Rob Doyle - Here Are the Young Men

I went upstairs to my bedroom and stuffed whatever money I could find into my pocket. Then I thought I could do with a little more — you never know where we might end up — and had a quick rummage in Fiona’s room to see what I could borrow, but she never had any money because she was only fifteen and hadn’t worked a day in her life. I gobbled a big bowl of Frosties to keep me going, then wrote a note to my parents saying I was going out and would more than likely stay with a friend. I put on a jumper and went to leave.

On the floor under the letterbox there was another postcard from Kearney. Fuck this, I thought, picking it up. The picture was of a little smiling girl with blonde hair, looking into the camera, full of trust and warmth, on the grass of some city park, next to monuments and a duck pond. I turned it over.

greetings infidel,

dry youre eyes Matt — ill be home very soon. Roll out the red carpet mofo. lissen man Ive’ seen sumthing over here your not going to beLEAVE!!! trust me blood u aint never seen shit like this before. Ill tell u when i get back but put it this way it makes that stuff we seen with the little girl look like CHILDS PLAY!!!!

Dont trust Whitey

The Kronic

I shoved the postcard into the pocket of my jeans, and left.

Scag was in the public gardens of Dublin Castle, by the big grassy circle outside the Chester Beatty Library that was designed to look like a Celtic symbol or something. As I approached I saw him standing beside a bench, engrossed in telling an anecdote to, as I had guessed, a pair of shabby alcos who sat on the bench and watched him. It was a warmish summer’s day but Scag still wore the black, fingerless glove on his left hand he’d had last time, and the black leather jacket.

‘Ah Matthew, me oul flower,’ he called when he saw me. ‘Nice to see ye again, man. I thought you’d left me behind in the world. Me more tender feelins were bein hurt.’

‘Yeah, I’m sure they were,’ I said, laughing.

‘These are me mates, Patser and Alfred.’

I shook their hands, and Alfred, a grizzled, badly dishevelled wreck probably in his fifties, said in an almost genteel English accent, ‘Here ye go, lad. Get some of that into ya.’ He passed me a flagon of cider and I drank some, worried about what kind of diseases swarmed on his cracked lips and gums, but not wanting to seem snobby. You probably had to allow for these things, hanging around with Scag.

Patser, the other alco, shook his head, coughed like there was a swamp in his throat and said through his beard, ‘So you’ve found another one to take under your wing, Scag. Some lost soul lookin for a father figure, is he? Ye never never learn. Pray God he doesn’t end up like the last one.’

Scag looked at him, amused and about to say something. But just then, two tall, obviously foreign girls walked by, in their twenties and both beautiful. The two alcos and I just watched longingly as they passed. But Scag called to them: ‘How are yis doin, ladies?’

They looked back at him, unsure, not stopping but slowing down a little.

‘Are yis havin a nice time?’

They nodded. One of them was frowning, but in a curious way, with a faint smirk on her face. The other one was trying to keep walking, but Scag saw his chance and consolidated the advantage.

‘Come on over, we don’t bite, like. Where are yis from, girls? We were just havin a little smoke, sure come on and talk to us for a bit.’

Forced by common manners to reply to his question, the girls finally stopped walking.

‘Norway,’ they said together.

‘Ah, Norway — the land of Mr Hans Christian Anderson, if I’m not mistaken. Would yis believe I used to live in Oslo?’

‘No,’ said the more mistrusting of the two. She had a pale, smooth-skinned face and wavy blonde hair. She wore a white pullover and torn jeans. She was very stylish, I thought. Both of them were. Though not in the boring, fashion-victim way.

Grinning more openly her friend said, ‘Actually, Hans Christian Anderson was from Denmark.’

‘Oh yeah, of course!’ said Scag, only fractionally discouraged. ‘I must have been thinkin of Knut Hamsun — now he’s definitely Norwegian. Do yis know him? He wrote Hunger . It’s a book about my life story; this lad comes to a foreign city and does fuck all, and he has no money and goes round the bend a bit. It’s a great book.’

The thing about Scag was, he really seemed fairly well read, despite all the junkie stuff and the criminality.

‘I’ve heard of it,’ said the girl with the grin. She was tall and slender with long limbs and dyed red hair, and even prettier than her friend.

‘Yeah well, yis should read it,’ Scag said. ‘It’s a Norwegian classic, ladies.’

I looked on, impressed, as were Alfred and Patser who, unlike Scag, seemed to shrink and fixed their eyes on the ground when the girls finally decided to come over and give us — or give Scag — the time of day.

I was wondering if Scag really had lived in Norway when the dyed-redhead asked him the same question.

‘Yeah, I did. Lived in a squat there for a few months in around eighty-nine. Denmark as well. There’s a lot goin on in Denmark.’

‘Yeah, I have a few friends who squat in Copenhagen,’ she said.

They talked about that for a few moments. Then Scag turned to his two alco friends and said, ‘Right lads, I’ll love yis and leave yis, I have to be gettin on. I shall be seein yis soon.’

And with that we found — the two girls and I — that we were following Scag, being led out of Dublin Castle and down Dame Street, and across into Temple Bar. He kept up a steady flow of verbiage to ensure neither girl had time to question what they were doing and slip from his grasp.

‘It’s a lovely afternoon, girls,’ he said as he weaved us among the cobblestoned alleys of Temple Bar. ‘It would be a sin not to make the most of it by sittin out and havin a pint in a nice oul beer garden. Am I right or am I right?’

We let him lead us through the laneways until, a few minutes later, we found ourselves in a pub. Scag slapped his hands on the bar and said, ‘So, ladies and gents, what’ll it be?’ It was as if we had arrived there magically, having had no say in the matter ourselves.

The girls said they’d have pints of Guinness, and I said the same. I guessed what was coming next. The barman started pouring the pints and then said, ‘Fourteen euro forty, please.’

‘Fuck!’ said Scag, making a show of pulling his wallet open and peering into it. Lo and behold, it was empty. ‘I’ve only got fifty pence. I thought I had another twenty bills on me.’

He started off on what was sure to be a longwinded, regret-heavy explanation, but the blonde girl — we had by now learned that her name was Nicky, and her redhead friend’s, Lorna — said, ‘Oh no, don’t worry. I’ll get this one.’

‘Are ye sure?’ he said, as if it was a completely unforeseen, even bizarre idea.

‘Oh yes, of course, no problem.’

I had barely said a word since the girls appeared. The truth was, I found them intimidating. They were a few years older than me, and surely far more interesting. No doubt they were hugely sexually experienced. As we sat down at a thick wooden table and sipped our pints, I remained silent but for a few nervy grunts, and imagined them screaming and sweating in the throes of mind-blowing orgasms administered by calm Jürgens, cool Tibors, handsome Tags.

We quickly finished our pints and then Lorna got another round in. Both of them had now settled into the idea of spending the afternoon with a Dublin junkie and his witless, wordless friend, and they loosened up, laughing and joking, telling us about themselves. They had just finished college, studying architecture (Nicky) and fine art (Lorna). Now they were ‘backpacking around Europe, staying with friends here and there, seeing what happens’.