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

He panicked.

Without doing any work, without producing anything, he had amassed all that money and had the promise of nearly as much again every month for the next five months. It was dreadful. It was frightening.

Chuckie knew that something bad was going to happen. He would be found out. The world would come to its senses and take back all those pounds it had given him. Justice required it. Likelihood dictated it.

Meanwhile, the besuited salesmen had clustered round him again. They were eager to amuse and please.

`Well, Mr Lurgan. She's ready for you now.'

`Who?'

The men laughed indulgently. At the reception desk, the sharp girl laughed too, although she could have heard nothing of what was said.

`Your X series:

Chuckie looked vacantly at the man's broad, straining face.

`Your car, Mr Lurgan, the one you've just bought'

`Yeah, right enough.'

The men looked genuinely impressed by Chuckie's patently unfeigned abstraction. A man who could absent-mindedly pay cash for a Mercedes was the kind of man they dreamt of, about whom they masturbated. The receptionist's eyes flashed at him.

They led him out the back way to a side-street where his new car was parked. It was blue, shiny and very big.

`It's taxed for eight months and we took the liberty of call ing our insurance company. They've covered it in the meantime and they'll be sending you their literature over the next few days' The man smiled, his voice was heavy with significance, with drama. `She's all yours.You can take her away.'

After an emotional farewell, Chuckie opened the door and sat in his glittering new purchase. The salesmen still lingered on the pavement, obviously intending some valedictory waves as he drove off. Chuckie sat mutely looking at the sleek dashboard. Chuckie did not know how to drive.

He pushed a button. The passenger window slid into the door with a marvellous electric hiss.

`Listen,' he called out to the salesmen, `you go on in. I just want to be alone here for a while.'

The men both nodded their complete understanding — Chuckie could have sworn that they had lumps in their throats — and went inside. He paused. Then he started the engine.

By some quirk of town planning (typical of Belfast's most unpaternal City Fathers), the monotonous ghetto in which Chuckie lived was only about eleven hundred yards away from the car saleroom. Belfast low-income areas often pressed ass to ass with its more prosperous slivers. Admittedly complicated and lengthened by a series of complex one-way streets, it was still impressive that it took Chuckie twenty-five minutes to drive the eleven hundred yards back to Eureka Street.

By the time he had pulled up near his house, he felt confident that he could master most of the difficulties that driving presented. Unable to park the monstrous machine, he abandoned it in the middle of the road, vaguely close to He got out. He stood on the pavement. He looked at his car.

It was Austrian or Bavarian or something. He liked that. He had to admit that it looked pretty Nazi, wallowing hugely there in the middle of the dwarf terraces, a car that cost more than most of those houses put together. Parked on Eureka Street, it looked extraordinary, freakish. It looked like the miracle of money.

Some of the kids who lived on the street had come out of their houses at the advent of the monster motor. They obviously expected John Long or some such plutocrat. When they saw Chuckie emerge, their jaws dropped and their eyes bulged. Some of the mothers came out too. They drew their children back with expressions of fear and bewilderment on their faces.

Blissfully, Chuckie beckoned one of the Eureka Street tenyear-olds. The boy approached uncertainly. Chuckie smiled patronizingly. He held up a five-pound note.

`Here, son. Keep an eye on the wagon, would you?' He gave the boy the money and walked to his own front door, a faint ripple of stunned applause breaking over his shoulders. He hoped it was not excessively childish of him to enjoy this moment. He had lived a long time on Eureka Street, chiefly remarkable for his girth and his Catholic acquaintance. He had earned the right to make this splash. He had earned the right to enjoy.

Inside, he found his mother staring through her front-room windows at the massive car that bisected her street. The small boy was now sitting squarely on its expensive bonnet.

He had not seen her for a week. He had been sleeping over at Max's flat and that morning, when he had returned home, she had been out. It was only when he saw the ghost of himself reflected in her grey eyes that he understood how far he'd come, how much had happened.

His mother lifted her hand towards him in a weak and untypically Irish action. Her face was full of fear and pain. `What's happened, Chuckie?' she breathed. `What's going on?'

Chuckie felt congested, he felt a traffic jam in his heart. His fearful week, terrifying month welled up in him. His face heated and crumpled. He felt tears prick at the backs of his eyes.

`Oh, Ma,' he said anxiously. `I'm fucked if I know.'

Peggy Lurgan understood Chuckie Lurgan as no one could. As no one really wanted to. Flesh of her flesh, she knew the extent of his limitless proletarian shame and fear. She knew how this small city in which they lived could expand or contract at will, leaving them feeling claustrophobic or agoraphobic as paranoid circumstance demanded. As she had aged, her own life had constricted chokingly to its present confines. She lived in a tiny house on a little street with a fat son who didn't talk to her. She only slept with chemicals.Ten years of nitrazepam had warmed her life and made it more than the sum of its parts. But she knew her life was a small, small thing. She had been terrified when Chuckie had started to change. She had been relying on an unaltering, unalterable future. Futile, tedious but gladly unsurprising. Her son's mutations threatened her precarious equilibrium and she needed to know what was worth that risk.

But even after Chuckie had told her about all the money he had made, she was still unsure of how he had done it, not realizing that so was he. But she fully sympathized with his naked panic and terror, the feeling that, soon, the police would come to arrest him. She hoped that it would be only the police.

The weeks since Chuckle's big idea had passed bewilderingly for her. She was confused by her son's sudden suits, the mysterious international phone calls and the glistening fax machine in her scullery.

Chuckie tried to explain things to her. He tried to explain the ease of raising money. He saw the blankness of her look. He kissed her sweetly on the cheek. Which was going too far for Peggy. Which, for her, was much too much to take.

`Cut that out, Chuckie,' she snapped. Just cut that out.'

He asked her what was wrong.

`You've changed, son. Something terrible has happened to you.' Her eyes filled with tears. `When did you get to be so nice?'

Half past eight the next night, Chuckie sat in the Wigwam on Lower Crescent. The boys were there: Jake, Slat, Donal and Septic Ted. He had called them all an hour ago.Telling Max that he had to see the boys after so long, he had slipped brokenly out of her flat. Eight o'clock and she'd boffed him twice already. The day before, Chuckie had noticed that, for the first time in his adult life, he had lost some weight. Four pounds gone.With Max around, he suspected he'd be on vitamin boosts and meal supplements before too long. He was managing the idea of himself rich and horny but the notion of a skinny Chuckie might be too much for anyone to bear.

The Wigwam was a theme cafe near the university. Bad food and good coffee. Small groups of attractive, intelligent young women seemed to dine there regularly. Naturally, Septic Ted had discovered the place a month before and had been, more or less, camped out there since.