Authors: Joe Murphy
I’m watching them from where I’m sitting on a chair dragged from the kitchen. The can in my hand is almost empty but I’m not sure if I can get another because the floor to the kitchen is paved with comatose people. There’s a cumulous cushion of smoke clinging to the ceiling. It is the colour of dishwater.
I don’t smoke but my eyes are red and heavy from the
atmosphere
and now they’re closing and opening again like in slow motion. Davey does smoke but he’s watching me from the couch with eyes like polished black stones. He is wide awake. He’s watching me and then he’s curling his fingers in the blonde hair of the very very attractive girl and then he’s grinning at me. The girl is listing into his side and upon her neck is the ripe plum mark of his lips and teeth.
We don’t say anything and I’m watching him watching me like through someone else’s eyes.
I’m drunk and I’m tired and he’s more alive than ever. I’m thinking something about vampires and then I’m falling asleep.
And then I’m waking up because the nearly empty can I’m holding isn’t so empty that I don’t feel it slipping out of my hand. Everything is natural now. No day-glo chords to highlight
emotion
. No chatter to clutter the night. There is only the sound of breathing, heavy and sleep-drugged and tidal.
I don’t know why but I can hear dead leaves in the wind.
This is what’s going through my head as I’m waking. Then I’m wondering, can I smell burning? Then I’m thinking, fuck, I can smell burning. Now I’m opening my eyes and now I’m looking around. This is easier said than done because I have the
beginnings
of a hangover and it feels like something’s died in my mouth. My eyes are filmed with sandpaper but I’m taking in the difference in the smoke. I’m taking in the small black flakes
yawing
through the air, I’m taking in Davey standing up and looking at something. And now I’m taking in the fire.
The candles set on the CDs have burned down to nothing and now they’ve set the CDs on fire which have in turn set the
wallpaper
on fire. The flames are scuttling halfway up the wall by now and the surrounding wallpaper is beginning to peel and blacken. Like dead leaves in the wind. The ceiling is
smoke-smudged
and I’m thinking Rory must not have a fire alarm. Everyone except me and Davey is asleep. This is not a good thing.
I’m about to scream, I’m about to yell, I’m about to raise the roof and then Davey’s putting a finger to his lips and he goes, ‘Shhhhhhhhhh.’
My tongue turns to clay and I’m sitting watching him
watching
the fire and I can’t do anything. I don’t know why this is. I am a vegetable. I am an empty void.
I don’t know how long I sit silently with Davey watching the fire climb the wall, watching the smoke make a black rose upon the white ceiling. I don’t know how long I sit watching Davey watching the melted CDs eat into the carpet like a cancer. I don’t know how long it is until the very very attractive girl starts to stir. Then she’s coughing in her sleep, coughing in little rattling barks.
Then Davey’s moving. He’s picking up two nearly full cans and now he’s pouring them down the wall and now I’m yelling, ‘Fire!’ and now I’m screaming, ‘Fire!’ like a fucking broken record. Davey’s pouring more beer to drown the fire and now he’s using someone’s jacket to smother the burning CDs. I’m
watching
Davey do this and then I’m on my feet and helping him.
I’m angry at myself for sitting there so long. I’m angry at myself for letting Davey play out this little charade. I’m angry at myself for being shushed and staying shushed. Davey’s grinning again and he winks at me through the smoke. In spite of my anger my mouth grins back.
Everyone else is awake now. They’re getting up from the floor like extras in a zombie movie. They are all stiff-limbed and
loose-faced
. Most of them are wide-eyed with terror. You can see the whites of their eyes the whole way around and now they remind me of frightened horses. Through all this Davey is still grinning and the fire’s almost out and for the first time in my life I see something terrifying behind the smoke of the everyday. In
Davey’s face I see a man ready to watch the whole lot go up in flames.
I’m looking around at the terrified tottering things that are Rory’s friends. They look shocked and I’m standing with my hands sooty and chest heaving and I’m apart from them. Not just apart but above. Their still-stoned, still-drunk eyes blink at me like those of slaughterhouse animals, dim-witted and blankly grateful. I’m thinking this and then I’m thinking, what if they had burned? What difference would it have made? Would their absence be filled by someone else? I’m thinking this and then Rory’s pumping my hand.
He’s still drunk as a lord and his voice has the consistency of porridge. He’s coughing a bit because of the smoke and the reek of the burning. Then he’s going, ‘Fucking hell, son! Jesus Christ! Thanks, thanks, thanks. Christ, we all could’ve been killed!’
But all I can hear is Davey’s sea-surge ‘Shhhhhhhhhh,’ and the light in his eyes as he watches the flames.
This is how Dr Thorpe looks. It is the same eagerness, the same rapture, the same light. It is the expression of a man watching something burn to ashes and revelling in it.
And then I’m blinking and then I’m falling away from the glass and the letterbox, falling so hard that I land on my arse in the middle of the doorstep. I’m sitting on my arse in the middle of the doorstep and Seán is looking at me like I’m something from a different planet.
I’m scrambling to my feet and I’m hoping to God that I haven’t made much of a noise. Seán is looking confused and now he’s moving over to the golden slot of the still-open letterbox.
I grab him by the arm and I go, ‘Don’t look, Seán. We have to get the fuck out of here.’
Then, quieter, I’m going, ‘We’ll get you sorted somewhere else.’
Seán’s frowning at me and he’s whispering in this stage
whisper
like he thinks this is how you’re supposed keep your voice down. He’s saying, ‘But I like Dr Thorpe. He’s nice.’
I look from Seán to the red slab of mahogany door with its carved panels and tasteful lacquer. I look from Seán to the door and then back and I’m remembering the sound that Dr Thorpe’s fist makes as it connects with the poor woman’s face. The dead meat smack of it. I look from Seán to the door and then I go, ‘Dr Thorpe’s not a nice man, Seán. There’s no way he’s a nice man.’
Seán blinks at me slowly like the way elephants blink, calm and placid and with all the time in the world.
My voice is this slithering whispering thing because I’m
terrified
that Dr Thorpe will come out and find us and I’m saying in this slithering whispering voice, ‘Are you sure you haven’t got your phone?’
Seán nods and I go, ‘Fuck it.’
I go, ‘We have to get out of here. I’ll tell you why when we’re over that wall.’
Seán’s staring at the door now and his face is in flux. He knows I’ve seen something and he knows that it’s frightened the
bejeezus out of me. He’s like a hunting dog set on some scent that compels and repels him at the same time. Still staring at the door he goes, ‘I don’t like it here. I want to go home. I told you I wanted to go home.’
I honestly don’t know what to do. I know we have to tell the guards but then we’d have to explain how we got here. We’d have to explain about Seán’s dead dogs. My stomach feels like a
swinging
bag filled with acid.
I saying, ‘We’ll go to my house. I have to tell my Da. And you’re coming with me.’
A minute later I’m hanging down the outside of Dr Thorpe’s wall, holding on by my fingertips. The lip of the concrete is jagged and splintered into broken little saw-edges. I can feel the concrete digging into my hands and I know that if I don’t let go all in one go the stuff will just gouge red-leaking furrows in my skin. Wet concrete is horrible to the touch. It’s all cold and
clammy
and it feels the way you’d think a chest infection would feel if you could touch a chest infection.
Seán’s already on the path underneath and he goes, ‘I’ll catch you.’ Then he’s reaching up and his hands are all cupped like he’s about to catch a ball and they are about six inches away from my butt cheeks.
In spite of everything, in spite of the dog and her pups lying in the mess of their own dying, in spite of seeing Dr Thorpe do what he did, in spite of all this, I go, ‘Seán, if you touch my arse, I’ll box the fucking forehead off you.’
Seán takes his hands away and I drop to the ground. My
hands are cold and sore from hanging onto the wall but they’re not cut, not weeping blood. I’m strangely thankful for this and it’s like my hands not being shredded is the best thing that’s
happened
all evening.
Right down from where I live there’s a shop beside the bus stop. There’s a shop beside the bus stop and usually outside it there’s a guy with a South Dublin accent and a Lacoste shirt
talking
into a mobile phone. When you get off the bus you’d swear it was someone off a TV3 lifestyle show. Same clothes. Same
hairstyle
. Same fucking accent. Everything. These guys are usually accompanied by their girlfriends or mates and they’re usually catching the bus back to Dublin from
Weckie
. I kid you not.
The first thing you notice when you get off the bus is the New Bridge. It is the colour of doves’ feathers and it makes a flat trajectory across the river. If you’re halfway across the New Bridge you can see that the castle and the spires of the twin cathedrals are black spikes against the sky. From my house, you cross the New Bridge, go up Castle Hill, swing right through the Market Square, walk up past the Cathedral, down past the Fair Green and the primary school and you’re more or less at Dr Thorpe’s.
If you were heading from my house to Dr Thorpe’s right now you’d meet me and Seán coming the other way. Me and Seán are now half-walking half-jogging past the big, green-painted, steel gates of the primary school. I’m going to Seán, ‘Don’t draw any attention. Keep calm.’
Seán looks as calm as a doldrum sea and I’m saying these words in a sort of chant. They are a mantra to keep me from
breaking into a freaked-out run. I’m the on the very verge of panic.
Seán keeps pace with me as we go from orange to black to orange beneath the streetlights and he goes, ‘What about the dead dogs? What about my tablets? Why are we running away? What did you see through the letterbox?’
He’s asking these questions and he’s looking at me with his great, dull cinders for eyes.
My breath is coming too quickly and my tongue feels like a wet cotton rag but I know that Seán needs to be told something so I say, ‘We’ll get tablets from another doctor, Seán. We won’t tell anyone about the dead dogs but we have to tell my Da about what I saw Dr Thorpe do.’
I’m looking at Seán’s blunt profile now and he’s not even out of breath. He trots along beside me like he could keep this up all night. I’m swallowing and then I’m going, ‘Dr Thorpe is a bad man. I saw him do something bad to a woman.’
Seán takes this in like still waters swallowing a carcass and he goes, ‘Did he rape her or hit her or something?’
I say, ‘I don’t know if he raped her but he definitely hit her.’
Take a pack of rashers and slide all that wet, slimy dead pig out of the plastic. Then drop the rashers onto a cold, hard floor. This is the sound that Dr Thorpe’s fist makes.
Seán goes, ‘Oh.’ He accepts everything I say without any sort of question. He says this with calm, with equipoise. The emotion he shows is curiosity, not horror, and he goes, ‘He shouldn’t do things like that.’
And in that tone I hear everything that’s wrong with Seán Galvin.
We’re heading down through the Square now with its steps and its statue put up to commemorate 1798. The big bronze priest is pointing off toward Vinegar Hill and the croppy boy is all noble-faced and proud in the daylight. Now, though, with the streetlamps greasing him with their light, the croppy boy has this strange expression. There’s a certain fall of shadow and a certain quirk of lighting that makes it look like the croppy boy, with his pike and farmer’s shirt, the croppy boy with his slash-hook for a sword, is thinking,
Are you taking the piss, Father?
Now we’re jogging down past the Castle and now we’re on the New Bridge. The water is sliding beneath us and now I’m stopping and now I’m cursing and now Seán’s going, ‘What’s wrong?’
I’m staring back the way we came and the town mounts the slope and climbs away from me. The roofs and chimneys step away toward the weeping dark of the horizon except you can’t see the horizon. There’s just more roofs and more chimneys and then when you get to the edge of town there’s the mountains sitting in the distance like big blue anvils. You can never see far around here. Lines of sight are never true and perspective gets lost real easy.
In my mind’s eye I’m looking back the way we came and I’m seeing Dr Thorpe’s driveway and then I’m seeing Dr Thorpe’s front porch. And there, right in the middle so that if you open the door you can’t help but trip over the fucking thing, I’m seeing my
gear bag. My name screams out from the bag’s red fabric panelling in heavy, black permanent marker.
Just like that the world is falling away from me and it’s like I’m occupying a bubble of air suspended way above anything. I’m suddenly really really cold and I feel like I’m going to vomit again and that my bowels are going to let go all at the same time.
Again Seán goes, ‘What’s wrong?’
And I go, ‘I left my bag on the doorstep. It has my name on it.’
And Seán says, ‘Shite.’
I take a step back the way we came but then I stop and then I look at Seán and then I go, ‘We can’t go back.’
Seán nods placidly and he says, ‘Are we in trouble? I told you we’d get in trouble. Are we?’
Above the burbling noise that’s coming from my guts, I go, ‘I think so. Yeah.’
When you cross the New Bridge my house is up the hill on the right. There used to be a factory there but it was demolished and eight new Council Houses were built over its bones. I don’t think you’re supposed to call them
Council Houses
anymore. Instead, you’re supposed to call them
Affordable Housing. Affordable Housing
or
Social Housing
. It all means the same thing. It all means you can’t afford to buy a house of your own so you get stuck with what the Council gives you. Da doesn’t like this pointed out to him.