The Spinning Heart (6 page)

I got a woeful hop the day Mickey Briars went at me with the shovel. Bobby and them were hiding all in the yard while Mickey went tearing around, roaring and shouting out of him about how he was going killing Pokey and where was his fuckin money and all. I thought first it was all a mess because everyone that was hiding was roaring laughing and I didn’t duck down behind a load of blocks like Seanie and Rory or climb up into the cab of a digger, only stood looking at auld Mickey as he ran at me. Bobby and them caught a hold of him and thrown him in the back of Seanie Shaper’s van and Bobby gave me a hand to get up off of the ground and asked to know was I all right and I done my level best not to be crying like a baby but that’s the sort of a battle I near always lose. I lid down that night after going home from the pub and the ceiling above me was spinning and spinning and I ran into the back toilet and got sick for ages. My stomach was burning and all. I’d say I was poisoned from the drink. I was quare lonesome that night, more even than all the other nights.

WE WAS ALL
sent off different places when we were small. There was six of us in it. My father went stone mad on the drink when my mother died so he did. She died having me. I often do see him outside Ciss Brien’s in the village or the Half Barrel inside in town, smoking a fag. He never says nothing to me. I do hate walking past him. My uncle took us all to the beach one time in a big van with windows. He drove to all the different houses we lived in to collect us: Nana’s, Auntie Mary’s, Uncle JJ’s, his own house to get
Noreen, my big sister. Nana told me I was to bring her back a bag of seashells. I gave the whole day to finding shells for Nana. I went up and down the long beach a rake of times. Uncle Noely had to come and find me when it was time to go home. He was vexed over having to look for me. He grabbed me by the arm and dragged me up along the steps from the beach. My big bag of shells fell all over the path at the top. Noely wouldn’t leave me pick them up. My bag was bursted anyway. I looked at them as we drove away from the beach. Seagulls were swooping down for a look to know were they something to eat that was after getting dropped. Then they’d fly off again, raging. Uncle Noely wanted to know why in the fuck was I crying over a few auld shells. I didn’t know what to say to answer him. My brother Peadar laughed at me and gave me a puck. Nana gave out stink to Uncle Noely at home because I was burnt to a crisp. He never put no lotion on me.

Noreen had a baby who died after a few days. The doctor told her the baby wouldn’t live after it was born. Noreen didn’t believe it. She said the baby was beautiful, the baby was perfect, there was nothing wrong with the baby. The baby was brought home and all. All the nurses cried inside in the hospital as they left. They all knew well the little baby hadn’t a hope in the world. Noreen wouldn’t believe it, though. Sure look at him, Nana, look at him, he’s perfect so he is, he’s
perfect
. He was too, I seen him. There was something wrong with his heart; it wouldn’t stay beating. I stayed close to Noreen’s house the whole time after they brought him home so I did. I didn’t like to be going in, tormenting them and they busy worrying and hoping and praying. I stayed outside in the shade of the big weeping willow that hung out over their wall. I let on to be standing guard against death. He got in, though, in spite of me. I heard Noreen from outside, roaring crying. PJ came out as far as the garden wall and
called me in. Noreen had the little baby in her arms. She pulled me in to her arms as well. I couldn’t hardly breathe with the flood of tears and the heat off of her and the little baby squashed into me. I knew you were outside the whole time, my love. I’m sorry, love, I’m sorry. I never minded you properly, love, and now aren’t I paying for it? I’m sorry my little love, my little love, my little love. I didn’t know for a finish was she talking about the baby or me. I think a lot about what Noreen said that day. I think she thinks it was my fault her baby died, like it was my fault Mammy died. I don’t know in the hell.

WHAT WILL I DO
for a job, I don’t know? Imagine if Bobby went out on his own and gave me a job working for him! Jaysus, it’d be brilliant so it would. I’d work like a dog for him so I would. I have all the house painted below and I got a lend of a hedge trimmers off of Noreen’s husband and done all the hedges up along the sides. I made a new panel for the back fence to replace the one that got blown down and busted up. I have every single weed pulled up from the roots the way they won’t grow back. Nana would be delighted with me. My brother Peadar said I can go way and shite now if I think I’m having that cottage. He says we’re all the same and equal in the eyes of the law when it comes to who owns the cottage. He says even if Nana wrote a will and left me the cottage, and she
didn’t
, I’d have to pay a fortune in
inheritance tax
. You’d be a fine man now below in the Credit Union looking for thirty or forty grand with your no job and one arm as long as the other, Peadar says to me. There isn’t a job to be got anywhere. Peadar wants Nana’s house sold. He has to think of his own children, he says. He came down a few nights ago with a lad from the auctioneers. He had a right cool yoke that you have
only to press against one wall inside in a room and it measures the whole room for you. It’s like magic.
Lasers
, your man said, and winked at me. He was a sneaky-looking fucker.

You’d want to buck your ideas up, Peadar says. I’d love to say ah go way and have a shite for yourself. He’d probably go mad and puck the head off of me, though. He has a fierce short fuse so he does. Noreen told me I could live in their house. I don’t want to; they might look at me and think of how their little baby was took off of them because Noreen didn’t mind me. That’s not true, but if it’s what Noreen thinks, it’s as true as it needs to be. I’d never upset Noreen. She’s lovely, so she is.

I WENT IN
as far as the new hotel in town because they rang me from the dole office to say I had to. I done an interview and all. Your man said it was for to be a kitchen porter. I’d have to wash the pots and stuff. It’s a demanding position, your man said. He had a pink tie on him. Nana would’ve called him
a right-looking dipstick
. I couldn’t stop looking at his pink tie. He showed me the place where I’d have to wash the pots and all. There was a foreign fella inside in it; he was bent over a big sink, scrubbing like mad. His britches was drownded wet and all. He looked at me as much as to say he’d slit my fuckin throat for me if I went near his potwash. Some of them foreign boys do have a fierce dark eye. Your man with the pink tie asked to know who was my referee. I looked at him with my mouth open until he asked who could he ring for a
reference
. Oh ya, Bobby Mahon, I said. Is he a former employer? Ya, I said. Then No. Ya. No. Ya. Sort of.

Jesus Christ, your man said and shook his head. Look, I’ll let you know.

He will I’d say.

Brian

I REMEMBER THE
mother and father talking about Matty Cummins and the two Walshes and Anselm Grogan and all them boys when they went to Australia a few years ago. A right shower of wasters they called them. Imagine fecking off to the far side of the world to drink their foolish heads off and the power of work to be had here! Context is everything. Pawsy Rogers used to be always saying that. Context is the first thing to examine in a statement. Aboy Pawsy, you were bang on on that score, boy. I’m fecking off to Australia now, and my mother keeps crying and my father won’t talk about it. He’s in denial. (He reckons if he doesn’t acknowledge something, it doesn’t really exist, like gayness, drugs or Marilyn Manson. When they were all on about Donal Óg coming out of the closet below in Cork, the father would only hum and look out the window when anyone mentioned it. Jaysus, what about your man of the Cusacks, Paddy? Dee dee dee dee …)

So I’m going to Australia in the context of a severe recession, and therefore I am not a yahoo or a waster, but a tragic figure, a modern incarnation of the poor tenant farmer, laid low by famine, cast from his smallholding by the Gombeen Man, forced to choose between the coffin ship and the grave. Matty Cummins and the boys were blackguards; I am a victim. They all left good jobs to go off and act the jackass below in Australia; I haven’t worked since I finished my apprenticeship. He has to go to the far side of the planet to get work, imagine, the mother does be saying to her ICA crowd. How is it at all we left them run the country to rack and ruin? How’s it we swallowed all them lies? You can be certain sure there’s no sons of
bankers
or
developers
or
government ministers
has to go off over there to get work. After all the trouble we had to get him through his exams and all.

What trouble? It was I had to do the bloody things. Boo hoo hoo, like. And the da’s eyes glaze over and he starts to suck his false teeth and squint out the window at nothing if anyone mentions it. If I was leaving a good job to go, he’d be every day telling me I was a yahoo and a blackguard and getting right thick. I could cope with that a lot easier. At least I could tell him to shut the fuck up and we could have a row and I could feel anger instead of guilt. I can’t tell him shut up if he says nothing. I wouldn’t say he even
knows
he’s humming.

I was only ever thinking about going to Australia because every single person I know went over there for at least a year and had unreal craic. Could the parents not just get over it, like? Jaysus, you’d think I was going to Afghanistan to take on the Taliban. I heard the mother giving out stink to the father about it the other night; she was doing the old shout-whisper: He’s too
young
, Paddy, he’ll drink his
head
off and spend all his money trying to keep up with the boy of the Farrells and he’ll get no
job
or
anything
. He
won’t ever go to
Mass
out there, you can be certain sure. The Aussies is all turning against the Irish, too – didn’t they kick a crathur to
death
outside a pub over there only a few months ago? Dee dee dee dee, the father said. She was fairly torturing him. Paddy, will you talk to him about it? Will you tell him it doesn’t matter about the ticket, sure what about it if he loses the money, we’ll put it back in his Credit Union for him, Paddy, will you Paddy, will you?
Paddy?
Doo doo doo doo …

My young wan broke it off with me two weeks ago. She said there’s no way she’s going to have me riding all around me below in Australia while she waits here like a fool. She seen the lads’ Facebooks; in every single photo they were pawing girls in bikinis. Forget that, she said. Then she started looking at me really closely, and sort of laughing nervously, and asking was I crying. Are you
crying?
Jesus Bri, are you actually
crying?
I was in my hole. Dopey bitch. As if I’d cry over her.
She’ll
be crying the next time she sees me; I’ll have got rid of the belly, I’ll have an unreal tan, and I’ll be home for a visit only before heading back out to my beach house and my job making four or five grand a week. Slapper. Is that it so, she wanted to know as I put my runners back on, are you just going to go? Have you nothing to say to me? I hadn’t. I kicked her bedroom door before I left, though. JESUS, she went. Then I met her auld fella on the stairs, with his big manky tacher like Joseph fucking Stalin and his little beady eyes full of suspicion. I should have gave him a slap. Bollocks.

You know the way you get used to getting the ride? And then you’re cut off, like, all of a sudden? That’s what all them wankers do be feeling when they’re going around crying over women. They’re only missing the ride. Love is a physical mechanism that ensures humanity’s survival. It’s an abstract concept as well, for people to write songs and books and make films about. Either
way, it’s nothing but a
construct
. That’s the kind of auld shite I used to write in English. Pawsy used to cream himself over it. You have a keen mind, Brian. I do, ya. In me hole. You should look at arts or humanities, Brian. Avoid construction, Brian. Don’t be tempted by the high wages, Brian, they won’t last. Don’t waste your
brain
, Brian. All right, Pawsy, leave it go, in the name of all that’s good and holy, let it go.

I won’t think about Lorna again after I start tapping some fine blondie wan below in Australia, that’s what I’m getting at. It’s only the want of a ride is making me all emotional at the moment. That’s the pervasive influence of popular culture: I
think
I’m sad over Lorna. It’s all this shite on MTV. On an intellectual level, I couldn’t give a shite about her. It’s a strange dichotomy, so it is; feeling and knowing; the feeling feels truer than the knowing of its falseness. Jaysus, I should write this shite down and send it to Pawsy before I go.

Kenny came over earlier. He has a load of Es bought, and we heading off in less than a week. He’s some spa. We’ll be off our heads all week youssir, he says, we won’t hear the auld wans bullshitting. Kenny is afraid of his shite of the flight; I know well. He’s also afraid of upsetting his parents. We’re all afraid of our lives of upsetting our parents. Why is it at all? Why have we to be bound by this fear of the feelings of others? Is it because my actions will always affect them? Am I the anti-matter particle to their matter particle, always having a direct effect on each other, even with a galaxy between us? Will the Earth’s largest ocean be deep enough to drown my guilt? Whoo boy, I have to stop thinking. I’ll be writing in a diary next, like a right prick.

I know for a fact now it’s going to be a big huge ordeal going to the airport. The mother will want to come. She’ll mither the whole way. She’ll roar and scream at the father. He’ll drive
along at about forty, hunched over the wheel, knuckles white, teeth gritted. If I see him crying, I’ll start crying too. Kenny will snigger and slag me the whole way to Australia. He’ll probably find the sexiest airhostess to tell all about it. Well gorgeous! Hey, you should a seen this lad the whole way to Shannon! Crying like a child! Will you give him a lend of your make-up there hey, it might fuckin cheer him up a bit! Fwahahahaaaa! Put on a bleedin chickflick for him there, hey! Fwahahaha! Sometimes I’d love to box Kenny in the face. But I’m getting thick over things he
might
say, which is a tad unfair on the chap, in all fairness. I’m living on my nerves. I’m like a young wan on a heavy period. Let me out of here, for Christ’s sake.