Here Are the Young Men Page 14

  Now there was something pathetic to him. I had the sense that he really didn’t want me to go, and that if I did, it would be disastrous.

  I sighed. ‘Look, forget about it. Ye can’t be talkin to me like that, though. I was only askin ye if you were alright.’

  His face darkened like he was going to snap again. ‘I am alright,’ he said, but then he made a visible effort to smile and soften his tone. ‘Look, come on back to the gaff, we’ll have another spliff. I’ll nick some of me da’s vodka and we can have a drink. I’m sorry man, I was just bein fuckin ridiculous.’

  We walked back to his house together. Rez actually seemed to lighten up a bit after that. He even made a few jokes and did impressions of some of the teachers, like in the old days. He flailed his gangly limbs about while telling an anecdote from the couch, and after a while he had me cracking up, like there wasn’t a thing in the world wrong with him, and our nasty argument of earlier seemed to be forgotten about completely.

  We listened to Nine Inch Nails and Orbital and played a game of Zero: Retribution (Rez had borrowed the game from Kearney while he was in the States). An hour before his ma came back we opened the windows to air out the room and get rid of the hash smell. He poured some tap water into the vodka bottle, refilling it to where it was before we’d started lashing into it. Then I said goodbye and walked home, stoned and drunk, thoughtful and confused at once.

  29 | Matthew

  I didn’t call Jen after what had happened in her bedroom. The thoughts of it filled me with such shame, I couldn’t bear to face her again. Besides, I had no doubt that she was secretly hoping I’d leave her alone – who would want to stay with a guy who couldn’t please a woman?

  On Thursday evening I was sitting in my room, looking out the window, worrying myself into depression over my penile affliction. My mobile started ringing. I looked at the screen: it was her. I placed the phone back down on the desk beside my bed and let it ring. Eventually it stopped, only to start again a few seconds later. After it had rung out for the second time, it didn’t ring any more.

  The next day I phoned Scag. I wasn’t sure if he had meant it when he’d said to give him a shout sometime, but today I couldn’t sit at home and wallow. I needed to be out, getting annihilated and forgetting all this crap. It was too miserable.

  ‘Story, Matthew,’ said Scag when he picked up. ‘Good to hear from ye, bud. Are ye lookin for a few yokes, is it? I’m afraid there’s a bit of a drought on at the moment, sunshine. What about a bit of speed?’

  ‘Em, the thing is, I wasn’t actually lookin for any pills. I was just, ye know, givin ye a shout, seein if ye wanted to, like, meet up or something.’

  There was a pause, then Scag said, ‘Sure thing bud. We should meet up for a bit of a chinwag, have an oul smoke, see if we can get to the bottom of this thing once and for all, know wharray mean?’ He laughed like Dustin the Turkey: ‘Hua hua hua.’ There was something mad about him, but basically Scag seemed alright.

  ‘So what’s the craic with ye these days, then?’ he said. ‘Are ye still refusin to work?’

  ‘Actually I got a job. Just doin a few hours a week down in the garage around the corner from me. It’s dead handy. The best thing about it is that I don’t actually have to do any work. Or at least, I don’t do any work.’

  ‘Fair enough, man, fair enough. Like I told ye, just don’t get into bed for less than ye got out of it for. So c’mere, are ye doin a line these days?’

  I was puzzled. ‘What, ye mean cocaine?’

  ‘No, no. Not cocaine, I mean, are ye seein a bird. Doin a line.’

  ‘Oh. Well, em, I was yeah, until recently. But it’s, ah, I don’t think it’s goin anywhere.’

  ‘Ah well mate. Fishes in the sea and all that. Know wharray mean? But c’mere, I’m just here in town havin a smoke and a can with a few old pals.’ I presumed he meant junkies or winos. ‘I’m in Dublin Castle. Stall it in and we’ll have an oul chat.’ He paused. Then, ‘Have ye got a few quid on ye for a can or two? I’m a little bit skint to be honest with ye.’

  ‘Yeah. Well, I mean, I can get a bit of drink … I’ll jump on the bus now and see ye in there in half an hour.’

  ‘Grand, yeah. I’m wearin me gold suit and a top hat, so ye can’t miss me.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He cackled and I heard the old friends in the background guffaw along. Even their laughter sounded slurred. ‘C’mere Matthew,’ he said, ‘I reckon we’ve been havin a bit of an Iraqi summer here in Dublin: it’s a little bit Sunni, but mostly it’s Shi’ite!’ The chorus of laughter flared up again. It was cheering me up to talk to Scag.

  I went upstairs to my bedroom and stuffed whatever money I could find into my pocket. Then I thought I could do with a little more – you never know where we might end up – and had a quick rummage in Fiona’s room to see what I could borrow, but she never had any money because she was only fifteen and hadn’t worked a day in her life. I gobbled a big bowl of Frosties to keep me going, then wrote a note to my parents saying I was going out and would more than likely stay with a friend. I put on a jumper and went to leave.

  On the floor under the letterbox there was another postcard from Kearney. Fuck this, I thought, picking it up. The picture was of a little smiling girl with blonde hair, looking into the camera, full of trust and warmth, on the grass of some city park, next to monuments and a duck pond. I turned it over.

  greetings infidel,

  dry youre eyes Matt – ill be home very soon. Roll out the red carpet mofo. lissen man Ive’ seen sumthing over here your not going to beLEAVE!!! trust me blood u aint never seen shit like this before. Ill tell u when i get back but put it this way it makes that stuff we seen with the little girl look like CHILDS PLAY!!!!

  Dont trust Whitey

  The Kronic

  I shoved the postcard into the pocket of my jeans, and left.

  Scag was in the public gardens of Dublin Castle, by the big grassy circle outside the Chester Beatty Library that was designed to look like a Celtic symbol or something. As I approached I saw him standing beside a bench, engrossed in telling an anecdote to, as I had guessed, a pair of shabby alcos who sat on the bench and watched him. It was a warmish summer’s day but Scag still wore the black, fingerless glove on his left hand he’d had last time, and the black leather jacket.

  ‘Ah Matthew, me oul flower,’ he called when he saw me. ‘Nice to see ye again, man. I thought you’d left me behind in the world. Me more tender feelins were bein hurt.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m sure they were,’ I said, laughing.

  ‘These are me mates, Patser and Alfred.’

  I shook their hands, and Alfred, a grizzled, badly dishevelled wreck probably in his fifties, said in an almost genteel English accent, ‘Here ye go, lad. Get some of that into ya.’ He passed me a flagon of cider and I drank some, worried about what kind of diseases swarmed on his cracked lips and gums, but not wanting to seem snobby. You probably had to allow for these things, hanging around with Scag.

  Patser, the other alco, shook his head, coughed like there was a swamp in his throat and said through his beard, ‘So you’ve found another one to take under your wing, Scag. Some lost soul lookin for a father figure, is he? Ye never never learn. Pray God he doesn’t end up like the last one.’

  Scag looked at him, amused and about to say something. But just then, two tall, obviously foreign girls walked by, in their twenties and both beautiful. The two alcos and I just watched longingly as they passed. But Scag called to them: ‘How are yis doin, ladies?’

  They looked back at him, unsure, not stopping but slowing down a little.

  ‘Are yis havin a nice time?’

  They nodded. One of them was frowning, but in a curious way, with a faint smirk on her face. The other one was trying to keep walking, but Scag saw his chance and consolidated the advantage.

  ‘Come on over, we don’t bite, like. Where are yis from, girls? We were just havin a little smoke, sure come on and tal
k to us for a bit.’

  Forced by common manners to reply to his question, the girls finally stopped walking.

  ‘Norway,’ they said together.

  ‘Ah, Norway – the land of Mr Hans Christian Anderson, if I’m not mistaken. Would yis believe I used to live in Oslo?’

  ‘No,’ said the more mistrusting of the two. She had a pale, smooth-skinned face and wavy blonde hair. She wore a white pullover and torn jeans. She was very stylish, I thought. Both of them were. Though not in the boring, fashion-victim way.

  Grinning more openly her friend said, ‘Actually, Hans Christian Anderson was from Denmark.’

  ‘Oh yeah, of course!’ said Scag, only fractionally discouraged. ‘I must have been thinkin of Knut Hamsun – now he’s definitely Norwegian. Do yis know him? He wrote Hunger. It’s a book about my life story; this lad comes to a foreign city and does fuck all, and he has no money and goes round the bend a bit. It’s a great book.’

  The thing about Scag was, he really seemed fairly well read, despite all the junkie stuff and the criminality.

  ‘I’ve heard of it,’ said the girl with the grin. She was tall and slender with long limbs and dyed red hair, and even prettier than her friend.

  ‘Yeah well, yis should read it,’ Scag said. ‘It’s a Norwegian classic, ladies.’

  I looked on, impressed, as were Alfred and Patser who, unlike Scag, seemed to shrink and fixed their eyes on the ground when the girls finally decided to come over and give us – or give Scag – the time of day.

  I was wondering if Scag really had lived in Norway when the dyed-redhead asked him the same question.

  ‘Yeah, I did. Lived in a squat there for a few months in around eighty-nine. Denmark as well. There’s a lot goin on in Denmark.’

  ‘Yeah, I have a few friends who squat in Copenhagen,’ she said.

  They talked about that for a few moments. Then Scag turned to his two alco friends and said, ‘Right lads, I’ll love yis and leave yis, I have to be gettin on. I shall be seein yis soon.’

  And with that we found – the two girls and I – that we were following Scag, being led out of Dublin Castle and down Dame Street, and across into Temple Bar. He kept up a steady flow of verbiage to ensure neither girl had time to question what they were doing and slip from his grasp.

  ‘It’s a lovely afternoon, girls,’ he said as he weaved us among the cobblestoned alleys of Temple Bar. ‘It would be a sin not to make the most of it by sittin out and havin a pint in a nice oul beer garden. Am I right or am I right?’

  We let him lead us through the laneways until, a few minutes later, we found ourselves in a pub. Scag slapped his hands on the bar and said, ‘So, ladies and gents, what’ll it be?’ It was as if we had arrived there magically, having had no say in the matter ourselves.

  The girls said they’d have pints of Guinness, and I said the same. I guessed what was coming next. The barman started pouring the pints and then said, ‘Fourteen euro forty, please.’

  ‘Fuck!’ said Scag, making a show of pulling his wallet open and peering into it. Lo and behold, it was empty. ‘I’ve only got fifty pence. I thought I had another twenty bills on me.’

  He started off on what was sure to be a longwinded, regret-heavy explanation, but the blonde girl – we had by now learned that her name was Nicky, and her redhead friend’s, Lorna – said, ‘Oh no, don’t worry. I’ll get this one.’

  ‘Are ye sure?’ he said, as if it was a completely unforeseen, even bizarre idea.

  ‘Oh yes, of course, no problem.’

  I had barely said a word since the girls appeared. The truth was, I found them intimidating. They were a few years older than me, and surely far more interesting. No doubt they were hugely sexually experienced. As we sat down at a thick wooden table and sipped our pints, I remained silent but for a few nervy grunts, and imagined them screaming and sweating in the throes of mind-blowing orgasms administered by calm Jürgens, cool Tibors, handsome Tags.

  We quickly finished our pints and then Lorna got another round in. Both of them had now settled into the idea of spending the afternoon with a Dublin junkie and his witless, wordless friend, and they loosened up, laughing and joking, telling us about themselves. They had just finished college, studying architecture (Nicky) and fine art (Lorna). Now they were ‘backpacking around Europe, staying with friends here and there, seeing what happens’.

  ‘How long have yis been in Dublin?’ I asked.

  ‘Only two days. You’re the first Irish people we’ve met since coming here, in fact.’

  ‘We’re the only Irish people here,’ said Scag. ‘I imagine your dormitory is crowded, is it? The summer and everything.’

  ‘Oh, we are not staying in a dormitory, we have a double room,’ said Lorna.

  ‘I see. Well, how about another pint, girls? Like I say, next time it’s all on me.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Nicky with a grin.

  We stayed in the pub all afternoon, getting progressively more wrecked. Every hour or so either Scag or I would roll a joint – at first in the toilets, but after a few pints, under the table – and go outside to smoke it.

  The girls were drunker than we were, though they kept up the pace surprisingly well. Scag hardly seemed affected at all. I supposed that, with all the smack and other drugs he must have hurled into his body down the years, alcohol no longer had any effect on him at all, or not very much at any rate.

  He was now educating the girls with one of what he called his ‘race theories’.

  ‘Ye see, drink pulls ye back into yer body. It anchors ye in yer physical experience, whereas marijuana on the other hand makes ye float further out into the cosmic realms, the non-visible reality.’ He vaguely waved a hand in front of his face to suggest enigma and weirdness.

  ‘You mean the spirit world?’ said Lorna.

  ‘Precisely. The fuckin spirit world. And that, ladies, is why the Irishman drinks so much: cos he’s already far enough out in the other world, due to his inborn Irish nature. He doesn’t need something to take him out there to the fairies and the spirits and the bleedin demons. He’s already there, so the oul grog helps to keep him grounded, it doesn’t let him drift too far out. The drink is better for the Irishman than the weed. That’s why I never touch marijuana, girls, not so much as a single toke of the stuff.’

  As he finished saying this, he slowly licked along the joint he was making, looking intently at Nicky all the while. He smoothed down the folded papers with his thumb and twisted the end of the joint to finish it. Then he put it behind his ear.

  ‘Very interesting, Irishman,’ said Nicky with another playful smirk.

  ‘Mmm. You know, we were supposed to do some of the sightseeing today. So long to that,’ laughed Lorna. The place was starting to fill up now, the Friday after-work crowd coming in with ferocious thirsts on them.

  ‘Ah, don’t mind that,’ replied Scag. ‘This is the most authentic bit of Dublin cultural experience yis are likely to get, drinkin all day with two bona fide Irishmen. When in Rome, ladies, do as the Greeks.’

  They laughed and raised their glasses to us. Since she had started getting a little drunk, Lorna had begun giving me looks, smiling at me when someone else was talking. I grew tense whenever she did it, looking into the head of my pint and then taking a big, steeling gulp.

  Nicky said: ‘So we were wondering, do you know anywhere that is good that we can go to, like for going out?’

  ‘Ye mean before or after we go back to yer hotel and have a bit of fun?’ said Scag with a grin.

  ‘What!’ Nicky protested. ‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.’ But she was laughing as she said it.

  ‘What’s wrong? I wasn’t implyin anything underhand, ladies. I just meant that we could go back there for a few cans and a smoke, like. Save a few sheckles, play some of our own tunes, far from the maddening crowd, know wharray mean? God almighty, ladies, what do yis take me for?’

  ‘Well, we’ll see,’ said Nicky, playfully. ‘But we want
to go out in Dublin, what can you recommend?’

  ‘Well girls, the thing is, I thought I had me ATM card with me, but now it seems I’ve left it back at me gaff. But if yis wouldn’t mind buying me another couple of pints, I’d be more than happy to show youse ladies a good night.’

  ‘And you, Matthew? I imagine you’ve got no ATM card either?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not,’ I said. I had bought one round, but decided to keep quiet about the twenty quid still in my pocket. I was playing it like Scag.

  ‘Well, we don’t mind buying you a few more drinks, do we, Nicky?’

  We went to a dingy, heaving club off Thomas Street that I’d never seen before. Scag said he knew the DJ and he could get us in for free; surprisingly, this turned out to be true. The bouncer asked me for ID, but Scag and the girls acted outraged and he let it pass. Inside the club, there were four different rooms, each with its own DJ. There was techno of various kinds, and trippy, mellow electro stuff, and in one room, this brutal noise-music, like pneumatic drills and chainsaws, all fucked up. I thought of King of Pop, wondering what Rez was doing. There was no point calling him. He rarely came out these days. Besides, every time I met him now I’d come away feeling drained, hollowed out, lethargic. In a different way than Kearney, Rez sucked the life out of you. He was a vampire.

  ‘Girls, listen, I see an old mate of mine over there. If yis like, I can get some yokes off him. They’re always amazin from him, and he’ll give me them for dead cheap as well cos I’m a pal. What do yis reckon?’

  ‘Yokes?’ said Nicky.

  ‘Pills. Ecstasy. Yips. Fuckin disco biscuits.’

  ‘Ah! Okay. Go and ask him, I’ll give you the money in a moment.’

  The girls danced while I stood at the side of the floor, drinking my pint and feeling awkward. Scag went and talked to his friend, a wiry, paranoid-looking guy in a black Autechre T-shirt. Older guys than me confidently manoeuvred themselves closer to the girls, who laughed and threw back their heads, encircled by admirers, enjoying the attention.