Torn Water Read online

  ‘Drinking's pulping your friggin' brain,’ Marion had said.

  ‘Shut your beak. You're only jealous.’

  ‘Of that? Of that? I wouldn't scrape the bastard off my shoes if I stepped on him.’

  ‘Get out,’ his mother had said, advancing slowly on her friend, fists clenched.

  He can remember the dramatic turn Marion made on the linoleum, reaching angrily for the door handle and shouting, ‘he's a loser! he's a frigging loser!’

  That was the last time she had been in their house as a friend. She sometimes calls in after work, but James knows it is different. When Sully had heard what had happened he had nodded self-importantly, his eyes widening slightly. ‘She should have stuck to her own and not try to be what she's not.’

  James had been sorry to see her go. By then he was fond of her, and he missed the inching upwards of that dress's hem.

  A school bus pulls into the gates, swinging wide to make the turn, the driver using the ball of his hand to work the steering-wheel, his eyes fixed ahead, a cigarette dangling from his lips.

  He stands, shouldering his satchel, and begins to walk the short distance to the town. He can feel the hungry gape of the school gateway on his back as he walks away. He jogs, pushing the air through his lungs. He thinks of the man in the alleyway. Had he imagined him? Maybe Sully was right: maybe he is a bit touched, maybe he is mad. As his feet thump the pavement he tries to forget him, to push the man and the firefly away, to pretend that he had never felt them, that he had never seen that beat of light flit by him on the day of the bomb. He is sprinting now, bending his body into his run. He thinks of the dream he had the night before when he had killed a part of himself, the part of him that looked to the ghost in things. Yes, maybe Sully and his mother were right: maybe he is the cause of all her pain. Yes, maybe he is the ghost.

  Letter from a Firefly

  Space

  Far from Earth

  High above Everything

  Son,

  It is cold. Cold since you questioned my existence. Warmth has seeped from me. I heard you as you ran into town the other day – your thoughts rose to reach me here high in space. It is the love of our friends and family that keeps us burning, that gives us heat, and yours is the only love I can count on. So the other day when you wondered, for the first time, if I was real, the light went out in me. Put your hand on your heart and say truthfully that you no longer believe I am with you. I guarantee that beneath your fingers as they lie across your heart you will feel not only your own heartbeat but another softer beat, as soft as a small bird's wings. That's me. That has always been me. It has been a blessing to have a son such as you, someone to keep the flame of me alive, so you can imagine my shock when I heard you wish it otherwise the other day.

  In your last ‘thought#x2019; letter you asked me where souls go when they die. You have to understand there are certain things I can't tell you – it is forbidden – but it is a better place. That's all I can tell you. You also asked me if we had days and nights. There are no such things, no days, no nights, no hours, no minutes. And, no, I don't think badly of your mother. Now Sully, on the other hand, that's a different ball game. If I had such a thing as fists I would use them, no question. I was there the other day when he tore at your mother in the café. It wasn't pretty. Look after her. New fireflies join us all the time; there were a few on the day of that bomb. They are very shocked at first but they soon settle down. One woman kept saying she had to put her husband's tea on. We tried to tell her gently that the time for tea was over.

  Anyway, it's time to go. Don't doubt me. Love your mother. Oh, by the way, I sometimes see your deaths when you perform them, or even think them. They are very true to life, or death, I should say. Love and continued warmth, I hope,

  Your loving firefly father

  13. The Invitation

  At the end of the third week of rehearsals, Kerry decided to throw a party. She lives in a small farmhouse halfway between Newry and Crossmaglen, and arrives one day armed with her invitations. They show an unflattering portrait of Mr Shannon in a 1920s bathing-suit astride a hastily drawn road map. As Shannon tries to gain some order in the rehearsal room, she slips the invitations into people's hands and watches as they snigger. When one arrives with James, he glances at it, then tries to pass it back, but Cathal Murphy, sitting to his right, refuses to accept it, folding his arms and smirking at him. Shannon is trying to place people into groups for the scene where his character, McMurphy, tries to get the television turned on so the inmates can watch a ball game. He fusses around the rehearsal space, putting his hands on people's shoulders, pushing them into the position he requires, his moccasins slapping about on the concrete floor. One by one he calls on the people sitting around to join the action, yelling out their characters’ names.

  The small trestle table that serves as the nurses' station now has a crescent of people in front of it. James's name is called in a loud roar and he scurries up, shoving the invitation into his jeans pocket, trying desperately to keep a straight face. He is positioned at the front of the first group beside Patricia. Chin Chin, who is playing Chief Bowden, is placed at the back so that he looks like a lighthouse towering above the rocky peninsula of heads in front of him.

  Suddenly Shannon stops. He looks like a hunting dog that has suddenly seen its prey. Slowly he bends down to retrieve one of the invitations that has fallen to the ground. He brings it up and looks at it, holding it by its corner as if it is infected. The room explodes with laughter. The actors' positioning, which Shannon has spent ages putting in place, dissolves. People are slapping each other on the back; some burst into applause. Kerry stands, right hand waving regally, her lips parted at the sweet glory of it all.

  ‘I see we have a heartless cow in our midst.’

  James watches as Shannon looks at the piece of paper in his hand, then around at everyone's faces, a big grin sitting on his lips.

  ‘Given the exactitude of the work that has obviously been poured on to this slip of paper, I trust Saturday evening will be the far side of mediocre, Miss Boyd.’

  ‘You can bet on it, baby.’

  That night as they sit down for dinner, James asks his mother if he can stay with his friend Plug on Saturday night as there is some work they need to do for a history exam.

  ‘What exam?’

  ‘History, the Versailles peace treaty.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The Versailles treaty, the First World War.’

  She nods, her mouth full of chips. She doesn't say anything but continues eating.

  It was a lie. He knows in his heart that his mother will forbid him to go to the party if she knows the truth. He had realised after their exchange in the kitchen, weeks before, that she didn't trust the whole idea of the play, most especially Mr Shannon whom, he now knows, she sees as a threat. In the time since their row, when she had caught him reading the play, and after what she had said in bed that night, he knows she tolerates his association with the man, but no more than that. He wonders what has made her so distrusting, so quick to judge. Eventually, after a few moments of silent eating, she consents. He nods his thanks between mouthfuls of fried egg.

  ‘I want you back here first thing on Sunday morning.’

  ‘Yes, Mum.’

  ‘First thing, do you hear?’

  ‘Yes, Mum.’

  Later that day he works on Plug, putting his plan to him, suggesting that he stay with him on the upcoming Saturday and that they can go to the party together. They are squeezed into the boys' locker rooms, just after lunch. A fight had been called at the eleven o'clock break that morning, boys eagerly whispering the news to one another on their way to a grabbed smoke or a hurried game of handball.

  ‘Saturday night?’

  ‘Yeah, Saturday night.’

  ‘They're all poofs. I'll need iron underpants.’

  ‘Don't flatter yourself, Plug.’

  ‘I'm getting worried about you, Lavery. You'll be wear
ing pink cravats next.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. So?’

  ‘What if I say no? You'll be in the deep muck then.’

  ‘Shit – the expression is “deep shit”. Come on – it's near Culloville.’

  ‘Comanche country … I dunno … I'll need more than iron underpants up there.’

  The fight is between two large boys only a year older than Plug and James, but nearer men than boys. They are due to leave school at the beginning of the following summer. They are muscular and fearless, and their rivalry is notorious. A small crescent of space has been cleared in the centre of the locker room, and all around boys cram into it, their eyes glittering. Seamus Byrne, the larger of the two boys, is the first to enter. The second, Clive Henessey, then takes his place in the small space. Both look as if they have just stepped out of a shower, or like two racehorses that have just run a very tight race.

  ‘What brought this on today of all days?’ Plug says, his voice a tiny girlish whisper of fright.

  ‘I dunno. You're such a fucking professor, Plug.’

  ‘I'm only wondering.’

  ‘What about the party?’

  ‘Someone's about to die and you're still on about the effin' party?’

  For a moment the two fighters eye each other, an insolent smile playing across their lips, then rush forward, snagging themselves on each other's arms and legs, parting to get their breath. The first engagement has been so sharp, so swift that James almost missed it. A noise rings in the air, like the high-pitched squeal of trapped rabbits. The smaller boy has been cut. His lip is split like a busted cherry, and blood runs down his chin in a red line. He gives it a wipe and edges forward once more. This time they stay locked together for longer, their fists grabbing lumps of each other's hair, rocking together in a grotesque lullaby of pain.

  ‘Go on – fucking kill him!’

  James's shout is so vehement that it startles Plug, causing him almost to lose his footing. For a moment James believes he sees the two fighters stop and look his way, and they are no longer Bryne and Henessey, but Sully and he, fighting tooth and nail for the love of one woman, fighting to the death and beyond.

  ‘Go on, do him! Do him!’

  He sees Sully take a blow to the head, and James yells insanely. He is Errol Flynn in Captain Blood cutting his opponent's smug smile off his face with deft throws of his cutlass. He is Jason shattering the bony hordes of skeletons that mean to deny him the Golden Fleece. He is Montgomery Clift smashing his fist into John Wayne's face in Red River.

  ‘Kill him, kill him, kill him!’

  He sees Sully's head crack as it hits the floor and he sees himself climb over his prone body, biting and punching, nailing his rage to the bigger man's chin. He feels every swipe of the smaller boy's fist, every grunt of his throat, every hefty thump.

  ‘Kill the fucker!’

  ‘I never thought you had it in you,’ he hears Plug say.

  Once the more nimble boy gets the other down, he won't let him up, but lies on him as if they are two spent lovers still woven into the pattern of each other's bodies. The high-pitched squealing falls away, and there's a hush as the watching boys wait for the final act. The larger boy is face downwards and it soon becomes apparent that they are mumbling to one another.

  ‘I'm going to get a knife.’

  ‘Oh, yeah?’

  ‘I'm going to get a fucking knife and I'm going to fucking stab you.’

  ‘You are? You're going to stab me, are you? Say you're sorry,’ Henessey says.

  ‘I'm going to get a knife and kill you and your fucking family, I swear to Christ. I have a fucking knife at home and I'm going to fucking use it on your family.’

  No one sees Shannon arrive, until his large hands reach down, pull Henessey up from the floor and slam him against a locker door. He puts his face into the boy's so that their noses are almost touching. He doesn't say anything, just holds him there. The boys disperse, slouching towards the locker-room exit.

  ‘Don't bloody move. None of you! Don't you dare bloody move! I said, stay where you are.’

  Everyone freezes.

  ‘There's enough of this out there,’ he says.

  James sees him move close to Seamus Bryne, the larger boy, who is now on his feet.

  ‘There's too bloody much of this.’ Shannon waves a big arm in the direction of the world beyond the walls of their school. ‘Too bloody much.’

  For a moment he stands there, his head dipped, his large belly rising and falling, and then he goes out, leaving the hard truth of what he has said in the air behind him like the lie of bare, honest earth after a storm has ripped through it.

  ‘OK,’ Plug says, as they shuffle out of the locker room.

  ‘OK what?’

  ‘You shall go to the ball.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You can stay at mine.’

  ‘Good stuff.’

  ‘You're no poof, you're a frustrated psychopath.’

  Errol Flynn and the Cutlass of Death

  I am Errol Flynn and I am revered as the greatest swordsman this side of the Irish border. I have lost count of how many have died at the point of my trusty cutlass of death. It was given to me by my dear friend Count Plug as he lay on his deathbed. He had made the same mistake I have just made: he fought for a woman's love, and was mortally wounded. I have seen the cutlass work a whole army of English invaders, slicing them down, like ragweed in a summer field. For a country, yes, for honour, yes, for a man's good name, yes: for all these things the cutlass is invincible, magical, and bestows superhuman powers on the man who wields it.

  ‘Use it only for the ways of man and honour, never for a woman, for then the cutlass will turn on you and cause your end …’

  That was what Count Plug had said as he had taken his last breath, his weakened hands clasping mine to the cutlass's jewelled hilt. For the years following I had obeyed the unwritten law of the cutlass. Although there were times when, I must confess, I came close to killing for a woman's love. I resisted until now.

  The cutlass has just turned on me and stabbed me through the heart and as I write this my life is failing. I defended a woman's honour, challenging the oaf Baron von Sullivan to a duel for abusing our beauteous Queen Ann. The fight was no more than a couple of minutes old and I had looked forward to cutting my opponent's sneery grin from his face, when my left arm (I am left-handed) had swung in the air and driven the cutlass through my own heart.

  I am now on my knees, and my breath is failing. All around I hear the baying of the local townspeople as they watch me die. As my head hits the ground I see my opponent bend to lift the cutlass from my hand, a hungry gleam beginning in his eyes. I smile because in doing that he has sealed his own fate, and as I die I bring my smile with me to the fireflies that ring Heaven's gates.

  14. The Party

  Lights blaze from every window of Kerry's house. Plug and James stand in the driveway, looking at the squat bungalow. James watches as party guests flit by the windows. He looks at Plug and his friend whistles at him, his face breaking into a smile.

  ‘Have you got your iron underpants?’

  ‘And my asbestos willy warmer.’

  They begin to walk towards the house, their feet crunching on the gravel of the driveway.

  As they reach it the door is thrown open, revealing the human clutter of the hallway. Bodies seem to be sewn into the garish fabric of the velvet wallpaper. Women lean into tight huddles, and one or two couples lurk in the doorways to other rooms.

  ‘It's an orgy,’ James says.

  ‘It's Christmas,’ Plug answers.

  Suddenly Cathal Murphy appears; both boys' eyes immediately spot the pink polka-dot cravat he is wearing.

  ‘Oh, no,’ Plug whispers, and turns to bolt down the driveway. James grabs him by the elbow.

  ‘Boys, lovely boys …’

  ‘Cathal, this is my friend Plug.’

  ‘What a name!’

  ‘Yeah, it's short for Paul,’ Plug
says, his eyes lighting up with defiance.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, you learn something new every day. And how are you, young James?’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Splendid. Well, grab yourselves something to drink and to hell with the consequences, as they say. A pleasure to meet you, er … Plug.’ He moves off down the hall, nodding and smiling at everyone he passes, his drink held aloft in his hand as if it were a trophy.

  ‘What the effin' hell was that?’

  ‘Plug!’

  ‘Hey, big fella.’

  James looks round to see Jarlath McAllister charging down the hall towards them, powering his way through the revellers. ‘Jarlath.’

  ‘How's she cuttin'?’

  ‘Fine. Jarlath, this my friend … er …’

  ‘How's it going?’

  ‘All right,’ Plug says.

  ‘Any crack, literal or otherwise, eh?’

  James blushes. Jarlath digs his shoulder playfully.

  ‘We're on the lookout,’ Plug says.

  James gives his friend a look. Plug shrugs his shoulders and smirks at him.

  ‘Good man, good man, that's the stuff. They don't come flockin' – know what I'm sayin'? – unless you're Val Doonican or Big Tom or someone like that. You have to hunt – know what I'm sayin'?’

  ‘Yep,’ Plug says, his head nodding seriously.

  ‘Well, all the best, boys … And, big fella?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Take her handy …’

  ‘Right. See you later.’

  A man strides past the two boys and into the night air. It's a moment before James realises it's Chin Chin. He takes a few strides past them, then stops abruptly, swivelling on his Cuban heels to face them. He stares at the two boys as if he is peering through a dense fog,

  ‘Lavery?’

  ‘Chin Chin.’

  Suddenly Chin Chin snaps his hand to his temple, his fingers flattened in a salute. ‘Maestro.’ As he says the word, he inclines his head.