The Barrytown Trilogy (43 page)

—He did this to his brother last night, she said. —The exact same thing.

Bimbo came back. They got in together, to consult.

—I can’t smell anythin’, said Bimbo.

—Can yeh not? said Bertie.

—D’yeh have a cold? Jimmy Sr asked Bimbo. —It’s gettin’ worse.

—It’s not, is it? said Bimbo. —God, this is desperate.

Maggie and Veronica arrived, and most of Bimbo’s kids.

—What’s up? said Maggie. —Ah howyeh, Vera.

—Howyeh, Maggie. Happy Christmas. Happy Christmas, Veronica.

—And yourself, Vera; happy Christmas.

—Never mind Christmas, said Bimbo.

He nodded his head back; he didn’t want to look. He whispered.

—We’ve an emergency on our hands.

—How come? said Maggie.

Jimmy Sr was having real problems keeping his face straight. So was Vera. Bertie though, he looked like a doctor telling you that you had cancer.

—Your mother —, said Bimbo.

—She has a name, you know, said Maggie.

—That’s not all she has, signora, said Bertie.

That was it; Guinness, snot, probably some of his breakfast burst up into Jimmy Sr’s mouth and nose; it didn’t get past his teeth – he was lucky there – but something landed on his shirt; he didn’t care, not yet; his eyes watered —

—Fuck; sorry.

And he laughed.

Veronica had her handkerchief out and was trying to get the snot off his shirt.

He laughed like he was dying of it; it was hurting him but it was fuckin’ great. Veronica was tickling him as well and that made it worse.

Veronica started laughing at him laughing.

They were all laughing now, even Bimbo. He knew he’d been had but he didn’t mind; he never did; only sometimes.

Jimmy Sr felt a fart coming on, and he didn’t trust himself with it; he couldn’t, not the way he was, helpless from the laughing and sweating and that; he’d have ended up being the
one who’d ruined Bimbo’s Christmas – by shiteing all over the new carpet.

—Eh, the jacks, he said.

—Off yeh go, said Bertie.

It took him ages to get up the stairs; he had to haul himself up them.

* * *

He had a piss while he was up there, and gave his hands a wash; he always did when he was in someone’s house.

He was some tulip, Bertie; he was fuckin’ gas.

Jesus, the water was scalding.

He dried his hands, and looked at his watch: half-twelve. That was good; they’d stay another hour and a half or so. The crack would be fine.

Vera; she was a fine-looking bird. She looked after herself – whatever that meant. She looked healthy, that was it. She looked healthier than Veronica. She was a good bit younger than Veronica, maybe ten years. But she looked like she’d been a young one not so long ago and poor Veronica looked like she’d never been a young one. It wasn’t just age though.

Bimbo had an electric razor.

He had two of them, two razors, the jammy bastard; an ordinary-looking one and a thin yellow one that didn’t look like it could’ve been much good. Jimmy Sr picked up the yellow one: Girl Care. What the fuck —

She was a bit of a brasser, Vera, but Jimmy Sr liked that.

It was Maggie’s, that was it; for her legs or – only her legs probably. He pressed a small rubber button, and it came on but there was hardly any noise out of it. He put his foot up on the bath and lifted his trouser leg and pulled down his sock a bit; new socks, from the twins.

—One from each o’ yis, wha’, he’d said when he’d unwrapped them, earlier at home.

He looked at the door; it was alright, it was locked.

He slowly put the Girl yoke down on top of a couple of long hairs, there on his shin: nothing. He massaged another
bit of his leg with it, and then felt it. It was smooth alright but – it was smooth there anyway. There was a clump of about ten hairs growing out of a sort of a mole yoke he’d had since he was a kid.

They were real wiry, these hairs, and blacker than the other ones. He wouldn’t put the head of the razor straight down on top of them; he’d just run the thing over the mole quickly and see what it did.

He looked at the door again. Vera probably used one of these, when she was shaving her legs —

—Ah fuck this!

He threw the Girl Care back onto the shelf over the sink.

God, he was a right fuckin’ eejit. Shaving his legs; for fuck sake!

He was sweating.

He’d better get back down to the others.

Shaving his fuckin’ legs.

He felt weak, hopeless, like he’d been caught. Was something happening him?

He turned on the cold tap.

No, fuck it; he’d only been curious, that was all; he’d only wanted to see if the fuckin’ thing worked, that was all.

The cold water was lovely on his face. Nice towel as well; lovely and soft. Maggie had probably put it into the bathroom just before they’d arrived, just for them. It wasn’t damp and smelly, the way it would’ve been if the whole family had been through it that morning.

Fair play to Bimbo; and Maggie. They had the house lovely.

He felt better now. That hot wetness was gone. He was grand now.

He unlocked the door and went downstairs.

* * *

It was nice. The window was open and it wasn’t cold at all. There was no one out on the road; no voices or cars. No one would’ve been out on Christmas Day night; there was
nowhere to go, unless they’d been out visiting the mother or something and they were on their way home.

Veronica was asleep.

That was the first time they’d done the business in a good while; two months nearly. Made love. He’d never called it that; it sounded thick. Riding your wife was more than just riding, especially when yis hadn’t done it in months, but – he could never have said Let’s make love to Veronica; she’d have burst out laughing at him.

He wasn’t tired. He hadn’t drunk much. There hadn’t been that much to drink, but that didn’t matter; he wouldn’t have wanted it anyway. Anyway as well, he’d had a snooze after they got back from Bimbo’s while Veronica and Sharon were getting the dinner ready.

Veronica had caught him feeling her legs to see if they were smooth, to see if she shaved them.

—What’re you doing?

—Nothin’.

She hadn’t really caught him; he’d have been doing it anyway. But he’d had to keep feeling them up and down from her knees up to her gee after she’d said that, so she wouldn’t think he’d stopped just cos she’d said it.

They were smooth, except on her shins. They were a bit prickly there.

Young Jimmy’d come for the dinner. In a taxi, no less. Fair play to him. And five cigars for Jimmy Sr from Aoife, his mot. That was very nice of her; he’d only met her the once. She was a nice young one, too nice for that —

That wasn’t fair. He was alright, young Jimmy. He was staying the night, downstairs with Darren. And Darren was well set up as well, with a lovely-looking young one.

Aoife and Miranda.

Two lovely names. There was something about them; just thinking of the names, not even the girls themselves, got him going. They were models’ names.

Veronica wasn’t what you’d have called a sexy name. Or Vera.

Vera wasn’t too bad though. There was no saint called Vera as far as he knew.

Veronica shifted and moved in closer to him. That was nice. He felt guilty now; not really though. He put his hand on her back.

That fucker Leslie hadn’t got in touch; not even a card. Even just to tell them where he was; and that he was alive. He’d been caught robbing a Lifeboat collection box out in Howth. He hadn’t even been caught, just seen by an off-duty cop who knew him. And that was why he’d left, for robbing a couple of quids’ worth of fivepences and twopences. Last August that was. He’d spent two nights in Veronica’s sister’s in Wolverhampton, and that was it; they hadn’t heard from him since. On the run. He was only nineteen. He’d have gone eventually anyway; he was always in trouble and never at home, and you couldn’t be held responsible for a nineteen-year-old. They were better off without him. Jimmy Sr had taken the day off work to go with Leslie to court the first time, about five years ago now, for trespassing on the tracks.

Poor Veronica had bought a present for him, just in case; a jumper. But she hadn’t put it under the tree. It was up in the wardrobe over there, all wrapped up. She hadn’t said anything when he didn’t turn up yesterday or even today. She’d been in good form all day. You never knew with Veronica.

Jimmy Sr would throw the little shitehawk out on his ear if he turned up now. No, though; he wouldn’t.

Trespassing on the tracks. Then he’d gone on to the big time, robbing fuckin’ poor boxes. He was probably sleeping in a cardboard box —

It hadn’t been a bad day; not too bad at all. Fair enough, probably nobody got the present they’d really wanted – the faces on the poor twins when they’d seen their presents, clothes. They used to get new clothes anyway, their Christmas clothes; their presents had always been separate. Still, they were happy enough with the clothes. They’d been changing in and out of them all day. They were getting very big, real young ones. Gina was the only real child left in the house.

Jimmy Sr had got David Copperfield for Darren, and he’d liked it; you could tell. To Darren From His Father; that was what he’d written inside it. He saw Darren reading it after the tea.

They’d had their turkey as well, same as always; a grand big fucker. They’d be eating turkey sandwiches for weeks. He’d won it with two Saturdays to spare, and a bottle of Jameson. His game had definitely improved since he’d gone on the labour.

He got a tea-towel for Veronica, with Italia 90 on it. She liked it as well. She showed it to Sharon and the two of them laughed. He gave out to her later when he caught her using it to dry the dishes and she’d laughed again, and then he had as well. That was what it was for, he supposed. But she could have kept it for – he didn’t know – a special occasion or something.

—Jimmy, love, she’d said. —Christmas is a special occasion.

Then she’d shown him how to use it; for a laugh. It had been a good oul’ day.

* * *

You got used to it. In fact, it wasn’t too bad. You just had to fill your day, and that wasn’t all that hard really. And now that the days were getting a bit longer – it was January – the good weather would be starting soon and he’d be able to do things to the garden. He had plans.

The worst part was the money, not having any of it; having to be mean. For instance, Darren had gone to Scotland with the school when he was in second year, but the twins wouldn’t be going anywhere. They’d come home soon and ask and he’d have to say No, or Veronica would; she was better at it.

Unless, of course, he got work between now and then.

Only, it was easier to cope if you didn’t think things like that, getting work. You just continued on, like this was normal; you filled your day. The good thing about winter was that the day was actually short. It was only in the daylight that
you felt bad, restless, sometimes even guilty. Mind you, the time went slower, probably because of the cold.

It hadn’t been cold at all yet this winter, not the cold that made your nose numb. Inside in the house during the day, when they didn’t have a fire going – when the kids were at school – and they didn’t have any heaters on, except in Sharon’s room for Gina, it was never really cold, just sort of cool, damp without being damp. It wasn’t bad once you were dressed properly.

He’d had to take his jacket off a good few times when he was out walking with Gina it was so warm. He did that a lot, went out with Gina. He even took her to the pitch ’n’ putt once, and some fuckin’ clown had sent a ball bouncing off the bar of her buggy when Jimmy Sr was teeing up at the seventh, the tricky seventh. God, if he’d hit her he’d have killed her, and he’d only said Sorry and then asked Jimmy Sr did he see where his fuckin’ ball had gone. Jimmy Sr told him where the fuckin’ ball would go if he ever did it again. But it had scared him.

Mind you, at least he’d had something to tell Veronica when he got home, something genuine. Sometimes he made up things to tell her, little adventures; some oul’ one dropping her shopping or some kid nearly getting run over. He felt like a right prick when he was telling her but he kind of had to, he didn’t know why; to let her know that he was getting on fine.

He went into town and wandered around. He hadn’t done that in years. It had changed a lot; pubs he’d known and even streets were gone. It looked good though, he thought. He could tell you one thing: there was money in this town.

—Si.

Bertie agreed with him, and so did Bimbo.

Young ones must have been earning real money these days as well; you could tell by the way they dressed. He’d sat on that stone bench with the two bronze oul’ ones chin-wagging on it, beside the Halfpenny Bridge; he’d sat on the side of that one day and he’d counted fifty-four great-looking young ones going by in only a quarter of an hour; brilliant-looking
women now, and all of them dressed beautifully, the height of style; they must have paid fortunes for the stuff they had on them; you could tell.

He’d read three of your man, Charles Dickens’ books now; they were brilliant; just brilliant. He was going to do some Leaving Cert subjects next year, next September; at night, like Veronica. He read the papers from cover to cover these days. He read them in Raheny Library, or Donaghmede if he felt like a change. He preferred Raheny. And he watched Sky News in the day. He couldn’t keep up with what was happening these days, especially in the Warsaw Pact places. They were talking about it one day, him and Darren and Sharon and Veronica, and even the twins, at their dinner; they were talking about it and he’d noticed one thing: the twins called Thatcher Thatcher and Bush Bush but they called Gorbachev Mr Gorbachev: that said something. Because they could be cheeky little bitches when they wanted to be.

Sky News was good, better than their other poxy channel, Sky One. But he wouldn’t pay for it when they had to start paying for it later in the year sometime. It wasn’t worth it, although he didn’t know how much they were going to charge. And that reminded him: there’d been a bill from Cablelink stuck up on the fridge door for weeks now. It could stay there for another few; fuck it.