‘Why didn’t you come over?’

‘You were talking to…’ Howard nods clandestinely over his glass at Tom, waiting at the bar with his back to them.

‘So?’ Farley says. ‘He’s not going to bite you, is he?’

Howard stares at him. ‘How do you know? Don’t you realize what day it is?’

‘Friday?’

‘It’s the
anniversary
, you clown, the anniversary of the accident. Eleven years.’

‘Oh, for –’ Farley swats his hand at the idea. ‘Howard, I swear, no one in the world is aware of that except you. Forget about
it, for God’s sake. You’ve got enough to worry about.’ He drains his glass and sets it down on a nearby ledge. ‘Aha, perfect
timing,’ as Tom appears beside them and hands him a drink.

‘Sorry, Howard,’ he says, ‘are you all right for a pint?’

‘I’m still on this one,’ Howard mutters.

‘It’s nearly gone – excuse me.’ Tom grabs the lounge girl and orders another beer. This is the first drink he has ever bought
for him; Howard raises his eyebrows in bewilderment. Farley shrugs back at him. Well, perhaps he is right, Howard thinks,
perhaps it is only himself who keeps clutching on to the past, who’s been obsessively watching the calendar. Tom is certainly
in better form tonight than he has been lately – relaxed and jovial, if not what you could call sober. It’s Howard who remains
stiff and diffident, unable to settle; he can’t help feeling thankful when Jim Slattery ambles up.