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

The man protested only mildly when he snorted up the last two chunky portions of the substance. Chuckie felt as needy and blameless as a greedy superpig and the man felt a certain evangelical satisfaction at introducing such a keen newcomer (and Chuckie pressed a fistful of money into his hand, which also helped console him).

Chuckie straightened up and strode out of that pisser like another man, like several other men. He felt absolutely fucking tremendous as he was quick to inform the waiting TV people in the make-up room. Surprised at this new super-bullishness, the producers decided that he was ready for broadcast and the make-up artists went to work, dabbing at his sweat patches, smudging his spots, failing to damp the lunatic glitter in his eyes. When they finished their work, Chuckie leapt to his feet and strode unaccompanied into the studio, godlike, austere, filled with glorious chemical rectitude.

Thirty-five minutes later, the interview was coming to an end. On the periphery of his vision, Chuckie could see the floor manager signalling that a countdown was imminent. He was broken-hearted. He tried to look pleadingly at the interviewer but the man paled visibly under his demented gaze. He ignored the crumpled figure of Jimmy Eve and tried to finish what he was saying before they were counted out.

`And the other thing is that it always comes down in the end to cold, hard cash. That phrase is no accident. Those are its attributes. America, fabulous America, understands this. All you wonderful Americans out there don't need to listen to our moronic politicians.You don't listen to your own, why should ours be any different? What America understands is what I a dollar, cutting a deal. There are no nationalities, only rich and poor. Who gives a shit about nationhood if there's no jobs and no money? Bread before flags, that's what I say. I'm here in America to do a bit of business. It's the real peace. Don't listen to assholes like this.' Chuckie gestured towards the silent Jimmy Eve. `This man wouldn't know an economic policy if it came up and bit him on the bollocks. Interested Americans should invest in my country. They should give their money to men like me.' Chuckie smiled a ghastly smile.

The tirade continued for another minute or so. Chuckie saw the floor manager counting down the seconds and he helpfully reached some notional full stop. There was a moment's dread ful silence, until the presenter managed to gasp a flabbergasted good night.

The red lights on the cameras went dead and the men and women behind them started to bustle importantly. Chuckie removed his own chest mike, shook hands with the presenter, chucked the just Us leader under the chin, waved a cheery farewell to all and sundry and went off looking for the man he had met in the toilets.

Jimmy Eve had said nothing during those seventeen and a half minutes of national television. He had made several attempts to speak but Chuckie had charged him down with coked-up exuberance. The politician had sat silently, pale and sweating, while the lunatic Protestant had ranted, only sporadically interrupted by the flailing presenter.

Afterwards, Eve's entourage had been mystified. As they bundled him into a waiting limousine, they quizzed him as to what had gone wrong, why he had not performed. Eve said nothing. He looked close to tears and his forehead was cold and damp. When they reached their hotel, they called a doctor. The doctor could find nothing wrong with Eve although he manifested some of the symptoms of shock.

This was not surprising. Something shocking had occurred. Ever since he had arrived in America, Eve had made a big event out of who would shake his hand and who would not. He had tried to discomfit British government officials and opposing Irish politicians by offering his hand whenever there were cameras around. He knew that these people could not possibly shake his hand and he knew that that looked so unreasonable on American television. There he was, making the ultimate gesture of peace and amity, and those unreasonable reactionaries continued to reject him.

Thus when Chuckie Lurgan had surged into the television studio, Eve had offered his hand in his usual demonstrative and significant manner. He had never heard of this Lurgan guy but he knew he was a Protestant and that he was there to put for ward the Unionist position.Thus, he was enormously surprised when this excited fat man took his hand firmly and shook it vigorously. His surprise increased when the man moved close to him and hugged him one-armed in the American fashion, putting his face close to Eve's own.

The two men remained in that position for what seemed like a long time. The smile on Lurgan's face was so joyous and the way he murmured so intimately in Eve's ear led the producers to think that they had been set up and that these men were related. They did not notice Eve's abrupt pallor and immediate sweat. They did not remark the tremble of his hands as he regained his seat.

When Chuckie was seventeen he had suffered a brief fad for rugby football. He began to play for the third fifteen of a club situated in the nearest bourgeois area to Eureka Street. He had not lasted long. Chuckie had not fitted in. His own team-mates disdained him and opposition players treated him with open contempt. Chuckie was neither good enough nor butch enough to reply with any on-the-pitch heroics, but he found a way to unburden himself of some of his resentments.

He began to place himself in the front row of scrums. When both front rows locked shoulders, his face would be inches from that of another player. Chuckle would proceed to hiss nauseating and vile abuse of a nature that sometimes shocked himself. He told these nice middle-class boys that he had had sex with their mothers and sisters, sometimes their fathers and brothers as well. Sometimes he threatened to have sex with the boys themselves, sometimes he threatened them with arcane amputations and extractions: penises lopped off, bottoms burnt, testicles torn apart. Occasionally, to vary the monotony, he did this to one of his own team-mates.

It always worked. It produced in the victim a state of something approaching catatonia. The dazed individual, a rabbit in headlights, would then be haplessly mashed in some hospitalizing tackle.The obscenity or level of threat was not the effective ingredient. What worked so brilliantly was the sheer surprise. These young men were astonished to have their bourgeois pastime invaded so abruptly by this back-street coarseness.

And this was what had produced the uncustomary silence in Jimmy Eve. Fired by a million years' worth of resentment against this duplicitous Nazi (Chuckie had never felt so Protestant before, he had never felt Protestant at all), Chuckie's rage had been massive. He had whispered things so appalling in Eve's ear that he would always prefer to forget exactly what he'd said. It was bound to be his finest performance. The four fat lines of cocaine had helped.

Two days later, Chuckie and Max boarded a 747 bound for London.They had settled the here-or-there question in the way both had known they would. After a difficult parting from the old house in Kansas, during which Max tried to be stoic but blubbed like a baby, they flew to New York and spent a night there. With Max beside him, that city was a different and much more appealing experience.

Once they had boarded the British Airways plane and Chuckie heard of the cabin crew, he breathed a sigh of European relief. He had liked America enormously but his last two days had been mayhem. His television appearance had made him briefly famous. Excerpts were shown on other networks; the entire event was even repeated. Other stations called him and asked him to be interviewed in tandem with American politicians, one even offered him a job as their political correspondent. The CLAD.(Campaign to Legalize All Drugs) called him. Max had to deal with much of this telephone traffic. Her mulishness protected him. He was referred to as the MFG in Irish politics, the Mad Fat Guy. There were even rumours of T-shirts being printed. Jimmy Eve skulked home a week early.