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

Having screwed up his courage, he was about to go upstairs when the bell rang again. He opened the door.

A surly man in overalls looked back at him. `Lurgan, fortytwo Eureka Street?' he asked.

`Yup,

`There are two vans here now and another couple coming this afternoon… Are you sure about this, mate? I've never delivered an order this big.' The man had pushed his way past Chuckle and now stood in the middle of the little sitting room. `Fuck,' the man said. `We're never going to get all this stuff into a house this size. Sign here.' He thrust a piece of paper into Chuckie's hand and left.

Chuckie read the delivery note. He remembered. He regretted.

Chuckie had always had an intense and troubling relationship with mail-order catalogues. They had always meant much to him. In the tiny, muted world of Eureka Street, they had been injections of colour, prosperity and glamour. His mother's house was not a house of literature. There was a Bible and there were catalogues. It was obvious which the fat, consuming young Chuckie would have preferred.

As he grew older, he became conscious that they were tacky, sad, but some component in his soul made him find the world of commodities represented there glamorous, quite intoxicating.

They had been a joy to him but they had been a sadness too. Throughout his childhood, these tomes had been an emblem of his mother's poverty. When he had been young, she had tried to curtail his endless perusing of their unattainable bounty. He could not understand that she could not supply him with the toys and goods he could see before him in these glorious books. He never understood her pain at the hunger they caused in him, a hunger she could not satisfy.

And although she herself had always looked lovingly through every last bright page, she had only ever selected the meanest items from the least exciting sections. She always had to pay by instalments, weekly sums so small they made him blush. These books, so addictive, so beautiful, had been a part of their mutual shame.

That week, wounded by his mother's pain and gloom, Chuckie had searched his mind for something he might do for her. His limbs heavy with fruitless love for her, he had stalked up and down and around their little sitting room until his eye fell upon one of those catalogues. He had leapt on it as he had used to fall upon them, passionately, convinced they would solve his problems.

He had spent almost an entire afternoon on the telephone. After some persuasion, the girl he spoke to chose to take him seriously. He told her to ring his bank. She did. Then, his heart filled with joy, he bought a book's worth.

For the first thirty or so pages as he and the girl on the phone leafed through the catalogue together, he merely bought every item. It was quicker that way. The girl persisted in slowing him down by carefully itemizing and pricing each item he chose but in the end he prevailed upon her simply to tick them. After a while, the buying of every thing on every page had proved patently absurd. By the time they got to the watches and jewellery, it would have involved buying his mother one hundred and fourteen watches, sixty-one of them men's. When they reached the sports section, although he knew that his mother would have little use for cricket bats and football boots, Chuckie still bought at least one thing from every single page.

It was an epic event. Towards the end, Chuckie could hear that the woman's colleagues had grouped around the telephone and were counting down the total and whooping in delight and encouragement. They had never seen such buying and when he ordered his last electronic personal organizer, with French and German translating sounded as though they were having a party. Chuckie asked the girl to give him the total cost. There were some minutes of keyboard tapping, then a pause.

`Forty-two thousand five hundred and twenty-eight pounds, fifty-two pence,' she said, awed.

`I'll send a cheque,' said Chuckie, with infinite brightness.

Now, he stood aghast as a series of overalled men began to dump endless brown cardboard boxes in the front room. They all shook their heads and laughed. One of them looked around the meagre space and mentioned that three sofas were coming in one of the later vans. Chuckie had forgotten that he had bought five. He had chosen five in case his mother didn't like the first, and also because several pages of the catalogue were devoted entirely to sofas and he had insisted on maintaining his item-a-page record.

As the unloading continued, Chuckie remembered that he had bought dozens of garments for her with no real sense of what size she might wear. He had bought countless pairs of men's shoes. He had bought exercise bikes, sunbeds, fishing rods, computer games. He had purchased car seat covers, cat baskets, televisions, electric guitars, dumb-bells and attache cases.

His heart sank as he remembered the part of the catalogue that had borne the brunt of his buying, the first forty pages. He rummaged desperately amongst the growing piles of boxes and found it. He opened the first forty pages. Women's underwear. He leafed through disconsolately. Black bustiers, frilly baby-doll nighties and high-thigh Lycra G-strings. He thought of his stunted middle-aged mother. He felt like crying.

Forty minutes later, the men had finished and Caroline Causton had come across the street to see Peggy. She was appalled but an irrepressible snort of laughter escaped through the hand she held to her face.

'What were you thinking of, Chuckie? Where's your sense? Peggy'11 have a fit.'

Chuckie mumbled some feeble apology.

'Try and clear some of it up and I'll go to your mum,' snapped Caroline briskly.

Chuckie watched her mount the stairs, shaking her head. He always felt superfluous in Caroline Causton's presence and he feared her disapproval greatly. As she disappeared into his mother's bedroom, he felt a momentary and additional qualm of jealousy.

He was preparing to return to the office when the doorbell rang again. It was growing monotonous. He answered it irritably, expecting more deliverymen. He was surprised to find Roche there. The boy stood looking at him, a ragged bunch of flowers in his hand. Chuckie did not invite him in.

`She got them?' he enquired dubiously of the besmirched gamin.

`Nah'

`Why not?ff

`She wasn't there.!

'No?

`No:

Chuckie considered. He had never known Max miss a day at the nursery. He would call her at home before he left for the office.

`Where's my change?' he asked the boy.

'What change?'

`You're not going to tell me that you spent fifty quid on those?' Chuckie pointed to the listless bunch of carnations in the boy's hand.

'I had more. But I, ah, lost them.'

`What?'

`Yeah, I was chased by a flock of swans and I dropped them.'

`What?'

`Aye, big fuckers.'

'In Belfast?'

`You calling me a liar, fatso?'

'Go away,' said Chuckie hopelessly.

He closed the door on Roche and called Max's flat. There was no answer. He called Aoirghe at work. `Lurgan?' She sounded annoyed.

'Why can't you call me Chuckie?'

`What do you want?'

'Where's Max? I tried her at work and at the flat.'

There was a pause. When she spoke again, her voice was softer than he had heard it hitherto. `Look, Chuckie, Max has gone.

'Gone? Where?'

`Home.!

'I told you. I called her there.!

'No, I mean home. Back to America.'

'What?'

`She left last night, Chuckie. She told me not to say anything. She's sent you a letter.'

'What's going on?' asked Chuckie angrily.

Aoirghe told him. She nearly seemed to enjoy it.

He had only seen Max once during that week. She had been understanding and sympathetic about his mum. She didn't mind his absence while Peggy was upset or ill. Indeed, she had been so sympathetic that she had even visited his mother a couple of nights ago. Chuckie had been filled with desire when he saw her in all her warm brown healthy flesh, but she had spent almost the entire visit upstairs with his mother and he had felt himself excluded in a very definite manner. When she left, her face had been strange and her kisses uncharacteristically diffident.