Torn Water Read online

  ‘Did you go to Shannon's effing rehearsal?’

  ‘Why don't you just come out and say it, Plug?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Fuck – not “eff”, not “frig”, fuck. Fuck. Fuck.’

  ‘Eff off, Lavery.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Eff off – there.’

  ‘You still didn't say it. Why can't you curse like a normal fucking human, Plug?’

  ‘Eff you.’

  ‘No, fuck me. Fuck me.’

  ‘What was that, son?’

  ‘Sorry, sir?’

  Mr Hogben is standing before them. He is the head of the history department, a small man with rat-like features, and wavy hair that spills about his ears and face. He constantly fidgets with it, splaying his long fingers and pushing them through it, then patting and tapping it into shape. ‘What were you saying with such vehemence, young Lavery?’

  ‘Nothing, sir.’

  ‘I hope so, son, because if it was what I thought at first it was, there'd be no bleeding skin left on your hands.’

  Hogben is a Cockney, the only English teacher in the school; as a consequence he is viewed with distrust by the pupils. He is a passionate West Ham supporter, and if a pupil has any sense he learns quickly to become one too because, come the bell for history on Monday morning, God help any boy who takes private glee from a West Ham defeat. He has a volcanic temper that erupts almost without warning, especially if he has taken a dislike to a pupil, and most especially if he suspects a boy wishes ill towards his beloved Hammers. James and Plug watch as Hogben runs his small ratty eyes over the rest of the students in their scattered queue.

  ‘All right, my boys. One all against the namby-pamby Spurs on Saturday … So don't bleedin' push it today. In you go – and, Lavery …’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Who do we adore?’

  ‘The Hammers, sir.’

  ‘No, my son, no. The ’Ammers, son – no H. Now say it.’

  ‘The ‘Ammers, sir.’

  ‘Complete the following. Bobby who, son?’

  ‘Moore, sir.’

  ‘I'll make bleedin’ ‘Ammers out of you lot yet. In you go – and no lip from any of you or my hand'll be on your faces, you gammy lot.’

  That day at lunchtime, between hot gulps of apple crumble and lumpy custard, Plug continues his interrogation of James. ‘Come on, spill it.’

  ‘They were weird.’

  ‘Told you. They're all weird, that lot.’

  ‘No, you didn't.’

  ‘Yes, I effin' did.’

  ‘Bollocks.’

  ‘Actors.’

  ‘But they're not actors.’

  ‘That's what I mean. They want to be, which makes them even more actory.’

  As he says ‘actory’, Plug waves his arms in front of his face as if he was drawing big flowery clouds in the air, knocking a neighbouring boy's spoonful of dessert into his teeth.

  ‘Hey, watch what you're doing, McGowan.’

  ‘Oh, eff off, small fry.’

  That night as he lies in bed she comes to stand by him. She hasn't done it for a long time, but he knows how it will follow. She will stand there, watching him sleep, watching the soft up-down of his breathing. This time, though, for the first time he sits upright in the bed and stares back. ‘Mum.’

  ‘Sorry, son. I thought you were asleep.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you want some company?’

  She sits softly on the end of his bed, her hands resting in her lap. So this is it, he thinks, a truce. A truce by moonlight. She reaches out to touch the side of his face. He feels her hand settle on his cheek. ‘My beautiful young man.’

  He sees the burn of her eyes looking at him in the grainy moonlight, holding him, claiming him.

  ‘Whose are you?’

  ‘Yours.’

  ‘Yes, mine.’

  ‘Mum, you OK?’

  Her hand is still on his face. It makes him feel uncomfortable. She nods, her eyes never leaving his. It reminds him of that walk he had made many years before when she had called herself his queen and he had danced with her. Long ago when the sherry had shone in her glass, years before when he had first heard his dead father's name, and she had shot it down, killed it as it had left Teezy's lips, stamped it out as it had struggled to be heard.

  ‘Budge over,’ she says.

  After a moment he parts the bedclothes and offers her his bed. He watches as she swings her legs up from the carpet. He feels them enter the bed and search for the warmth of his feet. They spread their cool power through the bed. He feels her head land softly on the bone of his chest, and her hair spill across it.

  ‘My beautiful young man.’ She says it again. This time she makes a tiny snuffle with her mouth, like a small resting animal glad to have come across warmth. ‘Tell your mum you love her.’

  He can smell the evening's drink on her, its stale force hanging in a sickly cloud above them.

  ‘I'm tired, Mum.’

  ‘Tell her.’

  She has lifted her head so that her breath is running into his, so that her lips are a finger's breadth from his. Closer up, her eyes have a trance-like pall, and he can see the dark, cavernous rings beneath them.

  ‘Tell your mother you love her.’

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘How's the play coming?’ she asks suddenly.

  ‘All right … I like it.’

  ‘Are you an actor, then?’

  ‘I don't know … Do you want to come and see it? When we do it?’

  There's a pause as she thinks about what he has just asked. Then she lowers her head back to his chest and says quietly, ‘You're all right, son, it's not my thing. I'd feel funny around that lot.’

  ‘OK.’

  It's no surprise. She hates change. She hates anything that takes him out of her watchful domain. He knows that. There is a pause and then she says quietly, ‘Good boy … Now sleep with Mummy … Sleep sound with Mummy and all your dreams will be white and free … And in the morning, no more stories, no more fireflies …’ Her voice breaks on ‘fireflies’ and sticks, and her hand tightens on his stomach, squeezing, scratching at the flesh it finds there. He can feel her nails pinch, and her body shiver. In a moment she is asleep, snores rising from her like a car ticking over.

  ‘Conn?’

  She says it softly in her sleep. He lies there and thinks of himself beginning in her belly all those years before, a fleck, no bigger than a thumbnail. He thinks of himself walled into her, while on the outside he imagines his father standing before her, his hand to her belly, caressing the thought of him there. He imagines the pride in her eyes for the thread of life she carries beneath her heart. He closes his eyes and pushes himself back into her womb. He imagines himself floating through the waterways of her heart, deeper, into the pit of her, and he brings hate with him to the place where he began. He doesn't want to, but it flares in him; it lights his way. He brings his anger; he brings his rage, at her, at the world, at the father who is gone. He brings his loathing of Sully. He brings murder to the history of himself.

  Letter from an Unborn Child

  Yet to be named James Lavery

  Yet to live in: 11 Erin Grove

  Carickburren

  Mother,

  Kill me. I don't want to be born. It is better this way, better not to trouble you with me. I can see the future from your womb. I can see the pain of the long hours of my childhood, when your eyes will meet mine and sorrow will rise there. Can you hear me, Mother? I will say this as you sleep, as my father's hand rubs my shape in your belly. Kill me. Tell God it was my idea. That way maybe nothing will happen, maybe things will be different. That way I won't know anything. I won't see anything. I won't feel anything.

  You see, I know your dreams. I see what you are. I can see what God has planned from here, and I know I will forget it when I am in your arms. Maybe if I go God will be happy with that and won't take Dad. That's the best thing to do because I know how
much you will miss him, and our lives will be dead anyway.

  I am only a dot at the minute. No one is going to notice if a dot disappears. The universe is so big that I could just go back to where I came from and quietly tell God that you didn't want me and that it was better that way. Maybe then Dad will live and I could come back another time.

  Kind regards

  Your yet-to-be-named son, James Lavery

  9. Al Pacino

  Rehearsals are now something that he looks forward to, expectantly counting the hours and the days until Monday and Wednesday evenings come round. After school he runs the mile or so to the rehearsal rooms, like a child rushing downstairs on Christmas morning.

  Mr Shannon has augmented the cast with recruits from the local amateur operatic society, and punters from the local GAA club. Most are used to fill out the ward scenes, and are required to do no more than shuffle to and fro across the playing space. One, Jarlath McAllister, is also the cast driver, in charge of ferrying the actors to the opera house, come the time. He is a wide, squat man, with large muscles that bulge from beneath his caramel-coloured leather jacket. He has taken a shine to James, laughing every time the boy launches into the Italian accent he is using for Martini, shaking his head and wagging his finger at him.

  James loves the feverishness of the rehearsal room. He loves the freedom, and the gentle ribbing of the actors. Shannon smiles at him, gently pats his shoulder at the end of a night's work, and tells him to keep up the good work; he leaves the rehearsal taller.

  His commitment is total. His character, Martini, is his and his alone. He begins to practise with other characters, with people he sees on TV or on the street, enjoying the release of jumping in behind their eyes, revelling in leaving his own troubled heart behind.

  Once he spent hours as Errol Flynn, raking and swashbuckling his way across the kitchen, stabbing the mound of butter his mother had left out for tea. He even dived on to a mound of dirty clothes believing he was Captain Blood fighting a rising tide, flailing to save his life. His mother had watched him for a few moments, then shouted at him to behave.

  ‘I'm Errol Flynn,’ he had protested.

  ‘I don't care if you're the Pope. Behave,’ she had replied.

  One morning he decides to spring a surprise on Sully. He waits until his mother is out of the room and just the two of them are left.

  ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ Sully asks.

  ‘Nuttin'.’

  ‘Nuttin’? What's “nuttin”‘ when it's at home?’ Sully is standing in front of him, towering above him, at the edge of the kitchen table, cramming a piece of toast into his mouth. ‘You seem different.’

  ‘Hey … I'm fine.’

  ‘“Hey”? “Hey”? What the sweet Jesus is that? Are you coming down with something?’

  ‘You wouldn't understand.’

  ‘Try me, sunshine …’

  James takes a deep breath. He lets the pause hang in the air, picks up a fork, studies it carefully, just like he had seen in the film the night before. He licks his lips, then says quietly, but with all the authority he can muster, ‘I'm Al Pacino.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I'm being Al Pacino.’

  ‘You're being a friggin' pain, that's what you're being.’

  ‘I knew you wouldn't understand.’

  ‘Who in the sweet Nora is Al Pacino?’

  ‘The guy in the film, the gangster. Forget it.’

  ‘Oh, the guy in the Mafia. Right, I'm with you. In that Godfather drivel. Sure the country's full of fucking gangsters, you gobshite.’

  ‘Leave me alone.’

  ‘Is that why you're sitting there looking as if you just swallowed a lemon? This family's fucking cracked! It's not Al Pacino you need, it's a good dose of salts. Al fucking Pacino.’

  James looks up from the table, places his hands palm upwards in his lap and stares at his foe, his head nodding on his shoulders.

  ‘Hold on there, soldier. Now I'm quaking in my fucking boots.’

  ‘Sully, language.’

  James's mother bustles into the kitchen, her face flushed from lifting the bundle of clothes off the line, her hair sprayed across her face.

  ‘Excuse me, Ann, but may I introduce Mr Al Pacino?’

  ‘Who's he when he's at home?’

  ‘Him.’

  ‘Stop messing, Sully – I've an axe of a headache.’

  ‘Your adored son thinks he's Al effin' Pacino, the gangster.’

  ‘What's he on about, son?’

  ‘Nuttin'.’

  ‘See?’ Sully shouts it, pointing a finger triumphantly at James.

  ‘Sully, calm down – you're as big a child as he is.’ She leans down into James's face and says quietly, ‘He doesn't half get carried away, doesn't he?’

  Death Al Pacino-style

  Loyalty. I expect nothing less from my consigliere. I liked the way she backed me up, took my side. That's the way it should be. He's a no-good nuttin' and soon he will die. He thinks he's running us into the town, so my consigliere can do her shopping and I can go to my gangster school. That's what he thinks. The truth is different. He will walk us to the van, and I will take my place calmly in the back.

  he's had it coming. This one I will take care of personally. I will take great pleasure in it. He will start the van, the consigliere will behave as normal – she will fuss and tut about making sure she has everything with her – and I will wait patiently in the back, the clothes-line flex in my hands. My heart will be calm and steady because I am Al Pacino.

  As he leans forward to put the van into gear I will throw the flex round his neck and pull, using my knees to clamp hard on the back of his seat. I will see his face in the rear-view mirror bouncing in and out like a big fat purple ball. I will pull and pull and pull, and he will buck like da bull, and my consigliere will sit on his hands so he can't use them.

  His tongue will hang down like a long loop and he will die, and I will calmly put away my flex and adjust my tie in the mirror, because I am Al Pacino.

  10. The Grand Inquisitor

  ‘Acting now, are we, son?’

  ‘Er … yes, Father.’

  ‘A whore's profession, son … Then again, if it keeps you off the streets …’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  Father Leneghan is doing his rounds, standing painfully close to each boy he meets in the long corridor of the science block.

  ‘Mr Shannon tells me you're inventive.’

  ‘Does he, Father?’

  ‘Now, if only you applied that to your studies, what a world it would be, eh?’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘Tell me, son, have we … ?’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘Had a little chat … ever?’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  He watches as the priest ambles away, stopping to stand achingly close to another young boy, pushing his face into theirs. When no one is looking James gives the priest the finger.

  Father Leneghan is the school principal, a pallid-skinned man in his mid-fifties. He punctuates everything he says with the flapping emphasis of his hands. That, coupled with two large ears that protrude from the sides of his head, has earned him the nickname ‘Flappy’. He also has the habit of sitting silently and eyeing a boy for what seems like minutes on end, watching as he squirms in the leather chair across the desk from him in his office. James has often heard rumours of students sitting there nervously, sweat falling from their faces as Leneghan's pale eyes explore the pert fear on their bodies. He has heard that sometimes Leneghan gets up and walks round the heavy desk to the boy's side and stands by him, his hands buried in his trouser pockets, his knuckles protruding like black slugs through the cloth. He has been told that he stands that way for an age, his large flappy head inclined.

  ‘Have you been a good boy?’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘No … You know what I mean, son.’

  ‘I'm sorry, Father.’

  ‘Sorry for wh
at, son?’

  ‘I don't know what you mean.’

  They had been right. Father Leneghan had finally caught up with him one day, months before, as he had walked the same science corridor. He had appeared as if out of nowhere, moving into the centre of James's line of vision like a large black crow.

  He had been led to Leneghan's office, had followed him up the back staircases of the school until they had reached a small dark room at the top of the building. First Leneghan had asked him if he was happy at the school and what were his favourite subjects, walking all over James's mumbled answers, impatiently waving his big soft fists. Then he made a note in his black notebook, closed it, leaned back in his chair and settled into the charged silence that James had so often heard about.

  James had sat, perched uneasily in the leather armchair, for what seemed like an age. Father Leneghan's eyes seemed to glaze, as if a film of Cellophane had suddenly been placed in front of them. His lips were slightly parted, the yellowed enamel of his teeth showing.

  Then Leneghan had risen slowly to his feet, rocked on his heels then crept over to the side of James's chair. James could hear the snorted breaths of the priest as they hit the back of his neck. Resolutely, almost desperately, he had stared ahead, eyelids lowered. Out of the corner of his eye he could glimpse the black outline of the priest's fingers through his trousers. They seemed to be moving, wriggling towards the centre of his groin.

  ‘I mean, son, have you had any impure thoughts?’

  ‘Impure thoughts, Father?’

  ‘Yes, my son.’

  ‘I don't know what you mean, Father.’

  ‘I mean masturbation. My boy … do you masturbate?’

  James had thought immediately of his hands beneath his bedcovers at night, of his fingers across his crotch. His jaw clenched. A new, darker hand now joined his beneath the covers, laying itself like a bristling tarantula across his lower abdomen. He knew that the priest now occupied his dreams, and with his laboured breaths and his flesh-obsessed hands he was there to stay.

  He remembers mumbling denials as Father Leneghan had stood over him. He remembers the priest repeating the question, his hands buried forearm deep in his pockets, his wide, shovel face rich with perspiration.