Robert Wilson: Eureka Street: A Novel of Ireland Like No Other

Next morning Rathcoole, a Protestant estate on the northern quiff of the city, concrete and cold. Not even eight o'clock and we were doing our third call already. Here I was, working Saturday again. We'd started off at half past six with a threepiece suite from a sleepy, anxious young couple. The woman had cried and the man had gulped nervously as he comforted her and watched our burly forms lumbering about his home. Then we'd picked up a fridge, microwave, electric guitar and mountain-bike from a family on the edge of the estate. Their house looked like it was made of cardboard and they were used to interference. We'd busted in there while all but the seven year-old were in bed. The dad had grumbled briefly but nobody feels like a fight in their pyjamas. They gave us no trouble.

We pulled up at the third house on our list. We were to take a television from a couple of pensioners. Crab stayed in the van and Hally and I walked up the little path and rapped the door in that hard, hard way we had. I went in behind him when the old guy opened up. We didn't say anything as we stepped over the rubble of the dingy hallway into the sitting room.

Curtains closed, the room was glutinous and dark. A television chuckled in a brassy nook ignoring our incursion like a brave comic shunning hecklers. An old lady sat on a sofa dimly illumined by the blue glow of breakfast television. Her reactions were tardy. She turned towards me. The old guy followed us in, swearing inaudibly, his pruny face slack like he wasn't surprised. The old lady made a couple of efforts to raise the tub of her belly off the sofa. The TV suddenly went to advertisements and the old girl was bathed in Caribbean warmth as she tottered to her feet. She began to shout. `Get out of here, you dirty hallions! Whoohjoos think y'are? My grandson's in the UDA. I'll have youse kneecapped'

Blah blah blah, the usual.

Silently, I unplugged the set and picked it up. It was my turn to carry and Hally's turn to be hardman. He flexed himself and looked pretty big in that murky little room. I moved to the door. The old man mumbled some exasperated oath at me and the old lady aimed a swipe of her hand at my retreating back.

Hally stopped and turned round to face her. He bent down a long, long way and put his face within kissing distance of hers.

`Fuck up,' he advised.

Outside I loaded the van and we moved on, Crab trundling through the cheap streets in second gear. Hally was rumbling and red with disappointed aggression. It looked like no one would give him the trouble he sought this morning and even he balked at smacking some old biddy. I looked at him and sighed. I didn't like my job.

CZ45, outstanding, £135, resale maybe 10o to The company would want back on a gogglebox of that price. Twenty pounds' profit split three ways. We were tycoons. I didn't like my job.

Crab and Hally bitched at each other while I looked out at all the bricks and all the sunshine. The day before they'd picked up a video and stereo in Ballybeen. Hally had been driving and he'd told Crab that the woman they were stiffing was so badly broke that she'd put out to keep her stuff. He'd given poor old Crab some big story about her being an unmarried mother in her late twenties, blonde, big tits: usual list of yob desirables. Crab had gone wild with anticipation. Hally and I had sussed the poor slob was a virgin. Needless to say, it was all crap as Crab discovered when some fat matron had answered the door and smacked him about for trying to take her stuff. This grievance still rankled. It wasn't like Crab had a lot of other things to think about.

I was feeling sour. I worked in the repossession industry. How else was I supposed to feel? Repo work had the capacity to take the edge off my morning and it was always the morning for us boys. That's when we did our best work. People were disoriented in the morning, half dressed, malleable, not generally pugilistic. It seemed that trousers were necessary for confident protest. We didn't work after never knew what size the guy might be or how much he might have drunk; it was also harder to find women alone after dark and people kept mistaking us for the IRA.

Oh, boy, people were always mistaking us for the IRA. I suppose it was easy to mistake one trio of macho Puckers for another. My colleagues were very basic human beings indeed. Crab was big, fat and ugly. Hally was big, fat, ugly and vicious. I tried not to hate people. Hating people was too tiring. But sometimes, just sometimes, it was hard.

I had a personal theory as to why the people we dealt with were so easy to deal with first thing in the morning. I had a feeling that poverty like theirs felt worse first thing. It might have been easier to dream or fantasize at night when some optimism or booze could make you bullish but in the pallid light of morning it must have all seemed pretty permanent, this poverty, this shame. It must have seemed fairly realistic.

What depressed me most was that so many people gave us so little trouble. Like they expected our invasion. Like they guessed we had a right and they had none. When an unmarried mother who owes twenty quid on a three-hundred-pound fridge lets you walk out with it and no grumbles, something very odd is going on.

Crab was definitely getting excited about our next call. A sunbed. Crab felt that a sunbed guaranteed some big blowsy tart — just what he needed before breakfast.We pulled into the street and stopped at the address. The house looked smarter than its neighbours: there was a fancy door and some intricate porchwork. Somebody doing well enough to buy sunbeds and build fancy porches had obviously lost their job and now we were coming to take it all away.

I stayed in the van because Crab was so desperate to get a look at the woman his imagination had created. He and Hally knocked and waited. I lit a cigarette and settled down. I felt like shit. Some would say that working-class aspiration always ends like hoodlums taking all the gaudy baubles away. I still felt like a criminal.

I couldn't get Mary out of my head. I had told her I was a debt counsellor.Which was a big fat laugh. I could never get the hang of being seedy and it appalled me to think of what I had become again since Sarah had left. Some repo thug who lies to the waitresses he takes home. The high life.

Hally was still knocking at the door and Crab was looking disappointedly through the windows. Nobody home. Just as I was beginning to hope that he wasn't going to do it, Hally had whipped out his chisel and jemmied the lock. I hated it when he did that. The cops had hassled us too many times already. I didn't want any more grief. But I said nothing as the two disappeared inside.

I put my head back and closed my eyes. I felt ashamed of the night before. I wondered if I would have felt more ashamed if I'd slept with her. It was just that the girl had somehow shown that she was much better than me. When she had asked me to take her home, it had been a stylish, independent thing to do. Maybe it was always like that when girls did it. But I had smudged it and made it somehow sordid. I wished I didn't have that knack.

A hand tapped me on the shoulder and I jerked upright, eyes open. A man was standing by the open van window. He was unshaven and weary-looking.

`That's my house,' he said. `What's going on?'

His tone was desultory, certainly not aggressive. Even so, I thought about getting out of the van in case he cut up rough.

`Repossession,' I said, more dismissive than I felt.

'What are you taking?' he asked, curiously.

`Sunbed.'

'Ah, right,' he murmured, without interest. He eyed my cigarette. I offered him one.'Thanks, mate.'

Crab and Hally were still inside. This man didn't look like he intended moving.

'They'll be ages taking that fucking thing apart: He tittered grimly.