The Fall Girl (21 page)

‘Johnny, Johnny … no, it doesn't ring a bell. I'd want more to go on than that.'

‘He's a bread man and he has ginger hair.'

‘Nah,' he coughs, clearing his phlegmy throat and sending a lumpy spit flying out into the night. ‘Still can't place him,' he says, winding up the window. ‘Though he'll not be one of Danny Connolly's. Them lads are all very dark; they're like a bunch of Spaniards. Anyway, whoever he is, he's a fierce lucky fella having a looker like you.' He pats Lesley's bare knee.

A couple of miles later, he turns down a narrow lane off the main road. With held breath, I look around me as branches reach out from the overgrown hedges and tap on the windscreen with skeletal fingers. I dig my knee into the back of Lesley's seat, but she just keeps nattering away to the man as though nothing untoward has happened. I can't see anything ahead of us, only one gloomy bend after the next. I'm convinced that we're going to be attacked.

‘Excuse me,' I say, sitting up, ‘where are you going?'

‘I'm just taking a bit of a detour to avoid the checkpoint,' he says. ‘I don't want them Limey fuckers rooting in the boot of the car. Besides, if they startle Blackie, he'll go for them bald-headed and they'd not think twice about burying a bullet in the back of his skull.'

Although I'd been dreading the prospect of having to go through a checkpoint, I'd give anything to be out on the main road again heading in that direction. This is it, I think: my comeuppance. And bloody good enough for me it is too. Oh God, the thought of losing my virginity like this … to that. Where is he taking us? Will there be anyone else there? A gang maybe. Jesus!

‘I feel sick.'

‘Roll down the window and stick your head out,' the man says.

‘I'm gonna throw up.'

He puts his foot on the brake. I pull the lever, but the door won't open. I try again, this time banging against the door with my shoulder. It still won't budge. I'm trapped!

‘Hop out and open the door for her,' he tells Lesley. ‘The cursed thing will only open from the outside.'

‘Are you all right?' Lesley asks, as I step out. ‘You're as white as a sheet.'

I slam the door shut and grab her arm.

‘I think he's gonna rape us,' I whisper, turning towards the ditch and pretending to vomit. ‘Let's make a run for it.'

‘Don't be daft. He's a harmless oul eejit.'

‘How the fuck do you know?'

‘Cos if he was gonna try anything, he'd have done it by now.'

‘He touched your knee.'

‘So what? You could hardly call that sexual assault, could you?'

‘I don't care what you think, Lesley – I'm not getting back into that car.'

‘Are youse all right, lassies?' he shouts out the window.

‘Think about it, Frances,' Lesley says. ‘If he really wanted to attack us, how far do you think we'd get if we started running now?'

‘Oh, we've had it. We're dead meat. My mother was right all along.'

‘Will you get into the car and don't be such a wimp. If he tries anything, you punch him in the face and I'll knee him in the balls, right?'

‘Do I have any choice?'

‘No.'

‘OK, then.'

When I turn round, I see the dog sitting upright and staring out the window at us with a slobbery gob.

‘Shite, the dog's awake!'

‘You can sit in the front with me.'

As soon as we open the car door, the dog growls.

‘Shut up, Blackie,' the farmer shouts, giving him a clout across the mouth. The dog whimpers and crouches down.

Several bumpy miles farther on, the lane widens and we see the lights of Enniskillen. I feel like crying with relief.

‘I'll leave youse right to the door of the discotheque,' the man says, turning on his wipers, ‘seeing as youse aren't exactly clad for that weather.'

‘See,' Lesley mutters into my ear, ‘told you he was a harmless oul eejit.'

The nightclub is packed and particularly rough. We can't see past the throng of people in front of us.

‘How the hell are we gonna get home, Lesley?'

‘Johnny of course.'

‘But what if he's not here?'

‘He will be. Now, shut up panicking and let's just concentrate on finding him. We'll split up. You go right and I'll go left.'

‘No way. We'll stick together. If we split up, we'll never find each other. It's like a cattle mart in here.'

Already lads are nudging each other and eyeing Lesley. For once, she doesn't notice.

‘I'm bursting for a pee,' I tell her as we pass the Ladies.

‘OK, I'll wait for you here,' she says, leaning against a pillar.

I have to queue for ages behind two well-plastered women in their late twenties. One of them keeps staggering and stepping on my toes with her stilettos. With the dirty looks I'm getting from her slightly less drunk friend, I'm afraid to flinch, let alone complain. I'd rather keep my mouth shut and have my feet stabbed than grumble and risk getting my head blown off. Who knows what kind of weapons the Northern girls carry in their handbags?

It's the guts of twenty minutes before I finally make it back to the pillar to meet up with Lesley, but there's no sign of her anywhere. Where could she have gone? I hang around for ages waiting for her, feeling more vulnerable and panicky by the minute. A man, nearly as old as my father, starts chatting me up.

‘Where are you from?'

I don't answer.

‘I said where are you from?'

I look away, pretending not to hear him.

‘Wanna dance?' he asks, tapping my shoulder.

‘No, thanks.'

‘Arragh, go on.'

‘No,' I say, moving away.

As I scour the hall for Lesley, I vow to myself never to cross the border again. It's been a disaster from the word go. I can't find her on the dance floor, or at the bar, or upstairs on the balcony, so I go back to the pillar, but she's still not there. Not knowing where else to look at this stage, I'm on the verge of tears. As a last resort, I go over to a bouncer and ask him if he's seen a seventeen-year-old girl with long black hair wearing a denim mini-skirt and black T-shirt.

‘I did surely,' he says.

‘Which way did she go?'

‘They went that way,' he laughs, pointing to his right and left, ‘all two hundred of them.'

Bollocks, I think, walking away. When I hear the introduction to the Nolan Sisters' ‘I'm in the Mood for Dancing', I perk up and circle the dance floor hopefully. I'm convinced I'll find Lesley somewhere in the middle, strutting her stuff and singing at the top of her lovely voice. Whenever we go discoing, she begs the deejay to play the record at least twice and then drags me out to the centre of the floor to boogie with her. She says it reminds her of when we were little girls. But by the end of the song, I haven't found her and I'm really starting to sweat, because I know that if she were still in the hall, she'd have made her way on to the floor no matter whom she had to knock down to get there.

At the end of the night, the Irish national anthem blares from the speakers, and the mob, who have just finished buck-leaping around the dance floor to Horslips' ‘Trouble', are now standing
to attention like an army of well-trained soldiers. I'm leaning against the wall by the main doors praying that wherever Lesley has spent the previous three hours, she'll come back to meet up with me there. But fifteen anxious minutes later, I'm still watching and waiting, and the hall is almost empty.

‘Looking for me, sexy?' some fella slobbers. His breath is reeking of whiskey.

‘No. For my boyfriend,' I say, turning my back on him.

My stomach is in bits. I don't know what to do next. The bouncer I'd spoken to earlier is dragging a bloodied skinhead by the scruff of his neck across the hall towards the exit. As soon as he's rid of the fella, I approach him again.

‘Excuse me, can you help me? I've lost my friend and I've no way of getting home to Castleowen.'

‘Castleowen!'

‘Yeah,' I say, feeling stupid.

‘Fuck me, it's hardly a quick spin out the road, is it?'

‘No.' I burst into tears.

‘Come on,' he says, walking me back inside the hall and sitting me down near the bar. ‘Is there anyone you could ring for a lift?'

‘No.'

‘What about your parents?'

‘They won't come,' I sob. ‘They never cross the border.'

‘If they want you home tonight, they'll have to cross it, won't they?'

‘They'll kill me. I'm not supposed to be here.'

‘Aye, they might. But they'll hardly leave you stranded all the same,' he says, tapping a cigarette from his packet. ‘Want one?'

‘Thanks,' I snivel.

After lighting my cigarette, he asks for my home phone number and goes behind the bar to make the call. With the shutters down, I can't see whether he's managed to get through to my parents or not. There are a few stragglers still staggering their way towards the exit. Another bouncer is walking behind them, urging them on like a farmer does with straying cattle. I could kill Lesley for landing me in this mess. That's if it is her fault. Maybe I should be worried, not angry. What if something bad has happened to her? It is the North after all. Someone might have copped her English accent (she still has a touch of it) and thought she was a Protestant, or a Unionist, or even worse – a terrorist. She could have got beaten up, knee-capped or, God forbid, killed. Jesus, such a night! I can't wait to be back on familiar territory. Without Lesley by my side, I feel out of my depth.

A couple of young lads are clearing glasses from the tables. Some of the drinks look as if they haven't been touched. There are several on the table in front of me. It's a shame to see them going to waste, especially when I'm in dire need of an injection of courage. I don't want my mother seeing me upset. She'd make mincemeat of me if she caught me with my defences down. Besides, the booze is only going to end up being emptied down the drain, so it could hardly be considered stealing. I pick up a half bottle of Coke and pour it into what looks like a shot of vodka. Afraid of being caught by the bouncer, I gulp it down quickly. One of the lads approaches the table.

‘I saw that,' he says, grinning at me. He lifts a drink from his tray and sniffs it. ‘Gin,' he says, handing it to me.

‘Thanks. Is there anything to mix it with?'

‘Just this,' he says, pouring in the end of a small bottle of tonic water. ‘Are you Mac's girlfriend?'

‘Whose?' I ask, taking a bitter mouthful and almost choking on it.

‘Mac's. The bouncer.'

‘Are you mad?' I splutter. ‘That man must be fifty.'

‘Don't let him hear you saying that. He's only in his thirties. And what's more, he's got off with younger girls than you.'

‘Well, he's not getting off with me. He's just arranging a lift home for me.'

‘I'll give you a lift if you like.'

‘Too late, Ownie boy,' the bouncer says, coming up behind him and clipping his ear. ‘Her very irate parents are on their way as we speak.'

‘Sneaked out your bedroom window, did you?' the young lad asks, handing me another glass of spirits.

‘No, I –'

‘Oi,' the bouncer says, swiping it out off my hand. ‘I think you're in enough trouble as it is, don't you?'

‘Ah, come on, Mac, the poor girl may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.'

‘Shut up, for fuck sake,' he says, plonking the drink down on Ownie's tray, ‘and just get on with the job you're being paid to do.'

As soon as the bouncer turns his back, Ownie picks up the glass and sets it down by my feet.

‘Thanks.'

‘Just make sure Mac Bollocks doesn't see it.'

Shortly after three o'clock, the staff have finished clearing up and I'm three shots of liquor less concerned about having to face my parents than I'd been an hour earlier. In fact now it seems quite funny. As we leave the premises, Ownie offers to wait with me until my parents arrive.

‘No need,' I say, spotting them driving into the car park.

‘How about a quick kiss then?'

The bouncer clips his ear again.

‘I'd better go,' I say, walking away feeling light-headed.

‘Good luck,' Ownie shouts. ‘Might see you here again some night.'

My father gets out of the car and, without looking up, opens the back door for me as I walk towards him. When I catch sight of my mother, I start tittering. I can't stop myself. She's sitting in the front passenger seat staring straight in front of her. Over her hair rollers, she's wearing a cream-coloured beret. She looks just like a head of cauliflower.

‘Hiya, Daddy.'

‘Hiya!' He peers at me with small glassy eyes and shakes his head. ‘Is that all you have to say?'

‘Sorry.' I glance at him briefly before climbing in.

My mother straightens herself up and, half turning her head, addresses my bare knees. ‘This is a lovely carry-on on the Sabbath, I must say.'

‘I was at a disco and missed my lift home. It's hardly the crime of the century, is it?' Whatever about my father, I've no intention of allowing
her
to make me feel guilty. ‘Anyway, it's not the Sabbath, it's Saturday night.'

‘It's long past midnight, in case you haven't noticed, madam. So that makes it Sunday. The Sabbath.'

My father gets back into the car.

‘Normal people would call this Saturday night,' I mutter, ‘but then again, you're not exactly what I'd call normal.'

‘That's enough,' my father says, slamming the door. ‘You have some explaining to do when you get home, young lady. A mouthful of bad manners is hardly going to appease things, is it?'

‘And taking the door off its hinges won't help much either,' my mother snaps, glowering at my father as if he's as responsible for this situation as I am.