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

Everything was looking local.

Under the circumstances, Belfast was a pretty famous place. When you considered that it was the underpopulated capital of a minor province, the world seemed to know it excessively well. Nobody needed to be told the reasons for this needless fame. I didn't know much about Beirut until the artillery moved in. Who'd heard of Saigon before it blew its lid? Was Anzio a town, a village or just a stretch of beach? Where was Agincourt exactly?

Belfast shared the status of the battlefield.The place-names of the city and country had taken on the resonance and hard beauty of all history's slaughter venues. The Bogside, Crossmaglen, The Falls, The Shankill and Andersonstown. In the mental maps of those who had never been in Ireland, these places had tiny crossed swords after their names. People thought them televised knackers' yards. Belfast was only big because Belfast was bad.

And who would have thought it thirty years before? Little Belfast could be such a beautiful city. Squatting flat in the oxter of Belfast Lough, hazily level with the water, the city was ringed with mountains and nudged by the sea. When you looked up the length of most Belfast streets, there was some kind of mountain or hill staring back at you.

But, yeah, Belfast continued to fail to surprise me. A couple of days before, a bomb had gone off near the police station just across the road from my flat. I'd watched from my window as the Lisburn Road was evacuated. The flower shop, the newsagent's, the hairdresser's. After sealing off the road, they did a controlled explosion. Jesus! Blew in two of my windows and scared the chocolate out of me into the bargain. How controlled were these controlled explosions? It fucked half the other half was pretty fucked already. What new definition of the word `controlled' was this?

It was, of course, nothing serious. As Belfast bombs go, it went. Little to relate. Nobody died, nobody bled. It was no big deal. That was the big deal. It was dull stuff. Nobody really noticed. What had happened to us here? Since when had deto nations in the neighbourhood barely raised a grumble?

It had been a while since I had been that close to an explosion, what with me moving to this middle-class end of town and all. It was strange.You forget what they're like. But when it went off, I remembered what they were like, quicker than I wanted to.

What were bombs like? naturally. And loud. And frightening. They were loud and frightening in your gut like when you were a child and you fell on your head and couldn't understand why it hurt like panic in your belly. They were fairly irreversible too. Bombs were like dropped plates, kicked cats or hasty words. They were error. They were disarrangement and mess. They were this was important — knowledge. When you heard that dry splash, that animal thud of bomb, distant or close, you knew something.You knew that someone somewhere was having a very bad time indeed.

It wasn't the bombs that were scary. It was the bombed. Public death was a special mortality. Bombs mauled and possessed their dead. Blast removed people's shoes like a solicitous relative, it opened men's shirts pruriently; women's skirts rode up their bloody thighs from the force of the lecherous blast. The bombed dead were spilled on the street like cheap fruit. And, finally, unfuckingbeatably, the bombed dead were dead. They were so very, very dead.

(Incidentally, the controlled explosion was carried out on a bin bag full of discarded Kentucky Fried Chicken. There were little pieces of singed white-meat all over the place. My cat was a very happy cat.)

It was Saturday. I couldn't look for another job on a Saturday and I had the purposeless day to get through. I thought of my cheap friends.They would do. It was Chuckie Lurgan's thirtieth birthday. It would be a big event and his present wouldn't need wrapping. The only decision would be which bar to get him lushed up in.

I left my flat and found the Wreck still unstolen. Nobody was ever going to steal the Wreck. It was the only thing I liked about it. I called my wreck the Wreck for obvious reasons. It was a hugely shitty vehicle but it had incredibly clean windows. Rusty bodywork covered in three-year-old filth but the windows gleamed. I cleaned them every day so that I could see my city when I drove.

I headed for Chuckie's house.

We ended up in Mary's bar again. It was very present tense.The usual cast: Chuckie Lurgan, Donal Deasely, Septic Ted, Slat Sloane and me. The boys, the crowd. Oh, boy, I needed new friends.

Mary was there, working her tables, making no tips. My chest tightened when I saw her and I found out what I'd only guessed. That I'd made myself want her. The way I do. The way we all do. I'd caused myself to need her. When she took our order she said hello to me in a voice commendably level, admirably sure. Mary was just a working-class Belfast girl waiting table but she had a bit of style.

Chuckie's cousin came in after a while. He had the girl with him. They were getting married, apparently. Chuckie's cousin seemed unhappy. From the way he followed her gaze, from the way he looked where she looked, I guessed he thought that she was too pretty. He was right. I wouldn't have married her. Chuckie told me that the cousin was so jealous he dusted her breasts for fingerprints.

And, as usual, the talk got talk was always big in Belfast bars. The old mix, constitutional democracy, freedom through violence and the eternal rights of man. We used to talk about naked women but after a few years we stopped believing each other's lies. Chuckie hijacked the high moral ground which was a bit rich for someone as stupid as Chuckie. I mean, history and politics were books on a shelf to Chuckie and Chuckle was no reader.

Some guy from Delhi Street started Buffing on about revo lution. I got involved. I got angry. I was only there to see if Mary would go home with me again and, as always, I got involved.

It felt like another of our wasted nights. Six hours of flapping our gums about things we didn't understand at a cumulative cost of about twenty quid per head. Donal and Slat were talking crap about morality and genetics while Chuckie chimed in with his usual dumb-fat-guy routine. The talk seemed easy, like it had fallen off the back of a lorry. But the talk was truly difficult. It was hard, hard work.

Chuckle's cousin and Chuckle's cousin's girl had a row. One of those two-way tiffs conducted in the Irish manner (pretty shrill). I couldn't be sure but I came away with the distinct impression that the whole thing blew up because the girl refused to shave her bikini-line. They went home in separate taxis. I must say, it seemed a lot of fuss about a haircut.

And, as the night passed by, Mary served us our drinks and I failed to talk to her. Sometimes she looked at me, sometimes she didn't. I knew because I looked at her every time she breathed. It looked like we'd drink out our time and I'd miss my chance if chance I had.

And soon enough there was that grim business of barmen shouting time while my drunken pals tried to jostle me into leaving. I kept meeting Mary's eye and leaving messages there. I panicked like a general whose army is retreating. Chuckie was so drunk that he seemed to have lost the ability to speak English but even he seemed to have worked out what I was about.

`You taking her home?' he leered.

I blushed at him for want of anything better. Slat was mouthing about moving on to Lavery's but Chuckie silenced him with the broad flat of his hand and leaned to me confidentially.'Iss awright. Iss ma birthday. I'll take care it.'

And then he did. To my horror, he stood and called Mary over. She answered his summons, her face sceptical but toler ant.

'Whass name, love?' asked Chuckie, with bland patronage.

`Mary.'

`Well, Chuckie paused to wave a mild goodbye to some exiting group of yob mates. `Well, Mary, my friend here, who's a good friend, a good man, my friend here wants to take you home.'