Donal Ryan - The Spinning Heart

I SAW that girl of the Cahills that married that boy of the Mahons below in the post office on Thursday. Triona, her name is. She had their little boy with them. He’s the pure solid cut head off of his father. He’s solid gorgeous. She looked wretched. She was three or four ahead of me in the queue. The queue wraps around in an S, so the coven of auld bitches that are forever standing in that queue got a fine view of her. They’d look at her and then look back at each other with mock sympathy, their eyes glistening with delight, with triumph. The whole place has it that Bobby is doing a line with a little strap of a wan from town that bought one of Pokey Burke’s houses. Ha ha, them auld biddies are thinking, that shook her! I wonder is it true. I normally wouldn’t care a bit; only that Bobby is a lovely boy. I’d hate to think he was just a rotten auld faithless yoke like so many more. There’s something in that boy; the way he looks at you while he’s talking, sort of embarrassed so that you nearly want to hug him, and with a distance in his eyes even when he’s looking straight at you, that makes you think there’s a fierce sadness and a kind of a rare goodness in him. So, if that boy is off doing a line with some little piece of fluff I’ll eat my hat. Maybe it’s because I always think of him the day of his mother’s funeral, and he fully grown at the time but still and all he had the eyes and the expression of a small boy and to look at him that day, anyone else bar me would have asked God for some of his pain so he hadn’t to bear it all alone. I was out with God though, for good and glory, and was finished asking Him for anything.

I went mad doing things to the house one time. Michael didn’t argue. The drilling and hammering drowned out the sound of me, I suppose. We got a delivery of blocks early one morning, for the bottom wall of a sunroom we were putting up at the back of the house, stretching into the garden. Michael wanted to be certain sure the lorry wouldn’t be spotted by too many, the way there wouldn’t be too much auld talk out of the neighbours about planning permission or what have you. You’d never know what way people are going to react to changes in their surroundings or to a bit being gone from their view of a field they never looked at in the first place. But we were spotted taking in our blocks anyway: Frank Mahon walked down along past us just as the two boys in the lorry were jumping down out of it. He had an auld scraggy-looking yoke of a dog with him and it collared with a piece of twine and a bolt or something shoved in through the knot so as to stop the poor creature from being choked by a tightening of it if he pulled against the mean twine too hard.

This was a fair few years ago now and that man’s wife wasn’t long dead. And there I was, and Michael only a step or two behind me, and the only noise to be heard was a ticking from the lorry as the heat left it. I can hardly think of words to describe what I saw, or the strange feeling of it. Frank Mahon stopped across from our gate, against the far ditch and stood looking up along the gable end of our house. And I suddenly knew why: one of the two boys doing the delivery was Bobby, his son. The world and his wife knew those two had had a big falling out.

Bobby was facing me, coming in the gate. His mate was foostering with the controls on a panel attached to the lorry’s flat bed. And Frank was standing still, looking across, and it was for all the world as though Bobby sensed him there and he froze. And he couldn’t have known he was going to be there; they’d arrived at our gate from opposite directions. I saw with my own eyes the colour draining from that boy’s cheeks. His face never changed, but I swear a sadness you could nearly touch came down over it, and he turned slowly. There was nothing said for long seconds, and Michael and myself stood rooted to the spot. And then Bobby Mahon said: Well Dad.

Just that. Well Dad. And his father just stood looking at him and his eyes were an ordinary blue like any man’s but still and all, as dark as night. And he raised his arm and pointed across at his son with the bit of a sapling stick he had in his hand and it was like as if a cloud had darkened the sky, even though the early-morning light never changed. And he lowered his arm and opened his mouth as if to say something. God bless us, said Michael under his breath, as if he couldn’t help it. Howya Frank! And the cold spell was broken as auld Frankie Mahon turned away and walked off down the road towards the village, away from his pale son. That all took only a handful of seconds but I felt after it as though the entire morning was gone.

Bobby wouldn’t even take a few bob for himself off me that day, for doing us that turn. I think maybe he remembered the time when he was a child that he and his mother gave a whole day and night in my house when his father was gone mad on the drink and was after making splinters of every stick of furniture that was in their little cottage below. I met them on the road, she was crying and he was barefoot. I picked them up and brought them home and asked her nothing. I didn’t embarrass her. She was graceful and quietly grateful; she knew I knew he was below, wrecking the place. We’d have been great friends after, I’d say, if my little Peter hadn’t left this world and taken my heart and soul with him. How is it at all that I let one child take my whole heart? It wasn’t fair on anyone. Life isn’t fair, as the fella says. He can say that again.

I SEEN A lad walking up the road towards me that day last week when your man Bobby Mahon killed his father. But then the lad hopped in over a wall before I could make out who it was. The dogs smelt something. I know in my heart and soul it was Bobby Mahon. The dogs smelt death. We walked on down past Bobby Mahon’s auld lad’s cottage and he was dead inside in it and we never knew. I seen him just after he done it. He must of still had blood on his hands. I wish now I would of gotten them glasses that time they was free on the Social besides going around squinting like a fool. I seen him again on the news being taken in to be charged, handcuffed to a big fat cop. Some lads do try to cover their faces when they’re getting taken in and out of court. Bobby looked straight into the camera and there was nothing in his face. It must have been Bobby I seen that night last week. I wonder is there any gain to be had in telling the cops what I seen. I have no problem telling the cops stuff about a lad that’d do his own father in. Fuck him. Why wouldn’t I? They might be a bit slower to stick their big red noses into my business the next time if I put the bollocks in the right place at the right time for them. Fuck it, though, I won’t I’d say. He’s a sound skin all the same.

THE BIGGEST MISTAKE I made when I was younger was getting tattoos all over my face. The very minute you’ve a tattoo on your face, the whole world looks at you different, even if it’s a real nice tattoo, like birds or flowers or something. I done it for a woman. I only had a few birds up my neck that time. She told me I’d look rapid with a spider on my cheek. I would’ve done anything she wanted. She was sixteen and I was eighteen but she had way more brains than me. She had it all worked out and wrote down on a sheet of paper how much she could claim for this and that and the other and she even had it worked out how much she could get with one child, two children, three children and so on down the page. She knew everything . She had her life all planned out. All she needed off of me was a bareback ride. After I done the business she only wanted to have a laugh off me till the next prick came along. I only ever seen my young fella once. He was mad-looking. She was gone right fat but I’d still of rode her in a flash. I wonder how many has she now.