Donal Ryan - The Thing About December

Siobhán said she was grand, she’d have a drink the next time she called — the roads were crawling with guards lately. If she got this job looking after these two auld geriatrics in Rooska she could call loads, because it’d be on the road out. Mumbly Dave told her to call any time, as if it was up to him to be telling people to call to Johnsey’s house. They walked her out to the gate and Mumbly Dave laughed at her car and called it a nun-mobile and Siobhán laughed as well and looked back at Mumbly Dave’s yahoo car and said Little willy, big exhaust, and Mumbly Dave, who could talk a dead man back to life, just stood there with a wounded face on him and a fake smile painted across it, and Johnsey knew he was thinking about how Siobhán had probably actually seen his mickey inside in the hospital, and her slagging therefore had an edge to it like a new razor, and Johnsey caught himself enjoying Mumbly Dave’s torment and felt ashamed. She wrote a number on a tissue from a plastic packet with a little black pencil that she had in her handbag and handed it to Johnsey and said Send me a text or whatever and we’ll arrange something, and Johnsey took it and his hand was shaking a bit as he reached for it and he wondered did she notice the shake and if she did, did she know he was shaking with nerves just from being near her and did she think he was an awful weirdo?

Mumbly Dave was quiet for a while after Siobhán had gone. When he eventually came back around to being himself, he told Johnsey how Siobhán must have the hots for him big time. Why else would she have called to his house and gave him her phone number? You didn’t see her calling to his house, did you? She didn’t give him her number, written with an eyebrow pencil, which every fucker knows is a way women have of telling a fella they want to ride them. Why would someone like Siobhán want to be hanging around with a fella like Johnsey? Mumbly Dave told him not to be thinking too much about her reasons — if you won the lottery would you ask the crowd above in Dublin what their reasons were for having a lottery in the first place? You would in your hole; you’d snatch the big cheque off of them, hand and all. A wan like Siobhán bothering with you without having to be begged — for a lad like you, that’s like winning the lottery. Seeing as you’re determined to refuse all them millions on offer from Herbie and the gang, you may as well take what’s offered in other departments. Big land deal or no big land deal, you’re still a farmer, kind of, anyway, and that counts for a lot with wans of a certain age and inclination. It’s not your sultry good looks is after attracting her, that’s for sure.

Mumbly Dave told Johnsey there was no sense trying to do a line with a girl in this day and age without a mobile phone. Texts are the new tool of seduction. And you, my friend, are a tool, he said, but not one skilled at seduction. You could have a wan all warmed up and gagging for action before you met her at all with a few nicely worded text messages. He said not to worry; he’d look after that side of things. You also need a couple of them nice shirts that you don’t tuck into your pants. And pantses are out — you has to wear jeans, boot cut jeans — not them fuckin Lees or Wranglers from the eighties. And boots are out; you has to wear nice slip-on shoes. But not black ones, they has to be brown and pointy-looking. And you has to make your hair look as though you don’t bother your hole combing it. And you can’t be going around in a big puffy jacket with a hood or a duffel coat; you has to get a nice blazer or a leather jacket, but not one that looks new; like it has to be new but look old. And some lads only pulls their trousers halfway up their arses so you can see the tops of their jocks, but you had to wear right cool jocks in that case, with Calvin Klein written on them — the old three-pack Penneys Y-fronts wouldn’t do. Yerra, forget about that anyway, you’d probably get bate up again if anyone saw you.

IF SIOBHÁN WANTED to arrange something, like coming back to Johnsey’s house without Mumbly Dave, and if she was going having a drink, and if she was worried about how the roads were crawling with guards lately, and if she lived miles and miles away, and if she was a saucy strap of a lady like Mumbly Dave said, then she could very easily have it in her mind to stay over in Johnsey’s house for the whole night and God alone knows what else she might have inside in her mind. Imagine what Mumbly Dave would say if he knew about the thing with his mickey! It’s possible for a thing to give you half of a horn and make you feel sick with worry at the same time just by thinking about it. What would Mother and Daddy think if Johnsey let sin happen under their roof? What would the spirits of his ancestors say to each other? The IRA great-uncles would probably be egging him on, seeing as they had to swear to God never to go near a woman the rest of their born days after they joined the priesthood. Daddy would probably say Well … good … man … Johnsey … begod. And Mother would slap him and tell him he was a fright to be praising the boy for being dirty and making a solid fool of himself.

He probably was going to make a fool of himself, in fairness. It was one thing to give every minute of the day thinking about how much you love a person and to have fine romantic thoughts when all you have to do is lie down like an old sheepdog and listen to their voice and sneak the odd look at them while they’re foostering about with tablets and drips and sheets and what have you. It’s another story to have to actually do things like give them something to eat and drink and decide how close beside them to sit and try to think of things to say and then to organize the words properly so that they come out through your mouth in the proper order and at a manageable speed. How is it you can’t be given warning of things that’s going to happen, like the newspaper bollix and the Unthanks being in the consortium and Siobhán arriving and making him sweat with delight and fear and desire and shame at allowing his friend to be hurt? How is it you can have no say in what happens you? Probably because he’d choose for nothing to ever happen him and he’d live out his days behind the window, looking out, wondering.

MUMBLY DAVE said if a woman wants you she’ll ride you into submission. That’s how women gets their way, apparently. Balls full, brain empty. Balls empty, you don’t give a shite, anyway. But if you’re going to be led around by your lad, it may as well be a flaker like Siobhán doing the leading. Johnsey didn’t like that kind of talk about Siobhán. How would Mumbly Dave know anything about anything? All them auld stories about all the sex he’d had and all the other brilliant things he’d done were just made up. He was only raging that Siobhán had called to Johnsey and not down to the house Mumbly Dave lived in with his two brothers who he doesn’t bother with on account of they’re a pair of pricks and his father who goes every day to the pub and the bookies and pisses away what money he gets from the dole and what he can scrounge off of people and what Mumbly Dave’s wrinkled, scrunched-up mother gets for cleaning the school and the few bits of offices below in the village belonging to the bigshots.

Isn’t it a solid fright to say a man can have such mean auld thoughts about his only pal? He’d want to have a word with himself, in all fairness. How’s it he couldn’t keep a howlt on his own badness? He was turning into an awful bad yoke.

THE MILKING WOULD BE getting light by October. You might be down to the one milking a day by then. Daddy wouldn’t take his ease, though. He might do a third cut of silage, or he’d tighten up around the place in preparation for the winter, or he’d be still going off doing block-laying jobs. The cattle would go back in to the slatted house to shelter from the cold, and they wouldn’t settle for ages but Mother would look in and say Ah, the auld dotes, come on now, auld dotes, curl up and be warm, and it was hard to believe when she talked like that to the cows that she had a tongue on her that could cut a man right in two.