Roddy Doyle - The Van

Although they never ran out of ways of flogging their chips and stuff, closing time outside the Hikers was still their bread and butter. Dollymount was grand on a good, sunny day but on a rainy day or even just a cloudy one there wasn’t a sinner down there to sell a chip to. And there were never going to be too many good, sunny days in an Irish summer; there was always rain coming at you from somewhere. But people coming out of the pub after a few jars didn’t give a shite what the weather was like, they just wanted their chips and maybe a bit of cod with a nice crispy batter on it. Anyway, rain was never that wet when you were half scuttered.

The dinners-for-two with candles and wine hardly paid for themselves. They did them for the crack more than anything else. Bimbo did them to please Maggie, because the idea had been her brainwave, and Jimmy Sr went along with Bimbo.

Only she was always having brainwaves. Sometimes Jimmy Sr felt like telling her to give her fuckin’ head a rest.

They came back from Dollier on a Monday late in July covered in sand and with damn all in the money box because there’d been showers on and off all afternoon, and she was there waiting for them, swinging off the front door, with her latest: breakfasts on the Malahide Road.

— You’re jokin’, said Jimmy Sr, once he knew what she was on about.

She wanted them to park the van at the crossroads in Coolock every morning and make rasher sandwiches for people driving to work.

— Wha’ time?

— Half-seven.

— Jaysis—!

— Eight then; it doesn’t matter. Durin’ the rush hour.

— Look it, said Jimmy Sr. — Maggie. If they’re in such a rush they’re not goin’ to be stoppin’ for a rasher sandwich. Or even a rasher an’ dunphy sandwich.

— There’s plenty of people would love a rasher sandwich on their way to work, said Maggie.

— I know tha‘, said Jimmy Sr. — But they’ll be goin’ by us on the bus or they’ll be at home in bed cos they’re on the dole.

Bimbo was staying a bit quiet, Jimmy Sr thought; very fuckin’ quiet.

— The only people who’d drive past that way, said Jimmy Sr, — is the yuppies. An’ they can make their own fuckin’ breakfasts as far as I’m concerned.

— You just don’t want to get up early, said Maggie.

Jimmy Sr ignored this; he wasn’t finished.

— Sure, Jaysis, he said. — No yuppie’d be caught dead eatin’ a rasher sandwich on his way to work. Think about it.

— You could give it a try, Maggie said to both of them, but especially Bimbo.

— Hang on, said Jimmy Sr.

He wasn’t dead yet; and he wasn’t getting up at half-six in the morning.

— How far is it from Malahide to town? he asked them. — Abou’?

— Five miles, said Bimbo.

— Abou’?

— Yeah.

Jimmy Sr looked to Maggie to give her a chance; she agreed with Bimbo.

— Five miles so, said Jimmy Sr. — A bit more maybe. It’s not very far, is it now? You’re not goin’ to get hungry travellin’ five miles only. Unless you’re goin’ on your hands an’ knees.

— The airport road then, said Maggie. — That’d be better. They’d be comin’ from much further on tha’ one. Drogheda, and Dundalk — and—

— Belfast, said Bimbo.

— That’s righ’, said Maggie. — Well—?

— I’m on, said Bimbo. — Jim?

He’d no choice.

— Okay. — Just promise us one thing, he said. — If it works, don’t make us go ou’ later an’ make their fuckin’ tea for them as well.

It didn’t work. Jimmy Sr made sure it didn’t.

— Come here, he said to Bimbo.

They were on the new airport road. It was seven o’clock.

— D‘you want to do this every mornin’?

— Wha’? said Bimbo.

— Don’t start, said Jimmy Sr. — Do yeh?

— Wha’?

— Want to get up before the fuckin’ seagulls every mornin’. Do yeh?

— No.

— Righ’; park over there then.

— Where?

— There.

— Under the bridge?

— Yeah.

They stayed there on the motorway, under the flyover, for an hour and a half. They opened the hatch and all; they didn’t cheat. They made three rasher sandwiches, and Jimmy Sr ate two of them and Bimbo ate the other one, and a Twix each as well. They shouldn’t have been there but the guards never came near them. They leaned out over the hatch and watched the cars and the trucks blemming past. Then they shut the hatch and went home.

— Not a word, Jimmy Sr warned Bimbo.

— No, said Bimbo. — No.

Jimmy Sr enjoyed getting back to the fort that morning. He let Bimbo do the talking.

— Where did yis park it? she asked him.

— Just there, in Whitehall, said Bimbo. — At the church; where yeh said.

— And no one stopped at all?

— That’s righ’, said Bimbo.

— No one even slowed down, said Jimmy Sr.

— Ah well—, said Maggie.

That was all; it was grand. Maggie wasn’t pushy or a Hitler or anything; she was just a bit too fuckin’ enthusiastic.

Bimbo and his kids ate nothing except rashers for two weeks after that, and Maggie brought Wayne and Glenn and Jessica and the other two kids into Stephen’s Green in town and they fed seventeen large sliced pans to the ducks.

Bimbo and Maggie were the ones in charge; Jimmy Sr couldn’t help thinking that sometimes. Not just Maggie; the both of them.

It wasn’t that they ordered him about or anything like that — they’d want to have fuckin’ tried. It was just, he was sure they talked about business in bed every night, and he wasn’t in bed with them. There was nothing wrong with that; it was only natural, he supposed. He’d have been the same if it’d been Veronica. But sometimes he felt that they’d their minds made up, they’d the day’s tactics all worked out, before he rang their bell.

He felt a bit left out; he couldn’t help it.

When Maggie’d announced the dinners for two with wine and candles Bimbo didn’t say anything but Jimmy Sr could tell that he knew about it already. He didn’t stand beside Maggie and nod like he’d heard it all before, but he didn’t ask her any questions either: he didn’t have to. He might even have come up with the candles bit himself. It was the type of romantic shite that Bimbo always fell for.

But, again, there was nothing wrong with it; it was a good idea. It wasn’t any less of an idea just cos he hadn’t thought of it himself, or because he hadn’t been around when Maggie’d thought of it. And anyway, even if he didn’t like it, there was nothing he could do about it. He could stay downstairs and watch the telly in Bimbo’s till they were finished riding each other or whatever the two of them did when they went to bed and then go up and get in between them and have a chat for a couple of hours, but he couldn’t see them agreeing to that.

There was another day; Jimmy Sr was going to play pitch and putt, against Sinbad McCabe. It was the Hon Sec’s Prize he was playing him in, and Sinbad McCabe was the Hon Sec himself, and Jimmy Sr hated the cunt. So he really wanted to win it, to beat the bollix in his own cup. He was getting a few sandwiches into him — not rasher ones, mind you — and a bowl of soup, and psyching himself up at the same time. There were two things Jimmy Sr hated about Sinbad McCabe, two main things: the way he always waited till the Hikers was full before he filled in the results on the fixtures board, like it was the Eurovision fuckin’ Song Contest he was in charge of, and the way you could see the mark of his underpants through his trousers. There were other things as well but they were the big two. Jimmy Sr was going to look at Sinbad’s underpants lines before he took a shot; it would help him concentrate. He wouldn’t talk to him either, not a word, and he’d stand right up behind him when Sinbad was putting, as close behind as he could get without actually climbing into his trousers. He was telling Veronica and Sharon this when Bimbo came in.