Gavin Corbett - This Is the Way

Conchita said she wanted to go to Grafton Street. I did not know the streets this time, I did not go in Dublin much, but I made it like I knew the streets. My father did not know the streets neither but he wanted Conchita to think he knew them, he wanted her to think I knew the streets. He says to me before we left the house do you know where to be going, do you know which streets. I looked at Conchita in the street now, I wanted to be doing right, I respected my father. I says to Conchita Grafton Street is this way but she knew the way.

When we got to the end of the street we were walking in Conchita says to me does your father hit you. I didn’t know what to say, I was embarrassed. I says no, it was the truth, but I didn’t say if he hit me I would hit him back.

She said that was another thing she learnt off that book, that the religious people liked hitting people including themself.

In Grafton Street Conchita said she wanted to go in a shop sold clothes. She found the shop, it was a huge shop silver inside with loud music coming out of it. I said to Conchita I would not go in then I went in and came out again, I didn’t like the men’s clothes and I didn’t like the music. Conchita was in the shop twenty minutes then she came out she said she didn’t like the girls’ clothes neither.

We went across to McDonald’s, we sat down in a corner with Cokes and a quarter pound and a chicken burger and chips. Conchita said a strange thing, she says a true test of how much you love someone is if you imagine strangling them to death.

A thing I seen in Conchita was every word she said she said it quick but in her head the words were slowed down. I seen her mouth saying the words. Her mouth moved around the words before she said them and after she said them. When she was concentrating her eyes were closed over and the eyes jittered under the skin.

She says if you see in their eyes as they look at you for one last time a look of being confused and suddenly sadness and if what you feel then outside your imagination is sadness and you want to go to that person you imagined murdering and hold them and they do not know where this feeling in you of wanting to hold them close to you came from but they are happy it is happening and the sense of this comes to you and you want to hold them tighter and with more love then that means you truly love them.

She opened her eyes she says do you think I am strange.

I thought sometimes she was strange but I says I don’t think you’re strange but I says you are thinking a lot about killing and fighting.

She says I’m very normal.

I says you’re good at speaking.

You mean English she says.

Yes I says.

She says I will tell you a secret.

I waited for her to tell me the secret but she would not tell me the secret.

When she was finished her chicken burger and chips she went up again and got a banana in a cake. She ate into the cake then she lowered her head forward and her eyes opened up.

I says are you all right there.

She says uunh and she looked at me. She says this is the same taste in my mouth when I think about Catherine Labouré.

I knew who Catherine Labouré was I seen pictures of her dead body, she made the Miraculous Medals. I thought it was strange to be saying and then Conchita put her hand on the top of my arm and pinched it. I did not mind it but I did not know what to be saying.

Conchita put down the cake and went up and got a coffee. She drank the coffee and put her tongue outside her head for to suck air in her mouth. When she was finished drinking her coffee she took her phone from her bag and she looked at it.

She says Anthony I am meeting my friends from the school now. My friend has sent me a message to say she is in the city centre.

I says do the other girls in the school show the boys in their house to one another or are they shamed of them.

Conchita says I would not say that but these are my friends and I said I would meet them on my own I am so sorry.

She put her hand on my arm again but she did not pinch it this time.

You’re welcome I says.

Do you say you’re welcome when someone says they are sorry she says.

You do I says.

Oh that is a beautiful thing to say she says.

We went different ways outside McDonald’s. We said to ourself we would meet back in the house because Conchita was not sure what time herself and her friend would be finished meeting. I walked away out of Grafton Street, I did not like the noise. I went down at the river where men sold their badges and sold poems. I looked up the river with the sun in my eyes. There was a smell of earth in the air and there was a seal in the river. Past the chimneys and the smoke was the Phoenix Park, some way in that direction. It was a way I could have walked but I didn’t know about it then. I could have lied down in the trees with a girl, I would not have cared if it was wet, I like that smell. I am thinking of girls the whole time, there are many girls I would go with, I am thinking of Conchita too. I would like to be doing things, hold their face, it is stupid, but I would not go after young girls the same as Arthur went after young girls.

Some time I should have said something to Conchita. I should have said that my father was only in serious in the religion in the last two three year. I seen it is a religion of violence, I seen it is a religion of pain and tears, and many take their violence from the violence done to Christ and do not feel shamed of the religion if that is what you are, but the violence my father learnt he learnt it from others and that was why he hit my mother. But I would not have said the thing about my mother. And I would not have said about where he learnt the things he left behind. I would have said my father is a man of ideas, and there is some that fill up with water and there is some that are buckets that draw up the water but my father wants to be the weight that goes below to what has settled, and in this way I grew up, and this is where I grew up, and everyone comes from somewhere.

Madame Neill’s salons they were called. We learnt the name off Pam the lesbian woman. We came up to her at the back of Judith’s house. She was smoking and she looked at us suspicious. She had small ears and the lamp above her head lit the hairs on her face. Her trousers were tight around her legs and she struggled getting her box of cigarettes out the pocket. She says to us a smoke anyone.

Arthur says yes missus if you don’t mind it.

She did not say much. Arthur and me got the fit of giggles, we tried to stop ourself. She blew the smoke out her mouth thin and flat, she looked at us. She says what do you think of Madame Neill’s salons. She said it in a certain way.

Arthur says they’re good and I says they’re good.

Good she says nodding.

Then she says well don’t worry about anything and she threw her cigarette on the damp grass and turned into the house.

We found it hard keeping up with the things were said in Judith’s house. Everyone talked the same time, people were shouting, the wine given out made us drunk. Angry Stephen would stand up and people would say sit down.

Stephen waved his arms he would say no one can really say he says.

He says the church owed people more than just.

He says in my day are dangerous words.

He says the arrogance.

He says the government the people the ways the reasons.

Sit down Stephen sit down says Professor Michael and Izzy and Melody and Don.

Will we go Arthur would say to me in a low voice.

I tried reading the play Barry Lyndon with Arthur. I sat down with it in the room in the house I would say some words to him. It made him restless. We didn’t get far most the nights because he would end up rubbing his skull, he would walk around the room he would flick things. I would say stop flicking things he would keep doing it.