Roddy Doyle - The Van

They ignored it, and stayed quiet.

It felt good, being finished, knackered. They were too tired to grin. Jimmy Sr’s ears were buzzing with the tiredness. He got a can from under the hotplate and it slipped out of his hands because of the grease; the flask cup had flowed over.

— Ah Jaysis—

He held the can with his apron, opened it and took a slug: it was horrible and warm.

— Ah — shi’e—

Bimbo got a can and held it up to make a toast.

— Today’s chips today, he said.

Jimmy Sr nudged a chip on the floor with his shoe.

— Absolutely, he said.

It had been some day.

At the end of the week — next Friday — he was going to put money on the table in front of Veronica, and say nothing.

They went home.

— Look it.

Sharon showed Jimmy Sr, Veronica and Darren the spots on her left cheek all the way up to her eye, clusters of them in little patches. She’d just found them, up in the bathroom. Her left side was much redder than the right, horrible and raw looking; she couldn’t understand it. She wanted to cry; she could feel them getting itchy.

— My God, said Veronica, and went to get a closer look.

Darren was a bit embarrassed.

Jimmy Sr leaned out from his chair to see.

— Gis a look, he said.

— It’s some sort of a rash, said Veronica, — or — I don’t know.

— That’s gas, said Jimmy Sr. — I’ve them as well; look.

He showed them the right side of his face.

— I shaved over them, he said. — But yeh should be able to still see them.

He rubbed his cheek.

— They’re still there alrigh’.

Veronica was confused but Sharon was beginning to understand.

— D‘yeh know wha’ it is? said Jimmy Sr. — It’s the hotplate; the fat splashin’ up from the hot plate.

He mimed turning a burger.

— I was on the righ’ an’ you were on the left, he told Sharon.

He grinned.

— Poor Bimbo must be in tatters, he said. — Cos he was in the middle.

Darren laughed.

By the time Ireland played Egypt, the Sunday after, they’d added sausages to the menu and Jimmy Sr was putting less lard on the hotplate.

Business was hopping.

On Friday they pitched their tent outside the Hikers earlier, at five o’clock, and stuck up posters — Jessica’s work — all over the van: £I Specials — Chips + Anything—5 to 7.30pm. It worked; the Pound Specials went down a bomb. Women coming out of Crazy Prices with the night’s dinner read the posters and stopped and said to themselves Fuck the dinner; you could see it in their faces. They either bought the chips and anything immediately or went home and sent one of the kids out to get them.

It was Maggie’s idea.

— Twelve Poun’ Specials, Mister, said one little young one, and that was the record.

By seven, when they were having a rest, Jimmy Sr and Bimbo were talking seriously about getting an engine; then there’d be no stopping them. They’d have to get some sort of a flue put in as well. Even with the hatch and the door open, the fumes were gathering up in the back of the van. You noticed it when you went down there to get more chips from the bin; you came back crying. And the smell off your clothes; no amount of washing could get rid of it.

— It’s an occupational hazard, Jimmy Sr told Veronica.

Spots, singed hair and smelly threads; Veronica said that he looked like something out of Holocaust.

— Ha fuckin’ ha, said Jimmy Sr.

— A large an’ a dunphy.

— Wha’? said Jimmy Sr.

He looked down at the customer, a young fella about young Jimmy’s age, with his pals.

— Large an’ a dunphy, he said again.

He was grinning.

— What’s a dunphy? Jimmy Sr wanted to know.

— A sausage, said the young fella.

— Sausage, large, Jimmy Sr called over his shoulder to Bimbo.

He looked back at the young fella.

— Are yeh goin’ to explain this to me? he asked.

— Sausages look like pricks, righ’?

— Okay; fair enough.

— An’ Eamon Dunphy’s a prick as well, said the young fella.

By Thursday of the second week, the night of the Holland game, the word Sausage had disappeared out of Barrytown. People were asking for a dunphy an’ chips, please, or an eamon, a spice burger an’ a small single. Some of them didn’t even bother eating them; they just bought them for a laugh. Young fellas stood in front of the big screen in the Hikers and waved Jimmy and Bimbo’s sausages in batter instead of big inflated bananas.

— This is where the real World Cup starts, said Paddy, when they’d settled down again after the final whistle.

— He’s righ’, said Jimmy Sr. — For once.

Ireland were through to the knock-out stages.

Jimmy Sr took another deep breath.

— Fuckin’ great, isn’t it?

They all agreed.

— After all these years, wha’, he said.

— COME ON WITHOU’

COME ON WITHIN

YOU’VE NOT SEEN NOTHIN’ LIKE THE MIGHTY QUINN—

Bertie summed up the campaign so far.

— We beat England one-all, we lost to Egypt nil-all, an’ we drew with the Dutch. That’s not bad, is it?

— OOH AH—

PAUL MCGRATH—

SAY OOH AH PAUL MCGRATH—

Jimmy Sr stood up.

— Yeh righ’, Bimbo?

The van was outside waiting for them.

It was hard leaving the pub after all that, the match and the excitement: but they did, Bimbo and Jimmy Sr. You had to admire them for it, Jimmy Sr thought anyway.

The day after the Holland game Maggie brought home T-SHIRTS she’d got made for them in town. They had Niall Quinn’s head on the front with His Mammy Fed Him On Bimbo’s Burgers under it. They were smashing but after two washes Niall Quinn’s head had disappeared and the T-SHIRTS didn’t make sense any more.

It was great having the few bob in the pocket again. They didn’t just count the night’s takings and divide it in two. They were more organised than that; it was a business. There was stock to be bought, the engine to save for. Maggie kept the books. They paid themselves a wage and if business was really good they got a bonus as well, an incentive, the same way footballers got paid extra if they won. Jimmy Sr took home a hundred and sixty quid the first week. He had his dole as well. He bought himself a new shirt — Veronica’d been giving him grief about the smell off his clothes — a nice one with grey stripes running down it. He’d read in one of Sharon’s magazines that stripes like that made you look thinner but that wasn’t why he bought it; he just liked it. He handed most of the money over to Veronica.

— You’re not to waste it all on food now, d‘yeh hear, he said. — You’re to buy somethin’ for yourself.

— Yes, master, said Veronica.

The country had gone soccer mad. Oul’ ones were explaining offside to each other; the young one at the check-out in the cash-and-carry told Jimmy Sr that Romania hadn’t a hope cos Lacatus was suspended because he was on two yellow cards. It was great. There were flags hanging out of nearly every window in Barrytown. It was great for business as well. There were no proper dinners being made at all. Half the mammies in Barrytown were watching the afternoon matches, and after the extra-time and the penalty shoot-outs there was no time left to make the dinner before the next match. The whole place was living on chips.

— Fuck me, said Jimmy Sr. — If Kelly an’ Roche do well in the Tour de France we’ll be able to retire by the end o’ July .

He’d brought home two hundred and forty quid the second week.

They were going to get a video.

— Back to normal then, said Jimmy Sr. — Wha’.

— Yep, said Veronica.

She was going to say something else, something nice, but Germany got a penalty against Czechoslovakia and she wanted to see Lothar Matthaeus taking it; he was her favourite, him and Berti, the Italian. Jimmy Sr liked Schillaci; he reminded him of Leslie, the same eyes.