Rob Doyle - Here Are the Young Men

Jen called him two days before she was due to fly away, to say that she would miss him and would be thinking of him. Rez thanked her. He believed her. ‘When do ye think ye’ll be back?’

Jen sighed. ‘I don’t know, Rez. I really don’t. I’ve enough money to last me a good while. I might see if I can do some kind of volunteer work, or get a job out there, or something like that.’

‘You probably shouldn’t do the volunteer work,’ Rez began mechanically, ‘It’s only Christian pity, a sort of disease … injustice is the natural order, ye shouldn’t fight it.’ Suddenly hearing himself, he cut himself short. His heart wasn’t in it. ‘No, that’s good,’ he said. ‘It’s really good. Fair play to ye.’

‘Yeah. Thanks Rez,’ she said, her voice strained; she was trying not to cry. She said again that she’d miss him, that she’d have no one to talk to about books, but that she’d write to him and tell him everything that was going on with her. ‘I hope you take care of yourself, Rez.’

They said goodbye. Then they hung up.

That same evening Rez’s mother said, ‘Don’t ye think it’s time ye went out again and spent time with your friends? We think it would be good for ye. Don’t we?’

Rez’s da mumbled his agreement. Trisha, who had called in for a cup of tea, smiled supportively. She too looked older now, more dried out.

‘What do ye think of that?’ his ma said.

Rez didn’t think anything of it. He watched his mother with calm, dozy eyes. The poor thing , he thought, then smiled at this funny phrase that had come from nowhere, the kind of thing an old woman would say. ‘Okay,’ he said.

The following day, Thursday, he was called to the phone. It was Matthew. ‘I got a call from your ma yesterday,’ he said. ‘She was sayin she thought it would be a good idea if we brought ye out or something.’ There was an embarrassed pause. ‘Yeah. So, em, there’s this secret rave on Saturday we were goin to go to. I’ve been hearin about it for ages. It’s to coincide with the lunar eclipse.’

‘Who’s we?’

‘Me and Cocker. We’re meetin in the field at the school. Probably not Kearney. I don’t think he knows about it. I mean, he’s …’ Matthew trailed off. Rez felt something then, a shadowy form lurking just out of view. ‘So are ye up for it?’ said Matthew.

Rez said he would go.

They hung up.

— Dwayne Kearney

To: Joseph Kearney

Email received at 14:00

21/08/2003

arite queer!!

stil havin a mad fihear in U fflof muddafuken A

lissen fag u heard about de rave in greystones dis saturday?? its de EEE-KKLIPSZZ!!! man id fucken LUV 2 b der. me mates r DJn--seerious fucken techno. hard az fuck. BLOW YR FUCKIN MIND OUT!!!:-> trust me joe itll be fuckin DEADly.

just a heds up 4 me little bro. now den off 2 get me mickey suckt!!!

later fag!!

dwayne IN-Sane

Jen left Ireland on the Saturday morning. I knew she was going then because Cocker had told me. Around ten o’clock my phone rang — it was her. I lay on my bed and waited till it stopped ringing. That was the last time Jen tried to call me.

In less than a week’s time, on the last Friday in August, the exam results would be out, and then I’d learn whether I’d be going to college to study English. I doubted it; even on the slim chance that I did get in, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to study. I didn’t know what I wanted. By now, the Future looked even murkier, even colder than it had before. I wished I could talk about it to someone — about everything that had happened — but the weight of it all was too much. Jen was gone, Rez was at an all-time low, and I’d never felt less close to Cocker. I was sure that, from now on, our lives would only diverge further. Soon we would have nothing in common, nothing but a past. I felt more lost than ever. Maybe I could hang around with Scag more, drop out of the mainstream altogether. At least that was a direction, a way in which to drift.

Near to six o’clock that evening, I headed over to the school. Kearney was waiting for me in the field, hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, an Aphex Twin grin on his face. Erratic against the murky twilight, he reminded me of one of the obelisks in 2001: A Space Odyssey . There was a rucksack at his feet, bulging with what I assumed to be drink. The faint sound of traffic reached me from behind, past the railings. Again Kearney had that aura, that strange charisma, standing dead still in the field.

‘Alright Kearney.’

‘Alright Matthew. Haven’t seen each other in a while, have we. All set for a serious onslaught?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Have ye bought drink already?’

I unshouldered my rucksack and shook it.

‘What is it?’

‘Two bottles of Buckfast and six cans of Dutch Gold.’

Kearney gestured at the field behind me. ‘Here’s Cocker.’

I looked over my shoulder, saw Cocker folding himself over the railings and dropping ungracefully into the ditch. He emerged and came trotting towards us.

‘Howayis lads,’ he said when he reached us, out of breath and grinning his usual cheery grin.

‘Alright Cocker,’ said Kearney, cracking open a can of Dutch Gold. ‘Up for gettin monged out of it tonight?’

‘Definitely. Do yis reckon we’ll be able to get some pills?’

‘Yeah, easy. It’s a rave after all. Everyone there is going to be yoked off their tits.’

None of us had ever been to a rave before. I didn’t imagine I’d care much for the music, but I was curious to see what it was like. By all accounts, tonight’s was going to be one of the biggest raves the city had ever seen.

‘Did ye talk to Jen before she left?’ Cocker asked me.

‘No. I’m not with Jen any more, don’t forget.’ I didn’t want to hear about her.

‘I know that. I just thought ye might have been speakin to her. She … she really wanted to talk to ye.’ He looked like he wanted to say more, but he glanced up at Kearney and was quiet.

‘There wouldn’t have been much point,’ I said. ‘She’s probably right, though, doin what she’s doin and gettin away from here. It’s not the same as it used to be. I’d almost go away myself.’

Kearney pointed towards the fence and said, ‘Here’s our man. Here’s the tragic hero.’ Rez was lowering himself down from the railings with slow, exaggerated care. We watched him crossing the field towards us, like an alien; strange to everything.

‘Alright Rez,’ said Cocker.

‘Alright Cocker. Howaya lads.’

‘And how’s young Prince Hamlet?’ said Kearney.

‘What?’ said Rez.

‘Give it a rest, Kearney,’ I said.

‘No, I’m only messin. Yer lookin well, Rez,’ said Kearney. ‘Good to see yer back in the game. Here, get that into ye.’ He passed him a can of Dutch Gold. Rez cracked it open and started to drink.

After an hour in the field, drunk and eager, we got on a bus to town, smoking and drinking in the upstairs seats. We got off and walked to Tara Street Station and took a DART out along the darkening coast, for the last big night of the summer.

The beach was wide, dark and made of stones. It was past the lights of Greystones, at a distance from the town’s few, quiet streets.

Already there were a lot of people arriving, packed in cars or in the carriages of the DART trains that stopped at Greystones before turning back for the city centre. We had taken the second-last train of the night: there was no way of getting home till morning.

Our pace quickened as we walked from the station towards the beach. The pulse of techno drew us in, charging us with anticipation. Kearney passed me the whiskey and I swigged on it. In a rush of euphoria, I reflected how much like old times this was, like it used to feel, before all this shit happened: before Rez tried to hang himself, before Kearney started doing such fucked up things, before I had got with Jen and then lost her in the most painful way possible. But the euphoria vanished when I realized that the old days I was nostalgic for were only a few months ago, lasting up until we finished school. And now there would be no more school. There was only the Future. I almost wished we could all go back to school for just one more year: at least back there things were clear. We knew who we were and what we were against. But that would only have been delaying the inevitable — being spewed up on the shores of the adult world and expected to choose, embrace, belong.