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

`She didn't deserve to be slapped:

'You like children?'

She was going the full way here, she was practically gasping. I think she thought I was some well-dressed desperado with a sensitive side that she could unlock. I think she watched too much television.

'Yeah, I like kids.'

'Why don't you have any?' She smiled at me. `You'd make a good father,' she said. She flicked her eyes my way.

Now, when a woman says something like that to you, there's no mistaking what she means. It had only been said to me a couple of times but I'd always ended up getting bits of myself wet.

I tried winding it down a bit. I liked her. I didn't want her giving me any cut-price cutesy. She was too nice for that. I was too old for that. I wanted to like her too much. I should have eased off but I couldn't help myself. I was looking for love. Again.

I almost felt sorry for Rachel. She hardly deserved me and all my grief. But I didn't want her to stop talking to me. I didn't want her going away. After Sarah, Mary, Aoirghe and the others, my self-esteem was low, their poor opinion of me had kickstarted my own. Such unanimity was convincing. I was feeling more than susceptible. If Rachel said anything too nice to me, I'd lick her hand and fetch sticks for her.

We were stuck there for ages. Rachel and I talked for half an hour before she returned to her friends. Then they herded us back into the train, which rolled slowly back into Portadown. Ghinthoss and some of the others insisted that everybody get out there and have another demo. The station employees tried to stop it. Portadown was hardly the big smoke, the station was just a single long platform and a breezeblock hut but Ghinthoss was adamant so out we got.

We hung there for another hour. By now Northern Ireland Railway's schedule was fucked. There were only two or three lines in the country and we'd done a better job of blocking one than the IRA themselves. The NIR people begged us to get back on the train. In the end they called the police. When the fuzz arrived, Ghinthoss obviously pondered the possible benefits to his career. Having a full pacific battle with the cops might have had an attractive 1960s, Parisian-riots air but, on the other hand, he didn't want to lose any glitter with the authorities: there were too many prizes, grants and subsidies available to the genteel and careful Irish poet, too many knighthoods and laureateships. With a great air of sacrifice and suppressed menace, he told us all to board the train.

With the chaos on the tracks it took us more than an hour to get back to Belfast. I'd exchanged a few words with Rachel at Portadown but nothing had been hadn't signed anything. I knew I only had minutes left to solidify this liquid situation. I wanted to see her again, desperately.

As we all disembarked at the station it looked like it wasn't going to happen. In the small-scale melee I tried to keep as close to her group as possible but we had no chance to exchange any words. We were nearing the outer doors of the station and it looked like she would slip away for ever when fate — or, at least, fascistic

About forty or so just Us demonstrators with placards and another couple of TV crews were strewn across the electronic doors of the station. I recognized one as Mickey Moses, the messianic public relations man; he was surrounded by a group of Just Us women, hard-eyed, Maoist, a typical bevy of republican unlovelies. Many of the men looked tough enough and pretty keen as well. I'd seen lots of just Us demos, they were childish affairs. But this one smelt somehow different. Deep down, right in my molecules I could feel trouble coming.

Our crowd milled to a stop twenty yards away from the just Us lot. I looked round for Rachel and saw Shague Ghinthoss instead. He was standing uncertainly, close by the TV crew, his expression more confused than those of most of the crowd. Perhaps only I could fully appreciate his dilemma, after the previous night's republican rabble-rousing and this afternoon's beatnik peace-talk. Several of his many constituencies were pressing their claims.There were now three television crews on the scene. That was an opportunity not to be missed.

I saw him slip furtively into the ladies' toilets. Good decision, I thought. Once the grief cleared, he'd be around to give three separate speeches of heartfelt lamentation to the TV crews. He might scam a Nobel if there were any deaths.

Meanwhile some words were being exchanged at the front. I elbowed my way up there just in time to see the first chair thrown. A few bottles and stones followed. (Where had they found stones? They must have brought them in with them, which was undeniably and commendably far-sighted.) Some peace girls started screaming and crying. Elbowing through some more, I got to Rachel and grabbed her hand. The Just Us front rank of beer-bellied heavies had charged our crowd and peaceful heads were being kicked already. Someone shouted to call the police, others thought running was the best idea. I dragged Rachel towards the elevators at the side exit of the station.

Before we got there one of the fat freedom-fighters weighed up to us. Leather jacket, stiff hair, moustache and tattoos, standard wide-boy warpaint. He liked the look of us. His blood was up. He grabbed my collar, called me a Prod fucker and took his swing. He occupied but a rudimentary position on the evolutionary scale so his big paw was easy to evade. I could have reasoned with him but I just busted his nose and teeth with one of those joyous, unrehearsable elbow punches that only come along once a year or the moustache made for an easier target.

A couple of guys who'd been following up stopped momentarily.They were surprised. I don't think that we peaceniks were supposed to show such good moves, and guys like that could never fight for fuck. Maybe with Armalites you don't have to.

Their pause gave Rachel and me time to slip out and down the escalator. We tripped through the car park double-time. Nobody followed us.The sounds of the fight receded in the city hum of Belfast traffic. I'd parked the Wreck on the other side of the station and the only way to get there was to walk across the front concourse. I thought it was better to leave that for a while. The cops had just arrived but I didn't want to be there for the sorting-out. And I'd remembered that there was a little patch of river accessible from the station car park. I'd been there before and I knew it was a good place to hide and not a bad place for a first kiss. It wasn't dark yet, when all the glittery lights on the river would have rendered it a fait accompli, but it was twilighty, it was pink enough for me.

We headed down there. It was pretty and my heart was swelling. Rachel's internal organs seemed inflated too. I could feel her tremble beside me and she kept talking about the fracas and the way I'd put my guy down. This grated. I had biffed the man but I was proud of the way I'd sidestepped all the trouble. I'd been feeling like Gandhi. But Rachel was all lit up by my fistwork. This depressed me but I decided, charitably, that nice girls like her didn't see much of that stuff so her reaction was bound to be disproportionate.

We sat on the lip of the river side by side. The sky grew pinker and Rachel's blood cooled. I found myself extremely happy. I was a chump that way. She might have been gauche but she appeared to like me. I wanted to kiss her. The thought that she might want me to was erotic prize enough.

My mouth dried and I grew nervous but I talked on. She was silent and started glancing at me in that wonderful way that says the first kiss is expected, dreaded and desired.

It could have gone on like that for hours but in the end something in her she had her own version of the Reluctant me simply pull her slowly towards me. I did my sensitive, hilariously virginal, puckering-up thing, she just did that grave, pretty-girl, head-tilting thing. My heart surged. Like almost everybody else, in a life littered with the undead memory of a hundred first kisses, I still hadn't got over them. First kisses still made life worth all the boring bits of the going to the toilet, getting headaches and having your hair cut.