The Fields (5 page)

I pull the brakes, slide forward off the saddle and stand there spreadeagled at the edge of the footpath with the bike still between my legs. Gary does the same, only he says Fuck Sake under his breath and tries not to damage his balls on the crossbar. Two figures, still in shadow, are walking away from the fire, crossing the five-a-side and coming towards us. They’re wobbling a bit, half tripping each other. They’re muttering things that we cannot hear. It’s hard to tell but it looks like they’ve got their arms linked around each other. One of them is definitely Mozzo. I knew that from the minute he shouted my name. The other one’s a girl.

They get closer. Mozzo’s hair’s pulled tight into a ponytail and he’s wearing a leather jacket with loads of buckles and zips that clink and clank like a tinker’s cart with each step and half stumble. The girl’s got long hair that’s straight and shiny and brown. They keep coming. Closer still, right off the pitch, feet away from us. She’s wearing drainpipe jeans and a black bomber jacket plastered with those tiny button badges that usually say things like Madness, Ska Rules, Elvis Lives, and so on. Closest yet. They walk right up to our bikes. Her skin is brown, summer-tanned. Her eyes are brown too, like the toy eyes you get in teddy-bears.
And her lips are shiny with whitish lipstick, like Madonna in the ‘Borderline’ video. Her name is Saidhbh Donohue, she is a vision of pure beauty, and her arm is locked tight around Mozzo.

If Helen Macdowell was as nice as the Bionic Woman, then Saidhbh Donohue is all three of Charlie’s Angels put together. In school, before the summer holiday, we were doing this poem about Helen of Troy and in it they say that she’s got ‘beauty like a tightened bow’. Our English teacher, Mr King, says that beauty like a tightened bow is the most amount of beauty you can ever imagine in someone, just before it snaps and breaks like a bow that’s been tightened too hard. Saidhbh Donohue is that beautiful. She’s so beautiful that if she gets any more beautiful she’ll be ugly.

Mr King is into all that kind of stuff, romance and everything. He has a brown leather jacket and he plays the guitar in class at the end of the lesson, when we’re writing with our heads down on the desks, and the music with no words is like a waking lullaby as we suck bits of spit in and out of our jumper sleeves. He’s always promising to take us to the pub, or bring us out for chips, but he can never find the time. He’s dead friendly with all the boys, and he had to fight tooth and nail to get us reading the Heathcliff book, at our age, even though we won’t be doing it till Leaving Cert. He does all the actions when he’s reading it, and he goes on and on about Heathcliff and Cathy and life on the moors, which is the English version of the bog. His favourite bit of the book is when Heathcliff has to go out and bang his head against a knotty tree trunk, because he loves Cathy so much even though she’s dead. Heathcliff’s all like, Ah Jaysus, she’s bleedin dead! Feck’s sake! Cathy! Feckin no!!!

And Mr King then puts down the book and looks around the room and asks us to imagine loving a girl so much that we’d want to bash our own heads off a knotty tree trunk for her, even though she was dead. All the GAA lads snort at this, and say
things like, She can knot my trunk any day of the week! Which is totally stupid and doesn’t mean anything, but gets everyone laughing and kind of makes Mr King stare into space and dream about a time when he might be teaching real-life boys and not a load of complete fecking eejits.

Saidhbh’s name is pronounced Sive, like hive, but her father’s dead proud of being Irish so he always wears thick jumpers and makes his kids spell their names with as many ‘bh’s and ‘dh’s as possible. This is so everyone will always know that they’re Irish, no matter what country they’re in, even though the Donohues never go abroad coz Mr Donohue, Taighdhg (pronounced tie-g), always says that there’s so many beautiful places to visit in Ireland why would you want to be going to some awful ole hot foreign place when you have all the riches you could want right here in front of you? Sometimes Saidhbh hangs around with Fiona, but she never comes into our house or up to Fiona and mine’s room. She’s kind of floaty like that. Loses track of what you’re saying and is off in her own head somewhere. Fiona says that Saidhbh is great fun and a real giggler when you get to know her. She’s dead religious too, and goes to confession every fortnight, and is a real Mass-head. In fact, Fiona once met Saidhbh up in Kilcuman, stumbling out of the church on Good Friday, with tears streaming down her face. Fiona asked her what was wrong and Saidhbh said, It’s the Passion, I just find it so moving.

And yet, she’s crazy too. She’s always being caught drinking in Belfield with the college boys, and smoking in the shopping centre, and in school too. Fiona says that there’s a joke going round that this is why Saidhbh has to do so much confession, but actually it’s because she has ‘issues’ with her parents. Samuel Foster, Kent Foster’s younger brother, spilt the beans after their big religious retreat at school. Said that Saidhbh had a breakdown during one of the heavy group sessions, and cried in front
of everyone about how her dad’s a bit of an alkie, and only ever pays her attention when he’s shouting at her to put on a longer skirt, or take off some make-up. They’ve called the Parish Priest too at theirs, loads of times. But he stopped coming after Taighdhg told him to ‘fuck off’ for saying that the whole family had ‘issues’ and that they needed to go on a religious sing-songy holiday in Connemara for Goddy people, called Camp Generation.

Saidhbh doesn’t go to The Sorrows. Taighdhg sends her to an all-Irish-speaking school in Oakfield called Coláiste Mhuire ni Bheatha where he teaches history and everyone speaks Irish all day long and you can get expelled for speaking English. Fiona says that the teachers there, including Mr Donohue, are all mad. The men teachers have all got beards and belt you for talking out of place, and the women are worse and they carry sticks and hit the kids if they can’t recite the national anthem backwards by the time they’re in fifth class. Maura Connell thinks Coláiste Mhuire ni Bheatha is an awful place and one night, after the London burger bombings were on the news, she was over in our house talking to Dad about it and she mentioned the school and called it ‘a Hotbed of Republicanism’. Later, when he was tucking me into bed, I asked Dad what she meant by that and he said that it means a place where you love things like flags and history books more than you love people.

Fiona says that there’s a whole world of mental whispers and giddy gossip sprung up around the teachers in Coláiste Mhuire ni Bheatha, and that Samuel Foster told her, during a Spandau Ballet slow set, and after drinking a whole jam jar of gin at the Sorrow’s summer disco, that half of them are in the IRA itself, and that there’s a rumour going round school that Saidhbh’s dad once allowed two IRA fellas to sleep on the floor in the family sitting room for a whole month when they were on the run from the British Army and the guards because of a shootout over in London. The rumour also says that all Taighdhg Donohue has to
do is make one phone call and he can get straight through to The Movement. No sweat. And you don’t call it the IRA when you’re as close as Taighdhg. It’s simply The Movement.

Fuckin Hell, Finno, how the fuck are you, haven’t seen ya in fuckin ages! That’s how he starts.

And you too, Gary, where you been hiding?

Gary doesn’t answer. Mozzo never puts an O on to Gary’s name, even though it would be easy – Garro, or Conno would do. Mozzo’s holding a can of HCL in the hand that isn’t attached to Saidhbh. She has one too. HCL is what everyone buys when they’re going knacker-drinking. No one knows what HCL stands for but Steven Casey says it means High Content Lager. Content means how quickly it can get you pissed.

We’ve been around, I say. Just cycling.

And you wouldn’t go fuckin cycling with me? What’s fuckin wrong with me, do I have fuckin BO?

Now that I’m this close I can see that there’s real fire in Mozzo’s eyes. He looks like he could kill you on the spot. His upper lip is curled into his gums, his nostrils are all wrinkled and his bottom lip is tight and wet. Like the fella in
An American Werewolf in London
, when he’s in the early stages of changing, before he turns totally into the doggy creature.

Saidhbh can see that I’m shitting bricks and I don’t know what to say to Mozzo so she butts in and says that Mozzo is an awful tease. He bursts out laughing and says sorry to me and Gary, says he knows the score that it was our mams that made us stay away because of the broken window. He looks at Gary and winks and says, And the other thing! Saidhbh giggles a bit and Gary goes puce. Imagine, the most beautiful girl on the planet knows that you shoved two pillows together and stuck your mickey in between them and pretended that they were a woman?

You’re Fiona’s little brother, aren’t you? says Saidhbh, looking me right in the eyes, like she’s trying to melt me there and then.

I say nothing, because I think that if I open my mouth I’ll get sick.

Fiona’s brother? she says again, slower this time, like she’s talking to an old wan.

I nod. I remember you, she says, in your Spider Man pyjamas, following the big girls around all night.

I still don’t know what to say.

Well, you’re with the big boys now, says Mozzo, all macho-like. Come over and meet the gang.

I freeze. The way Mozzo has said it means that I’m the one who’s invited and Gary can come along too, if he likes. Mozzo and Saidhbh move straight away as if it’s a done deal, but I just shuffle a bit on my bike so as not to look like I’m not going. But I’m not, coz Gary isn’t having any of it. Gary is facing the ground and won’t even look at me. It’s like he’s waiting for me to run off with Mozzo and Saidhbh.

Look, I say out loud to everyone, I better drop the bike off first.

Mozzo and Saidhbh just wander off and Mozzo shouts back, Don’t worry we’re not going to nick it.

Me and Gary stand there, spreadeagled over our bikes, arguing for ages as the night gets darker and darker about why we should or shouldn’t follow them over to the fire. Gary is saying that we should just get on with our cycle, go back to my and Fiona’s room, listen to some boppy music and not be messing with that crowd from the Villas. I’m saying that it might be a laugh if we give it a try, but I’m lying. What I should say is, Please Gary, come over with me so I can sit down next to Saidhbh Donohue.

We argue like this for about half an hour, while all the time in the background Mozzo is passing comments and shouting out things like, Come on, girls, we won’t bite you! And, There’s no pillows over here for you, Gary.

Gary says that there’s no way he’s going over for more of THAT. He tells me that I can do whatever I want and he jumps back up on to his saddle. He cycles away into the night with his bike whining and his flying saucer headband blipping away brightly, disappearing into the shadows of The Rise like a teeny-tiny space machine.

I wheel my bike over to the five-a-side fire. I’m shitting it. It’s totally dark now, and for all I know Mozzo’s probably gone off with Saidhbh Donohue to show her all the things he knows about lickjobs and fannies. And I’m thinking that I’ll be left with all the lads from the Villas who’ll slap me about and ask me for lunch money and call me a little posh queer even though I’m a knacker just like them compared to someone as well-off as Gary.

Nice bike, bufty! is the first thing I hear as I close in on the fire, but before I have time to mount up and leg it I hear Mozzo saying really angrily, Shut the fuck up, Heno!

Mozzo’s sitting on the grass, right up against the flames, looking all orange and glowy. He’s got his leather jacket open with Saidhbh still glued to his armpit. He pulls a can of HCL from his six-pack stash and offers it to me while introducing the four lads, Heno, Macko, Hylo and Stapo, sprawled around the fire.

The lads all have sharp faces. Tight split lips, bony battered cheeks, tiny beady slit eyes, and smooth skinheads. If they even looked at you cross you’d give ‘em your boombox and your entire Soft Cell collection straight away. Still, they nod and call me Finno, which makes me feel kind of tough.

I grab the HCL, crack it open and take a decent slug, as if I do this all the time. Saidhbh and Mozzo are looking at me. They’re waiting for me to go all red and cough and splutter like in the westerns when they give a glass of whiskey to a youngfella and he spits it all out and acts like it’s red-hot poison. But I know that’s the game, so I hold my back teeth together and push it, all
the fizzy mank, right down my throat, using my tongue as a sweeper, and I don’t make the slightest noise or funny face. Instead I go Ahhh, a good long Ahhh, like when you’ve had a drink of lemonade after playing Swingball for an hour.

Mozzo nudges Saidhbh and then says, He’s a madser all right!

This, I guess, is a good thing.

I have tasted drink before, a sip of leftover beer here, a glug of Christmas sherry there, but this is my first proper bout of knacker-drinking. Dad says that it’s illegal for me to drink until I’m sixteen and that the booze is a terrible curse, but all the same he’s always punching me in the shoulder and saying that he can’t wait for the day when he can take me across to The Ballydown Inn and buy me my first pint. The way he says ‘pint’ makes it sound like something special. A decent ole Pint! A quick Pint! A lovely juicy Pint!

Even though Sarah and Siobhan are nineteen he doesn’t think it’s right that they drink and go into pubs. Mam agrees with him on this one.

At your age, going into pubs! she says. If my father ever caught me, or Grace for that matter, in a pub at nineteen, he would’ve lost his reason. We would’ve been the scandal of Ballaghaderreen!

Aunty Grace is Mam’s younger sister, who was meant to be a bit wild when she was young, but now lives far away in London, right next to Buckingham Palace, and has a huge house, a flash car, and runs her own business. She might well have been caught in pubs at nineteen, but Mam certainly wouldn’t. Because Mam is a Pioneer and has never ever had a drink of drink, except for communion wine and the hot whiskies she has when she’s got the flu. Being a Pioneer means that you always ask for fizzy orange at parties, you pretend to be enjoying yourself when everyone’s getting all sweaty and stupid, and you pray every night to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and ask him not to send you to any more
stupid parties. Mam has a little laminated card with the Pioneer’s prayer printed on it. She keeps it tucked into her missal. The prayer is all, Give me strength for this and Help me offer it up for that and Don’t let me fail and all that stuff. But the best thing is that right above the words there’s this brilliant picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It’s got Jesus, looking calm and clean, opening his cloak and bam! There, right in the centre of his chest is a red heart floating out from his body, hovering in space! The heart itself is wrapped in thorns which are making it bleed, and it’s got a crucifix jammed into the top of it, and it’s on fire and the whole thing is glowing like mad.