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

That's what I liked about Ronnie Clay. Absolutely nothing.

We worked on for another few minutes until one of the boys spotted a woman approaching our spot. I paused. There was something in her gait I recognized. I couldn't put my finger on it but I felt a sudden foreboding.

Ronnie and Billy started their business:

`C'mon, big girl.'

'Show us your hairy pie.'

`Do ya wanna climb my pole?'

"Mon over here and I'll put some colour in your cheeks.'

Rajinder looked at me and rolled his eyes. I smiled back. I had finally recognized her and I confidently awaited events.

As the woman passed my workmates, her chin was set grimly. They did not abate their compliments and Ronnie grew enormously excited. The tide of his obscenity did not ebb.'Ach, cone on, honey. Just a quick blowjob. I'm dying for ye. C'mon over here and empty my bollocks for me.'

The woman stopped abruptly and looked Ronnie full in the face. Some of the others cheered. They waited for her feeble objection.They became quiet as she walked up to Ronnie.This had never happened before. One or two briefly thought that Ronnie was going to receive some of the sexual services he had requested.

It was not to be. The woman simply grabbed Ronnie's testicles and started to squeeze. Ronnie crumpled, his knees bent but he did not fall. The woman squeezed harder. Ronnie's face went white. The woman looked in my direction.

`Hello, Aoirghe,' I said.

`Friends of yours, Jackson?' she asked, giving Ronnie another tweak.

I looked around my dumb, terrified workmates. `Not exactly,' I replied.

Some moments passed. I bit my lips. Ronnie had stopped breathing.

`When are you bringing that sofa round?' Aoirghe asked me.

`Any time you like.'

She thought for a moment. Beads of sweat had begun to sprout on her forehead, I could see the muscles in her gonadsqueezing arm, flexed and taut. I bit my lips some more.

`Bring it round tonight. Before eight.' She smiled at Ronnie. `Empty enough for you?' she asked him pleasantly. She loosened her grip and walked away.

Ronnie dropped to the ground and measured his length there. By the time he had regained consciousness, several attractive women had passed by. No one said anything to them.

After work we all went home. No one suggested stopping off at the Bolshevik. Ronnie was still incapable of consecutive speech.

I walked home happy. Belfast was looking good. Proper summer had was August so it was about time. And it was hot. It boiled. People walked around dazed at the unBelfast balm. Men took off their shirts and decided that it looked nice to go all red and swollen. Girls wore startlingly little clothing and demonstrated many of their beauties, emphasizing the unfairness of the Northern Irish gender pact. The red, swollen men got them, and they got the red, swollen men.

I had to confess, as I walked there, that I watched these women as much as Ronnie and the others.The only difference was that I tried to pretend I wasn't looking and I kept my big male mouth shut.

Looking out my Wreck windows that week, I'd never seen the city so empty, so muted. The streets went unwalked, bars were people-free, and multi-screen cinemas played to four or five people a night. Everybody was scared. Everybody had thought that Fountain Street would produce reaction. Fountain Street had produced reaction.Three days later, there had already been four separate murders.Within a week, there had been two more bomb blasts and a betting-shop drive-by. Twenty-seven people had died in eight days. The citizens stayed in their houses, waiting for the extra bomb-and-gun stuff they felt was sure to follow.

So, up and down I drove, the city scarily free of traffic. It made me feel like I owned it even more. There was no one around but me, the police and the Army. They stopped me at roadblocks every six hundred yards. At least it was a social life.

The OTG thing was getting serious. The cops had started laying wall-watching traps to see if they could catch people writing OTG. They succeeded in nailing a few but they had been copyists with no idea what the legend meant. I'd begun to notice, immediately after the Fountain Street bomb, that the OTGs were beginning to be written with a more desperate, hurried air. I didn't ponder seemed an appropriate response.

It was like the seventies: a time when rubble scars marked the city like a good set of fingerprints. But as I drove street to street, I felt sorry for Belfast. It had a guilty, sheepish air, as though it knew it had blundered again, made its name sound dark in the world's mouth again. It was uniquely endearing to me and it chose to look its prettiest in recompense. In the unusual evening heat, I wound down my window and drove slow. The evening was light, fragrant, the air was clear. Look at all my good points, the city seemed to say.

There were many. For all my big talk, this was still a city I loved. Me and the Wreck, we sometimes toured this metropolis in a little haze of directionless benevolence. Sometimes we just drove around late at night, the old car and I, and just watched happily, listening to Heaven 17 songs, looking at all the people and wondering if they knew how multiple and beautiful they were. It never mattered what happened.

I paused as I passed Sandy Row. I stood at the foot of the Lisburn Road. I hadn't checked up on Chuckie's mum that morning. It was the first morning I'd missed. My duty was clear.

Chuckie was still in America. I'd been looking after his mother. I'd stopped looking after his soon perceived that I couldn't handle it. I went back to the Wreck. I knew it was a crap car but I felt it was more me, somehow. Hey, for that matter, I felt it was more Chuckie too.

But I was still monitoring his mother. After the first few days, Peggy appeared to be getting a little better but she still wasn't talking much. At first I'd felt only sorry for her. That Fountain Street thing had been very bad medicine and I could think of no one I'd less like to witness such an event than Chuckie's chubby mother. Poor old five-foot Peggy was half a woman as it was. She was almost the definition of the damageable human. Everything about her had always seemed frail or conditional. His mother's softness had always troubled Chuckie but I had always felt for her.

And though she was better, she still lay for hours on end, staring at Chuckie's bedroom wall. It broke my heart. Some old girl called Causton from across the street was helping look after her. They talked some. This woman had a proprietorial air aboat her care for Chuckle's mother. They had been friends since they were schoolgirls so that was fair. But she didn't like me and resented Chuckle's having asked me to hang around. It was some womanly thing, some crucial lack of the feminine in me. I resented that. My dick wasn't my fault. It didn't necessarily make me a bad person.

Notwithstanding her objections, I called in on Eureka Street twice a day or so. I even spent some entire evenings there — with my many social obligations that was such a sacrifice.

For four or five days this had continued amiably enough. Then, a week after Chuckie's departure, it began to unravel. One evening Caroline went home to spend some time with her grumpy husband. I helped her across the road with several remaining boxes of Chuckie's mad catalogue purchases. When I got back I found that Peggy had come downstairs and was clearing up. I was surprised but pleased. I said nothing and began to help. Much of the gear had been distributed around Sandy Row and definite patches of carpet were visible between the boxes and bags.

Caroline had told me that one night she'd found Peggy sitting downstairs amongst all Chuckie's purchases, picking over them and whimpering. She seemed more amused than anything now We worked for half an hour or so, Peggy even chatting intermittently like some plump, uneasy bird.