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

I sat on the stairs and waited for the next instalment. His hat had come off and I got a good look at him. He was probably about my age, but that clean-shaven, short-haired cop look made him seem like a kid. He looked at me, too, and all his steam was blown. I guessed it was over and raised my hand in a vaguely pacific gesture just to make sure.

'Jesus, take it easy there,' I said placidly.

I think the guy was amazed by my moderate tone. He looked like he didn't know what to do next. He bent to pick up his hat and glanced up the hall. He frowned at something. I turned to see my wide-eyed cat peeking round a doorway. I nearly laughed.

The policeman turned to me again. I was calming down. I wasn't too badly hammered. Despite the neat elbow work, the guy wasn't much good at fighting. I'd worked out that this was private business, that there was nothing official about this brand of violence. I was also beginning to guess who he was. As he stood there, unsure what to do, I felt like giving him some help.

`You stay away from Mary. Hear me?' He tried to hiss the words. The threat was pallid under the circumstances.

'I hear you.' I figured this was the best way of getting rid of him. I don't think she'd told him everything he needed to know. His anger was too shambling to be cuckolded anger. He was being too reasonable about this. He'd seen us earlier and Mary had obviously told him I was hassling her and no more.

`You'd better,' he said. He looked at my cat again. His confusion intensified. Maybe he thought there should be something more. But he decided there wasn't so he turned and walked out.

I closed the door behind him, close to laughter again. I did a systems check at the bathroom mirror.There wasn't much damage beyond blood and puffiness. My nose and mouth felt hot with the unmistakable heat of fightmarks but all the teeth were intact and my jaw did all the things it should do. He was a weed, this cop, this Paul.

But it still hurt. Fighting had certainly become much harder since I'd given up fighting. But it could have been much worse. He could have brought his copper chums with him. The whole squad could have helped him out there. They could have banged me about down the station. Jesus, the way things went in this country he could have had me serving seventeen years for knowing the first three lines of the Hail Mary. It was nice that it was all just fair in love for a change. I found myself admiring his self-control.

My cat padded to the open doorway of the bathroom. Unusually silent, he looked up at me. I looked down at him. Maybe it all looked like justice to him because, if I hadn't known it to be impossible, I'd have sworn that the furry little shit cocked an eyebrow at me.

The Thursday evening of the next week. It had been the first sunshiny day of the year. Clocks forward, sky wide, the mood good, I drove home from work. I'd found a new job already — I was humping bricks on a hotel refit down the town. The day was late and the sun was low and orange with age; the city looked so light that you could have blown it away.The multiple windows of Belfast's dwarf skyscrapers turned red in pairs like there was a fire inside. Between the trees dogs reddened in the sudden blush of sun.

It was the night on which Chuckle had arranged our double date. My heart much misgave me. I showered. I changed out of my work gear and into my blue suit. Double-cuff white shirt, old gold ladies' cufflinks and black oxfords that shone like a wet street. So, I was a fop. All the really working-class guys I knew were fops. Whenever I'd worked in shitty jobs (wasn't that always?), I'd generally made a point of dressing well after my day's work. It was a kind of nineteen-fifties Northern England fiction thing. It made me feel better.

It didn't quite make me look better. My face was pretty unrepaired after the previous week and all its fun. Bruises, shiner and a swelling on my right jaw that gave me something of the air of a damaged hamster. I didn't mind. I wasn't the vain type.

In my nearby supermarket I bought all the mushrooms I could buy and cooked them in a single pot. With my mushrooms and a baguette, I filled my face while the cat ate his usual double tin. I was conscious of the unpleasantness of having to play the beard on Chuckie's double date but even that prospect didn't dent my mood. I'd noticed that the big OTG across the road had been joined by a smaller, less typographic one. The mystery increased. I ignored it. I read some Erasmus and then I took my cat for a walk while the sun went down.

I stopped at the top of my long, long street. My cat circled my legs as I stood there.The trees were weren't any blossoms exactly but there was an attempt. I was lonely still but I was happy to be around. My mood had ~rnproved. I was glad to be me. It had been a while. Sarah had soon tired of me being me and Mary had taken only a very temporary dose. I'd paid heed to those votes of no confidence.

I looked down at my cat. He looked up at me. Startlingly, my cat was a comfort. My cat hadn't left me. I couldn't really say he liked me but he stayed around, he hung on.

Walking home, cat and cigarette, I prosed on to myself for a while about how good I felt and why. But it was simple. In the supermarket where I'd bought my mushrooms, there was a seventeen-year-old girl who was cracked on me. She was dying for me. I'd noticed her a few days before. She had gone all clumsy when she served me, her blush was minute-long and her smile painful. I knew she liked my bachelor thing, my suits, my cufflinks and my vegetables. Despite the bruises, my life obviously looked liveable to her. I felt old enough to be her daddy's daddy but she didn't care.

That was me all over. A schoolgirl with a crush on me and suddenly life felt worth living.That was the big secret about me. I was so shallow.

It was one of those things I liked about myself.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. I had other reasons for feeling good. It had taken me more than a week but I had finally managed it. I'd had to sell my stereo, my television and my video. I'd had about eight hundred set by and I cadged a couple of hundred from Chuckie. A few other sales, a bit more cadging and I had enough money. It took me a day to find a company that sold them. It took me a morning out there, going through their catalogues, trying to recognize the right one. It took me an hour to persuade the fuckers to knock a couple of hundred off the price and another hour to make them deliver it within the week but in the end it all came right.

I'd called the company before I went mushroom-buying. They had delivered it that morning. When I asked how the Johnsons had reacted when they got their new bed, the guy on the phone said that they'd been confused. They couldn't work out who'd sent it.The delivery guys had told them it was a surprise just like I'd asked them.

`I'll call them tomorrow,' I told the guy. `They're always like that.You know what parents are like.'

I was glad I'd done it. I'd needed to do it. But I hadn't started feeling better yet.

I drove the Wreck to the riverside bar where I'd arranged to meet Chuckie. It was a new place, an old lock house converted to a yuppie paradise. People who looked like they went yachting frequented it. I didn't like it.

Chuckie bought me a drink and we went out into the Biergarten. Biergarten, Jesus. We sat on wooden chairs and looked blankly at the river. They were still dredging it. Some riverside corporation was beautifying the riverside. (Belfast had discovered these frivolities as all the other cities in Britain had decided, expensively, that they didn't work.) There were millions going down round there. All it seemed to be producing so far were waterlogged tractors and a bad smell. I gave Chuckie a bit of disaffected lip about all this.