Donal Ryan - The Thing About December

Johnsey told Mumbly Dave all about Herbert Grogan and his big auld spiel and how he’d told lies about Daddy having planned all along to sell the land and how it was Daddy tried to get the land rezoned originally and all about Dermot McDermott trying to trick him into selling the land to them because they were mar dhea after getting a bigger milk quota and wanted to be sure of the land , and Mumbly Dave shook his head and spat like Paddy Rourke and said how them Grogans would buy you and sell you and they’d tell you black was white and that McDermott was only a bollix anyway, and his people were pure grabbers, sure the whole place knew that.

Mumbly Dave wanted to know how’s it they was never friends years ago? Johnsey ventured that they went to separate schools and were a good few years apart, anyway. Mumbly Dave allowed that this was so, and said he was forever forgetting that Johnsey was only twenty-four. Johnsey never heard talk of friendship before between two men. He wondered had Daddy and Jimmy Unthank and Paddy Rourke ever declared themselves to be friends, or was their bond left go unmentioned, unmolested by words? Johnsey got the impression that Mumbly Dave could talk himself into things and out of things until the cows came home and none of his declarations of friendship or enmity would carry much weight when all was said and done. But still and all, for days like this, when that auld clock inside was ticking and tocking its cruel beat and a man had little to do besides look in over the haggard wall and wonder how a universe so packed with stuff could have left a space this empty, Mumbly Dave’s declarations of fondness and friendship, weighty or not, were as welcome as the sun when there was hay waiting to be saved or turf to be footed.

FOR A FINISH, Mumbly Dave called up nearly every day that August. The days he didn’t call stretched out their legs and took their own sweet, maddening time in passing. Those days, he looked at the telly and the telly looked back and outside the milky sun shone down on a world that seemed to be going to waste when there was no Mumbly Dave to go out into it with. The days he did call galloped past, because that’s the way time is — it’s not a constant either, like that science teacher said. Going to town in Mumbly Dave’s car to look at wans in miniskirts or walking down the Callows and firing stones into the river like bould children or sitting around the kitchen looking out at the rain and drinking a few cans of Harp with Mumbly Dave talking and talking and talking all the time — doing these things made time speed up so you’d barely be finished laughing at Mumbly Dave’s slagging of a wan’s fat arse or some fella’s gimpy walk or a young fella with the head dyed off of himself or whatever new tall tale he had to tell and you’d look at your watch and you’d realize you were going to miss Home and Away and you didn’t even care.

Mumbly Dave was going to claim a fine whack of money off of Timmy Shaughnessy who everyone called Timmy Shake Hands on account of how he’d always greet you with a handshake. Timmy owned the stand on which he’d placed his ladder, which had then collapsed and spilled ladder and Dave onto the hard ground and his fall only broken by the edge of a wall and the ladder was the finest but you know yourself how I fared out, wasn’t I in smithereens? And Timmy Shake Hands could claim recompense from the council who owned the house the gutters of which he was cleaning and sure they could claim from the Board of Works who had ordered that the house be tidied up in the first place and the house should have been knocked long ago anyway and wasn’t that what insurance was for, to compensate a man for his pain and suffering? And that solicitor lady was taking no prisoners, that was for sure. She was a fine thing too, bejaysus.

Mumbly Dave had the world of stories about things he’d done and seen and places he’d been and women he’d gotten off with. He’d shifted every girl who was roughly his age in the parish and most of the girls in surrounding parishes. He was solid red from riding. He’d even point at wans inside in town and claim to have gotten a shag off of them! Besides making himself out to be a great lover of women, Mumbly Dave was forever telling stories about the lads . Me and the lads, one time, we went away to Cork for the weekend. Jaysus youssir, twas some craic. Me and one of the lads took two cracking women home one time and one a them turned out to be an awful lunatic and she went for your man with a broken wine glass, twas a solid scream! Me and the lads used be forever fighting with them townies inside in the nightclub and one night I was cornered by three of the bowsie fuckers and I was on my own on account the lads had all gone away early but I nutted one prick in the snout and lamped another in the balls full force and the third bollix turned and ran and I didn’t even bother chasing him, only stopped a cab, and there was a wan waiting for a cab as well and we said Feck it to hell, we’ll share, and I ended up shifting the face off of her in the back of the cab and as I was paying your man he just looked at me and shook his head and he just said Legend .

Johnsey never saw any of these lads, though, nor heard their names. When Mumbly Dave blew his horn and saluted fellas along the road with the back of his hand flat against his windscreen, they as a rule returned his friendliness with a bare raised finger or nod of the head or not at all. And Mumbly Dave never made good on his promise to bring Johnsey for a few pints. Sure what harm? A few tall tales never hurt anyone, and he had survived grand so far without going to pubs. Mother often said someone she enjoyed was a tonic . Like that person was good for her. Now he knew what she meant.

THE PHONE HOPPED most days, and when he answered it people wanted to ask him questions and tell him things and talk about auctions and commission and what he wanted to do and for a finish he found a volume yoke on the bottom of the phone and he turned it down to the last and that was an end to the torture of having to mumble half-truths to strangers and hang the phone up on them. But that was only like when that little Dutch fella stuck his finger in the hole in the dam — he could feel the pressure building up in the silent phone of all the unanswered calls and all the people wanting to talk to him and ask him things and tell him how much he could make and what an opportunity he’d been handed and after a few days he could hardly walk past the hall table where the phone sat without feeling like it was going to go BANG and burst all over him and drown him in angry voices and big urgent words.

After a few visits, Mumbly Dave took to walking straight in, without knocking on door or window. The first time he did it, he stood in the doorway of the kitchen looking in at Johnsey and Johnsey looked back at him from the table where he was eating a cut of toast and having a sup of tea and Mumbly Dave asked him had he a problem mar dhea he was going to fight with Johnsey and Johnsey tried to stop himself laughing and told him he had some neck sauntering in like he owned the place and Mumbly Dave said he was very sorry, it was just that Sir Godfrey Blueballs the Butler seemed to be indisposed today, otherwise he’d have announced his arrival, you bollix, and they both started laughing and sure what about it if he walked straight in, you’d hear him coming from the far end of the village in his yahoo car, anyway.

That’s how Johnsey got caught with the newspaper fella. It was getting on towards half-eleven one day, the time Mumbly Dave normally arrived and they’d drink a mug of tea and eat a Mikado or a cut of tart if the Unthanks had been up before, planning whether they’d have a city day, a video day, a cans-of-Harp day or a do-nothing day. The doorbell rang and Johnsey roared Come in, it’s open, and just as he was wondering why the Jaysus Mumbly Dave had reverted to doorbell-ringing, a right-looking quare-hawk presented himself at the kitchen door and smirked and said Mister Cunliffe I presume, like that fella that went looking for the other fella in the jungle, in one of those accents like you hear now and again if you’ve the car window down and it’s lunchtime in the city and there’s young lads passing the car from the posh school, Mount Something. The quare-hawk said he worked for a newspaper and he had a square yoke with his picture on it and small writing and he wanted to know could he ask Johnsey a few questions about his part in the local land deal and Johnsey felt that tightness in his stomach and lightness in his balls that he’d hoped he’d never feel again, and he wasn’t even sure why. He said No, you can’t, I thought you were someone else, that’s why I said to come in, you’ll have to go, and the posh-accent lad said Oh right, no problem, so I’ll just put no comment will I, because everyone else around here has a comment about you , and the way he said you it sounded like he couldn’t stand Johnsey and thought he was better than him. He had the head of a right dipstick, Daddy would have said.