The Fields (27 page)

Larry leaps up and calls Aunty Grace ‘Your Ladyship’ and, after a few mumbles and whispers between them, plus a few nods in Saidhbh’s direction, he promises to give us the best seats in the house. He leads us to a raised platform at the back of the building, where just three tables are arranged, looking down over the entire pub, like a theatre balcony on to the stage. Larry serves us himself, for the rest of the night, and doesn’t once let a bar girl give us anything, or take anything away from the table. He does lots of the usual chat. Asks us where we’re from in Dublin and wants to know what’s happening back there in the Auld Sod these days. Me and Saidhbh both shrug our shoulders and say nothing much, because we don’t really know what he means. Aunty Grace tells him to leave us alone, especially when Larry starts asking us about old pubs in town, and if we knew about this fecker or that fecker who used to sit in the window of Davy Byrne’s all Saturday afternoon.

The music blasts into gear at around ten o’clock, just as the ice-cream sundaes are hitting the table. It’s not a real disco, but there’s space downstairs, in the middle of four or five low tables, to have a bit of a dance. Larry kicks it off from a hi-fi machine above the pint glasses, and sure enough three girls at the bar, and one fella, are the first to start shaping. It’s Culture Club, ‘Karma Chameleon’, and I can see Saidhbh’s leg bobbing up and down under the table like she’s dying to get up for a boogie. We both, me and Saidhbh, have glasses of Guinness in front of us too. Aunty Grace is brilliant like that, and just gave Larry the nod during the drinks order, and it was Guinness all round. No one even looked at me, or mentioned my age. I was just part of the gang.

Saidhbh’s Guinness glass, now her third, is empty by the time ‘Karma Chameleon’ ends. She’s only picked at her sundae, and
has hardly said a word all meal. She clings tightly to the empty glass and taps it nervously against her thigh as she waits for the next song. I’m wondering how exactly, without sounding too greedy, can I make Aunty Grace order Saidhbh yet another drink, just to dampen down all the nervous tapping, when it kicks off. It’s ‘Smalltown Boy’ by Bronski Beat. The slow ghostly intro sends shivers down my spine, and I get that rush you feel when the best song in the world comes on, and you know that everything in your life has never-ending possibilities just for those few gorgeously roaring moments. It’s magical. And for the first time since I’ve put a single foot on English soil I get the tiniest whiff of the sense that everything might, in fact, be about to play itself out for the better. And maybe it’s also the effect of the bitter black booze slowly eking its way into my system, or maybe it’s the combination of the booze with the dreamy high-pitched purr of Jimmy Somerville at his best, but for the first time too I begin to drop my guard, and to step out of cat-nurse mode, and to look around me and to see that Saidhbh is still brilliant, and that Aunty Grace is brilliant, and so is Larry the Last Port of Call, and that pubs themselves, and London itself, just waiting there outside the dirt-streaked windows, with all its rubbish and traffic and busy people and nutty neighbours and beardy Kilburn tramps, it’s all, all of it, brilliant!

The drums kick in, and I’m in heaven. I start to nod and sway in my seat, doing some of my best bedroom dance moves from the waist up. As the beats get louder I’m tapping the table and shifting shoulders, left to right to left to right again. Fiona and Deano are down on the floor in seconds, and doing brilliant forward and backward moves, a bit Dollar, a bit Legs and Co, like they’d planned it all night. Aunty Grace is just looking on, smiling. When the music goes bonkers high and says, ‘Run away turn away run away turn away run away!’ I feel flooded with happiness and nudge Saidhbh in the shoulder and point my nose
hopefully towards the dance floor. She scrunches up her face and gives her head a tiny shake, which is not a definite no, but certainly not a yes. I lean my chin sideways on to her shoulder and am just about to plead, directly into her ear, when she whips her head round and says, Look at this!

At what?

She pushes her chair back, just a couple of inches from the table and, with a triumphant smile, reveals to me, and to me alone, that instead of tapping her thigh, she has actually snapped her Guinness glass apart into handy razor-sized chunks, and is currently working her way right down, deeply down, through her hand, from the tip of the middle finger all the way to the start of the wrist, cutting and jabbing away, while a heavy and messy Ribena-red flow gushes out over both hands, both thighs, and on to the floor.

With one word from Aunty Grace, Larry leaps into action and whizzes us out the back door. He insists on taking Saidhbh and Aunty Grace to hospital himself, while Deano walks me and Fiona the couple of hundred yards back to Glengall Road. We stay up for ages, with Deano and Fiona at first going over the night a million times, and wanting to know every gory detail, about when I first saw the blood, and did I have any inkling of what she was up to under the table, and how did I manage to wrestle the glass from Saidhbh’s hand with the help of Last Port of Call Larry? They cool their jets, however, when they see that I’m shaking so much that I can hardly bring the cup of milky sweet builder’s tea to my lips without splashing and scalding myself to pieces. They change tack and tell me that Saidhbh will be fine. And that it’s just a blip along the road to her eventual recovery. Deano even says that it’s a good thing, and that if he has learnt anything from the School of Astral Sciences it’s that the path of healing is a mysterious one, and that tonight was an
energetic release for Saidhbh, as well as a blip. But I’m not so sure. Jack the cat didn’t have blips. And he died.

Saidhbh gets back in the wee hours. She lashes upstairs without saying a word, and keeps her bandaged hand hidden under her coat. She slams the bedroom door three or four times in a row when she discovers that Deano’s taken off the lock. And then she flops into bed and doesn’t get out of it, pretty much, for the next entire month.

On the upside, I get a job at Border Town!

Border Town is totally brilliant. Aunty Grace pulls a load of strings and calls in a million favours to get me in the door. She tells me exactly one week after Saidhbh’s hand-slashing night, during which time I’ve mostly been staring zombie-like into space or learning the
Ladybird Book of London
off by heart while keeping loyal watch outside of Saidhbh’s bedroom door like a cross between a heartbroken puppy and one of the Queen’s very own Life Guards (who daily sit, I recite, on patient glossy horses and wear splendid uniforms). I know that everyone’s worried about me, and they think that maybe I’m going to go the same way as Saidhbh, which is why I’m not expecting much joy when Aunty Grace sits me down on my own in front of another space-age dinner and says that we need to have a serious conversation.

She says that it looks as if I’m in Queen’s Park for the long haul, until Saidhbh stops being mental at least, so I might as well earn my keep while I’m here, and help pay for some of the lovely grub that I’m eating and the bed that I’m sleeping in. I give her a look, and say nothing, and she continues, telling me that she’s spoken to my mam on the phone and she agrees that it will be good character-building stuff, and that after bending a lot of
rules and calling in a lot of old favours, particularly from a randy old Italian called Giorgio, who runs an employment agency exclusively for busboys, she has finally managed to get me a paying job as a table-clearer, floor-cleaner and general mopper-upper in none other than, and at this point she pauses for ages, just to make it even more impressive, Border Town in Oxford Circus.

Gobsmacked, I practically throw myself out of the chair and fling my arms around her neck. Border Town?! You’re fecking joking! The big time! Aunty Grace dismisses me and tells me that I’ll have to lie to everyone I meet and tell them that I’m sixteen and must never admit my real age, or else she’ll get into lots of trouble with the British Government. I tell her that her secret’s safe with me as I dash out the door and run straight up the stairs to tell Saidhbh the good news. I know that this is weird, and it’s selfish, and it’s probably the last thing on Earth that she wants to hear, but more than anything I want Saidhbh to return to being normal, and she’ll only be normal if I’m normal right back to her too, and treat her like the old Saidhbh, the one who wants to listen to, and laugh at, any old rubbish that I have to say, especially the good kind of rubbish.

I catch her awake with the curtains half open, sitting on her bed, and holding a copy of
Jackie
magazine right up to her face with her big bandaged hand. Not mental at all in my eyes. I flop down beside her on the bed and tell her the news. She gives a little half-chuckle from behind the mag and says that it’s great to hear something good for a change. She calls me a lucky madser, pulls the mag away from her face for a split second, and gives my nose a right comedy tweak, before going straight back to reading. It’s the problem page, she says. Below-the-belt issues, she says, making a real meal out of the words, below the belt. And then she chuckles again. A dry chuckle. Not really laughing.

The job itself, it turns out, is dead easy and mostly involves me and two little Italian fellas called Marco and Luca – all three of us dressed in real flash uniforms of black trousers and blue denim shirts – whipping all the empties away from the table-tops as soon as we spot them, and rushing them into the kitchen. We clean up the spills too. And we even mop the vomit into buckets. That happens, I quickly discover, mostly on Saturday nights, when too many crazy fellas in rugby shirts have had too many tequila slammers from Sandy the shooter girl. Mix all the tequila with some spicy tomatoey and peppery foods and tons of beer, and you’ve a recipe for a badly splattered trip to the jacks, and multicoloured upchuck all over the back stairs.

I take to it like a duck to water, and everyone treats me really nice, from Trevor the English manager with the shaved head to the Arab fellas in the kitchen right through to all the gays out on the floor. Yeah, there’s gays everywhere. The bloke at the front, who takes you to your seat, the tall blond fella behind the bar who makes the cocktails, and all three of the main waiters, are all super gay. It’s a big change from Dublin, where you never really saw a gay, because they all must’ve been in hiding together somewhere, but these gays are brilliant about it, and dead funny, and always cracking jokes to each other and acting a bit like posh women who are on a break from having afternoon tea in huge mansions, and just doing waitering for a laugh. Billy, the head waiter, is the nicest, and he’s always calling me his little Irish helper, and telling me I’m cute as a button, and stroking me and hugging me. It’s the best thing ever, and it’s not at all like O’Culigeen. Not a bit. Not dangerous at all. It’s lovely and warming. Like the touch of a mam. And it makes me want to be near him, and listen to him, and make him happy with me when ever he’s on duty.

I’m not the only one though. Everyone loves sitting around Billy after shift, listening to his stories. When the customers are
gone home and the vomit and tomato is all cleared up, it’s staff beer time, and the bar stools are usually arranged in a little semicircle around him, and he can just go on and on all night, till dead late, right into the morning, with funny stories and sayings and expressions that he’s collected from years of being a top London waiter. Telling you about the early days in Soho, and the fights in Greek Street, and the rude sex-related things you’d see on the turn of every corner. One of his stories is about a girl running down the street with no pants on. And when he gets to the bit where he has to describe her fanny he does loads of funny actions, as if he’s about to get sick, and as if the very thought of a fanny is enough to make him feel faint. We all burst out laughing at this, me and the other busboys and all the gays, because we know that it’s dead funny when a fanny makes you want to puke.

At first Aunty Grace doesn’t allow me to stay for staff beers. Partly because I’m too young, and she says that the after-hours chat would be unsuitable. Although Fiona sticks her head into that argument and reminds Aunty Grace that after everything that’s happened me, well, really, come on?! But it’s mostly because she doesn’t like being called out at one in the morning on cold car pick-up duty, to drive all the way to Oxford Circus wrapped up in two heavy dressing gowns, woollen socks and slippers, and with eyes full of sleep and a head full of half-dreams. When Billy hears about this he goes mental in front of Trevor and insists that I get a staff taxi home every night that I work, just like all the girls do. Which isn’t a big deal, because the British Government says that I’m only allowed to work two shifts a week, on Friday and Saturday night, on account of me being a pretend sixteen-year-old.

I plan to stay at home for the rest of the week, on Life Guard duty right next to Saidhbh’s bedroom door, but Aunty Grace won’t hear of it. Not least, she says, because there’s boxes to be lifted, shelves to be stacked, and files to be numbered down at
The Business. I begin to tell her that Saidhbh needs my help, and my attentions, but Aunty Grace just waves me away and says that the greatest help I can give to that poor young wan is to lead by example, and to show her that I’m not a moper, like she is, and am out instead and helping with The Business. This seems like the sort of thing that adults say when they want to get their own way, like when they go, I’ll time you if you run down to the corner shop and buy me a packet of fags, or, I bet you can’t empty that dishwasher by the time the titles for
Dempsey and Makepeace
are over? But I go with it anyway. Because I don’t have a better plan. And because I know that, when it comes down to it, the idea of being at home alone on the brown beanbag when Saidhbh eventually finds the courage to stab herself with another broken glass – successfully this time, and right through the neck – freaks me to Jaysus and back.

Aunty Grace calls it The Business, but the official working name is
Grace’s Angels
. It’s the name typed on the rusty metal buzzer panel outside the door that leads you up to the office itself, which is really two huge rooms knocked into one above a chemist’s shop in Ladbroke Grove, just opposite the tube station.

I walk down there after ten most mornings, way after everyone’s started, and after I’ve finished my Frosties and had a chance to stick my head into Saidhbh’s room and tried to get something, anything, out of her. I usually do this little song-and-dance routine that Mam used to do to me when I was a tiddler, and it goes, Good morning! Good morning! You slept the whole night through! Only you’re singing it, and you’re shuffling from side to side as you do, and you’re moving your hands around, both of them open and flat, in front of your body in little circles, as if you’re washing a window pane in front of your face with two separate cloths.

When Mam used to do it back in The Rise she’d go from bedroom to bedroom in the early mornings, patiently performing the whole routine from scratch in each room, and getting totally different responses each time. Sarah and Siobhan would be all like, groggy and, Shag off with yourself and your good mornings! Whereas Claire and Susan would squeal with the thrill of it all when Mam got to the you, you and you bit, because then she’d be dancing closer, step by step, to the bedside, and she’d poke you in the armpit with big tough tickly fingers every time she said the word, you.

When I’d hear her coming towards me and Fiona’s door I’d get instantly giggly, and hold the sheets right up to my face for the whole song, and work myself up into a hysterical high-pitched fit at the pokey, tickly, you, you and you climax.

Of course, I don’t do the tickling bit with Saidhbh. But I do go through the whole routine, right there in the dark, and even manage a couple of shuffly left-to-right dance steps most days. Sometimes she answers with a groan. Sometimes she giggles very softly under the covers, and sighs to herself that I’m Finno the Madser. And sometimes she says nothing at all. On those days I leave straight away, slipping quietly out the door, and feeling like a right berk – which is a new curse word that everyone in England uses, especially Aunty Grace, and it means prat or wally.

The walk down to Grace’s Angels, from Kilburn through Queen’s Park and into Ladbroke Grove, helps me remember that I’m in London, and that my life is mad, and that you can get used to anything when your girlfriend’s life is depending on it. And anyway, London is pretty much the same as Dublin, except for the amount of people, the bigger streets, the faster cars, the deafening noise, and the blacks. In Dublin, besides the Shilawehs, we don’t really have any blacks, whereas there’s millions of them here. Although Fiona says that this is because of the particular
part of the city that we’re living in, and because the blacks and the Irish are always thrown together in every city in the world, because they’re the lowest of the low. Everyone hates the blacks, she says, because they’re lazy and they have big mickeys and are desperate to have sex with all the white girls. And everyone hates the Irish because they’re lazy, and are always drunk and they don’t use their mickeys for anything other than peeing up against your doorway in the small hours of the morning on the way home from the pub. So, together, the Irish and the blacks are a lethal combination, like one big lazy, drunken, stumbling sex-machine, and are best kept hidden in the darker corners of any city.

Fiona’s brilliant like that. She’s become really wise since living in London, and she knows loads more than she did when she lived in Dublin. And she’s serious too, about her job, and about being all successful and everything, like the women on telly with the shoulder pads. She charges around Grace’s Angels all businesslike, and gives me a potted history of the story so far, and of how there’s a quarter of a million Irish living in London, but most of them are women, because Irish fellas usually get given the land down in the bog back home, and because even if they don’t get the land the fellas are usually mammy’s boys, whereas the girls are always a bit tougher and more full of adventurous spirit thanks to all the crucial early years that they spend being beaten up by angry nuns and being told by everyone to shut their fecking faces and go off and make the tea.

She says that it’s boom time for Grace’s Angels because of the amount of Irish girls that turn up in Kilburn every week. Although it’s getting harder and harder to get the really thick ones into jobs, because the jobs themselves are changing and everyone has to be able to type at best, or at worst be able to read and write. Which is why Grace’s Angels now has a full line of typewriter desks next to the windows, and is like a school most
days, rather than a job centre, with nervous-looking girls getting rapped on the knuckles by Aunty Grace’s ruler every time that they try to type with one finger instead of using the whole hand. Yes, says Fiona, sounding like a real old pro, it’s all about the FIBs now – which is, she says, looking at me like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, Finance, Insurance and Banking. Because ten years ago, according to Aunty Grace, you could get a girl into anything. Working at a biscuit factory, or in a furniture makers or at a car plant, you name it and there was a gig for a girl there, as long as she had two arms and half a brain. But now everything’s gone upmarket, and there’s no factory jobs any more, and all the city fellas with the red braces and the big cigars will only think of hiring great-looking women with brilliant typing skills and
Dynasty
-style suit jackets.

But then, of course, there’s always restaurants, says Fiona, handing me a fresh pile of envelopes to stuff, and giving me a sisterly smirk. It’s nice that being this successful hasn’t changed Fiona at all, and she still knows how to be jokey and friendly-mean, without being hurtful. She thinks it’s great that Aunty Grace snagged me the Border Town gig. And that I’m dead lucky to have an actual job, while most fellas my age are running around playing with Action Man, and
Star Wars
figures and scabbing pocket money from their mammies on a Sunday morning after Mass. And in London too! she says, beaming broadly, which makes us both instantly give each other the look that says that London’s brilliant, without a doubt, yes, sir.