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

He walked to Max's bedroom window and looked out. The moon hung high like a bare bulb in a cheap room.The mountain was a rim of glow, a flat, wide thing. Chuckie had never been too impressed by the horizon. To him it had always been just a distance. Nevertheless, he conceded that it looked fine that night, it looked dandy.

In his panic, he had gone round to Poetry Street to see if he could find Jake. He sat on his friend's doorstep, practically sobbing. Jake was not in. He didn't know what he could do. He would never be able to make up a meaning for the letters OTC on his own. He needed his friend.

Jake's cat appeared from underneath a hedge and screamed happily at the disconsolate Chuckie for a few minutes. The cat looked hungry and neglected but Chuckie knew he tried to look like that all the time and decided to take him for a walk anyway. It was the only one of the animal's idiosyncrasies that he could bear.

So, cat and fat man set off up Poetry Street, both anxious and confused in their different ways.

Then Chuckie saw the OTG man. He was half-way up a ladder, which leant against the wall of the Irish Institute. It took Chuckie a few moments to determine that he wasn't a workman. It was only as he saw him paint the word The, the letters OTG and the rest of the sentence that he knew who it was.

He was just as Jake had described Roche describing him. Jake's age and height, dressed in shabby, priestly black. Chuckie saw him carefully paint out the words around the OTG itself and then the fat man went charging up the street after him.

The man saw Chuckie coming and panicked. He slid down the ladder like a fireman and ran for it, paint and brush in hand. Chuckie zoomed on after him.

He was very quick and by the time Chuckie got to the Lisburn Road, the OTG man had gained some yards. But Chuckie saw him turn down one of the little terrace streets on the other side of that road. The fat man increased his speed and followed. His quarry ducked down a little alleyway. Seconds later, Chuckie skidded in behind him.

Imagine Chuckie's surprise when he saw the words LEAVE ME ALONE painted on the alley wall. The paint was wet but the typography was composed. Jesus, he thought, how had he managed that? Chuckie ran on, shouting at him now.

The man came out of the alleyway on to another terrace street. Chuckie was gaining on him. Quickly, the man dived into the alleyway opposite and turned a sharp corner. When Chuckie turned the corner there was more fresh writing in that steady, unmistakable hand. FUCK, YOU'RE QUICKER THAN YOU LOOK, it said. Chuckie began to lose his mind but he didn't check his pace.

By the time the OTG man made it on to the next street, Chuckie was almost within diving distance of the spooky bastard. As he sped into the last alleyway available, Chuckie thought he had him. The man vaulted a wheelie-bin and turned again. Fat Lurgan's heart was bursting as he turned the corner, banged into the wall and collapsed on the ground. He looked up through the sweat in his eyes and saw the words THIS ISN'T FUNNY ANY MORE perfectly written on the wall above him. He raised himself on his elbows and stared down the alleyway. The OTG man had stopped and was staring at Chuckie with something close to a smile. Chuckie could have sworn a wink trembled in one of his eyes.

'Fuck it,' said Chuckie.

The OTG man smiled again and jogged off towards the railway tracks, towards the mountains, towards fuck knew where.

When Chuckie regained his breath, he beat a painful path back to Poetry Street. Jake's cat was sitting near the foot of the ladder. There was some more paint there and the cat had got some on his paws. Chuckie approached him smiling, in the hope he could get close enough for just one kick, but the cat was too cute. He ambled off, leaving white-paint paw marks on the pavement behind him.

Chuckie stood on the ladder looking up at the wall. In his panic, the guy had inadvertently dragged his brush over the OTG. It was a meaningless blur of wet paint.

Chuckie stared at it blankly.

Then he picked up the paint. He climbed up the ladder.

OTG, Chuckie wrote, OTG.

Chuckie turned away from the window. Seeing the OTG man had been fortunate but it had solved none of his problems. He still had to think of something believable that might be represented by the initials OTG. If only he could think of something Catholic that began with 0 and something Protestant that began with T, he would be laughing. As he pondered, he began to believe that the Omagh Trotskyist Group wasn't such a bad idea.

He wished Jake had been in when he had called. He needed his Catholic friend's guidance. He thought with pride of their friendship. Protestant and Catholic, their casual brotherliness was the ultimate example of what he meant when he said that no one he knew had been fighting. He and Jake had a friendship that the world supposed could not exist. Chuckie thought with horror that it was exactly this kind of platitude that was bound to get him elected. Political office was probably only months away. His fantasies of wealth had been much more unlikely and he had achieved those while barely noticing. Things seemed to come easy to him now. Perhaps he was becoming a force of nature.

He looked over at the sleeping Max. It was all her fault. Because of her, he had wandered the streets of his city bewildered by the mathematics of people. And now he couldn't think of a time when he might have walked a street without thought of her as company and motor. Because this wasn't love, this was punishment.

She had made a music of his heart. Now, the beautiful things smacked him in the mouth like a bar-room fly-weight: motorways, cheap cafes, cigarette smoke in a still room, dull days with dirt in the air, car parks.

There are things so beautiful that they let you not mind that you will grow old and die. There are things so beautiful that growing old and dying seem like pretty good ideas, rounded and generous. For Chuckie, Max was one of those.

Chuckie's chest swelled with unfashionable grandeur and he headed for the fridge to drink something calming, something cold. Max's fridge was full of bottled yuppie water, open bowls of spices and a solitary tub of margarine. On the lid of the margarine, printed in large yellow letters was the advice:

KEEP COOL

Yeah, thought Chuckie, that's a good idea.Yeah, I'll try.

Today the sky was an amazing thing. The clouds were city clouds, thick with dirt and matter. The light was the colour of tea, badly stewed. At midday, I walked out to buy cigarettes. It surprised me that the people could walk, drive and stand on those streets with me.

I'm in that kind of mood. Tonight, the sweet, sweet world makes me wanna he down and take my clothes off. In another room the radio's on and a man reads a letter from a woman who says her heart is cold and broken.Then he plays a song that means much to her. And that banality makes me faint with tenderness.

Yesterday, she only smiled, she only wiped a strand of hair from her face, she only kissed me.

And tonight the world is a big world, grand and marvellous as the story you never knew when you were a child. And tonight the sky is an amazing thing.

I'll never forget that morning. She had gone home to her parents' house in Fermanagh. It took me two days to find a firm address. Next morning, I drove the ninety miles to her town in a mood like an opening chapter.The radio was on but I needed no music. Her little town was beautiful. It rose on both sides of a thin river. Dozy houses, too many churches, it looked like an impossible place, a child's drawing. It looked fine to me. Across the bridge in the little townland, I was stopped at a checkpoint. The young policeman leaned on my open window.

`Going far?' he asked.