When Love Comes to Town (2 page)

But Neil shook his head. “No, Dad, I won’t, I’m just going out.” Escape was imperative. There was only so much happy family chat he could endure. It was as if the same record were replayed every time they met.

“Where’re you going, love?” his mum asked.

“Just out on the bike for a bit of air.”

“Oh, some young one, I’ll bet,” his dad teased.

“Is there something we should know?” Kate looked to Catherine inquiringly.

His mum shrugged. “Sure, he tells us nothing.”

“A break from my studying, Kate.” Neil blushed as he lifted Annie down from his shoulders and purposely avoided his mum’s searching look.

“A good-looking fellow like you should have a girlfriend,” Kate said, prodding him gently.

“Only one?” Neil felt suddenly nauseous as he muttered the well-worn reply and brought the predictable macho laughter from his dad and his brother-in-law. But he was still conscious of his mum’s stare.

“Whatever happened to Becky what’s-her-name that you brought to your debs?” asked Kate, tweaking Neil’s nose.

“That’d be tellin’,” Neil said, ducking out the door. He couldn’t get away fast enough now. He glanced back quickly and saw them all watching him leave.

While Neil was wheeling his bicycle out of the garden shed, he could hear his mum’s voice drifting out through the open window. “He likes to go out for rides on his own,” she said, but Neil could sense the pain in her voice. She knew that there was something troubling her youngest. Neil had once overheard his dad blaming his exams, but he knew that his mum wasn’t convinced. Her motherly intuition told her that it was something a lot deeper than that. But her watchfulness drove Neil even further away from her. The boy who had told her everything during his younger, more carefree days was like a stranger to her now.

Neil forgot his troubles as soon as he felt the summer breeze on his face, blowing away all the bedroom cobwebs. He took a shortcut through the deserted suburban oasis of Blackrock College, past all the rugby fields that held so many vivid memories of past glories for him. He smiled as he recalled his brother-in-law Dan charging onto the Lansdowne Road field in front of twenty thousand spectators and embracing Neil after he had scored a goal in the Schools’ Cup final. Neil had teased him about the lengths people go to to get their mug on television. But Dan was so taken with the achievement that he actually brought Neil’s medal into his office and down to his rugby club to show it off.
Look what the missus’s kid brother won! Passport to any job in the country, this medal is
. Neil imagined the reactions behind Dan’s back.
Swear he had won it himself. Idolizing a kid, what a dork
.

Neil’s thoughts were interrupted when Father Donnelly stepped out into his path and flagged him to stop. His brakes screeched as he skidded his bike to a halt.

“Trying to run me down?” Father Donnelly joked.

Neil grinned. “Sorry, Father, didn’t see you there.”

“You look like a man who’s very worried about his graduation.”

“Short break from the studying.”

Father Donnelly rested his hand on Neil’s shoulder. “I want an A on that English paper from you,” he said.

“At least,” Neil smiled. Father Donnelly had taught him since First Year and Neil had always been one of his favorite students.

The priest’s face became serious. “Have you decided on your major?”

Neil nodded. “Liberal Arts.”

“And have you told your mother and father?”

Neil shook his head. Father Donnelly squeezed his shoulder gently. “I think you should, you know.”

Neil blushed. “I will after the exams are over.”

The priest relinquished his grip on Neil’s shoulder. “You should tell your parents these things, Neil, they’ll understand. They know you a lot better than you think they do,” he added absently before he bade farewell and continued on his stroll.

What was Donno getting at? Neil wondered. Had he been talking to his mum? Neil knew the priest well enough to realize that what he had just said was laden with undercurrents. Surely the old codger couldn’t have guessed. No way. He was just worried that he would be seen as the one responsible for Neil’s decision not to do engineering. That was it, he decided as he pressed down on his pedals and set off again through the empty school grounds.

A man with a bushy mustache was standing by the urinals, supposedly pissing, when Neil stepped cautiously into the gents’ toilets on Blackrock seafront. Keeping his head down, Neil ducked into a stall and locked the door.

Water was hissing through the overhead pipes, and the faint sounds of people on the beach drifted through the vent in the concrete wall. Ignoring the pungent odors, Neil started to read the graffiti. It struck him how sad most of the comments were. Notes of desperation. Presumably sane people organizing dates on the back of a toilet door. After he had read the complete toilet-door works, he flushed the toilet and opened the stall door. His heart jumped when he saw that Bushy Mustache was still in the rest room, now pretending to wash his hands in a dingy hand basin that looked older than himself.

“You wouldn’t have the time, would you?” Bushy Mustache asked in his suave voice.

“Eh, it’s just past three o’clock,” Neil replied, avoiding the man’s lingering look. His face felt like it was on fire as he walked out of the rest room. He stayed out of view while a DART train, packed with happy day-trippers, shuttled past. Then, as he was unlocking his bicycle, Bushy Mustache appeared at the doorway of the rest room.

“Lovely day, isn’t it?” he said.

“Yeah.” Neil’s hands were trembling as he fiddled with his combination lock. He felt the man’s eyes burning right through him. He kept his head bowed, certain that with his luck, someone he knew was bound to be passing at this embarrassing moment. “Hey, Neil, saw you chatting to this bloke outside the bog in the park. You’d want to watch it, you’ll get a bit of a name for yourself.”
Don’t worry
, Neil reassured himself,
you’d fob them off with a grin and a joke
. “Oh, he was some goer,” you’d say with a mock sigh, “me arse was sore for a week after.” They’d laugh, and all suspicion would be dispelled immediately.

“You don’t have a light by any chance, do you?”

Oh shit, he’s not giving up easily. Maybe you’re giving out signals without even knowing it.

“Sorry, don’t smoke.”

That’s it, up on your bike now and cycle away back into your safe little world,
Neil thought.
Leave the toilet fiend to his own devices. God, what a life, spending your Sunday after
noons in a stinking toilet. Imagine if his mother knew. Imagine if the doctor delivering the screaming baby said, “Oh missus, this boy of yours is going to spend every Sunday afternoon in a dingy toilet, attempting to lure younger men into the cubicle with him.” Aaaah, she’d scream, “Murder him! Drown him like a kitten. Slit his throat from ear to ear. Gag him till he suffocates. Just get rid of him.”

Quickly Neil squashed any thoughts of what his own mum would say if she could see her little fellow now.

Later that evening, Neil crossed the road as he cycled past Hollywood Nights. He didn’t want to be spotted by any of the rhyming couplets who went there most weekend nights. Anytime he did go there, Neil ended up standing at the edge of the dance floor with Mal and Tony, two cynical guys from his class who spent their nights commenting on the ugliness—and the sexual availability—of the female talent. Two cynical guys with whom no self-respecting girl would dance even if they did have the nerve to ask. It was Mal who, during one of his more inventive moments, had coined the phrase “rhyming couplets.” Neil hated himself for fraternizing with them, but it was better than feeling completely left out.

After locking his bike to a railing in the carpark of the Stillorgan Orchard, Neil skipped up the steps that led to the cinema. Quarter to nine. Good, he thought, he wouldn’t have to stand in line and pretend he was waiting

for someone.

“Neil!”

Neil’s heart sank. All the people in the line turned to look at him.

“Hey, Neil!” It was the unmistakeable voice of his sister Jackie. Neil turned around and saw her and her boyfriend, Liam. There was no escape.

Neil grinned as he joined them. “How’s it going?”

“How’re you, Neil?” Liam beamed his friendly smile. Both Liam and Jackie were wearing odd shoes again. It was their latest craze. They had started off wearing odd socks, before graduating to odd shoes. One day Neil had bumped into the pair of them on Grafton Street, when they were wearing one running shoe and one Doc Marten each.

“Who’re you here with?” Jackie asked, searching around for her younger brother’s friends.

“I’m supposed to meet Gary and Tom,” Neil lied, “but I’m a bit late. You haven’t seen them, have you?”

Jackie and Liam shook their heads vaguely. Then Jackie’s eyes lit up as she grabbed Neil’s sleeve.“ Did the old pair say anything about me not coming home last night?” Both Jackie and Liam were second year science students at UCD. Liam had a flat in Rathmines and Jackie often stayed the night there. She would phone home after the pubs closed and tell her parents she had missed the last bus and was going to stay with her friend Michelle.

Neil shrugged. “Nah, just the usual martyr act from the old dear.”

“Oh, what have we reared?” Jackie was doing an exaggerated mimicry of their mother.

Liam smiled. “Which film are you going to?” he asked, flicking his long hair back from his face and jangling the huge collection of love bangles on his wrist. Both he and Jackie gave each other a bangle to mark each new week of their relationship.

“
The Crying Game
,” Neil told him, wishing he had someone to wear bangles for.

“That’s what we’re going to,” Jackie said. “You might as well sit with us, looks like the lads have gone in already.”

The line had started to move. Neil sensed that Jackie knew that he had come alone. She was probably wondering what was wrong with her little brother. Why didn’t he hang around with the crowd? Neil saw a flicker of the same look of pity that he’d seen on his mum’s face earlier. He wished he had hidden away with his books as usual, invisible to the world.

A
carnival atmosphere swept through the Sixth Year classrooms as the end of term drew closer. Everyone knew that it was the end of an era, a benchmark in their lives, and a strange aura of camaraderie and goodwill pervaded. Fellows who had hated one another’s guts for the past six years exchanged pleasantries. The coolest bloke in the class, Mick Toner, who had behaved like a rock star for the past few years and made a particular point of not speaking to anyone who played rugby, now dropped his guard and babbled away like an excited kid on Christmas morning. The two cynics of the class, Mal and Tony, were barely recognizable without their sneers. Even despised teachers were treated as friends.

But a great cloud of nervous anxiety hung over everything. Neil smiled to himself; he and his classmates were like unborn infants reluctant to leave the womb, afraid of the great unknown that was beckoning and that they had all been looking forward to escaping into for so long. Now, even the classrooms that had always been seen as torture chambers suddenly became appealing. They personified safety and certainty. All decisions were made there for you. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad place after all, he thought, but it was like something he had read somewhere once, that most people only realize how good times were when they are over.

“I don’t like saying good-bye,” Father Donnelly, flanked by all the other teachers, was addressing the Sixth Years, all of whom had assembled in the hall, “so I’m not going to say good-bye.”

“Say au revoir.” The voice from the back of the hall was clearly audible, and a ripple of amused laughter filled the hall.

Up on the stage, Father Donnelly smiled benevolently, biding his time, waiting for the noise to subside. Then he pointed down at the grinning culprit. “Keep that sense of humor, Mr.Toner, God knows you’ll need it.” This was greeted by a burst of laughter, as every head turned to look at the now-red-faced Mick Toner.

Father Donnelly rambled into his end-of-term speech.

He reminded them how fortunate they were to have been educated at Blackrock Academy. This was met by low mumblings of protest from the back of the hall. He told them that they must show compassion to those less fortunate than them, that they must take Christ’s message out into the world with them.

“His rule is simple…” Father Donnelly paused.

“No baseball hats in the classroom,” a deep voice at the back of the hall interrupted, and this was greeted by another burst of laughter.

Father Donnelly chose to ignore the comment, “…Love God and love thy neighbor.”

“Even Mal and Tony?” The deep voice was again followed by sniggers, quickly silenced by Father Donnelly’s icy glare. Neil felt sorry for Donno; it was obvious that the ceremony meant more to him than it did to his students. He had admitted as much to Neil and a couple of others on the Co-Operation North weekend. He had told them that summer was the saddest time of the year for him. The graduating class, which he had known since they were twelve-year-olds, would walk out the school gates, and very few of them ever came back to see him again. Neil decided that he was definitely going to drop in and visit Donno regularly.

Father Donnelly signaled for attention. “Now, all that’s left for me to do is to open these envelopes here in front of me and announce the winners of this year’s prizes.”

The tension in the hall mounted. Father Donnelly didn’t lift his eyes from the gathered assembly as he tore the envelopes open. He seemed to enjoy watching them squirm. There was a prize to be awarded for each subject and each recipient had to suffer the long walk up to the stage to collect his prize. Drops of perspiration trickled down Neil’s rib cage, his heart pounded. The prize for English was about to be announced and he was one of the hot favorites.

Big deal
, he thought,
who gives a shit if I win or not. It’ll all be forgotten about by tomorrow anyway
.