Donal Ryan - The Spinning Heart

His friends, a fat one, a foreign-looking one and a simple-looking one, were standing leaning against their van, trying to look like they weren’t gawking over at us. I suddenly listed the things that were unfinished in my house, the loose skirting boards, the unpainted banister, the badly hung door, the wobbly kitchen tile, the lumpy garden, the missing fence panel. He wanted to know had I not gotten a snag-list done. A what? Another thing I should have known about. He sighed, then said he’d do all those jobs, them jobs, he said, but he’d have to charge, he didn’t work for the builder any more. Forget it so, I said, I have zero money. Daddy had tried to do all of those jobs loads of times, but I’d never let him; I was foolishly insisting on waiting for the builder to come back. He looked over his shoulder at his friends and then back to me and said in a soft voice that he’d come back on Monday himself and do all the jobs. He’d charge fifty for labour and he’d probably be able to get any bits he needed from the other houses.

So now I have a whole weekend ahead of me of looking forward to Bobby the out-of-work builder coming to trudge around my house, dragging in muck around the place, putting Daddy’s nose out of joint and probably frightening the life out of Dylan. I’ll have to try and get into town tomorrow to buy a new top. How sad am I?

I WALKED UP Fernley’s Hill yesterday evening after I had my supper ate. It was melting close so it was. I seen Bobby, but he looked like he was right busy. He had a jeep and a trailer full of blocks. He must’ve cut down a tree. I thought I heard chainsaws a few nights ago all right. Rory Slattery was giving him a hand. I seen his big fat head and it wedged up Bobby’s arse. Seanie Shaper always says if Bobby opened his mouth wide enough you’d be able to see Rory Slattery looking out at you! I heard Rory is going away to England soon to see about getting work in the buildings for the Olympics. I’d say Bobby got a lend of the jeep and trailer off of the Burkes. I wonder did he just go up and take it or did he ask Pokey’s father. I walked real slow all up along the road past Bobby’s house. His young fella seen me all right. He pointed over at me and went Ti, Ti, Ti. I only waved at him. He knows my name on account of I used always walk up there in the mornings to get a lift off of Bobby if we were on a site I couldn’t walk or cycle as far as. He was standing in the garden, half the way between the fence and the front of the shed where Bobby and Rory were. They never seen me I don’t think. I didn’t go in to give a hand stacking the blocks. I kept walking up the hill and back down the far side and down the lake road and I thrown stones in the lake for a while and I skimmed one right good so I did. It bounced five times. That stuff always happens when there’s no one to see it happening only yourself. Then you’re not believed when you tell it.

A power of fellas is going foreign. I’m not. I might be asked to be a sacristan when Padjoe Ryan is dead I think. Father Cotter showed me the tabernacle one time and the press where the collection baskets do be. I’m fierce devoted to Our Lady so I am. Padjoe had a triple bypass a few years ago. There’s so much copper pipes in him it’s a plumber they’ll have to get the next time he has a turn. That’s what Nana said about him. Nana never got no copper pipes in her heart. She never went to a doctor once in her life either. Doctor me hole, she used to say. What the feck do they know about anything? All they do is pull and drag out of you and then send you in as far as the hospital to die. The hospital does be full of them auld black doctors. How’s it them boys do be so worried about Irish people that they has to come over here to be doctors? Would they not look after all them starving babbies in their own places? And all them that’s falling away dead of the Aids? That’s what Nana used to say anyway. I don’t know anything about it. Nana’s heart just burst one night.

Nana used to be always saying how she lived her whole life only over the road a small bit from the house she was born in. She’d say aren’t I as lucky as can be? There’s not too many can say it, and a lot of them that can aren’t happy over it. As if to say they’ve missed out on something in life by making their life in the place of their birth. I’d always agree away with her. Nana said this place has the best of all worlds. If you need something handy you can go in as far as the village on your bicycle, or you could walk it easily, or if you need something that can’t be got in the village, there’s three buses a day into town and they’ll stop for you right at the gate. Nana often wondered to know why in the hell people get into years and years of debt for motorcars. Wouldn’t one even do between two or three houses? Everyone does be going the same way anyway. That way the expense could be divided up and shared.

BOBBY WAS ALWAYS fair sound to me. He’s the only one never slagged me. The first day I got the job off of Pokey, Mickey Briars who lamped me last year sent me in as far as Chadwicks for a packet of straight springs, a skirting ladder and a box of rubber nails. Your man in Chadwicks only laughed and shook his head and said I’d say your mates are pulling your leg. When I got back Mickey Briars was raging. He said years ago a fella starting off would’ve been sent all over the town from shop to shop for the joke messages the way everyone could have a go at laughing at him, and wouldn’t you think the smart prick inside in Chadwicks woulda kept it up?

I’m glad he didn’t all the same. I don’t like the sound of getting made little of from pillar to post. Bobby laughed at that kind of a thing but he never really joined in with it. One time Seanie Shaper kept showing me pictures in a magazine of naked women and I didn’t know what I was meant to do or say so I only smiled down at them naked paper women and all the rest thought it was a howl altogether and were asking to know had I a horn, and would they send me over as far as Lily the Bike and even the Polish and the Russian boys were roaring laughing at me and for a finish Bobby just walked over and grabbed the magazine off of Seanie and threw it into the fire in the tar barrel and said now, leave the boy alone to fuck. You yahoo. Seanie said nothing to Bobby. He was afraid of him when he was in a temper.

I got a woeful hop the day Mickey Briars went at me with the shovel. Bobby and them were hiding all in the yard while Mickey went tearing around, roaring and shouting out of him about how he was going killing Pokey and where was his fuckin money and all. I thought first it was all a mess because everyone that was hiding was roaring laughing and I didn’t duck down behind a load of blocks like Seanie and Rory or climb up into the cab of a digger, only stood looking at auld Mickey as he ran at me. Bobby and them caught a hold of him and thrown him in the back of Seanie Shaper’s van and Bobby gave me a hand to get up off of the ground and asked to know was I all right and I done my level best not to be crying like a baby but that’s the sort of a battle I near always lose. I lid down that night after going home from the pub and the ceiling above me was spinning and spinning and I ran into the back toilet and got sick for ages. My stomach was burning and all. I’d say I was poisoned from the drink. I was quare lonesome that night, more even than all the other nights.

WE WAS ALL sent off different places when we were small. There was six of us in it. My father went stone mad on the drink when my mother died so he did. She died having me. I often do see him outside Ciss Brien’s in the village or the Half Barrel inside in town, smoking a fag. He never says nothing to me. I do hate walking past him. My uncle took us all to the beach one time in a big van with windows. He drove to all the different houses we lived in to collect us: Nana’s, Auntie Mary’s, Uncle JJ’s, his own house to get Noreen, my big sister. Nana told me I was to bring her back a bag of seashells. I gave the whole day to finding shells for Nana. I went up and down the long beach a rake of times. Uncle Noely had to come and find me when it was time to go home. He was vexed over having to look for me. He grabbed me by the arm and dragged me up along the steps from the beach. My big bag of shells fell all over the path at the top. Noely wouldn’t leave me pick them up. My bag was bursted anyway. I looked at them as we drove away from the beach. Seagulls were swooping down for a look to know were they something to eat that was after getting dropped. Then they’d fly off again, raging. Uncle Noely wanted to know why in the fuck was I crying over a few auld shells. I didn’t know what to say to answer him. My brother Peadar laughed at me and gave me a puck. Nana gave out stink to Uncle Noely at home because I was burnt to a crisp. He never put no lotion on me.