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

A week had now passed since Fountain Street. To Chuckie, his mother seemed little improved since that first dreadful night. She was speaking, true. But not much. Not so as you'd have noticed.

He put the teapot and cup on a tray and carried it up to her room.

She lay in her bed with her small face quarter-turned into her pillow. He put the tray on the little table beside her head.

`There's your tea,' he said gently. His throat was still thick with this unaccustomed emotion so his voice sounded strange to him. He bent down beside her. She opened her left eye and murmured her thanks.

Chuckie looked at the bottle of sleeping pills by his mother's bed. There were three left. There had been the same number for a week now. He knew she didn't sleep. He wondered why she wouldn't take her nitrazepam. He hadn't asked her yet.

`Caroline says she'll come over lunchtime,' he announced to the wall.

He helped her gently into a sitting position. He poured some tea. He made it badly and it looked greasy and dark. Peggy drank a little. Chuckie looked at the untouched magazines by her bed. He had chosen poorly and had mixed up middle-aged knitting magazines with youthful glossies filled with pictures of naked young women and articles about penis size.

`Would you like me to get you some more magazines? Would you like me to get you some different ones?'

She tried to smile at him but there was a droop in her features that made him think she was going to cry.

'I've just got to ring the office,' he said hastily.'I'll be back in a minute.'

He looked back towards the bed as he walked away. She sat motionless, the forgotten cup cooling in her hand. As he stood at the door he glanced at the wall beside his head. The muchpainted photograph of himself and the pontiff was there. He had taken it from the drawer and hung it over his list in its old place in the hope that it might make her laugh. It had not yet succeeded. He touched it fondly and went downstairs.

Chuckie hadn't spent much time at the office in the past week. Events and schemes were afoot there that he barely understood. Luke had tried to explain as simply as he could, but Chuckie, sudden mother-lover, found no room in which to do any new thinking, any new comprehending.

He called Luke. He told him that he would spend the rest of the morning with his mother.'How are we doing?' he asked.

'You told me not to tell you, Chuckle!

That was true. It had all become too frightening for Chuckle. His fattest fantasies were being made copious flesh and he could not face all the facts of his id. He didn't know all the grisly details. What he didn't know couldn't keep him awake at night.

'Well, what about the ecumenical dating agency?You can tell me about that,' he said.

'I hired someone to run it yesterday and the ads go in the papers tomorrow. It's moving along nicely.'

'We're not going to make much money out of it.'

'Why not? We always do'

That was fair enough, thought Chuckie, they always did. He didn't want to ask himself why.

'Is the kid still there?' he asked.

'Yes,' said Luke, in some embarrassment. 'I've told him repeatedly to go away but he just asks me whether my dick reaches my arse.'

'Relax,' said Chuckie.'Send him round.'

He hung up.

For twenty minutes Chuckie cleaned, tidied, and avoided going up to his mother's room. Every few minutes, his conscience would lead him inexorably to the foot of the little staircase but his dread and love prevented him from mounting that obstacle.

After twenty minutes the bell rang. He answered the door to find Roche, slightly less dirty than usual, standing on his doorstep, looking entirely unimpressed.

`Come in,' said Chuckie.

`Ta,' said Roche.

He led the boy into the kitchen, not noticing the feral looks of calculation on the child's face. They sat by the table and Chuckie poured yet more tea. He'd bought a score of yuppie coffee-makers of various degrees of complexity and ingenuity but he couldn't help yet preferring a cup of tea brewed with working-class over-insistence.

`Do you have a first name?' he asked the boy.

Roche's indignation was immediate. `Are you trying to get up me again? You're just like your friend — always trying it on.'

Jake had warned him. Chuckie had listened but it had made no difference. Roche was still around. Chuckie had first encountered him when he had gone up to Catholic Land on the Lower Falls and rounded up some kids there to go twiggathering for him. There weren't enough Protestant urchins to go round and every bone in Chuckie's body, every atom of his being, was ecumenical. This kid had gathered three or four times as many sticks as the others but Chuckie suspected that he had operated some sinister form of sub-contracting. Whatever, Chuckle had recognized a kindred soul and had paid him extra.

That had been a mistake. Roche had been lurking around their offices ever since. Tentative at first, he had become bolder and for the last week Chuckie had been dealing with irritated phone calls from Luke, complaining about the boy's presence around and outside the building. Chuckie knew the kid should have been going to school or something but he had made him run a few errands. Once or twice he had even invented something for the kid to do. Roche guessed this and despised him heartily for his weakness, but Chuckie couldn't help liking him.

'Well?' he asked.

'Well, what?' squeaked Roche.

'Your name.'

He saw the boy's mouth open in some imminent bellow of homophobic accusation. He cut him short.'Forget it,' he said. 'I don't want to know.'

There was an uncomfortable pause. Chuckie sipped his tea. Roche stared dumbly at him. The boy was unsurprised not to be told why he had been summoned. Evidently he suspected another manufactured task.There was a faintly supercilious curl to his stained features.'How's your old ma?' he asked suddenly.

Chuckie spluttered his tea. `I don't know,' he mumbled uncertainly. `I think she's improving.'

'That's good'

Chuckie stared.

'These things take time,' Roche continued, with an air of infinite gravity. 'Especially at her age.'

`Yeah. Right. Absolutely.'

'Don't worry about it. It'll be OK.' He patted Chuckie's shoulder with his tiny filthy hand.'Mind if I smoke?'

Chuckie shook his head. The boy lit up. He sat back in his chair and exhaled comfortably. He looked about the little kitchen with a placid expression.

Chuckie pulled some money from his pockets.'I want you to do something for me.'

`No handjobs, remember!

Chuckie tried to smile. 'Go to McCracken's and buy a big bunch of flowers and then take them here,' he passed the boy a scrap of paper,'and give them to Max.'

'The Yank chick?'

'Yes,' answered Chuckie, somewhat resentfully.

'What kind of flowers?'

`I don't know Flowers:

`You're a poet.!

`What?'

'What kind of flowers? Do you want roses, carnations, lilies? What do you want to say to this girl?'

`Just buy the fucking flowers.' He passed Roche some notes.

The boy looked at the notes in his own hand and then at the rest. A smile hinted around the squeeze of his narrow eyes. `I tell you what,' he suggested, `why don't you slip me fifty and I'll make sure you say something special to her?'

`And keep the change, right?'

Roche tried to look affronted. `There won't be much. I'll get something swanky. I'm a bit soft-hearted that way myself.'

Chuckie gave him the rest of the money. The boy left.

After he had gone, Chuckie stood for some minutes in the narrow hallway. He suspected that he should have been wondering all kinds of things about the boy. What were his dreams? He didn't, though. He couldn't. As always now, his thoughts were full of his mother. Possessing all these new contemplative skills was proving as vexatious as possessing all this money.