Donal Ryan - The Thing About December

She stood and looked at him and he stood looking back at her and he could feel the burning redness igniting around his neck and creeping up along his jaw and she was wearing one of those dresses some women wear in the summer that look as though they’d feel silky to the touch and the sun was playing with her hair and if the world halted itself there and then and the sky exploded and rained down fire he wouldn’t have been able to look away. Siobhán asked was he going to invite her in or would she have to stand there in a puddle of cowshit all day? Mumbly Dave would have said something like You could eat your dinner off of that yard, girl, the only cow that does be trotting along here now is Bridie McDermott bringing Johnsey the rent! But Johnsey had no such talent for smartness and he just told her to come in, come in.

SIOBHÁN TOLD HIM it wasn’t every patient got home visits. As a matter of fact, he was the first patient she’d ever visited at home. She walked from the hall to the good room and looked at everything and then she crossed the hall to the kitchen and she examined the table and the couch and said Jesus, do you have a cleaner or something? Or did you get married since I saw you last? And all he could do was stand in the hall looking at her like a gom and he just about caught himself in time before he started scratching himself.

No, no, I do be tipping away myself at it, like, while I’m waiting for D … How do you explain that you only clean your own house because it makes the time go faster while you wait for the sound of Mumbly Dave’s exhaust pipe? There’s a word for that manner of carry on: pathetic . The last thing you want to do in front of a woman is look pathetic. Only having one friend is pathetic. Only having any sort of a life because of that one friend bothering with you and being constantly frightened he’ll get bored and drop you is worse again. It could even be worse than having none; at least then you could make out to yourself that you’re too tough to need anyone, you plough a lonely furrow, you’re a lone wolf, like John Rambo or your man in Mission: Impossible .

Waiting for who ? Have you a girlfriend? You haven’t, I know. I kept track of you, my little blind farmer boy! Sure I had to keep tabs on you. That wasn’t a great picture of you in the paper. You wouldn’t want to be relying on that now for attracting women. You’d nearly be as well off chancing your arm in Lisdoonvarna than plastering your face all over the newspapers. Johnsey told her how that newspaper fella with the camera had snuck up on him and she said he must have. Anyway, who do you be waiting for? Dave, he told her. What? Mumbly Dave?

Her eyes widened and one side of her top lip twisted upwards. Was this the way women talked to men all the time? As though they were trying to catch you out or make a fool of you? Was this flirting, he wondered? It was certainly embarrassing enough. When she used tease him inside in the hospital it was funny; he knew she was only pulling his leg. Now it seemed like she was nearly insulted that he and Dave were friends and the jokiness in her voice and her mar dhea surprise sounded like it was half sourness. The shock of her arrival, her scrutiny of the house, her high-pitched questions, the scalding loveliness of her — there were too many things attacking his brain at once. He thought of a cartoon where a lad’s head would burst like a balloon. He felt sweat pricking through the skin of his forehead. His brain could marshal not a word to send to his mouth. Oh Lord, he was coming undone. If she went at his mickey now, he’d probably pass out. But then he heard a distant trumpet that rose and fell with the changing of gears — Mumbly Dave was on his way, to save him from himself! And to save Siobhán’s lovely eyes from the sight of his exploded brains dripping down the kitchen wall. Thank God for Mumbly Dave.

IF YOU PUT two boy rats in a cage together, they’ll more than likely get on the solid finest, provided they’re given a bit to eat and aren’t driven mad with the hunger. Put in a girl rat with them, though, and no matter how much food they’re given, they’ll tear strips off of each other over her and one will kill the other for a finish. That’s something Daddy used tell Johnsey to let him know how women could cause terrible trouble for men. Mother used tell him shut up out of it and stop poisoning the boy against women and signs on he used a story about rats to illustrate his point — sure weren’t all men the same as rats, really, with their little beady eyes and their little pointy snouts twitching the minute they see a flash of skirt? Then Daddy would smile and tell Johnsey about Helen of Troy and Kitty O’Shea and Maud Gonne and the trouble they caused for men and the downfalls from greatness they brought about, but he’d be all the time casting an eye over to Mother and she’d be ironing or baking and smiling away and shaking her head and Johnsey would know then that Daddy was only trying to get a rise out of her and he didn’t really believe all that stuff about how women were awful troublemakers. Still though, he couldn’t help remembering Daddy’s story about the two boy rats and the girl rat as he listened to Mumbly Dave and the same auld smart talk out of him opposite Siobhán as he used be going on with in the hospital.

The Lovely Voice, in his house. Imagine! And Mumbly Dave, spouting smartness and doing his best to show off, and she laughing at his auld spiel; it was an almost unbearable pleasure. But now he couldn’t sit there dumbly and listen and feel the mad mixture of laughter and jealousy bubbling in his stomach like he had in the hospital; he had no blindness or sickness or weakness to hide behind, he’d have to try and be a proper person who throws out whole lines of conversation, all casual and cool and without making people lean closer and look embarrassed and ask him to repeat himself. He might as well try and sprout a pair of wings and fly about the yard.

Mumbly Dave was telling Siobhán all about Johnsey being a property tycoon and how he was sticking to his guns for his twenty mill and letting them all go and shite and Siobhán looked at him and tutted and said it was a shame they were let say what they want in newspapers, there should be some kind of law about telling lies about people like that, and Mumbly Dave said Sure what lies, isn’t it true that Johnsey’s a bad yoke, sure look at him, he’s the worst kind of a blackguard, he’d sell his granny to the highest bidder and Johnsey knew what that was — it was sarcasm — which Daddy had often told Mother was the lowest form of wit .

Sometimes it was hard to tell if someone was saying good things or bad things when there was sarcasm involved, but Johnsey was fairly sure that by calling him a blackguard and saying he’d sell his granny, Mumbly Dave was actually saying that the opposite was true and that all the stuff about him being a greedy divil and holding the poor developers over a barrel and destroying the whole village’s future was lies. Why is it at all that things can’t be said simple?

Siobhán said she had to go; she had to see about a job looking after an old couple in their house out towards Rooska, seeing as that fat cow was due back from her maternity leave in a few weeks. Mumbly Dave said Yerra Jaysus, she hadn’t even been asked had she a mouth on her, and Johnsey jumped up from the edge of the couch and offered to make tea and cursed whatever slowness was in him that stopped him knowing to do these things without having to be told by Mumbly Dave. There wasn’t as much as a barmbrack or a cut of tart in the house. Why had he to eat everything as soon as he got it? Should he offer her a proper drink? He said there was a bottle of red wine there if she’d like a glass, it wasn’t in the fridge, though, and Mumbly Dave laughed all shrill like a little girl and looked at Siobhán and asked had she ever heard the bate of that? Red wine in the fridge , ha ha ha, and Johnsey thought again about the two rats who got on the finest until the girl rat came along and isn’t it a fright to God to say a man could have violent thoughts about his only friend over a bit of a slagging that wouldn’t cost him a thought normally, but delivered in front of Siobhán was like a stab into the heart?