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

OTG

I was too tired to wonder what it meant.

Chuckie Lurgan walked across the Ormeau Bridge with unsteady step and the dust of a hangover pill in his pocket. He winced at the Lagan, which gurgled and bubbled loud, bright water. Under his feet, the bridge felt unsteady as though it, too, were drunk. Frightened, Chuckie picked up his pace to cross the intoxicated bridge.

A car horn blared cruelly and Chuckie almost fainted. The sun broke through some sluggish clouds and Chuckie felt aggrieved by its shine.The day's incidentals seemed malevolent. But, despite the sardonic morning, Chuckie felt that much was beginning for him.Though in the pockets of his grimy trousers he had only three pounds and something near sixty pence, Chuckie was large with potential. Chuckie was thirty now. Chuckie had plans.

He turned into Agincourt Avenue, a street he had never liked. It was without trees and the rustic in him objected to so much undiluted brick and pavement. As Chuckie walked, his thoughts grew confident and steady. After another useless night, he had decided to get things organized. He was tired of the incoherence of his life. Two days before, he had turned thirty. Things must change, he sensed. On this momentous Monday, he was walking the long walk from Four Winds because he had concluded that he was too old to ride on the bus any more. Such transport was undignified for a man a weekend more than thirty.

He was walking from Four Winds because he had woken that morning to find himself crashed and damaged in Slat Sloane's two-up, two-down in Democracy Street. It has been the usual boneheaded weekend. Forty-six pints and two meals. Chuckle's pastimes were a form of reverse evolution. He spent time and money making himself less capable, less evolved. And it seemed to take a whole load of money and time to end up a protozoic reptile on Slat's kitchen floor.

`I'll kick your nappies round the block, wee ba!'

Two warring boys swore at each other as they rolled fistfully on the pavement of Damascus Street. As Chuckie passed through the Holy Land, he rehearsed his plans. He needed money. He needed much money. But Chuckie was not foolish enough to consider looking for a job. Employment was the goal of fools. Chuckie had decided that he would set up in business for himself. He felt that only self-employment would entirely satisfy his independent instincts. Chuckie knew that he had some way to go, but phrases like start-up capital, overheads and profit margins peppered his thoughts and felt quite as good as money in the bank.

He passed the dingy launderette on the corner of Collingwood. He smiled prosperously at a slovenly girl who sat at the window awaiting her wash. She frowned and turned away. Chuckie fancied this some form of reluctant coquetry. He was pleased and ran his hand complacently through his thin hair. As he glanced down the length of Jerusalem Street, Chuckie was realistic enough to understand that his project was as yet hugely initial. But the thought of an eventual office, an eventual secretary (hugely bosomed) and an eventual desk cheered him enormously. The three pounds and near sixty pence seemed to grow heavier in his pocket. Despite a sudden urge to vomit or sneeze, Chuckie felt a grander man.

`How's about ye, Chuckle!'

Chuckie stopped dead and stared at the speaker. He searched the rubble of his sludgy thoughts for the man's name and was surprised by his success.

'Hiya, Wilson.'

Stoney Wilson smiled too greedily at the compliment of his surname. Chuckie concluded that this would take some time. Wilson's bony hand poked him comically in the sternum.

`You're looking bad, Chuckie.'

'I'm dead but I haven't the wit to stiffen.'

Again, Wilson smiled his eager smile and his equine teeth and gums glistened in the sunlight. `Been a while since you saw this time in the morning, I'll bet.'

Soon-to-be-prosperous Chuckie took exception to this. 'I take exception to that.'

'Easy on, Chuckie. I was only messing.'

Chuckie frowned an unmollified frown and looked at the pavement. He tried to dislodge a splat of old chewing gum with his blunt toe. Wilson searched for a way to continue the dialogue.

'I heard your Ned's getting married to that girl with the great knockers. What's her name?'

`Agnes'

`Yeah, Alice. I wouldn't mind walking round the block with her on my own account. When's the happy day?'

'I don't know.'

Wilson's weak mouth was mobile with feeble merriment.

'You'll be the last of the single Lurgans. A great responsibility.'

Chuckie frowned again. He remembered a night spent in Wilson's wigwam on Constitution Street when Wilson did his country-boy-in-Belfast act. Three hours of the halcyon days in Portrush-sur-Mer. Wilson had dropped out of the technical college after a couple of months but he still presumed upon his brief brush with tertiary education. Chuckie wanted to escape before the geek started up about Dostoevsky or somesuch.

`Listen,Wilson. Gotta run. I've an interview for a big job this morning. I don't want to be late-You know how it is.!

Wilson's eyes narrowed with incredulity. His mouth flapped open, ready for some comic reply, but his wit deserted him. He muttered some thick valediction and patted Chuckie's arm manfully.

'See you about,' said Chuckie, walking on quickly.

He crossed the road towards Palestine Street. A large car swooped just past his burly form, swerving and blasting its horn. He turned mildly as the receding driver leant out and shouted at him. Chuckie raised his arm in a gesture of squat profanity and apologized as best he knew. `Go fuck yourself, shit for brains!' he suggested.

Placidly, Chuckie trundled up Palestine Street. Soon, he mused, when he had a car of his own, he would make a point of sounding his horn at pedestrians whenever possible. He promised himself that if he didn't own a car by the end of the year then he would steal one. He wanted a car very badly. He wanted that chattel under him. He wanted a steering wheel in his skilful hands, a sunroof over his head. He wanted to visit car washes and garages. He wanted to go to car parks with something to park. Chuckie longed to be a solid automotive citizen.

By the time he crossed Botanic on his way to the public bar of the York Hotel, Chuckie had decided on the manufacture, colour and engine size of the shiny car that all his plans would bring him.

The distinguishing features of the Lurgan clan were that they had historically loved fame and that the Lurgan women too often were not married to the fathers of their children. The Lurgan lineage was matriarchal. And the Lurgan family were starfuckers one and all.

In 1869, Mortimer Lurgan, a shabby copying clerk at the Ulster Bank in Donegall Place, spent eighteen cold hours on a pavement outside the Chandlers' building in College Street. A reading was to be given by the famous English novelist Charles Dickens. It was his first visit to Belfast and probably his last. Mortimer Lurgan wanted to be in the front row for such an event.

His desire was fulfilled and, that night, Mortimer could be seen sitting in the very centre of the very front row of seats, greasy with delight, even though he could hear nothing since his night on the street had rendered him temporarily deaf.

After the reading, one of the organizers introduced Mortimer to the exhausted novelist. When Dickens was told that Mortimer had slept on the street in his eagerness to attend, his old, lined face flickered with brief interest. `Well, Mr Logan,' he said, `it is pleasant to meet such a true aficionado.' Smiling kindly, Dickens was bundled into a curtained carriage.

For the next six weeks, Mortimer Lurgan walked on air as he replayed the details of this brief but touching interview. The spot on his right hand where Dickens had touched him felt livid and ticklish with transmitted greatness. Mortimer resolved two things: that he would one day get round to reading one of the great writer's novels and that he would find out what 'aficionado' meant.